Pious Deception

by Susan Dunlap

  Dowd shook off his reverie. Thirty-five minutes till he was to meet Necri. She’d want something for Elias. But what? It was going to mean trouble. More trouble.

  The loudspeaker crackled. “El Paso, Odessa, Abilene, Forth Worth, Dallas, and points east.” Oh to get on the bus and be gone. But his eyes returned to the Sheltons.

  The Shelton clan. How many Sheltons had there been when he’d climbed off the bus here, when he had signed on in Phoenix? Maybe twenty. Twenty men, women, and children, a couple in the state hospitals, one in a nursing home he wouldn’t have left his eight iron in overnight.

  Of course, it hadn’t been official. Nothing like that. Old Bishop Welborn hadn’t driven him out to the old Mission San Leo and said, “The Shelton clan goes with the church. Get them out of our hair.” Maybe Welborn had forgotten about the Shelton incident, more than twenty years earlier. Like those fools in San Francisco sitting on their earthquake fault, as if the big one would never come, maybe he had been lulled by the years that had passed quietly, scandal-free, since then. To Welborn and the rest of them out here it was ancient history. None of them could see how easily it still could explode and spray scandal over the archdiocese. Lucky for them Dowd had had more sense. Street smarts they’d call it back East now. Whatever. As soon as he heard about the incident, he checked the links to the present, and made it his business to chop them off.

  Looking at Jesse and Anita Shelton, he found himself smiling. The last links. He had gotten rid of the others, spread them out across the country, two here, a family there, far from Phoenix, far from each other.

  “I guess it’s time we got on now.” Jesse Shelton eyed the Greyhound with a clear mixture of excitement and apprehension. But in his wife’s eyes there was only trust.

  “Bishop Dowd,” she said, “you’ve done so much for us. We just have no way to thank you. All the times you helped us out when we needed food or a place to stay. I don’t know how we would have managed without you. The jobs you got Jesse, even after he’d been let go before. No one’s ever done for us like you have. We’re going to miss you something fierce. You know that. Little Billy”—she looked down at the toddler who was staring at the buses with a fascination that seemed to have been lifted whole from Dowd’s youth—“he’ll miss you most of all. It’s kind of scary, going all the way to Tampa, Florida. But if you say it’s the best thing, we sure know it is.”

  “Tampa, Tampa, Tampa.” Billy sounded like a miniature cheerleader. He reached up for Dowd’s hand. “You come on bus.”

  Dowd squeezed the small hand, swallowed hard, and forced himself to let it go, for the last time. He had to pull himself together. He could have sent them to L.A. They would have been better off there. Or to Houston—he could have wangled a good job there for Jesse. But L.A. and Houston were too close, too cheap a bus fare back to Phoenix. “You’ll like it in Tampa. There are big trees, green like the tropics. The jobs are steady. Monsignor Bristow thinks he can get Jesse into an apprentice program. It’ll be a new start for you.” Bristow had owed him one. Not this big a one, but a little pressure had turned the trick.

  In a minute they would climb onto their bus and the last of the Shelton clan would be out of Phoenix. And even if someone traced back the history of Mission San Leo and its property, there would be no Sheltons around to give the family’s story, no one to make the connection to the Church.

  When they had stowed their boxes and suitcases in the bus’s belly and climbed into the bus, Dowd felt an emptiness in his stomach. In one of those rare flashes of certainty, he knew this move would be disastrous.

  Dowd waved as the bus pulled out.

  Once he had wondered if he really had a soul. Now he knew he did, but he had just sold it.

  13

  STU WIGGINS WAS HOME when the return call came. He picked up the receiver on the first ring. “Afternoon.” He’d learned the hard way not to offer his name.

  “Stu?” It was Jesse Dixon from the sheriff’s office.

  “Yeah. What’d you find?”

  “Nothing. What you figured, eh, man?”

  Stu nodded hut offered no reply—he’d gained a few bruises learning that lesson, too. He didn’t ask Jesse if he was sure there was no record of Vanderhooven’s death. If he’d had to ask, he wouldn’t have trusted Dixon with the inquiry. For the same reason he neither reminded him about secrecy nor mentioned the debt he had incurred. Before he replaced the receiver he said, “Thanks.”

  He sat a moment staring out the front window of the cottage that served as his office and home. If the sheriff’s office in question had been in Maricopa County, he would have picked up the phone and called. He wasn’t planning to talk long, but he didn’t want this call to show up on his bill. He pushed himself up and ambled out to the faded red Mustang and drove the few blocks downtown to Heritage Square. Between the convention center and the concert hall was, for Wiggins’s money, the best public phone in the area.

  He dialed the main number for the sheriff’s department. When the dispatcher answered he said, “Check the Haley’s Funeral Home on Alma School Road, on the way to Chandler. There’s a priest, Father Austin Vanderhooven, in their freezer. He was murdered at Mission San Leo on Tuesday.”

  14

  THE SELF-HELP CENTER LOOKED as if it had once been a grocery, the type the chains drove out of business. It had been painted school-wall green—painted, but clearly not prepped beforehand. Kiernan made her way through the waiting room to the women’s center.

  The bright yellow walls of the Women’s Center were a welcome surprise, and instead of stale smoke, this room smelled of Play-doh and crayons. But a look at the dark-haired woman shifting nervously on a plastic chair across the room brought Kiernan back to the reality of the place. There was a hematoma on the woman’s cheek and an incisor missing from her upper jaw. Fear, desperation, and physical abuse had beaten the youth out of her.

  On the floor, a child coughed. Kiernan looked down. The boy shrank back under the chair. Beside him, a girl with hair almost as dark as her mother’s sat staring suspiciously at a rocking horse in the far corner.

  Kiernan’s head throbbed as she looked at them. How many children like them had she seen in her medical school days working in the ER? Children with cigarette burns, with bruises from electrical cords, children who looked at teddy bears and rocking horses and saw only something to trick them.

  A woman in a pale denim shirtdress strode in. She had a boyishly athletic look to her: a sturdy, winsome face, a thatch of sandy hair, and a splattering of freckles so dark that even her desert tan didn’t mask them. Holding out an envelope to the dark-haired woman, she said, “Mrs. Allen, I’ve arranged an appointment with Dr. Herrera at three forty-five. He’s about a mile down the street. You can catch the bus outside.”

  Mrs. Allen stood slowly, nodding. She took the envelope but continued to hold it away from her. The sandy-haired woman put a hand on her arm. In a soft voice she said, “It’ll be okay now. You can do this. You’re taking charge now, right? I’ll keep your things in my office till you get back. Call me if you have any trouble; we’ll be leaving at six sharp. Okay?”

  Slowly the dark-haired woman pocketed the envelope. Her “Thank you” was almost too soft to be heard, but there was a solidity to it, as if in taking the envelope she had accepted an infusion of the freckled woman’s strength. An unusual skill, Kiernan thought, one most doctors would give an added year of internship to possess.

  Mrs. Allen picked up the boy. The little girl clasped her free hand fiercely. Kiernan held the door open.

  When they left she turned to the sandy-haired woman. “Are you Beth Landau?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her gaze was still on the departing family, worry apparent in the set of her eyes.

  “I’m Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. I need to talk to you.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s about Austin Vanderhooven.”

  Her eyes hardened. “Shit! What is this? I’m sorry he’s dead. Really sorry. But it�
��s his own fault. And I’ve got my own responsibilities.” She turned and strode down the hall.

  “Hey.” Kiernan ran after her, catching her outside her office. “Look, the man is dead.”

  “And his father’s already been here to accuse me.”

  “His father came here?” Kiernan asked, taken aback. “Why?”

  “To tell me I’d driven Austin to hang himself!” Beth’s freckled face was drawn tight; her hand shook as she braced herself against the doorframe.

  Kiernan’s shoulders tightened. What was Philip Vanderhooven doing running around accusing people and making the investigation that much harder? She took a deep breath and said, “No wonder you’re angry, Beth. He had no business doing that. I’m a private investigator and there are a couple of things I think you have a right to know about Austin’s death. Can we go inside?”

  Beth flicked a chip of yellow paint from the doorframe. “An investigator? Who’s paying you? The Vanderhoovens or the Church?”

  “And I’m doing this because I want to see that Austin gets a fair shake.”

  The color rose in Beth’s face. “Austin Vanderhooven always got a fair shake, more than a fair shake. Austin’s dead. You’re not doing anything for him. What you’re getting your money for is protecting the delicate Vanderhooven reputation, and, of course, protecting the Church from its bête noire, scandal. I don’t give a damn about either one.”

  “Nor do I, believe me.” Kiernan smiled. “But there’s a good chance Austin did not hang himself, that he was killed. Murdered. I do care about that.”

  Beth Landau’s face paled; her freckles seemed darker in contrast. “Okay,” she said, “come into my office.”

  Kiernan followed her into a shabby yellow room and settled on a black plastic sofa. High on the wall a vent rattled, but no cold air came out. The small office was windowless and smelled of air freshener masking some dull, thick, odor that Kiernan didn’t want to identify. Beth perched on the other end of the sofa. Despite the warmth of the room she was shivering.

  “So, investigator, how did Austin die?”

  “This is not going to be an easy thing to hear. Mr. Vanderhooven had no business barging in on you and then not giving you the whole truth.” Watching for Beth Landau’s reaction, she told her the condition in which Bishop Dowd had found the body. “You can see the sexual implications, and why I have to ask you about your relationship with Austin.”

  Beth dug her fingers into her denim-covered thighs. She inhaled deeply, eyes closed, as if pulling together all her control. “Like I told his father, if he had any sexual activities at all, they weren’t with me. And what you’re telling me about him …” Her eyes flicked shut again and she seemed to shrink back into the sofa. “I just can’t believe Austin would do anything so … so seedy.”

  “Beth, I don’t think he did. That’s why I’m working on this case. That’s why I have to ask you to be totally frank with me.” It was a moment before Beth offered the slightest of nods. “Okay, you dated him in high school, right? And in college. Even after he entered the seminary you still wrote to him. And then you followed him to Phoenix.”

  Beth’s eyes snapped open. “Followed him! Who told you that? Philip? Or was it Grace? According to her, I led Austin kicking and screaming to a bed of perversions. According to Grace, I created the poor so her son would have a police record.”

  Kiernan laughed. “And the bearer’s-bond caper? I suppose that was your fault, too.”

  “Of course,” Beth said, her voice only slightly calmer. “So what if we were both sixteen, and I’d never heard of a bearer’s bond. In Grace’s eyes, it was I who masterminded the escape to Mexico, I who chose a public bus from Tijuana with no shocks and metal seats that left our butts black-and-blue for weeks, I who found the Casa de la Playa, a ‘hotel’ that had more insects than a junior-high science project.”

  Kiernan leaned into the corner of the old sofa and pulled an ankle up on her knee. In the alley out back a truck rattled by; the vibrations reverberated through the stiff plastic on the sofa. “Still, that trip must have been great fun for a pair of sixteen-year-olds. I’m sure the hotel room didn’t look as bad then as it does in retrospect. Nothing does when you’re a teenager. When I think of the places I stayed in college …” She shook her head.

  Beth’s eyes softened. She shivered again but seemed not to notice. The shock was taking its toll on her. As Beth spoke Kiernan sensed that she was talking mostly to herself. “That room couldn’t have been more than eight by eight. There was sand and dirt all over the floor, and so much on the bed that it crackled every time we made a move. And the glasses—afterwards I saw a kid washing them out in water that was brown. But I suppose either the alcohol or being sixteen protected us.” She leaned back against the arm of the sofa. “It’s hard to beat that for romance and adventure, when you’re sixteen. There we were, on the lam, lying together in a real hotel bed.”

  She laughed. “First thing we had a fight. I can’t remember what it was about. When we made up we celebrated by drinking a Mexican liqueur called Culiacán. Culiacán became our peace offering after that—every time we fought and made up. We thought we were such hot stuff then, with our loot, and our hotel and our own bottle. After we drank it we made love, and I had to keep my eyes open the whole time so I didn’t throw up.” She laughed again, but with a hollowness this time. “And then Philip found us. Naked. No house rules about announcing guests at Casa de la Playa. Thank God it was Philip and not Grace. Once he realized the bearer’s bonds were intact he wasn’t too concerned that I wasn’t.”

  Kiernan waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, Kiernan said, “Fifteen years is a long time to be lovers.”

  Beth jerked upright, the spell broken. “Fifteen years! Haven’t you heard what I told you? There’s been nothing between Austin and me since he chose the seminary. What do you take me for?”

  “But Beth, you followed him to Phoenix.”

  “Followed him! Look, I didn’t follow him. If anything he followed me. I was here months before he ever thought of Phoenix. And don’t start thinking I was front-trailing him like a dog. There was no way I could have guessed he’d be sent out here. He was in seminary back East. His godfather’s brother is an archbishop. Austin got him to pull strings to get him out here.”

  “To be with you?”

  “How do I know?” Her right hand was braced against the back of the sofa; she looked ready to push off, stand up, and stalk out.

  Careful not to meet her gaze, not to challenge her, Kiernan said, “It’s very possible I’ve been given false information. People lie to investigators all the time, Beth. I didn’t know Philip Vanderhooven would come here. And believe me, I am not pleased he did. But there’s more to the question of your relationship with Austin. I found a pair of red lace bikini pants.”

  Beth dug her fingers into the back of the sofa. “Anybody can buy bikini pants.”

  “These had been worn.”

  “So?”

  “They are yours. From fifteen years ago? From the Mexican trip?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “How did they get in his dresser drawer?”

  “I don’t know.” Another truck rattled by. The plastic quivered under Beth’s fingers, but she seemed not to notice.

  “Those pants are a real damning piece of evidence, Beth. How do you think they could have gotten there?”

  “Maybe Austin took them. He was the one who bought them. I never cared about them.”

  “When would he have been in a position to take them?”

  “Look, I don’t know,” Beth snapped. “It could have been any time. I didn’t wear them. They aren’t pants you wear for comfort.”

  Kiernan sat silent, watching Beth consider her own danger. Beth ran her forefinger back and forth across the black plastic. Her eyes were half-closed, her lips pressed hard together. In the waiting room the phone rang again. This time Kiernan could hear the murmur of the receptionist’s voice. Then Beth
opened her eyes and swallowed. When she spoke, there was no sign of emotion in her voice. “I’m going to tell you about Austin because it’s in my self-interest. And you can believe what I say or not.”

  Kiernan nodded.

  “I don’t know why Austin came to Phoenix. It’s not that I haven’t given the question thought. Here I am, head of the women’s center. I’m supposed to have my life together.” She gave a forced laugh. “Austin wasn’t sleeping with me. We hadn’t been to bed since college, since the night he told me he was going into the seminary. He took me to dinner, then to a hotel, made love. Austin was always good in bed. I didn’t realize how good until it was over between us and I started dating other guys. But that night it was as if it was the last chance he’d ever get, which of course it was. I just didn’t know it then. Afterwards we sat up, leaning back against the headboard. I remember it was a padded headboard like they had in the fifties. And Austin told me he was going into the seminary.”

  “Tantamount to announcing his engagement to someone else,” Kiernan said.

  “Worse. Another woman, well, you may not like it, but there’s plenty of precedent, plenty of friends who’ve gone through that and are only too happy to console you. But the Church! It’s not like there’s someone better; he just doesn’t want you!”

  Beth’s face had relaxed. In that face Kiernan thought she could see the bewilderment of the college girl Austin Vanderhooven had discarded.

  “I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t awful. Maybe I should have known. Probably. But I didn’t. We’d gone together for years. It took me most of the next year to get myself in reasonable shape to deal with, well, anything.”

  “But you still wrote to him?”

  “He wrote to me. I didn’t answer, not for a long time. Then I convinced myself that answering his letters would be the adult thing to do, that it would prove to me I had gotten over him.”