Pious Deception

by Susan Dunlap

  “What?”

  “He hired some floozy to pretend she needed my help.” Beth smacked the sofa arm. “But I’ll tell you one thing: She’ll think twice before she tries something like that again.”

  Kiernan let out her breath, slowly. “Where is she?”

  Beth’s mouth dropped open. “You! It was you. I can’t believe it. I thought only Joe Zekk would be slime enough to hire that woman—”

  “Where is she!”

  “I found her in my office in the middle of the night. I made damned sure she wouldn’t be any more trouble. Follow me. She’s all yours.”

  Beth stalked to the storeroom, took out a set of keys, and unlocked the deadbolt and the door.

  There was barely room between the gray metal shelves for the flimsy cot. Lying on it, Patsy Luca looked like an illustration from a text on jaundice. No hint of tan remained on her sallow, sweaty skin. Her blond hair stuck to her scalp in gooey clumps. Her eyes appeared to be glued closed.

  Kiernan put a hand on Patsy’s arm. “My God, Patsy. What happened?”

  Before she could answer, Beth said, “She seemed so interested in a bottle of liqueur of mine that I had her drink the whole thing. Very sweet it was, right, Patsy?”

  Patsy groaned. “Damned eight-sided—”

  “Eight-sided?” Kiernan exclaimed. “Was the bottle about three inches wide?”

  Patsy groaned again, but this time added the smallest of affirmative nods.

  “Did it look like this?” From her purse, she extracted a copy of the stain on Vanderhooven’s blotter.

  Patsy’s eyes opened. “In the trash, there.” She rolled over and plucked the bottle from a wicker basket.

  Kiernan held it against the copy of the stain. “Perfect fit.” To Beth she said, “Culiacán, the peace offering you and Austin had. When did you get this?”

  “A year ago.”

  Patsy sat up, lowered her feet to the floor, and groaned once more. Wind smacked the window behind her. “I found more than that,” she said, with the merest suggestion of a smile. “I found a stack of love letters. From Vanderhooven. Hot stuff, huh, Beth? Latest was four years ago, and things had cooled down a lot by then.”

  “But you kept them, Beth?” Kiernan asked. “His ardor cooled, but you kept his letters. That doesn’t sound like disinterest.”

  “What business is it of … Oh, hell! I started to burn them probably twenty times. Once I had the match lit. Look, I never said I had no emotional attachment to Austin. But it wasn’t love anymore. I just needed to get to the point where I could read one of those letters and have it mean nothing.”

  “So you could prove you weren’t attached to him?” Kiernan said. “And have the power?”

  Beth started to retort, then appeared to think better of it. Slowly, Patsy pushed herself up and stood, balancing her shaky body against the cot. Then she walked slowly into the hall and leaned against the wall.

  Kiernan sat down on the rumpled cot, vaguely listening to the window rattling in the sash, vaguely wondering if this was going to be one of the dust storms Stu Wiggins had warned her about, mostly pondering Austin Vanderhooven. A spray of dirt hit the window. She said, “Beth, Austin Vanderhooven sent you the Culiacán as a peace offering a year ago. That’s when he told you about the monastery, right?”

  Beth said nothing.

  “Why would he give you a peace offering then?”

  “Because Culiacán was always our peace offering!”

  “Why would adding a monastery building to the retreat make any difference? Why would that merit a peace offering?” She caught Beth’s eye. “What difference would that make to you? Your problem is with the construction of the buildings. Why should you care if he changed what they were to be used for?”

  “I don’t. I didn’t care what he changed, because, as I told him, and as I told you, I am not going to be here. Even he finally got that.”

  Kiernan sat, tapping her forefinger against her knee. “Vanderhooven hadn’t contacted the financial backers in a year. That doesn’t sound like the competent retreat organizer you were describing. Backers need to be nurtured, particularly on a project like this where the rewards are merely tax write-offs and good will. A year’s a long time for them to dangle. A year ago was when he made a peace offering to you. More like a farewell offering.” She took a long deep breath. “He gave you a peace offering because he was telling you he would never see you again. He was planning a life of seclusion, right? There wasn’t going to be any retreat, was there, Beth? No retreat, just a monastery.”

  35

  KIERNAN HURRIED DOWN THE steps from Hohokam Lodge. The wind sliced the hard dirt into her cheeks. She raised her hands to shield her eyes and ran for the Jeep.

  “What is it you’re supposed to do in sandstorms, Patsy?” Kiernan asked.

  “Go back in the lodge.”

  Kiernan laughed. “It’d have to be a blizzard before Beth Landau would let us in there again.” She started the engine, put on the dims, and headed slowly down the pockmarked trail. On the unprotected mesa the wind raced in, scooping up dirt, swirling it around, and slapping it against the windows. The predusk sky had darkened. She could barely see beyond the front of the Jeep. Dirt scraped against the side windows. It hit the windshield like myriads of tiny BBs and coated the glass. The plastic that covered the shattered back window fluttered but held firm. She turned the wipers on; they smeared the dirt. She hit the water spray; it cleared a small triangle under each wiper, but the blades covered them with dirt on the swing back.

  “Keep the water on, Patsy.” Kiernan steadied the wheel with both hands, bent low to see through the clearing, and headed down the dirt road. The Jeep hit a pothole and Patsy lost the spray button.

  “You okay?” Kiernan asked Patsy.

  “Yeah. Now that I’ve had a few aspirins I might pass for human.”

  The Jeep hit another hole. Patsy’s hand stayed on the button. Kiernan braced her left foot against the floorboard, thankful for the first time that the Jeep was an automatic. The windows were closed, but dirt flew in through the minuscule cracks around them. Kiernan could feel it on her face. It clung gritty to her teeth. It was on her tongue, in her throat. She coughed, but her throat didn’t clear.

  “You want to know what I found, Kiernan?”

  The Jeep ricocheted and landed halfway up the bank. Kiernan yanked the wheel left. The tires spun then caught. “I can’t see the ground at all,” she said.

  “We can’t stop here in the middle of this road. With the engine off the headlights won’t last. And if anything comes along it’ll plow into us.”

  “I know,” Kiernan said. “Hang on.”

  “I can give you the names of seventeen of the husbands and boyfriends Beth had in her files.” Patsy cleared her throat and began to chant to the tune of “Rock of Ages”: “Travis Arlen, Jake Bierstrom, Will Furgood, Fred-Greep McCue—”

  “What is this, detective sing-along?”

  “Ben Hmm Meader, Jos Mendoz—”

  “Hose Mendoze?”

  “José Mendoza. Look I’ve got to do it this way.”

  “Okay.”

  “Travis Arlen,” Patsy began again.

  When she chanted “Darryl Washington,” Kiernan said, “Well, there’s nothing there.”

  “Nothing there! That damned tune and those names are going to circle around in my brain for the rest of my life!”

  “Get a Walkman to wear tomorrow and a couple of new tapes and charge it to the case. Look there, I think that’s the road ahead.” Kiernan said. “Hey, I can see the road. I can see it. The storm’s letting up!”

  “Yeah. Most times dust storms don’t last long. Problem is you can’t be sure. Normal thing is they end in rain. I was afraid we’d be caught in a downpour. It’s monsoon season. The rains are what can be dangerous here in the mountains. And there are flash floods. I was afraid of that. I just didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Thanks,” Kiernan said sarcastically. “This is a
Jeep. I grew up driving in snow. And I spent one monsoon season in India.”

  “It gets really bad here,” Patsy said, clearly unimpressed. “You know all those dry bridges in town, the ones that go over dry washes or riverbeds? Well, when there’s a good rain, those rivers are like the Mississippi. Floods washed out the main bridge between Tempe and Phoenix one year. People die.”

  “Nice it’s not us.” Kiernan pulled onto the hardtop. The wheels grabbed and the Jeep leapt forward. And as suddenly the air cleared. It had become just a mildly foggy evening, clear enough to forego the dims for the headlights. Kiernan could feel the muscles of her shoulders releasing. She was aware of the pressure of her clenched molars. She swung her jaw side to side. “Is there any water in the bottle under the seat?”

  “Yeah. Here.”

  Kiernan drank and passed the bottle back to Patsy. “Besides the ‘Rock of Ages’ men, Vanderhooven’s letters, and the Culiacán, anything else?”

  “The prowler; but you know about him. And the deed to the land.”

  “Deed? From John McKinley? McKinley left the land to the church in his will. But you say he deeded it over. Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yeah. The deed was in the office closet. Since nineteen thirty-seven. Straight quitclaim. John McKinley deeded thirty-six acres of land to the pastor of Mission San Leo.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yup. Just the land, no buildings. Nothing. But there probably weren’t any buildings in nineteen thirty-seven.”

  Kiernan pulled around an ancient pickup truck. The road was completely clear now. The wind had died. And surprisingly, the sky was a royal blue, flecked with spotlight-bright stars. In the distance she could see headlights and farther on, in the valley, the pinpoints of streetlights. “John McKinley deeded the land to the church in nineteen thirty-seven. Then he willed it to them again. Just to be sure? The will was also written in nineteen thirty-seven. So what does that mean? Okay, so Austin Vanderhooven knew that the McKinleys had deeded the land to the church, but he didn’t know why. He paid Joe Zekk five thousand dollars to go down there to find that out. He must have heard about the massacre, but he wanted to know exactly what happened, and how it affected the church.”

  “And what did Zekk find out?”

  “That the Catholic Church didn’t just support the McKinleys when they wiped out the Sheltons; they supplied the money for the guns. The Rattlesnake massacre was in nineteen thirty-eight. But the deed and the will were written in nineteen thirty-seven!”

  Patsy whistled, then groaned. “Talk about blackmail! I guess you don’t need to ask where Joe Zekk got the rest of his money, huh?”

  “No. Not Zekk. That information was Austin Vanderhooven’s cache. If he was smart enough to go after it, he was smart enough to make sure Joe Zekk didn’t undercut him when he wanted to pressure Dowd himself with it.” The road had dipped; a rise in the distance hid the lights of Phoenix. Beneath the brightness of the stars everything was black. As the headlights flashed on the ocotillo at the edge of the road; they looked as if they were waving prickly arms, holding up spiny thumbs for a ride. On the dashboard the pale yellow light from the odometer and the radio gave the Jeep the aura of safety and intimacy. She smiled at Patsy. “Zekk’s selfish, immature, and unscrupulous. But at least until recently, he did consider himself Austin Vanderhooven’s friend. Could be Vanderhooven was his only friend.”

  Patsy took another drink of water. “What about Vanderhooven?”

  “Well, my suspicion is that Vanderhooven choose Zekk not because they’d been friends in seminary but because he knew that Zekk would do pretty much anything for a buck. What he didn’t count on was that Zekk would do it for anyone else for another buck. So here’s Zekk, an insecure, unlikeable guy, who really did think Vanderhooven, the star of his seminary class, chose him to be his confidant. Vanderhooven brings him out here and sets him up in what he considers the middle of nowhere. And then he ignores him. And Zekk responds by drinking too much and buying enough blue movies to keep the crew of a battleship happy and renting them out.

  Then he calls Vanderhooven’s father in Maui and arranges to spy on Vanderhooven for him.”

  Headlights filled the rearview mirror. Kiernan looked at the speedometer. She was doing seventy-five.

  “So, Kiernan, Joe Zekk was snooping around Beth’s place for Vanderhooven’s father?”

  “Possibly. But my guess is that’s what Vanderhooven himself paid him for.”

  “Maybe he sold whatever he found to both of them.”

  Kiernan laughed. “Of course, Patsy! But still, four hundred from them, three hundred from the films, and whatever he made hawking the McKinley’s pottery, it’s not enough to support his life-style.” The lights from behind turned the mirror into a spotlight. Kiernan squeezed her right eye shut against the glare.

  “Maybe he had money when he got here. What did he do before this?”

  “Merchant sailor of sorts.”

  Patsy laughed. “I don’t picture merchant sailors making a beeline from the boat to the bank. Do you think of Zekk as a saver?”

  Kiernan nodded. “Not unless you consider what he knew about Dowd a nest egg. Now there’s an alliance made in heaven.”

  Patsy laughed.

  The mirror went dark. Kiernan looked to her left as a vehicle flashed by so fast she could barely make out enough to classify it as a pickup. The Jeep crested a ridge, and suddenly all of Phoenix was spread out below, like a plate of tiny yellow lights with the shiny red and green dots of traffic signals splattered among them. The air was so clear that each individual light stood out. Beside her she could hear Patsy’s breath catch. And above, against the blackness of the sky, the piercing bright stars seemed as near as the town.

  She let a moment pass before turning her attention back to the question of the dead priest’s friend. “Zekk figures Dowd has no more scruples than he has. Dowd can’t afford to alienate Zekk because he knows too much. Maybe Zekk just blackmailed him. Or maybe, Patsy, he figured that here was one person who would want whatever dirt he could find on Austin Vanderhooven. One person who’d be dying to get even.”

  “But what was Dowd going to do with whatever he got from Zekk?” Patsy unsnapped the seat belt and leaned back against the door, propping one boot precariously against the dash.

  Kiernan eyed the boot warily, envisioning the heel flying into her cheek, but the camaraderie of nocturnal travel forbade comment. “Dowd could force Vanderhooven to go ahead with the retreat. It may not have made any difference to Beth if Austin Vanderhooven substituted a monastery for the great retreat, but it would be like night and day for Dowd. Dowd and Sylvia Necri had been planning the retreat for years. Stu Wiggins said Dowd’d given up trying to succeed the archbishop. He had all his marbles up here.”

  Patsy laughed. “And Vanderhooven kicked them aside.”

  Kiernan slowed to a stop. It was the first traffic light she had seen since morning. In contrast to the sudden stillness of the unmoving Jeep, her skin seemed to be vibrating. “Zekk had a lot to lose too, Patsy. He’s been scraping by for years, but he sees himself as an entrepreneur. When Vanderhooven talked about the retreat, he probably promised him introductions to the bigwigs, just like he did with Beth Landau. You can see how that would appeal to Joe Zekk. So he comes out here, lives in isolation. Then suddenly Vanderhooven changes his mind, gives up his plans for the great retreat, and decides on a monastery. Suddenly he can’t be bothered with his ‘friend.’ He’s spending all his time playing monk in his dome. Zekk’s drinking; he’s bitter, and he knows how to tie knots.”

  Patsy sat up straight. “Kiernan, Beth thinks he was the prowler. Suppose, Kiernan, he took the bottle from Beth’s office, got Vanderhooven to drink some—”

  “Maybe he left it on Vanderhooven’s blotter with a note supposedly from Beth, saying she was willing to make up for being pissed off about the monastery—”

  “And then he hangs the guy in his own church—what better revenge, huh?” />
  “And Patsy,” Kiernan said, “Joe Zekk has no alibi for Wednesday night.”

  36

  ON THE WAY BACK to Phoenix, Kiernan stopped twice to call Joe Zekk’s phone number. After the second set of unanswered rings, she considered and vetoed the idea of heading back into the mountains to question him face-to-face. She dropped Patsy off at her house, traded in the Jeep (for another automatic!), circled by Ben’s Burgers, and brought dinner back to her motel.

  She called Stu Wiggins. Not home. Joe Zekk, still not home. She pictured Zekk driving off as soon as she was out of sight of his house. The only question was to whom he was racing to report. Philip Vanderhooven? Despite his questionable financial connections, Vanderhooven hadn’t killed his son. He was in Hawaii then. And the Rattlesnake feud had taken place thirty years before he had wintered in Phoenix. Without much hope, she dialed the rectory for Bishop Dowd.

  Dowd wasn’t home either. But Mrs. Johnarndt, his housekeeper, was, and she was worried. As Kiernan sympathized and coaxed, she found herself picturing her childhood priest’s plump, white-haired housekeeper, holding the receiver slightly away from her ear and nervously wiping her hand on a purple flowered apron. Finally Mrs. Johnarndt took a deep breath and broke into sobs. “I was standing in the hallway. Bishop walked right past me. Like I wasn’t there. It’s not like him … go rushing out like that … and not tell me what to say.”

  “Do you think he could be with a parishioner?” Kiernan asked gently.

  “No. No one here,” she said, clearly making an effort to control her outburst. “The call was long distance. Collect.”

  “This call, Mrs. Johnarndt, when did the bishop get it?”

  “Right before he left. About an hour ago.”

  “Do you have any idea who it was from?” Kiernan asked.

  “That Joe Zekk, up there in the mountains. Collect, like all those other calls from there.”