Blood on a Saint

by Anne Emery

  He nodded to Mrs. Lewis. “Thank you,” he said.

  Monty

  Pike Podgis had made yet another appointment to see Monty in his office to ask yet again what progress he was making on the defence. Monty gave him a quick overview of the information he had uncovered, including the helpful evidence of Richard Campbell, who had heard male and female voices on Hollis Street the morning of the murder. Less helpful, in fact a dead end, was the information about Befanee Tate’s boyfriend; he had not been out there knocking off Befanee’s rival at the shrine of the saint. He had an alibi, as did Befanee herself. Much more promising was what Monty was learning about Jordyn Snider. It seemed she had more than one unsavoury acquaint­ance. Monty did not mention the letters she had received from the unidentified prison inmate. He wanted to know a lot more about that relationship before going public with it. And anything shared with Podgis tended to go public. If the letter-writer was still in prison, the correspondence was irrelevant to the murder case. Except for the light it would shine on the victim’s character, and on the unsuitable male companions she might take up with after dark. But this category of person might have included Podgis himself. So Monty tried to re­assure his client with “We are making progress.”

  Monty hoped Podgis would take a hint from the wrap-up: “Nothing more we can do in here this morning.” But he suspected that his client had never taken a hint in his life. And sure enough, Podgis did not budge. Then the phone rang, and Darlene told Monty Father Burke was here. Should he wait or come back later?

  “Send him in.” Burke’s presence might motivate Podgis to shove off.

  Burke looked as if he had seen the dripping fangs of a serpent from hell when he caught sight of Podgis, but he took the other of Monty’s two client chairs and sat down.

  Monty did not let on that he was aware of any reason the three could not have a pleasant time in the same room together.

  “Hi Brennan. What can I do you for?”

  “I thought we might have a word.”

  “Sure.”

  “But I can wait.”

  Monty could almost feel a live current of hatred pass between the two men. All out of proportion on his client’s part, surely. So out of proportion that he was planning to sue Burke for defamation. None of his lawsuits, against Burke or the Crown or against Monty himself, would see the light of day, but that was not the point. What Monty did not understand was the animosity Podgis displayed towards the priest. There was no question that Burke’s testimony put Podgis in a bad light, suggesting he had a date planned with the victim, and making him look like a gross, ill-mannered boor. Humiliating for Podgis, certainly. But it seemed there was more than the resentment one might expect. As for Burke, well, Podgis was just the sort of ignorant, abrasive lout that would set Burke’s teeth on edge. But the expression on the priest’s normally impassive face was one of intense loathing, his dark eyes like death rays boring into the other man’s soul. Monty wondered fleetingly whether Burke knew something about Podgis that Monty did not know. But how could he? Burke would not have any more information than these few strained encounters and the news stories provided. He had never even seen the television show until the night he made his brief appearance on the program himself. So that would not explain it. And it was not as if Podgis was one of Burke’s parishioners.

  Burke smouldered in silence but, true to form, Podgis had to hear the sound of his own voice and inflict it on everyone else.

  “What would the Bar Society say, Collins, about my lawyer palling around with a key witness against one of his own clients?”

  “Why don’t you ask them? Give them a call.”

  “You’re always such a smartass. Hard to believe you have any friends at all. Maybe that explains why you think you’re stuck with this guy.” He jerked his chin in Burke’s direction. “Nothing to say, Burke? It’s okay, you can speak freely here.”

  Again, nothing but eternal damnation coming from the eyes of Burke.

  What was going on between these two? It was as if Podgis was needling Burke about something. Well, whatever it was, it was not doing anyone any good.

  “All right, gentlemen, let’s adjourn this convivial meeting sine die.”

  “What does that mean, smart guy?”

  “It means ‘without day.’ We’re adjourning, and no date has been set for another meeting amongst the three of us.”

  “That’s not quite right, is it? We’re going to meet again at my trial. Where the jury will catch on that this guy is out to get me, just like the police and the prosecutors. No surprise there, when you think about it. Church and state coming down on me, to silence me for good. Well, it’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen, Collins. It’ll be kinda hard for you to find clients if you fuck up and let them convict an innocent man.”

  “I’ll never work in this town again, eh, Podgis?”

  “You’re an asshole, Collins.”

  “To respond in the words of our former prime minister, Mr. Trudeau, I’ve been called worse by better people.”

  “Mark my words: both of you will be laughing on the other side of your faces when this is all over.”

  Podgis heaved himself out of the chair and left the office.

  Monty turned to Burke, but he too was out of his chair. “Where are you going? What did you want to see me about?”

  “Nothing. Just lunch. But I’ve remembered something urgent, and I have to go.”

  “Where?” No answer. “Brennan, what is going on with you and him? You know what he’s like. He’s obnoxious to everyone he meets. What’s so personal about this for you? You look at him as if he’s the devil incarnate. I told you he’s pathetic; he’s not worth all this hostility on your part. So what is it?”

  Burke did not say another word but left the room in Podgis’s wake. Monty got up from his desk but sat down again when the phone rang. It was Tina. “Monty, Mr. Podgis just left. Does that mean you can see the insurance guy earlier than scheduled? I know he was wanting an earlier appointment if he could get one.”

  The claims handler for one of Monty’s motor vehicle accident cases. “Sure, Tina, give him a call. I’ll be back in five.”

  He went out through reception and pressed the down button on the elevator. When he arrived at the ground floor, he looked out the glass door and saw Podgis and Burke nose to nose on the sidewalk. Well, Podgis had his pugnacious face turned up, and Burke was looking down his nose, but it was a face-to-face confrontation any way you looked at it. Monty could not hear what they were saying, and he suspected that they would go quiet on him if he got in the middle of it. After a few seconds of this, the dynamics changed. Burke leaned down to the shorter combatant and unleashed a torrent of words at his adversary. Burke was turned away from Monty so he could not lip read what was being said, but it was heated. The response from Podgis was strange. Rather than his regular mode of real or feigned outrage and loud remonstrance, he had affected an expression of amused incredulity. It was as if he were saying, “What on earth are you talking about?” In fact, Monty could read his client’s lips at the end. He said, “What? No, of course not.” His expression turned to one of pity, and he reached out and gave Burke a patronizing pat on the arm. Monty saw Burke tense up, and he half expected the priest to ram a fist into Podgis’s gigantic mouth. But Burke restrained himself. Good thing for Podgis. If Burke chose to, he could reduce the man to rubble. Instead, Burke turned and walked away. The gloating expression returned to Podgis’s face.

  Monty went back to the office and met with the insurance man and other civil-litigation clients for the rest of the day. But one part of his mind was still on Pike Podgis. What was he up to?

  Chapter 18

  Brennan

  Saturday, February 6, felt like a morning in spring. Brennan had it in mind to pay a visit to Maggie Nelson and see what he could learn about her acquaintance, Ignatius Boyle. He
drove to Yukon Street and parked, then saw the two little ones playing on the sidewalk. They both had on white ankle socks, black patent shoes, and cotton dresses. Florrie’s was red plaid and Celia’s all white. Celia’s material had holes in it, but it was supposed to. What did Brennan’s mother call it? Georgette? Something-et. Eyelet, he believed. Both girls looked as if they had been dressed by a grandmother from forty years ago, or had perhaps got their outfits at a second-hand clothing shop. Whatever the case, they looked sweet. They were drawing pictures on the pavement with coloured chalk. When he got closer he could see that the pictures were rooms in a house. Smartly dressed dolls sat on the sidelines, waiting for their new home to be completed.

  “Hello, Florrie. Celia.”

  Two pairs of big brown eyes gazed up at him, then there was a simultaneous “Hi!”

  “How are the girls today?”

  “Great! We’re drawing a doll’s house, but I had to erase part of what Celia did.”

  “How come?”

  “Don’t tell, Flor!”

  “She drew a toilet and put a rock in it for poo, and a boy came along! So I scratched it out and told her off.” Brennan tried to keep a straight face. “How would you like it if your sister did that, and a boy saw it?”

  “I have sisters who I suspect would do much worse, if they could get away with it.”

  “Really?” Florrie asked. “Are they bad?”

  “My mother had to take their chalk away from them. So you get the idea. Is your own sister home today? Maggie?”

  “Yeah, she’s in there.”

  “Do you think she might come out and talk to me for a minute?”

  “I don’t know,” Florrie said. “Probably.”

  “I could ask her,” Celia offered.

  “All right. Would you do that?”

  “Okay.” She started towards the house, then turned to her sister. “Don’t erase anything else.”

  “There’s no more poo or toilets, so I don’t have to.”

  Satisfied, Celia headed inside the house.

  Florrie appraised her work, then filled in a barely noticeable gap in the deep blue walls of the house.

  Celia appeared again. “Come on!” she urged the unseen person behind the door. She lowered her voice, but Brennan could hear. “He’s really nice. He’s not bad or weird.”

  He knew all too well that any man could come by the girls’ home and pretend to be nice, and be very bad indeed. He hoped he would be able to reassure Maggie Nelson that his intentions were honourable.

  Maggie stepped out from the doorway. In her late teens or early twenties, she had cropped brown hair and deep-set dark eyes in a face that would have been lovely if she were not so very thin. She wore a shapeless grey sweater that hung below her narrow hips. There was nothing remotely welcoming in her unsmiling face or her posture.

  “Hello, Maggie.”

  “Hello,” she said in a tone that did not invite further conversation. “Girls, here’s a couple of Loonies. You can go up to the store, but only if you promise not to cross over to the schoolyard.”

  “Okay!” Celia agreed.

  But it wasn’t enough for Florrie. “Aw! Let us go play in the schoolyard. That’s what it’s there for on Saturdays — a playground!”

  Their big sister thought it over. “All right. If things look okay there.”

  “She means if there’s no weirdoes or bad guys hanging around,” the child explained to Brennan.

  “Not just guys, Florrie.”

  “Or big mean ladies with guns and holsters!” Florrie made a gun shape with her hand, then pretended to comb her hair with it.

  “It’s not a joke, Flor. You have to be careful when you’re out by yourselves. We’ve talked about this.”

  Florrie turned to Brennan again. “Maggie thinks there are some girls who are as bad as boys!”

  “She’s taking good care of you; that’s all,” he replied.

  “Okay, get going. I’ll join you in a few minutes. This won’t take long.”

  The little sisters took off at a clip, and Maggie faced Brennan.

  “You were here on Tuesday. You’re here again. What do you want?”

  “Well, I’ll introduce myself and — ”

  “Go ahead, introduce yourself. But you could be anybody, and I wouldn’t know the difference.”

  “My name is Brennan Burke. Father Burke, from St. Bernadette’s church. Here, I’ll show you my driving licence with my name on it.”

  She was looking at him closely. “No. I recognize you now. You were on the show with Asshole.”

  He laughed. “Right. That was me. And that was him.”

  “You walked off.”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t long before I’d had my fill of him.”

  If he thought he had built up a bit of rapport with Maggie Nelson, he had jumped to conclusions a little too quickly.

  “And now I’m going to walk,” she said. “Whatever it is you want, I can’t help you. Goodbye.”

  “Maggie, could I just ask you a couple of questions? I know Ignatius Boyle came here.”

  “And that’s your business why?”

  “Because I think he’s in trouble.”

  “He’s been living on the streets or in homeless shelters much of his adult life, as far as I know, so yes, you could say he’s in trouble.”

  “Is he a friend of yours? A relation?”

  She brushed past him and started to walk away.

  “Maggie, please listen for a second. Then I’m gone.” She turned to look at him with an expression that told him just how much of a nuisance he was.

  “I saw a Polaroid photo of Ignatius.”

  She reacted as if she had been struck, but she quickly formed her lips into a sneer in an effort to cover it. “Yeah, right. He was a photographer’s model in an earlier life.”

  “He was lying down. With Jordyn Snider.” Her eyes widened; her lips parted. The fact that Ignatius Boyle had been photographed with the murder victim had come as a shock. Was there more than one photograph in play here? But again, Maggie recovered.

  Her voice was strained, but she let Brennan know in no uncertain terms what she thought of him and his intrusion into her life. “You’re sick. If you’re not out of here in ten seconds, I’m going to go in and call the police.”

  “Why would Pike Podgis have that photo?” There was a quick intake of breath. This was clearly another unwelcome revelation. “Why would he have your street address?”

  But Maggie had only one message that she wanted to reveal to Brennan: “I don’t know what your problem is, but take your sick fantasies and get out of here. I don’t want you near me or my sisters ever again. Or I’ll have you arrested.”

  The only good thing about this scene on a public street in Halifax was that little Celia and Florrie were not there to witness it. The fact that their older sister considered him to be some kind of a pervert and a stalker was more painful than Brennan would ever have imagined. But her bravado was masking something else. There was something going on. And Maggie was in the know. And she obviously lumped him in with whatever other negative elements were at work in her life.

  Brennan was not cut out for this. And he knew he could not come by and pester Maggie again; it just was not in him to persist with a woman who did not want him around. He had no idea how to proceed from here.

  He got into his car and tried to banish the excruciating scene from his mind because he would be attending a much-anticipated concert that afternoon with his choirs, a recital by his favourite soprano in the world, Kiri Te Kanawa. He got nerved up just thinking about sitting there in her thrall. But a pang of mortification assailed him when he recalled what the infamous Befanee Tate had done with a letter he had dictated to the singer. The ghastly letter Tate had typed, with its horrendous spelling and punctuation. The memo
ry caused his stomach to seize up with pain and embarrassment. Fortunately, the great soprano would be on the stage and he in the audience and, in the unlikely event that she had actually received the disgraceful document, she would not know that the man whose name was on it was sitting in the auditorium hanging on her every note.

  Monty

  Normie was nearly beside herself with excitement as they all took their seats in the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium for the Te Kanawa concert. All of the Collins-MacNeil family were in attendance except Dominic, who was with Maura’s friend Fanny for the day. Tommy Douglas and his girlfriend, Lexie, were both musicians. They had a growing interest in opera, so they were in the right place today. Monty already thought of Lexie as his daughter-in-law but was wise enough never to let that slip out in conversation. The entire membership of the St. Bernadette’s Choir of Men and Boys and the choir school were present in a block of seats at the front of the house, reserved early on through Maura’s efforts. The schoolchildren wore their uniforms of blazers and white shirts, dress pants on the boys and kilts on the girls. The men were in suits and ties. This was an official outing. Brennan Burke was the only person present whose excitement approached that of Normie, though he seemed to have a case of the nerves as well. Immaculate in his black clerical suit and Roman collar, freshly shaved and scrubbed to perfection, he sat and stared at the curtain, willing it to part and reveal the heavenly vision. He was oblivious to everything and everyone around him.

  Monty took the seat beside him, one in from the aisle. “That’s not going to survive a case of the sweaty palms, Brennan,” Monty said, looking at the concert program clutched in the priest’s hands. Burke either did not hear him or did not care to respond.

  At long last, the master of ceremonies came on and gave his introductory spiel, lauding the singer’s achievements, and asked everyone to welcome Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and the show was on.

  She opened with “Dove Sono” from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and she was in splendid form. Her voice was warm and lyrical, and, as if her talent were not enough, she was possessed of a radiant beauty that was even more pronounced in person than in her publicity photos. Monty kept sneaking glances beside him. Burke looked about eleven years old, so open and innocent and enthralled was his expression. His hands moved slightly, as if he were conducting every perfect note.