Blood Ties

by Ralph McInerny

  “Here.”

  Tuttle accepted it in his doffed tweed hat, which he then returned to his head.

  “My car is in the parking lot by the school.”

  “I can’t go back there.”

  “Do you think it will be easier later?”

  Martin made a U-turn and headed back to the senior center, creeping in at 20 mph. But the trio was no longer outside the entrance. When Martin had parked, Tuttle hopped out.

  “Thanks for the lift, Martin.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Tuttle went whistling to his own car. He sat in it for a moment, watching Martin approach the entrance warily.

  When he was inside, Tuttle got out his cell phone and put through a call to Peanuts. “What do you say to the Great Wall?”

  “Now?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  The phone went dead. Tuttle put his car in gear and set off. Describing the recent scene to Peanuts would be as nothing to telling Hazel.

  When he and Peanuts were settled in a booth at the Great Wall, he got out his phone again and called his office.

  “Martin wants you to call him at the senior center at St. Hilary’s. Just have him paged.”

  He signed off.

  The humiliation of his visit to the Dolans seemed at last behind him. Of course, he had blamed that fiasco on Martin Sisk.

  17

  Henry Dolan was so furious that the lawyer Tuttle had shown up at the senior center at St. Hilary’s, he swore to George that he’d never go back. “That fool Martin Sisk went off with him. To think he had hired such a charlatan. He came to the house and tried to hold me up.”

  George had heard the story from Vivian. He was always the recipient of news that concerned Martha, Sheila’s reaction being what it was. She had gone into the bedroom and slammed the door when George told her again she must meet with Madeline Lorenzo. At least she hadn’t locked it.

  He went in and sat on the bed. “Putting your head in the sand won’t change anything.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It’s beyond talk, Sheila. You should talk to her before Martha does.”

  “Martha.” She lifted her head from the pillow into which she had been crying.

  “A meeting has been arranged.”

  She sprang from the bed. “That ungrateful child!”

  You’re only thinking of yourself. He didn’t say this aloud, of course. His mission in life was to pacify Sheila, as it had been to devote himself to Martha. Sometimes he half feared that there was something unwholesome in his love for the child he had brought from the delivery room and put in Sheila’s arms, making them parents of a sort, mother and father. Pathology is an impersonal specialty, a matter of running tests on biopsies in the course of an operation or performing autopsies. He had chosen the residency in pathology over several others just because it would protect him from dealing with living patients. That had left him free to devote himself exclusively to Sheila and Martha. Of course, Sheila was devoted to Martha, too, but he had come to see that his was a more selfless love than hers. Martha’s curiosity had from the beginning seemed a threat to Sheila, whereas George had always been sympathetic. Of course she would want to know the woman who bore her. If Sheila thought that belated meeting could destroy the long years they had had with Martha, then she was very much mistaken. Increasingly, it became clear that it was of herself she was thinking, not Martha.

  George recognized this without condemning his wife. He expected that others would be weak while he was strong. He could hardly have felt as deeply as Sheila the news that she would never herself carry a baby to term, but he had felt it. During her unsuccessful pregnancies, he had scarcely dared dream of the joys of fatherhood that lay ahead, so moved was he by the prospect. Acquiring Martha had been their salvation. How could Sheila imagine they could lose her love now?

  “What is she like?” Sheila asked.

  “Martha.”

  “Oh, stop saying that!”

  It was as if no father had been involved in the making of Martha, so like Madeline was she. He had never told Sheila who the father was. At the Women’s Care Center they had spoken to George more as a doctor than as the prospective father, telling him that Madeline’s pregnancy was the result of an affair with a fellow student. “Of course, he refuses to take responsibility.” Irene made a face. “Men!” In the circumstances, her misogyny seemed justified. Irene had gone on: The father was a big man on campus, despite his ridiculous name.

  “Ridiculous?”

  “Fleck.” She spat the name. Perhaps that was why he never forgot and why he had been startled to see the name on a book Sheila was reading.

  “What’s this?” he’d asked.

  “Just a novel.”

  George had learned not only the name but to hate it as well. It was all he could do not to rid his house of a book by the author who was Martha’s father. Sheila had wanted to expunge memories of the Women’s Care Center from her mind, the better to forget how Martha had come to them. George’s gratitude led him to continue to volunteer to counsel young women there once a week, a secret he kept from Sheila. He felt that he was paying both their debts to the place. Irene had passed away, rest her soul, but the work went on. George had been at the center when Nathaniel Fleck came, making inquiries.

  “What did he want to know?” George asked Louise, who had succeeded Irene.

  “Nothing I could tell him.”

  “Something about a child?”

  “What else?”

  “Did he know the mother’s name?”

  “Doctor, I wouldn’t even listen to him. As you know, everything here has to be kept completely confidential. We owe it to the young women.”

  George had informed himself of Nathaniel Fleck’s career since coming on that novel of his. The Internet is a marvelous device. He entered Fleck’s name in Google and pressed SEARCH, and almost instantaneously he had his choice of sites devoted to the author. Eventually, he checked them all. They were repetitious, of course, but uniformly laudatory. When Fleck showed up at the center, George felt he already knew him.

  He caught up with Fleck in the parking lot. “I’m Dr. Lynch, a counselor here.”

  “I just got the bum’s rush.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m sure that woman could have helped me, but she wouldn’t.”

  “Try me.”

  They went to a bar and drank beer, and Nathaniel Fleck bared his soul, such as it was. George became sure that the man had a romantic dream he wished to realize, an experience he wished to savor; that others might be affected by its realization seemed not to have occurred to him. He seemed to think he could rewind the years and undo what he had done, but it was only of himself he thought. It grated on him to know that he had been such a coward. He even quoted from Gatsby after his third beer. “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can.”

  It became clearer and clearer that the man was a menace, not only to Martha but to Madeline as well.

  18

  Cy wouldn’t have dared to ask Agnes and the other women to repeat the process he had gone through with car rental agencies, so he did it himself. Luckily, in all but one case he found a different person on duty from the day before. The girl at Avis was the same.

  “Not you again?”

  “It’s habit forming.”

  She was a lot of woman with a small, pretty face. Lisa. She looked speculatively at Cy. Unobtrusively he splayed his left hand on the counter. His wedding ring made her businesslike.

  “What was the name again?”

  “Maurice Dolan.”

  “Bingo.”

  The car had been rented the same day Maurice and Catherine arrived from Los Angeles. It had been turned in the day Catherine went home. The payment had been made with her credit card.

  “Just so they pay,” Lisa said.

  He used her phone to call the Hyatt Regency and got someone unwilling to give out the information he requested, certai
nly not on the telephone, so Cy went down there. The place was a zoo, two buildings divided by a street, with an underground passageway between them. It took him a while to find the office.

  “I talked to Mr. McDonald on the phone.”

  “Mr. McDonald is not available just now.”

  Cy showed Miss Quirk his ID.

  “Where’s Fox River?”

  “Do you want me to get a court order?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

  She seemed pleased when there was no record of Maurice Dolan having stayed in the hotel on the dates Cy gave her.

  Cy went through the passageway and sat in the lobby, an echoing atrium with music coming from somewhere. A lousy place to think. Perhaps the couple had shared the room Catherine Adams had taken in her name. Perhaps. The adverb of futility. He had begun the day in pursuit of Maurice Dolan, and all he had was a rental car and a room in her name. Only the airline record put Dolan in the area at the crucial time.

  Maurice Dolan had just returned from physical therapy when Cy came into his room. “Can I ask you some questions?”

  “Who are you?”

  He showed Dolan his ID. Maurice took it and studied it, which was his right. “Questions?”

  “I’m investigating a hit-and-run that took place two weeks ago.”

  Maurice Dolan went to the bed and hoisted himself onto it. “So what are the questions?”

  “What kind of car did you rent from Avis?”

  “Why should I tell you that?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “Because you’re investigating a hit-and-run.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  Maurice shook his head. “You’re fishing.”

  “And you’re dodging.”

  “I think I’ll call the family lawyer. Amos Cadbury.”

  “He’s a good man. I’ll be back.”

  At the Avis garage, he asked the attendant about the vehicle rented in Catherine Adams’s name.

  “You want to rent it?”

  “What condition was it in when it was turned in?”

  “That information would be in the office.”

  “Let’s look.”

  “Geez.” But he led the way through the parked cars to the glassed-in office and consulted the records. He looked at Cy. “Nothing here. They didn’t fill the gas tank before turning it in.”

  “Where is that vehicle now?”

  Once more the computer made the question answerable. “It’s out.”

  “Who’s renting it?”

  Cy got the name and the local number of the renter. His name was Winston Heather, and he wasn’t cooperative. “You want it back? Forget it, I’m not done with it.”

  “I just want to see the vehicle.”

  “You want to see the vehicle.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to come here, because I sure as hell am not going to drive it to the airport so you can take a look at it.”

  He was staying at a Holiday Inn near the Indiana line in an area of casinos. Cy located the vehicle in the parking lot. He looked around and then got out his penknife and scraped some paint off the fender, near a spot where the underlying metal showed through because of a dent. Back in his car, he called Heather and told him he had changed his mind. He hung up on the profane response.

  19

  Martha’s mother was a moody character, but Bernard Casey liked her father. They had golfed together twice, and Bernard liked a man who didn’t chatter on the golf course. He doubted that George Lynch chattered anywhere.

  When they came off the ninth green, George just looked at him, and Bernard shook his head. “Let’s go right on to ten.”

  No doubt George would have been equally amenable if he had suggested they pop into the clubhouse for refreshments. When they got to the tee, George bent over the water fountain for a long time. He had the honors, being one of those golfers who took the shots he could and made the most of them. He put his ball 150 yards out in the fairway. He would be on the green in three and doubtless get his par 5. Bernard’s drive was powerful and long, and inaccurate. They got into the cart and drove to George’s ball. Bernard watched his future father-in-law take out a 6-iron and advance his ball to the green. Another shot like that and he would be next to the pin. They went in search of Bernard’s ball.

  “Have you ever golfed with Maurice?” Bernard asked.

  George nodded.

  “I like him.”

  “Everyone likes Maurice.”

  “Too bad he’s going back to California.”

  “It’s best.”

  “Is he serious about that woman, Catherine Adams?”

  George had no opinion on the subject. The only topic that elicited much talk from him was Martha. George had asked Bernard what he thought of having the reception at St. Hilary’s.

  “It can be on the moon, so far as I’m concerned.”

  “St. Hilary’s isn’t the moon.”

  “George, I think it’s a great idea.”

  “We all went to school there.” He meant Sheila and himself, and his grandparents, too. A family tradition.

  Bernard wondered what George really thought of Martha’s obsession with finding her birth mother.

  “Of course she should know her. They look like sisters, you know.”

  Bernard had to waste a shot getting his ball onto the fairway. His third shot landed on the green but rolled beyond. George hit a 7-iron, and his ball ended twelve feet from the hall.

  “Good shot.”

  “You swing like Maurice.”

  “I thought he was pretty good.”

  “He is very good.”

  Still, the comment seemed a criticism. George meant he was trying too hard, and he was.

  “What does she think of all this? The mother?”

  “This can’t harm her. I would be as concerned to protect her as I am to protect Martha. The woman was treated very badly by a thoughtless young man.”

  This was a speech from George. Bernard thought that any woman George was determined to protect would be protected indeed.

  In the clubhouse afterward they had a sandwich and iced tea on the veranda. From the course, the sweet smell of grass came to them.

  George said, “Tell me about your work.”

  This was pleasant, Bernard thought, reporting to his future father-in-law. It seemed only right after the paces his family had put Martha through. Bernard had yet to tell his parents that Martha was adopted, not the natural child of the Lynches, and he was annoyed that he had not. The Martha he had fallen in love with was here and now, herself, not a bundle of inherited genes. Bernard was proud of his family but young enough to regard himself as a self-made man despite the advantages he’d had. Surely he would have been taken on by the firm right out of Notre Dame law school even if his father hadn’t been one of the titular partners.

  George listened to his account with genial interest. “I never thought of anything but medicine myself.”

  “What does a pathologist do, exactly?”

  “You wouldn’t want to know.”

  “That bad?”

  “Not entirely. It was the lab work that drew me.” Now George had all the pathology work in Fox River and in the abutting suburbs; employing nearly a hundred people, his clinic was housed in a new building strategically located for access from those suburbs. “Not that I do much myself anymore.”

  Just so, Bernard’s father sometimes lamented the fact that he no longer did the donkey work the younger lawyers in the firm did. Casey senior was a star of the Chicago courts, putting to effective use the work of those youthful lawyers as he argued his case.

  “Someone I would very much like to meet is Amos Cadbury.”

  “He will be at your wedding.”

  “He is a hero to my father. The fact that Cadbury had attended the Notre Dame law school is the reason I went there, urged by Dad.”

  They sat in silence then, a comfortable silen
ce. Bernard’s future looked as serene to him as the fairway he looked out upon, its surface mottled by sun, altering with the passage of clouds.

  “Martha sees her tomorrow.”

  “Good.”

  20

  Hearing her mother’s voice on the phone filled Martha with the strangest feeling. She had dreamed of this, and of what was coming, and now she was almost frightened. She said as much.

  “I feel frightened, too. You mustn’t expect too much,” Madeline said.

  “Where shall we meet?”

  “I could come to you.”

  Of course, Martha could not go to the Lorenzo home. Martha was at last aware of how her curiosity affected other people, but she detected nothing of resentment in Madeline’s voice. She thought of the parish grounds at St. Hilary’s, the walkways and benches scattered about, the shrine to Mary, a shaded, pleasant place.

  “Do you know St. Hilary’s parish?” Martha asked.

  “In Fox River?”

  “That’s where the wedding will be.” Silence on the line. Should she send Madeline an invitation? She could not yet know if the invitation would be welcome. “We could meet there.”

  “In church?”

  “No, no. There are benches and shady places. It’s very peaceful.”

  “All right.”

  Martha went to the noon Mass, having taken the day off from Foley, Farnum, and Casey. The night before, she had confessed to Bernard her fright.

  “Think of how she must feel,” he said.

  “Of course.” How wonderfully Bernard had taken all this. At the moment, she could have called the whole thing off. She had spoken to her mother on the telephone, two strangers bound by the ties of blood. Almost, that seemed enough. If Bernard had shown the least disapproval, she would have called it off.

  When she came out of the church, Martha wandered toward the grotto, the place of assignation. There was still an hour before her mother would come. She sat on a bench and took out her lunch. Someone sat beside her. She turned and knew immediately that this was her mother. They stared at one another in silence for a minute, and then Madeline held out her hand. Martha took it, still studying this face she had so longed to see, this woman who had brought her into the world. Neither of them spoke for several minutes.