Blood Ties

by Ralph McInerny

  7

  Mark Lorenzo had just returned from class when Cy Horvath came to his office. The detective took a seat and then told him about the negative report on the paint sample.

  “Thank God!”

  “That makes you happy?”

  “When I read that she had confessed, I knew she couldn’t have done it.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Because she was sitting in that same chair when it happened. I was her alibi. I have been trying to convince myself that I would just keep quiet.”

  “She was here?”

  “Not for the first time. She was a former student of mine, years ago. I told you all that before. Before my marriage, she came to me with what she obviously thought was damning information about my intended bride.”

  “What did she want this time?”

  “She came twice. The second time was to tell me how glad she was that the threat to Madeline was gone, now that Nathaniel Fleck was dead. The way she put it made me think that she might have had something to do with his death, but she couldn’t have. She was sitting right there when it happened.”

  “That was during the first visit?”

  “When she came back, she seemed to want to take credit for easing the pressure on Madeline.”

  “The vehicle involved was an SUV.”

  “I know.” Then he remembered the detective’s diatribe about SUVs, prompted by the sight of Stephen’s car. There was a long silence. “You want to see my son’s car.”

  “It’s just routine.”

  “Look, Horvath, if I was talking to Catherine Adams when the accident occurred…” He stopped. “Of course, you only have my word for that.”

  Horvath tipped his head to one side.

  “I didn’t want to be Catherine Adams’s alibi, and I don’t want her for mine.” He stood. “Come on and take a look at Stephen’s car.”

  There was no need to involve the son. The SUV was parked behind the residence hall in which Stephen lived. Horvath walked around it several times.

  “There’s no paint missing,” the detective said.

  “Is it the right color?”

  “Close.”

  “Then take a sample, for God’s sake.”

  “We might as well be sure.”

  “Right!”

  “Lorenzo, I’m just doing my job.”

  “Then do it.”

  Horvath got out his knife and looked for a place where a little scratch wouldn’t show.

  “He keeps it in pretty good shape.”

  “He better. I’m paying for it.”

  Horvath scraped a little paint into a plastic bag, then put it in his pocket.

  “You’re going to get another negative result, Horvath.”

  “I hope so.”

  The detective walked back with Lorenzo. He had parked his car in a handicapped spot outside the faculty office building.

  “What’s your handicap?” Mark asked.

  “Ten.”

  How could you be angry with a guy like Cy Horvath? Lorenzo punched the detective’s arm and they parted.

  * * *

  Madeline was a different woman since she had met with Martha, despite the reaction of Mrs. Lynch when she showed up.

  “Who can blame her, Mark? She must feel about me the way I felt about him.”

  “It’s hardly the same.”

  “It would be to her.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Mrs. Lynch?”

  “Your daughter.”

  She looked at him quickly and then came and put her arms around him. The way he had said it seemed to drive a wedge between them, and he could have bitten his tongue as soon as he spoke. Now he held her wordlessly.

  “Mark, it’s all over now.”

  If anything is ever really over. Years ago, Madeline probably thought her troubles were all behind her when she had her baby and gave it up for adoption. It must have seemed like something that had never happened. That would have been her justification for not telling him. How he wished he had learned of it from her rather than from that vixen Catherine Adams. Madeline’s anxiety had returned when first Dolan and then Catherine had claimed to have run down Nathaniel Fleck. She read the newspaper account carefully.

  “You’re not mentioned, Mad.”

  “Do you know the joke about the dyslexic mother against drunk driving who said she belonged to DDAM?”

  When Madeline remembered a joke, she never felt very funny.

  “You said it. It’s all over.”

  She nodded, but she must have been thinking what he was. There was another joke that proved it.

  “I’ll never be my own worst enemy while Catherine is alive,” Madeline said.

  He didn’t tell her about Horvath and the paint sample taken from Stephen’s car.

  8

  Tuttle’s bank account, presided over by Hazel, had been refreshed by recent events. Both Martin Sisk and Bernard Casey had paid what Tuttle regarded as the exorbitant fee Hazel had billed them for. Still, it was difficult to see Hazel as a blessing. When he had handed her the check Martin had scribbled in the car, she said, “I’ll get this right into the bank. That rascal may try to stop payment.”

  Within days of the other bill’s going out, payment was received from Bernard Casey as well.

  “We’re in clover, Tuttle.”

  Why didn’t he feel elation? It wasn’t just that, apart from the twenty dollars he had taken from Martin on his first visit, all the proceeds of his labors were in Hazel’s control. The misgivings he had expressed to Martin before trying to deal directly with the Dolans had been almost sincere. He did feel tainted by helping to dredge up past events best left forgotten for the good of all concerned.

  Hazel pooh-poohed such moralizing. “You’re a hired gun, Tuttle. Every lawyer is. You ought to know by now what legal ethics amounts to. Cover your rear.”

  He thought she had said “ear,” so he cupped both his with his hands, waiting for her revelation about legal ethics. Hazel had worked for years in a firm that specialized in criminal law, the office joke being that the phrase was an oxymoron. Hazel had considered them all morons, defending rapists, defending killers, helping flown fathers escape responsibility for their families. It wasn’t so much that she thought these things wrong as that they seemed a personal affront. It was too easy to imagine herself the victim in such cases. So she had come to Tuttle, first as a temporary and then, by a process he could never reconstruct, a permanent presence in his outer office, a tyrant with amorous tendencies. Tuttle was often thankful he could lock the door of his inner office when the tides of romance rose in Hazel’s enormous breast.

  “Something wrong with your ears?”

  “Just covering them.”

  She found this witty. A warm look came over the face that would have done Mount Rushmore proud, and Tuttle skedaddled. Had his hope of diverting her attention to Martin Sisk been completely dashed?

  “I feel like celebrating,” Hazel crowed when she came back from the bank after depositing Casey’s check.

  “Don’t let Martin turn it into a dutch treat. The man should always pay.”

  “Martin!”

  “He seemed wistful the last time I talked with him.”

  “He always seems wistful. Imagine, a man his age watching the same movies over and over. And pictures of his late wife all over the place.”

  “Well, if you want to throw in the towel, Grace Weaver will walk him down the aisle.”

  “She the one who called me?”

  “The same.”

  Hazel pondered this. Whether it was attraction to Martin Sisk or the prospect of losing him to a rival that decided her would have been difficult to say. “Well, I know the way to his heart.”

  “Please.” He covered his ears.

  She went on. “I’ll buy him a movie, DVD, that’s what he prefers. Any ideas?”

  He left the door of his office open a crack and listened to her when she got on the phone t
o Martin. She had found the most wonderful movie for him. Meet Me in St. Louis. Apparently Martin was wild about old Judy Garland movies. Hazel seemed to have received a favorable response.

  “My place or yours?”

  She began to hum the title song. St. Louis in this case seemed to be Hazel’s apartment. Tuttle closed his door.

  * * *

  Peanuts didn’t know much about developments at headquarters, but Tetzel’s lengthy accounts in the Trib kept Tuttle informed. First one person confessed to running down Nathaniel Fleck, then another. It seemed an obvious ploy to make both confessions useless. Peanuts did bring him the information about the report from downstate. That got the confessing couple off the hook. So who had run down the author?

  Tuttle went to the courthouse and poured himself a cup of coffee in the pressroom. Tetzel’s star was in the ascendant, and he was enjoying his moment. He even returned Tuttle’s greeting.

  “So who ran the man down?” Tuttle asked.

  For answer, Tetzel printed out a copy of the story he had just sent to his paper. In it he opined that we are often led astray by our insistence that events are part of a causal theory. Something happens, somebody must have caused it. But often the somebody did not intend what the something.

  Tuttle looked up from the page. “Are they going to print this?”

  It turned out that Tetzel had printed out his initial ruminations before writing his story. Soon he put a copy of that into Tuttle’s hands.

  When Nathaniel Fleck was struck by a car that jumped the curb on Dirksen Boulevard, sending the author through a window and to his death, it was an accident pure and simple, police investigation indicates. The motorist who fled the scene very likely did not know that his temporary loss of control of his vehicle had resulted in the death of the renowned author.

  The story cascaded from that beginning paragraph. In midstory, good citizen Tetzel urged the motorist to identify himself and clear the air once and for all. He, or she, need fear no charge more grievous than leaving the scene of an accident.

  Tuttle left the pressroom and the courthouse. Across the street a preoccupied Cy Horvath emerged from the sports bar. Tuttle watched him head for the police garage. He was behind the wheel of his car when Cy emerged, and he followed him.

  When they reached the Northwestern campus, Tuttle waited for Cy to get out of the car, which he had parked in a handicapped spot. Horvath entered the building, and a minute later Tuttle followed.

  A thin girl with overbite and glasses halfway down her nose regarded him. “Yes?”

  “My brother just came in here. A big fellow—”

  She was already nodding. “He’s with Professor Lorenzo.”

  He thanked her and went out to his car. Lorenzo. He would be the husband of the Madeline Lorenzo Tuttle had located for both Bernard Casey and the Dolans, via Martin Sisk. Again Tuttle felt a faint regret for what he had done. The Dolans, inhospitable as they had proved to be, were parents of a daughter who they had taken in as a child born out of wedlock, a noble deed in Tuttle’s book. And the young mother must have fought off suggestions that she abort her baby. Another noble choice. For those past events to rise to the surface now threatened the lives of both the adopting parents, the Lynches, and Madeline Lorenzo and her husband. A philosopher. He wondered what grade Lorenzo would have given Tetzel’s speculative reflections. Cy’s visit suggested that the story was otherwise than Tetzel thought and that Lorenzo was somehow involved.

  When the two men emerged and began to walk across campus, Tuttle followed. How unaware the watched are that they are being watched. It was a thought worthy of Tetzel. Nonetheless, Tuttle looked over his shoulder, lest the follower be followed. Of course there was no one behind him.

  Lorenzo led Cy to a parking lot, where they examined a vehicle. An SUV! Cy walked around the vehicle inspecting it and then began to scrape some paint from an area behind the huge spare mounted on the back. Aha. Soon the two men headed back the way they had come. Tuttle’s pulse was racing. If Lorenzo had now become the object of Cy’s investigation, he would need legal representation. Tuttle began to rehearse the approach he would make when he confronted the philosopher.

  But excitement drained from him as he followed Cy and the professor, and his earlier distaste returned. It helped, perhaps, that he had already profited sufficiently from Martha Lynch’s desire to find her real mother. Somewhere his sainted father seemed to be suggesting that he stay out of it now that he was out of it. Tuttle was not given to abstract generalization. When he thought of the Lorenzos and Lynches it was on analogy with the warm household in which he had been raised on the South Side. The family is sacred. By the time he slipped behind the wheel of his car, Tuttle had decided against ambulance chasing, at least for the nonce.

  Cy was standing with the professor at the door of the building. What would the detective say if he knew he had been observed? Satisfaction with his own cunning was sufficient reward for this excursion.

  Lorenzo punched Cy’s arm, and Cy got into his car. He backed up, coming right at Tuttle. His back bumper struck Tuttle’s front bumper, jolting his ancient car.

  Cy stuck his head out the window. “Tuttle? You can follow me back, too. I wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

  When Cy pulled away, there was a metallic complaint from Tuttle’s car. He put it in gear and followed Horvath back to Fox River. From time to time, he looked in his rearview mirror, but no one was following him.

  9

  The marriage of Martha Lynch and Bernard Casey was the social event of the year at St. Hilary’s. There were three bridesmaids—one rather elderly, Willa—and, complementing them, three Notre Dame classmates of Casey’s. The bride, of course, was beautiful, and she and the groom looked like the ideal little statuettes atop their wedding cake. Father Dowling said the nuptial Mass and witnessed the vows of the young couple. In the front pews on the groom’s side of the aisle was a great complement of Caseys, headed by Bernard’s parents, and opposite them were the Lynches, joined in the front pew by Henry and Vivian Dolan, Maurice, and his perhaps fiancée, Catherine Adams, a lovely little hat atop her cropped head. Two pews behind the family was the imposing figure of Amos Cadbury. Of course, Catherine Adams did not come forward at communion time, nor as it happened did George Lynch. In a back pew a woman whose mantilla not only covered her hair but put her face in shadows followed the ceremony with tears in her eyes. She might have been a sister of the bride. She, too, remained in her pew while communion was being distributed.

  Afterward, everyone adjourned to the erstwhile school, which had been transformed for the reception. In one corner of the former gym, a quartet played background music before the guests sat down to partake of the veritable banquet the Lynches had provided.

  Marie Murkin was in seventh heaven and was willing to share responsibility for the occasion with Edna Hospers, director of the senior center. In truth, neither woman had done a thing; all preparations were made by people sent in by the Lynches. Father Dowling circulated, feeling somewhat superfluous now that his role had been played.

  “He broke his fast,” Marie whispered in his ear. “Dr. Lynch. Mrs. Lynch told me.”

  “Why would she have done that?”

  “I have no idea. Of course I noticed he hadn’t taken communion and asked if he was non-Catholic.”

  This was not the time or place to scold Marie for her unpardonable behavior. She hurried away from his expression, and he resolved to read the riot act to her later in the rectory. Imagine, putting such questions to the mother of the bride. But he knew his anger would cool and he would not speak sharply to Marie. When he wasn’t wondering what he would do with her, he wondered what he would do without her.

  Eventually, everyone was seated, the bride and groom at a raised table, flanked by their parents, the others at the twenty or more tables arranged around the room, relatives and friends, luminaries of the legal and medical professions. Father Dowling took the microphone and said the grace. Now he could s
lip away without offense. Indeed, without being noticed. Marie and Edna were seated at a table featuring frequent visitors to the senior center. Before he reached the door, there was the sound of silverware striking glass, an insistent sound. The bride and groom kissed to great applause. Father Dowling left and soon was settled in his study with his pipe lit.

  Not so long ago, Henry Dolan had spoken to him in this room of the anxiety created in his family by his granddaughter’s intention to discover her birth mother. Well, Martha’s wish had been fulfilled, and the Lynches and Dolans were intact. Madeline Lorenzo’s attendance at the wedding had been self-effacing, and of course she had not come to the reception. Her family, too, had apparently been unaffected by Martha’s desire.

  The doorbell rang, and for a moment Father Dowling resented the disruption of his solitude, but he rose and went to the door. Amos Cadbury stood there.

  “I saw you leave, Father, and thought I might stop by.”

  “Wonderful, Amos. Come in, come in.”

  Amos had had a glass of champagne at the reception before the food was served. He accepted Father Dowling’s offer of some Irish whiskey.

  “Powers,” he said, impressed.

  “I thought Phil Keegan might like it, but he prefers beer.”

  “It is the best of the best.”

  “Oh, I had my share, Amos.”

  The venerable lawyer nodded. No need to expatiate on that. He lit a cigar and sipped his Powers, a picture of contentment. “I could not help thinking what possible disasters the Lynches have been spared.”

  “And the Lorenzos.”

  “Of course.”

  “She was there, Martha’s mother.”

  “Was she?”