Both men stared at her blankly for a moment.
“There isn’t anything to do,” Sid explained. “Silverman has the authority. I told you—”
“I know that.” Kathryn interrupted. “I heard you. I mean, what does Tom do now, specifically, about solving the case?”
They stared at her again.
“Tom,” she said deliberately, “How drunk are you? Did you drown your brains in that bottle? You are the one who understands what’s really going on, right? And the idiot Silverman has it all wrong? Which means if you sit here and do nothing, it will never get solved. So suspension or no suspension, you are going to have to get to work. Will the two of you stop staring at me as if I were a freak show? I am making perfect sense.”
“You know something? So you are,” said Sid. He turned to Tom. “She’s right. You can’t quit.”
“But how can I keep working? I don’t have any authority.”
“Well, here’s what you do have….” Kathryn enumerated, counting assets on her fingers: “You have access to the intended victim because she’s living in my house and she will talk to you anytime. You have access to a lot of the people involved in the case because they are friends of mine and will come to my house if I ask them to and they will talk to you. You have money, if any should be required.”
“Money?” Sid asked.
“I can afford a little financial investment if necessary,” Kathryn said, with spectacular understatement.
“Oh, that’s good.”
“Kathryn,” Tom protested, “I don’t want you spending your money on me.”
“I’m not spending my money on you, you nitwit, I’m spending my money defending the life of my good friend Tracy, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Tom replied, abashed.
“So if you could start somewhere, where would you start?” she asked.
“Ice cubes.”
So the three of them drank coffee and discussed ice cubes.
Kathryn left a half an hour later, saying she had a mountain of papers to grade before supper.
After she left Sid exploded. “Tom! My old buddy! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“About her!”
“What’s to tell?”
“What’s to—Are you out of your effing mind? A smart, gorgeous woman is in love with you and you don’t even bother to tell your old pal Sid about it? I’m hurt, I tell you, I’m hurt!”
“She isn’t in love with me.”
“Aw, come on, seriously, you don’t mean to tell me you haven’t noticed?”
“No, Sid, you’ve got it wrong. We’re just friends.”
“Just friends? Bullshit! She was ready to kill Silverman for you, she’s ready to spend money on you, never mind what she says about her friend Tracy, no, the woman was passion all over the place, Tom, and it was all for you.”
“She’s a passionate kind of person.”
“Tom, your problem is you’re too modest. Why do you find it so hard to believe that a terrific woman could be in love with you?”
“Because I know who she is in love with,” Tom responded gloomily.
CHAPTER 19
Driving home, Kathryn was trying to ignore the memory of what had happened when Tom had kissed her on the cheek. She should have been merely touched. Instead she had felt an instant’s unmistakable frisson.
That was absolutely insane. Completely out of the ballpark. She was in love with Kit Mallowan. She had been in love with Kit ever since she’d met him on the train from London to Oxford the previous July. He’d enforced her feelings for him by saving her life at considerable risk to his own a mere five days later. They had then spent the rest of the summer together at his fabulous Tudor mansion in rural Oxfordshire, trying to work out how a marquis and a woman priest could build a happy marriage. They hadn’t been very successful. But she was nevertheless deeply in love with him, so she had absolutely no business reacting like that to a platonic little peck on the cheek from Tom! She forced herself to think about something else. Like who the hell those stupid eight people could be, and how the District Attorney had gotten hold of them.
When she got home Mrs. Warburton informed her that Tildy Harmon had called. “She sounded upset.”
Kathryn went to the telephone and punched call back.
“Tildy? What’s up?”
“I’m not sure but I don’t like it. The District Attorney from Trenton, a guy named Silverman, came by my office today, grilling me about Louise Holder’s disappearance, and it was plain as the nose on your face that he was trying to get me to say that I thought Tom killed her! Can you imagine? Needless to say, I sent him away with a flea in his ear. Now what I want to know is this: Where did the District Attorney get a list of members of St. Margaret’s Church who know Tom Holder well? Because I wasn’t the only one he was talking to, he said so.”
“Oh my God. The Rector.”
“I am going to kill Mark Randall.”
“Not if I get to him first, you’re not.”
“You go get ’im, sister. Give him one for me.”
Kathryn looked at her watch. It was five minutes to five. She called the church.
“Frances, it’s Kathryn. Tell me something: By any mad chance did the District Attorney show up to see Father Mark today?”
“Why, yes he did, he was here in the morning. He came about Louise Holder’s disappearance.”
“And did the Rector give him a list of parishioners to talk to?”
“Yes, Father Mark asked me to Xerox a copy of the vestry members for him,” said Frances innocently, little knowing what she had just let her boss in for.
“Is Father Mark there now? I need to speak to him.”
“Sure, I’ll put you through.”
Kathryn told the Rector that she knew it was five o’clock on Friday and she was terribly sorry but she had to talk to him and it was urgent, and would he kindly stick around and she would be there in five minutes. Naturally he had no choice but to say he would be waiting for her. Fortunately, Kathryn reflected, Frances would be gone so she wouldn’t hear her employer getting yelled at.
Sure enough, Kathryn passed the secretary at the church door on her way out.
“Hi, Kathryn, he’s waiting for you.”
“Thanks, Frances. Have a good weekend.”
Kathryn walked into Father Mark’s office without knocking, slammed the door behind her, marched up to the man’s desk, and declared, “I hereby resign from the staff of this church because you”—she pointed at the astonished Rector—“are a son of a bitch!”
All parish priests find themselves, from time to time, the targets of hostility in varying degrees from their parishioners and their staff, but it is fair to say that it does not usually come in such a full-frontal verbal assault as this, especially from a heretofore faultlessly civil staff member, and it was only to be expected that it took Father Mark a few seconds before he could do anything but gibber.
“I—I—ah—wha—you—can—I—wha—how—” Finally he managed, “Kathryn, please sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down!” she raged. “I’m too angry!”
“Then tell me what I have done to offend you.”
“Tom Holder has been suspended from duty, relieved of his command, and it’s your bloody fault!”
Normally Kathryn was careful to prune the Briticisms from her vocabulary for fear of appearing affected, but she was too furious to care. Besides, Father Mark was pretty affected himself.
“Suspended? For God’s sake, why?”
“Because, reportedly, eight people from St. Margaret’s were prepared to say he just might have killed Louise. Now, to begin with, where might the District Attorney have gotten a list of St. Margaret’s vestry members to go talk to?”
The Rector had the grace to blush.
“Well, he got them here, of course. But be reasonable, Kathryn! The D.A. comes around saying he’s investigating Louise’s disappearance,
he wants to talk to some St. Margaret’s people, what am I supposed to do? I thought the easiest thing would be to give him a list of the vestry members. What was wrong with that?”
“There wouldn’t have been one damn thing wrong with that,” Kathryn said, leaning over the desk and glaring at him malevolently, “except for the fact that you had already turned the vestry against him, Mark. Oh, yes. Don’t give me that blank look. Tildy Harmon told me all about what happened at that emergency vestry meeting, and Tildy has always been one of your biggest fans. But she said you’d gone off the deep end. Nonstop prayer vigil in the church, not until the killer was caught, but until the police were off the property. Don’t you see what you did, Mark? You made Tom and his men the villains. You were going on about this violation of the sanctity of the church grounds and according to Tildy you were blaming it on the police, not the killer. Well, the ‘police’ are Tom Holder. So when Louise disappeared, the vestry members, who have all thought of Tom for lo these many years as the salt of the earth, instead of feeling sorry for him, began to feel suspicious of him. At least a few of them did. At least enough of them felt just suspicious enough that the District Attorney, who has his own agenda and wants to remove Tom so he can take over the Mason Blaine case, was able to persuade them to say they thought it was possible he murdered her.”
“Nonsense!”
“Eight of them. Eight vestry members, Mark. That’s your doing. It would never have happened before that wretched meeting of yours.”
The Rector shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“You’re an intelligent man, Mark. Yet I watched you stand toe-to-toe with a Police Chief and order him to clear his officers off of a crime scene as if you had the authority to do it. Would you have dreamt of speaking to him that way if he had not been a parishioner of yours?”
Father Mark dropped his head into his hands. “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” he groaned. “When I saw those yellow tapes up around the church I went crazy. It was as though my wife had been violated. And there was Tom, in charge of it all.…You’re right. I blamed him. When I talked to the vestry, I talked about the police, but as you say, they all know that around here Tom is the police. My God. You say eight vestry members actually told the D.A. they thought he might have killed her? I can’t believe it. I wonder which eight? Do you think the D.A. would tell me? I might try talking to them.”
“No, Mark, that horse has bolted. You’re not going to get it back.”
“I can’t believe this. What a mess. Do you suppose, now that I’ve repented and confessed, you might stop berating me and sit down? Maybe together we could figure out a way to minimize the damage.”
Kathryn decided this was a reasonable enough request and declared a truce by dropping into the chair facing Father Mark’s desk.
She said, “Tom and I and a friend of his from the crime scene team in Trenton are working on getting him reinstated by solving the homicide, which the District Attorney is never going to solve because he’s an idiot, and of course if anybody’s going to find Louise it’s Tom because the D.A. isn’t going to bother to look for her.”
The Rector nodded. “Good. Then what remains is to reestablish Tom’s reputation in the eyes of this congregation, which you tell me I have damaged. Any ideas?”
“Off the top of my head, no. Because the suspicion is so irrational. Granted, nobody in his right mind would want to live with Louise, but Tom’s put up with her for several decades now, so why should he all of a sudden up and murder her? Why would anybody who’s known him forever think for a minute he would do such a thing, even given all these negative feelings you were dishing out about him?”
“Well, Kathryn,” said Father Mark, with the merest trace of gentle malice, “there is one new element in Tom’s life that hasn’t been there for those several decades, and some people around here might suspect that that might make a difference. A very big difference.”
“What’s that?” Kathryn asked, honestly puzzled.
“Oh, come, come, Kathryn,” the Rector chided. “A woman of your perception? Having spent the amount of time you’ve spent with Tom? Why, you were practically living together at that castle in England last summer! You can’t tell me you haven’t figured out how he feels about you, when the whole congregation knows it!”
Kathryn did not seem to be able to draw breath; there was a sudden constriction at her heart and a ringing in her ears. Then she felt her entire face flush; even her ears grew hot.
“You did know it!” the Rector exulted.
“No. I didn’t know until now. But I see it. I should have known it. What an idiot I am.”
“So you see, those eight people, whoever they are, much as they may be mistaken about Tom killing Louise, they would be able to produce a viable motive if the D.A. asked them for one. Tom wants to marry you.”
Kathryn was shaking her head. “He knows he doesn’t have a prayer.”
The Rector chuckled. “Kathryn, you underestimate the optimism of the male of the species. If we—”
“No. You misunderstand me. Tom knows I’m in love with somebody else. Very seriously in love with somebody else.”
“You’ve told him so? Specifically?”
“In no uncertain terms. Point blank.”
“Ah.”
There was a brief silence.
“That would be that marquis you met last summer?” the Rector asked.
“Yes.”
The Rector thought for another minute. “I have an idea. This marquis—”
“Kit.”
“He feels the same way about you?”
“Yes.”
“He’d be willing to do you a big favor?”
“Yes.”
Father Mark raised an eyebrow. “Those are pretty confident answers.”
“He keeps asking me to marry him.”
“Keeps asking?”
“So far I haven’t said yes. Or at least, I said yes and then changed it to a maybe.”
“Why? Not that it’s any of my business.”
“I am reluctant to be a marchioness. I’m not happy with the idea of living in the middle of nowhere in a mansion in Oxfordshire in a life of rarified privilege. I think it would ruin me. I already have too much money. I’m afraid for my soul.” She didn’t want to tell Mark about the personal problems, about Kit’s possessiveness, about his stubborn refusal to compromise on issues such as how many children they were going to have and whether she was going to get a job in Oxford after they got married or stay at home. She didn’t even want to think about those problems when she and Kit were an ocean away from each other.
“I’ll be damned,” the Rector remarked. “I minister to a parish full of rich people and you’re the only one I know who doesn’t want to get any richer. Congratulations. But let’s get back to the point. O.K., if this man keeps asking you to marry him, it’s probably safe to assume he might do what I have in mind. Get on the phone and ask him to drop everything and catch the next plane and get here in time for church on Sunday. If you call him this instant, he might be able to do it. Then we’ll have Tom, not you, introduce him to everybody as your boyfriend, with the implication of almost-fiancé, if you don’t mind. We will make it clear to everybody that Tom knows all about Kit, accepts Kit, likes Kit, et cetera.”
Kathryn frowned. “And how is this going to convince the eight people—and anybody else—that Tom didn’t kill Louise?”
“Because it does away with his motive, you see. The only reason anyone at St. Margaret’s would suspect Tom of finally being willing to do something violent after all these years would be that he had a temptation, an alternative, namely you. I’m convinced of that. If they see that he knows about Kit, then they’ll know that he doesn’t have a motive for killing Louise, then these infamous eight people and any other doubters will also come around.”
“Mark, you’re sure of this?”
“I’m positive. The only reason it sounds strange to you is that you’re not accustome
d to thinking of Tom being in love with you, and believe me, the rest of the congregation has been whispering about it behind your back for over a year now.”
Kathryn could feel herself blushing again, although this time, mercifully, it wasn’t so bad.
“So,” the Rector continued, “if we have Tom introducing Kit around as if he considers him a fait accompli in your life, there goes Tom’s motive, there goes any suspicion of Tom, Tom is reinstated in everybody’s eyes, Tom can hold up his head proudly in St. Margaret’s, and with any luck we can even find out who these eight people are and get them to reverse what they said to the District Attorney.” Father Mark spread his hands in a “nothing to it” gesture.
It seemed to Kathryn that the plan was nowhere near as straightforward and obvious as the Rector suggested, nor the benefits to Tom anywhere near as great as the disadvantages. For there was one huge disadvantage.
“You’re going to have to tell Tom that you’ve told me how he feels about me. Otherwise when you explain the plan to him, how he’s supposed to introduce Kit to people, it won’t make sense to him.”
“Yes, that’s true. Well, you were bound to figure it out eventually, weren’t you?”
Kathryn hesitated. “I’m considering his embarrassment.”
“You ought to be considering his career. I’m telling you, Kathryn, we can get to those eight people and make them change their minds.”
“But how do you even have the faintest idea who they might be?”
“Because I annotated that vestry list so Silverman only would have talked to people who’ve been here more than four years. That shortened it to fifteen names. With a few phone calls we can find out who he actually talked to. And we’ll be able to eliminate some of them from the eight because we know they’re too loyal to Tom to ever say anything like that to the D.A.”
“Like Tildy Harmon.”
“Right.”
“O.K. You’ve convinced me.” She looked at her watch. “I should call Kit instantly. It’s already eleven thirty-five in England.”
“Use Maggie’s office. She’s out on a pastoral call. I’ll let you in.”
Familiar Friend Page 19