Lovely, Dark and Deep (The Madeline Mann Mysteries)

by Buckley, Julia

  The next thing I knew Jeremy Yardley was at my side, looking reluctant, with a thin and sweet-faced girl who looked about nineteen; I knew she was Fritz's age, but she had that eternally youthful look that would probably follow her through life. She had brown hair and freckles, and blue eyes that looked honestly into mine as she introduced herself and sat down across from me. “I'm Sherry,” she said. “You know Jeremy, right?” She actually pushed him forward.

  “Yes. How are you, Jeremy?” I asked, shaking his hand, too.

  Jeremy looked the same, except that a certain vulnerability had crept into his face, and if I had to venture a guess at a glance who was making the decisions in this couple—today, at least—it would be Cheryl.

  “Can I order you anything?” I asked, as the waitress came back.

  “Just coffee for us,” Cheryl said absently, picking at the corner of a menu.

  The waitress disappeared, not thrilled by the order, and Cheryl Yardley got down to business. “Madeline, I know you've been looking into things, for whatever reasons. And Jeremy figured it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.” Jeremy was looking out the window, part sulky child, part chastened spouse, but it was obvious that he was listening very closely.

  “The thing is, Madeline,” Cheryl paused as the waitress poured their coffee. “Jeremy was starting to do drugs. Back in school, when we were sophomores. He was getting into stuff, for various reasons—”

  “I was pissed at my sister, basically,” Jeremy said defensively. “I found out what she'd been into when I was a kid. It started just as a way to piss her off.”

  “I thought you got along well with Rachel,” I said.

  “I did. But she was a hero to me, you know, and—”

  “You were disillusioned?”

  “Bingo.”

  Cheryl seemed in a hurry. “Anyway, Madeline, I only told you that to tell you that Jeremy was getting deeper into stuff. I was worried. Then they asked him to sell.”

  “Who asked him?”

  “No one knew. He got notes in his locker, or stuff was left for him at the drop-off spot. Jeremy never saw anyone.”

  I looked at Jeremy in disbelief. He shrugged. “It's true,” he said. “It seemed like a safe way to do things. Whoever it was remained anonymous, and we could always say “Hey, I just found this lying here. I didn't know what it was.”

  “So they left you a note—sell this, Jeremy?”

  “Basically. And I figured I could use the money. I wanted to take Cher to a dance. I wasn't thinking about morality. My sister and Cher, they taught me about that later.”

  “Your parents?”

  “I obviously hadn't listened to them,” he said. He was starting to lose his reluctant look, starting to have a sense of urgency, as though it mattered for me to get the story right.

  I took a sip of my coffee, thinking. Cheryl, aka Sherry, rushed on. “I heard about this, Madeline, and I got upset. I told Rachel. I called her on the phone, and she asked where Jeremy got the drugs. It was cocaine, Madeline, a big bag of it. Jeremy could have gone to jail forever if they found him with that, and he actually had it sitting in his room—” Even now she seemed to feel the need to explain her intervention, although Jeremy didn't look upset. He looked at me with a frank expression.

  “So she came to get it,” he said. “Rachel did. She came to see me, ransacked my room, found the stuff, and took it away under her habit.”

  “You're not joking.”

  “Seriously. But not before she sat with me, cried over me, told me she didn't want me to make her mistakes, that she'd made them for me so I could be free of all her problems. She told me she wanted me to make her proud, make Mom and Dad proud, because they all loved me so much.” He rubbed his face with both hands, as though it suddenly itched. I wondered if he was regaining composure.

  I smiled at them both for encouragement. Jeremy sighed. “She told me something, Madeline. She said, 'Through Christ we are all capable of our own resurrection, Jeremy. You can start anew.' That's what she told me, and I wrote it in a notebook that night, because that was the night she died.”

  I stared. “You're telling me that Joanna—Rachel—took away a bag of cocaine and was killed, what—hours later?”

  “She saw me around three. She was hit by a car that evening.”

  A motive for murder. Rachel had cocaine. Someone inside the school was pushing drugs, and trying to enlist kids to sell, as well. Rachel may have known, through her own experience, who that person was. Was that what happened? She confronted someone with the evidence, and they killed her?"

  Jeremy nodded as he watched the thoughts flit across my face. “So I killed her, is what I'm telling you. I let her take the responsibility, and obviously someone took her out and took back the evidence.”

  “That's only assuming that they knew Rachel had it. And that they feared Rachel knew their identity. That's a lot of ifs. I don't think you need to feel guilty, Jeremy.”

  “That's what I've told him for years,” said Cheryl earnestly. “But he said how come the drugs weren't found? Whoever killed her took them, he thinks.”

  “But they couldn't have,” I said. “It was a hit and run. Her room wasn't ransacked, no one broke into the convent, and certainly no criminal jumped out to frisk her when she fell. She hid it, Jeremy, it's the only answer. And whoever killed her must have had some other motive.”

  Jeremy tried to maintain a tough façade, a disbelieving one, but his relief was palpable. He had finally told an objective party, and she hadn't called him a murderer.

  “Listen,” I said. “I have another appointment this morning, but I'd like you to write down the names of some kids who also went to this “source" of yours. And where did you find these notes, anyway? And how did you find out about them?”

  Jeremy blushed. “It was different for everyone. Mine was outside the school chapel. I'm sorry to say it, but it was the most deserted place in the school. There was this little pedestal where you could write your prayer requests, and put them in a basket. Behind the pedestal it was open, sort of like a podium. The notes or the drugs would be in there. An envelope with my name typed on.”

  “The bag of coke was in there too?”

  “Just sitting in a big envelope. My name on it. Inside was a note telling me what to charge, and what my cut would be, and not to try anything funny. When the stuff disappeared, I had to write a note, saying that my sister took it, and now she was dead. I never heard back from my pusher again.”

  I thought about this. It was too weird, too unbelievable. And yet it happened, more than once over a span of ten or fifteen years. Which meant it wasn't likely it was a student masterminding the whole thing. I felt suddenly ill.

  “Listen, I really appreciate this, Jeremy, Cheryl.” I looked at them both. “I will let you know whatever I find out. One last question, and I'll let you go. Do you ever dream about Rachel?”

  Jeremy was surprised. “Not much. I used to wish I could. To see her again, you know.” He concentrated on one of his fingernails.

  “If you do—either of you—could you tell me? It sounds crazy, but I just want to know.”

  “It does sound crazy.” Jeremy gave me a skeptical look. “But thanks for what you're doing. Maybe if you find out once and for all—well, that would help my family, I think.”

  He gave me a list of names he'd jotted on a napkin, just as he'd done at the public works garage. On it was a name I'd heard earlier that day—Peter Wallingford. Smudgy. Fritz had been right.

  I thanked them again, and we walked out together. Cheryl was a good wife, I thought, watching them make their way to their car through the winter slush. He was lucky to have her.

  I got in my own car and rested my head on the cold steering wheel. Sister Joanna, music teacher, beloved daughter, Dominican Sister. With a bag of cocaine; a bag of cocaine that was never seen again. She saved her brother, and died within hours. Was this a drug-related crime? Or were the drugs an unnecessary complication in an old puzzle,
a red herring to distract me from a true motive for murder?

  What did Sister Francis remember? Did she, too, die because of a bag of cocaine? I suddenly had a wild image of her in the big convent kitchen, baking cocaine into her brownies, and selling them at the church fair—and Heaven help me, I started to laugh.

  Part Three

  Deep

  Chapter Ten

  I wasn't sure where I'd find Father Fahey, so I checked first at the Rectory, a beautiful old brick building with ivy climbing its walls. A very Irish housekeeper told me, while wiping her hands on an apron and squinting at me, that Fadder was somewhere in the church.

  I made my way to St. Catherine's. I entered through a side door and appreciated the hush of the church on a Saturday, the brilliance of the sun through the stained glass windows, the beauty of the dome at the center of the vaulted ceiling, in which were windows depicting Christ's Ascension in glorious color.

  A burst of song almost bowled me over. I looked to the choir loft and saw a large group up there, apparently practicing for Sunday Mass. I'd walked in as they were between pieces, I supposed, shaken by the sudden sound. Soon enough, though, I was entranced. I sat in a pew for a moment and mused.

  My parish, Resurrection, has a well-meaning choir, mostly women, who usually sounded like a group of earnest cats. I really hadn't thought about how truly worshipful music could sound until this moment. The hymns seemed almost palpable, traveling from the mouths of the singers straight up into the dome and into Heaven, where God's ears were waiting for their petitions.

  They were practicing for Lenten services, starting in a few weeks.. “Were you there when they nailed him to a tree? Were you there when they nailed him to a tree? Oh-oh—”

  The tenors’ voices soared effortlessly over the high note, chilling me. I stared at the dome. An atheist could wander in here and leave a believer, I thought fervently, moved by the song. I thought of Shoe, and my old friend Logan, both deceased. Could they hear music where they were? Shoe had loved music, loved singing, and so did his daughter, my mother. They would sing in harmony when he visited, doing the dishes together, or peeling potatoes, or sitting in the garden. Everything was a setting for a song, some hymn from my mother's childhood, or a round she'd learned long ago. They'd sung one about a nightingale that had been so haunting and sweet that even Fritz, on an evening trip to the kitchen to forage for food, had heard the song and rubbed away guilty and unexpected moisture from his eyes.

  “Hello, Madeline,” said Father Fahey quietly at my side. “I see our beautiful choir has moved you to tears.”

  “Oh, no. Allergies,” I said. “Where can we talk, Father?”

  “We can talk right here, if you don't mind. I have a meeting down the street at 11:00, and this will save me going back home.”

  “Fine,” I said. I eyed the choir. “Won't we disturb them?”

  “Oh, they can't hear us, luv,” he said, with a glimmer of an Irish accent.

  I nodded, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the day's events. I leaned back in my seat for a moment, looking through my notebook.

  “I sense you're having doubts?” Father Fahey asked me softly.

  “Doesn't everyone?” I asked. “I mean, ever since I was a kid I felt like I was sort of a faker. I'd listen to those long prayers and wait for the Amens like you'd wait to see the caboose at the end of a long train. I felt I should be feeling . . . something that I didn't. Maybe I still feel that way.”

  “I was actually referring to Francis' death. I assume you know about that,” he clarified delicately, looking at his lap.

  I must have turned bright red. “That too,” I said.

  “Sister Moira suggested to me that you, eh, questioned the timing of her death. And the likelihood of her being careless.”

  “Yes to both,” I said. “I think there's more here than meets the eye, just as there is with the death of Joanna.”

  He looked up and smiled at me. “That's what faith is. More than meets the eye. Madeline, don't you think that beneath these other doubts you're having there is a layer of belief, one which allows you the freedom to question what already belongs to you?”

  “I didn't entirely follow that,” I said.

  Father Fahey folded his hands. “Our religion is steeped in contradiction. Life can exist within death, hope can thrive within a despairing heart. Doubt can exist within faith.”

  “Right,” I said. “Why do you believe in God, Father?”

  Thomas Fahey looked me in the eye, his expression serene. “Because he told me the truth,” he said. “In a way that I can't even explain, but which I have relied upon all my life.”

  I liked that, the way he said it, and what he said. I looked at the dome, at the Ascension. “And if someone were able to prove to you, today, that there was no God?” I persisted.

  “It wouldn't change the way that I live. It wouldn't change what I believe is right. It wouldn't change what I understand about the nature of love and forgiveness,” he said. His face looked saintly and compassionate, like the faces in the windows behind him.

  “Those words remind me of Joanna. Something she said to her brother, before she died. She seemed very focused on the concept of resurrection.”

  “Yes.” His face closed slightly.

  “Did you counsel Joanna at all? In your capacity as priest?”

  He sighed. “What Joanna told me was told me in confessional. I cannot discuss it.”

  I paused, surprised. “But if you thought you knew anything, something that might suggest that her death was not accidental—”

  “I would probably go to the police,” he said calmly, meeting my eyes.

  I sat for a moment, absorbing some of the serenity of church and its heavenly music. “Do you think Sister Francis was deliberately killed?” I asked him.

  He shook his head, looking again toward the floor. I was waiting to hear a denial, but he sighed and said, “I'm afraid that I do.”

  I stared in surprise, and he added, “I think it seems too much of a coincidence. I have to agree with you, Madeline, it doesn't look good. Francis was old, but she was strong. And she was careful about eating for eighty years.” He looked at his folded hands. They were blue-veined, strong, capable. “She was my friend,” he said.

  That was one of many surprises I was to receive that day. I thought for a moment, then shook my head at his logic. “But if there was no foul play with Sister Joanna then there would be no motive to kill Francis. The two have to be related.”

  Father Fahey leaned toward me earnestly. “Unless Francis implied that she might reveal secrets about Joanna. Secrets she feels she should confess in the name of investigation. Perhaps someone out there felt they were best kept hidden.”

  “Secrets such as?”

  He shook his head.

  I voiced the suspicion of Mr. Yardley. “That as a teenager she'd had an affair with a married man?”

  Fahey looked surprised, dismayed even. Then his shoulders slumped. “Perhaps.”

  “So who would have a motive? The married man?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose that's what you must determine.”

  “But Joanna spoke to you about it? Her regret about this?”

  He looked protective. “She regretted many of her teenage exploits. Her adulthood was beyond reproach.”

  I thought of what Rick Astor had said about Fahey keeping reporters at bay when Joanna died. “Is that why you didn't want her death investigated? So her secrets wouldn't be dragged out in the open?”

  Fahey sighed. “The poor girl was dead. Her family revered her memory. There was no reason—that is, we could no longer help her. I . . . .” Fahey struggled over his explanation. I knew what he meant, but if Joanna had been murdered, he might have some regrets of his own. “She was beyond reproach,” he repeated firmly.

  I thought of the cocaine smuggled under her habit.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me, Father? You had lunch with Sister Francis yesterday.”

>   He frowned, thinking. “I was at the lunch table with Francis. We said it was old home week, because she was subbing, and so was Tommy Watson, a former math teacher. I didn't really notice anything significant. We were talking about literature, what people were reading, and Francis said she was subbing in a class that was reading Gatsby. So we talked about Fitzgerald for a while. We were eating cupcakes and brownies; it was Jenny's birthday. And then—”

  He paused, remembering. “It's funny—”

  “Yes?”

  "She seemed to have a sort of revelation. She said she was remembering Joanna, and what was bothering Joanna in her last days. She said she was starting to realize that Madeline Mann was right. She kept saying 'chapter seven'. 'Remember chapter seven, everyone? Myrtle is hit by a car. Struck and killed. Just like Joanna.' "

  I jotted this in my notebook.

  Fahey continued, summing up. “I'm afraid people considered it the morbid ramblings of an old woman. We changed the subject. But Francis didn't seem to notice. She was in her own world after that.”

  He shrugged, glanced at his watch, and stood up. “She was a wonderful woman, and Joanna was a wonderful girl. And they were both fine sisters. And if there is a connection between their deaths, I hope you find it. I must go to my meeting.”

  “Oh—Father?”

  “Yes?”

  “I never signed up for Pre-Cana. I'm getting married in June.”

  He smiled. “Call the rectory, darlin', they'll set it up for our next weekend session. That will be in March.”

  I thanked him, shook his hand, and watched him walk down the main aisle. The choir sang a sustained "ah" in four part harmony. I imagined clouds parting so that Thomas Fahey could walk past Heaven's gates.

  I shook off my reverie and sat on the edge of the pew for a good think. Francis had known something. She had realized something at the lunch table. Had she been sending a veiled message to someone sitting at that very table?

  The envelope of Joanna's final writings would need another look. I'd perused it once, and found nothing controversial, as Mrs. Yardley had promised, aside from the little note in the yearbook saying “T's involvement?”