“Isn’t that interesting?”
I had drifted off to sleep again but was jolted awake by Max’s “Hello!” in my ear.
“Yes. Interesting.” I yawned loudly.
“Anyway, she feels the same way about that troll, Richie. He’s got short-man complex, so he feels like he has to overcompensate by being really controlling in all business dealings, yet, shall we say, extremely attentive in bed.”
Hell, there had to be a reason he was able to date women like Max and Morag and keep them on the line for any amount of time. “Attentiveness” in bed was not something to be taken for granted, I had learned. My late ex-husband had apparently been very attentive, but to a bunch of other women.
“So I saw you talking to Richie. What did he have to say?”
“Can we talk about this later?” I shifted. Trixie jumped off the bed, knocking my alarm clock to the floor and pulling half the comforter with her. I was awake now. “I’ll call you when I get to school.” And before she had a chance to hang up on me, which is how our phone calls usually ended, I hung up on her.
Trixie stared at me expectantly. I knew what that meant. I rolled over with a groan and propelled myself out of bed. Trixie bounded out of the room and down the stairs; I knew that by the time I was dressed and had made it down to the kitchen, she would be waiting by the back door with her leash in her mouth. That was a trick that either Frankie or his brother Brendan had taught her and that never ceased to amaze me. I couldn’t train her to stay in the yard, which on the learning scale had to fall below the leash-in-the-mouth trick.
Although we usually went out the back, I decided to throw caution to the wind and take her out the front door. I had gone to bed at ten, so I had a little spring in my step after a good night’s sleep, during which I had dreamed that Jack McManus had been sent to Finland permanently to scout local hockey teams for new talent for the Rangers. We had shared a chaste kiss on the tarmac before he boarded Icelandair and set off to the land of the midnight sun. Or was that Greenland? Anyway, in my dreams, he was gone and I was beyond finding myself in any further compromising positions.
I headed down the front walk in the semidarkness, clad in my pajama pants, a St. Thomas hooded sweatshirt, and Ugg boots, figuring the only people who would see me would be those speeding by on their way to the train station. As usual, my radar for these sorts of things was way off, and as I crossed the street I encountered my neighbor, Jane, and her son Frankie. Frankie looked miserable, carrying the heaviest book bag I had ever seen, a pair of giant sneakers tied to the loop at the top of the bag. His flannel plaid tie with the insignia of his school embossed on it was half-tied, and his shirt was unbuttoned, exposing a crisp white undershirt.
I gulped. I’m a sucker for a clean white undershirt. That’s not to say that I was preparing to hit on a teenager; the undershirt reminded me of Crawford, who has about four thousand in his possession. An image of Crawford, clad only in an undershirt and his gun belt, flashed through my mind, and I flushed deep red.
Jane, as always, was smiling and didn’t seem to notice my hot flash. “Good morning, Alison!” She turned to Frankie, who was wrestling his book bag into the backseat of their Subaru. “Say good morning to Mrs. Bergerson, Frankie.” Jane has this thing about Frankie calling me “Mrs.” even though I had told both of them that it wasn’t necessary; however, neither of them knew that they had my surname wrong and it had gone on so long that I was embarrassed to tell them.
“Grudemornmizbergerson,” he mumbled.
I nodded in his direction. “Hey, Frankie.” Trixie sat by my side, and Frankie came over to give her a hug. “You’re up early.”
Jane smiled. “I was going to say the same thing to you.”
I pointed at Trixie. “Nature calls.”
“Frankie has an early practice this morning,” she said, opening her car door. “Playoffs are coming up.” She tossed her purse onto the seat. “But he still has time to go to the Lord’s Bounty on Saturday night.”
The morning chill had started to seep into my pajama pants. “Great. I’ll pick him up at our usual time.”
Frankie mumbled something to Jane and realization dawned on her face. “Oh, right!” She pulled her blond hair into a ponytail and tied it with an elastic band. “Frankie’s with his dad in Peekskill this weekend, so Greg will drop him off at the church and pick him up.”
Oh, so that’s why I never saw a man around. I’m a little dense.
Jane fiddled with her hair a bit more, and I studied her face in the dawning light, noticing for the first time how attractive she was, dressed for work in a suit with a smattering of makeup on her youthful face. Self-consciousness started to creep into my thoughts and I pushed it aside; I decided that not every chance encounter was an opportunity for me to feel bad about myself or the fact that I was seven feet tall when compared to this petite, fine-boned woman.
Frankie mumbled something to Jane and she translated. “We have to go.” Before she got into the car, she turned back to me. “Would you like to come over for dinner some night? It’s just me and Frankie now that Brendan’s away at school, but you can bring someone, if you’d like.”
“I would really like that,” I said and flashed on Crawford’s face. I doubted I’d be able to drag him away from the Fiftieth for a night out, but I had another thought, and even though I didn’t know this woman from Adam, I believed that Plan B was genius. It involved my divorced neighbor and one Jack McManus and to me seemed foolproof. “Actually, I would like to bring a friend,” I said.
“Great!” She hopped into the front seat. “I’ll call you later and we’ll set something up.”
I watched until they were safely down the street and then let Trixie, who had been pulling insistently at the leash, deposit a big, giant load on their front yard that nearly exceeded, in mass and weight, the New York Times plastic bag that I had brought along just for that occasion. I scooped it up and held it an arm’s length from my body as I trudged back to the house.
I figured that since I was up, I would head off to school. Maybe an early arrival would get Sister Mary, my boss, off my back about, well, just about everything she is constantly on my back about.
My first class wasn’t until twelve ten, so everybody I encountered on my way into my office was beyond surprised to see me at eight thirty. Dottie looked up from her Us Weekly and let out a long whistle. “D’ja sleep here?” she asked in her thick-as-pea-soup Bronx accent. I gave her what I thought was a disdainful look, but she just peered back at me through all her lavender eye shadow wonder.
“No,” I said. “Do I have any messages?”
She shook her helmet of hair back and forth. “No. But Father Kevin’s been looking for you half the morning.”
Considering morning had just broken, I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded urgent. Eight o’clock mass would be ending shortly, so I headed up to the chapel floor and stepped into the back of the vast room and watched as Kevin went through the motions of putting away the hosts, water, and wine from mass and said the final blessings. The pews held a smattering of old nuns, but nary a student. Poor Kevin. Ministering to the drunk and promiscuous and a couple of octogenarian nuns—it seemed a stern punishment for a young priest who couldn’t get along with the cardinal, but it was the punishment meted out nonetheless.
I couldn’t tell if he saw me standing at the back of the long aisle, but when he raced out of the sacristy after changing back into his regular clothes—which today consisted of traditional black priest garb and a Roman collar—and hustled down the aisle toward me, I knew that he had.
“Hey, you almost knocked over Sister Anselm,” I said, giving him a quick hug.
He watched as the old nuns who frequented the daily morning mass filed silently out of the chapel and gave a solemn nod to each and every one, exchanging a few words with one or two of the sisters. They clearly revered him, even though he was a good forty years younger than the youngest nun there. Sister Alphonse—there since
I was a student and aptly nicknamed “the Fonz”—patted him on the head as she walked past, a good six inches taller than the vertically challenged Kevin. When the last one bade him farewell, he grabbed my arm. “I have an idea.”
He pulled me into the back pew and told me what he had in mind. The next thing I knew, we were in his Honda Civic, heading south on the avenue and winding our way through the labyrinthine streets of the neighborhood and down to the river. Kevin drives twenty miles an hour on a good day, but it was a little drizzly so it took about ten minutes longer to get there than it would have normally. He’s also the worst parallel parker I’ve ever seen, so after failing at several tries to get into a parking space that could have held three Honda Civics, I wrested the steering wheel from him and angled my way in, leaving him standing on the curb looking perturbed.
We were parked exactly where I had parked a few days earlier when I had stopped by the condo site. Unlike that day, the construction area was bustling with activity. My usual attire consists of a skirt, cardigan, and moderately high heels. Fortunately, I had worn a pair of dark wool slacks and my trusty Dansko clogs instead—perfect for picking around the debris that littered the area. I stepped over a large piece of wood and followed Kevin over to the site. There were enough people that nobody noticed a tall woman with a head full of frizzy hair blowing in the breeze and a myopic priest.
Kevin asked me what my friend’s name was as well as the name of the dead man. “Escalante,” I said. “Hernan is the uncle and Jose Tomasso is the deceased. Jose’s his sister’s kid.”
Kevin walked over to a group of men working with cement and spoke a few words in Spanish that sounded suspiciously like Spanglish to me. I pulled Kevin aside. “I thought you said you spoke Spanish,” I whispered. I knew that Kevin had done some work in rural Mexico when he was first ordained and I had taken his proclamation of fluency seriously.
He shrugged. “I guess I’m a little rusty.”
Being fluent in a romance language myself, I caught a few words, yet nothing made sense. Finally, a man who spoke broken English on par with Kevin’s broken Spanish stepped away from the group and approached Kevin. This ought to be interesting, I thought. He was holding a large mallet, which he tapped against his side as he spoke to Kevin. Kevin asked him if he knew Jose Tomasso. I didn’t hear his response because out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Hernan walking with a group of men. I hurried down the hill and called his name.
I detected a slight hitch in his step; he had heard me. But he kept walking. I finally reached him, avoiding a suspended and swinging batch of two-by-fours, and tapped him on the shoulder.
He turned and stared at me like he didn’t know me. He said a few words to the men he was with while holding my gaze and they scattered.
“Hernan, what are you doing here?”
“You shouldn’t be here. I’ve got it under control,” he said. What had happened to the cab driving and the odd painting job? By the looks of it, he had apparently joined the ranks of the day laborers who routinely left their towns and villages to work for a cut rate at the homes of residents and at the job sites of companies who flouted union rules. “You shouldn’t be here,” I said. “Do you want to jeopardize the investigation or be in danger yourself?” I asked.
He sighed, defeated and angry. “The police won’t help. Jose was just another illegal.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true. Crawford is one of the investigating officers. I promise you. He’ll help.” I took Hernan’s rough hand in my own. “He’s a good guy, Hernan. And there’s a lot of publicity surrounding this case. They won’t let it drop.”
Hernan dropped my hand. “I haven’t seen anyone around here asking questions about the case. No one,” he spat out. “You tell me how that helps us find Jose’s killer.” He closed his eyes. “Tell me.”
I thought about that and about Crawford sitting outside of the restaurant last night. I didn’t know enough about police work to figure out what they were doing there, but I had to believe they were doing something. I knew that they were “sitting on” Richie, as Crawford described it, which to me meant that they were working a specific angle. I told Hernan that.
“That means nothing to me.” He started to walk away. “Don’t come back here again,” he said over his shoulder.
I stood for a moment and watched him walk away. The Hernan that I knew from the Lord’s Bounty, a quiet, humble man, had been replaced by this angry, surly individual. But I didn’t have time to think about it because a voice from behind me called, “Hey, lady! Watch out!” and I turned to see a cement truck barreling down the hill. I moved out of the way, twisting my ankle in a ditch. After the truck rumbled past, I started back up the hill and found Kevin waiting by the car for me.
“You look shaken,” he said, popping the locks on the Civic.
“I am,” I admitted. I rubbed my sore ankle.
We got into the car. “Well, I don’t know if I learned anything besides what we already knew: Richie Kraecker cuts corners by having illegals do some of the preliminary work, like foundations.” He put his hands on the steering wheel. “And someone makes sure that they get illegal green cards.” He turned and looked at me, his eyes wide. “That’s not good, right?”
“Who told you that?” I asked, amazed.
“I can’t say. I promised.”
I was stunned that he got all of that in five minutes from a group of non-English-speaking workers. But he was right: the collar opened up a lot of doors.
And, obviously, a lot of mouths.
Ten
“The foreman at Riviera Pointe told me that a tall woman and a priest were nosing around the job site this morning,” Crawford said.
I wedged the phone between my ear and neck. “Really?”
“Any idea of who that might be?”
“Not a clue,” I said with all the innocence I could muster.
“No ideas?”
I tried to sound like I was thinking hard. “No.” I knew he wasn’t stupid; how many tall women—or even garden-variety average-height women—pal around with priests? Not too many. I heard a knock at the door and was grateful for the interruption. “Hold on. Someone’s at the door.”
I ran down the hallway and peered through the side window at the front door. Trixie hovered by the living room, growling. I opened the door.
Crawford was standing there, a tight smile on his lips, his cell phone still pressed to his ear. “Are you sure that you’ve never seen a tall woman with a priest?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“The foreman said she was cute.”
I blushed a little bit. “He did?”
“But you don’t know who it is, so I guess we’ll never know,” he trailed off, walking into the kitchen. He spied the two pots on the stove. “Cooking?”
“Sort of,” I said. I can boil water and open up a prepared tub of pesto. I crossed my fingers behind my back. “Can you stay for dinner?”
“That depends,” he said, taking off his blazer and loosening his tie. “Is anybody else going to be here?”
I was confused. “Anybody else?”
He raised his eyebrows. “You know what I’m talking about.”
I thought for a moment, the realization finally dawning on me. “About that . . . let me explain,” I said. I thought I had done a good enough job of explaining the night before, but this was one angry former altar boy. He had seemed fine when we had parted, but the intervening hours had obviously changed his attitude for the worse.
He held up a hand, stopping me in midsentence. “I don’t want to hear another word about him.”
“I only went to the cocktail party because I wanted . . .”
“Did you hear me?” he asked, his face reddening. “Not another word. I don’t want to hear his name, the name ‘McManus,’ anything about Rangers tickets. As a matter of fact,” he said, his voice getting higher and coming dangerously close to cracking, “I don’t want to hear about the Rangers period!”
>
I was silent for a moment. “Well, that’s going to be kind of hard. They are in a playoff race,” I said quietly.
He stared me down. “I’m not kidding, Alison.”
I tried hard to keep the tears that were pressing at the back of my eyes right where they were. Didn’t he get that I was trying to help him? That I was trying to help my friend—who, in reality, was only kind of my friend—Hernan? My motives were purely altruistic, although I had to admit that they didn’t look quite so pure if you put them all together. I was going to start explaining with how I had been bamboozled by Kevin, first on the night he invited me to dinner, and then on the day we went to the job site. Then I was going to explain how I only went to Richie Kraecker’s cocktail party to get more information. But looking at Crawford—who usually looked at me with a reverence that I’ve only seen him reserve for his daughters—and seeing how he was giving me a look a perp might get during an interrogation, I held my tongue. I nodded. “Do you want pasta?” My voice was a little shaky, and I swallowed hard.
“Do you have a beer?” he asked testily.
I motioned to the refrigerator. “You know I do,” I said.
“Do you want a glass of wine?” he asked, pulling open the door to the refrigerator.
I motioned to the half-full glass of red wine sitting on the counter next to the stove. “I have one.”
He pulled out a kitchen chair with such force that it slammed into the wall behind it; he sat down heavily. I had thought that when he first walked in he was in a good mood, but apparently, I was sadly mistaken.
I stirred the pasta in the pot, silently, holding back tears. I pulled the lid off the pesto, struggling with the protective sheet of plastic that covered the top of the container. I finally pulled it off, pulling the container toward me, and flattening it against my chest. Pesto streamed down into the front of my T-shirt. Trixie, smelling a food disaster, bounded into the kitchen and jumped up on me, putting her paws on my shoulders and licking the front of my chest.
Quick Study Page 8