by Jane Haddam
Now, watching Gregor Demarkian come up the rectory walk with the two police detectives he recognized from the night before, Robert was mostly worried that he would fall asleep in the middle of a question and embarrass himself even more than he had already been embarrassed by events. The Cardinal Archbishop had been clear as a bell. He was the chief suspect in three murders, including the murder of Sister Harriet Garrity, which had almost certainly happened by arsenic, like the two others. He had bought the arsenic. He knew all three victims. He was known to be on rocky terms with Sister Harriet—but really, Robert thought, it was hard to take that seriously. Everybody was known to be on rocky terms with Sister Harriet. The woman made a vocation out of being on rocky terms. It disturbed him more that anyone thought he might be responsible for the death of that poor young man across the street, whom he had hardly known except to say hello to once or twice. Only a crazy person killed somebody he didn’t know, or, worse, killed to bring the wrath of God down on the people he thought God ought to condemn. Robert was sure he had never suggested, or even thought, that the wrath of God should come down on the gay men at St. Stephen’s. He had only wanted to be clear in his support of the Magisterium. He had only wanted his position to be impossible to misconstrue.
The detectives all had their coats open, even though it had to be below zero outside. They all had their heads down, but Robert thought that might have been the wind. He looked around the rectory foyer and realized with a certain amount of resignation that it, like the rectory living room, was full of bad art. There was a painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that might as well have been done by numbers on a velvet field. There was another of the Virgin and Child that made the Virgin look like a saccharine sheep and the Child look like a stuffed toy. He never noticed those things when he was in the rectory by himself—if he had, he would have gotten rid of them—but they always impressed themselves on his consciousness as soon as he had company.
He opened the door before they had a chance to knock and stepped back to let them in. “Mr. Demarkian,” he said. “And Detective Mansfield. And Detective—Emilio, isn’t it?”
“Emiliani,” Emiliani said.
“Emiliani,. I’m very sorry.” He took the coats they were shrugging off—all but Demarkian; Demarkian seemed determined to keep his coat—and put them over the banister at the bottom of the stairs. There was a closet, but it was full of junk that nobody knew what to do with. He gestured them in the direction of the living room, and they went. Mansfield and Emiliani went directly. Gregor Demarkian stopped at every piece of art.
“It’s really very bad stuff,” Robert found himself saying. “I ought to replace it with prints of decent work. The Church has such a wealth of truly fine art. But I never get around to it.”
“It was here when you came in?” Demarkian said.
“Oh, yes. It was here when my predecessor came in, too. Father Corrigan put it up. Which is funny, actually.”
“Why?”
“Well,” Robert said carefully, “because Father Corrigan was one of the priests who later, uh, well, was caught up in the pedophilia thing. He admitted to … interfering … with two altar boys who were underage at the time of the contacts.”
“How underaged?”
“One of them was eight,” Robert said. “The other was ten. They’re grown men, now, of course. But I’m surprised you don’t know. All this was in the papers for weeks a few years ago. I thought everybody in Philadelphia knew.”
“I knew about the scandal,” Gregor Demarkian said. “I didn’t know a lot of the details. It’s not the kind of thing I follow closely. Do you think it should have been less likely for Father Corrigan to commit child abuse if he liked bad art?”
“What? Oh, no. No, that wasn’t what I meant. It’s devotional art, you see. That’s the Sacred Heart you were looking at it. There are special novenas to the Sacred Heart, and a special devotion called the First Fridays, where you make a point of going to Confession and saying special prayers on the first Friday of the month for nine months running, and receiving Communion. The people who have this kind of art in their houses are the kind who are committed to those sorts of devotions, very traditional, very conservative people, really.”
“And you thought people like that would be less likely to commit child abuse?”
“I don’t know what I thought,” Robert said. “Maybe I was just stunned by the hypocrisy of it. All the sweetness-and-light piety. It’s funny the way it works, isn’t it? When there’s trouble like that, it’s never the holy terrors like the Cardinal Archbishop who commit it. Didn’t you want to have a seat in the living room?”
The detectives already had seats in the living room, on opposite sides of the couch, facing the big, garish painting of the Last Supper. Da Vinci might have painted the original, but whoever had copied it for this print had had the artistic version of a tin ear. Robert sighed slightly and then, because it had become obvious that Gregor Demarkian did not intend to sit down, sat down himself in the wing chair.
“Well,” he said. “You wanted to ask me about Sister Harriet.”
“Not right away,” Gregor Demarkian said. “I wanted to ask you about Bernadette and Marty Kelly. You knew both Bernadette and Marty Kelly, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” Robert said. “Well, I did in a way. With Marty, it was only in passing. But with Bernadette, I knew her rather well. She did a lot of volunteer work at the church. And she was nearly a daily communicant, until the last few months at the end. Diabetes, you know.”
“Yes,” Gregor Demarkian said. “I do know. When you say she volunteered in the church, do you mean she had some semiofficial position? Did she work here on a regular basis?”
“Oh, no,” Robert said. “There was nothing like that. She just pitched in with our projects, with the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter and that kind of thing. She had her own job to go to, after all.”
“Bernadette Kelly didn’t have a job,” Detective Mansfield said confidently. “That’s in the record. She was unemployed.”
“When she died she was, yes,” Robert said, “but that was because of her medical problems. They became so severe those last six months or so, she wasn’t able to work. But she had a job before then, for years. She was a receptionist at Brady, Marquis and Holden.”
“What’s Brady, Marquis and Holden?” Demarkian asked.
“It’s a law firm,” Detective Emiliani said. “A big one. Weren’t they the one that handled the, uh—”
“The pedophilia scandal, yes,” Robert said. “Or rather, they handled part of it. They represented several of the individual parishes. There was another firm that represented the archdiocese as a whole. It was very complicated. But yes, you see, that’s how Bernadette got the job. My predecessor got it for her. Father Dunedin. He tried to get her a job as a secretary, but of course that didn’t work out.”
“Why didn’t it work out?” Demarkian asked.
Robert shrugged. “Well, you know, Bernadette was a remarkable person. She had very good sense, and she was very devout. She had great practical intelligence. She knew what was wrong with the lottery. She and Marty owned that trailer of theirs. She decided they would, and six months later she did it. She was aiming for a house. If she hadn’t gotten sick, she would have made it. She could calculate the interest on a credit card in her head. But it was like watching an idiot savant. Other than money—even with numbers, if it didn’t have to do with money, she was dead. She just wasn’t very bright.”
“And Marty Kelly? What about him?”
“Well,” Robert said, “it’s one of those things. He dropped out of school at sixteen. He was always in trouble. He was always doing drugs. He probably did some stealing. He was lucky not to get caught, and he was lucky to fall in love with Bernadette. She refused to go out with him if he didn’t go back and get his high-school diploma, and then she refused to marry him if he didn’t register at the community college. She brought him to church. She got him off all drugs exc
ept two beers with the game on the weekends. She turned him around. When it first happened, you know, I wasn’t really very surprised. I could see that Marty might not be able to face his life with her gone. She made a different person of him.”
“You don’t think she might have been ready to leave him?” Demarkian asked.
“No,” Robert said. “Bernadette was the most committed Catholic I’ve ever known. If Marty was beating her up, she might have left him. If he was acting up, she might have left him. But it would have taken the marital equivalent of thermonuclear war. I know she died from arsenic, but if you’re thinking Marty killed her, you’re wrong. Marty could no more kill Bernadette than I could fly.”
Demarkian nodded, and Robert found himself thinking that he liked this man. That surprised him. He had expected to feel tense and under pressure, but instead he felt the way he always did when he gave interviews, like when the press came to ask questions about the outreach programs that Mary McAllister and the nuns had made such an important part of parish life. He stretched out his legs and sat back. If he wasn’t careful, he really would go to sleep.
“Let’s talk about Sister Harriet for a minute,” Demarkian said. “She was the parish coordinator. What does the parish coordinator do?”
“She coordinates the parish,” Robert said, and smiled. “She keeps the schedules straight. Mass linens sent out to the laundry. First Communion breakfast not in conflict with the Senior Citizens’ Celebration. Rosaries and scapulars ordered for First Communion. Bibles ordered for Confirmation. Mass schedules made out so that both I and the parochial vicar say Mass every day and all the Masses that are supposed to be celebrated are celebrated. That kind of thing.”
“What about money?” Gregor asked. “Did she have anything to do with the money?”
“I’m not really sure what you mean,” Robert said. “She had something to do with money, of course, because she had to make sure there was enough money in the budget to buy the rosaries and that sort of thing. But she didn’t deal directly with the parish finances. That’s Sister Thomasetta’s job. She’s the comptroller.”
Demarkian paused in his pacing—he was all over the room, from one wall to the other, from one painting to the other, from the windows to the couch and back again—and said, “What about her background? Did she come from a wealthy family?”
“I have no idea,” Father Healy said. “I never asked her. I’m sorry, but at least in the old days the nuns weren’t supposed to tell you about their backgrounds. Not that I was around in the old days, of course, but most of the Sisters here are very traditional, and I try to be sensitive to, well, you know—”
“Yes, I do know. What about Bernadette Kelly? Did she come from a wealthy family?”
“Oh, no,” Robert said. “I know Bernadette’s family—well, her father, anyway. Her mother died when she was eight. Diabetes, too. Her father worked in a factory most of his life. Then he got laid off in the early eighties and clerked in a liquor store for a while. Her brother is a mechanic somewhere in Delaware. They’re very good people, very solid people, but they’ve never had much money.”
“Hmm,” Demarkian said.
On the couch, the detectives stirred. “You’re barking up the wrong tree here, Mr. Demarkian,” Detective Mansfield said. “There isn’t this kind of connection.”
“We ought to check, anyway,” Demarkian said. “The books on both churches—has anybody bothered to ask if there were any irregularities in those books?”
“We’re a little early in this case to have gone in for audits,” Detective Emiliani said.
Robert leaned forward. “If you want to know about us, I can tell you right now that there are no irregularities in our books. If there had been, Sister Thomasetta would have noticed. And she would have told me. Or she would have told Sister Scholastica, and Sister Scholastica would have told me. Sister Scholastica is her superior. But Sister Thomasetta did a complete internal audit when she was appointed comptroller back in September. And she’s a very competent woman.”
“I’m sure she is,” Demarkian said. “Let’s try one more thing. What about the settlement that was made with the men who sued the church in the pedophilia scandal? Is the parish part of that settlement? Do you make a monthly payment into a fund, or to the archdiocese, for the restitution payments or the legal fees?”
Robert thought about it. It was shameful, but there were whole segments of parish life he knew very little about. Parish priests were supposed to be hands-on administrators, in charge of every aspect of running their parishes, but he had known from the beginning that his talents in some areas were slight. One of those areas was budgets and finance.
“I’m not entirely certain,” he said, “but I believe that we were assessed a single payment several years ago, and that we now pay a portion of that to the archdiocese every month. We don’t deal directly with the litigants in that case or with their attorneys or with the court. The suit was against the archdiocese principally and only peripherally against the parishes. I think they referred to the suits against us having ‘nuisance value.’”
Demarkian shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “It really doesn’t make any sense. Does it make sense to you, Father, that somebody would kill Bernadette Kelly and Harriet Garrity?”
“Bernadette is a puzzle,” Robert said drily, “but there was probably a waiting list for Sister Harriet. I’m sorry. I don’t see any reason to disguise the fact that she and I were not exactly friends. No matter what His Eminence says.”
“Forget His Eminence,” Detective Mansfield said. “We’ve already had an earful about how people felt about Sister Harriet. Not exactly a world champion at winning friends and influencing people.”
“No,” Robert agreed.
“I think we can leave you to your life for the moment,” Gregor Demarkian said. “You’ve probably got work to do. So do we. Would you mind doing me just one favor?”
“What favor is that?”
“Do you mind telling me the last time you saw Sister Harriet alive?”
“Oh,” Robert said. “That’s easy. It was at Mass that morning. Seven o’clock Mass. She was there, and then afterward she was downstairs for coffee and doughnuts. We do that after weekday morning Mass so that the people who come on their way to work and want to receive Communion can get something to eat. You’re not supposed to eat for an hour before you receive Communion.”
“And was Sister Harriet her usual self? You didn’t notice anything different about her? She wasn’t particularly upset?”
“Well, Mr. Demarkian, she was particularly upset, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. We’d just told her—I’d told her, on instructions from His Eminence, that I concurred with entirely—she’ d been told that she would have to adopt some sort of distinctive habit if she wanted to go on working in this parish. I don’t mean the long dress and that sort of thing that the Sisters of Divine Grace wear, but something, you know, that would make it clear she was a Sister. The Holy Father has been explicit about this. Members of religious orders are supposed to wear simple but distinctive garb. They aren’t supposed to be running around in sweatpants and blue serge suits.”
“I see,” Demarkian said. “And Sister Harriet didn’t want to adopt a habit?”
“She would rather have eaten cow dung.”
Demarkian shook his head. “That doesn’t get us anywhere, either, does it?” he said. “Thank you, Father. We really will let you get on with your life now.”
Robert nodded politely, and stood while the two detectives got up and made their way to the foyer and their coats. He felt suddenly very light-headed, as if he had just jumped from a tall building and the bungee cord hadn’t taken hold until the last second. He was so exhilarated, he thought he was going to be sick.
“Well,” he said. “Well. I’m glad to have been of help. Really. More than glad.”
It was true, too. He was glad to have been of help, especially since it had cost him so little,
and meant so little, to himself or to them. He didn’t even mind the stiff cold wind that came in the door at him as he watched the three men walk away across the courtyard to the church. Cold was good. Cold would keep him awake—at least until he made it upstairs to his bedroom to lie down.
For the first time in hours, Father Robert Healy thought he could sleep.
2
By the time Mary McAllister got Chickie George back to St. Stephen’s, she was exhausted, and she still had at least an hour of studying ahead of her if she hoped to pass her weekly quiz in Systematic Theology. She was also sliding into one of those irritated moods that had been plaguing her for almost a month. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and already dark, although not so dark as it would have been before New Year’s. When she got out of the van and came around to help Chickie down, she could feel the sting of freezing rain against her cheeks. They were gearing up for an ice storm, the worst kind of weather possible. Too many of the homeless people she looked after were too mentally ill, or too damaged from alcohol, to have sense to come in from the cold.
Chickie had an Ace bandage around his ribs. Four of them were broken, and neither he nor she had been happy to hear the doctor say there wasn’t much that could be done about it but to feed him painkillers and wait.
“I’ve always tried very hard to stay away from drugs of all kinds, even the legal variety,” Chickie had said, in that highcamp squeal he affected around people he didn’t know. Later, when they were alone together, he dropped most of the act, and said, “It’s a very sensible policy, Mary. You know what happens to so many of us over at St. Steve’s. I’ve got to stay off.”
In the end, Mary had convinced him to take at least a half dose of the painkillers they had given him—Demerol and Percodan; they weren’t fooling around—and now she could see it was a good thing she had. The van was not the smoothest ride in the world. They had been bumping over potholes for miles. Chickie’s face was a mask of pain, which meant, of course, that it was a mask of pretense. Mary held out her arms to him and felt his weight against her shoulders.