And then she was gone.
Glancing over to the other side of the room, he realized for the first time that he was not entirely alone. There was another patient sleeping quietly in the other bed, behind the curtain.
Father Godfrey, at the hospital on visitation, entered the room slowly, threw a casual smile and nod in Will’s direction, then pulled the curtain fully around the bed of the other patient.
A nurse breezed into the room to check Will’s vital signs.
The nurse turned to the drawn curtain. “There’s Father Godfrey again. He sure is faithful to his people. He’s here all the time.”
“How’s the other guy doing? He’s not getting the last rites, is he?” Will asked a little apprehensively.
“No, nothing like that—just a hospital visit. In fact, I think he’ll be ready to be discharged tomorrow. And I think you will too,” the nurse replied.
From behind the curtain, Father Godfrey was speaking in low, gentle tones and the patient was responding, but Will couldn’t make out any words. The nurse finished her work and hurried out of the room.
Some of the pain pills were kicking in. With the muffled sounds of the conversation across the room in the background, he drifted off. For a little while, at least, he could forget about vindicating Mary Sue Fellows—or wondering who was behind the attack in the jail and really wanted to locate her.
Will’s eyes closed as he fell into a deep sleep, oblivious to the ritual of confession being administered discreetly behind the nearby curtain.
37
TINY HEFTLAND, all two hundred thirty-five pounds of him, was tired and hot.
As the private detective sat in his new Cadillac convertible, he wiped his brow and loosened his tie. Then he checked the notepad lying on the passenger seat next to him, thanking his stars again that he’d decided to drive to Georgia rather than fly, now that the big airline strike was almost certain to occur.
Pursuant to Will’s instructions from a week before, Tiny had followed up a number of leads in the Mary Sue Fellows case.
His contact with attorney Stanley Kennelworth had been a bust. By the time Tiny had talked to him, Kennelworth had been fired by Joe Fellows as his attorney, and was in no mood to talk.
But Tiny did follow up on the ownership of Continental Motors, the car dealership from which the local attorney had gotten his brand-new Jaguar.
Continental Motors was owned by a two-man partnership consisting of Ambrose Deacon, a flashy multimillionaire and owner of several sports franchises, and Jason Bell Purdy.
Social worker Liz Luden had been surprisingly cooperative when Tiny had contacted her. According to the written demand that Will had served before his incarceration, Luden had to permit Tiny, as an official investigator, to peruse through her file on Mary Sue Fellows.
Most notable in Tiny’s review of the four-inch stack of documents was a small, handwritten phone message. The name of the caller was absent, but the note had been taken by “LL” (Tiny presumed that was Liz Luden), and it documented a phone conversation. The caller had indicated that he or she had some reason to believe that Mary Sue Fellows was “poisoning her little boy Joshua—with hydraulic brake fluid.”
Bob Smiley, the insurance agent, had been playing a persistent game of dodgeball with Tiny, not answering his phone calls, and complaining that he was just on his way to a “meeting” the one occasion Tiny had cornered him at his office. The agent had indicated he’d been unable to locate the file he’d discussed with Will Chambers but would continue looking for it.
Tiny finished jotting down a few notes, glanced at his watch, and then decided he would breeze by the Delphi hospital to give his greetings to Will, thinking he ought to pay the injured man his respects.
As Tiny maneuvered his huge frame through the hospital room door, Will had just finished dressing and was ready to be discharged.
“My oh my,” Tiny exclaimed, “aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”
“Hey—I’ve been out of things for a while. So I hope you have some great news about our case.”
Tiny walked up closer and checked out Will’s black eyes, his gauze-covered broken nose, and the bandage around his head. After a few seconds of solemn silence, Tiny spoke up.
“Will, my man, there’s one thing they did not teach you in law school.”
“What’s that?”
“How to duck.” Tiny enjoyed his own joke with a belly laugh.
“Well, I thought I was glad you’d stopped by,” Will remarked. “But anyway, I need a drive over to my car at the courthouse. I hope it hasn’t been towed away.”
On the way over, Tiny reviewed the results of his investigation. The lawyer was particularly interested in the anonymous telephone message accusing Mary Sue of poisoning her child.
After he’d studied a photocopy of the note that Tiny had obtained, Will muttered something.
“What was that?” Tiny asked.
“Just something that keeps going around in my mind. Something on this note. Something that’s at the bottom of this case. Hydraulic brake fluid.”
As they got within a few blocks of the courthouse Will turned to him with an idea.
“Tiny, before you drop me off, let’s go out to the Fellowses’ farm. There’s something I want to look at.”
Tiny pulled into the drive of St. Stephen the Martyr Catholic Church. As he was turning the car around, Will noticed a sign that announced the time of daily masses. Below, the sign also bore a pastoral message, which Father Godfrey would post for the encouragement or edification of passersby.
This week’s message read,
CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL
Tiny pulled his big Cadillac back on the road, and they headed out to the countryside and the farm.
Tiny unlocked the house with the key he’d picked up from the jail, where Joe Fellows’ belongings were being kept. The two men walked in. The two-story farmhouse had the musty smell of not having been occupied for several weeks. The windows were closed, and everything was silent.
They walked up to the second floor, and as they reached the top of the stairs, Will noticed a pair of child’s yellow plastic binoculars lying on the carpet and glanced out the hall window that gave a good view of the winding dirt road that led from the main highway to the front yard. Will and Tiny looked through each room—not knowing exactly what they were looking for, but finding nothing significant in any event.
Walking downstairs to the kitchen, they noticed a few dishes in the sink from some forgotten breakfast.
It was then that Will walked to the garage, which was connected to the kitchen by a door that had been left ajar. The two-car garage contained only one vehicle there—an older-model pickup truck. The front hood had been left propped open and two oily red rags were lying over the radiator.
Will stood staring at the truck, until he noticed Tiny’s large bulk looming behind him.
“Okay, chief—what’s the deal?” he asked.
“Joe and Mary Sue had two trucks.”
“So?”
“The other truck was the one that broke down on the highway when Mary Sue was trying to escape. I know that truck was impounded by the sheriff’s department. It says so in their report.”
“Well—what’s the big mystery?”
“No mystery,” Will said. “It’s just that Mary Sue never mentioned the second truck. This truck was being worked on before the deputies arrested Joe.”
Tiny did not see the connection or the point and simply shrugged.
They locked up the house, climbed into Tiny’s big Cadillac, and headed back to Delphi, where Will would pick up his Corvette.
He was anxious to get back to the houseboat, take a shower, and then start his frantic last-minute preparation for Mary Sue’s trial, which was now only a few days away.
38
AS TINY WAS PULLING UP to Will’s Corvette in downtown Delphi, he was suggesting something to his passenger.
“Look, I’ve got a room in a mote
l here, but maybe I’d better stay on the houseboat where you are. You may need a bodyguard.”
“Bodyguard? Where were you when I really needed you?” Will asked with a chuckle.
“I’m serious,” Tiny protested. “Look, can’t you tell I’ve dropped twenty pounds? I’ve been trying to exercise—get back into shape. You know there was a time in my former life, when I was a cop in the military—you know, I was a lean, mean, fighting machine!”
“Thanks anyway,” Will replied. “I really don’t need a bodyguard. On the other hand, if you like the Huckleberry Finn life of living on a high-class raft, why don’t you join me? There’s only one bed, though—you may have to try to make yourself comfortable on the couch.”
“Me on a couch?” Tiny said with a laugh. “Look, if you don’t need protection, I think I’ll pass on that and stay at the motel.”
Tiny headed off while Will climbed into his Corvette and gunned it off in the direction of Eden Lake. It seemed as if he had been gone for weeks. He recognized the familiar “Tex, the Flying Cowboy” sign and the road that led down to the water.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was getting low on the horizon over the quiet surface of the lake when he pulled up to the dock, looking forward to getting settled back into something normal.
He unlocked the houseboat and threw open the windows to get fresh air. Suddenly feeling exhausted and a little dizzy, he thought he would lie down for a minute. Although his skull wasn’t fractured, as the doctors had originally feared, he had had a serious concussion and a broken nose. He stretched on the couch in the small living room that overlooked the lake.
He was just dozing off when the phone rang next to him.
“Is this Will Chambers?” a young female voice said on the other end.
“Yes, it is. What can I do for you?”
“You can’t do anything for me, but I might be able to do something for you.”
“Like what?”
“You represent a woman by the name of Mary Sue Fellows?” the young woman on the phone asked.
Will sat up quickly—so quickly that his head gave him an immediate reminder of his injuries.
“Yes—do you know her?”
“Never met her in my life.”
“Alright—do you have some information on her case?” Will asked.
“I am the anonymous caller.”
“Okay—can you explain that?”
“I’m the one who called the Department of Social Services. I told them about Mary Sue Fellows poisoning her little boy.”
“I am sorry, I didn’t catch your name…” Will prompted.
“You’re not going to get my name. I want no part of this case. And I don’t want any trouble.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Because someone did me wrong. I had a perfectly good job, and now I’ve been fired. He’s mistreated me and taken advantage of me—I’ve been harassed and treated like dirt. I don’t appreciate that. So I took the information about how to contact you with me.”
“Wait a minute,” Will said, trying to put the pieces together. “Who did you wrong?”
There was silence at the other end. Will decided to probe a little further.
“You said that you made the phone call. But you’ve never met Mary Sue Fellows. Why did you accuse her of poisoning her child?”
“I was told to. He told me that I could make the phone call—no one would have to know who I was—and the law protected me as an anonymous caller reporting a child-abuse incident.”
“When you made the phone call, you knew that those allegations were basically untrue?”
“Look, like I said—I know nothing about Mary Sue Fellows. I don’t know anything about her poisoning her kid. I was told to say those things and that’s it.”
“Why would you have made a false allegation against someone you didn’t know?”
“Very simple—money. And there were other issues. Anyway, I’m sorry I did it and I wanted you to know. I’m hoping this could be helpful.”
“It isn’t going to be very helpful,” Will replied, “unless you give me a name and give me some way to contact you so I can interview you. I need to find out who put you up to this and why. And then I need to convince you how important it is to be a witness in this case.”
“Oh no,” the young woman said, “there’s no way I’m going to get involved in this case. I’m not going to give you my name and I can’t afford to testify. You’re just going to have to run with the information I’ve given you.”
“I don’t think that’s enough,” Will said gently but firmly. “An innocent woman may lose custody of her child. And there’s still a criminal case pending against her—she may even go to prison when this is all over. Can you live with that?”
There was a tense pause at the other end. Will continued to push.
“Can you tell me who put you up to this?”
“I…I don’t think I can tell you that. I really don’t want my life destroyed. He can really mess up your life.”
“Isn’t there anything else you can tell me?” Will asked, passion rising in his voice.
He heard noise in the background as the woman remained silent. It might have been as long as a minute. It sounded like she was calling from a telephone booth or a store, or perhaps a restaurant.
Finally she spoke. “Do you ever give confession? Are you Catholic?”
“No, I’ve never given confession to a priest, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Well, ask a guy named Henry Pencup. He gave a confession. I can guarantee you that.”
“And what does that have to do with Mary Sue Fellows?”
“That’s what you’ll have to figure out,” the young woman said. Then she hung up.
Will quickly jotted down the name she’d given him on a magazine, spelling it several different ways—Pencupp—Pencup—Penkupp—Penkup.
Then Will noticed the telephone number on the caller ID and called it immediately.
After a number of rings, a man answered the phone.
“Delphi Café.”
“I think a young woman just called from your phone. Is she still there?”
“Haven’t got a clue. If she is, I don’t know what she looks like. We’ve been real busy here.”
“Do you think you could find her in there in the restaurant?” Will asked.
“Locate who—what’s her name?”
“That’s just the problem—I don’t know her name. She just called me from your telephone,” Will said.
“Look—we’re real busy here. Sorry I can’t help you.” The man hung up.
Will quickly plugged in his laptop and went on-line. After searching a few news sources under various spellings, he came up with a small article in an Atlanta newspaper. It was an obituary.
Henry Pencup had been the president of the Delphi National Bank. The obituary indicated that he was memorialized in a service at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Delphi.
Following the obituary, Will also located a number of articles mentioning an ongoing investigation into several million dollars missing from the Delphi bank. Auditors had so far failed to uncover the reason for the missing funds. The death of Henry Pencup, who had suffered a massive heart attack, had become a major obstacle in the investigation.
That was when Will remembered the sign outside the St. Stephen the Martyr Catholic Church.
Confession is good for the soul, the attorney thought to himself.
He decided he needed to visit the church.
It was time to find out whose confession.
And—whose soul.
39
FATHER GODFREY WAS BEHIND the rectory at St. Stephen’s, working on his garden. He was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat that he took off occasionally to wipe off the perspiration trickling down his pale, withered face.
He was resting for a moment on a stool, hoe in hand, when Will rounded the corner of the rectory and called out to him.
“Are y
ou Father Godfrey?”
“Yes, sir. You look familiar. Have we met?” the priest replied.
“I am Will Chambers, a lawyer from Virginia. I was a patient at the Delphi hospital. You visited my roommate yesterday. I’m here in Georgia working on a legal case, and I’m wondering whether I could take a few minutes of your time.”
“Your timing is good—I just decided to sit down for a few minutes and catch my breath.”
“Do you know a man by the name of Henry Pencup?”
“I did. I presided over his funeral. He was a member of my parish.”
“Do you happen to know if he gave a last confession at the Delphi hospital before he died?”
“That is a very strange question—why do you ask?”
“I represent a woman by the name of Mary Sue Fellows. She is a mother of a small boy named Joshua. Happily married. Her husband is a farmer by the name of Joseph Fellows. They live outside Delphi on the farm they own and operate.
“Mrs. Fellows has been charged with committing child abuse against her son. I don’t believe those charges are true. I believe she is innocent, but I have only a short period of time to prove that. If I don’t, they are going to take her child away from her—possibly permanently—and she may end up going to prison.”
“That is a rather amazing situation you describe. What did you say your name was?”
“Chambers, Will Chambers. I am her attorney.”
“I think I may have read something about this in the local paper. The name doesn’t ring a bell. But then—I don’t think they publish the names of people involved in those juvenile cases, do they?”
“No—no they don’t,” Will said.
“But I don’t see how this concerns me,” Father Godfrey went on.
“I have reason to believe,” Will explained, “that a confession was given to you by Henry Pencup right before he died, and that it may have something to do with my client’s case. It may help me prove her innocence.”
“I can tell you this—I did take the last confession of Henry Pencup. And it was at the Delphi hospital. I can tell you that much.”
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