by Rose Connors
She nods and tears up all at once.
“You waited there, probably, until morning. My guess is you didn’t sleep.”
She bites her bottom lip and her tears spill over.
“You didn’t plan it. You’d never plan such a thing.”
She shakes her head.
“But when you saw her the next morning—young, full of promise, and radiant after a night with your husband—something snapped. You wanted to hurt her. You wanted her to ache every bit as much as you did.”
The door at the top of the staircase opens. Abby emerges, walks down a couple of steps and stands still, staring at us. She’s obviously been listening; her face is ashen. I won’t stop, though. I can’t now.
“So you reached for something—anything—you could use to make her hurt. It turned out to be the shovel. And in a split second, without any forethought, you swung. Once.”
“With a strength you never knew you had.”
The words are calm, steady. And they’re coming from Abby’s mouth.
I’m uncertain for a moment, unsure what to make of her comment. And then—in a heartbeat—I’m not. Honey Kendrick doesn’t know the details. Abby does.
Her mother is a step ahead of me. “Abigail,” she says, her voice trembling, “be quiet this instant.”
Abigail doesn’t seem to hear. “And then,” she says, “even though you’ve never seen a dead person before, you know you’re looking at one. You’re as sure of it as you are of your own name.”
She walks toward us, down the stairs, her cheeks tear-streaked. “And then you panic—like you’ve never panicked before. You can’t move at first, you’re paralyzed, and then you can’t stop moving. You have to get rid of her somehow. Her and her car. And her stupid car is so small she won’t fit in the trunk. But you can’t drive down the road with her in the passenger seat. It’s starting to get light. And she’s a mess.”
“Abigail, you’re talking nonsense,” her mother tries. She’s wrong, though. Abigail is telling the truth. It’s written on her face.
She stops at the bottom of the steps, looks at her mother, then at me. “So you take out the spare,” she says.
She’s on autopilot. Her mother can’t change the course. No one can.
“And somehow you get her into the trunk, then, but it still won’t shut. So you find a piece of clothesline and you tie it.”
“Abigail, please,” Honey says, “stop.” Her words are flat, though. Even she knows it’s too late. Abigail can’t stop.
“And then you dump her into Pleasant Bay because she’s already dead and there’s nothing you can do about it. And you know somebody’s going to find her, but you feel sort of lucky because the tide’s going out, so maybe it’ll take a while, and all you really want is time to think.”
Honey backs up to the wall, slumps against it.
“And then you leave the stupid car in the woods. And you know somebody’s going to find that, too, but you don’t know what else to do.”
Abby pauses to breathe. She isn’t pale anymore; she’s flushed from the base of her neck up, dark red blotches on both cheeks.
“And then your father gets arrested for it,” she says. “And at first you think that’s not so bad, because he didn’t do it, so he’ll get off.”
If only it were that simple.
“But then he goes and pleads guilty and you don’t know what’s going on. Until he stares at your mom that way. And then you do.”
She looks me square in the eyes and waits. She seems to think I might say it for her. She’s wrong. I won’t.
“He thinks she did it,” she says at last, pointing at her mother. “Just what you thought. And he’s going to take the blame for her, go to jail for her, give up everything for her. That’s how much he loves her. More than he ever loved that girl.” She points at the empty parking spot, as if Michelle is still here.
And she is. For the Kendricks, all three of them, Michelle Forrester will always be here.
Chapter 30
A Week Later
Harry’s second-floor apartment is empty, the fireplace cold. I’m surprised at first, but after a moment I realize I shouldn’t be. I have a pretty good hunch where he’s gone on this Christmas morning. I back the Thunderbird out of the office driveway and head toward St. Veronica’s in the steadily falling snow. The day’s first light is on the horizon, muted by silver-gray cloud cover.
When Luke was little, he couldn’t bolt out of his bed fast enough on Christmas mornings. He’d burst into my bedroom well before dawn, Danny Boy hot on his heels, the two of them panting with excitement. They’d both tug at my blankets and pajamas until I opened my reluctant eyes, and then Luke would complain—and Danny Boy would whimper—about the unbearable length of time it took for me to find my robe and negotiate the stairs. Those days are long gone, of course. Luke and Danny Boy were sound asleep—both snoring—when I left our Windmill Lane cottage twenty minutes ago. Sleeping in is a luxury Luke will enjoy only for another couple of weeks. Classes resume in early January.
Abby Kendrick’s won’t, though. She may return to the hallowed halls of Harvard someday—her father has vowed she will—but it won’t be anytime soon. Geraldine Schilling offered her a better-than decent plea bargain—a reduction to involuntary manslaughter, a dismissal of the obstruction of justice charges, and a recommendation to the court for leniency in sentencing—all in exchange for a full written confession, and all with the blessings of the Forrester family. On the sage advice of veteran defender Bert Saunders, Abby took it.
She was arraigned and sentenced in a solitary proceeding—yet another media feeding frenzy—on Wednesday morning, just forty-eight hours after all charges against her father were dismissed. Judge Leon Long took Geraldine’s leniency recommendation to heart. He gave Abby six-to-eight, a decidedly light term under current statutory guidelines. With good behavior and a little luck, she’ll be out in five.
Our system worked for Abby Kendrick—not a claim every criminal defendant can make. It worked in part because our District Attorney recognized a critical fact: Abby’s crime—though undeniably heinous—was born of passion, a circumstance we, as a society, have long recognized as a mitigating factor. It also worked because her case ended up on the docket of Leon Long, a man who carries a hefty dose of compassion into the courtroom—and up to the bench—every day of his working life. And for that she has her father to thank. It’s unlikely Judge Long would have been summoned to serve had the initial arraignee not been the Commonwealth’s senior senator.
Honey headed to San Francisco, to stay with her parents for a while, as soon as the sheriff’s patrol car left the Barnstable County Complex with her only child in the caged backseat. She told her husband to expect the process server on his doorstep—with her Petition for Divorce in hand—within the week. Charles Kendrick says he won’t contest it, and he won’t try to talk her out of it. He doesn’t plan to fight for his long-held seat in the U.S. Senate, either; he simply doesn’t have any fight left in him. The public outcry for his resignation began the day he was charged with Michelle Forrester’s murder. It diminished only slightly when the truth emerged.
It wasn’t until Honey pulled out of the county complex on Wednesday that I noticed Luke’s truck idling in the driveway, a few spaces behind where her car had been parked, a half dozen spots from where the sheriff’s patrol car had been. There were tears on his cheeks when I started walking toward him, but he was quick to brush them away before rolling down his window. “She’ll be okay,” he said right away, as if I were the one in need of reassurance. “Abby’s strong,” he added. “She’ll get through this.”
Generally speaking, I’m proud of my son. But at that moment, my maternal pride hit an all-time high. I hope Luke never loses his generous spirit toward others. I hope he’ll always be as fiercely loyal to his friends as he is today. And as to Abby Kendrick, I also hope he’s right.
Harry’s Jeep is parked on the street, in front of the chapel’s main
entrance. I pull in behind it and cut the engine, then walk around the stone building to the small graveyard in back. He’s sitting in the snow, leaning against a leafless tree, his legs stretched out in front of him. He’s facing Father McMahon’s headstone, the old schoolbag serving as an armrest. He looks up and musters a smile and a small wave as I approach.
“How long have you been sitting here?” I ask.
He checks his watch. “Sixty seconds or so.”
I laugh. “You’re in a time warp, Harry. I just left your apartment. I’d have seen you if you were only a minute ahead of me.”
“I haven’t been to my apartment yet,” he says.
Harry spent last evening at the cottage with me. He opened a bottle of wine and boiled a couple of lobsters while I made a salad and sliced a loaf of sourdough. We ate a late dinner in the living room, close to the woodstove, and then decorated a Charlie Brown tree, one Harry had cut down in the woods behind the office. Luke got home at midnight and regaled us with tales of the fabulous young woman he’d just met—we have an endless supply in this town, it seems—before laughing out loud at our yuletide efforts. Harry left about an hour later and I assumed he was going home to bed, as any normal person would. I should know better by now.
I squat beside him, look closer at his face. He has the beginnings of a mustache and beard. His normally ruddy complexion is pale. And his eyes are bloodshot. “You haven’t slept,” I venture.
“Not yet,” he says.
“Not yet? It’s seven-thirty in the morning. What are you waiting for?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what?”
He thinks about it for a few seconds. “Breaking and entering. In the night.”
I stare at him.
“In a private dwelling,” he adds.
“What the hell are you talking about, Harry?”
“I paid a little visit to Derrick Holliston’s bachelor pad.”
He can’t be serious. “Holliston’s been in the county jail for a year. Hasn’t someone else rented that place by now?”
Harry shakes his head. “I worried about that too. I thought I’d have to knock on the door and introduce myself to the new tenant.”
“What? You were planning to knock on a stranger’s door in the wee hours of Christmas morning and ask if you could take a look around?”
He shrugs. “Turns out it wasn’t necessary. A slightly overserved neighbor of his was just stumbling home when I got there. He said that unit’s been vacant since the cops carted Holliston out of it. And once I got inside, I knew why. It’s a dump.”
“How’d you get in?”
He takes his left hand from his coat pocket; it’s bandaged. “Broke a window in the kitchen door,” he says. “It was pretty easy.”
“What possessed you to use your hand?”
“I didn’t,” he says. “I used a brick. I cut the hand when I reached in to flip the deadlock.”
“Cat Burglar of the Year?”
“It was dark,” he says. “Could’ve happened to the best in the business.”
I can’t squat any longer—my middle-aged hips are complaining—so I kneel on the snow beside him. I’ll have to put up with wet leggings for a while. “Help me out here, Harry. Why in God’s name did you break into Holliston’s old apartment?”
He reaches into his schoolbag and pulls out a sack—a faded blue pillowcase. “Go ahead,” he says, “have a gander.”
Cash. The bottom third of the pillowcase is filled with cold, hard cash—bills of almost all denominations. More ones than fifties, but plenty of everything in between too.
“The coins are on the bottom,” Harry says, “mostly quarters. A year’s worth of trips to the Laundromat.”
“Let me guess.” I tear my eyes from the mound of money and look back at him. “You’re thinking this is last year’s Christmas Eve collection.”
“I’m not thinking anything,” he says. “I know it is.”
“You think it is, Harry, but you don’t know it. You can’t know it.”
We seem to say that to each other a lot lately.
“Oh, yes, I can.” He reaches into his schoolbag again, pulls out a second pillowcase—a mate of the first—and hands it over.
I know without looking, but I peer inside anyway, to make sure. And there it is: the monstrance. Tommy Fitzpatrick described it to a tee. A solid-gold stand, about a foot tall, its gleaming surface intricately carved. And the small, off-white wafer—the host—is still inside the monstrance’s circular window. I look up at Harry and then back to the pillowcase. I’m numb, and it’s not because of my wet knees. “The cops would’ve turned Holliston’s apartment inside out looking for this evidence,” I tell him. “Geraldine would have seen to that. How did you find it?”
He taps his temple. “Kidneys,” he says. “Holliston told us he was an electrician in a prior life, remember?”
I’m blank for a few seconds, but then I do. Even so, I shake my head at Harry. “If Holliston’s apartment has a suspended ceiling, you wouldn’t be the only one to notice. The cops would have dismantled it first thing. That’s Evidence Collection 101.”
“It doesn’t,” he says. “The ceiling’s plastered. And it’s intact. Or it was, anyhow, until I got there.”
It occurs to me that Harry probably needs a good lawyer. Maybe Bert Saunders is available. “What did you do to the ceiling?” I ask. I’m not sure I want to know, though.
“Took it down,” he says.
“Took it down?”
“Not all of it.”
Oddly enough, this doesn’t make me feel much better.
“Just one corner,” he adds. “The only spot that had been hollowed out.”
I stare at him. Again.
“Holliston did a good job,” he says. “I’ll say that much for him. Maybe he was a plasterer in a prior life too.”
I look down at the monstrance but don’t say another word. I can’t. The implications of this discovery are just beginning to hit me. I have to remind myself to breathe.
Approaching footsteps break the silence, the steady crunch of boots on snow. It’s Monsignor Davis. He’s in formal robes—it’s Christmas, after all—but they’re mostly hidden by a heavy gray coat. And his purple beanie has been replaced—or perhaps covered—by a warm woolen hat. “You’re getting to be regulars around here,” he says, smiling at us through the snowflakes.
“It’s a temporary obsession,” Harry tells him. “Don’t go signing us up for catechism class.”
The Monsignor laughs. “Don’t worry,” he says, “you’d scare the children.”
“Now you’ve hurt my feelings.” Harry wags a finger at the Monsignor as we both stand. “Not very Christian of you.”
Monsignor Davis laughs again, shaking his head. “Paying a visit to Father McMahon?” he asks us.
Harry nods. “And to you, too, whether you like it or not.” He holds out a pillowcase, the one full of money. “Here,” he says, “this is yours. And I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you I didn’t have it until a couple of hours ago.”
The Monsignor looks into the sack, then at me, then at Harry. “Glory be to God,” he whispers. “What is this?”
Neither of us answers. We wait.
It takes about thirty seconds, but then his expression changes, the explanation dawning on him. “But there’s no way to know,” he says. “Is there?”
I hold out the second pillowcase and Monsignor Davis drops the bag of money on the snow. He looks inside the second sack, then at us, then back inside. He takes hold of the ornate gold stand and drops the empty pillowcase on top of the cash. His eyes are damp when he looks up. “Glory be to God,” he whispers again.
We stand in silence for a few minutes, the Monsignor’s eyes glued to the monstrance, the snow collecting on our hats and coats. “Justice,” he says at last. “Another bit of justice for Father McMahon.”
That’s not true, of course. In the end, Derrick John Holliston is the only one
who even came close to finding justice. He got exactly what the Constitution promises: he was judged by a jury of his peers, peers he pretty much hand-selected. Judge Gould sentenced him to twelve-to-fifteen on the voluntary manslaughter conviction. If he keeps his nose clean—and Holliston seems able to do that when he’s on the inside—he’ll be out in a decade. Francis Patrick McMahon didn’t fare nearly as well.
“I’m sorry,” Harry says, resting his bandaged hand on the Monsignor’s shoulder, “about everything.”
Monsignor Davis takes in the bandage, then looks closely at Harry’s face. “Why don’t you come to Mass?” he says. “Both of you. The eight o’clock starts in just a few minutes. Share your burdens with the good Lord.”
Harry holds up both hands, palms out, to stop him. “I’m sorry, Your Emerald,” he says, “but it’s been sort of a rough morning. Could we not do the God thing right now?”
The Monsignor’s laugh is hearty. He shakes Harry’s hand, then mine. “All right,” he says, “we’ll do the God thing later.”
Harry starts to protest, but the Monsignor cuts him off. “Whether you like it or not,” he adds. He retrieves both pillowcases and heads for the church’s back door, the sack of money at his side, the monstrance pressed to his chest—no, to his heart.
“Hey, Padre,” Harry calls after him.
Monsignor Davis stops on the bottom step and turns.
“Merry Christmas,” Harry says.
The Monsignor nods, then smiles and disappears inside.
Harry retrieves his considerably lightened schoolbag and drapes his arm around my shoulders as we head for the cars. “Come back to Windmill Lane,” I tell him. “Luke probably isn’t up yet, but I’ve got eggs and bacon. He’ll follow his nose downstairs as soon as we start cooking. After we eat, we can open presents.”
Harry’s expression brightens at once, and the change has nothing to do with gifts. Not the wrapped kind, anyway. “Eggs and bacon?” he says as he climbs into his Jeep. “It really is Christmas.”