When they reached the front hallway Rufe could hear someone moving around in the back of the house, opening and closing doors.
“Tillie? I’m sorry I didn’t know you were back.”
“I left most of the bags in the car for you when I saw you had a visitor.”
“I’ll bring them in right away,” DiAngelo said. “I was just showing my caller out.”
* * *
Rufe decided on his own to bring Sam into the inner circle before the Frig It meeting. A bunch of the support group’s members already were texting like high school kids, shook up by the news Patrick had been murdered and by the unprecedented call for a special meeting. Rufe needed to know he could count on someone other than himself if emotions got out of control.
Doug’s lawyer persona was a sharp contrast with his usual laid-back self. Rufe knew if the dichotomy was bugging him, it had the potential to send a few of the more high-strung members of the group into orbit. Putting Sam in the know ahead of time meant there’d be another steady voice if the troops needed calming. They met late Friday afternoon at Sam’s condo overlooking Casco Bay. The pharmacist listened intently before getting up to pace the room.
“You say Doug claims he accepted at face value Pat’s story that he was looking to sell some pieces he’d inherited. Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know. He might be trying to cover his ass.”
“Do you think he was involved in this fencing ring?”
“No way,” Rufe said. “There’s every reason to believe Doug came by his money honestly, if defending criminals can be called honest work.”
“I don’t have a beef with how Doug made his living. When my son screwed up I spent serious bucks on a lawyer who not only kept his sorry ass out of jail, but gave him a good talking to about how the world works. There’s a real need for people who can do that. My question is whether Doug is covering up some involvement of his own, something more than matchmaking. Maybe Pat came to him and proposed they partner up? Pat would deliver the goods to Doug, who’d then work hand-in-hand with his former clients to sell them to the highest bidder.”
“That doesn’t ring right to me. Even though he’s retired, Doug’s got a reputation to protect. And he’s talked his former clients into spilling what they know to the cops. He wouldn’t do that if they were going to implicate him.”
“I guess that’s right. But I can see why you’re worried about explaining this development to the Frig It guys. It shatters my illusions about both Pat and Doug, and makes me wonder who else in the group—which is supposed to be about honesty—is keeping secrets.”
Rufe kneaded the back of his neck and pondered that question as he drove to Doug’s house. There wasn’t an official Frig It pledge where members promised to tell each other everything. But the whole idea of a support group was to share the hard things going on in your life, the stuff that caused you despair. Despite that underlying pact, Rufe had felt pretty damn special when Pat took him into his confidence about being gay months before he worked up the nerve to tell Doug and Sam. Until DiAngelo made him wonder if he was a gullible fool, he believed himself the only other human being on the planet who was aware Pat was in a relationship.
Since leaving the rectory Rufe had thought obsessively about Father Michael’s patient, almost apologetic tone when he denied he’d been Pat’s lover. There was no defensiveness in the tall priest’s voice, no sense he was measuring his words. So either Pat had lied to him about having been in a relationship, or DiAngelo was buried so deep in the closet not even the compassion of another gay man could bring him to admit he’d lost his life partner.
Four cars already were in the broad driveway when Rufe reached Doug’s house. A pickup truck driven by a Frig It member Rufe didn’t particularly like pulled in behind him. Thom hopped out, wearing the paint-splattered khakis he’d been working in all day.
“What’s up?”
Rufe shrugged and put out his hand. “Tough week, eh?”
Rufe could smell booze when Thom moved in for a handshake.
“It’s sucked.” There was ferocity in Thom’s voice, from emotion or booze or both.
Great idea, Thom, to have a few pops before coming over here? That’s just what we need tonight—to throw some booze into the stew of emotion that’s simmering on Doug’s stove.
Thom’s bloodshot eyes held the defiant glint of a man spoiling for a fight, so Rufe kept his mouth shut, the price of his self-control being another crank of the stress wheel that had hold of his shoulder muscles.
Fifteen minutes later a moment of stunned silence followed Doug’s explanation of why they were gathered, then a roar of upset washed through the living room.
“I cannot fucking believe this,” Chuck said. “Pat’s been murdered, and now you tell us he was a thief? And you introduced him to the people who probably killed him?”
Doug was as cool as Rufe imagined he’d been in front of a jury. “The people I connected him with are cooperating fully with the police. They are not responsible for his death.”
“I don’t know how you could possibly know that. That’s what they say, but they’re crooks for Chrissakes. And even if it’s true, the thought Pat was a thief is blowing my mind.”
“I’m not sure Pat saw it as theft,” Doug said. “You all know how much respect he’d lost for the institutional Church. He talked about it in this group many times. He felt angry and betrayed when he was instructed to supervise the stripping of churches that had been built by the ancestors of the parishioners who were being displaced. The orders came from on high, but he didn’t recognize their authority anymore.”
“That is the biggest damn rationalization I’ve ever heard,” Thom said. “If he was so opposed to what they asked him to do, why didn’t he refuse?” Thom had a temper that could veer toward uncontrollable, especially when he’d been drinking. “I thought Pat was supposed to be the last honest man. Now we learn he was as corrupt as the rest of ‘em.”
Rufe stood to get everyone’s attention, but he addressed his words to Thom.
“Back up the truck for a minute, okay? Corrupt is a hard word. I can’t imagine applying it to Pat under any circumstance, not even if you could prove to me he sold all of the stained glass windows and pocketed every penny. The man was under stress. Huge stress. We of all people ought to have the decency to stand up for his good name, not add our voices to those who see the world in black and white.”
It was clear Thom was struggling to hold himself in check. Doug cleared his throat. “If it matters, Pat told me his goal was to pull together some money for community projects the diocese had stopped funding. If he spent the proceeds on himself, he was flat-out lying to me.”
“All I’m saying is it sucks when people pretend to be one thing and turn out to be another,” Thom said. “I realize he’s not even in his grave yet, but the Pat I thought I knew wasn’t two-faced.”
Sam jumped in. “I don’t know how to explain this development, but on the money end of things? Pat didn’t care a whit about having money for himself. When do you think he last bought a new pair of shoes? Or took a vacation outside of Maine?”
“If that’s the case, then where’s the money?” It was no surprise the question came from a Frig It member who was an auditor. “If he set up a bank account into which he deposited whatever share of the profits the fences returned to him, that won’t excuse his behavior, but it won’t make him a thief.”
Rufe nodded to signal to the group that he agreed with the auditor’s assessment. He wondered if he could find the password Pat used for the SecretsSafe account they’d set up that rainy Sunday afternoon. If he could—and Pat hadn’t changed it—maybe Rufe could do a little forensic investigation of his own.
“I’m certain the state police are going full-tilt investigating the money angle,” Doug said. “They don’t have the an
swers yet. They will at some point. I would hope out of respect for Pat—whose funeral hasn’t even been held—everyone would take a deep breath and suspend judgment.”
“Suspend fucking judgment? You’re not in a courtroom, feeding platitudes to a jury,” Thom said. “We were Pat’s friends. No, actually, we were his brothers. If my brother was doing something he shouldn’t be doing, I wouldn’t hook him up with the kind of people who could get him in deeper. I’d find a way to get him to stop doing stupid shit.”
“And how would you know what the state police are investigating? You brought them a couple of shady characters who did some apparently illicit business with Pat,” Chuck said. “I’m no expert on police procedure, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t put you on the inside circle of their investigation.”
Doug put his hands up in surrender. “I knew this was going to be a difficult conversation. I’m sorry for all of us that we’re having it. But Pat’s wake is Sunday and his funeral is Monday. I couldn’t go there and sit shoulder to shoulder with all of you without telling you what I knew.”
“What you knew, or what you engineered?” Thom stomped to the front door and slammed it behind him. Chuck was close on his heels, looking at the floor as he crossed the room. He didn’t do the slam routine, but he didn’t say goodbye.
No one else followed them out the door, but the men who stayed were all over the place emotionally. It took hours to process all the shit that followed Doug’s announcement.
Sam and Rufe intoned one variation or another of the same mantra throughout the evening. We don’t have the whole story. Don’t jump to conclusions. Stay calm.
Doug sat back and listened, aware no one wanted to hear another word from him. Rufe felt some sympathy for the retired lawyer, but knew he was strong enough to take being on the outside for as long as it took for the mysteries of Pat’s life to be solved.
Chapter Sixteen
Kathleen Hazelwood had left a voice mail on my desk phone while I was huddled with Leah, asking me to call her back stat.
“I love the nurse lingo,” I said when she picked up. “Stat. Great word. I’m going to start using it around the newsroom.”
“It’s an ingrained habit, sorry. I spoke with Michael—you know, Father DiAngelo—told him you’re writing a long piece for the Sunday paper about Patrick. He agreed to talk with you.”
I thanked Kathleen for her intervention, taking care not to be too effusive, given that the profile I was writing was occasioned by her brother’s death. She said DiAngelo told her he’d be free in the afternoon, that I should text him to let him know what time I’d arrive. She provided his cell number.
“Priests have cell phones, huh? And they communicate with their parishioners by text message? All the Catholic kids I knew in high school complained about their religion being hopelessly out of touch with the modern world.”
“That’s because you were in high school, and every topic of conversation had sex as a reference point. On that critical life issue, the Church remains stuck in the eighteenth century.”
“I didn’t ask when I saw you the other day, but are you still a practicing Catholic?”
“Yeah. I criticize my Church all the time, but I can’t walk away. Maybe that will change now that my brother is gone.”
Father Michael DiAngelo answered my text saying he was free all afternoon and I should come to the side door. I hoped he’d be waiting for me so I wouldn’t have to suffer the wrath of Tillie McGuire on such an idyllic October day, when the light breeze was ruffling the deciduous trees, sending colorful leaves fluttering to the ground. The temperature was in the low fifties but the sun made it feel warmer, so I pulled off my leather jacket and left it in the car.
Before I left the office Leah and I had brainstormed some questions for me to ask, the goal being to get more out of DiAngelo than platitudes. I ran through my mental outline as I walked through the churchyard to three granite steps that led to the rectory’s door. DiAngelo was standing in the entryway, watching my approach.
As I put out my hand to introduce myself I was struck again by his physical presence. He had to be six-four, and he was well-muscled like a lifelong athlete. Since the morning Patrick’s body was found in the garden, that first image of DiAngelo—kneeling in the flower bed, wailing—had stayed with me. I didn’t see even a flicker of recognition in his face when he acknowledged my words of sympathy, and I felt no need to let him know I’d witnessed his raw grief.
“Please come in. Mrs. Hazelwood told me you have been extremely sensitive to her loss.”
He led me a few strides down a hallway to a small office, where he slid into a straight-backed chair behind the old-fashioned oak desk and gestured me toward one of its companions on the other side. He crossed his hands and focused his dark eyes on my face. His face did not offer much clue to his age. Unlined and mostly untouched by sun, its paleness was a sharp contrast to his black hair.
“I was not surprised to hear that you’ve treated Kathleen kindly. I’ve read a lot of your stories over the years. You’ve impressed me as a thoughtful, sensitive man.” His voice was deep and melodious.
“Reporters often are accused of being callous when we’re simply doing our job. People make a lot of inaccurate assumptions about what we do.”
“These days, priests have the same problem.” He offered a crooked smile. “We might even be ahead of reporters in the world of faulty assumptions.”
His smile was restrained, and he looked as tired as I felt. He must have intuited that I noticed, because he diverted our discussion to my exhausting beat.
“The school bombing story must have you working day and night,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happening in this town, but it isn’t good.”
“Riverside’s crime stats are pretty low, but you wouldn’t know it by this week’s headlines.”
DiAngelo fixed his eyes on mine like he was trying to see into my soul.
“Can I ask your indulgence? I have an opinion about this matter that I will share with you, but only if you promise me you won’t print it in your newspaper.”
“You mean you want to tell me something off the record.”
He nodded.
“I’ll agree to that.”
DiAngelo’s broad lips were a tight line while he chose his words.
“Despite Lieutenant Rigoletti’s headline-grabbing announcement, I think the investigation ultimately will show Father Doherty’s death wasn’t the result of foul play. I believe the police will conclude that he fell and hit his head. He suffered from insomnia and often went out into the garden in the middle of the night.”
He fixed me with that soul-seeking look again.
“Father also had been drinking a lot lately. I told the police that, and how alcohol made him unsteady on his feet. I think a careful analysis of the evidence will show he was impaired that night, and he fell and hurt himself.”
I thought about the off-the-record report from my friend Alan regarding the Medical Examiner’s conclusions regarding both the head injury and the tox analysis. Clearly the police hadn’t broken the news to DiAngelo that their homicide investigation was the real deal, not an effort to cover all their bases.
“I’m sure even the idea Patrick was murdered would be difficult to accept.”
“Impossible,” DiAngelo said, his voice husky. “Truly impossible.”
He closed his eyes until he regained his composure.
“I expect you need some quotes for your story, so let me say that while I wish I had insights or helpful information to offer, I don’t. It is unbearably sad that Father Doherty is dead. He was a good man, a wonderful priest. This community will miss him.”
“I imagine the police have been here a lot.”
“I’m not allowed to talk about my conversations with them. They made that quite clear.
I can’t talk with anyone about their investigation.”
“I’m not surprised.” I paused for a moment, then pivoted toward the personal. “Kathleen said you and Patrick were more than colleagues—you were good friends.”
“I was proud to call him my friend, but truly, he was my mentor. I was young—both in years and experience—when I arrived at St. Jerome’s, unsure of how I’d fit in. Patrick was so supportive, especially when I wanted to focus my ministry on the elderly and the infirm, which is where my particular gifts lie.”
“Was Patrick happy in the priesthood?”
A blink of surprise ran across his face.
“Absolutely. The Church—not just St. Jerome’s, but the entire institution—was his natural home. Patrick was a deeply spiritual man, which is the only way he was able to do the work he did in the community. Did you ever watch his face when he was celebrating Mass?”
“I was in the church a few times when he was on the altar, but I always sat in the rear. I’m not Catholic.”
DiAngelo leaned forward and smiled over his clasped hands. “You don’t have to be Catholic to sit up front, only to take communion. I am sorry you never had the opportunity to watch him consecrate bread and wine. His love for our Lord shone through so strongly then, and when he interpreted the Gospels.”
“I heard him speak many times, of course. Watched him comfort parishioners who were deeply distressed. His talent—his gift, to use your word—was evident even to a non-churchgoing reporter like me.”
“Patrick was a remarkable man. I was fortunate to work with him all of these years.”
“You didn’t just work with him. You lived here together. I’m sure you knew a side of him the public didn’t know. What made him laugh? What did he do to relax? What were his hobbies?”
DiAngelo made no effort to hide his glance at his watch. “I’m afraid if I started telling Patrick stories we’d be here all afternoon, and I’m sorry to say I have another appointment in a few minutes.”
Truth Beat Page 12