Night of the Ice Storm

by Stout, David;

  “I have the idea that Ed Sperl was not well liked by some people,” Grant said. “Hated, even. Being a police reporter in a town this size, he probably gave some people reason to hate him. This is a small town.”

  And a Catholic town, she thought. Marlee badly wanted to change the subject. “You’re playing golf tomorrow?”

  “Sure am.” Grant made a face and shrugged. “My game is so rusty, I don’t expect much. But as long as I was coming to Bessemer, I figured I might as well.”

  “I was, to tell you the truth, a little surprised when you accepted the invitation. I had the feeling when you left that you never wanted to see Bessemer again.”

  Again, Grant shrugged and produced a half-insolent smile. “I guess I just figured it was time, that’s all. I mean, one visit every twenty years isn’t bad.”

  “So, good luck and all that.”

  “Thanks. I’m playing with Will, of all people.”

  “Great.”

  Marlee was getting tired of standing in the same place. “I think I’ll see who else is here. Talk to you later?”

  “Sure.”

  Moving around, Marlee felt better. Talking to Grant had been momentarily exhilarating, then draining. Was it Grant himself, or what they had talked about? Both, probably.

  On her way past the buffet table, she crossed paths with Will again.

  “Thanks, Marlee,” the editor said. “The publisher’s having a good time and doesn’t seem to notice who isn’t here. So thanks for your extra work.”

  “I’m glad I could help, Will. You’re the one who got stuck with so much.”

  “Anyhow, things are going pretty well. See?”

  Will nodded in the direction of Lyle Glanford, Sr., sipping a cocktail and looking elegant in a summer suit that, Marlee was sure, he couldn’t have bought in Bessemer. His silver-haired, ornamental wife stood next to him, smiling and shaking hands gingerly. Mrs. Glanford (was her name Veronica?) was always polite and supercilious and had a way of smiling as she looked right through people.

  “I’m glad. Will. Grant says you’re playing golf with him.”

  “Yeah. I just hope I don’t hurt myself. Maybe if I drink enough, I’ll have a nice easy swing. Oops, here comes Karen. Bye for now.”

  Marlee finished her drink (her third already?) and listened to a local singer’s rendition of “John Henry Was a Steel-Driving Man.” It didn’t sound very good.

  At one point, she saw Grant talking to Lyle Glanford, Jr. Yes, Lyle was having a good time; at least he was drinking a fair amount. As she watched, Lyle seemed to be listening intently to Grant, who seemed to enjoy the audience. Then Grant leaned slightly and said something to Lyle, who nodded sagely.

  “Marlee, come and talk to me.” Jenifer Hurley was standing next to her.

  “Hi,” Marlee said, glad for the younger woman’s presence. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

  “Why not? Happy birthday, Gazette, and all that. Come on. Let’s talk.”

  Jenifer headed for the least-crowded part of the room. The men she passed glanced appreciatively, and some did more than glance. Jenifer was stunning in a sleeveless yellow dress that flattered her curves and beautifully complemented her tanned arms and lustrous hair. She and Marlee went by Will, whose eyes shone for a moment with what Marlee thought was pure longing.

  Finally, Marlee and Jenifer were off near a wall. No one was within ten feet of them.

  “You were right about Ed Delaney,” Jenifer said. “My prosecutor friend says he’s as straight up-and-down as they come.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s also backing off a little.”

  “Hmmm. Well, maybe we can turn him around again. Are you free tomorrow? During the day?”

  “I guess so. Tomorrow night, I’m going to the country club.”

  “There’s someone we want to talk to.”

  “About …?”

  “About what’s been on our minds a lot. Trust me, we want to talk to him.”

  “Well, who is he, and how does he know us?”

  “He doesn’t know us. He’s a cousin of my prosecutor friend, but that’s absolutely between you and me.”

  “And he knows something, about Ed Sperl?”

  Jenifer shrugged. “I told you my prosecutor friend belongs to a big, big family. I’ll pick you up about ten.”

  “Jenifer, who is this guy?”

  “I don’t know. Honest. My prosecutor friend says he’s ‘straight up-and-down’—he likes that expression—and that we can trust him. We just have to make him trust us.”

  “Where are we seeing this guy?”

  “I don’t know yet. My friend has to set it up first.”

  “Do you think something will come of it?”

  Jenifer’s eyes (for an instant Marlee envied her for them) flashed with cold shrewdness. “Any information is better than none. And my feeling is yes.”

  Marlee felt both alert and competitive; she wanted badly to contribute something. “Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if I called Olga again, just to pick her brain. One of Ed Sperl’s ex-wives, the one who told me Ed was expecting some money.”

  Jenifer nodded. “Why not?” Then she smiled knowingly. “It’s under your skin, isn’t it? The story, I mean.”

  “You could say that.” Marlee smiled back.

  “Excellent. Now I’m going to circulate and have a drink or two and pretend I like some of these people before I go home.”

  Marlee felt alive. Just a short time ago she had felt half-sick and depressed; now it was as if she had been drinking black coffee instead of vodka. I’ll be damned, she thought. I haven’t lost it all as a reporter. I sure as hell haven’t!

  Marlee went to the bar again, ordered a weaker-than-usual drink and started on one last circle around the room. She chatted with businessmen and politicians and Gazette alumni, who seemed to be outnumbered. She remembered everyone who had worked for her paper and tried to be charming to everyone.

  But her mind was somewhere else.

  She encountered Will and his wife again, shook hands with Lyle Glanford, Sr., and his wife, giving her the same see-through stare she got.

  She saw Jenifer Hurley again, in animated conversation with Archangelo Grisanti, the builder whom she had written about in a not-very-flattering way. The man obviously appreciated Jenifer’s body even if he hadn’t liked her stories. Marlee watched Jenifer deftly sidestep Grisanti’s attempt to drape an arm over her shoulder. Marlee chuckled to herself as Grisanti seemed to have his arm around a crescent of air.

  Still, Marlee’s mind was somewhere else.

  Halfway around the room, she again met Grant Siebert, who seemed to want her to linger. “We’ll talk some more,” he said. “Tomorrow night or at the brunch on Sunday. Or maybe, uh …”

  “Sure, we will,” Marlee said. In fact, talking to Grant some more was a pleasant thought.

  But Marlee’s mind was still somewhere else. She was glad when she completed her circle through the room, glad as she fled down the wide steps she had long ago ascended with prom-night nervousness, glad when she was in her car.

  In her eagerness, she fumbled with her front-door key. Once inside her house, she gave a quick look around: everything seemed to be the same as when she had left. After the night of the prowler, she had never taken her security for granted.

  Was it too late at night to call Olga? No, especially since she had extended herself on Olga’s behalf.

  She found Olga’s number and dialed. The first time Marlee tried, she was sure she had punched a wrong number.

  She tried again and got the same result.

  Marlee paused, squinted again at the number, punched each digit crisply. She had not made a mistake; this time, there was no doubt.

  “We’re sorry,” the recorded message said, “but the number you have reached has been disconnected.”

  Thirty

  Hearing Jenifer’s car out front, Marlee took one last gulp of coffee, poured the rest down the sink, and raced outside.

&nb
sp; “Where are we going?” Marlee asked.

  “North Park. We’re meeting this guy by a bench under a big tree near the duck pond.”

  Marlee was silent and nervous.

  “It’s okay,” Jenifer said, sensing Marlee’s unease. “My prosecutor friend is a straight up-and-down guy. He says it’s safe.”

  Marlee filled her in about trying to call Olga the night before and finding that the number had been disconnected.

  “Well, now,” Jenifer said. “This gets more and more curious, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. Indeed. Don’t speed, okay?”

  “I’ll be careful. What do you think it means?”

  “The Olga I know—although not that well, I admit—didn’t seem like a woman with a lot of sophistication, self-esteem, you know.”

  “Not much in marketable skills?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Or marketable beauty?”

  How heartless, Marlee thought. But true. “No.”

  “So maybe she just moved to a different neighborhood. Or stopped paying her phone bill. Ever think of that?”

  Marlee allowed herself to feel smug—very smug. “This morning, I called the Gazette and got a library clerk to look up Olga’s block in the street directory. I got half a dozen phone numbers of people who live within a few houses of her.”

  “Excellent! And?”

  “I managed to reach four people. They all said Olga seems to have left for good. One had the idea that she’d gone to Arizona.”

  “Arizona! Sunbelt! Now that is interesting. I wonder if she left a forwarding address.”

  “Wonder no more. None of the neighbors knew of one. More to the point, the friendly post office didn’t have one.”

  “Well, well, well. And this is the woman you were feeling sorry for. A funny time of year to go to Arizona, don’t you think? Bessemer summers are pretty good, after all.”

  “Maybe she has family there?”

  “Family? Marlee, I’m willing to bet she went to Arizona for one reason: it’s far away.”

  “You think she was afraid?”

  “You know the lady better than I do, Marlee, but it makes sense to me. She split because she was afraid, or because somebody paid her off.”

  “Or both. An offer she couldn’t refuse. Damn.”

  Jenifer found a parking spot next to the cast-iron, spiked-top fence that ran around the perimeter of North Park.

  “A glorious day, isn’t it?” Jenifer said.

  “Beautiful. Good for the reunion golfers. Almost makes me want to take up the game.”

  “Not me. I don’t have the patience.”

  “You learn patience as you get older.”

  They walked down a sloping gravel path. Squirrels and birds played in the grass around them, and the sun filtering through the trees cast ever-changing light patterns. Some of the trees still carried huge tar-covered scars from the ice storm that had torn off their limbs two decades before.

  “There’s the duck pond, and there’s a bench under a big tree. That must be where.”

  “No one there,” Marlee said.

  “We’re early.”

  It was not quite ten o’clock.

  “Say, who is this guy anyhow?”

  “Vito—he’s the guy I’ve been seeing, the assistant DA—says it’s a second cousin of his, or something. I told Vito about all that’s happened, and he apparently talked to his cousin, and his cousin said he could tell us something.”

  “That sounds a trifle vague,” Marlee said. Actually, it sounded worse than vague. Marlee didn’t subscribe to stereotypes, but she still didn’t like meeting a total stranger (who happened to be Italian) to discuss a crime.

  “This man’s name is Dean,” Jenifer said.

  “Dean something, or something Dean?”

  Jenifer just shrugged.

  “What do you know about him?”

  Jenifer shrugged again.

  Several joggers went by, singly and in pairs, men and women. At least it’s broad daylight, Marlee thought.

  She looked up the path they had just come down and saw a man walking toward them. Marlee sized him up in a hurry: medium height and build, loose-fitting casual pants, short-sleeve sport shirt, graying curly hair, tan skin, and dark glasses. Italian, she thought.

  “Jenifer?”

  Jenifer turned, saw.

  The man came up to them, stopped, smiled without taking off his dark glasses. “You’re Jenifer and Marlee?” he said.

  “I’m Jenifer.”

  “I’m Marlee.”

  “And I’m Dean. Um, how much did Vito tell you about me?”

  “Not much,” Jenifer said. “Just that you’re honest.”

  “‘Straight up-and-down’ is the operative phrase,” Marlee said.

  At that, the stranger laughed. His was a friendly laugh that showed bright teeth. “So’s Vito. A good boy. Good man, I should say. I only see him a few times a year, but I love him dearly.”

  “He said you had some information,” Jenifer said.

  The stranger nodded—grimly now, the smile gone. “I can tell you a little, okay? I don’t know how much it fits in with what you know, or if it helps you at all, but I’ll tell you what I remember.”

  Marlee and Jenifer waited for him to speak. Instead, he walked slowly toward the duck pond only a few yards away. “Here, duckie, duckie, duckie!”

  At that, the stranger took several pieces of bread from his pocket, broke them into small pieces, and tossed them into the water. The ducks had come to the water’s edge as though welcoming an old friend, and they immediately stirred the pond with splashing and soft nibbling.

  Marlee and Jenifer had followed the man, who now turned toward them. “I knew the man who was killed, John Barrow. I wasn’t all that close to him, but I knew of him. I can tell you, because I know it for a fact, that there was, oh, a feeling among some in the Bessemer church hierarchy that there might be less suffering if the case were, oh, not pursued all that aggressively. But I know there were other people, high in the church, who loved John very much—loved him as a person—and very much wanted his killing solved. I know that definitely.”

  Marlee and Jenifer waited for the man called Dean to go on. Instead, he removed his glasses to reveal large dark eyes. Kind eyes, Marlee thought.

  “We, I mean John’s friends, waited for the detectives to come around and, you know, really question us at length. About John’s known contacts and so forth. But that never happened, despite the news accounts of the time, on television and in your newspaper, that ‘all available police manpower’ was being used. It wasn’t.

  “And I began to wonder if it might be just me. I was young then, didn’t trust my perceptions all that much, so I talked with a much older man, one who knew the score. And I said to him, ‘Am I wrong, or is John’s death just being quietly swept under the rug, perhaps because he was homosexual?’ And this older man, who as I said knew the score much better than I, said that indeed it was just being swept under the rug.”

  The man called Dean paused. Though he had total self-control, the pain on his face was obvious. It’s so true, Marlee thought, so true that gay people have to endure so much more.

  “As I said, the older man I talked to, he’d been around. He knew Bessemer inside out, had contacts at many levels, and he told me that the bishop himself was dismayed that more wasn’t being done to find John’s killer. This wise old man told me that the bishop was very hurt and disappointed all the rest of his life that more wasn’t done by the police.”

  Marlee’s memory circuits flashed right and left as she recalled her conversations with Ed Delaney, who had thought someone in the church had quashed the investigation.

  “So,” Jenifer began carefully, “you’re saying you know it wasn’t the church powers-that-be …”

  “As surely as I know anything,” the man said, “I know it wasn’t the church.”

  My God, Marlee thought. “You’re a priest,” she said matter-of-factly.r />
  The man nodded. “My name is Dino Morini. Some of my friends call me Dean for short, not because I dislike the name Dino.”

  “And you know. …” Jenifer began, before Dino Morini cut her off with a hand gesture.

  “All I knew, as a young priest, a young man, was what I heard from a much older and wiser man. A priest, Father Brendan Sullivan. He happened to be the one who discovered John’s body.”

  The ducks had gone away, there were no joggers nearby, and Marlee and Jenifer waited in transfixed silence.

  “He was a good and holy man, this Father Sullivan. Wise in the ways of the world, wise in the ways of the church, the ways of the diocese. To me, he was like …” Dino Morini smiled sadly at the unspoken thought. “So, that’s about all I can tell you. Dear God, all these years later …”

  “We appreciate your seeing us,” Marlee said.

  “Well, I don’t know how much good I did you. At least, maybe I gave you a perspective. After twenty years, there aren’t that many people who know much of the truth. And lies take on a life of their own, you know?”

  “We know,” Jenifer said.

  “Look outside the church for the start of the cover-up,” Dino Morini said. “If I were you, I’d look to the police. Now, I think I should be leaving. Use what I told you any way you can. Just treat our conversation in total confidence. Understood?”

  “Of course, Father,” Marlee said. “You can trust us.”

  “I know I can. And you,” he said to Jenifer, “say hello to my cousin.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  Father Dino Morini turned to go up the gravel path he’d come by. Pausing a moment, he looked at Marlee and smiled. “You were surprised when I said I’m a priest. You thought something else, at first.”

  “Well, I thought maybe …”

  Father Dino Morini chuckled. “Emphatically not. When I took my vow of celibacy, I was forsaking something much better.”

  Riding back to her house, Marlee felt an electric excitement she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  “You were great back there,” Jenifer said. “You had him made as a priest before I did.”

  “Mmm. Well, we wouldn’t even have met him if not for you.”

  “This feels very good, Marlee. Being on the hunt of something. And I don’t think there’s anyone I’d rather hunt with.”