Green Thumb

by Ralph McInerny

  “You still live on the west side?”

  “Nobody lives on the west side anymore.”

  Agnes had a condo in a development so close to the Toll Road that she was serenaded to sleep by the constant roar of semis not a hundred yards from her pillow. This was Grantley’s reconstruction of her complaint.

  “You should move.”

  “Into the firehouse?”

  “Ho ho.”

  In an effort to divert her mating instinct, he brought up the recent campus murder. Agnes had the anonymity of a waitress in Sorin’s and picked up all kinds of gossip; diners assumed she was part of the decor as she came and went in her uniform, always with an ear open. Maureen O’Kelly usually took a table in Agnes’s section and Agnes had become fascinated with the blond bombshell, as she called her.

  “She’s been a busy bee since checking in.”

  “How so?”

  Agnes leaned forward, about to talk, then sat back. “I’ll tell you at Houlihan’s.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Out on Main.”

  Grantley hesitated. If he let Agnes take him off in her car, he would be at her mercy, and there was a new determination in her attitude as if she meant for him to fish or cut bait. She wasn’t getting any younger. Well, who was?

  “You’re faking.”

  “Maybe.” But she smiled enigmatically and Grantley was hooked.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “In the lot.”

  “Let’s have another drink first.” His voice even sounded coy.

  “We can have a drink at Houlihan’s.”

  As he followed her through the lobby, Grantley felt oddly like a trophy. At the front doors, she waited for him to be gallant and he obliged her, pushing through first and holding the door. Outside, she led him to the parking lot and a Corvette.

  “What’s this?”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I’ve never ridden in one.”

  “It’s snug. You’ll like it.”

  Going out Notre Dame Avenue, Grantley felt a sense of adventure. He seldom left the campus and, as he had said, he had never been in a car like this. He felt like Robin to her Batman.

  If Father Carmody could see him now!

  The noise level in the bar at Houlihan’s did not provide a promising setting for any confidences Agnes might have. The dining area was better and he suggested that.

  “There’d be a wait. I thought you’d want to watch a game.”

  A dozen television sets brought in half a dozen different athletic contests, the lower part of the screen conveying in text the inane remarks of the commentators. Agnes wanted to sit at the bar, but Grantley headed for a booth, tripping on the step that led to its raised level. He managed to right himself and Agnes slid in beside him. He felt trapped.

  A waitress came and Agnes ordered a beer of enormous proportions. Grantley asked for scotch and water, and the waitress was off.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?” She put her arm through his and leaned against him.

  “Tell me about Maureen O’Kelly.”

  Agnes wrinkled her made-up nose. “Later. You won’t hear a word I say in here.”

  “So why did we come here?”

  “Silly.” Her arm squeezed his.

  For two and a half hours they drank and had enormous hamburgers served with enough potato chips to satisfy the most voracious appetite. All Agnes’s appetites were on display. As she ate, she licked her lips and gave him her soulful look. She was like the squire in Tom Jones as she laid into her food. She gnawed suggestively on a spear of pickle. On his third scotch and water, Grantley felt his defenses weaken. Agnes looked better all the time. He didn’t even resist when she suggested that they adjourn to her condo where the hum of the semis was less distracting than the dozen television sets in Houlihan’s.

  Agnes’s condo was a pleasant surprise and Grantley was struck by the contrast with his room on the second floor of the firehouse. He could live like this if he wanted, but that would entail leaving the campus and he doubted he could bring himself to do that. There was a deck, on the opposite side to the Toll Road, and they sat there, having yet more to drink. The immediate future seemed vague and oddly welcome. Que sera sera.

  “So, what about Maureen O’Kelly?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “I should have known you had nothing to tell.”

  “Oh, but I do.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Agnes pulled her aluminum chair closer to his and they sat knee to knee. “She’s got something going with the one named Toolin.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Wilfrid, the night clerk. They came in late the other night and went up in the elevator, close as can be. Wilfrid went up the stairs and saw them come out of the elevator and go to his room.”

  “Big deal.”

  “For a couple hours he kept ringing her room and didn’t get an answer.”

  “It probably doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Listen, a woman knows.”

  “Is Wilfrid a woman?”

  “They had breakfast together the next morning. I could tell.”

  “Ah.”

  “Well, you wanted to know.”

  She put a hand on his knee and he put his hand on hers. “Agnes,” he began. She turned her hand over, gripped his, and pulled him to his feet. A minute later they were in her bedroom. Who knows what might have happened if there hadn’t been a picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall? Grantley freed his hand.

  “I’ve got to get home.”

  “You expect me to drive you back now?”

  So they had an argument. He ended by sleeping on the couch in the living room, Agnes having closed the bedroom door with an angry bang. On the Toll Road the semis thundered all night like voices of conscience. Grantley tried to pray, glad he had not sinned, but he couldn’t stop thinking of what Agnes had said about Maureen O’Kelly and Christopher Toolin.

  30

  Abstractly considered, there was no question in Roger’s mind what he should do, but what he had learned was far from abstract. There was, of course, the possibility that Paul was lying about Maureen O’Kelly taking leaves and berries from the plant he had grown in his window box. But that did not present an attractive alternative. His dilemma was that he had information that he should not keep to himself, but if he told Phil he would in effect be accusing either Paul or Maureen O’Kelly. Roger was in a state of uncharacteristic confusion when he went out to his golf cart and drove to Holy Cross House to talk with Father Carmody.

  He found the old priest in a lawn chair that faced the lake, dozing in the sun. Across the lake, through the trees, was the silhouette of the old campus, the Golden Dome, the spire of Sacred Heart Basilica rising to the blue June sky. Roger pulled another chair next to the old priest’s and sat. A rheumy eye opened and regarded him.

  “Roger.”

  “Father. You know Aquinas well, don’t you?”

  “Tolerably.”

  “I have been thinking of the text in which he writes of the family of a man condemned to death. Am I right in remembering that he held that their blood relationship takes precedence over their duty to justice?”

  “Ah, an interesting conundrum.”

  “I have been wondering what other considerations might trump the demands of justice.”

  Father Carmody looked out toward the lake and sat straighter in his chair. He might have been putting on a stole.

  “What is it?”

  So Roger told him, as he would have told a confessor, what he had discovered in Paul Sadler’s room and what Paul had told him of Maureen O’Kelly.

  “And what will you do, Roger?”

  “What would you advise?”

  “You are wondering if you must make this known. I mean to someone else.”

  “Yes.”

  Father Carmody ran his hands down his cheeks, turning his face into a tragic mask.
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br />   “And it was your previous impression that Mrs. O’Kelly did not know of Paul?”

  “Her daughter had not revealed her feelings for Paul. But I suppose she must have known the name, and perhaps the person.”

  “Did the young man say why she had come to see him?”

  “To see his window box.”

  “And how would she have known that?”

  “It was she who got him interested in belladonna.”

  “How much of his story do you believe?”

  “Ah, that is the question.”

  “Perhaps your doubt is justification enough for saying nothing. At least for now. Let me see what I can do.”

  “You mean you will tell Phil?”

  Father Carmody smiled. “Not now, certainly. There is someone else I must talk to.”

  And so it was that Roger returned to campus, somewhat relieved. He stopped at the library and took the elevator to the sixth floor, where he found Greg Whelan at work in the archives.

  “Roger, what a delightful surprise.” Heads turned at the sound of Greg’s uncharacteristically fluent voice. “There is something I want you to see.”

  Greg led Roger off to a study room, closed the door, and eased onto the table the archival box he had been supporting on his hip. He sat and pulled the box toward him, his expression that of a child opening a Christmas gift. His fingers flew over the tabs of the manila folders the box contained until he found the one he sought. He pulled it out, opened it, and slid a photocopy across the table to Roger.

  It was an article from The Observer of a quarter century ago, recounting how Mortimer Sadler had been whisked away to the emergency room at St. Joseph’s Hospital to have his stomach pumped.

  “Poison?” Roger said.

  “Not just any poison.”

  Mortimer Sadler had fallen ill from the ingestion of belladonna. His roommate, Christopher Toolin, had had the presence of mind to call an ambulance immediately when he found Sadler collapsed on the floor of their room in St. Edward’s Hall.

  “Well, well.”

  “Things happen once as farce and the second time as tragedy.”

  “Isn’t it the other way around?”

  “Not this time.”

  Greg slid another, later story across the table. This made it clear that Sadler had administered the poison to himself. Unwittingly, as he claimed. But there was an ambiguous quote from Toolin: “The poor devil missed a chemistry test.”

  Roger recalled an allusion to this from Jim Crown during his interview with Phil and Jimmy Stewart. He pushed his chair even farther from the table than his midsection required and smiled cherubically at Greg.

  “I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.”

  “Happy?”

  “Well, not happy. But it comes as a tremendous relief.”

  And then he hunched forward and told Greg in a whisper what he had just been discussing with Father Carmody.

  “Suicide is an awful possibility, but these stories suggest that Sadler had simply wanted to get out of his bet with Maureen O’Kelly. As he had before, he underestimated the danger of what he was doing.”

  “And that takes Mrs. O’Kelly off the hook.”

  “And Paul.” Roger sighed. “And your humble servant, I might add.” He rose in careful degrees to his feet. “Could you make me copies of these? I want Phil to see them.”

  “Of course.”

  It would have been an exaggeration to say that it was a lighter Roger Knight who descended in the library elevator some minutes later, save metaphorically. He was humming as he came out of the car on the first floor.

  31

  The wooden beads of his rosary slipped through Dennis Grantley’s fingers as he sat on a bench at the Grotto, but if his words flew up, his thoughts remained below. He had just come from confession, but he did not feel the relief that absolution usually brought. He had agonized over whether he should confess his date with Agnes as carelessness about the occasion of sin, but any mention of it would have conferred on it more importance than it had. Nothing had happened. He could not even accuse himself of sins of thought. His main concern had been to escape Agnes’s predatory advances and in this he had succeeded, to the point of her disappearing into her bedroom and slamming the door. This left him stranded far from campus, which was why he spent the night on her living room couch. But why, if he was sinless, did he feel such guilt? He worried that his confession had not been a worthy one since he had not mentioned Agnes.

  He had awoken to the sound of the shower and her tuneless singing. When she emerged, she was wearing her waitress uniform. She seemed surprised to see Grantley in her living room.

  “You stayed the night!”

  “You will remember that we came here in your car.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.” A lascivious smile. “You might have knocked on the bedroom door.”

  He ignored this. She was aglow from her ablutions and a picture of propriety in her uniform, whereas he was a rumpled mess with a furry mouth and an uneasy conscience. While she made breakfast, he went to the bathroom and stared at his whiskered face in the mirror. What might have happened if he had knocked on the bedroom door? Out of danger, he could enjoy imagining the possible upshot. He gave himself a look. Shame on you. But he felt a bit like a roué when he went out to his bowl of cornflakes.

  Agnes had dropped him off at the firehouse and he went up to his room, but all he could think of was that confessions were heard in the basilica prior to the 11:30 Mass. He had been the first in line, whispered the usual menu of his sins through the grill. Now, an hour later, he sat at the Grotto wondering if he had come clean to God and his minister.

  Someone sat next to him on the bench. He turned to face Father Carmody.

  “Finish your rosary,” the priest said.

  Fear and hope leapt together in Grantley’s breast. He could confess to Father Carmody and undo the possible sacrilege of his earlier confession. But the difficulty recurred. What exactly could he accuse himself of? He pocketed his rosary and piously blessed himself.

  “Now then,” Father Carmody said. “You know everything that goes on around here.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “I accuse you. You are a magpie of gossip; news sticks to you as flies do to flypaper. What do you know of the doings of those members of the class of 1977 who are here for a reunion?”

  Grantley thought about it. What surer route to a recovered sense of innocence than to accuse others?

  “So you’ve heard about Maureen O’Kelly and Chris Toolin.”

  “If I had, I wouldn’t be pumping you for information.”

  “It probably doesn’t mean anything,” Grantley said in a tone that implied the opposite.

  Carmody glared at him. “Don’t be oblique. What are you talking about?”

  Grantley opted for directness and told him what Agnes had found out about Maureen’s going to Toolin’s room in the Morris Inn. “After midnight,” he added.

  “As you say, it probably means nothing.”

  Grantley stared at the votive lamps flickering in the cavern of the Grotto. Our Lady, the epitome of purity and innocence, gazed down on him. “Or they could be in it together.”

  “‘It’?”

  “The poisoning of Mortimer Sadler.”

  “Why?”

  “In her case, it’s obvious. There was enmity between him and the woman.”

  “Don’t abuse Scripture.”

  “And she was Eve to his Adam.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  But it was clear to Grantley that Father Carmody had taken to heart his interpretation of the midnight tryst of Maureen O’Kelly and Christopher Toolin, co-conspirators up to no good in the night.

  Father Carmody got to his feet. “You are a reservoir of iniquity.”

  “And obliquity?”

  “That too.” Father Carmody went up the steps to the parking lot and his car. Grantley took out his rosary again and began to pray it wi
th attention and devotion. He might have been saying his penance.

  32

  When the cell phone went off in his briefcase, Cal Swithins at first had no idea what was happening. He was in his car at the time, parked in a lot at police headquarters, making notes for a dispatch to the Chicago Tribune, eschewing the press room lest the odious Raskow should be reminded of his professional duties. By the time he figured out that it was the phone Maddie Yost had given him, the better to have him at her beck and call, it had stopped ringing. With some difficulty, he managed to pick out the number of The Shopper.

  “I tried to reach you,” Maddie said without preamble.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “Caller ID. Look, I want you to go out to the mall and get an extension from Boswell for his ad. Where are you now?”

  “At police headquarters.”

  “They’ll never run an ad.” A pause. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not if I get some rest.”

  “Rest! Rest from what?”

  Recent events had brought home to Swithins the demeaning trough into which his career had sunk. Imagine composing a column for a virtual illiterate like Maddie Yost. But even worse was the fact that she considered him a space salesman, not a writer. Dear God. Swithins’s persistent investigation of the death of Mortimer Sadler now carried the promise of lifting him from the jaws of defeat and putting him on a more exalted path than he had ever trod before. The Chicago Tribune had expressed interest in receiving his accounts of the strange murder on the Notre Dame campus. Chicago was the home of vast numbers of Notre Dame alumni, and the city’s population could be evenly divided into those who loved Notre Dame and those who hated her. Either way, interest in such a scandal would be intense.

  Swithins would not have been human if he did not imagine the reaction of Lyman Mendax to the news that the reporter he had rejected had been good enough for Chicago. At one end of the spectrum of his hopes, Swithins imagined himself the regular Notre Dame correspondent of the Chicago paper, feeding it daily dispatches on campus events. Not sports, of course. Platoons of sports writers descended on South Bend on game days and covered each event like a blanket. Swithins frowned at the cliché. He must keep his style fresh and innovating, but accessible. At the other extreme of hope was a summons to Chicago, installation in an office with the title of feature writer. His eyes narrowed in pleasant thought.