Deadly Blessings

by Julie Hyzy

  “How did you know what I wanted to talk with you about?”

  “Keep raking,” he said. “It’ll be your penance.”

  I listened to the twin scrapes of our wiggly fingered rakes against the uneven stubble of the ground for several beats. “How did you know?”

  “The Church is taking Father de los Santos’ escape to South America seriously. Very seriously.” His head down, Father Trip’s eyes met mine; his voice lowered a notch. “They don’t want a repeat of the scandals from a few years back.”

  I moved closer, toward the base of a tree nearer to him, lowering my voice as well. “You mean they think this might not be an isolated incident?”

  He shrugged, but I noticed that he dug deeper into the piles of leaves as he spoke this time. “I pray to God that it is. But the fact that Milla Voight is dead, and so conveniently, is making the media sit up and take notice.” He glanced at me, and I felt the weight of his words. “All I hope for is that the truth comes out. But I’m afraid that people will see a conspiracy where there is nothing but the very bad judgment of one priest, and the unfortunate death of a young woman.”

  He stopped raking. “The Church values human life. Life is sacred. There is no man in the Catholic Clergy today who would so callously end another human’s life to protect himself from scandal. This I believe. I would stake my vocation on it.”

  “Do you know Father Bruno Creighter?”

  I paused in my raking, but Father Trip’s quick glance of reminder got me started again. He nodded and began again, too.

  “We’ve met, briefly, several times, but I know him by reputation more than personally.”

  “He was Father de los Santos’—umm—boss? For lack of a better term. What’s the word on him?”

  A strong breeze shot past, flipping my hair into my mouth and twirling away the top layer of leaves off the pile I created. I reached my rake out to recapture them.

  “From what I understand, Father Bruno is heartsick. The man is well-known as a staunch proponent of the Catholic Church, and he abhors anything or anyone who sullies the Church’s good name. This is particularly hard for him because the young priest was one of his golden boys. A candidate for eventual pastor. What with the shortage of young men entering the priesthood, the granting of a parish to someone with his qualifications is no longer unheard of.”

  “Leaves a bit of a hole in the organization?”

  “Not only that, but Bruno’s a career priest.” Father Trip must have caught my raised eyebrows because he quickly added, “Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not minimizing his devotion. But with his media contacts, he’s got a shot at Bishop and from there, a clear path to Archbishop. Maybe even Cardinal. He’s proven his usefulness, his dedication. And he’s a go-getter. He’s overseen the ordination of more young men than anyone in years. And he’s got friends in high places.” He smiled as he paused for a moment.

  “Such as?”

  “He’s technically a citizen of the Vatican. Was born in Italy to devout parents and made lots of useful connections before he was sent over here.”

  “Creighter isn’t an Italian name.”

  “Italian on his mother’s side. Doesn’t matter anyway, he’s got the drive, the network, you name it.”

  “So if he’s such a Catholic catch, why hasn’t he moved up already?”

  Father Trip pulled out a big brown lawn bag and began scooping armfuls of debris into it. “Could be any number of reasons. Timing being key. You realize that no one can move up until a position is vacated. And with life expectancies going up all the time, there’s not a whole lot of turnover at some of those higher levels.”

  “Is there any dirt on him?”

  “Alex!” Father Trip’s reaction came out sharp, but a look at him told me he bordered on hurt. His tone softened. “There aren’t a whole lot of secrets in the Church. Not anymore. And that’s a good thing. I think if there were anything about Father Bruno that could tarnish his reputation, I would have heard about it by now.”

  “Okay, okay. But there’s a guy who works for him. Emil.”

  “Emil?”

  “Yeah, he’s the secretary or something. I’m not really sure. But he works for Bruno—”

  “Father Bruno.”

  “Sorry. He works for Father Bruno and he’s—I don’t know—icky.”

  “Well, there’s an objective observation.”

  A leaf fluttered down over my head and landed on my right shoulder, its scratchy edges hanging tight to the fabric of my T-shirt. I brushed it away. “What I mean is, he works for the Church, but I get a bad feeling from him. He’s got connections, I think, that he shouldn’t.”

  “Connections?” I could hear the skepticism in his voice. I wanted to avoid telling Father Trip about the prostitution ring. It didn’t yet feel like my story to tell; the fewer people who knew about it, the better.

  “Something’s wrong. There’s not much more I can tell you, just yet.” I bit my lip. “Would you mind checking around? Just a little?” I pulled the leaves closer to the big pile that had accumulated, obscuring the bright white of my Reeboks. Keeping my attention to task, I waited.

  It wasn’t until I heard him sigh that I looked up. “Have you really become as cynical as you sound?”

  I stopped scraping the leaves. “Not cynical,” I said slowly, meeting his gaze. The look in his eyes was pained concern and I hated the fact that I put it there. “Just less willing to take things at face value.”

  He gave me a lopsided grin, and with it, a sense of willingness to lighten the mood. “Whatever happened to that little girl who trusted everybody?”

  Looking at the big pile of leaves, curled corners of brown and red and orange, I couldn’t resist. I sat down with a sigh of pleasure, feeling the crunch beneath my butt as a puff of mossy autumn smells enveloped me. I covered my covered my blue-jeaned legs, just like I used to do as a kid. “She’s still here,” I said smiling up at him. “But life changes people. And she’s grown up.”

  “Grown up?” he asked, and he held my gaze a moment before averting his eyes. “Or grown away?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The following morning I cancelled my employment physical. Despite the fact that Lisa had given me the address of an established medical group in the area, the idea of submitting to an examination for a job selling sex made my skin crawl. I wanted to go undercover, but not under those kinds of covers. The nurse who handled my phone call asked me if there was any sort of problem, or if later in the day suited my schedule.

  My suspicious mind raced, wondering how if any of the staff of this place were on Lisa’s payroll as well. The nurse’s voice was so sincere, yet she pressed.

  “I have an opening tomorrow, if that would be any better. A cancellation at ten? How’s that?” Her voice sounded mid-fifties, brassy, eager.

  “Umm,” I hedged.

  “I’m just trying to help, you understand. I see from the notice here, that this is for new employment, and we try to do our very best to expedite when we can.” I could hear the smile in her voice as she said that.

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking fast. There was one excuse that would make sense. “But I got my period today. Totally unexpected.”

  “Oh,” she said, stringing the word out into two syllables. “Don’t you hate when it does that?” A page flipped and she hummed. “Okay, what about a week from today, same time?”

  “That’ll work,” I lied.

  “Okay thanks for calling Miss Szatjemski. We’ll see you then.”

  * * * * *

  The rest of the morning I spent at the library, looking up local news stories for any mention of Lisa Knowles. Fruitless venture.

  Back home, I left the car in the garage and walked across my own small yard to the house. Leaving the gray sky and the sharp wind outside, I pushed open the back door, lifting it slightly so it didn’t scrape the landing, and felt the home’s welcoming warmth. The heat must have just kicked on, with that recognizable, comforting smell o
f the summer’s dust burning off in the vents.

  I flicked the overhead light on in the kitchen and thought about making some hot tea as I leaned over to check the answering machine on the counter. No messages. With a grin I remembered Lucy’s exclamation whenever there were no messages on the machine when we got home. “I guess nobody loves us,” she used to say. Yep. With my parents gone, Lucy safely ensconced in her new home, and Dan out of my life, that about summed it up. Even the telemarketers had thumbed their noses at me.

  Gearing up for more research, I settled myself in Lucy’s old room, where I’d hooked up my computer and peripherals. I surfed the net, using every search pattern I could think of to find something, anything, about Lisa Knowles. My intense concentration and unswerving stare at the monitor for over two hours netted me little more than a pounding headache. The kind that made a starburst of light appear with each throb. I massage my temples and sat back, waiting for the hammering to subside.

  It didn’t make sense. Everybody could be found on the net. I got a slew of hits on the name Lisa Knowles, over five hundred. And I tenaciously clicked and followed every promising lead. Unless Lisa was a flyfishing aficionado in Oregon, a McDonald’s manager in Colorado Springs, or a librarian in Utah, I was outta luck.

  Another thing nagged at me. I’d left three messages at Sophie’s and hadn’t gotten a reply. I started out with a brief inquiry, expressing my concern and hopes that she was doing well after yesterday’s ordeal. The second and third messages I left were more imperative, requesting, then insisting, she return the call. I was sure there’d be a quick “Hello, everything’s fine,” when I got home.

  Starving, I meandered back and forth from the bare pantry to the nearly bare refrigerator, half my mind deciding what to eat from my meager supply, the other half of my mind worried about the lack of word from Sophie.

  I was coming up empty on both.

  On the countertop, next to the answering machine, were three taffy apples, tempting me from their clear plastic “keep-em-fresh” display packaging. Not exactly a healthy meal, but I was getting desperate. Telling myself I’d make up for my poor eating habits later, I tore open the crackling package and downed two of them, licking the caramel off the stick of the second one as I eyed the third.

  My appetite not quite satiated, I checked the answering machine again. As if it might have lied to me earlier, hiding a message. Still nothing.

  While Sophie had been forthcoming on much of the story, I sensed that there were things she held back, things she was reluctant to admit to. And since she seemed equally reluctant to return phone calls, I decided I’d take a quick ride and visit her. Granted, I told myself, as I pulled my university sweatshirt over my head again, enjoying the fragrant outside smell as the cushy inner lining conformed to my shape, she could be recuperating from yesterday’s long day. Maybe she was sedated. It wasn’t unheard of.

  Still, I hadn’t gotten this far in life by not listening to my gut. Trotting back out to the garage, I started to feel the sugar high from the taffy apples kick in. Just what I needed right now.

  * * * * *

  I knocked on Sophie’s door four times. When I’d been here before I spent little time at her doorstep. Now I had a moment to look around while I contemplated my next move. This first level landing of the three-flat had been painted a semi-gloss gray. As though a cleaning crew had been in moments before my arrival, the place was pristine. And if that shade of gun-metal gray had been even a little bit lighter, I would have said the place sparkled.

  As it was, the cleanliness was almost depressing.

  I could have sworn I heard movement in the apartment after my first knock. I put my face close to the heavy paneled door and called to Sophie, hoping that she’d answer if she knew it was me. I remembered her description of the police officer who came to tell her about Matthew and I stepped out of the little vestibule onto the porch to peer into her kitchen.

  Not much there.

  I tapped at the glass, and took a slow inventory of the room as I waited, the condensation of my breath on the glass fogging it up so I had to shift positions every few seconds. Everything in place. If cleanliness is indeed next to godliness, this woman was destined for sainthood.

  A delayed realization caused my eyes to swing back to the kitchen table. One mug. One chair slightly askew. In my house, disorder of this magnitude would be cause for celebration. There was usually half a week’s worth of dishware on the table or near, though never in the sink.

  Sophie, however, would not have left the table looking like that.

  I knocked again at the glass, hoping to catch her moving about in the apartment. Nothing.

  With resolve I headed up the creaking gray stairs to the second floor. It didn’t matter that I had no idea who lived above her, I was beginning to get a bad feeling and I had to do something. Or at least feel like I was doing something.

  No answer at that door.

  One more flight up. If I had no luck, I could try the front door. At least there were doorbells there. As I climbed the steps, my feet making quiet smacks against the black lining, I noticed how much warmer it was getting up here. They say warm air rises, and this was no exception. At the top of the stairs, I was surprised to find yet another short flight that obviously led to the attic.

  The gray and white paint combination ended abruptly and the look of bare wood, dark and kind of creepy began as that last flight led upward. I didn’t see any need to explore the attic, not now. And the hot, musty air that poured out from above didn’t give me added incentive.

  I peered up around the steps and realized there was almost no natural light up there. Probably a slew of spiders, though.

  Before I could knock at the apartment on this floor, the flat, solid door opened with an abbreviated squeak and I found myself face to face with an equally solid woman. Over sixty years old, she was about five and a half feet tall, and nearly as wide. Her dark brown hair had been pulled around gray metal rollers and secured by big pink plastic pins, so tight that if I reached over to flick at the hair stretched out, I was sure I’d hear a “ping.” Her face was pudgy and squished up, like a bulldog’s and she peered at me through rhinestone-studded glasses.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She spoke to me in rapid-fire Polish, so fast that I couldn’t keep up at first. What I gathered was that she didn’t want to buy whatever I was selling and she was taking the opportunity to let me know how very put out she was by all the comings and goings in the apartments lately and didn’t people even try to keep quiet anymore? I got the impression that she thought I had a direct line to all door-to-door salespeople and Jehovah Witnesses nationwide and that I’d pass the word along to quit showing up at her door.

  I waited till she quieted her tirade. When her head tilted back and she looked at me more closely, she asked if I spoke Polish. I was getting asked that question more in the past few days than I had in my entire life.

  I shrugged. Punted. “Sophie?” I asked, pointing downstairs.

  Behind the woman, a man shuffled toward the stove where a percolator sat, making its musical coffee announcement and sending the delightful aroma out the door toward me. The woman gave me a look that could have been suspicion, could have been lack of comprehension, and turned to the man, who poured himself a cup and was making his soft-footed way to the table. This apartment was full-size. These were probably the landlords.

  She spoke to the guy in Polish, which caused him to look my direction. I felt his assessment, though he kept himself bland-faced. Placing his cup on the table with unhurried care, he shuffled to the door. “Yes? You ask about Sophie?”

  I explained that I’d been concerned about her. That I hadn’t seen her since the funeral yesterday. “She isn’t answering her door, or her phone,” I said, looking from his face to hers, and back again.

  The man turned to his wife and conversed in low-toned Polish. I caught that their names were Mabel and Casimir. They’d been concerned about Sophie, too, from
what I could gather. They were the landlords and had been debating going into her apartment to check on her.

  “I looked in the window,” I said. “She left a cup of coffee on the table.”

  He translated and they both raised eyebrows at that. The man nodded to me and invited me in. “I get keys. You wait.”

  Why on earth the woman decided to talk to me while we waited for Casimir to meander to the back bedroom for the keys, I didn’t know. I feigned ignorance, but I picked up as much as I could.

  There’d been a disturbance this morning. Standing on the landing above Sophie’s apartment, they eavesdropped, hearing shouts, sounds of furniture moving around. Not wanting to get involved, they waited upstairs until things quieted down. It was Sophie’s boyfriend again; they’d seen him often enough, knew he was trouble. Wished she’d break up with the guy already, because one of these days he was going to smash something or cause damage and who would pay for that?

  Worried more about the state of the first-floor apartment, it seemed, than Sophie’s well-being.

  Maybe I was too quick to judge, I thought. Mabel here was yammering on and on in Polish, unaware that I understood her every word—a woman who didn’t hesitate to vent when she felt like it. And the way she shook her head when she said Sophie’s name made me wonder if perhaps she was concerned for her, but masked those feelings in concern for her material goods.

  Maybe I was providing a means to go check on Sophie and this was Mabel’s way of working out her anxiety. Not sure. And I wondered if the man they’d seen was that Rodero guy.

  She held up the percolator, raising her eyebrows in the universal gesture of “Want some coffee?” I shook my head, tempting though it was. Mabel poured herself a helping so full that I was sure it would spill over the top before she raised the delicate china cup to her pursed lips. In a curious juxtaposition, she slurped the black coffee noisily, while keeping the cup aloft, and her pinky extended in a show of elegant manners.