The Lost Years

by Mary Higgins Clark

  Desmond Rogers eventually decided to accept the two-million-dollar loss and, at least as far as Albert knew, had never told anyone else about it. He did express his utter contempt for Charles Michaelson. “I’m a self-made man, and I know many people who have been in a terrible financial bind. Not one of them would have accepted a bribe to cheat a friend. Tell Charles for me that no one will ever know of this incident, but also tell him I never want to see his face again. He’s nothing but a crook.”

  If Charles has Jonathan’s parchment in his possession, he’ll probably sell it, Albert decided. He’ll find a hidden buyer for it.

  How much did Charles resent Jonathan? It was clear to Albert that on that first archaeological trip six years ago, Charles had been deeply interested in Lillian Stewart, only to find that door closed in his face as he watched Lily and Jonathan fall into each other’s arms practically overnight.

  That Charles had willingly allowed everyone else to believe that he and Lily were involved with each other when they attended dinners at Jonathan’s home had been absolutely out of character for him. He must have done it at Lily’s request.

  What else might he do for her?

  I wonder what will happen now? Albert thought as he started the drive to the campsite he had been frequenting of late, the one in the Ramapo Mountains just minutes away from the scene of Jonathan’s murder.

  17

  Father Aiden O’Brien escorted Detectives Simon Benet and Rita Rodriguez to his office in the building connected to the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street in Manhattan. They had called and asked if they could come in and talk to him, and he had willingly agreed, even though he immediately began to review in his mind exactly what he could tell them and the best way to word it.

  It was his own grave fear that Kathleen had pulled the trigger that caused Jonathan’s death. Her personality had changed so radically in the last few years, since the onset of her dementia. It was several years ago now that he had first noticed the telltale signs that her mind was beginning to fail. He had read that less than 1 percent of the population showed signs of dementia in their sixties.

  Father Aiden had met Jonathan and Kathleen when they were newlyweds and he was a young priest. Jonathan, only twenty-six years old, already had his doctorate in biblical history and was on the faculty of New York University. Kathleen’s master’s degree was in social work, and she had a job with the city. They lived in a tiny apartment on West 28th Street and would come to Mass at Saint Francis of Assisi. They began chatting with Father Aiden one day on their way out, and before long he was frequently going to their apartment for dinner.

  The friendship continued after their move to New Jersey, and he had been the one to baptize Mariah when, in her early forties, Kathleen had at last given birth to the child they had given up hope of having.

  For over forty years they had what I would call a perfect marriage, Father Aiden recalled. He could understand Jonathan’s emotions as Kathleen’s condition increasingly worsened. Lord knows I see enough of it every day in my own parish as sons or daughters, or wives or husbands, struggle with the care of an Alzheimer’s patient, he thought.

  “I don’t mean to get angry at him, but some days I feel as if Sam asks me that same question over and over again…”

  “I left her for just a minute and she had thrown all the wash I’d just folded into the laundry sink and had water running on it… ”

  “Five minutes after we finished dinner, Dad told me he was starving and started pulling everything out of the refrigerator and dropping it on the floor. God forgive me, Father, I gave him a shove and he fell. I thought, Please, God, don’t let him have a broken hip. Then he looked up at me and said, ‘I’m sorry I’m so much trouble to you.’ He had that moment of total clarity. He was crying, and I was crying…”

  All this was running through Father Aiden’s mind as he went behind his desk and invited Simon Benet and Rita Rodriguez to take the two visitor’s chairs.

  Jonathan was unfailingly patient and loving to Kathleen until he met Lillian, Father Aiden thought. And now, has Kathleen’s twisted mind pushed her into committing an act she would never have committed if she was the Kathleen he had known for so many years?

  “Father, thank you for seeing us on such short notice,” Simon began. “As I explained on the phone, we are homicide detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, and we are assigned to investigate the murder of Professor Jonathan Lyons.”

  “I do understand that,” Father Aiden said mildly.

  The kind of questions he had been expecting followed in close sequence. How long had he known the Lyonses? How often did he see them? Was he aware of Professor Lyons’s friendship with Lillian Stewart?

  Here starts the dangerous ground, Father Aiden thought as he reached into the pocket of his robe, took out his handkerchief, took off his glasses, polished them, and returned the cloth to his pocket before answering carefully.

  “I have met Professor Stewart two or three times,” he said. “The latest was over three years ago, although from the altar at the funeral Mass yesterday, I observed her come into the church late. I do not know when she left.”

  “Has she ever reached out to you for counseling, Father?” Rita Rodriguez asked.

  “Many people who seek counseling do so with the understanding that their privacy will be respected. You are not to infer anything by my answer when I tell you I do not think it appropriate to reply to that question.” That attractive young detective with the deferential expression already knows that I would be the last person Lillian Stewart would come to for advice, Father Aiden thought. The question is a setup.

  “Father Aiden, we understand that Jonathan Lyons’s daughter, Mariah, has been extremely upset by the fact that her father was involved with Lillian Stewart. Has she ever discussed that with you?”

  “Again—”

  Simon interrupted. “Father, we were speaking to Mariah Lyons an hour ago. She freely and openly told us that she had complained to you about Lillian Stewart and that she felt her father’s relationship with Lillian Stewart was harming her mother’s condition.”

  “Then you know what Mariah and I discussed,” Father Aiden said quietly.

  “Father, yesterday you told Mariah that her father, Jonathan Lyons, had visited you ten days ago—on Wednesday, August fifteenth, to be precise,” Simon said.

  “Yes, I told Mariah, over a cup of coffee in the friary, that Jonathan Lyons believed he had found an object of immeasurable value that is referred to as either ‘the Joseph of Arimathea parchment’ or ‘the Vatican letter.’”

  “Did Jonathan Lyons visit you specifically to tell you about the parchment?” Rita asked.

  “Jonathan, as we have established, was a longtime friend,” Father Aiden said. “It would not have been unusual for him, if he was nearby, to drop in on me for a visit in the friary. That Wednesday afternoon he told me that he was in the process of reviewing ancient parchments that had been discovered in a church that had been long closed and was about to be razed. A safe was found buried in the wall there. Within it were some ancient parchments and he was asked to translate them.” Father Aiden leaned back in his chair. “You may have heard of the Shroud of Turin?”

  Both detectives nodded.

  “Many believe that it is the burial cloth Jesus was wrapped in after the Crucifixion. Even our present Pope, Benedict, has been quoted as saying he believes it may be authentic. Will we ever really know that as a certainty? I doubt it, although the proofs are very strong. The Vatican letter, or, as it is known, the Joseph of Arimathea parchment, is of the same beyond-price value. If it is genuine, it is the only example of a letter written by Christ.”

  “Wasn’t Joseph of Arimathea the man who asked Pontius Pilate for permission to take the body of Christ and bury it in his own tomb?” Rita Rodriguez asked.

  “Yes. Joseph was a longtime secret disciple of Christ. As you may remember from your catechism lesson, when Christ was twelve
years old he went with his parents to the temple in Jerusalem for Passover, but when it ended he did not leave with the others. He stayed behind in the temple and spent three days confounding the chief priests and the elders with his knowledge of the Scriptures.

  “Joseph of Arimathea was an elder of the temple at that time. When he heard Christ speak and then learned he had been born in Bethlehem, he believed that Christ was the promised Messiah.”

  Warming to his subject, Father Aiden continued. “We do not know anything about Christ from the time he was twelve and discussed the Scriptures with the chief priests in the Temple until the wedding feast at Cana. Those years of his life are lost to us—the lost years. However, many scholars believe that some of that time was spent studying in Egypt because of the intervention of Joseph of Arimathea.

  “The letter, if it is authentic, was written to Joseph by Christ shortly before the Crucifixion. In it he thanks Joseph for the kindness and protection he had offered him from the time he was a child.

  “The authenticity of the letter has been disputed since Peter the Apostle carried it to Rome. Some of the Popes believed it was genuine, others did not.

  “It was in the Vatican Library and word got out that Pope Sixtus IV was planning to destroy it to end the controversy. Then it disappeared.

  “Now, some five hundred plus years later, it may have been found among these ancient parchments Jonathan was studying.”

  “A letter written by Christ. I can’t imagine.” Rita Rodriguez’s voice was incredulous.

  “What did Professor Lyons tell you about the parchment?” Benet asked.

  “That he believed it was authentic, and that he was troubled that one of the experts he showed it to was concerned only about its monetary value.”

  “Do you know where the parchment is now, Father?” Benet asked.

  “No, I do not. Jonathan gave no hint of where he was keeping it.”

  “Father, you said you had coffee in the friary. Before that, did you meet Jonathan Lyons in the church?” Rodriguez asked.

  “We met in the church. The entrance to the friary is in the atrium.”

  “Did Jonathan Lyons also visit you in the reconciliation room?” Rita asked, her voice now innocent.

  “If he did, I would not be at liberty to tell you,” Father Aiden replied, his tone now severe. “Which I suspect you already know, Detective Rodriguez. I see you are wearing a small cross. Are you a practicing Catholic?”

  “Not perfect, but yes, I am.”

  It was Simon Benet’s turn. “Father, Jonathan Lyons was involved in a long affair with a woman who was not his wife. If he did go into the reconciliation room and confess his sins, could you have given him absolution if he intended to continue his affair with Lillian Stewart?” Benet smiled apologetically. “I was raised Catholic too.”

  “I thought I had made it clear that any references to Jonathan Lyons other than what he told me about the parchment are off the table. That includes your speculation, Detective Benet. However, I will add this. I have known Kathleen Lyons since she was a young bride in her early twenties. I do not believe, no matter how sadly twisted and lost her mind has become, that she would be capable of killing the husband she loved.”

  As he emphatically made that statement, Father Aiden realized that within the core of his heart, he believed what he had just said. Despite his early fears, he knew that Kathleen simply could not be guilty of Jonathan’s murder. Then he looked from one detective to the other and knew he was wasting his breath defending Kathleen to them.

  He wondered what they would think if he told them that Jonathan had a premonition of his impending death. Jonathan had said it openly at the table, but there was an inherent danger to mentioning it. They might think that he was in essence saying that he had come to fear Kathleen’s increasingly violent outbursts. The last thing Father Aiden intended to do was to make things any worse for her.

  Simon Benet did not apologize for asking an inappropriate question. “Father Aiden, did Jonathan Lyons give you the names of the expert or experts he consulted to authenticate the Joseph of Arimathea parchment?”

  “No, he did not, but I can specifically say that he mentioned ‘one of the experts,’ so, of course, he showed it to more than one person.”

  “Do you know any biblical experts, Father Aiden?” Rita asked.

  “The three I know best are Jonathan’s friends, Professors West, Michaelson, and Callahan. They are all biblical scholars.”

  “What about Greg Pearson? Mariah Lyons said her father was his good friend and always included Pearson in that dinner group,” Rita continued.

  “Maybe as a friend Jonathan would have shown it to Greg, or told him about it, but I don’t think he would have any reason to consult Greg as an expert.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t tell his own daughter about his supposed discovery?”

  “I don’t know, except that sadly the closeness between Mariah and her father was strained by his relationship with Lillian Stewart.”

  “Would you consider Professor Lillian Stewart an expert on an ancient parchment?”

  “I can’t answer that, either. Lillian Stewart is a professor of English, but whether that extends to judging ancient parchments, I don’t know.”

  The discussion with the detectives lasted about an hour, and when they got up to go, Father Aiden O’Brien was certain that they would be back. And when they do come back, he thought matter-of-factly, they’ll be focusing on Jonathan’s relationship with Lillian and whether he might have entrusted the priceless parchment to her.

  After they left, feeling drained and weary, he sat down again at his desk. Before he had become aware of Jonathan’s involvement with Lillian Stewart, he had occasionally been at Jonathan’s dinners for his colleagues. He liked Lily and had gotten the impression that she and Charles Michaelson were a couple. She had a flirtatious manner when she spoke to Charles and would refer to a play they had gone to or a movie they’d seen. It was all a cover-up for the fact that she and Jonathan were involved.

  And Jonathan went along with it, Father Aiden thought sadly. No wonder Mariah feels so betrayed.

  Would Jonathan have kept the Vatican letter in Lily’s apartment for safekeeping? he wondered. And if so, would she admit to having it now? Especially since Jonathan told me he was planning to give her up?

  Father Aiden leaned on both arms of the chair as he rose painfully to his feet.

  The terrible irony is, he thought sadly, if Kathleen killed Jonathan, it was just after he had decided to dedicate the rest of his life to taking care of her and to mending his relationship with Mariah.

  God works in mysterious ways, he thought with a sigh.

  18

  Richard Callahan taught biblical history at the Rose Hill campus of Fordham University in the Bronx. After college, he had entered the Jesuit community but stayed only a year before realizing that he was not ready to make the commitment to the priestly life. At age thirty-four, he still had not come to a final decision.

  He lived in an apartment near the campus. Raised on Park Avenue by his parents, two prominent cardiologists, it was convenient to be able to walk to work, but there was also something else. The beautiful campus with its Gothic buildings and tree-lined paths could have been set in the English countryside. When he walked outside the gates, he enjoyed stepping into the diversity of the crowded neighborhood and the abundance of splendid Italian restaurants on nearby Arthur Avenue.

  He had intended to meet friends for dinner at one of those restaurants, but on his way home from the funeral, he canceled the date. The sadness of the loss of his good friend and mentor Jonathan Lyons would be a constant for a long time. But the question of who had taken his life was paramount in Richard’s mind. If it was proved that Kathleen in her dementia had committed the crime, he knew it would mean she would be confined to a psychiatric hospital, probably for the rest of her life.

  But if she was found to be innocent, who else would the detectives start l
ooking at as someone who had a reason to kill Jonathan?

  The first thing Richard did when he stepped into his cheerful three-room apartment was take off his jacket, tie, and long-sleeved shirt and put on a sport shirt. Next he went into the kitchen and got out a beer. I’ll be glad when the cool weather comes, he thought as he stretched his long legs out and leaned back in the aging fake-leather reclining chair that he refused to allow his mother to replace. “Richard, you haven’t taken the vow of poverty yet,” she said, “and you may never take it. You certainly don’t have to live it now.” Richard smiled affectionately, remembering the exchange, then turned his mind back to Jonathan Lyons.

  He knew that Jonathan had been translating ancient parchments that had been discovered in the safe of a long-closed church.

  Had Jonathan found the Joseph of Arimathea parchment among them? If only I hadn’t been away, Richard thought. If only he had told me exactly what he found. It was possible that by accident he had stumbled across it. Richard remembered that a Beethoven symphony had been discovered on the shelf in a library in Pennsylvania not that many years ago.

  There was a nagging thought in the back of his mind that refused to surface as he later fixed pasta and a salad for himself. It was still there when he selected a movie on demand on his television set and watched it.

  It was also there when he went to bed, and it slipped in and out of his dreams during the night.

  It was midmorning on Saturday when it finally surfaced. Lily had been lying when she said she didn’t know anything about the parchment. Richard was sure of it. Of course Jonathan would have shared that discovery with her. Maybe he might even have left it with her.