Stained Glass

by Ralph McInerny

  8

  Cy Horvath listened to the message Agnes had left on his phone and sprang to his feet. The message had been recorded almost an hour ago. He bounded from the room and took the stairs to the roof and the police heliport.

  Biederbeck was in his little office, feet on the desk, scowling at a television set. “Wouldn’t you think reception would be better up here away from all the interference?”

  “Warm it up, Beady. We’re going to Skokie. You got a map of it?”

  “In the copter.” Biederbeck, the welcome but infrequent prospect of flying before him, got up and ran out to his craft. Cy picked up the phone and called Keegan.

  “You’re flying?” Keegan had a horror of defying gravity.

  “She called an hour ago.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  The great blades of the helicopter were turning lazily when Cy came onto the rooftop. Biederbeck was aboard, grinning in anticipation.

  Cy climbed in. “No stunts.”

  “Have I ever?”

  Cy could count the times he had flown with Biederbeck, but every one had been an adventure. Prayer came easily in a copter. Biederbeck revved the rotor and then, magically, effortlessly, they lifted, fifty, then a hundred feet above the great encircled X on the rooftop. At sufficient altitude, they shot ahead, the cabin tipped forward, over the edge of the roof, and then there was the vertiginous sight of the streets below. Biederbeck gained more altitude, and soon they were whirling west.

  “You know the place?”

  “We’ll be looking for one of our cruisers.”

  “Stolen?”

  Cy ignored him, examining his conscience, assuring God he would be good as gold from now on. The only consolation was that he could never have covered this distance in less than an hour by car. He had found a map of Skokie in a leather pocket beside him. Opening it blotted out the swiftly passing scene below. When they got there, Beady identified the main street, and Cy guided him from the map.

  “Thar she blows,” Beady cried, and they began to descend. The cruiser with FOX RIVER POLICE suddenly legible on its side was parked in front of a house.

  “The lawn?”

  “Anywhere,” Cy said.

  Beady brought it down gently on the lawn, and Cy got the door open and ran crouched under the blades toward the house. He had his weapon out before he began beating on the door. Behind him the great blades turned slowly to a stop.

  “Around back,” he shouted to Beady.

  He knocked, he rang the bell, and then, lowering his shoulder as he had playing offense for Illinois, he crashed into the door. It gave on the second try. He stumbled through and had trouble coming to a stop. Agnes stood staring at him. The man who was more behind than next to her held a mean-looking steak knife to her throat.

  “Drop that!” Cy barked.

  “No, you drop that.”

  “It’s all over, Charlie.”

  The man considered that. “In that case, what do I have to lose?” The answer came in multiple form. Agnes turned and brought her knee into his groin, just as Beady came in from behind and wrested the man away from Agnes. He still had the knife in his hand when Cy got the cuffs on him.

  “You all right, Agnes?”

  “I am now.” If Pippen ever looked at him like that, Cy would be a goner.

  Biederbeck was disappointed that he wasn’t going to carry Charles whoever back to the heliport. “I could give him a pretty good ride.”

  It was tempting, but Cy shook his head. “We’ll use the cruiser.” “Aw,” said Beady.

  Cy followed Agnes and the prisoner, giving her the satisfaction. From the next yard, a man yelled, “What’s he done?”

  “Jaywalked,” Agnes called back.

  Before putting Charles in the backseat, Cy got leg irons out of the trunk. When those were on the prisoner, Cy put him in the backseat, enjoying it when he pushed the man’s head down as he did so.

  Once inside, before Cy closed the door on him, Charlie tried to smile. He said in a strained voice, “I don’t think I’ll ever play the violin again.”

  “But you’ll be able to sing soprano.”

  Beady had started his rotor, and the man next door backed away. It was a beautiful sight, watching the chopper rise, seemingly orient itself, and then prattle away to the east.

  “I’ll drive,” Cy said. “You keep an eye on your prisoner.”

  9

  Tetzel was the emperor of the pressroom in the courthouse. He was hailed when he entered the Jury Box across the street.

  Even Lyle Menteur, editor of the Tribune, drifted dangerously close to praise. “More interviews,” he suggested but it sounded like hip-hip-hooray to Tetzel.

  Tetzel flapped his notebook and flourished his tape recorder. “As many as you want.”

  Menteur chewed a mouthful of gum morosely. Was he picking up the scent of cigarette smoke from Tetzel’s clothes? His resentment at the exemption of the courthouse pressroom from the no-smoking ordinance would always be a barrier to fulsome praise.

  “I haven’t seen much of Rebecca lately,” Tetzel said offhandedly.

  “She’s on sick leave.”

  “In Amsterdam?” Rebecca’s piece on the hookers of Holland had been spiked by Menteur.

  “Ho ho.” Nicotine deprived as Menteur was, male solidarity survived in the editorial breast.

  Success, when it comes late, is a bittersweet thing, and Tetzel grew philosophical. “Gone with the wind,” he said to Tuttle. “Look at this monitor. Letters, words, sentences.” He punched a key, and the screen cleared. “That’s news, Tuttle. Snowflakes on the warm sidewalk of life.”

  “Have you thought of poetry?”

  “It is my consolation. Do you know Kipling?”

  Tuttle wrinkled his nose. Never answer a direct question. “After I finish my novel I shall turn to verse.”

  “I’d keep that quiet if I were you.”

  “You may be right.”

  Tetzel’s story as originally written had crested with the arrest of Fulvio Menotti in Barrington. The arrest of Fulvio’s brother changed all that, and the story as run ended with the look-alike brothers. Tetzel would have likened it to A Tale of Two Cities, but at the time he was alone in the pressroom, and talking to himself was something he only did while writing.

  He heard that Father Dowling had enquired about Charles, so Tetzel drove out to St. Hilary’s to get his take on the man.

  “Confessions are Saturday,” the housekeeper said, sweeping Tetzel with an assessing glance. “Unless it’s an emergency.”

  “I would like to see him now.”

  Mrs. Murkin threw up her hands. Her job did not include the care of souls or the discernment of spirits. Another sweeping glance and she sniffed. “You’ve been drinking.”

  “It’s my mouthwash.”

  Frowning, she led him down the hallway and tapped on a door. “Father, a penitent to see you.”

  Father Dowling looked up, his look welcoming, then puzzled. “Aren’t you Tetzel of the Tribune?”

  “I confess.”

  “Any other serious sins? Sit down, sit down.”

  The housekeeper expelled air—“Humph”—and clomped off down the hall.

  “She misunderstood me.”

  “It’s when she understands you that you’re in trouble. Quite a dramatic story you wrote.”

  “Thank you. I’m working on a follow-up. We know more of the innocent brother than we do of Charles. I understand you were down in Joliet recently.”

  “Have you talked with Father Blatz?”

  “Not yet.”

  Father Dowling began to fill his pipe. Tetzel got out his Pall Malls and looked a question.

  “By all means. Why settle for secondhand smoke?”

  “Father Blatz is the chaplain at Joliet?”

  “That’s right. Charles was his assistant during much of his stay there.”

  Having lit up, Tetzel scrambled to get out his notebook. Accused Murderer Chaplain’s Assist
ant. “Can you tell me about that?”

  “It would be secondhand. Talk with Father Blatz. I was surprised that you made so little of the connection to the artist Angelo Menotti. Both young men are his grandsons, you know.”

  Tetzel scribbled. “That will be in future articles. Right now I’m interested in the man who tried to shift blame for what he did onto his brother.”

  “I’m sure you remember Cain and Abel.” A smile and then a rising cloud of smoke. “Once at an international conference Graham Greene said that every time he heard the phrase ‘brotherly love’ he thought of Cain and Abel.”

  “I’ll use that. Have you talked with the suspect, Father?”

  “If you don’t inquire into my professional secrets I won’t inquire into yours.”

  “Of course, of course.” Pastor of St. Hilary’s Invokes Seal of the Confessional.

  “I enjoyed the series by Rebecca Farmer on her adventures in Europe.”

  “That’s been discontinued,” Tetzel said evenly. “She went too far when she submitted a piece on Amsterdam.”

  Father Dowling puffed on his pipe. After a moment, he said, “Angelo Menotti lives in Peoria.”

  “I was on my way there when I learned of the murder of Carl Borloff.”

  “His funeral is tomorrow.”

  “Here?”

  “The rosary is tonight at McDivitt’s.”

  Tetzel made a note.

  10

  In the conference with Cy and Agnes, Jacuzzi the prosecutor waxed philosophical. “In trying to lay it on Borloff and then his brother, he provided us with all the evidence we need to get a conviction. The box cutter, the rope. It reminds me of a play.”

  “Running or passing?”

  Jacuzzi was not to be distracted. He couldn’t believe that the twins could be so identical that people wouldn’t know they were talking to one or the other. Apparently, though, that was the case. Margaret Devere Ward, taken downtown to identify Charles Menotti, couldn’t believe her eyes. It helped that Fulvio was standing beside her. She looked from him to the man behind the glass and threw up her hands.

  “Was it you I met on the freighter?”

  “Of course.”

  “But how would he know of all that?”

  “I told him. I had no idea that he would impersonate me.”

  “What on earth does he have against you?”

  “Do you have any brothers?”

  Cy and Agnes had explored that with Fulvio. Seldom had ‘sibling rivalry’ seemed so apt a phrase.

  “He was always in trouble. Many times I was blamed for what he’d done. He ended up blaming everyone else. He wanted our grandfather to support him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “‘On the toe of my shoe.’ When Charles saw all that Devere money going to people he regarded as parasites on our grandfather’s fame, he must have gone berzerk.”

  “He did get one hundred thousand dollars of it from Carl Borloff.”

  Fulvio whistled. “He should have settled for that.”

  “He had already killed several people.”

  Fulvio became solemn. “He has to see a priest. Is there a chaplain here?”

  “Father Dowling has talked with him.”

  Fulvio seemed relieved. “Nobody’s all bad, you know.”

  “Are you including Louellen in the indictment?” Agnes asked Jacuzzi.

  “That would be hard to prove. I want to stick with the sure ones.”

  Agnes didn’t like that at all. She reviewed everything that had been found in Louellen’s room; she went downstairs to the morgue to talk to Dr. Pippen.

  “Alcohol and drugs,” Pippen said, shaking her head.

  “She didn’t drink.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “A woman down the hall. If she never drank, others would have known that.”

  “The trouble is, you can start drinking.”

  “I don’t want her just forgotten.”

  “Agnes, if they convict that man they will have convicted the man who murdered Louellen. If he did.”

  Agnes knew what she must sound like, even to Cy, even to Pippen, and there was some truth in it. She didn’t think the skinny little hooker was looming large enough on anyone’s radar because she was black. She went back to the evidence room and had the custodian get out everything.

  “You were just here.”

  “I may have overlooked something. I’m going to take this to the lab.”

  “Sign for it.”

  Winston in the lab seemed to wear glasses so he could look over them. When he wasn’t doing that, he put them on top of his head. He groaned when Agnes told him what she wanted. “I checked all that stuff, the syringe, the pipe, everything.”

  “Do you drink, Winston?”

  “Is that an offer?”

  “I don’t drink. How do you open a bottle of liquor?”

  Winston showed her. The cork had a plastic ridged top, and it was twisted off. With both hands? No, you hold the bottle with one hand and twist with the other.

  “Where would you grip the bottle?”

  “In the middle. There are no prints there, Agnes.”

  “What if you held the bottom and twisted different ways with different hands?”

  “I’ve never seen it done that way.”

  “I’ve never seen it done any way.”

  Wearing gloves, Winston placed the bottom of the bottle in the palm of one hand, got a grip on the bottle, then put the other hand on the cork. He checked where a bottom grip would have made prints. There still were no fingerprints on the bottle.

  “Of course, it was wiped. All this stuff was.”

  “Why is the bottle dented on the bottom?”

  “So are wine bottles.”

  “Did you check in there?”

  Winston checked in there and found a print. He grinned as if it had all been his idea. “He must have carried it that way.”

  The print matched Charles’s. Agnes went back to Jacuzzi with the news. He still didn’t want to add Louellen’s name to the list of victims.

  “I’ll picket your office unless you do.”

  Jacuzzi had a crooked grin that many jurors found charming. “You’re kidding.”

  “Try me.”

  Louellen’s name was added to the list of Charles Menotti’s victims.

  Cy congratulated her. “I think you’ve discovered a new right, Agnes.”

  “It’s only justice.”

  “The next time I’m the victim of a mass murderer, I’ll insist on equal billing.”

  From Cy such kidding was okay. Don’t ask her why.

  The Devere Foundation was indeed the link between all the recent murders, and it had generated the second link that was Argyle House. Charles, infuriated by his grandfather’s disinterest in him, had irrationally determined to become the executor of his estate, the heir of Angelo Menotti’s fame. He had followed the dispersal of Devere money, all of it connected, as he thought, with Angelo Menotti. That his resentment would turn him into a murderer surprised even him, if you could believe him.

  “Bobby? The poor girl refused when I went there to take away the portrait she had done of me. She said it was one of the best things she had ever done. She intended to show it. I couldn’t have that.” He looked around the room, but his eyes returned to Agnes. “If only I had known then that Fulvio was back.”

  “Your twin brother.”

  “Separated at birth. We never got along.”

  Charles became uncomfortable when Agnes asked him why he had desecrated Bobby’s body as he had.

  “Who would think I would do a thing like that? She didn’t die of hanging, you know.”

  “It wasn’t the exhaust, Charles.”

  “I know. She was dead when I brought her there. She died in her studio.”

  Their struggle when he had tried to remove his portrait had seemed just jostling at first. Bobby had climbed onto his back to prevent him from taking the picture. That had angered him
.

  “I threw the canvas on her waterbed and grabbed her by the throat. Not meaning to do more than frighten her.” Again he looked away. “It was as if I couldn’t remove my fingers from her throat.”

  He looked at Agnes as if expecting sympathy.

  Was it possible to strangle someone inadvertently? Maybe if it was your first attempt.

  “So you hung her stripped body in Amy Gorman’s garage and cut it up a bit.”

  “I am sorry about that.”

  “Why make her body seem that of Madeline Schutz?”

  “It confused you, didn’t it?”

  “How did you get hold of her purse and clothing?”

  “I talked a man named Mintz into letting me into her apartment. I was her publisher; she had sent me to pick up a manuscript.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t get rid of Mintz, too.”

  “By then I had thought of turning suspicion onto Fulvio.”

  “Brotherly love.”

  “My grandfather thought the world of Fulvio.”

  Louellen had to go, of course, because she would know about him and Bobby. Carl Borloff?

  “That sonofabitch. Can you imagine making a career out of someone else’s work?”

  “Your grandfather’s.”

  “Yes!”

  “Wasn’t that more or less your own plan?”

  “It’s not the same thing. My grandfather opposed what he was doing. Not that anyone gave a damn.”

  “What about J. J. Rudolph?”

  “Bobby told me about her. So I went to Kenosha and joined the firm.”

  “Just like that? Do you feel any guilt at all?”

  He thought about it. “I’m trying to explain how it happened.”

  Does anyone ever stop seeming innocent in his own eyes? That was a problem Agnes would leave to God. Meanwhile, she was glad that Charles would go on trial for all the murders he had done.

  “He won’t die in prison,” Cy predicted. “He did pretty well in Joliet the first time. He will be free before he loses his looks.”

  11

  At the trial, Amos Cadbury himself sat with defense counsel, unsettling Jacuzzi. When had Amos Cadbury ever appeared in criminal court? Or sat next to Tuttle, for that matter. That patrician presence at the defense table had no effect on the outcome of the trial. The best Tuttle could do was argue mistaken identity and go on and on about the unreliability of fingerprints, citing instances.