Mom Meets Her Maker
Page 10
Then I noticed that the office door was slightly ajar, and I saw Gabe Candy’s pudgy figure inside. I gave a rap on the partly opened door and walked in without waiting to be asked.
Gabe Candy was sitting behind his father’s big mahogany desk. His coat was off, his collar was open; he wasn’t wearing his vest. His hands were clasped together on the desk blotter, as if he were holding something in the palms of his hands and contemplating it. The expression on his face was awfully close to despair.
He looked up sharply as soon as I stepped in, and pulled his hands down to his lap. A kind of wavering annoyance crossed his face. As if he’d like to rise up to anger but was just too tired. “I told them out there I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “When you’re carrying on an investigation, you have to act fast, before the trail turns cold. You can’t wait around ’til people are ready for you.”.
“What’s so hard about following this trail? I’d say it was paved in concrete.”
“Maybe so. But I’ve still got my job to do. The sooner you answer my questions, the quicker I’ll be out of here.”
His hand brushed his eyes quickly, and he said, “All right, all right, what can I do about it anyway? Ask what you want. But don’t take too much time at it.”
I took a seat across from him. “That’s nice of you, Mr. Candy.”
“Dr. Candy,” he said.
“Oh, you’ve got a doctorate?”
“Of divinity.”
“What seminary did you graduate from?”
“University of Kansas, if you want to know. I’ve been out two years. I started older than most—I was having a family, and that delayed me.”
Or maybe it had taken awhile before his father was doing well enough in the preacher business to send his son off to theological school.
“What did you do between college and the seminary? Besides have babies, I mean.”
“I worked for Daddy in the church. When it was down in Arizona. Just outside Tucson.” His face darkened a little. “That’s just as important as any studying and getting degrees and all. I was laboring in the vineyards. That’s what Daddy did, and I learned more from him than any of those professors of divinity could teach me.”
“Is that what your father used to tell you?”
Gabe flushed. Then he lifted his chin, trying to make his voice firm and dignified. “You didn’t come in today to hear the story of my life. You came to ask questions about Daddy’s murder. Go ahead and ask them.”
I took him through everything he had done yesterday, and everything he had seen his father do. There wasn’t much to it. His father had left the church a little before noon, as was his custom on Thursdays, going home to ask the Lord’s help for his Sunday sermon. Gabe had stayed on in the church, where he had a lot of administrative business to take care of. Mostly to do with finances, he said.
There was so much to do that he hadn’t gone out for lunch. His wife had given him a sandwich and an apple in a paper bag when he left the house that morning, and he had eaten these at his desk while he was going over the books. Then, from roughly two o’clock to four o’clock, he had discussed the books with the church’s business manager, a local accountant who was a member of the congregation and volunteered his services “for the benefit of his salvation.” After Mr. Perkins left, Gabe had stayed on at his desk for another hour or so, then he had gone home, to find his household in an uproar, his wife weeping, his five children screaming, and a policeman in his hallway. His mother had called a few minutes before to break the news.
“How come she didn’t get in touch with you, here at the church?”
“Maybe she tried. The switchboard here was closed down. I let Mrs. Connelly off early yesterday. At four, when Perkins the accountant left.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“She had to work late a couple days this week, so I figured to make it up to her.”
“Wouldn’t incoming calls go directly to your office phone?”
“Only if I connected it up. I didn’t, on account of I wanted to get my desk work done without being disturbed.”
“You say you spent the afternoon going over the church’s finances? So how are they?”
His eyes shifted a little for a moment. “That’s not the kind of thing I really have a head for. But Perkins says we’re keeping our heads above water. What Daddy always said was, ‘Religion is no profit-making business, and it was never meant to be, and thank the Lord for it. But as long as we’ve got a God-fearing flock that feels close to Jesus Christ when the collection plate goes ’round—’”
“My boss might want to send somebody down to look at your books in the next day or two.”
“You have to do that, I suppose. All right, all right. Give us a few hours’ notice, I’ll have Perkins open everything up for you.”
“Now you were saying you stayed on in your office yesterday afternoon, after your accountant left at four o’clock. For about an hour, was it?”
“It must’ve been closer to an hour and a half. It was quarter of six when I got back to my house, and that’s a ten minute drive from here, even if the traffic’s light.”
“Say you were here for an hour and a half then. You weren’t all alone in the building, were you? There must be a janitor or a cleaning woman.”
“The night janitor doesn’t come on ’til seven. And we haven’t got a full-time day janitor, or cleaning women either. We can’t afford them, we use volunteers from the congregation.”
“The collections won’t stretch to a daytime janitor?”
“Daddy would never allow it. He didn’t like the idea of siphoning money off from something more important. One of our good works maybe, or our annual contribution to the Central Baptist Missionary Society.”
“You’re affiliated with the Baptist Church? You don’t say anything about it on any of your posters or ads.”
“We contribute to the Baptist Missionaries. We’ll contribute to any cause that does the work of the Lord. But we don’t care to be affiliated with anybody. What Daddy always said was, ‘We meet Jesus face to face, we don’t need any bureaucracy to stand between us.’”
“Your father wrote a sermon yesterday afternoon, while he was alone in his house. I understand you’ve got that sermon.”
“Do I?” He blinked a little. “Yes, I guess I do. Right here in my briefcase.” His eyes narrowed. “How do you know I’ve got it? Have you been talking to—” He broke off with another sigh, the thread of indignation just wasn’t worth pursuing. He reached down to the floor for his briefcase, an old brown one with the leather fairly battered, and pulled a few sheets of yellow lined paper out of it. “You can look it over, but don’t ask me to give it to you. I’m delivering this sermon at the memorial service Sunday morning.”
“Isn’t it unusual to hold a funeral on Christmas day?”
“It won’t be a funeral. Actually the funeral won’t be ’til Monday. It’s a memorial service we’ll be holding on Sunday. Daddy always said he wanted it that way. Whatever day he died, he said, he wanted a memorial service on Sunday, because that’s the day Christ rejoined His Father in Heaven. Of course it’s even better the way it’s actually worked out. Daddy died on Thursday, and Christ was born on this coming Sunday. Four days. It’s the exact same time as there was between the crucifixion and the resurrection. I’m going to mention that coincidence in my remarks at the service.”
“You’re going to deliver a sermon too, along with your father’s?”
“The dead will speak, and then the living will speak. It shows the continuity. Christ died but His mission to humanity lives on forever.” His eyes lowered, and he was holding on tight to the edge of the desk. “Daddy never let me—I never gave any of the sermons while Daddy was alive. But if I’m going to continue his work, I have to start showing right away—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. The knuckles had turned white on the hand that was gripping his desk.
Was “continu
ity” the key word, I wondered. Would Gabe Candy have committed a murder so he could inherit the church?
“You will be taking over for your father then?” I asked. “You’ll become the chief minister of the church?”
“The Board of Vestrymen had a quick emergency meeting first thing this morning, and they offered me the appointment. They’ll announce it officially this afternoon, we already sent a notice to the TV news.”
“You accepted the appointment, did you?”
“I was proud to accept.” Another dignified lift of the chin, but the look on his face made me turn my eyes away; I had never seen such a look of misery on anybody’s face before.
“That’s what I’m doing here in Daddy’s office,” he said, obviously pushing himself hard to go on talking. “I’m looking over his papers, seeing if there’s any business that can’t wait. Letters he was getting off that he never finished, for instance.”
“Was there any business that can’t wait?”
“I didn’t find any yet. There’s a lot to do though, Daddy wasn’t a very methodical type of man. He didn’t go in for paperwork. Or for reading, as a matter of fact, or for thinking about theological points, and all. He was a people kind of minister. That’s the big difference between him and me. I always loved the reading, I thought awhile about going off some day and joining a monastery—there are monasteries that aren’t Roman Catholic, maybe you didn’t know that. But I was a dumb kid then, and Daddy made me see what a crazy idea that was, how I’d be giving up on my duty to the Lord and His children—”
Gabe broke off, and for a moment a tear appeared in his right eye. It never had a chance to run down his face though. It bulged out, but then it receded again, sucked back in by his eyelid.
I ducked my head and got busy reading the sermon.
The handwriting, as Mrs. Candy had warned me, was pretty hard to decipher. And half the time what was scrawled there weren’t complete sentences, just fragments, reminders for lines that no doubt he intended to flesh out from the pulpit.
It would’ve been a highly emotional sermon, that much I could tell. It began with long passages from the story of the prodigal son in the Gospels, and reached its climax with this thundering sentence: “Pray then, my dear fellow warshipers, for the Prodigle Son, who traveled the path of Sin, sedused by the Scarlett Woman. But now, with great travail and suffering, he frees himself from the Scarlett Womans Evil Influense and returns, a broken and humilyated man, to the fold of the Rightious.”
Well, if you’ve got an inside track to God’s ear, what do you need with correct spelling?
“He was a powerful speaker,” Gabe Candy said, as I looked up. “He would’ve done a terrific job with that one.”
“It isn’t much like his usual sermon, is it? I get the impression he was usually more positive. Lots of joy and comfort, and if you believe in Jesus your ills will be cured and you’ll achieve success.”
“That’s so, I guess. But the fact is, Daddy couldn’t ever be sure how his sermon was going to turn out. The Lord gave him the words, and he just wrote them down.”
Suddenly he smiled. It was a faint smile, a little sad too, but it was the first less than wretched expression I had seen on his face since coming into the room. “I’m glad we had this talk. I was a little sharp with you when I ran into you in my house yesterday, and I want to say I’m sorry for that. At a time like this, a man’s under a strain. I guess you can appreciate that.”
I told him I could. And the thought came into my mind that Gabe Candy was frightened and bewildered, and worst of all alone and lonely, and he badly needed a friendly word.
The only words I had to give him were “Goodbye, and thanks,” but I put as much friendliness into them as I could.
* * *
It was a little before noon when I got to Pasquale’s at the mall. Connelly wouldn’t get off work till noon, so I had about fifteen minutes before she’d arrive. I used it to commandeer a table for myself—pretty soon this little place would be full of lunchtime customers—and then to order a glass of wine.
Connelly got to the restaurant a few minutes later. She was wearing a dark blue coat which was probably meant to be indicative of mourning; it looked a little threadbare. In spite of the tragic occasion, though, she had put on some lipstick and powder—which she was evidently forbidden to wear inside the church—and they made her look younger and a lot more attractive. I was also surprised by her hefty bust and her long classic legs: those assets hadn’t been visible from the other side of her reception room desk.
I got up and held her coat for her as she took it off.
“Thanks, that’s nice,” she said, slinging it across the back of her chair. “People don’t do that for you like they used to do. I’m in favor of Women’s Lib, but I’m getting tired of these guys that race you to see who gets through the door first.”
She sat down and looked around. She was obviously pleased by what she saw, but her strategy was to be blasé about it. “Nice place. I don’t recall I was ever here before. The Reverend Chuck used to have lunch here every day. When he got back to the church, you could smell the garlic on his breath—”
She cut herself off. Her lips began to tremble a little. “Listen—do you think I could order something to drink? Something a little strong? I won’t pick the most expensive—”
“You order whatever you want.” I signaled for the waitress, and pretty soon Connelly was sipping a margarita, which is the only cocktail ever invented that you have to put salt on. I had a second glass of wine.
“Well, I guess you don’t want me drinking like this,” Connelly said, “unless I tell you what I know about the Reverend Chuck getting killed.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“Best of all would be if I knew something that could do the Meyer kid some good? That right?”
Just then the waitress came, and gave us the menus. Connelly began timidly, asking if this or that was too steep for me, but I encouraged her and she ended up ordering the works—minestrone soup, antipasto tray, spaghetti and meatballs, and a side order of garlic bread. Her figure suggested to me that she didn’t eat like this ordinarily, when she was paying for it herself.
“Working for a church doesn’t exactly make you rich, does it?” I asked.
“That’s a fact. But I’m not complaining, it’s a good place to work, nice people. They believe in God, and that means they mostly don’t shout at you and curse at you, and the men mostly keep their hands off you. Some of the places I’ve worked! I could tell you stories, you better believe it!” Her smile faded a bit. “But they don’t pay you too good in a church, I won’t kid you about that. They don’t have any money, that’s because they’re non-profit and tax-free. Some weeks it’s just a goddamned drag to— Oh, sorry about that. There I go again, taking His name in vain. The Reverend Chuck told me what a lousy habit that was, and mostly I try and be careful. Only sometimes you just have to—well, the way the grocery prices are going up these days—”
“Isn’t it easier with two salaries coming in?”
“What two salaries?”
“Yours and your husband’s.”
“Who’s got a husband?”
“The sign on your desk says Mrs.”
“Plenty of Mrs. nowadays don’t have any husbands. Connelly walked out on me five years ago. I got a divorce, and he’s supposed to send me the alimony every month. Do you think I ever saw any of it? Meanwhile, that new wife of his, that hooker that got him drunk and married him, is walking around in a fur coat and driving a Japanese four-door. A friend of mine saw her on the street only last month.”
“Why don’t you go to the cops? The judge could order him—”
“What does he care about any judge? They’re living down in Texas, him and this hooker. Nobody ever got a dime out of an ex who’s in Texas. They don’t have any courts down there, I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”
“You’re still using your ex-husband’s name though.”
The waiter showed up with our lunches. My own was a salad—I prefer to use up my calorie quota at Mom’s dinner table—but Connelly lit into hers as if food were going out of style.
A little later, with her mouth full of antipasto, she said, “There’s no way you can send any of this back, is there? Okay, I’m going to level with you. I don’t know a goddamn—darn thing about this killing. I can’t help your client at all.”
“Maybe you can without knowing it. Tell me about the late Reverend Candy. What was your job for him exactly?”
“Mostly answering the phone in the reception hall and doing the church typing and taking dictation for his letters. I did that an hour every day, in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Who looked after the reception desk during that hour?”
“One of the volunteers mostly. There’s always a bunch of them around. Widows or maiden ladies who don’t have any husbands or boyfriends to go home to.”
“What sort of letters did the Reverend Chuck dictate?”
“Most of them were to people in the congregation. The people who were too shy to see him in person, they wrote him and asked him questions—how they could be at peace with God, how they could pay off the mortgage, that sort of question.”
“And he was able to answer them?”
“He’d pretty much say the same thing to all of them. If they’d make their peace with God, the mortgage would get itself paid off. Material things weren’t important.”
“And in order to make their peace with God, what did he advise them to do?”
“They had to pray harder and believe better. That’s what Jesus wants us to do. That’s how we get to be saved.”