“Oh,” Katie replied in disappointment.
At the sound of middle C being played upon the massive Skinner organ, the funeral mass commenced. The mourners rose while, to the strains of Verdi’s Requiem, the pine coffin that carried the body of Robert Finch was wheeled down the center aisle of the church.
Riordan leaned closer to Katie. “Notice how most of the people here are women?” he whispered. “Probably friends of Mrs. Finch, wouldn’t you say?”
Katie recalled Simonetti’s description of Finch and his many affairs. “Most of them, probably, but some might be—” Once again, she caught herself on the verge of telling Riordan more than she had intended.
Luckily, her sudden silence coincided with the appearance of the priest, who immediately launched into the greeting, followed by a prayer, and then the Kyrie Eleison. As the congregation replied to the cleric’s chants with the response of “Lord, have mercy,” the main doors of the church opened, piercing the dark Gothic interior with a long shaft of bright light.
Beneath the worshippers’ curious stares, the figure in the doorway hastily closed the heavy wooden doors and slid from the center aisle into Katie’s pew. Approximately thirty-five years of age, with fair skin and long black hair that had been tucked into a fine mesh snood, she was more exotic than good looking and her gray suit, although well-fitted, showed signs of pilling at the elbows.
With a final, “Lord, have mercy,” the priest signaled the mourners to be seated before he delivered the eulogy. Katie had never before attended a funeral where the deceased’s final tribute was spoken by someone who wasn’t a close friend or family member, but given Finch’s reputation, finding an individual to issue a few kind words would probably have proven difficult. After all, the man was murdered for a reason.
“Today we celebrate the life of Robert Andrew Finch,” the Father announced before expounding upon the details of the man’s birth, childhood, and start, as a teen, in the shipbuilding industry. When he went on to describe Finch’s role as a “caring, devoted husband and loving father,” one could hear the clearing of throats and the awkward shuffling of feet against the gray stone floors.
More dramatic, however, was the reaction of the mysterious woman seated on the other side of Katie. At the mention of Finch’s wife and son, she rose to her feet and opened her mouth as if to speak. But before she could utter a sound, Charlie, in his carriage, let out a loud gurgle, followed by a happy coo.
The dark-haired woman was instantly transfixed by the infant. She watched as Katie lifted the baby from the carriage and cradled him in her arms, the expression on her face shifting from anger to surprise, and then, finally, grief. As quickly as she had risen from her seat, the woman took off down the church aisle and out the arched church doors.
A dumbfounded Katie flashed a quizzical glance at Riordan. Surely someone should follow the woman. Yet there the lieutenant sat, his only reaction a vague shrug.
Leaving Riordan to watch the carriage—the only task for which he seemed prepared—Katie slid out of the pew and, balancing Charlie in her left arm, pushed through the Gothic church doors with her right. Outside, she spotted the mysterious woman with her back leaned against the church and her face in her hands.
At the sound of Katie’s footsteps on the pavement, she looked up and walked hastily down Montague Street, her scuffed black pumps clicking against the cement sidewalk that ran alongside the church.
With Charlie in tow, Katie took off in pursuit and called after her. In keeping with her gentle, somewhat retiring nature, Katie’s voice was soft and quiet. “Hey,” she said in a near-shout, to no effect. She had to talk to her. She had to find out who she was and why she was at the funeral. Rosie’s life depended upon it.
With a renewed sense of urgency, Katie drew a deep breath and released the air over her vocal cords with all the force she could muster. “Hey!”
The sound surprised Charlie, prompting him to cry, but it had also stopped the mysterious woman in her tracks. She turned on one heel and faced Katie.
“I just wanted to give you a handkerchief and see if you were all right.” Katie extracted a lace-trimmed hankie from the pocket of her cardigan sweater and dangled it from her extended arm.
The woman drew closer and accepted the square piece of fabric. “Thank you. I ... I’m sorry you had to shout like you did. I’m sorry you had to make him cry.”
Katie smoothed her son’s fine, silky hair over his forehead and rocked him back and forth. Within a matter of seconds, the child quieted down. “He was just frightened. See? He’s already better. You, on the other hand ...”
“I’m okay.”
“Really? You didn’t strike me as okay.”
“I just ...” Her voice trailed off as her eyes slid toward Charlie. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you. I don’t know you.”
“Who better to talk to than a stranger?” Katie reasoned. “At least you know I won’t be biased. Besides, I know how emotional funerals can be. You see, my husband passed away recently.”
The bid to earn the woman’s sympathy worked. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry. And now here you are at another funeral.”
“Oh, I only came to be neighborly. We’re staying with my aunt and, since she can’t get around anymore, I thought I should pay my respects on her behalf. I don’t know the Finches and, from what I’ve heard about him, it’s probably just as well.”
“Hmph,” the woman snorted. “Got that right.”
“You knew him?”
“I, um ... yeah, but ...”
“You can tell me. I swear I won’t say a word to anyone. Heck, I don’t think I’ll even be in the neighborhood long enough to tell anyone. My sister and I are looking to share a place in Greenpoint.”
This part of Katie’s story, at least, was true.
The woman looked longingly at the baby. “Greenpoint is a lovely neighborhood. That will be good for him. Say, what’s his name?”
“Charlie.”
“Charlie.” She smiled. “The fresh air in Greenpoint should be good for Charlie. He’ll have more room to run around, too. Boys need lots of space to play.”
“I’m sure. He’s already pretty active. I can’t imagine what he’ll be like when he starts crawling and then walking. Tell me, um ...”
“Lois.”
“I’m Katie. Tell me, Lois, do you have children?”
“No.” The woman frowned. “I’ve never even been married. And now I ... well ... I can no longer have children.”
Katie felt awful for asking. “Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I mean, I wouldn’t have pried, only you didn’t seem that old.”
“I’m not. Age had nothing to do with it. It was all stupidity.”
Katie’s face looked a question.
“Well, since I’ve gone this far, I guess I might as well tell you. Bob Finch and I were friends. Close friends.”
Katie’s eyes grew wide. “You mean—?
“Yeah. I’m not proud of it. But you gotta understand that Bob could be a real charmer when he wanted to be.”
Be it her naïveté, her unflinching devotion to her late husband, or the fact that her brother-in-law had run around on her sister, Katie could not fathom how some people could even think of cheating on a spouse. However, this was not the time for moral judgments. “When did you meet him?”
“About a year ago. I was moving into the building two doors down from Bob’s when he spotted me. He said hello and helped me carry my things upstairs. Once I was settled in, he invited me to have dinner with him and his wife.”
“He did? You didn’t go, did you?”
“Of course I did. It was the first day in the neighborhood. There was nothing going on then. I had only just met him and he seemed like a ... gentleman. And Marie was sweet, too. Over the next couple of months, I’d go over there and ask for Bob’s help with some things around the apartment. My landlord is okay, but he’s slow to make repairs. Bob was always at the ready with his toolbox. It was nice. An
d nice is tough to come by these days.”
“Oh! So you and Bob—er, Mr. Finch—really were just close friends.”
“Oh, honey, you’re sweet, but you really need to get out more!”Lois laughed. “No, no, no. What happened is this: the first few times that I stopped by to ask if Bob could fix my sink, or help me set a mousetrap, Marie was happy to see me. But after a little while, she was ... well ... displeased. Looking back, it was probably because she knew what her husband was up to. But Bob told me she was sick. That she’d fly into fits of rage and then get so melancholy she’d spend days inside, all the lights off, just crying.”
Lois drew a heavy sigh and then continued the story. “I just felt so bad for them. Bob especially. He seemed so lonely, like he had no one in the world to talk to. So I started to ask him over to fix things, only nothing needed fixing. Instead, we’d talk over coffee, or I’d make him lunch. During one of our meetings, we kissed. Well, one thing led to another and ... well, you know. After about a month or so of us getting together, Marie started to balk about Bob coming over. I’m not sure whether she was jealous or whether she had gotten wise to what was going on, but we decided to meet in secret.”
“How could it be secret if Mrs. Finch already knew you were ... lovers?” The word made Katie blush.
“Bob promised Marie that he wouldn’t see or talk to me. But meanwhile, he gradually began leaving earlier for work each morning. Bob always ate breakfast at a coffee shop near the yard, so Marie slept in. She was none the wiser.”
“And he went to see you?”
“Yes, we’d have about an hour or so together before he left for work.”
“He saw you every day?”
“Well, every day the yard was open. Five days a week at first, but since the war started, six days. Not that we ... um, all the time. Sometimes I’d just make breakfast or coffee. Other times we would ... well, you know.”
Katie’s eyes narrowed.
“Like I said, I’m not proud of what I did, but I was lonely and thought he was lonely, too... .”
“But he wasn’t?”
“I don’t think Robert Finch was capable of feeling anything as deep as loneliness. He had one thing on his mind and one thing only.”
“Why do you say that? What did he do?”
“He gave me the clap,” Lois whispered.
“The ... the what?”
“The clap. Gonorrhea. It’s a social disease. I ... I didn’t even know I had it until I got pains in my stomach,” she stated as tears ran slowly down her face. “When I went to the doctor, he sent me to the hospital right away, but it was too late. I needed an emergency hysterectomy.”
Katie rested a consoling hand on Lois’s shoulder.
“I know what you’re thinking. ‘She got what she deserved, the hussy. Sneaking around with someone else’s husband.’”
“No! Not at all. I can’t imagine being told that you’ll never—”
“It’s more than that. Bob was the only man I ever felt that way about... . I trusted him. I loved him. I thought he felt the same way. But all the time, there were other women. He was just using me and I was too blind to see it.”
“Love can be blind,” Katie said gently.
“Yeah. I’ll say,” Lois said in disgust. “Do you know? The whole time I was in the hospital, Bob never once bothered to check on me. When I got out, he didn’t even stop by to see if I needed anything.”
“So he had no idea what had happened?”
“Oh, I finally told him. I waited outside his building one morning just so I could see him.”
“And?”
“He thanked me for telling him and said he’d make a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible. No ‘I’m sorry.’ No ‘how are you?’ No sense of remorse. Nothing. I thought he might at least be sympathetic, but he was just worried about getting to the doctor. Worried about himself. My God, what an idiot I was!”
Katie was reminded of her conversation with Rosie, just three days earlier. “You’re not an idiot because you loved someone, Lois. You just chose the wrong someone to love.”
“Yeah, but now my life is ruined,” Lois sobbed. “By him. I hope he rots in hell!”
“If that’s the case, what were you doing here today? Why would you even consider paying him your respects?”
“Respects? Who said I was paying my respects? I came here to let everyone know what a weasel he was! And I was about to when ... when—”
“When Charlie caught your attention,” Katie recounted.
“Yes. And everything came flooding back again ... how I can never have that. How Bob took that possibility away from me.”
The church bells rang out. Slowly. Somberly. As if in mourning, not for Robert Finch, but for the lives that had been indelibly altered by his existence.
Realizing that Finch’s widow would soon be on her way to the cemetery, Katie, eyes cast downward, spun around, only to witness her petite five-foot-one-inch shadow being slowly engulfed by that of Lieutenant Riordan.
She looked upward. His right hand, which had clutched his gray fedora inside the church, now had a firm grip on the handle of the baby carriage. “Charlie’s chariot,” he announced. “I thought you might be needing it.”
Nonplussed, Katie placed her son into the carriage and, with a murmured thank-you to the lieutenant and Lois, barreled toward the front of the church. She arrived just in time to see Marie Finch exit through the heavy wooden doors.
“Mrs. Finch,” she cried, as she abruptly blocked the woman’s path with the carriage.
The sudden appearance of the obstacle caused Marie to stop short and teeter a few moments, hands high in the air, before regaining her balance. Those few moments of lost footing, however, were enough to cause the woman to drop her handbag.
“Oh, Mrs. Finch, I’m so sorry,” Katie apologized as she scrambled to collect the purse and its contents from the church pavement.
Lipstick ... compact ... change purse ...
“I’m new to the neighborhood and wanted to give my condolences... .”
Emery board ... apartment key ...
“I lost my husband not very long ago... .”
Katie spotted Marie Finch’s comb, as well as the white object passed to her by Simonetti just two feet to her right.
“Oh?” Marie responded. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Umm ... oh ... I ... I can get those things. You don’t have to do it.”
Katie lunged for the items and managed to secure the comb, but a brown shoe, belonging to a man in a dark brown suit, kicked the white object another six inches north.
“Oh no,” Katie replied, “I insist.” She leaped forward and collected the item in question and pretended to place it, along with the comb, inside the handbag.
Standing upright, she fastened the clasp of the handbag and presented it to Mrs. Finch. “As I was saying, I know what it’s like to suffer the loss of a husband, so if you need anything, anything at all ...”
“Well, thank you, umm ...”
“Katherine,” she inserted.
“Katherine. That’s most kind, but ...”
The firm hand of the funeral director escorted Mrs. Finch toward the open door of a black car. “Ma’am, we need to be on our way.”
A perplexed Marie Finch stepped into the backseat of the car, all the while her gaze fixed on Katie, who, clutching the mysterious object in a white-gloved hand, rocked Charlie’s carriage and attempted to mold her facial expression into an expression of sympathy until the funeral procession began.
Once the limousine had pulled a safe distance away from the curb, Katie opened her gloved hand to reveal the folded object, approximately two inches by two inches square, that she had, by recalling the magic tricks of her father, successfully palmed.
But before she could revel in her victory, a set of masculine fingers snatched it from her palm.
“Hey! That was mine,” Katie complained.
“No, I believe it actually belongs to Marie Finch,” Riordan c
orrected.
“But I—”
“Lifted it from her handbag? I know. I watched you. Nice work. If Charlie here grows up to have one half of his mother’s sleuthing skills, I look forward to having him on the force.”
“My father had many talents: magician, amateur boxer—”
“Detective?”
“No. Now, will you please give that back? I’m the one who got it.”
“You did, but sorry, no. Can’t. Police evidence. But you know what, I’ll open it up and we can read it together. How’s that sound?”
“I guess so.”
Riordan carefully unfolded the sheet of paper and Katie peered eagerly around his arm:
“‘S’? Who’s ‘S’?” Riordan asked.
Katie shrugged innocently.
“Come on, now. Don’t be that way.”
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“Because if you don’t, I can have you arrested for obstructing justice.”
“You wouldn’t!”
It was Riordan’s turn to shrug.
“Okay ... It’s Simonetti, the butcher.”
“He signs a love letter using his last initial?”
“Maybe that’s his first initial, too. His first name could be Steven ... Sean ... Sergio ... Simon ...”
“Simon Simonetti?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’m guessing. I’m lucky I got as far as I did.”
“But you’re positive this is from the butcher?”
Katie closed her eyes and crossed her heart. “One hundred percent. I saw him pass her the note when he paid his respects. Vincent is his son. I met him yesterday.”
Riordan raised an eyebrow.
“Umm ... I came down to check on Rosie and thought I’d do my shopping at the same time.”
“Uh-huh. And what about your friend?”
“My friend?”
“The one you followed out of the church. The one you were talking to just a few minutes ago.”
“If you’re so curious, why didn’t you follow her?”
“Because, given how she stared at your son, I thought you’d probably get farther than I would. Not to mention that she was already spooked by something. Having a cop on her tail would only have made her run faster.”
Don't Die Under the Apple Tree Page 10
