Ash Wednesday

by Ralph McInerny

  “Whatever I know I learned from Tetzel.”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  “Any other message for him?”

  Tetzel had confided in him Menteur’s insistence that his reporter write a piece blasting the hypocrisy of the city council for exempting the courthouse from the smoke-free ordinance.

  “What’ll you do?”

  Tetzel had looked sly. “I’m interviewing the man in the street. One gripe after another about the ordinance. We should have done this when it was before the council. It’s the beginning of my campaign to have it repealed, Tuttle. That ought to please Menteur.”

  He found Tetzel in a booth in the bar across the street, a scotch and water before him, a pleased smile on his face. Tuttle slid in across from him, having placed an order for a shandy when he passed the bar. Passed the bar. Unpleasant memories of the number of attempts it had taken him to be admitted to the local bar came and went.

  “Rebecca says you’re a son of a bitch.”

  “I didn’t know you were taking maternity cases, Tuttle.”

  Tuttle squinted. “There is a resemblance.”

  Tetzel dismissed this. His pleased expression had not gone away. “My story on Jason Burke is featured on the paper’s Web site.”

  Tuttle’s shandy arrived, and he toasted Tetzel. “Let me be the first to congratulate you.”

  “What do you mean, first? Menteur actually gushed about the story.”

  “I suppose you’ve heard about Maxwell?”

  Tetzel’s smile faded, but there was wariness in his eye. “The coffee?”

  “Are they still in business?”

  “Who the hell is Maxwell, Tuttle?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  He hunched over the table, and Tetzel followed suit. Tuttle pushed his tweed hat to the back of his head, then took it off and put it on the seat beside him.

  Tetzel didn’t know who Eugene Schmidt was until Tuttle reminded him of the accident that had killed Helen Burke. “Schmidt was driving the shuttle bus.”

  Tetzel remembered.

  “Okay. I don’t have to tell you who Natalie Armstrong is. She’s going to marry Eugene Schmidt.”

  Tetzel sat back in disgust. “I don’t do the society page, Tuttle.”

  Tuttle waited. Tetzel was no idiot, no matter what people said. Thoughts came and went. He sipped his drink. Finally he said, “It’s like a series, Tuttle. All involving the same family, more or less. First the return of Nathaniel Green and his new will. Then Jason Burke, son and heir who is determined to go on with his shoe store. And now …”

  “Now one of Helen Burke’s heirs is about to marry a man that Maxwell has been hired to check out. Cy Horvath is on it, too.”

  “What do we know of the man, Tuttle?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to do your work for you. I suppose you’ll talk to Maxwell.”

  Tetzel offered another shandy to Tuttle, but the little lawyer held up a staying hand. “I have miles to go before I sleep, Gerry.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Warn Natalie about the mysterious Eugene Schmidt? Madeline had begun to shake her head even while Amos Cadbury was formulating the question.

  “Madeline, the man’s life can be traced back less than a year, to Detroit. Before that is a total blank.”

  “Have you been investigating him?”

  “Not personally, of course. Madeline, would I be a worthy lawyer to the family if I just shut my eyes to this development?”

  Madeline thought about Eugene Schmidt, the heartthrob of the widows at the senior center until his interest had focused on Natalie. Such a harmless little fellow, with his twinkling eyes and neat little mustache. He looked like fun, and Madeline felt she understood why Natalie had responded to him. Was he as old as Natalie? Not that a little age difference made a particle of difference at their time of life. Working at the center had restored Madeline’s sense that she was still young, that life lay ahead of her, not just behind. She imagined that Natalie and Eugene would live together as she had once dreamt she and Jason might.

  “We don’t need another sensational story about the family, Amos.”

  He closed his eyes as if in pain. Tetzel’s story about Jason and the Foot Doctor had made Jason seem a minor hero. Come into piles of money, he intended to just go on as he had before. Winners of the lottery often made similar claims. What Madeline had feared was that Jason’s turn of fortune would reawaken his vices, but he seemed genuinely through with drink and gambling.

  Amos said, “Thank God the story didn’t mention Carmela’s control of his money. Think of what the reporter would have made of that.”

  Madeline said nothing. When at the reading of Helen’s will Amos mentioned this proviso, adding that he and Jason had already discussed it, Madeline had assumed that Amos was taking Jason under his wing. But Carmela! Jason’s estranged wife had established herself in Schaumburg; she was by all accounts successful, which no doubt was the reason she had been chosen as custodian of Jason’s money. Madeline couldn’t believe that Carmela would accept such a role. All her experience with Jason had been unhappy; why should she think he would be different now?

  Madeline knew immediately that this arrangement would bring Jason and Carmela together again. She wouldn’t be surprised if that had been Amos Cadbury’s intention. No one could ever convince Madeline that Aunt Helen would have wanted such a reunion. Now Carmela had moved the Avanti Group to Fox River.

  “Is it still a group?” Madeline asked.

  “One of the partners is moving with her. A man she calls Augie Liberati.”

  “Calls?”

  “I assume Augie is short for August. Maybe even Augustine.”

  * * *

  It was short for August. He was there when Madeline stopped by the new offices of the Avanti Group.

  “How would you like to have been named after a month?” he asked her.

  “I was named after a repentant sinner.”

  “Mary Magdalene?” Carmela said. “I never thought of that. It seems so inappropriate.”

  Why should she have been annoyed at the suggestion that she was not a repentant sinner? Oh, everyone was some kind of sinner, of course; Madeline made no great claims for herself. She had led an uneventful life. Temptation had never come her way.

  Augie said, “Look who’s talking. You were named after a candy.”

  “I was not. The allusion is to Our Lady of Mount Carmel.”

  “That’s a high school football team.”

  Other women seemed so at ease with men, joking with them, able not to take them seriously, an easy and comfortable equality. Madeline envied her old friend’s ability to banter with her partner. Not that she wasn’t all seriousness when Madeline explained why she had come. They were in Carmela’s office then.

  “Madeline, I am flattered.” She paused. “I do have some misgivings, however. As you know, I now have responsibility for Jason’s assets. Which are considerable. And I manage a little account for Natalie.”

  “Really?”

  “If you didn’t know, consider it a confidence. You can see what I am getting at. I would feel uncomfortable with even more family money in my hands.”

  Madeline was disappointed and must have shown it.

  “Not that I would want your money to get away from the group.” Carmela smiled.

  She meant Augie. That did seem a solution. Madeline felt less rejected. Carmela called Augie in. He listened, all seriousness now. He nodded his head. In a minute, Madeline was in his office, trying to explain that she hadn’t the least idea how to handle the money that was suddenly hers.

  “That’s what we’re here for, Madeline. You want it in professional hands.”

  “It was Amos Cadbury’s suggestion.” Hadn’t he more or less intimated such a thing? In any case, it seemed a pardonable stretch of the truth. Amos had cautioned her to proceed carefully in selecting someone to manage her money.

  “It’s a considerable sum, as yo
u know, Madeline,” the old lawyer had purred.

  “That is a considerable sum,” Augie said as she sat in his office. “What we need is a plan. I will work it out and submit it for your approval.”

  “I suppose it was silly asking Carmela to do this.”

  “This is the best solution. But we have no secrets in the Avanti Group. Carmela and I pool our expertise.”

  Of course, there would be a fee for all this, but Augie smiled when he said it. “That will be absorbed in the money you will be earning. Your principal can only grow.”

  “Wise move,” Jason said when she went by the Foot Doctor to tell him what she had done. “The thing about money is to be able to forget it.”

  It seemed to be his way of indicating his acceptance of Carmela’s role in managing his assets. She couldn’t resist trying to find out what else the arrangement meant.

  “And now Carmela has come back.”

  “Well, her business has. She still has her condo in Schaumburg.”

  “Jason, you should get out of that dreadful place in which you’re living.”

  “So we can set up housekeeping again?”

  Her breath caught until she realized he meant Carmela. “Will you?”

  He tipped back in his Barcalounger. “In good time, perhaps. We’re both out of practice.” He righted his chair. “Say, do you remember that pizza man who was found in the river?”

  Madeline needed a reminder of John Thomas.

  “He was on his way to make a delivery here. Eric ordered it. The poor widow is destitute. I decided to do something about that. Carmela approved, of course. I have settled a little annuity on Mrs. Thomas.”

  “Oh, Jason! What a wonderful thing to do.”

  “Carmela’s partner wasn’t wild about the idea.”

  “Augie?”

  “Yes.” Jason’s eyes went away from Madeline as he said it. Which is when Madeline had a dreadful thought, only it wasn’t really so dreadful when she thought about it.

  She and Jason went to the Great Wall for dinner. When he asked for hot tea, she could have kissed him. This was indeed a new Jason. Would he really care if Carmela did not come back to him as everyone seemed to assume he would?

  The fact that Carmela had kept her condo in Schaumburg and there were no immediate plans for a reunion with Jason filled Madeline with a hope she would not have wanted to analyze. She remembered the bantering couple at the Avanti Group. She could imagine that Carmela in her loneliness had found her partner attractive. Augie’s reaction when she had told him she was unmarried came back to her.

  “You may find it difficult to keep it that way now.”

  “Is that an offer?” She couldn’t believe she had said that.

  “Well, I am eligible.”

  That was that. Madeline wondered if she was getting the hang of banter between the genders.

  Augie was unmarried. Carmela had known him during her years of loneliness. Was it unthinkable that theirs had been more than a business arrangement? And wasn’t it odd that he had agreed to move to Fox River with Carmela?

  Then Jason told her that a man named Maxwell had come to him to talk about Eugene Schmidt. “What in God’s name would I know about him?”

  “He is going to marry Natalie, Jason.”

  Clearly this was the first Jason had heard of it. He seemed to be searching for a way to react to this. Finally he just shook his head.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t go after you, Madeline.”

  Madeline, Natalie, and Nathaniel had asked Father Dowling to say a special Mass for the repose of the soul of Helen Burke. Jason was there as well, but not Carmela. Amos Cadbury, kneeling erect, in black as usual, was in a pew just behind the family. The Mass took place on the Thursday of the fourth week of Lent, and when Marie Murkin hurried over from the rectory, she found the church much fuller than usual. A tribute to Helen? Perhaps. As likely as not, just being nice to all these well-to-do people among them.

  Shame on me, Marie said to herself, trying to mean it.

  Father Dowling came out of the sacristy then; members of the congregation got to their feet, some with relative ease, others by grabbing the back of the pew ahead and pulling themselves upright, others with the aid of canes. It did Marie’s heart good to feel spry and comparatively young among these regulars at the senior center.

  People grow old in different ways, Marie knew that. It’s all a matter of genes. Why else did doctors always ask how old your mother and father were when they died? So let people jog themselves into cadavers, pursue one crazy diet after another, quit smoking. Did that add one cubit to their stature?

  “How biblical you’ve become, Marie,” Father Dowling had said when Marie developed this thought for him.

  Was that why the phrase had come so easily? Catholics get the Bible in the readings at Mass, selections, bits and pieces, and it just sticks to the mind like phrases from the liturgy. Priests are different, of course. Father Dowling was going through the Bible for the second time since Marie had known him. She had opened it once and been surprised.

  “Latin?”

  “The Vulgate.”

  “It’s been translated, you know.”

  “So has Dante.”

  That seemed to be an answer. The pastor seldom went on about anything he didn’t want to talk about. Not that he wasn’t communicative. Marie was certain that she knew more about parish affairs now than she ever had under the friars. Her great regret was his unwillingness to seek her advice in matters on which, let’s be frank, she knew a lot more than he did.

  So they’d had a pretty good talk about Nathaniel Green when all that came up, but where would they be if Marie had not taken action in Helen Burke’s campaign against her brother-in-law? And now Helen’s will and the way it had changed the lives of so many people. Marie was mystified by the way Father Dowling wasted hours with Eugene Schmidt.

  Oh, he was a charmer, no doubt about that. He had tried to sweet-talk Marie a time or two, but she had all the experience she needed of that type. The Don Juan of the senior center. Breaking hearts right and left and then coming to the rectory saying he wanted to take instructions.

  Ha. What he wanted was to marry Natalie Armstrong, and if the only way he could do that was by becoming a Hindu, he would. Marie had happened to overhear some of those exchanges. What is worse than an amateur theologian? Of course, Father Dowling would go that extra mile in the line of duty. And he should, Marie conceded. She herself would have bounced Schmidt out the back door on his second visit.

  “It’s Natalie Armstrong, you know.”

  Father Dowling looked at her.

  “He’s interested in her.”

  “Is there some impediment, Marie?” His eyebrows rose, and she got out of there.

  But after Natalie and Eugene came to say they wanted to get married, Marie sensed that curiosity about the little fellow had begun. Father Dowling had meetings with Amos Cadbury, and then that man Maxwell had come around asking questions about Eugene Schmidt. Even then, Father Dowling wouldn’t open up. So Marie had gone to talk to Edna Hospers.

  Such visits were always a matter of high diplomacy, only possible if they were conducted as between sovereign nations. Marie had given up trying to treat Edna as an underling, and Edna was a lot less huffy now when Marie showed up.

  Marie sat across from Edna, looked at her in silence for a moment, then said, “Eugene Schmidt.” Just the name. She waited. Everything depended on Edna’s response.

  “I can’t believe that Natalie is such an idiot,” Edna said.

  Marie relaxed. They were off on the right foot. “Someone should talk with her.”

  “Would you want to, Marie?”

  It was a problem, no doubt about that. Who had ever had any luck convincing a woman that she was about to pick a lemon in the garden of love? Marie shook her head.

  “Father Dowling?”

  “He’s going to marry them!”

  Edna shook her head. “That sort of thing happens from
time to time here. Crushes, little flurries of emotional attachment. A little twinge of arthritis and it’s gone. I knew he was trouble from the beginning.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s like a salesman, always giving a pitch. But what he’s selling is Eugene Schmidt.”

  “And Natalie is buying.”

  “She can afford it.”

  That put it on the table. Was Eugene Schmidt a fortune hunter or not?

  “He did start showing interest in Natalie before Helen left her all that money.”

  “But she had money of her own before.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Marie did not say that there were many things about St. Hilary’s that she knew and Edna Hospers did not.

  “Where is he from exactly, Edna?”

  “Did that man Maxwell talk with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s what he wanted to know.” “Where does he live?”

  Edna displayed her palms. “I should have asked Maxwell that.” “Can’t you ask Schmidt?” “Would you like to?”

  “Well, Edna, if I was seated behind that desk I would think I had the right to such routine information as that.”

  “They don’t register, Marie. They just come. It’s very informal.” “But that means that just anyone can come and prey upon those poor women.”

  “Not the poor ones, Marie.”

  Now, in church, distracted by all this, Marie shook herself back into attention to what was going on on the altar. But how could she concentrate on the Mass when the little cottony head of Eugene Schmidt, seated in the front pew when all around him knelt, was in her direct line of vision?

  When Amos Cadbury came to the new offices of the Avanti Group, he met Augie Liberati for the first time. A more susceptible man than Amos might have been flattered by the deference shown him by Carmela’s partner.

  “Welcome to Fox River,” Amos said.

  “I have a sister who lives here,” Augie said.

  Carmela swept out of her office then and hurried up to Amos, embracing him. This form of greeting had, of course, become widespread. Amos did not approve, though nothing in his manner of expression revealed this.