Saints & Sinners Ball

by Stacy M Jones

  Taking a sip of her coffee, Lottie leaned into the table. “That’s terrible. I understand he was not the best husband, but he kept her financially comfortable. If Lizzie didn’t want to be married, don’t be married, but don’t deny the man a memorial service. Don’t act like you never cared at all. The least Lizzie could do is fake it until it all blows over. This community deserves to say goodbye properly to one of our own.”

  “I agree. He needs the rite of Christian burial,” said a deep voice from behind the woman.

  Hattie turned and was surprised to see Fr. McNally standing there. She was so tired and lost in thought, she hadn’t heard him come in.

  Knowing what Harper suspected about the man, Hattie was a bit startled. He was the last person she’d ever expect to come into her shop. Fr. McNally was dressed in black pants and a shirt with his white collar. Hattie stood. “Hello, Father, can I help you?”

  He walked towards her and shook her hand and that of Lottie and Judy. “I was just walking through the neighborhood after hearing confessions at the church and thought I’d stop in. I’ve never been inside, but I’ve heard so much about it.”

  “Would you like some coffee or something to eat?” Hattie offered.

  “No, thank you.” Fr. McNally looked at Hattie and said sincerely, “I know we haven’t gotten off to the best start as neighbors, but I hope you believe now that I had nothing to do with Tucker’s death. It was all just a misunderstanding that evening. Matthew Inslee assured me he’s cleared it up with you.”

  Hattie didn’t believe a word he was saying, but she wasn’t brave enough to say that. “I think it was an overwhelming situation as you can imagine,” Hattie said finally.

  “Have the police made any progress in finding out who killed him? I’ve gone to the spot several times to pray that they would.”

  “Not that I’m aware of, but of course the police aren’t updating me,” Hattie explained nervously. “I’ve seen you at the spot a few times. I wondered what you were doing.”

  “Praying,” Fr. McNally reiterated. “Is your niece here? I wondered if I could ask her a question.”

  “No, Harper’s out for the day, but I can send her over to you when she’s back.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I can catch up with her here another time. I thought she might be back already. I saw her leave yesterday with that other neighbor of yours. Are they on a trip? They had luggage with them.”

  Hattie was starting to get more suspicious about the reason for the man’s visit. She didn’t like that he knew that Harper and Jackson were away. “Jackson had to take care of something and Harper tagged along. They should be back later today,” Hattie lied.

  “Oh good, good,” Fr. McNally said. “Well I’ll just take a little look around your shop if you don’t mind, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  Hattie sat back down with Lottie and Judy. Hitching her jaw in Fr. McNally’s direction, Lottie whispered, “That’s a bit odd, don’t you think?”

  “Very,” Hattie agreed. Then she said loudly, “Well you ladies enjoy the rest of your coffee. I have to get back behind the counter.” With that, Hattie got up, went behind the counter and got out her laptop. She pretended to do some work while she watched the priest over the rim of the screen. Fr. McNally was taking in the stones Hattie had, reading descriptions on each one. He walked over to the candles and picked up a couple, reading the labels on those as well.

  Fr. McNally stopped browsing the store. He stood in the middle of the room seemingly hesitating, then he approached Hattie at the counter. “I wanted to ask, do you speak to the deceased?”

  “I wouldn’t think as a Catholic priest you’d believe in such a thing,” Hattie said a bit surprised.

  “I believe all things are possible, now whether I believe it’s a gift from God or a source of Satan, that’s another story. As you know all forms of divination and clairvoyance are more than frowned upon. They are sin.”

  “Well, Father,” Hattie said angrily, “while I don’t really care about your opinion of my gifts, I can assure you there is nothing negative or demonic here. As for your question, speaking to the deceased is not something I do.”

  Fr. McNally and Hattie stood eyes locked for several seconds. Hattie was not backing down. Finally, the priest nodded his head and left the shop.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  After a hearty breakfast at the diner next to the hotel, Harper and Jackson drove to the St. Jude’s Parish in Park Hollow, a wealthy neighborhood in northern Dallas. They met with Fr. Borger, who was a tall man with a handsome face, striking blue eyes and an affable demeanor. Harper liked him instantly and quickly saw what Hattie might have liked about him when they were young.

  They met in the parking lot of the parish office and then were escorted in. The three had been waiting in a conference room for nearly an hour. Sipping coffee that had been provided to them, Fr. Borger was regaling Harper and Jackson with stories from Hattie’s youth. Hattie and Fr. Borger, who just went by Greg then, had been quite a duo in their upper eastside elementary and high school.

  According to Fr. Borger, they remained great friends through college and well into their forties. Hattie had even written him letters while he was serving in Vietnam before coming back and entering the seminary. Fr. Borger admitted time and distance separated the friendship, but he was happy to hear from her.

  Jackson and Fr. Borger shared some war stories and the differences during each of their time in the Army. Fr. Borger then turned his attention back to Harper. He noted he had also been friends with Harper’s father Maxwell, who as they aged, he saw more frequently.

  “Your father was never one for trouble. Hattie and I would skip school and just cause lighthearted mischief, but Max wanted no part of that. I think he felt a sense of responsibility to one day take over the family magazine and prove himself as a capable young man in spite of coming from a well-known and wealthy family. He always wanted to ensure people knew he earned it rather than it was handed to him. That was important to Max.”

  “My father was never one for having fun or letting loose. It’s pretty much how he raised me,” Harper lamented. Harper frowned thinking back to her sterile childhood. She was grateful for all she was given and the opportunities she had, but she never really felt like she had a father. He was more like a warden whose rules she had to follow and never step out of line or disobey.

  “I know that must have been hard, Harper,” Fr. Borger commiserated. “I’ve spoken to your father a number of times over the years. He had more grief than you know after you both lost your mother. In a lot of ways, Max felt extra pressure to make sure you grew up to be successful because it was a direct reflection on him. Right or wrong, he wanted you to succeed. Max is very proud of you.”

  “Really?” Harper asked in amazement. She’d never heard her father say he was proud of her. The fact that he told other people was shocking.

  “Really,” Fr. Borger reiterated. “All through school and even with how well you did at the magazine, Max has been so proud of you.” Fr. Borger must have taken note of the shocked expression on Harper’s face. He laughed and added, “I’m a priest. I can’t lie.”

  Harper explained, “When everything happened with my husband, he practically threw me out of Manhattan. That’s why I’m here. My own father fired me.”

  Fr. Borger leaned across the table and locked eyes with Harper. “Did he fire you or unlock your cage?” He let the question hang in the air. Then he said, “I spoke to your father while it was all going on. Harper, Max knew how unhappy you were at the magazine and your entire lifestyle in New York. Max said it was like constantly watching someone going through the motions. He saw an opportunity, and he took it. His delivery was terrible, but his heart was in the right place.”

  Harper was floored. She hadn’t thought about it that way. If her father hadn’t fired her, she would have stayed on out of family obligation and to make him happy. He forced her to make the decision she had wanted to make anyw
ay.

  A knock on the door interrupted the conversation and Harper’s thought. An older woman, probably closer to Fr. Borger’s age than Harper’s came in. She had a blue skirt and patterned yellow and blue blouse. She held out her small hand to Harper, and said to the three of them, “I’m Edna Parker, the administrator here at St. Jude’s. I was here while Fr. McNally was our parish priest. While I’m very glad you’re here, I can’t help but wonder what took you all so long to follow up on our report.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” Jackson said perplexed. “What report?”

  “We called the police when we heard Fr. McNally was missing. You aren’t from the Dallas Police Department?” she asked hopefully.

  Both Jackson and Harper shook their heads.

  “Then who are you?” Edna asked concerned.

  “They’re from Little Rock, which is where Fr. McNally is right now,” Fr. Borger began to explain.

  Edna cut him off, “I don’t understand. Fr. McNally has been missing since last June. When did he get to Little Rock?”

  Fr. Borger looked at Harper. She explained, “From what I understand, someone indicating he was Fr. McNally showed up at the St. Joseph parish in Little Rock last July. I don’t know the specific date.”

  “What do you mean someone claiming to be him? I don’t understand that,” Edna pressed.

  Jackson politely waved his hand to cut them all off. “Mrs. Parker, why don’t you sit with us and explain what you know and then we can explain what we know. The bottom line is we have concerns that the man saying he is Fr. McNally is not in fact him. Hearing you say you filed a missing person’s report is concerning. Maybe we can just start at the beginning and tie all the pieces together.”

  Harper laid a hand on Jackson’s arm. She appreciated his reason and logic. Her brain was starting to spin. “I think what Jackson said is a good idea. We need a frame of reference.”

  Fr. Borger agreed. Edna shut the door to the room and sat down at the table with them. She folded her hands in front of her on the table and began, “Fr. Patrick McNally started here at our parish nearly ten years ago. He quickly became a staple of our community. The children at our school adored him. The parishioners loved him and he seemed to absolutely love being here. He connected very well with the youth in our programs. On Saturdays, you could find him shooting baskets on the basketball court. And he played on our parish softball team.”

  Harper looked at Jackson and said softly, “He sounds nothing like the man who lives next door.”

  Edna continued, “We have a very wealthy parish here. Our families are very comfortable, but Fr. McNally made sure families were giving back not to the church but to the community. He hosted food drives and events to bring in people from all over Dallas. He worked with other churches, from all denominations across Dallas to coordinate efforts to help those less fortunate.”

  She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped away the tears that were starting to form. “You have to understand, we absolutely loved Fr. McNally. The entire community was heartbroken when the Catholic Diocese here asked him to help with a sister church at the Catholic mission in Rio de Janeiro. But Fr. McNally felt it was his calling so he went, and that’s when the trouble seemed to start. We had heard…”

  Edna did not get out her last sentence. A woman a few years older than Harper pushed open the conference room door. She had been crying. Her face was red and her dark hair was in messy curls around her face. She looked frantic. “Did you find Patrick?”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  “Patrick?” Harper asked, looking at the crying woman. Clearly, this woman was familiar enough with Fr. McNally to call the man by his first name. Harper was a good distance away from her Catholic roots so she wasn’t sure how common that was.

  Edna looked embarrassed. She got up, embraced the woman by the arm and lead her to the table. Edna handed her another tissue and explained, “This is Camille. She’s a fourth-grade teacher here at the school. She and Fr. McNally were quite good friends. They spent a lot of time together.”

  With her eyes cast down at the table, tears still running down her cheeks, Camille quietly explained, “Patrick, I mean Fr. McNally, and I became great friends. We are close to the same age and both grew up in the northeast. What we really had in common was neither one of us grew up with our birth families. Neither of us were ever adopted, and we aged out of the system. We had a lot in common. I took the teaching job here without knowing anyone in the city, and Fr. McNally made me feel welcomed and like I had a family for the first time.”

  Camille turned, looking at Edna. “I knew Fr. McNally as the wonderful priest who ran this parish and school, but I also knew the man who was my friend.”

  Turning to look across the table, Camille locked eyes with Harper. “Please tell me you found him.”

  Harper took a deep breath and let it out slowly. With sympathy in her voice, she said, “I’m so sorry, we had no idea Fr. McNally was missing. There is a man that lives at the parish behind my aunt’s house who claims he is Fr. McNally, but we have our doubts.”

  “No, that can’t be him,” Camille sobbed in disbelief. “If it was Patrick, I would have heard from him. I’ve been emailing him for months and nothing. He wouldn’t ignore me. We were too close of friends.”

  “When was the last time you heard from him?” Jackson asked. He had pulled out a pad of paper from Harper’s messenger bag and started to take some notes.

  “I know the exact date. It was June 17. I had emailed him about one of the students here who had received a college scholarship, and he emailed right back,” Camille informed them. “I emailed him on June 22 and that was met with no reply. I’ve emailed several more times since then and nothing. Even messages begging for a response were met with silence.”

  Fr. Borger shifted in his seat. Turning to Edna, he said, “You had started this conversation telling us you had made a police report, can you tell us more about that? What made you call them?”

  “It was a number of things.” Edna got up and poured herself a glass of water from a pitcher that was sitting on the counter on the side of the room. Water and coffee had been left for Harper, Jackson and Fr. Borger when they first arrived.

  Sitting back down, Edna continued, “Fr. McNally was going to be placed there for two years. He left here in July 2016. He came back to visit a number of times during his first year. It was a rough area in Rio, but Fr. McNally thought he was making a difference.”

  “He really did,” Camille said interrupting. “At first Fr. McNally really didn’t like Brazil at all. Then he got to know some of the people and felt more settled. He expressed to me that people told him they were very grateful for the church and the work he was doing.”

  “His first year and a half had seemed to be okay. Then there was a turn in January 2018,” Edna added. “In a letter he had sent back here, Fr. McNally expressed concern for his safety. He was working in a very rough neighborhood and in a parish filled with youth who had been in trouble with the law. The church rectory where he was living had been burglarized. It was youth who had been caught, but then let go by the police. The gang activity was increasing and even the police seemed stymied to stop it. In February 2018, Fr. McNally got word from the diocese that he would be coming back to the states in July of that year. He had asked to come back to this parish, but from what we knew that hadn’t been approved yet. Fr. McNally had expressed relief that he’d soon be back in the United States.”

  “What was the point though that you called the police?” Fr. Borger asked. He got up and walked around the room, stretching his legs. Harper felt like doing the same. They had been sitting there for a couple of hours.

  “We knew Fr. McNally was supposed to receive his orders from the diocese in mid-June. With the shortage of priests, there were a number of places he could have been sent to, but then we just never heard. He never came back here. There was no word from Fr. McNally and all communication ceased.”

  “Why not ju
st ask the Dallas diocese where they placed him?” Harper asked, wondering what she was missing.

  The question seemed to spark a memory for Fr. Borger. He looked to Harper, worried he said, “I have a feeling Fr. McNally got lost in the shuffle. We had a major merger of dioceses here last year. With so many Catholic churches and schools closing, we no longer had a need for so many dioceses, so smaller ones were absorbed by some of the larger. Each diocese had their own record keeping, some were more tech-savvy while others were still using paper files.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Edna agreed. “When we stopped hearing from Fr. McNally, we called the parish in Rio. Fr. McNally didn’t have much staff the way he had here, but we spoke to his housekeeper. We also spoke to the principal of the school. We heard the same story. Fr. McNally had packed up and left.”

  “Could he have taken some vacation time?” Jackson offered.

  “Possibly but we could never get a straight answer as to where he went. Actually, we never got any answer,” Edna remarked. “We waited a few weeks and then called the Dallas diocese.”

  Edna turned to Fr. Borger. Frustrated, she detailed, “The merger caused more than just a record keeping issue. We had significant staffing changes including a new bishop. We called the diocese several times, and each time we were promised someone would get back to us. They never did. Finally, we called the police there in Rio and here. No one would take a report. Both said it wasn’t their jurisdiction. Rio indicated that according to passport records, he left the country. Dallas police department said because he didn’t go missing here, it wasn’t their problem. We have been in the middle of this jurisdictional red tape while a man is clearly missing.”

  Camille was softly crying again. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, “It’s such a shame, too. Patrick had just found some of his birth family.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight