The Widow's Mate

by Ralph McInerny

  Something in Cy’s manner suggested that he had not lost all interest in these long-ago events.

  “You were an altar boy here?” Phil Keegan had told Father Dowling of Cy’s connection with the couple as pupils in the parish school.

  “Not much of one.”

  “And Flanagan?”

  Cy nodded, but that was all.

  9

  Tuttle was never thoroughly at his ease in Chicago, but then he found Fox River, where he was on the bottom rung of the legal ladder, intimidating. Nonetheless, the traffic, the buildings, the prosperity, the hustle and bustle of Chicago made him feel like a country bumpkin. He rode up the long escalator at Water Tower Place feeling little of the triumphant enthusiasm with which Hazel had dispatched him on this appointment.

  “Mr. Tuttle?”

  She rose from a little table in the atrium, a full head taller than Tuttle, and anyone except for the little lawyer from Fox River would have been rendered breathless by the mature beauty of the woman.

  “I knew you by the tweed hat,” she explained. “Your assistant told me.”

  Assistant? Was that how Hazel described herself? Perhaps he was lucky she didn’t call him her assistant. He removed his tweed hat, put it on again, then took it off once more. He put out his hand, and she took it.

  “Sandra Bochenski,” she said.

  He joined her at the table, a distracted waitress homed in on them, and they ordered coffee.

  “I called you because you once worked for Melissa Flanagan.”

  Tuttle became wary. That long-ago occasion when his help had been enlisted to find Melissa Flanagan’s lost husband represented one of the few peaks in his career. He had been of little help to her, of course, but no one else had any better luck finding Flanagan.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “I know.” She looked around. “I wish this weren’t so public a place.”

  It had been her choice, as far as Tuttle understood. Any place would have been more impressive than his office. “There’s a little park across the street. With benches.”

  “Good. Let’s finish our coffee and go there.”

  She went before him on the down escalator, equalizing their heights. They got safely across Michigan and soon were settled on a bench, with the old water tower conferring historical importance on the scene.

  “I had an affair with Wally Flanagan,” she said, looking him in the eye.

  Tuttle tipped back his tweed hat to conceal his uneasiness. His knowledge of the shenanigans in which men and women got embroiled was largely theoretical. He never took divorce cases, in tribute to the long and faithful marriage his parents had known. What Sandra Bochenski had said would have provided a welcome lead when Mrs. Flanagan was his client.

  “Tell me all about it,” he managed to say.

  She did. The little park was better than the coffee shop they had left, and Tuttle had the unsettling sense of occupying the role of confessor. She spoke with quiet intensity. She and Wally Flanagan had been in love, so they had decided to run away together and start a new life. He could make a fortune anywhere. She had gone ahead to San Diego and waited. “He never came.”

  Tuttle nodded, trying to convey some appreciation of the perfidy of males.

  “I waited and waited.”

  “Didn’t you try to contact him?”

  “Where? I called his office, but I couldn’t just ask. Weeks passed, and I began to realize that I had been jilted. I felt like a fool, of course.”

  “He wasn’t here,” Tuttle assured her. “I would have found him if he was.”

  She accepted the boast even though he had never discovered her affair with Flanagan. Was she telling the truth? It was not Tuttle’s way to look a gift horse in the mouth, but her story made him uneasy.

  She said, “His body was discovered here.”

  “That was years after he disappeared.”

  “I know! I want you to find out where he was during that time.”

  “What is your interest?”

  “Of course you would want to know that.”

  “Any lawyer would.”

  “Who killed him?”

  Tuttle thought of Peanuts, and his sense that this could be a dangerous client increased. “It could have been anyone.”

  “I think I know who it was.”

  Tuttle waited; his uneasiness increased.

  “I would rather not mention his name now. That can come later. Will you undertake to find out where Wally was during those years between his disappearance and the finding of his body?”

  “That is no small assignment.”

  “I can afford the expense.”

  His uneasiness lifted as memories of the fee he had earned from Melissa Flanagan came back to him. Sandra Bochenski’s dress, her manner, and her bearing suggested that she could be a plentiful source of needed income. On any other occasion, he would have snapped at the opportunity, asked for a retainer, and sealed the bargain. Now he hesitated.

  “You mustn’t refuse me.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you already know more than any other lawyer could. You worked on the case.”

  “That’s true.” Her praise did not warm his heart. Superior knowledge in such a matter as this could put one in jeopardy.

  “Well?” She had turned to look directly at him, and he felt at the same kind of disadvantage he always did with Hazel.

  “Where are you living now?”

  “In Chicago? The Whitehall.”

  “The hotel?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “I am thinking of moving back to Chicago. I’ll be frank. This has become my mission. For years I felt that Wally had made a fool of me. Now I don’t know. I can only know if I learn what he did do when he left his wife. How he spent all those years until his body was found.”

  “Could there have been someone else?”

  She glared at him and looked away. Her expression became tragic. “Of course, I thought of that.”

  “Is it possible?”

  “You will have to find out.” She turned back to him. “I find it hard to believe, I have to tell you that, but it does seem an obvious explanation, doesn’t it? He was in a mood to run away, and if not with me, why not someone else?”

  “His wife couldn’t believe he would abandon her.”

  “I know. He always said she had no idea how unhappy he was with her.”

  “Why was he unhappy?”

  “It will sound silly.”

  “Many explanations do.”

  “They had known one another forever, since they were children. His wife was beautiful, popular. Winning her was like a competition, and he won. He came to wish he had lost.”

  These were deep waters for Tuttle. He felt a residual loyalty to Melissa Flanagan. Romantic intrigue puzzled him. He might have been a Martian baffled by the way in which otherwise intelligent human beings make fools of themselves because of the flesh. Why couldn’t all husbands and wives have the simple love and devotion his parents had had?

  Sandra had opened her purse and taken out a checkbook, which she opened on the knee of one crossed leg. She looked inquiringly at him, and he knew he would not have the courage to tell Hazel he had refused the wealthy woman’s offer.

  “Do you have cash?”

  “Only three hundred dollars.”

  “That will do.”

  “We could find an ATM where I could get more.” She obviously did not object to keeping this on a cash basis.

  “No, no. What you mentioned will do.”

  “And make you my lawyer?”

  Getting married must be like this. She handed him three hundred-dollar bills. Benjamin Franklin seemed a stranger, and three images of him made him more so. Tuttle took off his hat and deposited the money in the band. She watched with a delighted smile.

  “So that’s the point of the tweed hat.”

  “You realize I am going to have to ask you a great many questions?”

  “Should I come
to your office?”

  He thought of the crowded rooms on the third floor of a building whose elevator hadn’t worked in years. “You say you’re staying at the Whitehall?”

  “We could have dinner there tonight.”

  “Let’s say tomorrow night.”

  She took his hand in both of hers. “I can’t tell you what a relief this is.”

  “I understand.”

  She stood, and he wondered if he should accompany her to the Whitehall, but again she took his hand in hers. “I really can’t tell you how relieved I am. I feel I should have done this years ago. Until tomorrow? Let’s say six thirty.”

  “Six thirty.”

  And off she went, suddenly just another well-dressed woman in a crowd of people hurrying to hundreds of different destinations. He watched her out of sight and then remembered his car. The hourly rate of the garage in which he had left it was like the monthly payment he had made when he bought it. Tomorrow he would come by train to cut expenses. He took off his tweed hat, made sure Ben Franklin was comfortable, put it on again, and hurried off to repossess his car.

  10

  “I’ve retired,” Luke Flanagan said, looking around Amos Cadbury’s office almost with resentment.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Biggest mistake I ever made.”

  “Then you’ve led a flawless life. Please sit down, Luke. You have to realize that my own duties have considerably diminished in recent years. I have become a remote presence to my juniors here.”

  “That’s what I should have done. Die with my boots on.”

  Luke’s shirt was open at the neck, no necktie, but that seemed to be the trend now, the wider world catching up with the wily entrepreneur’s somewhat flamboyant sartorial style. Today he also wore a sport jacket of many colors and khaki pants. He sat across the desk from Amos, crossed his legs, not without difficulty, and widened his eyes. “Guess why I’m here.”

  Amos chuckled. “Last week a client your age sat there and told me he planned to remarry.”

  Luke didn’t laugh. “You ever think of that?”

  “If I ever do, I will reread ‘The Miller’s Tale.’”

  “Don’t know it.”

  “Is that why you’ve come?”

  Luke hesitated. “My second biggest mistake was leaving my house in Fox River. Oh, I don’t regret turning it over to Melissa, but where I live is full of transplanted old people. They call it a community, but what it is is a business. I should have invested in the place rather than moving in there. Old age is lonely enough without being surrounded by strangers.”

  Amos smiled receptively. Luke would get to the point of this visit in his own good time. Of course, the office must remind him of the long-ago time when he had drawn up the agreement with Wally after it was clear that his son had no intention of taking over the business Luke had built.

  “Maybe if I had stood firm he’d be alive today, Amos.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I know, I know.” He shook his crew-cut head. “The worst part of being old and having nothing to do is that you sit around thinking, remembering, reliving the past. You listen to others only so you can talk yourself. That’s why I stayed away from the parish center.”

  “At St. Hilary’s.”

  “I didn’t want to be that old. Melissa likes the place. At her age!”

  “Many do.”

  Luke frowned. “I’m told that Gregory Packer is another habitué. More a son of a habitué as far as I’m concerned.”

  Amos remembered the man who had wept at Wally’s funeral. No need to commend him for that to Luke. The old man had convinced himself that Packer was a bad influence on his son.

  “Why I’m here, Amos, is this. I told you I spend a lot of time brooding. There are many things I don’t understand, but right up there near the top is where the hell Wally was all those years before his body was found in one of my trucks.”

  Amos nodded. “That is a mystery.”

  “I want to solve it.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “I just want to know. Where was he, what was he doing? Of course I thought he had run off with some woman. Maybe he had.”

  “Luke, even if he did, nothing would be changed by finding out.”

  “And then the way he died.” Luke squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. “Did you ever see the inside of a cement mixer?”

  “No.”

  A pause. “Did the client who sat here get married?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe that is the solution.”

  “What is the problem?”

  “I told you. Loneliness.”

  Amos did not have to be told of the loneliness that follows on the loss of a spouse. Every day since his beloved wife had died, he had said a rosary for her. Often, alone at home, he spoke aloud to her, and at night vivid dreams of her still came.

  “Do you have anyone in mind?”

  “Maybe. Do you know what stops me? The fact that Wally probably did run away with some woman other than his wife.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “One of my daughters heard rumors.”

  It was unclear to Amos whether Luke was simply unburdening his soul or wanted legal assistance. Only someone who had been a client as long as Luke could have taken up his time like this. He decided to regard it simply as a visit from an old friend.

  “How would I go about it, Amos?”

  “Getting married?”

  Luke’s laugh was like a bark. “That I could handle. I meant finding out if Wally did take off with a woman.”

  “Did your daughter mention a name?”

  Luke seemed relieved by the question. He took a slip of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the desk.

  Amos turned it so he could read it. “Had you ever heard of her?”

  Luke shook his head. “Never.”

  “Nor have I.”

  “Don’t worry about expenses.”

  It seemed a little late to tell Luke that Amos Cadbury was not the ideal person to hire for such a task. Then he thought of Phil Keegan. More to the point, he thought of Cy Horvath. There might be a way to get the information Luke wanted, although what he would do with it if he had it was difficult to say.

  Luke got to his feet. “I’ll let you know about the other thing.”

  Amos looked blankly at him.

  “Getting married. “Another barking laugh, and then he thrust his hand at Amos. They shook vigorously. After the door closed behind Luke, Amos picked up the slip of paper. Sandra Bochenski.

  11

  When Father Dowling invited Edna Hospers and her husband, Earl, to have dinner with him at the rectory, Marie Murkin was dumbfounded.

  “Dinner? Here?”

  “Would you rather that I entertain them at a restaurant?”

  “No!”

  “Well, then.”

  Marie stood mute and stricken in the door of Father Dowling’s study. None of the objections that doubtless surged in her breast could be voiced. Marie had always considered Edna a subordinate, doing at the parish center things for which Marie could not spare time from her rectory duties. This was not a view that Edna shared. She had been hired by Father Dowling; he had always expressed satisfaction with the way she had turned the empty school into a center where seniors in the parish could spend their days in company with one another. Marie’s incursions into Edna’s domain had often generated sparks, and once or twice Father Dowling had to negotiate the equivalent of the Treaty of Westphalia between them.

  He felt that he owed the housekeeper some explanation. “It’s a way to welcome Earl back.”

  “He came back months ago.”

  “So you blame me for the delay. I blame myself, Marie.”

  “I’m not blaming you at all.”

  “That’s a relief. I know I can count on you to prepare something special.”

  Marie left, and a low keening sound followed her down the hall to her
kitchen. It grew louder as the door swung back and forth and then closed behind her.

  The point of the invitation was to convey to Earl something of the concern he had felt ever since Phil Keegan had linked the name Pianone to the discovery of Wally Flanagan’s body in a cement mixer. Earl, on parole at last, had landed a job driving one of the Flanagan trucks. From Edna, Father Dowling had heard how pleased he was, and she, with the job. The news from Phil that the Pianones were seeking to invest in the company Luke Flanagan had built had turned the Pianone connection from a predictable rumor when a body was found in the locality to something less speculative and more upsetting. It would not do to have a man on parole working for a company infiltrated by a family like the Pianones.

  He had thought of mentioning his concerns to Edna in the conviction that she would pass them on to Earl, but there were two things wrong with that. He had no idea what he might say to Edna, and there was no way of telling how whatever message he came up with would be passed on to Earl. The Solomonian decision seemed to be to tell them both at once, but rather than diminishing the difficulty, it doubled it. As the evening when the Hospers would dine at the rectory approached, Father Dowling feared that the occasion might easily go by without any mention of the dangers the Pianones might pose for Earl. It did not help that Marie was giving him the silent treatment. Unable to express with anything approaching charitableness, or even civility, how she felt about seeing her rival ensconced at the rectory dining room table, she locked her lips and threw away the key. Conversations with her had been reduced to nods and shakes of the head supplemented by a makeshift sign language.

  “Cat got your tongue, Marie?”

  Marie purred in reply, but the expression in her eyes was not benevolent.

  “You’ve only set three places.”

  Marie made a face and stared at him.

  “Of course you will join us.”

  “I have my own table in the kitchen.”

  “As you like.”

  He almost wished now that Marie would join them. The prospect of the dinner no longer looked inviting.

  As it happened, it was Earl who brought up the Pianones. Rumors had floated around the yard at Flanagan’s and among the drivers. “If they come in, I’m out of there.”