The Widow's Mate

by Ralph McInerny

  “Watch your tongue.”

  “I would need a mirror.”

  She could easily imagine him preening before a mirror. If anything was unchanged, it was his charming bad-boy manner.

  “I suppose you want tea?”

  “If you’re out of altar wine.”

  She made tea the old-fashioned way, no bags, and soon the kettle was singing on the stove. Marie was trying to conceal her delight at this visit. It was all she could do not to tell Edna, when she had her on the phone, that Greg Packer had come to visit her. In his absence, she had come up with a long list of questions she wanted to ask him. When tea was ready and he had taken an experimental sip, then kissed his fingers with closed eyes, indicating approval, Marie began. “Where are you living?”

  “I have a little apartment for the moment.”

  “Here in the parish?”

  “It’s above the garage at the Flanagan home.”

  “You’re staying there!”

  “It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  Marie looked closely at him. “What is going on between you two? You are the talk of the parish center, as I am sure you know.”

  “Mrs. Murkin, we were kids together.”

  “So were Cain and Abel.”

  He sat back. “What a comparison.”

  Much as she would have liked to pursue the subject, there were prior questions. “So you are out on parole.”

  He smiled sadly. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “About you I know nothing at all. Where have you been all these years?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “That is why I asked.”

  He finished his tea but put his hand over his cup when Marie lifted the pot. “One’s my limit.” He looked at her. “I think you do want to know. Okay.”

  He had joined the navy and never left land. He had stayed on in San Diego after his discharge.

  “Doing what?”

  “I golfed a lot. I ended up managing a driving range.”

  “You gave me the impression that you had married.”

  “Did I?”

  “Did you?”

  “Give you the impression?” A grin that soon faded. “Yes, I got married. A huge mistake that I eventually corrected.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It was only a civil ceremony.” He paused so she could catch the significance of that. What kind of marriage could it have been if it hadn’t taken place in church?

  “You mean you divorced her?”

  “Oh, it was mutual. No hard feelings.”

  “And then?”

  “I went on managing the driving range. And played the field. Mrs. Murkin, my life has not been that of an altar boy.”

  “I should think not. And what about this parole?”

  “Who told you about that? I thought nobody knew.”

  No need to tell him that her source was Cy Horvath. “Perhaps nobody does.”

  “Just you.”

  “If you think I am going to spread the news, relax. Tell me what happened.”

  Cy Horvath’s account had the brevity of a police blotter. Stealing from the till when he tended bar in the Loop. In Greg’s account, it was largely a misunderstanding. “If I’d had a decent lawyer, I would have walked.”

  “And this happened in Chicago?”

  “I should have stayed in California.”

  “So what are your plans?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  This was more like it. Marie hitched her chair closer to the table. She was on her second cup of tea and in a pastoral mood. Thank God Father Dowling was away for the day and she had full scope for her ministrations.

  “It’s unfair, but because of my misfortune getting a decent job is difficult.”

  “Of course.”

  “I have a dream. What I would like to do is start my own driving range. It’s something I know. I have found two places, either one of which would be perfect.” He looked beseechingly at her. “But I need a little capital.”

  Father Dowling did not golf, although most priests did. The Franciscans had been fanatics. That did not commend the sport to Marie, but she had the idea that golf was a wholesome occupation—out in the fresh air, exercise, far from the temptations of the world.

  “How much?”

  He sat back. “Marie, I am not asking you for money.”

  “That’s a good thing. I am poor as a church mouse.” Not wholly true, but she did not want to encourage any hopes in the direction of her savings. “But maybe I can help you find someone.”

  “Marie, you do that and I’ll give up altar wine.”

  “We’ll see. Now, about the Widow Flanagan.”

  He pushed away from the table. “Fear not, madame. You have my heart.”

  He snatched her hand and kissed it before she could pull it free. Then he was in the doorway, his hand on his heart. “Mrs. Murkin, you are the best.”

  “Oh, call me Marie, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Farewell, Marie for heaven’s sake.”

  And he was gone, the door closing as he clattered down the steps. From the window, she watched him go off in the direction of the school, but abruptly he stopped. He looked toward the church and then directed his feet toward the side door. He disappeared into the church, and Marie realized her eyes were misty. The lost sheep had returned.

  The great question was how to approach Amos Cadbury about setting Greg Packer up in business. Go through Father Dowling? Of course, that was the best way, but would he be sympathetic to the idea? She remembered her faux pas when the Hospers came to dinner. Mentioning Greg Packer had obviously been a big mistake. She hadn’t dared bring it up with Edna since that night.

  15

  Cy Horvath’s response when Amos Cadbury asked him if he could provide information that would enable him to determine what Wallace Flanagan had been doing and where he was during the years between his disappearance and the discovery of his body in a cement mixer would not have encouraged someone unacquainted with the phlegmatic lieutenant. The slightest of nods, no promises, but Amos was certain Horvath would be of help.

  “How will you begin?” Amos asked him.

  “He might have gone to California,” Cy said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “He was mixed up with a woman in Chicago before he deserted his wife.”

  “Sandra Bochenski.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “How did you?”

  “Years ago, I ran into them in a Loop bar when I was in town to check up on some things. He introduced her as a client, but it was pretty clear what was going on.”

  “Did you follow that lead at the time of the disappearance?”

  “I went to where she had lived and found that she had gone off to California.”

  “With Wallace Flanagan?”

  “I suppose that was the plan.”

  “Were they traced?”

  “Mr. Cadbury, it was not a high-priority case. Missing persons seldom are. We were swamped with other things, and besides, Mrs. Flanagan had hired someone to track him down.”

  “Tuttle!”

  “I know. But dog will have its day.”

  “Not Tuttle.”

  “I may not be able to do much better.”

  Amos permitted himself to doubt that, however cold any trail would have grown after all these years. Three days later, Cy was back with a printout showing a marriage in San Diego.

  Amos was puzzled when he read it. “Sandra Bochenski?”

  “The one Wally was carrying on with in Chicago.”

  “But the groom. Gregory Packer. Isn’t that…”

  Cy nodded. “It’s possible that Wally would have used his old friend’s name. Once he and the woman were concealed behind an assumed name, it would be less likely they could be traced.”

  “This is the man who was at Wallace’s funeral?”

  “Who is now living in the apa
rtment over the garage at the Flanagan home.”

  Amos threw himself back in his chair. “What would Luke Flanagan say to that?”

  In subsequent days, Cy informed Amos that the San Diego marriage had apparently been dissolved. The woman, using her maiden name, had lived in Oxnard, where she seemed to have prospered. That was how he had been able to trace her, checking out Sandra Bochenski.

  “And the man?”

  Cy handed over photocopies of the travails of Gregory Packer, accused by his employer, a woman, of trying to take over the business and her assets.

  “A driving range.”

  “A driving range.”

  “She brought charges?”

  “And subsequently dropped them. She married him.”

  “Another marriage!”

  Cy had one more photocopy, a story of the death by drowning of Cecilia Packer, found in the family pool by her husband.

  Amos remembered how moved he had been when Gregory Packer wept at the funeral of his boyhood friend Wallace Flanagan. Cy gave Amos an oral report of the mishap that had landed Packer in Joliet.

  “That’s about it so far.”

  “But nothing on Wallace Flanagan?”

  Cy shook his head.

  * * *

  Amos believed that nothing that happens, however apparently obscure and unimportant, escapes the omniscience of God. History consists of the more or less unrelated deeds of billions of free agents, the collective meaning of which eludes human understanding. A Toynbee, a Gibbon, a Spengler could write accounts that suggested an intelligible significance to all those billions of human acts, but such accounts were made possible only by ignoring the vast majority of things that went on in the world. Historians concentrate on historically important figures, meaning those agents who caused most trouble for others, launching wars, new orders, world conquests, but the innumerable foot soldiers in their ventures were swallowed up in the prideful ambitions of the leaders. Surely their importance was not exhausted by being a footnote to the ambitions of an Alexander, a Napoleon, a Stalin, or a Hitler. Only God knew that.

  Cy’s report suggested some modification of this view. Now satellites hung above the earth, their cameras recording what went on below. Computers were filled with data no human memory could contain. The pervasive presence of government, something Amos deplored, had created bureaucracies and records that mimicked divine omniscience. Now Amos had a number of facts, more than he could have imagined possible, but he lacked any means of interpreting what they meant. Out of the past Cy had pulled the record of two marriages and of the charge against Gregory Packer of seeking to bilk his employer, a problem that had been solved by one of those weddings. Then the woman had drowned. Presumably Gregory Packer had then come into possession of the wealth he had coveted.

  Using contacts of his own, he made inquiries about the driving range outside Ventura, California. It had been claimed by eminent domain, giving way to a shopping center. It was then, apparently, that Gregory Packer had migrated back to the Midwest, tending bar in the Loop. It seemed a humble occupation for a man who had come into some money. Perhaps he had no special skills—but why work at all? It had been a fateful choice, leading to indictment and conviction. Now he was on parole, a frequent presence at the parish center at St. Hilary’s and occupying the apartment over the garage at the house Luke Flanagan had built for his family and lately turned over to his daughter-in-law, Melissa. Surely Melissa had no knowledge of the checkered background of her childhood classmate. Amos felt a professional as well as personal obligation to warn her, but how?

  16

  Hazel could say what she liked about Peanuts, Tuttle knew better, and now he had further proof of the value of his friendship with the Pianone contribution to the Fox River police.

  “Cy’s working on that,” Peanuts mumbled, his mouth full of egg roll.

  Tuttle was surprised that Peanuts had been listening. One of the features of their friendship was that Tuttle could ramble on about his practice, what, if anything, he was working on, without any fear that what he had said would be passed on. By and large, it wasn’t even heard, but Peanuts had perked up when Tuttle mentioned his new client.

  “Working on what?”

  “The woman you mentioned.”

  “Sandra Bochenski?”

  Peanuts’s interest in the matter was exhausted, though, and he attacked a massive dish of shrimp fried rice. Tuttle was rattled. However mixed his reaction was to acquiring his classy new client, the news that Cy Horvath was interested in Sandra Bochenski was unsettling. Clients like this were, not to put too fine a point upon it, rare in Tuttle’s practice. Yet she had called him; Hazel had set up the interview.

  “How’d it go?” Hazel asked when he returned from the Loop.

  Tuttle plucked one of the Bennies from his hat, carefully concealing the other two, and dropped it on her desk. “We have a client.”

  “What’s she like?”

  Tuttle decided against an accurate description of the woman who could have been a model in her youth and was still a most attractive female. Hazel, in the manner of her gender, had a limited appreciation for accounts of the attractions of other women. “Well preserved.”

  “How old?”

  “Middle-aged.”

  Hazel picked up the bill and put it in her account book. “You should have asked for more.”

  “She offered more.”

  “And you turned her down?”

  “Strategy.”

  Hazel laughed a derisive laugh, and Tuttle went into his inner office, sailed his hat at the coatrack, and then scrambled to pick up the two hundred-dollar bills that fluttered to the floor.

  “What are those?” Hazel demanded from the doorway.

  Tuttle handed over one. She held out her hand for the other, but he jammed it into his shirt pocket. “Expenses.”

  Hazel let it go. “Keep accurate records.”

  Alone, he retrieved his hat and settled into the chair behind his desk, put his feet up, and pulled his hat over his eyes, trying to think of how he could fulfill the assignment he had taken on.

  He had thought of Horvath but vetoed the idea. Why should the police do his work for him? They had their chance years ago. So had he, of course, but Melissa Flanagan had accepted his failure to find her husband with good grace. That was when the thought of having a chat with his old client occurred to him. Now Peanuts’s alarming suggestion that he and Horvath were on the same trail again brought the thought that talking with Melissa could do no harm and might do some good. Besides, it would salve his conscience. Accepting as a client the woman who by her own admission had been Wally Flanagan’s lover seemed disloyal. He had always liked Melissa.

  He drove to the Flanagan house in his own car, Peanuts being unavailable for chauffeur service. Tuttle had been told that Officer Pianone had called in sick. Peanuts kept accurate track of his sick days, lest he fail to claim one. Tuttle might have gone by the Great Wall to see if his friend was soothing his imaginary illness with sweet and sour pork, but having made up his mind to talk to Melissa, he did not want to delay.

  Concordia, the avenue on which the Flanagan house stood, was lined with dwellings several notches above the usual in St. Hilary’s parish, but the Flanagan place added notches to those. It was a monument to Luke Flanagan’s success, and he had called in favors from various associates in the building trades to make it everything a self-made man could want. Here he had raised his two daughters, both now gone to fat and living far off, and Wally, the heir apparent who had turned away from the role awaiting him. Owner of Flanagan Concrete? What must it be like for a father to hear his son express contempt for the business that had put food on the family’s table, built the house in which they lived, and given his children advantages he himself had never had? Not many fathers would have set up Wally the way Luke had. Tuttle, who had come through adversity to something short of success, compared his devotion to his own father to Wally’s callous treatment of his. So what was the
lesson, avoid success? Now Luke was living in Chicago, Wally was dead, the daughters were putting on weight elsewhere, and Melissa occupied the family house.

  Tuttle turned into the long drive and inched toward the house, leaning over the wheel to get a good look at it. Everything seemed in perfect repair; the shrubbery was trimmed; the lawn might have just been mowed. The driveway branched off, and Tuttle had the choice of going under the porte cochere at the front of the house or on to the four-bay garage. There was a middle-aged man shooting buckets at an old basket mounted above the garage doors. He went on shooting when Tuttle parked, and not even the unoiled complaint of the driver’s door disturbed his concentration.

  “Damn!” he shouted. He had just missed a shot. He turned to Tuttle. “Nineteen in a row.”

  “Did I throw you off?”

  “Yesterday I hit twenty-three.”

  He was a tall drink of water with an air of easy familiarity that gave Tuttle confidence. Was the man an employee? Perhaps he was the groundskeeper, but the pale blue slacks and silk shirt told against that. His highly polished loafers gleamed. Without warning he passed the ball to Tuttle. The little lawyer caught it with a wild movement of his arms, bringing it against his chest as if it were a baby.

  “Take a shot.”

  Tuttle returned the ball. “I haven’t shot a basket since I was a kid.”

  “Neither had I. It all comes back. What can I do for you?”

  “Tuttle.” He thrust out his hand.

  “Packer.”

  The scales dropped from Tuttle’s eyes. Gregory Packer. This was the man his client thought might have had something to do with the death of Wally Flanagan, and there he stood with a disarming grin, youthful good looks, and the air of the lord of the manor.

  “I saw you at the funeral.”

  “The funeral?”

  “Wally’s.” He added, “A long time ago.”

  Packer peered at him. “You a friend of Wally’s?”

  “Well, I know his wife. She was a client of mine some years ago.”