“You knew that already, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t tell me.”
“You didn’t give me an opportunity.”
Henry thought about that, as if reviewing their conversation in the bar. Reluctantly, he conceded that Phil was right. “When would you have told me?”
Phil shrugged.
“When we got to his hotel room?”
“Oh, I would have advised against that. The police will be examining his room.”
6
Bernice heard the news when she came to work that morning, but the body had not yet been identified, so it was just a spooky story everyone wanted to talk about. From the windows of the restaurant she could see the bench where the body of the man had been found. Hadn’t she sat there with Xavier? She hadn’t—they had usually sat at an outside table—but still it gave her a nice tingly feeling. She couldn’t wait to tell him when he came for lunch.
There seemed to be a rush on Grace that day. The place was swarming with people, and everyone seemed to be talking about the dead man. It was a little ghoulish, although Bernice was looking forward to doing just that with Xavier. But he didn’t come. Maybe the story kept him away. Martha at the cash register kept looking at Bernice, and finally Bernice went over there to see what it was all about.
“They know who it was,” Martha said.
“Who?”
“The man who ate here and always stayed late. You know.”
Bernice just stared at Martha.
“His name was Kittock.”
Bernice went back into the dining area and began to clear tables. She tried to make her mind a blank. Every time she had seen him, every time they had talked, came back so vividly that she could not drive the memories away. Martha was following her with a concerned look, and this conferred an importance on Bernice she kind of liked. Of course, Martha and others would have noticed that she had become friendly with Kittock. It made her almost a widow.
What she remembered most was the time they had sat together at a table outside the Morris Inn, in the back, with the big white reception tent billowing in the wind. It was the closest thing they had ever had to a date. Then that girl had come along, and he had abandoned Bernice. Thank God his friend had invited her to have a drink with them.
“My niece,” he explained the following day.
“I felt like an idiot after you left. You might have introduced us.”
“Maybe next time.”
There would never be a next time, not now.
“I did enjoy our drink together,” she said.
Until Ricardo showed up, that is. She dismissed the memory. What Bernice couldn’t understand was how she really felt. It didn’t seem to be sadness, yet that was what Martha’s expression suggested she should feel. So she adopted a solemn expression and went on working. When the lunch period was over she just wanted to go home.
“Are you all right, Bernice?”
“I will be, Martha.” She bit her lip. What an actress.
She left Henry in day care. She wanted the rest of the afternoon free. Alone, she could explore her feelings and try them out to see which would be the appropriate one. She began to think she could write a story about Xavier. Then Marjorie called.
“Oh, Bernice!”
“Marjorie?”
“Yes.” Marjorie sounded miffed that Bernice hadn’t recognized her voice. Of course, she had. “Have you seen him?”
Him? Did Marjorie mean Xavier Kittock? What a weird question. “Of course not.”
“Bernice, I ran into him last night. At a sports bar.”
“You should tell the police.”
“Have the police talked with you yet?”
“Yet? Why should they talk with me?” But now she imagined herself an object of attention, the younger woman Xavier had been so interested in.
“I wonder if you understand how angry he is with you.”
“Marjorie, what in God’s name are you talking about?”
“Ricardo! Surely you must see—”
Bernice hung up, really angry. What a silly, nosy creature Marjorie was. And what did Ricardo have to do with what had happened to Kittock?
The question followed her through the house. The phone began to ring again, and Bernice ran back, picked it up, and then dropped it into the cradle again. Then she took it off the hook.
Marjorie was suggesting that Ricardo had been so jealous of Kittock that … Good Lord. That was impossible. Being macho was one thing, but killing someone was something else. Of course, Ricardo had stopped Kittock on a campus sidewalk and thumped his chest, but what did that mean? And he had surprised her in the Morris Inn when she came out of the bar after having a drink with Eggs and his friend, hustling her through the lobby as if he were arresting her. She waited until they were outside before she kicked him sharply in the shin and ran off to her car.
“You better be careful,” he had called after her.
Bernice found that she liked more than she would have admitted the thought that her former husband had decided to avenge himself on Kittock. What would she say if they interviewed her? She meant the television news, not the police. She turned on the set.
Soap operas, but on the hour, local news. The man found dead on the Notre Dame campus had been strangled or perhaps suffocated. A plastic bag had been found. Bernice laughed. She couldn’t help herself. It was worse than a soap opera. A comic book. She felt a rush of relief as well. No one would imagine that Ricardo would take his revenge in such a way.
When she went to pick up Henry at day care, Bernice half expected television trucks to be parked along the curb and reporters eager to talk to her, but no one there seemed to have heard of the death on the Notre Dame campus.
“I thought Daddy was coming,” Henry said.
“That’s tomorrow.”
Henry looked disappointed, and that irked Bernice. She worked her fingers to the bone for her boy, and all he did was miss his father.
On the way home, listening to Henry’s chatter, she wished she had asked Marjorie just how she had managed to run into Ricardo at a sports bar. It seemed an insult. That was how she and Ricardo had met, as Marjorie well knew.
7
When Phil told Jimmy Stewart that Kittock had been staying in the Jamison Inn, they agreed to meet there.
“I drove here along Angela,” Jimmy said when he arrived. “That golf course sure looks inviting.”
“I could get us a tee time for tomorrow morning.”
“Good. I hope I can make it.”
They went to the desk and asked the clerk to call Kittock’s room.
“Have you been trying to reach him?” Jimmy asked.
“Several people have.”
“Several.”
The clerk nodded, as if his honesty had been impugned. Well, Phil thought, one of the several was me. There was no answer in Kittock’s room, of course, so Jimmy showed his ID and asked to be shown the room.
“Is something wrong?”
“Come on along and see.”
The second-floor hallway was almost blocked with cleaning carts. There was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door of 212. The clerk knocked before unlocking the door and stood aside so Jimmy and Phil could enter. Jimmy flipped the switch as he went in.
The blinds were drawn, but the bed had not been slept in. On the little desk were some papers and several books, but otherwise the room was neat as a pin, and probably had been since the last time the maid cleaned it. Jimmy went into the bathroom. A pair of pajamas hung on a hook behind the door and toilet articles were neatly arrayed.
Phil was holding one of the books when Jimmy emerged. “I hope only your set of prints will be on that book.” Phil dropped it onto the desk, and Jimmy laughed. “What was he reading?”
“A life of Father John Zahm by Ralph Weber.”
“Zahm.”
“Let Roger explain it to you. That was the man Kittock was reading about in the archives.”
&n
bsp; The two men stood in silence for a moment, looking around the room. A man now dead had stayed here and had left very little impress on it. Phil moved toward the bed. From a knob on the bedpost a rosary hung. Phil bent over to look. Roger would want to know about that.
The folder of letters from the Notre Dame archives was lying on the desk. Phil said, “I’ll take these. Roger can return them to the archives.”
Jimmy thought about it, then nodded. “Well, he seems to have been staying here alone.”
“Why would you think otherwise?”
“We got a call.”
Jimmy told Phil about it downstairs in the bar, where they had Cokes as far from the bartender as they could get. The caller had been a woman evidently trying to disguise her voice. She had said, “If you wonder what happened to Xavier Kittock, you might check with Bernice Esperanza.”
“Who is she?” Phil asked.
“That’s what we’re going to find out after we finish our Cokes.”
First, they told the desk clerk that they were finished upstairs.
“Is something wrong?” he asked them.
“You’ve lost a guest. But don’t rent that room until I give the go-ahead.”
“Well, thank heavens he had to show a credit card when he registered.”
“Let me see that, will you?”
Jimmy had to show his ID again before the clerk slid the registration form across the desk. The impression of the credit card was blurred. A MasterCard. Jimmy jotted down the number. As they pulled out of the parking lot, leaving Phil’s car behind, he was reading it to someone downtown who would check it out. That would give them an address.
“I wonder where the card is now? And whatever else was in his wallet,” Phil said.
8
Josh’s grandmother had died during his freshman year, and he had gone home for the funeral. It had been his first experience with death. What had struck him most was the way people at the wake just stood around and talked, not solemn at all, no one really broken up, not even his father, whose mother she had been. Of course, Grandma had been old, but even so. Josh had gone off from the others and sat at the end of a row of chairs and looked ahead to where his grandmother’s profile was just visible over the open coffin. Things quieted down when the priest came and the rosary was said, but as soon as it was over everybody was talking again, even laughing. Josh went up to the casket and knelt and prayed for his grandmother. He wanted to ask her to pardon her family and friends, who seemed to think her death was just another social event.
At least Rebecca seemed stunned when she told him about her uncle. She said it in a whisper, and he wasn’t sure he understood, but then she repeated it. “It was his body they found on a campus bench this morning. Had you heard about that?” His expression told her he hadn’t.
“Remember, we ran into him the other day.”
Of course he remembered. The man had called to Rebecca, and they had talked for a minute or so and then had gone on. She had called him the black sheep of the family.
“My parents are on their way.”
At his grandmother’s funeral everyone seemed to know what to say to his father and mother, the phrases well worn from other similar occasions. Josh didn’t know what to say to Rebecca. He put his hand on her arm.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said.
“What was it? A heart attack?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I suppose.”
They went to the student center and sat in a booth, neither of them wanting anything. Over Rebecca’s shoulder a television was visible, blaring on unheeded.
“I told you he never married.”
He nodded.
“And that he was in the navy.” A wry smile formed on her lips. “Roger Knight told me he was in the navy.”
Josh had to smile, too. “On our side?”
She put his hand on his. Pretty soon he would be as jolly as the people at his grandmother’s funeral.
“I didn’t hear a word Tenet said in class,” she said.
“I did. It didn’t help.”
She squeezed his hand. “I hardly know you and I’m dumping all this on you.”
“How old was he?”
“He graduated in 1974. I suppose you can figure it from that.”
Subtract twenty-one or -two from the current year and it was clear her uncle had been no kid. He hadn’t looked as old as he must have been when they ran into him on campus. It was a strange thought, an alumnus visiting the campus and being found dead on a bench.
The news had come on, and someone turned up the set at the mention of Notre Dame. The story was about the body found that morning on campus. Shots of the area, the bench on which the man had been sitting, and then a photograph.
Rebecca gave a little cry. “That picture’s a hundred years old.”
The reporter was saying that the police were being very careful in their announcements. “Of course, folks, this is Notre Dame.” A faint cheer went up. So much for sarcasm.
Rebecca looked at her watch. “Their plane is due at seven twelve.”
Her parents. Should he offer to go with her to pick them up? He would if she asked, but she didn’t, and that was a relief.
“That picture they showed? Uncle X was in the navy then, so think how old it is. Would you have recognized the man you met from that picture?”
“Probably not.”
“Probably?”
This was a running day, and he had not yet been out, but he didn’t want to leave Rebecca alone. He suggested a brisk walk around the lakes.
She jumped at the idea. “I’m not even going to change shoes.”
9
Sean Feeney loved pathology, but he hated dead bodies. He had been persuaded during his residency at Mayo that he needn’t see a corpse from one year to the next. He would be examining the results of biopsies. He liked the picture of himself as more scientist than physician. It hadn’t worked out that way.
He returned to South Bend from Rochester, not because he intended to practice there—he had three offers from clinics in preferable parts of the country—but to relax a bit and show off for his parents. They were proud of him, and he was proud of them for being proud. Who ever thought a Feeney would make it through medical school, let alone have a residency at Mayo? His big mistake was going to his father’s political club, which was in a panic mode. Their candidate for coroner had died, and they had twenty-four hours to name a replacement.
“We can put up anyone with name recognition. He doesn’t have to be a doctor.”
“But who will do the work?”
Casey, the wheeler-dealer, looked at Sean. “Who’s this?”
“My son Sean. Dr. Sean.”
“Yeah. You teach or what?”
“He is a pathologist.”
In retrospect, his father must have seemed to be nominating him for coroner. Did Casey leap with joy at the prospect? He took Mr. Feeney into a corner and frowned while he talked. Sean’s father kept shaking his head, and Casey kept grabbing his arm to keep him from getting away. Twenty minutes later Sean was presented with the results of the conference.
“I’m not running for coroner!”
“Assistant coroner,” his father said.
“Jankowski will carry you in, doc. Don’t worry.”
“Tell him what I get,” Mr. Feeney said.
Casey smiled benevolently. He had his hand on Sean’s sleeve. “Your father here has been a loyal member of the party.”
Sean knew all about that. His father would vote for Genghis Khan if he were a Democrat. As a reward for his loyalty, Mr. Feeney would spend his twilight years in a do-nothing position at the waterworks. Just watch the dials and try to stay awake. Casey punched Sean in the arm. The plea in his father’s eye was one Sean could not resist.
His mother became hysterical when she heard that Sean was on the ticket. Her son the doctor, playing second fiddle to that idiot Jankowski?
“Tell her the rest, Dad.”
&
nbsp; Sean went out on the porch. The neighborhood was not what it had been. Maybe his parents should move. Naw. They loved it here on the west side, half a block from church in one direction, half a block from a saloon in the other. All their old friends were here, at least the ones who hadn’t moved to the suburbs. He was twenty-nine. Maybe his father’s party would lose the election.
That had been two years ago. Jankowski and the rest of the ticket won in a landslide. The victor took over the coroner’s office and let Sean do all the work. There had been plenty of work. Where did all these bodies come from? Of course, everybody has to die, but did everyone need an autopsy? The ones that came to Feeney did. Still, he hadn’t had a real challenge until the body of Xavier Kittock was found on a bench on campus at Notre Dame.
On the scene, he had thought heart attack. Not stroke. Rigor mortis could mislead you, but Feeney ruled out a stroke. So a heart attack. He didn’t chip it in stone, of course. Jimmy Stewart had wanted his guess, and that was what he got. Then Feeney noticed the bruises on the neck.
“Then we got a murder,” Stewart said.
“I’m not so sure.”
“What do those marks on his throat suggest?”
“Strangling.”
“That would be an odd method of suicide.”
“You may be right.”
“May be. Look, Doc, this is your call. Make up your mind.”
In an ideal world, Feeney would have been able to explore all the possibilities. The logical possibilities. His first hunch had been a heart attack, and that seemed to fit a body found on a bench.
“His pockets were empty,” Stewart said.
“A thief?”
Stewart shook his head.
“Look, this is more complicated than it seems.”
Feeney got out the lab report, but Stewart held up his hand. “I trust you. So we have a man who had a heart attack while being strangled.”
Feeney beamed. “That’s a real possibility. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“Great minds.”
Stewart had a tough time keeping a straight face when he said it, but Feeney accepted it and left. In his office Feeney plunged his hands into the pockets of his lab coat and sat in the chair Jankowski had rejected and Feeney had claimed. It had wheels and turned 360 degrees with one good push of the foot. It was like sitting in a gyroscope, but Feeney found it conducive to thinking.
Irish Gilt Page 9
