A flush had crept into her cheeks.
“Why have you stayed with the Church, Peggy? Why do you put so much time and energy into an institution that infuriates you?”
She fingered the silver cross around her neck while considering her response.
“Because my Catholicism is central to who I am. I’m not mad at God. I haven’t lost my faith. My anger is directed where it should be, at the abusers and those who turned a blind eye to it. I’m not willing to cede my church—my beloved refuge—to them. They stole the innocence of children. They stole the consolation of the Church from the faithful. Now they’re trying to steal the holy places themselves, the walls that witnessed so many happy times—weddings, baptisms, confirmations—selling them off to pay for their sins, though those are literal payments for literal sins, not the kind of sins they’ll answer for some day.”
I’d heard Peggy say similar things at public forums over the years, but never at close range. Had her Church been willing to ordain women, she’d have been a natural in the pulpit.
Tears were gleaming again in her hazel eyes.
“They killed Patrick, too.”
My heart jumped in my chest.
“The bishop didn’t have the nerve or decency to stand in front of the microphones and admit the Church’s sins,” she said. “Patrick did that, without fear of the consequences.”
“You think stress killed him?”
“If he indeed died of a heart attack.”
I blinked, wondering if she was naturally suspicious or if someone had told her about the ongoing investigation. “Do you think there’s reason to doubt that?”
“You’re the one who asks questions for a living. But if the medical examiner finds it wasn’t a natural death, I may be able to be helpful.”
“You know of threats to Patrick’s life?”
“I do.”
“By who?”
Peggy took off her gigantic glasses and cleaned them with a napkin. Behind the scratched lenses her eyes were clear and sharp.
“I’m a big believer in the ninth commandment,” she said. “Unless I have reason to believe my gut feeling is true, I’m unwilling to bear witness against my neighbor.”
* * *
I thought about Peggy’s words as I walked to Casa Rinaldi, where I was not surprised to learn Stella had been keeping track of other people’s business, as usual. We sat at her kitchen table while a pot of Lavazza percolated atop the stove in an old-fashioned ceramic pot. I knew from experience her coffee would double the amount of hair on my chest.
The lights in Father DiAngelo’s suite had remained on all the previous night, Stella said, something she’d never seen since he moved to the rectory more than twenty years ago.
“How do you even know what windows are whose?”
“I know my way around that place.” She jutted her double chin toward the handsome brick structure across the street. “Whenever Tillie needs a second set of hands I help out.”
“Tillie?”
“The tiny lady I watched give you the bum’s rush yesterday. Matilda McGuire is her name. Fifty years or so ago she was off the boat from Ireland. Tillie’s the rectory’s cook, housekeeper, and social secretary, too. There used to be a staff of four or five that ran that place, but for a long time now it’s been just Tillie. She calls me when she needs help hanging drapes, using a ladder to dust up high. Things you can’t do by yourself.”
“She was not at all helpful when I asked to see Father DiAngelo.”
“What do you expect? Tillie never had a family of her own. She’s as protective of those priests as though they were her own sons.”
“It’s my job to talk with family and coworkers when someone dies, especially someone as well-known as Patrick. I wouldn’t have come on too strong.”
“All Tillie knows is you’re the press, not that you’re a good guy.”
“Maybe you can tell her.”
“Maybe I will.” She smiled at me across the table, pleased to know she had something I wanted.
“The rectory—what’s it like inside?”
“Like you’d expect a rectory to be. Formal dining room and parlor. A large library. Big eat-in kitchen. Several suites of rooms on the top two floors. Most have been unused for years. When I moved here there were four priests in residence, but it’s been only two for the past couple of decades. Patrick’s rooms are on the west side of the third floor, Father DiAngelo’s are on the east. They each have sitting rooms and a study in addition to a bedroom and of course their own bathrooms.”
When you were hanging the drapes did you note what books they were reading? I thought. What size shoes they wore? If they brushed their teeth with Colgate or Crest?
Stella speculated that Father DiAngelo was up late writing his colleague’s eulogy. “Patrick was like Father DiAngelo’s older brother,” she said. “I wonder if they’ll move another priest to St. Jerry’s to take his place, or if poor Father DiAngelo will be the only one rattling around in there soon.”
I figured it was more likely DiAngelo would be moved to another rectory in the diocese and the bishop’s bottom-line-focused financial advisors would recommend selling not only the St. Jerome’s church building but also the handsome rectory to a developer. That thought hadn’t seemed to occur to Stella. She’d already laid out cups and saucers so I got up to pour the coffee once the percolator stopped its glub-glubbing.
“When you told me there’d been a lot of odd things happening over there recently, did you mean at the church or the rectory?”
“The church. But not the protesters. They typically pack up their signs by nine o’clock. Other people have come around, in the middle of the night. Someone’s been letting them into the church. I’ve heard them sneaking around, trying to be quiet.”
“I would have known if there was a break-in at St. Jerome’s.”
“I’m not saying it was a break-in. But definitely people prowling around.”
I added cream to my coffee. Stella shamed me by drinking hers black. “It could have been something wrong inside the church. Maybe Tillie or one of the priests was letting in a repairman, and they were extra quiet because it was the middle of the night.”
She shook her head.
“They were tiptoeing around, and whispering. There was no reason for anybody to be inside the church in the middle of the night. I asked Tillie if she knew what was going on. She didn’t have an explanation, at least not that she’d share with me.”
I remembered the housekeeper’s abrupt manner when she put me in my place on the rectory doorstep.
“Tell me more about Tillie. Do you know her well?”
Stella twisted her mouth sideways and rolled her eyes.
“We’ve been neighbors for more than fifty years. I probably know her as well as anyone, but we respect each other’s privacy, of course.”
I was impressed that she kept a straight face. Stella’s days were made meaningful by prying and spying. But she knew the gatekeeper and I needed to get through the gate.
“What’s her story?”
“Tillie was a pretty enough girl, but no fellow ever quite settled on her. Her mother was a second cousin of the monsignor in charge of the parish back in the sixties—his name was Sweeney—which is how she went to work as the housekeeper for the priests. She was a few years shy of thirty at the time. She’s been there ever since.”
“How old is she?”
“Maybe five years younger than me.” Stella looked at the ceiling, as though she was doing the math in her head. “That’d make her seventy-eight.”
“A little old to be doing the work of three people.”
“Like I said, Tillie treats those priests like her children. Does a mother retire from caring for her kids?”
“So you’ve known
her the whole time she’s been there?”
“To the extent anyone knows her. Drawing her into extended conversation is like hauling four sacks of groceries up three flights of stairs. But she gets going every now and then, especially when something riles her up.”
“Like what?”
A pained look passed over Stella’s features. “She hates gossip. And she classifies a lot of things as gossip that really are neighborhood news.”
“Things people say about the Church? The priests?”
“Things people say about everything. I warned her not to hire Edie Polito’s son to wash the rectory windows, because he’s a druggie and likely would steal things. She acted like I was saying something bad. I mentioned that Phil Mathieu had changed his hairstyle and got new glasses, joked that he might be stepping out on Pauline. Tillie got spitting mad at that, even though it’s no skin off her nose if it’s true. But she really hit the roof when I mentioned that the Bellinghams’ 16-year-old daughter was pregnant and planning to keep on going to school right up to her delivery date. To me, that was a shocking thing. But Tillie was furious at me for mentioning it, even though we’ve both known the girl since she was a tot herself.”
Gossip being Stella’s currency—along with the related pastimes of snooping and eavesdropping—it must have stung when the officious Irishwoman shut her down.
“People who are sensitive that way usually have a reason,” I said. “Maybe at some point in her life someone said things about her that she wanted kept private.”
Stella heaved a big sigh, her ample chest rising and then falling.
“If that’s so, she could have told me about it instead of snapping my head off.”
I turned my conversation with Stella over in my mind after waving off a third cup of coffee and taking my leave. Patrick was like DiAngelo’s big brother. Tillie was like their mother. It was hard to know if the familial ties were real or Stella’s projection. But even if she was off base to some degree, Patrick’s death would have devastated both Father DiAngelo and Tillie. They were the ones who saw him day to day, ate meals with him, knew his worries and joys.
If the investigators concluded Patrick had been murdered, Tillie wouldn’t be able to shut the door in the law’s face. State Police Lieutenant Wrecker Rigoletti and his team soon would march through that rectory door and ask a hundred questions of the surviving priest and longtime housekeeper.
Chapter Seven
I spent Wednesday evening building the superstructure for my Sunday feature about Patrick’s death. The newsroom was close to empty when the growling in my stomach got my attention. I considered calling Christie, but it was on the edge of too late. She rises at the ungodly hour of four thirty every morning in order to open the Rambler. I didn’t want to wake her if she’d turned in early, so I skipped the check-in and called the House of Siam for takeout.
Lou was happy to see me, and happier still when I grabbed her leash after inhaling an excellent green curry with shrimp. Three police cruisers passed us on our half-hour stroll, one at a time, obviously keeping an eye out for suspicious teenagers.
One slowed to the curb a block from the high school.
“You out trolling for our chem lab superstar, Joe? I know how you love making headlines.” The speaker was a cop named DeMauro, with whom I was on good terms.
“Publicity Hound Joe Gale, that’s me.”
Another cruiser passed us, headed north. “Blanket coverage of the high school sector,” I said. “It’s clear you guys are determined to stop the bomber before he strikes again.”
DeMauro shifted the cruiser into Park but left the engine running. “He or she. The chief lectured us about that very point at roll call tonight. No one is above suspicion, the chief said.”
“You going to frisk me and my dog?”
“I should. It would win me some cred at the station.”
“How long can you keep up this intense level of patrol?”
“As long as we need to. We need to catch the perp soon. Someone with a bomb fetish running around town is scary as hell.”
“The fire marshal says it’s a bad sign when homemade bombs get progressively more destructive.”
“Yup, and the fact fireworks are now sold in Maine makes it too damned easy for kids to get their hands on stuff they can use to make bombs.” He put his car back in gear. “Just one more thing on the long list of things that makes it harder for us to do our job.”
“Lou and I will keep our eyes open.”
“You do that.”
After we wandered home I stretched out on the couch and fell asleep watching the baseball playoffs. A distant thump woke me and Lou shortly after midnight. Five minutes later my cell phone buzzed. Denny Arsenault said six words.
“Football field again. Big friggin’ bomb.”
He hung up before I could respond.
My house is four blocks from the high school. I ran instead of taking my car, which allowed me to cut through vacant lots and take one-way streets I would have had to drive around. It turned out there was no cause to rush. The fire marshal’s people hadn’t arrived yet and the Riverside firefighters were in the process of flooding the field with light, wary of more devices. A giant crater was visible, right on the fifty-yard line. I pulled out my phone and snapped a few photos, then buttonholed the deputy fire chief.
“Heard the call on the scanner,” I lied. “Look like the same MO?”
“Sorry, Joe.” He glanced across the field where a cruiser was parked, its blue lights flashing. “The PD and the fire marshal will scream if I talk with you.”
“Off the record then?”
He considered the offer. “Looks like a pipe bomb again, far bigger than Saturday night’s.”
“Think the bomber is getting close to the emotional edge?”
“My job is to answer the bell, man. I let other people figure out why someone wants to make a lot of noise.”
“Who called it in?”
He jerked his head toward the residential street that bordered the field. “A nurse coming home off the evening shift. Heard the boom when she was pulling into her driveway, called us from her car and came running to make sure it was only the turf that was blown to kingdom come.”
“She see anybody?”
“Nope.”
I thought of DeMauro and the other three cruisers I’d seen an hour before the changeover to the eleven-to-seven shift. The bomber probably saw them too, I thought.
A pair of grim-faced fire marshals showed up a few minutes later. One of them took charge, making it plain they’d have nothing to say until at least the next morning.
“We’ll be taping off the field and parking lots,” he said. “If you don’t stay outside the perimeter you’ll be arrested.”
I hung out across the street until Barb Wyatt showed up, but she pretended she didn’t know me. She needed to have cred with the state police and fire marshals, I knew, but it still felt lousy. When I got home Lou was waiting like a worried parent at the kitchen door. She prowled the kitchen while I wrote a five-paragraph story—dutifully leaving out the deputy chief’s call that this one was a larger pipe bomb—and transmitted it to the web editor.
I thought I’d be snoring before my head hit the pillow, but I was wrong. For a couple of hours—I eventually stopped glancing at the clock—my brain flashed alternating images of explosions and mangled school buses.
Chapter Eight
Thursday morning I was forced to switch gears again, from the bombing back to Patrick’s death.
At a 9:00 a.m. press conference outside the Riverside Police Station, Lieutenant Antonio Rigoletti strode to the podium and announced the staties were in charge of what was now a homicide investigation. The murmur that swept the room told me at least some of the electronic media folks had no idea
that was coming.
Rigoletti said exactly what he came to say and not one damn word more. Questions bounced off him like bullets off Superman, but nobody would confuse him with the Man of Steel. The form-fitting uniform of the Maine State Police didn’t flatter Wrecker’s plump frame, the shoulders of his jacket were littered with dandruff, and he had the unattractive habit of pursing his lips when pretending to listen to a reporter’s question. I watched the TV crews feed his enormous ego, elbowing each other aside in their quest for a talking-head shot. He ignored the questions I lobbed from the second row.
“Do authorities believe Father Doherty’s death is related to the recent protests about closing of parishes?”
“No comment.”
“Does the evidence indicate he knew his killer?”
“No comment.”
“Have you identified any suspects?”
“No comment.”
I shot out a tweet—State Police say prominent Riverside priest’s death a possible homicide. No suspects yet. Investigation “very active”—and thought about how to develop the story despite tight-lipped Rigoletti.
Barb Wyatt would be skittish, at least in the heat of the moment. Rigoletti was well aware Barb and I had worked cooperatively the previous summer on the mill murder, and he’d freeze her out of the investigation if he caught her talking to me. Stella still knew everything that happened in the churchyard, but the evidence gathering seemed to have shifted to other locations. I’d texted Rufe about the newest development, but he didn’t respond. Either he’d left his phone in his truck or was ducking me.
I called the diocese and asked for the press liaison. To my surprise I was connected to a real person, whose tentative voice made it clear she was not up to the job of talking with voracious reporters.
“I will not answer any questions, but I will read you the bishop’s statement. Are you ready? ‘Father Doherty was a man of God. We at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland have been saddened to learn his death was not a natural death. We will keep Father Doherty and his family in our prayers, and will cooperate fully with the investigation.’”
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