Truth Beat

by Brenda Buchanan

  Seconds later the hunky priest emerged empty-handed, opened the passenger door, then disappeared back inside. When DiAngelo came back out, he was carrying a small cardboard box in both of his big hands, as though it held something fragile. His torso disappeared into the car for a few seconds, then he stepped back and closed the door as gently as a new dad determined not to wake a baby he’d finally rocked to sleep.

  Rufe pulled his silent phone away from his ear just long enough to dial 911. His heart was trying to knock a hole in his chest, but he kept his voice calm as he followed the gray sedan toward downtown Riverside while telling the operator what he’d just observed.

  When he gave his name and address, he added that Chief Wyatt was well familiar with him, and asked that she be informed about his call immediately.

  “I’m no cop, but I don’t think you should dispatch a cruiser to pull this guy over,” Rufe said. “I’m pretty sure he has a bomb.”

  “Are you still following him?”

  “One car between him and me,” Rufe said.

  “Please stay on the line.”

  Rufe hoped to hell the woman understood the potential danger. It was possible the box DiAngelo had so gently placed in the front seat of his car contained a fragile object d’art, but there was something about the hyper-careful way the big priest had tiptoed between the storage unit and his car that had Rufe on high alert.

  Fifteen long seconds later the dispatcher was back.

  “Is the car still in view, Mr. Smathers?”

  “Yes. He’s heading south on Market Street, three blocks from Main. Traffic is stop-and-go, so it’s easy to keep him in sight.”

  Rufe heard a garble of radio traffic in the background.

  “An unmarked car is on its way to that location,” the dispatcher said.

  “Is the chief there?” Rufe had no faith that his warning about not spooking DiAngelo had been passed along.

  “She’s personally directing the response,” the dispatcher said.

  The gray sedan slid into the left lane at the West Street light.

  “It looks like he’s headed to St. Jerome’s,” Rufe said. “About to turn left on West Street now.” A jolt of doubt raced through his mind. Maybe DiAngelo hadn’t liked the retreat place and was simply going home. If he was carrying a bomb, that was terrifying. But if there was a china teapot in that cardboard box, Rufe’s panic would earn him a nervous Nellie reputation.

  As he backed into a parking space in front of Stella Rinaldi’s house he found himself mumbling the old saw about it being better to be safe than sorry, as though it were a prayer.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I’d parked in the lot on the west side of the church in order to approach the priests’ residence from an angle that gave me at least a chance to avoid Stella’s spyglass. I didn’t want her blabbing around town that I’d been to the rectory until I had a chance to write about whatever I might learn there. Peggy answered my knock at the front door and hustled me into a front parlor where Tillie McGuire was fussing with an arrangement of coffee cups on a sideboard.

  “Joe, I believe you’ve met Miss McGuire?”

  “Yes. It’s good to see you again, ma’am.”

  The diminutive woman crossed the room and offered me her hand. “I ran you off once before, but I’m welcoming you here today.” Her lilting brogue contrasted with the solemn look on her face. “May I serve you a cup of tea, or coffee perhaps?”

  I never turn down coffee and I figured it would ease the conversation with whoever was going to join us. He or she would simply be chatting with me over coffee, not being interviewed about a dead priest with whom he or she had been close. I sat in a straight-backed chair next to a window with a view of Stella’s house and set my cup on a side table covered by a lace doily.

  Tillie and Peggy perched on either end of a nearby sofa. After some polite conversation about my recuperation, it took a pointed look from Peggy for it to sink in that no one else would be joining us. As I opened my mouth to speak I remembered Stella’s observation—Tillie never had a family of her own. She’s as protective of those priests as though they were her own sons.

  “Miss McGuire, I am so sorry about Father Patrick’s death. I’m sure it’s a tremendous loss for you.”

  That got a sharp nod of her head.

  “It’s my understanding you’ve worked here—you’ve made a home for Father Patrick and the other priests serving St. Jerome’s—for many years.”

  “Fifty-one,” she said. “Father Patrick insisted on calling last year my golden anniversary year. He was always looking for something to celebrate, that one.”

  “I imagine you were like family.”

  That word undid her composure. She put her hands in front of her face when her bright blue eyes flooded. Peggy moved to Tillie’s side, patted her back, and made soothing noises when the elderly woman began gasping for breath. After several long minutes Tillie pulled a starched handkerchief out of her skirt pocket, dried her eyes and blew her nose.

  “Patrick was my favorite,” she said. “He was always so good to me. He stood behind me when the bishop tried to make me retire ten years ago. Convinced the old man I still was capable of the work of two women, and they let me stay on.” Tears started leaking again. “Truth be told, I had nowhere else to go.”

  I was nodding patiently, trying not to show my disappointment that Tillie was breaking her silence, but only to offer paeans to Patrick. Peggy continued to pat the Irishwoman’s narrow back.

  “We invited Joe to sit with us this afternoon so you could tell him what you know about how Patrick died.” Peggy’s voice was soothing but directive. “He can help, but you need to tell him what you heard that night.”

  Tillie blew her nose again, sat up straight and fixed those startling blue eyes on mine. “It was the other one,” she said. “I can’t even bring myself to say his name.”

  “Father DiAngelo,” Peggy said, her voice soft.

  “He’s no angel,” Tillie said. “He killed my Patrick.”

  I knew I had to project calm, despite my pounding heart. “How did it happen?”

  “They were arguing. Upstairs, where they have their rooms. They’d been fussing at each other a lot this summer and fall. Usually they kept their voices low. That night they didn’t even try to keep me from overhearing their row.”

  “What were they arguing about?”

  “Leaving,” Tillie said. “Not the parish, the priesthood. Patrick wanted to leave. He never spoke directly to me about it, but I heard them talking—arguing—on many occasions. Patrick wanted to leave the priesthood and move away, sometimes he said to Italy, other times he spoke of New Mexico. He told the other one he’d done what was asked and gotten some money together. He was hollering, Patrick was, saying they needed to go soon, to have what he called a full life in a new place, before they were too old.”

  “Father DiAngelo didn’t want to move?”

  “He wanted stay a priest, and right here in Maine. Patrick said he was done hiding, the world had changed and now he wanted what he’d always thought he could not have.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Peggy. She was Tillie’s friend. It would be more appropriate for her to ask the question that needed to be given voice.

  “They loved each other, as partners, for a long time, didn’t they?”

  Tillie nodded. “Since the other one arrived.”

  “And because you lived here, you knew. All these years,” I said.

  “They had the third floor to themselves and I gave them their privacy, but a woman would have to be deaf and blind not to have known.”

  “But they never actually told you they were lovers?”

  “There was no need for a big announcement. I don’t judge people. They knew that.”

  “But no one el
se knew they were together.”

  “Patrick’s sister was aware of it. I heard her teasing with them when she visited. I was cooking, but I was listening, too.”

  Kathleen knew. Of course she did. And predictably, she’d lied to me when I’d asked her. Her awareness that her brother had been DiAngelo’s lover explained the clandestine meetings better than Philo’s theory that she was having an affair with the priest.

  “So these arguments they were having, about Patrick wanting to move—”

  Tillie interrupted. “It wasn’t only that he wanted to move. He wanted to leave the priesthood. I heard him trying to convince Father Michael that the Church had failed them. It bolloxed the scandal with the evil priests, cared more about them than protecting the children. That was terrible, and as you know, Patrick stood up to the bishop over that. But he also could not abide that the Church failed to change with the times, and forced people like him to deny their true selves.”

  Her soft face was full of fierce love for the man she’d cherished like a son.

  “Patrick spoke with me about that issue several times, but in a veiled way,” Peggy said. “He never told me about him and Michael. I had no idea about that. Once or twice he expressed his anger that his beloved Church—which he always considered a beacon of enlightened thinking and social justice—was in the front lines fighting to keep same sex couples from marrying.”

  “How did he die?” My words brought the three of us back to the reality that Tillie’s favored priest and Peggy’s good friend was gone, never to enjoy the open life for which he’d been longing.

  Tillie twisted her handkerchief in her hands.

  “I’m not certain, but it happened upstairs. They were arguing. Their voices were louder than ever before. I was frightened. I was standing at the foot of the stairs, the ones leading from the second to the third floor, wondering if I should flick the light switch or do something to interrupt the fight, let them know I was overhearing. Patrick was pleading with Father Michael, asking him to listen. But he kept calling Patrick names, saying he would never leave. Then I heard slapping noises, and a big crash.”

  She was weeping again, silent, fat tears coursing down her narrow cheeks. “Then it was quiet, until he began to wail. And say he was sorry. That he didn’t mean it.”

  “Patrick?”

  Tillie looked up.

  “No,” she said. But she wasn’t answering the question, and she wasn’t looking at me. I turned when I heard the scrape of a shoe on the hardwood floor. Father Michael DiAngelo loomed in the doorway, wearing his topcoat and hat, holding a device topped by a blasting cap in his left hand.

  * * *

  Instinct is to hold your breath, which is exactly the wrong thing to do. When I started feeling like I was in the middle of a dream I realized I was bringing on my own lightheadedness, and drew air into my lungs. Once. Twice. Three times.

  DiAngelo held the bomb in front of him like an offering as he crossed the room and glanced out the front window.

  “You’re a stupid old woman, Tillie,” he said. “And a dirty gossip.”

  The tiny woman did not answer him, but she didn’t recoil.

  “I was going to let you leave,” he said. “Go to the market so you wouldn’t be here when the bomb went off.” He hefted it in his hand and reeled off the steps he’d planned to take, as though he was reciting a memorized poem. “Break the glass in the front door. Set it on the stairs. Run out the back door like the devil was on my tail.”

  “Then what?” I spoke before I considered the pros and cons. “How would setting off a bomb inside the rectory save you?”

  “It would end this ridiculous investigation,” he said.

  Nobody responded to that.

  “With the bishop’s blessing, I’ve been out of state on silent retreat since yesterday,” DiAngelo said. “No one knows I’m here and in a few hours I’ll be back there, cloistered in my room, oblivious to what has happened in the outside world.” He laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “The damned outside world. As Tillie so helpfully explained, that’s what came between Leonard and me.”

  Leonard. My heart thumped in my chest. The dead Musketeer.

  Peggy stood and faced DiAngelo. I did the same.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Sit down. Both of you.” His voice had steel in it.

  “You can’t retreat forever, Father,” I said. “The authorities will come find you at whatever monastery you’re hiding.”

  “By the time they get there, I’ll be gone. And so will the evidence the police believe they’ll find upstairs. At first the police were so kind—so sensitive—saying they didn’t need to invade our private space. But then they changed their mind, said they needed access to the upstairs, to snoop through our rooms and look for Pat’s blood or hair or tissue, whatever it is they think will allow them to prove in court that I killed him.”

  “What makes you think you’re a suspect?”

  DiAngelo spun his lanky body sideways and studied me, his long fingers fiddling with a wire on the side of the bomb. “Lieutenant Rigoletti is a crude man, but he isn’t stupid.”

  “Did you strike Patrick? Did you cause him to fall?” Peggy’s face was impassive, but her hands were shaking.

  “He fell. He fell and hit his head against a marble table. A man picks up a lot of velocity when he falls.” He shifted the bomb from his left hand to his right.

  “How did you move his body outside?”

  It was a calculated risk for me to address him, but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. DiAngelo’s know-it-all demeanor—paired with his delusion that he’d be able to set off a bomb in the rectory and escape unnoticed back to his room at the monastery—made it a risk worth taking.

  “I put him on my back and carried him to the garden. It nearly killed me. He wasn’t a particularly big boy, but it was a long walk.” DiAngelo laughed another mirthless laugh.

  “I was his Ricky. There was no reason we couldn’t have gone on that way. Michael by day. Ricardo by night. But he wanted to be Leonard all the time, to go out there in the big world, with no vestments. To leave Patrick behind.”

  Using the care one would use with a newborn, he set the bomb on the coffee table and collapsed into an adjacent wing chair, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. Before he looked up I’d eased my phone out of my pocket, thumbed the mute switch and tapped out a silent text to Barb Wyatt.

  rectory. sos.

  I tucked the phone under my right thigh. It vibrated ten seconds later, but there was no way I could answer it.

  Peggy was closer to the coffee table than I was, but the bomb was beyond her reach. She was focused on it like a laser, though, and I feared what she might do. If we were going to take DiAngelo on, our moves had to be coordinated.

  I was casting my eyes around the parlor for something I might use as a weapon when I spotted Rufe.

  He was outside the archway that led into the parlor, a pipe wrench in his massive hand. Heat washed through my body. If DiAngelo looked up, he wouldn’t be able to see Rufe. On the flip side, Rufe couldn’t see DiAngelo, and neither Peggy nor Tillie knew Rufe was there. I leaned forward in my chair and shot Tillie a look. She understood without words what I was asking. She stood and moved between DiAngelo and me, putting her hands on her hips to make her small frame as wide a screen as possible.

  “I didn’t know you for the bombing type, Michael,” she said. “You being such a gentle man.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” DiAngelo muttered.

  The bombs? Or leaving the priesthood? He didn’t say and it didn’t matter. We had to tip the balance in our favor and Tillie was providing us the chance.

  “I don’t even know where you learned to make such hurtful things.” The housekeeper had the Irish scold in her voice, the tone she’d used on me the first time I met her.

/>   “I didn’t make them.” DiAngelo’s voice had a hint of whine to it, like a kid naming a friend as the shoplifter of a stolen candy bar. “A boy confessed his sin to me. He knew it was wrong, to build bombs and set them off in the middle of the night, to frighten the whole town. He gave me two, as his penance.”

  Peggy glanced my way. I flicked my eyes at the doorway where Rufe was at the ready. She gave me the tiniest of nods.

  “And you defiled the Church by exploding one Sunday night.” Tillie’s voice was edging toward outrage.

  “The detectives wanted to come upstairs,” DiAngelo said. “I needed to give them something else to do.”

  Peggy pressed her hands together as though she were praying. She tapped her thumbs together three times, watching my eyes to see if I got the message.

  I nodded, glanced at Rufe, put my right hand on my knee where both Peggy and Rufe could see it, and gave the signal.

  One. Two. Three.

  Rufe hurled his wrench straight across the room, shattering the window to the right of my chair. I lunged for DiAngelo as glass exploded through the room, knocking Tillie sideways in my effort to get to him. At the same instant, Peggy went for the bomb.

  DiAngelo was half standing when I drove the top of my head into his stomach and wrapped my arms around his body. He fell backward into the chair and tried to use the advantage of his size to push me aside, but I hung on, tying him up long enough for Peggy to move beyond his reach. Then Rufe piled on, and DiAngelo didn’t have a chance. We pinned him to the chair and held him there for a long minute until half a dozen cops in SWAT gear barreled into the room.

  Barb Wyatt told me later the tactical police were stunned when Peggy stepped into the foyer with the bomb cradled in both hands. No muss, no fuss.

  “Take it,” she said to the first officer in. “Get it the hell out of here.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Stella, of course, had a front-row seat on the entire drama.

  She’d observed Tillie open the rectory’s side door to Peggy, and spied me entering via the front a few minutes before three. Intrigued, she stayed at her post, eyes scanning the street and churchyard until DiAngelo coasted into one of the parking spaces behind the rectory and let himself into the fenced garden. When he walked heel-to-toe to the side door, a person far less observant than Stella would have known he was trying hard not to be heard. But nobody could have missed the bomb. The tall priest carried it in both hands, like a talisman that made him invincible.