"I was nineteen when you were born. In age. I was . . . fifteen, the way Polish girls are raised, kept away from the boys, hearing stories of Saint Maria Goretti, the patroness of virginity, the little Italian girl who was raped and stabbed but lived long enough to forgive her attacker. That's what made her a saint, not her pain, not her death, bur her forgiveness of her despoiler."
"We agree. That kind of standard lessens women. It implies that they'd be better off dead than to be tainted forever by rape. It makes them property, not people."
"You think that? A priest.'"
"An ex-priest. But I've always thought that. The seminar was strict; it was doctrinaire, but ten percent of the seminarians were women in my day, and more are enrolled now that so few men are joining the priesthood. The instructors didn't quite dare hold the double standard as high as they might have, and they were never as Old World as we were at St. Stan's. Actually, the seminary was very liberating for me."
His mother sat back, underneath the Black Madonna, an expression on her face he'd never seen before.
"Perhaps this will not be so difficult," she muttered. "Or perhaps it will be even more difficult, to make you see how it was then."
"I want to see," Matt said. "You don't have to make me. Just let me in." He set the empty cup of cocoa on the low table next to the chair, with its cheap, ring proof, baked-on finish.
"There's no point getting into your real father. I was eighteen with the mind and heart of a child. We met only once. I can't say what happened. I was too ignorant to know. There was chemistry. It felt like a miracle. He was very handsome. I can't say I loved him, or he loved me, but we were both dazzled for the moment. I never saw him again."
Matt absorbed the story, vague as it was. "Once, and I--?"
She nodded. "As if the angels were laughing at me. I'd heard the tougher girls in school, the ones who rolled their uniform skirts higher than the rest and who smoked cigarettes and worse in the rest room. They were . . . taking chances all the time, and trusting to shaken bottles of Coca-Cola to protect them. Apparently it worked, for I was the only one who didn't graduate."
"You didn't graduate? Not even . . . privately?"
She shook her head. "No. Everything changed. I was sent away to a very cold, hard place for girls like me to wait. We worked like drudges, cleaned up the delivery room even when the morning sickness made us vomit. Twice a week we were walked into 'town' for 'recreation.' The recreation was the townspeople's. They gawked and pointed at us. When our times came it was like torture. Comfort seemed to be too good for us. Most were persuaded to give up their children to couples who could have none. I was stubborn."
"My God, Mother, that was only ... thirty-some years ago. What you're describing is some medieval penitentiary for fallen women."
"It was only thirty-some years ago, but it was like that. In far northern Wisconsin. I think the place is a hospice for the terminally ill now."
"Why did you keep me?"
"Are you complaining?"
"No, I just want to know. It would have been easier the other way."
Again she shook her head. "No. I've seen some of those girls since. They've had easier lives, but they're haunted harder. I can look at you now. Despite the past, you are healthy, well educated, you have spent most of your life serving others. I only mourn your priesthood because I saw it as a sanctuary for you. If now you want to live another life, go ahead. I just. . . don't like the past. Look forward, not back."
He nodded. "Then you don't disapprove?"
"No, never that. But I'm fearful. I don't want you feeling what I've felt for so long. An outcast in your own family. Your priesthood redeemed us, and especially you, as my marriage to that man redeemed us. In the family, in the church."
"But... he was worthless."
"He was a husband, and he was willing to marry in the church. As bad as things became in this house later, beyond it they were much, much better. I was able to go out and get work--"
"And needed to, with that lout around."
"Matt!"
He shrugged. She felt she had made the right choice, the only choice. She would never admit otherwise, but he wondered if she understood the effect of that unhappy domestic life on him, or the fears of himself it had raised.
"What about my real father?"
She straightened nonexistent folds in her gray wool skirt. His mother had never worn pants; in her youth, the fifties, Polish girls wore skirts and were not allowed to don trousers. Much less blue jeans . . . ! Surely, those rules were long gone now?
"I never heard from him again." When Matt would have spoken, she went on, raising a hand. "This you must never tell anyone. When you were just past two, a man came from the City. Downtown Chicago. A man in a very fine suit. He said he was a lawyer, and that . . . the family had learned of our existence because their son had died. In Vietnam. I was to have a settlement. A one-time settlement, and then I would have nothing more to do with them. It could be child support, paid on a Certain schedule, or something else I wanted."
She smiled and looked around. "I asked for a house, just a two-flat. With a house I would have the security of rental income from upstairs, and whatever small wages I earned would be sufficient. The lawyer agreed, and handled everything."
"But you bought it here, in the old neighborhood, that was going the way of all old neighborhoods, into decay. No new start. No escape."
"There was no escape for me anywhere. And you were better off knowing the family. Bo and Mary Margaret hadn't moved out to the suburbs yet. The house was why Cliff married me. He had big plans in those days. I think he was sincere in his way. Only when his big ideas didn't work out, he drank and then he gambled, hoping to win a fortune, and finally he became . . . But he left. You left. The Latinos moved in, some of them, but the yuppies want to move in more. Real-estate values have escalated. You'd be surprised. I have the house."
She was the daughter of people who had been through the Depression. The house was everything. And it had given them stability, even as it had attracted the worst element in their life together. Matt nodded. He couldn't argue with her choice of so long ago.
"Was Devine really my father's name?"
She shook her head. "I never knew his last name, and the lawyer wasn't about to tell me. Devine is a name I got from my favorite Christmas hymn, not spelled that way, but I changed it."
"Christmas hymn?" Matt's memory pulled up no phrase containing the word "divine."
" 'O Holy Night. O night divine.' "She was smiling.
Matt, knee-jerk shrink that he had become, wondered if she realized she had named him for a night, a single night, on which another infant was born, if not conceived. Or was Matt conceived on that night? His birthday was in September . . . ?
"What was his first name?"
"Who?"
"My father."
She hesitated. "If you don't mind, I'd rather not say. I... can't say it. He was from a well-educated, well-to-do family. It's not only the settlement that makes me think that. It's how I met him. In church, lighting two full rows of candles before the Virgin. I guess he came to St. Stan's because it was old-fashioned enough to have the plaster statues with the tiers of candles before them, and the poor box. He was going to war. He didn't have to, he said, but he thought it was the right thing to do, even though he had an easy out. I suppose that was college."
"And that was the night when . . . ?"
She looked down, to the bare, entwined hands on her lap. "I've said enough. I was another person then. You see why that man in Las Vegas doesn't matter at all anymore?"
Matt nodded again. She would never understand that while she could suffer Effinger's abuse for the long-term good, a male child in that household could never be reconciled with it.
The blood feud went on, not over Matt's mother any more, but between Matt and Cliff Effinger. Over what had happened between them. Some wars you can't opt out of, as Matt's real father had apparently known before him. Those are the wars you fight wit
h yourself before and after you fight them with--or for--someone else. Maybe turning Effinger over to the authorities would end this conflict. Matt would see how he felt when he got back.
"What are you going to do when you get back?" his mother asked, eerily echoing his thoughts.
"I don't know. I've got some major decisions to make. About my job. About other things."
"Have you made friends in Las Vegas?"
"Yes. Yes, I have. The volunteers at the hot line are quite interesting, quite admirable. And I have the wildest landlady; she's loaned me her motorcycle to get around on."
"Motorcycle!"
"Don't worry. Electra's in her sixties. Yeah, she rode that motorcycle before she lent it to me. And . . . I'm sort of friends with a police lieutenant."
"Any girlfriends'"
"Well, the police lieutenant's a woman, but I wouldn't exactly call her a girlfriend. My neighbor, Temple, is pretty incredible, though."
His mother nodded, smiling, politely inquiring, trying. "Temple." The name probably struck her as odd, if not blasphemous. "Is she a nice girl?"
Matt doubted that Temple would object to the term "girl" under the circumstances. "A very nice girl."
"Catholic?"
"Not. . . quite."
His mother nodded cautiously, smiling, but said nothing.
Chapter 29
"Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire..."
Temple returned to Colby, Janos and Renaldi Monday morning fully loaded for Louie (CatAboard, Allpetco cat food, cat minilitterbox) wondering what they would do today after the disaster Saturday night. Would it be business as usual?
Not if Kendall Colby Renaldi was involved.
While Temple had spent her time off tracking the sad life and sadder dead body of Rudy Lasko, Kendall had been doing something very different.
She met Temple and Louie as soon as the receptionist announced them. Her face was pale and her eye makeup merged with the dark circles around her eyes, but a bundle of manila folders lay in the crook of one arm, and her voice was brisk.
"Temple. I'm so glad you're early. We need to talk."
Temple trudged after her clicking heels to the tiny office. Kendall didn't even offer to help her unfasten Louie's carrier or take her coat. She shut the door as soon as Temple was inside the cubicle and began speaking.
"It's incredible that I didn't think of you sooner. Daddy has been playing the stoic, trying to dismiss what happened He insists that the victim, whoever he was, was really the intended victim, or else the victim of some outre accident. But who would want to kill some nameless Santa Claus nobody knew was going to be there, except for Daddy and the man himself?"
"Well, the Santa substitute could have mentioned the assignment to a friend. But I happen to know he didn't have many. So, really? Your father believes the actor was the target?"
"He's just trying to reassure me. He knows what a shock this has been. First, my divorce. Now this." Kendall sat at her desk and tapped her pile of folders. "Daddy is simply too confident a man for his own good. If someone tried to kill him once, and missed, that someone will try again. We've got to find the killer."
"We've?"
Temple was feeling overheated and slightly sick in her outdoor clothes, so she unlatched straps and began to struggle out of Louie, Inc.
"It's so obvious!" Kendall was oblivious to surrounding distractions. "Who's right here, with plenty of experience with murder? You!"
"Don't forget Louie."
Kendall glanced at the cat, now struggling out of the unfastened bag. How symbolic, Temple thought.
"I don't know what the cat can do here, or what he did anywhere else. Certainly, he was impressive in alerting us to the . . . hanging. Daddy keeps saying, who would want to kill him, but he isn't looking at things as I am."
"And what are you looking at?" Temple was interested despite herself.
Even Louie leaped atop Kendall's desk and began pawing the file folders in an eerily purposeful manner.
"I'll tell you soon enough." Kendall clapped a hand over the folders and gave Louie a narrow look. Then she leaned closer to Temple and lowered her voice. "Daddy may not know it, but when Carl and I were discussing divorce, it came out that Carl can't count on his daddy to tide him over in the manner to which he has become accustomed, because poor old Tony's private investments have taken a fatal turn for the worse."
"How would that motivate the elder Renaldi to want your father dead?"
"Daddy is the head and heart of this agency. With him gone, the remaining two partners could sell it for a bundle and divide the spoils. Of course I would get Daddy's portion--if they don't kill me too--but each surviving partner's share would be plenty. This is a report on the agency's worth."
"What makes you think that Victor Janos would give up the business without a fight?"
Kendall clenched the fat file she was about to hand to Temple. "Because Victor Janos commissioned this report on the state of the agency on today's market. I got it out of the personal files in his office."
"Why would he want to bow out?"
"I'm not sure, but both these guys are in their fifties. Maybe they crave an early retirement. Daddy will work until he drops. Or is dropped."
"Wouldn't it be simpler for your father to buy out his partners if they wanted to retire early?"
"Both of them? At his age, it'd hardly be feasible for him to continue on solo, and solid new partners are hard to find. Besides, the name means something. Colby, Wilcox and Whatzit would be meaningless. Unfortunately, the partners are like the Three Musketeers. They've always been in lockstep."
"Why would Victor Janos want to sell?"
"I don't know. But I've never trusted the man, not since I was a tiny child. I always wondered why Daddy associated with someone so . . . rough. You can see his edges still need filing down; he's not adapted as Tony Renaldi has."
"What about the grand sixties experiment? Men from different levels of society united by an ugly war into a friendship that overleaped social barriers. You know: the sixties, everybody get together and love one another. Sometimes literally, from what I hear."
"Listen. The partners have been inseparable, but it's always been business underneath the socializing." Kendall's eyes narrowed again. She looked older and harder. "I was awake all Saturday and Sunday nights, thinking. That was a clever, difficult way to murder someone? Whoever did it had to know how traps and snares work. Weren't there tunnels and traps in Vietnam?"
"I'm only a few yean older than you, Kendall don't look at me. I don't know." This time Temple narrowed her eyes. Narrowing one's eyes felt so Humphrey Bogart. "I do know that the victim was also a Vietnam vet."
"There! You see?"
"What do I see?"
"That it can't be just a coincidence. Maybe . . . maybe the dead Santa was hired to do in Daddy and somehow got caught in his own trap."
Now Temple understood how Lieutenant C. R. Molina felt about amateurs.
"That doesn't make sense. Your father was not going to be anywhere near that chimney Saturday night, and no one knew that better than the guy who played Santa Claus in his stead."
"The actor could have feigned being sick, then asked Father to do the chimney routine for him."
"Great idea. But he didn't. He went up the chimney and hung himself."
"Maybe he had a change of conscience. Maybe he had war flashbacks or something and decided to commit suicide."
"Thirty years later in somebody else's chimney?"
Kendall shrugged. Her haggard desperation both tugged at Temple's sympathies and exasperated her. Kendall had seen her father "die" before her eyes. The fact that the victim wasn't really him didn't lessen the emotional damage. A man had died by another's hand. Now Kendall sat shuffling files and papers, hunting for a motive and a killer and suspecting everyone around her.
"Could it be someone from the younger generation?" Temple asked.
Kendall looked up from pawing through the papers, and froze. "Yo
u mean . . . someone like Carl, my ex-husband?"
Temple nodded.
"No. Oh, we've all lived our lives under the umbrella of the firm, and I'll work here as long as Daddy's at the helm, but none of my peers really are that interested in taking on the agency once their fathers retire. I guess advertising was exciting back in the sixties. Television was still pretty new and there were a lot more daily newspapers. But everybody's into the Internet now. I can't think who else would want something, something about the firm, badly enough to kill my father. Except one of his partners. They were in a war, weren't they? They killed people then. Why not now?"
"What's on for me and Louie today?"
The abrupt change of subject startled Kendall into answering. "More mock interviews, lunch here with The Client. Nobody's heart is much in it, but Daddy won't let this account slide away because someone went nuts."
"I suppose I could get better acquainted with Victor and Tony. Anything you can think of to get me some private moments with them?"
"Oh, thank you!" Kendall grinned. "I can think up something." She pulled another file from a drawer. Temple glimpsed her own name on it.
"Improvisation is the name of the game in advertising." Kendall flipped through Temple's vitae as blithely as if it were wrapping paper. "Aha. Says here you're consulting with a major Las Vegas hotel on a new multimedia attraction."
"The Crystal Phoenix."
"Huh?"
"That's the hotel's name."
"Oh. Too bad it isn't something big like Caesars Palace or the MGM Grand. Anyway, new attraction equals promotional campaign. Who better than Colby, Janos and Renaldi for the job? We'll both look good if I bring you in as a potential client."
Temple shook her head, meaning agreement, but also conveying a certain skepticism. "Okay. I'm undercover for now. Bring on the murdering partners."
Temple learned a lot just from the way Kendall approached each man.
She began with Tony Renaldi, which indicated she suspected him less and liked him better. At his office door, she poked her head through, smiled and asked, "Got some espresso for a couple of weary survivors?"
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