A chuckle. “You may be right.”
“Who is Mame Childers?”
A pause. “Another client.”
“Dad, I’d watch out for that guy Briggs.”
17
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING about,” Jay Williams said when Roger told him he had received his poem.
“I won’t say that I enjoyed it as poetry, but as a code, it is interesting.”
Jay sat forward with the beginning of a smile on his face.
“The initial letters,” Roger said.
Jay fell back, shaking his head. “Congratulations. You really are a detective.”
“Oh, anybody could have figured this out. Anyone who had the air let out of his tires, that is.”
The initial letters spelled Anaximenes, the pre-Socratic philosopher who thought he could reduce the variety of things to their elements and the other elements to air.
“So what was the point, Jay?”
“I was testing your detective skills.” The little smile was gone, replaced by an apparently sincere expression of concern. “You’ve met my father.”
“Yes.”
“He’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know. This financial mess has hit him hard, I know that. If he wasn’t my father, I would think the recession was divine justice. I think there’s something more, though.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Would you want to quiz your father?”
Roger wondered if David Williams would want to tell his son about the strange bequest from his old classmate, Brother Joachim. On the other hand, why should that be kept a secret from his son? The surprising bonanza would surely go a long way toward solving any financial difficulties David Williams was in, but his impulsive, almost horrified statement that he would have nothing to do with the money seemed connected with the confessional story Brother Joachim had sent to the archives. That didn’t seem to be it, though.
“One of his clients was out here and wanted to see me. A man named Briggs. A spooky guy.”
“Spooky?”
“He all but threatened my father.”
“You should tell your father.”
“I did.” Jay inhaled. “What are your rates?”
“How do you mean?”
“I want to hire a detective.”
“You couldn’t afford me.”
“Oh, but I could. I’m loaded, thanks to my mother.”
Roger Knight said nothing.
“The client who looked me up? Larry Briggs. I think he is stalking my father.”
Roger listened to the account of Briggs’s visit. “Just french fries?”
“I ate his cheeseburger after he left.”
“I think I know what’s bothering your father, Jay.”
“What?”
“He will tell you if he wants you to know.”
“What’s the big secret?”
“Is it a secret just because he hasn’t told you?”
“You ought to write poetry.”
“Oh, I do.”
Jay left, angry. All students have rough edges—how could they not, given their age?—but Jay Williams was difficult to like. Amanda, of course, was another story.
“Jay told me about that stupid poem, Professor. And letting the air out of your tires. I had nothing to do with that.”
“I never thought you did.”
Emil Chadwick made a face when Roger tracked down the initial letters of the poem that had been slipped under their doors. “There’s a name for that sort of thing.”
“Anaximenes.”
“Usually the initial letters give the name of the dedicatee, Roger. Maybe no one could write a decent poem under those constraints.”
“I’ve explained it to Sarah, so she will know that her receiving copies of the messages had no more to do with her than it did with you.”
Chadwick mumbled once again through Jay Williams’s coded verse. “Do you know what Johnson said of Pope’s Essay on Man?”
“Tell me.”
“I’ll do better. I’ll read it to you.” He rolled toward a bookshelf and ran his finger over his complete set of Samuel Johnson. Having found The Lives of the Poets, he opened it and, after a moment, read. “‘The subject is perhaps not very proper for poetry, and the poet was not sufficiently master of his subject; metaphysical morality was to him a new study, he was proud of his acquisitions, and, supposing himself master of great secrets, was in haste to teach what he had not learned.’”
He clapped the book shut and beamed at Roger.
“Wonderful,” Roger agreed.
“He goes on and on like that. Of course, he liked most of Pope.”
“And Dryden.”
“Yes. He places those two above all the others he treated. And both were Catholic.”
The thought of giving a seminar on Dryden and Pope drifted across Roger’s mind, but another thought was more insistent. “Your son is a Trappist monk.”
“In Kentucky.”
“Do you ever visit him?”
Chadwick looked abject. “You have touched on a sore point. He is geographically closer than my other children—it is only a half day’s drive to Gethsemani Abbey—yet it has been three years since I was there.”
“We ought to pay him a visit sometime.”
“Are you serious?”
“Midsemester could be a possibility.”
Chadwick became almost excited. “We could stay in the guesthouse.”
“You’re able to talk with your son?”
“Trappist silence? A thing of the past. One of Maurice’s complaints.”
“There’s another monk there I’d like to see.”
Jay Williams, who had acquired a stringent view on usury, thought the financial crisis was divine justice. He also thought his father was in danger from some of his clients. His father’s reaction to the bequest from Brother Joachim suggested that there was another sort of retribution troubling David Williams. Was Brother Joachim engaged in some sort of celestial blackmail? Roger was eager to talk to the monk, but there were weeks to go before he could set off with Emil Chadwick for Our Lady of Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky. Meanwhile Phil had grown impatient of all the mystery.
“Jimmy Stewart and I are going to move that rock and dig to see if there is anything there.”
“So you’ve told Jimmy.” Stewart was a detective on the South Bend police with whom they had struck up a friendship. “Have you told Father Carmody what you intend to do?”
“He’ll be there.”
So early one morning a small band left the road beneath the Log Chapel and trudged across the lawn to the boulder. Father Carmody grunted beside Roger as they followed Phil and Jimmy Stewart, who were armed with a pickaxe and a shovel, respectively. In the first light, the campus had an odd allure, waiting for sun to bring it into its full beauty.
“I feel like a grave robber,” Roger said.
“Let’s see what we find.”
Even a small boulder is a boulder, and this one had settled into the ground over the years since Patrick Pelligrino had placed it as the marker for the spot where he claimed to have buried the body of Timothy Quinn. Jimmy got one point of the pickaxe under the boulder, jiggling it down, until it served as a lever. He leaned on the handle, and the boulder moved. Phil shoved his spade under the opening. Jimmy’s next effort got the boulder on end, and with his foot he toppled it free. Then Phil went to work, making a neat pile of the dirt he removed. The others stood around, watching expectantly.
The rotted box was three feet down. Jimmy and Phil crouched over the hole while Roger and Father Carmody kibitzed over their shoulders.
“I don’t see any bones,” Father Carmody said. He sounded relieved.
With the shovel, Phil knocked away the rotted wood and reached into the hole. Then he stopped, put on his glove, and reached again. The morning sun had begun to slant through the trees when he brought forth what had been beside the box.
They all stared at it.
A hatchet.
“Is that all?”
“He only buried the hatchet,” Father Carmody cried, relishing the phrase.
No, there was more. Roger lumbered forward and lowered himself to his knees. He lifted a side of the box that had crumbled. He let out an enormous sigh and gestured to Father Carmody.
“What is it?” the priest asked, bending down next to Roger.
“Bones, Father.”
“Dear God.” Father Carmody’s hand went up, and he traced a blessing over the remains.
“Those aren’t the bones of an adult,” Roger said.
Father Carmody said nothing.
PART TWO
THE BODY IN THE HERMITAGE
1
DAVE HAD DELLA SET UP AN APPOINTMENT for Larry Briggs, and Larry was there half an hour early. When he was ready for him, Dave went to the room in which Della had put him to find Larry glaring at the numbers flickering across the screen.
“I hate those goddam things.”
“Actually it’s the best day we’ve had in weeks.”
“Meaning lousy.”
“Let’s go to my office.”
“What’s wrong with here?”
“Not a thing. Larry, I’ve wanted to have this conversation for a long time.”
“Then why have you been dodging me? I flew out to Notre Dame, hoping to catch you there, but you were already gone.”
“I won’t have you bothering my son, Larry.”
“It’s you I want to bother. Your secretary told me—”
“Administrative assistant,” Dave corrected.
“Whatever. She told me you were in Florida, but you were gone by the time I got there.”
“I wasn’t at my condo on Longboat Key.”
“I went to Siesta Key.”
“Casey Winthrop?”
“That’s right.”
Dave already knew of this because Casey had called to ask if his other clients were as nutty as Briggs.
“Why else would they be my clients?”
“Mame isn’t nutty.”
“No.” That was when Dave had decided to unload Larry Briggs.
“I’m sorry you went to all that pointless trouble, Larry.”
“Pointless! Do you know what this is doing to Philippa? As you damned well know, that money came from the sale of her father’s business.”
“Larry, my suggestion is that you get out of the market.”
“You’re dropping me?” Larry was aghast.
“You don’t have the temperament for it. Let’s cash you out—”
“What could I possibly gain by that? Last time we talked, you sounded optimistic.”
“I think the market will correct itself, yes. In time. But it will take more patience than you’ve got.”
“Bullshit.” Briggs sat up as he said this, then once more slumped forward, his menacing hands dangling between his knees. He looked as if he’d like to put them around Dave’s throat. “You’ve put me in the poorhouse.” Now he sounded like he was going to cry.
“Not quite that bad. Larry, here is my proposal. We will cash you out, and I will make up the difference between what we realize and your original investment.”
Larry turned his head and stared at Dave. He began to nod. “That’s what I want, all right, but not that way. You’re as bad as Bernie Madoff. I’m going to sue.”
“You’d lose and waste a lot of money besides.”
“I want people to know what you’ve done to me.”
“Any lawyer, well, almost any lawyer, would advise against that.”
“You’re worried about the publicity.”
“Well, I wouldn’t welcome it. Let’s do what I suggested. I hope you understand that I am under no obligation to do what I propose.”
“I don’t want your charity.”
“Just my scalp?”
“Yes!”
Dave observed some moments of silence. He decided not to tell Larry again what he thought of his bothering Jay with his problems. “Larry, today would be a good day for you to get out. Let’s look into it.”
They moved to Dave’s office; he called in Della and told her that Larry was cashing out.
“Just tell me what I’m worth now.”
“That’s what we’re going to do.”
Half an hour later, Della brought him the figures. Dave glanced at them and tried not to think how much he would have to add to the amount on the basis of the proposal he had made to Larry. He handed Larry the paper.
“My God!”
“Shall I sell?” Della asked.
“Larry?”
“You meant what you said earlier?”
“Yes.”
“You’re trying to buy me off.”
“Larry, you’re a hard guy to be nice to.”
Larry glared at Della. “Sell it all.”
Dave nodded, and Della withdrew.
Larry was staring at the figures he had been given. “I’ve lost at least forty percent.”
“That leaves you quite a bit. Bank it, Larry. Bank it and forget about it.”
“Don’t think this squares us, Dave. Maybe I can find an adviser who knows what he’s doing.”
For the rest of the week, the market was on a sharply rising line.
Larry called, furious. “You sonofabitch.”
“Larry, you haven’t lost or gained a thing. You’re back where you were.”
“After what you’ve put me through?”
He slammed down the phone.
2
AFTER PEACHES TOLD CASEY OF MAME Childers’s interest in Dave Williams’s place on Longboat Key, she fell silent, a little kewpie doll smile on her lips, eyes wide.
“Why would she want a place on Longboat Key?”
“She doesn’t.”
“So you don’t think she’s serious?”
“You tell me. She’s your friend. Know what I do think?”
What Peaches thought was that Mame would like to buy the place and sign it back to Dave Williams. “Casey, he’s all she talks about. She’s nuts about him.”
He thought about that. She had been nuts about Dave years ago, when they were all students. Casey knew that because he had become her target of opportunity, her ticket into all their doings; no member of the trinity would ask her.
“They had girls of their own?”
“The same one. Beth Hanrahan.”
“They couldn’t all take out the same girl!”
“It all depends what you mean by taking out. We did things together. Pat wrote plays, Beth and Dave starred in them, Quinn was a poet.”
“And you?”
“I wrote sports for the Observer.”
She leaned over him and kissed his nose. “I love you.”
She crossed the room and eased herself into a chair, sighing as she did so. The phrase “heavy with child” turned out not to be a metaphor. “So who was Mame’s boyfriend?”
“Me.”
“I take back that kiss.”
Memories of Notre Dame and of his classmates, particularly the trinity and Beth and Mame, began to interfere with the plot of the novel he was writing. He tried to banish them by making notes, but that only increased the flow of memories and, more to the point, thoughts of what he could make of them, fictionwise. Isn’t that what Pat had attempted in the story he sent to the archives? Casey was powerfully tempted to set aside the novel he was working on and give full attention to what was now a distraction. In a later preface to Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton had mentioned the temptation a writer often feels when, in the midst of one story, an idea for another occurs, one which always looks more alluring than the one being written. Her advice: Never succumb to that temptation. Finish what you have started before turning to anything else. It was advice that Casey had always followed even if, as he learned, Edith Wharton hadn’t. She was forever setting things aside in favor of another story. Maybe her fervor in that preface was the plea of the fallen rather than
the stern voice of discipline.
Casey set aside the Western he was writing, looked at the notes he had taken while fighting temptation, threw them away, and started as he always had, by starting. He would discover the story as he went along. Maybe that’s what Pat Pelligrino had done when writing the story he sent to the Notre Dame archives. Dave, when he told Casey about it, tried to laugh it off, but it was clear it bothered him. No wonder. Joachim all but accused him of taking a hatchet to Timothy Quinn. Casey was sure he could make a better story of those events.
Three guys after the same girl, and one of them disappears. The other two look accusingly at one another. The story would bring out the fact that each had reason to suspect that the other had something to do with the missing member of the trinity. The disappearance alters the chemistry of the group, as Timothy Quinn’s disappearance had affected them all. The girl becomes wrapped up in things at St. Mary’s. Pat stops writing, Dave switches his major to business, and nothing is what it was before. Except Casey and Mame. They lasted right up to graduation, almost beyond it, but Casey briefly took a job on the sports page of the Sioux City paper, and Mame went to New York.
For years, nothing, and now Dave with his business apparently gone belly up wants to liquidate his Florida holdings. He came down again for the sale of his boat, and they had lunch at Marina Jack’s to celebrate the price the boat had brought. Of course, it was sad the boat had to go.
“You can always buy another.”
“I’ve been thinking of how seldom we used that one.”
“Mame Childers paid us a visit.”
“She’s a client of mine.”
“So she said. Is she as loaded as she appears?”
“She came out of her divorce with a pile.”
“Divorce?”
“She was married to a non-Catholic.”
“How do people live in Manhattan?”
Dave thought about it. “From day to day. Like everywhere else.” Casey thought of Larry Briggs. What a business Dave was in. And Casey had thought editors were a pain in the posterior.
He said, “Mame seems interested in this area.”
Dave just nodded.
“She’s asked Peaches about your place on Longboat.”
Sham Rock Page 8
