Jerry, I knew, served as an altar boy at St. Joseph’s Parish in River’s Edge. Glen had married a Catholic and agreed to bring up the kids in her religion. Their religious orientation didn’t bother me.
I watched Jerry carefully as he told me the story. He’d served Saturday morning Mass earlier today for Father Clarence Rogers. Jerry had actually forgotten his ice skates in the altar boys’ robing room off the sacristy and had gone back to get them. He’d been rooting around in the back of a walk-in closet under a pile of old cassocks when he’d heard angry voices.
Jerry’d only recognized Father Clarence’s voice, and he didn’t hear everything they said, but a lot of what he did hear was about Father Sebastian. The two voices blamed each other for his death, one of them saying they were lucky to be Catholic priests in Cook County, where people still respected the clergy enough to know when to shut up. They’d yelled about screwing their stories up when they talked to the police.
Jerry’d frozen when the voices started. You weren’t supposed to be in the sacristy without permission. The voices faded. Jerry began to think he was safe. He stretched to relax his tense muscles. In doing so he bumped a row of empty hangers. They clanged resoundingly. He prayed the voices had gone far enough not to hear, and for tense moments nothing happened.
Then the door swung open. Father Clarence dragged him out of the closet and raged at him for ten minutes about being a sneak, and a cheat who would go to hell.
“I kind of believed the threats, and kind of not. He was really mad, and he did scare me. Uncle Tom, I don’t understand all this.” Jerry scratched the brush-cut side of his head. The hair on top and in back flowed in waves nearly to his shoulders. “He said if I told, I’d be sorry. I lied and told him I didn’t hear anything, but I don’t know if he believed me.
“I thought about it as I walked home. I know I’m not supposed to tell lies, especially to a priest, but I’m glad I did. If I listened to him, I’d have to live in fear. You told me you’d never do that. I won’t either.” He looked proud, young shoulders squared, chin thrust forward just like his dad’s when daring us to fight thirty years ago.
I said, “You were right to tell me. Don’t worry about the lie you told him. You don’t have to be afraid of some priest. His threats sound like those of a terrified man, not somebody who’s practicing what a good priest is supposed to do.”
I watched some of the tension drain from his body. “I’m glad I told you. My dad would have yelled and carried on. He might not even believe me. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t tell my dad, will you, Uncle Tom?”
“Not unless you say it’s okay,” I said. I asked him a few questions about what he’d heard, but he only remembered what he’d already told me. I asked him about Father Sebastian. He frowned. Said he didn’t know him well. Father Clarence ran the altar boy program and taught them religion classes at school. He’d only served mass for Father Sebastian twice. They’d barely talked before and after the service.
“What are you going to do?” Jerry asked.
“What do you want me to do?”
He looked at me carefully, then gave me a wicked grin. “Get the son of a bitch.”
“I think I’ll have a little chat with Father Clarence in the morning.”
“Don’t hurt him too much,” Jerry said.
I smiled. “I won’t.” I clapped Jerry on the shoulder and stood up. “Maybe I’ll beat you at Monopoly tonight,” I said as we mounted the stairs.
I won the last Monopoly game. First Glen, then Jerry, landed on Marvin Gardens with a hotel just after I made a fortunate deal with Scott. Served them right for bankrupting me in the first two games. They left at eleven.
I’ve got an old VCR and a small TV in the bedroom. We threw the unfinished movie into the system, turned the sound on low, got undressed, and crawled into bed. Scott sat up with his back propped by a mound of pillows against the headboard. I pressed my back onto his chest. He draped his arms around me. He waited until we were comfortable to ask what was bothering Jerry.
I pressed the pause button on the remote control.
“How did you know he was upset?”
I felt him shrug. “Instinct.”
Scott is great with kids, especially those under six years old. When we’d known each other about two years, I agreed to baby-sit Glen’s kids while he and Jeannette took a two-week cruise to the Bahamas over Christmas vacation. I half expected Scott to retreat to his Lake Shore Drive penthouse, a recent purchase after his first million-dollar contract. Instead, he’d eagerly volunteered to help. Some things I’m good at. They don’t include little kids, but I owed Glen and Jeannette a big favor.
Jerry’d just turned five. The other kids were younger, down to six months old. Over the two weeks we’d done a couple of family things with my other nephews and nieces: Lincoln Park Zoo, the Field Museum. Scott amazed me. He can organize a herd of unruly kids as well as any mother. Then, after a mildly chaotic, kid-filled New Year’s Eve, Jerry woke up in the middle of the night frightened, crying, and throwing up. I hadn’t the
first notion of what was wrong or what to do. The kid wouldn’t stop being sick. I’d about decided on a trip to the hospital emergency room when Scott padded into the kitchen. Through his yawns he quickly sized up the situation. He took the kid, and I ran to get dressed.
Minutes later I found them in the rocking chair in the darkened living room. I watched from the kitchen doorway. Scott rocked Jerry slowly, speaking softly to him. The crying had become intermittent. Once in a while Jerry asked for something to drink.
I brought a glass of water from the kitchen, knelt next to them, and offered him the drink. Scott shook his head. “He won’t keep it down,” he said. “Bring me a towel.”
I dashed to the bathroom and hurried back. “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered.
At that moment Jerry let out a series of plaintive cries. Scott soothed him. “He’s probably got a touch of the flu. He shouldn’t drink anything until he’s done throwing up. When that’s over, we could give him a few sips of warm Coke.”
Of course there wasn’t any in the house. So I ran to the White Hen at 191st and Wolf Road. I got back in ten minutes. The two still rocked. Jerry was crying softly and whining, but his arms were tightly and trustingly entwined around Scott’s neck.
“Let’s try a little of the Coke. I think he’s had time for his stomach to settle enough.” I opened it and gave it to him. The kid kept it down. The crying bouts came farther apart and the sips closer together. Some time before he sent me back to bed, Scott told me he’d learned his kid skills taking care of his older sister’s family as he grew up. He spent most of his teenage years either playing baseball or baby-sitting.
Later, when I felt him crawl into bed, I glanced at the clock, saw it was five. He’d been up over three hours.
“Jerry okay?” I mumbled.
“Fine.” He sighed.
I snuggled close to him. I knew then—if I’d ever doubted
it—that I loved him and wanted to stay with him forever. Later I told him. Fortunately, he felt the same.
Now I filled him in on Jerry’s story. His reaction was the same as mine: we had to check it out. I outlined my ideas for the next day. Besides a visit to the priest and the cops, I wanted to see Neil and his buddies. I’d find out if this Father Clarence committed murder, and if he did, I’d nail his ass to the altar. Nobody threatens my favorite nephew! When Jerry told me, I’d masked my anger for his sake, but while telling the story to Scott, I’d begun to get furious at this priest. Scott calmed me down, and we discussed strategy for meeting the priest the next day.
Around midnight we turned the movie back on. We wound up engrossed in Kevin Costner building his dream. We cried at the end as we always do. I clicked off the TV. Scott nestled into my arms, and we fell asleep.
Next morning I woke Neil Spirakos at 9 A.M. He cursed at the interruption of his beauty sleep, which even he acknowledged he needed more than the rest of us, but stopped when I told him I’d changed my mind about checking into the murder and explained about Jerry. I told him I wanted to meet with the people in the Faith organization who had the closest connection to Father Sebastian. He promised to set up a meeting for some time that day. They had a board meeting at four and Mass at six.
I phoned the River’s Edge police station and asked Frank Murphy if we could see him. A police lieutenant and an old friend, he agreed to meet us late that morning.
I tried calling the rectory but only got an answering machine. It said their office hours were Monday through Friday nine to eleven-thirty, two to four, and seven to nine. I’d never heard of part-time clergy before. I figured if you wanted to be a priest, it was sort of like being a doctor. People’s troubles don’t usually come conveniently according to fixed schedules. Maybe I’m
old-fashioned, but if you’re in the business of helping people with problems, aren’t you on duty twenty-four hours a day?
We decided to drive over and confront Father Clarence unannounced. We arrived at St. Joseph’s Church to a slowly emptying parking lot. Caught in the traffic as we inched toward a parking spot, I had time to read a prominently displayed historical marker. The plaque boasted that the structure in front of us had been built with the earnings of the good farmers and first burghers of River’s Edge. Since this is the oldest southwest suburb of Chicago, after Blue Island, the church was well over a hundred years old. The faithful had kept it in pretty good repair. The original red brick, aged to a depressing maroon, enclosed a stolid rectangle broken only by narrow strips of stained glass that crawled two stories up the side of the building. There used to be a steeple, but it had burned three years ago; the firemen were just able to save the church itself. An ultra-modern complex sprawled around the old building: a school of gleaming new bricks, a gymnasium complex, a rectory that was obviously somebody’s idea of a modest $500,000 suburban bungalow.
“I thought these Catholic Church guys were supposed to help poor people, not live in luxury,” Scott said. “This looks like something a TV evangelist might build.”
“Don’t be prejudiced,” I said. “I don’t think it makes a lot of difference which denomination they are. The clergy’s pretty much the same all over.”
“I guess,” Scott said.
Several parishioners pointed us toward the sacristy at the back of the church. We entered a well-lit stairway that led up. As we climbed, a door banged open. Seconds later two giggling fourteen-year-olds tumbled by us. We heard the door below burst open, then crash shut. At the top of the stairs was a room filled with cabinets, benches, desks, cupboards, and cubbyholes, all made of wine-dark mahogany. A stained-glass window let in daylight. A muffled voice called that he’d be with us in a minute. The only light came from the window, a few lighted
candles, and a doorway through which I could see an altar surrounded by mounds of fresh flowers—a large expense, I thought, in cold January.
A smiling young man emerged from the closet. His face clouded when he saw us. “I’m Father Clarence. May I help you gentlemen?”
Model-handsome, his black suit emphasizing his leanness, this was a man who would turn the heads of both men and women as he walked down a street.
“New to the parish?” Father Clarence said, striding purposefully toward us, hand outstretched. He pointed to Scott. “You look familiar.”
I introduced us as Jerry’s uncles and explained our concern about what Jerry had said. He responded with words of wounded innocence and calm reason. The bastard almost pulled it off. Maybe he went to suave school. The old ladies of the parish must eat up his act. They’d want to mother him, and let it show, and secretly want to pinch his youthful ass, but hide that deeply. Yet he’d escaped the effeminacy so often associated with priests and ministers. Men would like him. He’d play baseball and drink beer with them. I almost missed the oily shiftiness in his eyes. Without seventeen years of teaching school and ferreting out teenage lies from truth, I’d probably have been fooled too.
He denied everything Jerry said. Claimed the boy’d been troubled for some time. Thought of talking to his mother about changes in the boy, a new moodiness. He didn’t like to bring it up, but perhaps a few signs of drug abuse? He tossed this last statement off casually.
I think his smugness infuriated me the most. That and his calling Jerry a liar. Scott recognized the signs of my rising anger and stepped between us. He rarely loses his temper. The media call him “the iceman” for his cool under pressure.
“Look, buddy,” he said. “We’re going to check out everything we can about Father Sebastian’s death. You’ve called Jerry a liar. Kids do lie. In this case, I don’t think he did. When I find out
the truth, and if you’re implicated …” He paused and gave the icy stare that had paralyzed more than one Major League batter. “If you’re implicated,” he repeated quietly, “we’ll be back.”
Father Clarence kept his mouth shut but left a pitying smile on his face.
All the way to the meeting with Frank Murphy, I swore at the priest, defamed the Roman Catholic Church, and cursed all self-satisfied hypocrites.
For the police station, the January thaw had proved an unfortunate event. The deeper the snow got, the more it tended to mask the flaws in the crumbling debris-encircled structure. Dirty, faded bricks, possibly once yellow, crept around a two-story disaster area. Gutters lay stacked and dented against the side of the building. They’d managed to pay for the things but forgot to allocate enough money for someone to finish the job installing them. In the autumn someone had raked leaves, rusted beer cans, and broken glass into huge piles now revealed by the retreating snow. In a vain attempt to dress up the place in the past year, someone had smeared orange paint over the building’s battered old shutters. Unfortunately, the town’s landmark committee now wanted the place preserved as a historical site. Because of this, for the moment, they could neither fix it up nor tear it down. They certainly didn’t have the money for a new station.
Inside, the officer on duty wore a bright blue uniform shirt, crisply ironed, along with a congenial smile on his face, presenting a pleasant contrast to the grimy walls and nicked and scratched counter.
We met Frank in an interrogation room. It contained a table, three chairs, four walls, and a door—all painted flat gray. A rusting radiator hissed at us softly.
Frank wore a conservative blue sport coat, black jeans, white shirt, and a loosened red tie. He greeted us warmly.
He and I had had some great successes and some equally spectacular failures with some very messed-up kids over the
years. Last June we attended the college graduation of a kid who spent what was supposed to be his senior year in high school in Stateville prison. We’d managed a miracle turnaround on that one. It’s good to remember those kids when month after month you stand by helplessly as others toss away whole lifetimes.
We talked awhile about the coming baseball season and then about troubled kids. Frank and I had to make a court appearance in a couple of weeks in a parental custody battle. Neither one wanted the child.
I asked about Father Sebastian, explaining my interest.
He shook his head. “We’re only peripherally involved. He lived here, but he died in Chicago. It was a nothing case. Thousands of people die like him every day. Too much cholesterol and they keel over. Fifty-one’s not too young for that.”
I told him about Monica’s perception of his health and spirits.
“She a doctor?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Do I need to say more?”
I grimaced.
He continued. “I’m not saying your nephew lied. You and I have both heard more fantastic stories from kids less trustworthy that turned out to be horribly true. But look at what we’ve got: a twelve-year-old kid versus a popular priest.” He held out his hands palm up and shrugged. “Who wins?”
I sighed.
“I know all the priests over at St. Joseph’s. My wife and kids go every Sunday. I show up if I’m not working.” He gave us his impression of the priests in the parish. He continued the litany of kindness and light we’d heard for Father Sebastian: a good man in the right sense, willing to help, go out of his way for anybody for the smallest thing. Father Clarence he didn’t care for. “I agree with your judgment. Something about that guy is wrong. He’s too perfect. Does everything right. Kisses the asses of all the right parishioners. Lots of people began to ignore Father Sebastian, talked about retiring him. Poor guy, doing a
simple good job, and this flashy kid steps in.” He shrugged. “It happens.”
“You think there was jealousy?”
“Nah. Sebastian didn’t work that way, and if Clarence felt it, he’d never let it show. Although …” He hesitated. He eyed us carefully, stretched his legs out, and crossed them at the ankles. “I hate to repeat tawdry gossip.”
We leaned forward.
“I found this out from the guys on the night shift.” He cleared his throat theatrically. “Father Clarence isn’t always where he belongs.”
“Huh?” we said.
He explained. On nighttime emergencies involving parishioners needing a priest—for last rites, for example—because the rectory had an answering machine, someone, usually the police, wound up banging on the rectory door. Several times Father Sebastian had let it slip that it was Father Clarence’s night on duty. Father Clarence drove a very expensive red Corvette that Frank’s source claimed often didn’t appear in the rectory parking lot until just before 6 A.M.
“Where does he go?” I mused aloud.
“None of our business generally,” Frank said. “He could have a sick mother in a nursing home, or maybe he’s getting a little nooky on the side.”
“I thought priests weren’t supposed to have sex,” Scott said.
“They’re human,” Frank said, “no matter what the Vatican tries to tell us.”
He agreed to do some discreet checking into Father Sebastian’s death but didn’t promise anything.
At home there was a message from Neil on the answering machine to get back to him. I called, and he said we could meet with the Faith board of directors at five and then Neil wanted to see us himself. Scott spent the afternoon responding to letters from AIDS groups around the country asking him for help with fund-raisers. These are his priority now. As a star athlete he
draws huge crowds, and he always appears free for AIDS groups. I spent the afternoon reading The Company We Keep by Wayne C. Booth.
I drove Scott’s Porsche to the city. I guess it’s juvenile, but I love its power and sexiness. My new gleaming black pickup with oversized tires and four-wheel drive has a certain sexual cachet, but his car is magic. For the forty-five-minute trip to Chicago, we took I-80 to I-57, up the Dan Ryan Expressway, and then over to Lake Shore Drive. The board met in an upstairs former dance studio on Clark Street, across from the Organic Theater. Fortunately, enough snow had melted so we found a parking space in less than fifteen minutes.
Upstairs, we entered a room that ran the length of the building. A large cluster of over a hundred metal folding chairs filled the half of the room closest to the windows overlooking Clark Street. A simple table draped with a white cloth waited for the congregation in a clear space in front of the chairs. The other three walls, including the back of the doorway, still had the floor-to-ceiling mirrors of its dance-studio days.
Neil got up and came over from the circle of people sitting in the far corner. His pink-and-purple-checked sweater vest hung over his paunch. It covered his faded blue-jeans shirt and the top third of his tentlike pants.
“You’re just in time. We just finished,” he said. He glanced around quickly at the group at the far end of the room, then whispered, “I’ve got to talk to you after this!” Everything is a crisis with Neil. His having to talk to us could concern something as simple as a hangnail or as heavy as a nuclear disaster. As he led us up to the group, he said, “I’ll introduce you; then you can ask questions.” Five people besides Neil sat in the circle. We pulled up folding chairs and joined them.
Neil introduced us. To my left sat Monica Verlaine, whom we already knew, dressed today in a black wool skirt, a red wool form-fitting jacket with black buttons down the front, black silk scarf splashed with red and white draped over the right shoulder of the suit jacket, black earrings, low-heeled suede
boots, and matching purse. No cigarette holder or smoking for now.
Next to Monica sat a man in his seventies, at least, bald and smiling: Bartholomew Northridge, former accountant and treasurer of the organization. His hands shook sporadically. Every few minutes he’d hold them together in rigid stillness, only to have them wander apart moments later to shake again. He spent much of his time darting nervous glances at other members of the group.
Then came Father Larkin, who nodded pontifically.
I knew the next person from a bar we frequented: Prentice Dowalski, twenty-three or -four, part-time bartender and hustler, willowy thin, strikingly handsome face, smart-mouthed, who generally hid behind a string of rude or stupid comments. Several years ago I’d accidentally learned that Neil occasionally pimped for Prentice. This was only for exceptionally high-class clients who paid over $1,000 an hour. I couldn’t imagine what a hustler could do to earn that much an hour. Then again, maybe I didn’t really want to know. I hadn’t been around him for long enough stretches of time to know if his stupidity was congenital or an act. He and a Chicago cop used to be lovers, but they’d broken up a year ago over the hustling issue.
Between Prentice and Neil sat Brian Clayton: short hair and mustache, a hint of a paunch, desperate to look thirty while rapidly approaching forty. Secretary and chairman of the membership committee, he smiled warmly and fussed over Scott and his fame.
Neil cut him off. “We’ve agreed that we think somebody killed Father Sebastian, and we want Tom and Scott here to look into it.” Heads nodded. Neil continued, “We knew Father Sebastian best. Our insights might guide them to the truth.”
“What we need to know,” I said, “is the type of man you think Father Sebastian was, what you remember from that last day, if you noticed anything different in him lately, and where each of you were at the time of the murder.”
Their memories of the last day coincided fairly well. During
the board meeting the week before, Father Sebastian had seemed as placid and calm as ever. Mass had been the usual. No one had noticed anything alarming or different in Father Sebastian’s sermon that Sunday.
After the service, the group had a social hour. Father Sebastian had gone downstairs to the sacristy, really more of a storage room for the group’s files and paraphernalia. That’s where they’d found his body. Except for Clayton, who found him, no one admitted leaving the dance room we sat in, but each would be hard pressed to prove their continued presence there. During social hour people mingled, formed groups, and dispersed as at any party.
“So any of the people present could be a suspect, which was how many?”
“Eighty-six,” Clayton said. “I always keep accurate count and seek out any new members to make them feel welcome, encourage them to join formally.”
“Anybody new this week?” I asked.
No strangers had shown up. It’d been a day of ice, snow, and rain just before the current thaw. The inclement weather kept the size of the group down.
I pointed out the impossibility of our questioning all those people with no official sanction. A collective look of helplessness was followed by silence. In the mirrors I watched them shift uncomfortably.
Neil spoke. “I know it’s tough, but our friend is dead. We have to do something.”
“Besides the police explanation of natural death and the possibility of someone at the Mass killing Father Sebastian, there’s always the stranger or tramp from the street solution,” I said. They fell silent.
“What the hell is this?” a voice snarled from the door. I turned to see a woman in a bright-red vinyl jacket, tight Levi’s jeans, and white high-top basketball sneakers advancing toward us.
Neil introduced her as Priscilla Kapustaglova, President of
Faith Chicago. He explained why we were there, adding what Jerry had told us. “We think they can help,” he finished.
She snorted. “A macho two-bit jock and a schoolteacher?” Hair unkempt, anorexically thin, no makeup, and what I suspected as a perpetual sneer on her lips, she straddled her chair backward like a Western movie extra. “You don’t want much from a couple of amateurs.”
“They’re our best hope. Tom Mason is trusted everywhere in the gay community. If he asks questions, people will take to him,” Clayton said.
Priscilla pointed to Brian. “You’re drooling because you think they’re hot men.” Clayton turned slightly red. Priscilla continued. “Father Sebastian died. The cops questioned us. They said it was natural causes. No conspiracy. No murder.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to trust the cops.” Bartholomew alternately clutched the back of his head and twined his fingers together as he spoke.
“At least, one of them was a woman,” she snapped. “And yes, I trust the cops in this. I wouldn’t trust the fucking Cardinal if he swore on a stack of cathedrals. But a female cop? Sure.”
“Naïve.”
Monica uttered the one word, and Priscilla became slightly quieter but no less hostile. She asked, “Why was this decision made without me present?”
Neil spoke quickly. “You had another meeting today. This was urgent.”
After ten more minutes of squabbling, they declared a truce in their internal politics.
After we got the Father-Sebastian-was-a-saint litany, even from Priscilla, she said, “See? Nobody had a reason to kill him. Give up. Go home.”
“Not yet,” I said.
We talked about Sebastian’s mental state. More serene than ever was the consensus; nothing else different.
“Did he have a lover?” Scott asked.
“He took his commitment to celibacy very seriously,” Bartholomew
said. He joined his hands together. “He always took time to chat with me after each Mass. He visited me each week. I live alone. I don’t go out much. But every Wednesday he came and spent a half hour. I appreciated it. He told me he hadn’t had a relationship since before he became a priest.” General hesitant nods at this.
“He was gay?” Scott asked.
“Of course,” Neil said.
Prentice spoke up. “I do know he met some guy every Sunday night at Roscoe’s. I don’t know if he was a lover or not, but I saw them once in the back on the couch looking secretive.”
Roscoe’s was one of the more popular gay bars in the city. Beyond seeing them, and drawing a possibly erroneous conclusion about their behavior, Prentice knew no more. It was something to check out later.
Other than these people, Father Sebastian had no close friends in the group. He met with them. Never had a fight with them, or with any member of Faith Chicago. They’d never heard him exchange a harsh word with anyone.
For the last ten minutes, stray group members had begun filling the space near the door, standing uncertainly, occasionally gawking at us.
The rest of our questions earned no further information. A few minutes later, as the others began moving away, I said to Monica, “We’ll have to talk to your source in the chancery.”
She looked disconcerted. “I’ll try to arrange it, but I don’t think he’ll agree to see you.”
The board of directors moved to their routines, places, and customs with the gathering crowd. I heard a few whispers of “Isn’t that Scott what’s-his-name?” as Neil led us down the stairs. We examined the storage closet, sacristy, office. We saw vestments, chalices, prayer books, crosses, and winebottles, all cluttered, jumbled, and cheerless, especially after a week of cops and Christians mucking about.
Back upstairs we grabbed our coats and were ready to leave. I reminded Neil about his wanting to talk privately.
Neil searched our eyes and glanced behind him at the rapidly filling chairs. “Fuck this church shit. Let’s get out.”
We walked up Clark to Belmont and over to Ann Sather’s Restaurant. Tonight it was a little less crowded than usual, and we managed to find a quiet corner where Scott could be pretty much out of the sight line of possible fans.
When Scott’s no-hitters in games five and seven of the World Series brought the championship to Chicago for the first time in decades, it became difficult for him to be in public without being mobbed. We’ve been forced to leave restaurant meals unfinished because of the adoring hordes. One oddity is that we’re more likely to be forced out of exclusive dining spots by obnoxious patrons than from popular neighborhood restaurants.
After we sat down, Neil started to prattle, but I held up a hand to stop him.
“Neil, I’d give up this whole shitload of trouble right now except for Jerry’s being involved. I care a great deal about him. Your group did not impress me.”
He began to speak. I stopped him again.
“Do you have any idea of what you’re asking?” I repeated the string of possible scenarios, then added. “The guy’s a saint. Nobody wants him dead. Everybody’s sad he’s gone. Priscilla’s a creep, but my impression is she’d act like a fool any time and being a fool isn’t a sign of murderous intentions. One pretty priest in the suburbs might have his ass in a sling for reasons I can’t begin to fathom. It’s bullshit.”
“Will you listen to me?” Neil asked indignantly.
I nodded.
“You can’t give up. I had suspicions before this about the chancery. Now, this suburban priest—what’s his name, Clarence—confirms it. Something’s up. Besides”—for one of the rare times since I’d known him he looked uncomfortable and evasive—“the whole truth hasn’t come out.”