Children in the Morning (17 page)

“Could it be that he attracts all that attention and fame because he is so good at what he does, and that you’re looking back and making an assumption that he needs it?”

“What drives him, though, Monty? What motivates him to take on this larger-than-life persona?”

“What’s your background, Chuck?” I couldn’t help but ask.

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He laughed, and said: “I did my B.A. in psychology before joining the department, and I’m plugging away at my Masters at night.”

“Yet you didn’t use the term ‘self-esteem’ once in your little personality profile of my client!”

“Don’t even go there, on the subject of self-esteem and Beau Delaney!”

“You think he’s got it in spades?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t.”

“Really!”

“I think he needs, and gets, a refill on a regular basis. I can’t quite imagine what he’d be like if he didn’t. This is a little thing, and you may laugh it off, but I’ll tell you anyway. When I went back to the Delaney house with a warrant, after we had laid the murder charge, I was in his bedroom and saw all these shoes in his closet, lined up on a rack. Not so many pairs of shoes that you looked askance at them, but you noticed them for sure. I looked at them, and do you know what I found?”

I shook my head.

“Shoe lifts.”

“Shoe lifts! The man is six and a half feet tall! They couldn’t have been Delaney’s shoes.”

“They were. They are. These lifts add maybe an inch, inch and a half, of height.”

Odd.

“What’s the significance of that?” I asked.

“You tell me,” he replied, and I felt as if I was on the analyst’s couch.

“I’d rather not speculate,” I said to him.

“Fair enough. I would speculate that he very much enjoys being the big man in town, physically and otherwise. I think it’s possible that someone like Delaney may feel the need to be the top gun, the expert, in any situation. It’s an impression I’ve formed over the years, seeing him in court or at official functions. I think maybe he’s the type who would need to lord it over others, including perhaps his wife, and he might have lashed out if she confronted him or disagreed with him.

“But no, Monty, none of this went into my decision to lay the charge. I based it on what I saw at the scene. A woman who apparently sustained a fatal skull fracture by falling down a set of stairs.

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Possible, sure, but how likely? And she fell backwards. If she had tripped, she would have fallen forward. She may have been able to use her arms to break her fall. And then there was Delaney’s demeanour at the house. All he told us was that he wasn’t there when it happened. He had come home from the Annapolis Valley just after twelve thirty. I found it curious that, well, he wasn’t more curious about what happened to Peggy, how she could have fallen like that, how such a fall could have been fatal. He didn’t wonder aloud whether somebody else had been with her. To me, Monty, it just didn’t add up. And the fact that he lied about what time he came home — Harold Gorman saw him outside the house before eleven o’clock — tipped the scales against him.”

To my dismay, I found his analysis compelling, and I did not look forward to trying to discredit him on the witness stand.

“I’ll tell you this, Monty. Within the Crown’s office, there was some unspoken but obvious
resistance
to taking this on, because it’s Delaney . . .”

“No doubt, given the thinness of the case against him.”

“But that soon changed to
determination
to take it on because it’s Delaney. Equal justice for rich and poor, that kind of thing.”

All I said was: “You don’t have a motive.” Not that he needed one.

Morash drained his coffee and put his cup on the table. “The motive may not have existed until the instant before she was killed.”

(Normie)

Wednesday was April Fool’s Day, and we had Elvis in our choir. He had thick, shiny black hair puffed up and pushed back, and a white jacket with shiny jewels on it. Father Burke looked at him, blinked, and looked again.

“Good of you to join us, Mr. Presley. You’ve been missing rehearsals.

Where have you been?”

And Elvis answered in a deep voice: “I’ve been wherever there are true believers.”

Father laughed and said: “Would you honour us with something from your repertoire?”

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And Elvis did this kind of dance move, and sang something about crying in the chapel, and everybody cracked up, including Father Burke.

Guess who Elvis really was? Richard Robertson! He begged us all not to tell his mother, or she’d kill him.

I drew a picture of Elvis in my diary. But the rest of the day wasn’t so funny. Father Burke was at our house when I got home from school, and he stayed with us until Mum got home. He didn’t say it, but I knew why he was there. He and Mum were scared that Giacomo might come and steal the baby if it was just me and Tommy babysitting! So Tommy took the bus to Lexie’s house, and Father Burke came to babysit. He checked on Dominic, and let him get down on the floor and crawl around, and he played with him for a while. Then he sat at the kitchen table and worked with a bunch of books and papers.

Writing sermons maybe, or making notes for the courses he teaches.

When Mum came in, she invited him to stay for supper, so he said yes and continued his work. I was at the dining room table, drawing a picture and colouring it. Father Burke looked over at me and smiled, and asked what I was drawing. It was a boat with a big yellow sail, and me steering it and Kim standing in the front with her yellow braids flying back in the wind. I told him I’d show it to him when it was all done.

Then Mr. Delaney arrived, and Mum answered the door.

“Evening, Beau.”

“Evening, my dear. I’ve received the latest missive from Giacomo’s counsel. There are some papers here in Italian. I understand you have a translator on hand.”

“Yes, I do. He’s right here.”

So that was another reason Father Burke was there. He knows Italian, so he would tell them what the papers meant.

“Hello, Brennan.”

“Beau. How are you?”

“Could be worse. Or so I keep telling myself. Have a look at this lengthy affidavit Giacomo and his lawyer have drawn up.”

Father Burke took the papers and started to read them. I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t like what they said. He gave Mum a quick look and went back to the writing. Then he pushed the papers away.

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“What’s the matter, Brennan?”

“I don’t want to be reading this, MacNeil.”

“Why not? What is it?”

“Let’s just say yer man Giacomo is a true romantic. He seems to remember, presumably with fondness, every time the two of you were together.”

I looked at Mum, and I saw her face turn pink. She grabbed the papers off the table, and scrunched them up in her hands and then just stood there as if she didn’t know what to do. She looked really upset.

Giacomo must have been bragging about taking Mum out for romantic candlelight dinners, and sending her flowers. It ruins things if you do something nice for somebody and then brag about it. She looked around then, and caught me gawking in from the dining room table.

“Up to your room, young lady.”

I heard a bit more on my way up the stairs. Father Burke said: “You’re forever giving out to me about butting into your lives. Well, here’s where I butt out. I’ll help in every other way I can, but reading this personal blather by your boyfriend about you — I’m afraid not. Giacomo may not understand the words ‘personal’ and ‘private,’ but I do.”

“I’m sorry, Brennan. I had no idea the little weasel would stoop to this.”

“He’s just making his case,” Mr. Delaney said. “And it falls to us to unmake it. I’ll hire a translator for this bit of —” He said “herod-ica”? or “airotica”? or something like that.

Whatever they said from then on, I missed, because I went into my room, and didn’t dare go out to the listening post. I had to draw the parts of a flower for science class, and Mum knew about it. If I didn’t get it done, she would ask what I had been doing instead.

I worked on my flower, and used all kinds of colours in the picture. Then I heard somebody go out the front door. I looked out and saw that it was Mum. So I went downstairs.

“Where did Mum go, Father?”

“She’s gone to Lexie’s to get Tom.”

“Oh. Tom’s been bugging Mum to let him buy his own car. He saw one in the paper for eight hundred dollars. And another one for three thousand.”

“Well, he’d best hire a mechanic to give it a once-over.”

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“Yeah, I know. Nobody in our family knows anything about cars if something goes wrong.”

“Tell me about it,” Mr. Delaney said. “Peggy knew more about cars than I ever did. Now I’m hopeless.”

“Tommy promised to learn,” I told them.

Then I thought about something else. When Mr. Delaney said Peggy’s name, that reminded me of how sad he must have been that she died. And how lonesome Jenny and Laurence and all the other kids were. And I remembered how worried Jenny was about their mum maybe committing a sin by yelling out “Hells Angels” and maybe not going to heaven. Mr. Delaney must have been worried about that, too, if Jenny had told him. I remembered Father Burke saying she wouldn’t get in trouble if she talked about it with her dad. I decided to make him feel better. I wouldn’t have the nerve to mention it if it was just me, but Father Burke was there and he could explain it.

“Well, I should get back upstairs and finish studying my catechism for school tomorrow.” It wasn’t really a lie, just because I was working on science. I still had to finish (and start) my catechism.

“Splendid,” Mr. Delaney said. “What a dedicated crop of students you have at the choir school, Father Burke!”

“Thank you, Mr. Delaney. We do our best. If only the adult students at my schola were as dedicated.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I was reading about sins and stuff like that.”

“Oh, I don’t imagine you have too much to worry about there.

Wouldn’t you say, Father?”

“I’d like to agree with you, Mr. Delaney, but in fact she’s a little divil entirely!”

“Is she? Appearances are deceiving! I would have thought she was one of God’s holy angels.”

I had to bring it up then or I’d never get it in! So I blurted out:

“It’s not a sin to say ‘Hells Angels,’ Mr. Delaney!”

He looked confused. “What do you mean, dear?”

“Jenny told me about Mrs. Delaney yelling ‘Hells Angels’ . . . one night . . . so we asked Father Burke and he said that wouldn’t be a sin!”

Oh my God! Mr. Delaney looked at me as if he was watching a horror movie. As if I really was a devil! But I’m not! I just wanted to help. I was scared of him. Then he looked at Father Burke, and the expression on his face changed to being really mad.

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But his voice was so quiet, he almost hissed when he said to Father: “What’s this all about, Brennan?”

“Take it easy now, Beau. Your little one apparently overheard something her mother said one night at the house. The children had been learning about sin and redemption in catechism class, and that’s how it came up. Jenny mentioned it to Normie, and they asked me.

I reassured them. They never brought it up again.” Father Burke put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him.

Mr. Delaney said: “Jenny must have been having a nightmare. She has them regularly. I can’t imagine my wife saying . . . anything about bikers. But I wouldn’t know.”

“Don’t be troubling yourself about it, Beau. The children had the best intentions in the world. No need to upset Jenny by bringing it up with her now.”

But Mr. Delaney didn’t say okay. He seemed to be thinking about it, and forgetting we were in the room. He grabbed the papers he’d brought with him, turned around, and left without saying another word.

I started crying, and Father Burke pulled me onto his knee and held me. I could hardly talk, but I tried to say: “I don’t want to get Jenny in trouble!” I was glad I didn’t tell them the Hells Angels thing happened just before Mrs. Delaney died. That would make it even more serious, and Mr. Delaney might be even more angry.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, darlin’,” Father Burke said. “You were just trying to help, and Mr. Delaney will understand that once he thinks about it. If Jenny says anything, you come to me, just by yourself, and I’ll take care of it for you.”

“Really?”

“I promise.”

“Are you going to tell Daddy that I got Mr. Delaney mad at me?”

He looked at me for a long time, as if he had to think about it. Then he said: “Don’t worry, little one, your sinful secrets are safe with me!”

Then I kind of laughed.

That’s when Mummy and Tom came in. “What’s wrong, Normie?” She looked at me and then at Father Burke. “Were you down here listening to grown-up talk and getting yourself all upset?”

“I wasn’t! I just told . . .” Uh-oh.

But Father Burke rescued me again. “I just explained to Normie that she has nothing to worry about at all, at all. She understands.”

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Chapter 8

(Normie)

“Daddy, do you know where there’s a building that says ‘Vince’ on it?” I was at Daddy’s house after school on Thursday.

“Vince?”

“Yeah. Or, wait . . .” I closed my eyes and tried to bring the picture back into my mind. “Vincent.”