Dog Bless You (18 page)

Mark shook his head. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I
paid the guy in cash. He was kind of paranoid, wouldn’t even tell me his last
name. But Owen vouched for him, and it was easier that way. No paperwork.”

I turned to Rick. “Was Owen’s bicycle at his parents’
house?” I asked

Rick shook his head. “Nope. I spoke to the guard. No
video surveillance at the gate, and the night guard didn’t notice Owen come
back in.”

The nachos arrived and as he reached for a chip, I
noticed that Mark was wearing a nice gold signet ring, and asked, “He didn’t
take any of your personal stuff, did he? No jewelry or anything?”

He shook his head. “No. But that reminds me—I found an
earring in the van this afternoon, when I was cleaning it out after my
deliveries. Wasn’t from my stock.”

He dug in his pants pocket and brought out a gold
earring with a thumbnail-sized red stone hanging from it. “That’s a genuine
ruby,” he said. “I checked. Must be worth something to someone.”

Rick took it from him. “This looks like one from a pair
that was taken from the Orlandos,” he said. “The house that was burgled Sunday
night. The wife described something like this to me.”

“You think Owen was using my van for burglaries?” Mark
asked.

“Remember, we saw Owen driving the van around Crossing
Estates when we were there last week,” I said to Rick.

“That’s right, you called me, Rick,” Mark said. “But it
wasn’t strange that he’d be out then. We have to deliver when the customer is
home to accept the merchandise, and sometimes that’s in the evening. And we had
to coordinate when Owen’s friend could come down and help.”

He thought for a minute. “And you know, a couple of
times he asked if he could borrow the van—wanted to go somewhere he couldn’t
get to on his bike.” He frowned. “Shit. You think those times he borrowed the
van he was using it to rob people? Holy Bible in a purse!”

We both looked at him. “Sorry, that’s an old family
expression. When my brother and I were teenagers we weren’t allowed to say
things like holy shit. My mom had this purse with a bible built into it—the
holy bible in a purse, they called it. My brother and I used to say that as a
curse.”

“Sounds like something Robin would say to Batman,” I
said. I picked up a tortilla chip and scraped some cheese and meat onto it. “Rochester’s
usually the friendliest dog, but he never liked Owen.”

“Next time I think about going on a date, I’m going to
borrow Rochester,” Mark said. “Maybe I’ll have better luck that way.”

We went through the pitcher, and the nachos, and then the
waitress delivered us a round of burgers and another pitcher. Mark was
rambling, talking about some pictures he’d taken of Owen, and how maybe they
would help Rick find him.

“That reminds me,” I said. “Lili found a picture online
of Owen up at Friar Lake, with DeAndre and one of the monks.”

Both Rick and Owen said, “DeAndre?” at the same time.

“DeAndre Dawson,” I said to Mark. “The guy whose body
we found up at Friar Lake.”

“I read about that in the Boat-Gazette,” he said. “It
was someone Owen knew?”

I nodded. “When Lili and I went out to Friar Lake last
week, right after I got assigned to manage the place, we took Rochester with
us. He was running around the property, and I noticed he was digging something
up by the lake. When I got over there I realized it was a human hand.”

Mark looked green, though it was hard to tell in the
dim bar light. “That part didn’t make the paper.”

“Step back,” Rick said. “Tell me about this picture
Lili found.”

I felt the beer getting to me, and I made a conscious
effort to clear my head. I took a long drink of water, then said, “Lili is
putting together a photo book about the Friar Lake property, and she was
looking for old pictures online. She stumbled on this photo on a Pinterest
board of Owen with DeAndre and this old monk named Brother Anselm. I doubt
either Owen or DeAndre knew the Benedictines even used Pinterest.”

“Any idea when it was taken?” Rick asked.

“I’ll have to check with Brother Anselm. But he said he
was out at Friar Lake in the early spring, and there’s a dogwood with new
blossoms in the background.”

Mark looked from me to Rick. “You don’t think Owen
killed this guy, do you?”

“Don’t know what to think,” Rick said. “Right now I just
know I want to talk to Owen. And not just about what he might have stolen from
Mark.”

By the time the evening was winding down I was still a
bit shaky, but I’d drunk a lot of water and eaten a lot, and I thought I was
good to drive. I could tell Mark Figueroa was completely wasted, though.

Rick and I walked him over to the antique shop and made
sure he got inside all right. Then we walked back to the parking lot. When we
got to his truck, Rick opened the passenger side and pulled a gadget out of the
glove compartment. As he turned it on, I said, “What’s that?”

“Breathalyzer. Want to make sure we’re both good to
drive.” It beeped, and he said, “Watch me.” He blew into it for a couple of
seconds, then held it away from him.

The parking lot light above us buzzed, and a car passed
down Ferry Street, heading toward the river. “You think Owen Keely ran away?” I
asked Rick.

“As opposed to?”

“As opposed to somebody killing him,” I said. “Like
DeAndre Dawson.”

“Don’t know yet.” He looked at the device. “I’m good.
You try.”

He held it up to me, and said, “Blow out long and
steady, all right?”

I followed his instructions, only stopping when he took
the device away from my face. “Do you think Owen killed DeAndre?”

“Like I said, I don’t know yet.” He held the device up
to me. “Can’t drive in Pennsylvania over .08. You’re at .04. You feel okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll take it easy going home.”

“All right. Talk to you tomorrow.”

It was almost eleven o’clock, and I only passed two
other cars on my way back to River Bend, but I still drove with exaggerated
care, and felt relieved when I pulled into my driveway. As I opened the front
door, I remembered I’d left Rochester uncrated, and braced myself for damage.

All I saw, though, was the dog eagerly greeting me, and
it looked like he’d been good. I hooked up his leash and we went for a quick
walk, and after some more water and a couple of aspirin I fell into a deep and
dreamless sleep.

Wednesday morning, I walked Rochester down Sarajevo
Court past the Keelys’ house. I hoped that Phil would be out working in the
yard, or Marie riding on her tricycle, but Phil’s SUV, usually parked in the
driveway, was gone, and the garage was closed. Had they gone after Owen? Or
were they just out running errands or off to see a doctor?

Not my business, I reminded myself. If Rick asked, I’d
be happy to help him. But I wasn’t a cop and it wasn’t up to me to investigate
anything.

The rash of break-ins at Crossing Estates finally made
the
Bucks County Courier-Times
that morning. It was in only a small
article in the second section, but I knew it had to be causing trouble for Rick
Stemper. I wondered about the earring that Mark had found in his van, and if
that clue had helped Rick show he was making progress.

I’d only been in my office for a few minutes when
Elaine from HR called. “Good news, Steve. Your application has everything we
need, and President Babson has authorized me to close the search.”

“Does that mean I have the job?”

“There are still a few more hoops, but this is a good
step forward. The hiring site is down right now – something to do with that
crappy Freezer Burn software, I think. I’ll be glad when they finally get that
removed from every computer. Once it comes back up I have to finish the formal
job description and schedule an interview with you where we discuss the job.
Assuming he gets the approval he needs from the Board of Trustees, then I prepare
an offer letter for you and get Babson to sign it.”

After I hung up I sat back in my chair. I felt
better—but not completely. I wouldn’t be satisfied until I knew that the Board
had signed off on Friar Lake, and I had the counter-signed offer letter—maybe
not even until I’d been established in the job for a while.

Joe Capodilupo called me about eleven, as I was packing
more boxes to send to Ruta del Camion in the press office. “I’m up at Friar
Lake,” he said. “Looks like there was a break-in here.”

“A break-in? Was it vandalism?” I asked. “There wasn’t
much there to steal.”

“A broken window in the anteroom at the back of the
chapel. Then a big mess in the chapel itself.” He turned away from the phone to
call a workman over. “Remember that hole under the altar? Whoever broke in made
it a lot bigger, and dragged a bunch of crap out from underneath the altar.”

“Looking for something,” I said. I remembered the reliquary
that DeAndre had been searching for. It seemed to be at the center of
everything. Had DeAndre found it and been killed for it? If so, then why was
someone still searching the abbey?

Or what if Owen had been working with DeAndre, and then
for some reason Owen had killed him before they found the reliquary. And then,
after leaving Mark Figueroa’s, Owen gone back up to the abbey and found it — and
that’s why he’d left town?

“Don’t know what they’d be looking for under there,”
Joe said.

I didn’t share my suspicion with him. Instead I said,
“I’m going to call the Leighville cops. Don’t touch anything that looks like it
was disturbed—maybe they can get fingerprints or something.”

“I want to get that window fixed by dark,” Joe said.

“I’ll get on it right now. I’ll let you know what I
hear.”

“Better call John Babson too. He’ll want to know.”

Great. I just loved taking bad news to the president. What
if he used this information as a reason to hold off on talking to the Board of
Trustees? Where would that leave me?

First, though, I hung up and dialed Tony Rinaldi.
“There was a break-in last night at Friar Lake,” I said. “I think it might be
connected to DeAndre’s death. Can you get one of your crime scene techs up
there to take fingerprints?”

“Connected how?” Tony asked.

“Rick told you about the photo Lili and I found, that
linked Brother Anselm, DeAndre and Owen, didn’t he? I think Owen knew about the
reliquary, too, and he broke into the chapel to look for it.”

“You think the thing really exists?” Tony asked.

“Doesn’t matter what I think right now,” I said. “Seems
to me like DeAndre believed in it, and Owen, too.”

“I’ll get a guy up there,” Tony said. “Owen Keely was
in the Army so I’m sure there are prints on file somewhere.”

After I hung up, I walked down the hall to President
Babson’s office. “Is he in?” I asked his secretary.

She looked down at the phone console on her desk. “He’s
on a call with one of the trustees,” she said. “You want to wait?”

I didn’t see that I had much choice. I sat in one of
the spindle-backed chairs and thought about the suspicions I had. I realized
I’d only been taking Brother Anselm’s word about the existence of the
reliquary. Sure, Lili and I had seen a grainy photograph of something that
might have been the reliquary. But was it? If it existed, surely someone else
must have know about it. I pulled out my cell phone while I waited and began
searching for information on Saint Roch. The connection was painfully slow and
my screen way too small to read much, but I found the same things that Brother
Anselm had told me, about his sainthood and his connection to dogs.

“He’s off the phone,” Babson’s secretary said.

I hopped up and knocked on his door, then pushed it
open. “Have a moment?” I asked. When he nodded, I said, “I wanted to let you
know that there was a break-in last night at Friar Lake.”

“What?”

I stepped farther into the room and told him what Joe Capodilupo
had told me.

Babson shook his head. “First a dead body, now a
break-in.” He looked thoughtful. “Have a seat, Steve.”

I sat, worried about what he was going to say. What
would I do if the job fell through? I’d already been told I was being phased out
of the fund-raising campaign. Could I go back to adjuncting? Freelance writing?

“Do you think maybe this project is too far from
campus? Too hard for us to keep a handle on?”

As it often did in my conversations with President
Babson, my heart rate zoomed. Was he asking me if I thought the whole idea was
a bad one? I sure wasn’t going to agree to that, when my job depended on it. I
thought very carefully before speaking.

“You know I have my master’s from Columbia,” I said.
“They have all kinds of additional centers. The Lamont-Doherty observatory, Arden
House in the Catskills.” I warmed to my topic, knowing just which strings to
play. “Every good college has them. Middlebury College has the Bread Loaf
Center, up in the mountains.”

Babson nodded. “You’re right. If Eastern is going to
keep its reputation as a very good small college, we need to match the
resources our competitors have. But I need you to keep a lid on these problems
before the Board of Trustees gets cold feet. Have the police wrapped up their
investigation of that body yet?”

“I’m in touch with the detective regularly,” I said.
“I’ll let you know once there’s news.”

“Good. I have the paperwork from Elaine about your job
right here. As soon as I get things firmed up with the Board, I’ll sign it.” His
secretary buzzed to let him know he had a call, and I stood up and walked out,
feeling like I had just dodged one bullet. I just worried how many more there
would be before the job was really mine.

Back in my office, I continued searching online for information
about St. Roch. After a few minutes, Rochester got up from his place on the
floor and nosed at my legs. Looking from him to the screen I had a bit of a
eureka moment. ‘Roch’ was the first syllable in ‘Rochester.’ What a wild
coincidence. My dog was named after his patron saint.

Of course I’d had nothing to do with that. Caroline
Kelly had named him after the romantic hero of Jane Eyre, and if she’d known of
the saintly connection, she’d never mentioned it to me.

Did he know that I was looking for information on his
namesake? Or did he just want to go out for a walk? I opted for the second
choice, and hooked up his leash.

I was distracted as we walked, still thinking about the
reliquary. I picked up a sandwich from one of the lunch trucks and took it back
to my office, where I ate while I continued searching. At long last, I
discovered a church in Philadelphia that had an archive of old photos of all
the churches and other religious buildings in the diocese there.

I called and spoke to Esther Washington, who told me
she was in charge of the archive. “Do you have any material there on the Abbey
of Our Lady of the Waters, in Leighville?” I asked.

“I can’t be sure,” she said. “We have an awful lot of
material that hasn’t been catalogued yet. But you’re welcome to come down and
take a look, if you’d like.”

I established how late she’d be there, and then hung
up. I dialed Lili’s office and told her what I’d discovered. “Do you have time
this afternoon to go down there with me?” I asked. “You might find some other
pictures there.”

“Give me a half hour to finish up for the day,” she
said.

Rochester and I finished eating. “You ready for an
adventure, boy?” I asked. “Even if it’s just into Philadelphia?”