Harlot's Moon (15 page)

Nothing of note in the kitchen. Father Daly obviously ate out of cans up here. Probably caught a few fish, cleaned them, cooked them on that grill out there, and then filled in with the cans of baked beans and beets and green beans in the cupboard.

Nothing in the bedroom area. The bed was neatly made with a faded and ragged old comforter on top.

In the living-room area, I picked up all the cushions on the spavined couch, and looked down below for anything that might have fallen down there.

"You live nearby?" I asked.

"Yeah. Quarter of a mile is all. Little farm up to the west there. Plant some corn and soybeans. Raise a few head of cattle. Pretty small-time."

"Did Father Daly ever seem . . . troubled or anything?"

Kevin Ward shrugged. "Lots of times. He was one of those fellas who thinks too much. You could see it in his face most of the time. You could be standin' right next to him but he was really off somewheres else. You know what I mean?"

"Right. You ever hear any arguments or anything?"

He looked surprised. "Yeah. Matter of fact, about a week ago I heard one. Father Daly was really mad at somebody. I was walkin' up the path over there. Didn't come close enough to the cabin to see who it was he was talkin' to, but he just kept sayin' "This is insane. This is really insane. Don't you know that? Don't you realize what you're doing?"

"The other person didn't speak?"

"Not so's I could hear, anyway."

"Could it have been a woman?"

"Coulda been. Sorry I can't help you more, mister."

I looked around the living room. I'd left one of the couch cushions at an angle.

When I walked over to straighten it out, I accidentally knocked a couple of magazines off the arm of the couch. When they hit the floor, the magazines fell open.

In the center of one of them was a newspaper clipping. I bent over and picked it up.

LOCAL MAN MURDERED

Michael James Grady, 34, was found dead Tuesday night near the picnic grounds where his bowling team was having its annual picnic. At press time, a police spokesman refused to comment on the details of Grady's death. Hospital sources, however, revealed that Grady had suffered multiple stab wounds and that both ears had been severed.

The rest of the story talked about the pending inquest, Grady's military service and his family and the various organizations he belonged to. Then I found more newspaper cuttings. They referred to the equally grisly deaths of two other men — Lawrence Lynnward and Frank Mason. The murders had taken place several months apart.

"Find something?"

I put the clipping in my shirt-pocket. "I'm not sure."

"Hope you get something for coming out here. It's a long ways from Cedar Rapids."

"Actually, I'm enjoying myself." I told him about my bi-plane and the horse.

"You know Sam Carson, huh?"

"Sure do." In case he was about to say something negative, I said, "He's one of my best friends."

"Great guy. The missus and I always go on his hayrack rides in the fall. Have ourselves a wonderful time."

I looked around the cabin. If there was anything more to find, it would take a better detective than me to unearth it.

"You flyin' back?" Kevin Ward said as I locked up the cabin.

"Sure am."

"Why'n't you fly over my farm? The missus and I'll be watching for you."

He looked and sounded like a kid. That's the best part of us all, I sometimes think. That ten per cent of us that never grows up, but which somehow remains, despite all the sorrow and cynicism of the world, essentially innocent.

"I'll do better than that for you," I said. "I'll buzz your farmhouse two or three times."

He grinned. "The missus loves stuff like that. Just loves it." He walked me back up the path to where I'd ground-tied Moonglow, watched me swing myself up into the saddle, and then said he'd see me in a little while when I buzzed his house.

I took Moonglow the long way back, and savored every minute of it.

I
guess the first thing I noticed about Sunset Towers was that it didn't
have
any towers. Oh well.

The nursing home was designed to resemble a pricy hotel of four stories, with an outdoor swimming pool, two tennis courts and a practice range for golf.

"We're like a family here," said the funereal young man in the blue suit.

I noticed, however, that as we passed up and down the halls looking at sleeping arrangements, showers and dining facilities, not one of the residents acknowledged him in any way. In fact, they looked a little wary of him.

The place did not smell of fecal matter, none of the residents wore any black eyes or bruises, nor did I hear the screams of an elderly woman being raped.

The food was probably bland, the staffers were probably given to impatience and even surliness on occasion, and my friend Eugene here in the blue suit was probably a past master of subtle intimidation.

But all in all, the place was squeaky clean and bright, and the residents looked reasonably content.

We spent twenty minutes discussing financial arrangements. My mother had left me some insurance money that I'd invested. It would take all that and some more to put Vic up here for his final months but I was willing to do it.

I sure as hell didn't want to live with him.

Eugene gave me several brochures and a long piece of paper listing all the things Vic would need to bring with him.

On the way out, I saw a sweet little old woman standing by one of the windows, gazing out.

I thought I'd ask her how she liked it here. But when I spoke, she said nothing, just looked at me with sad, ancient and very moist eyes.

I tried hard to convince myself that her moist eyes had nothing to do with conditions here at Sunset Towers.

"Y
ou're really going to put him in a home?" Felice said after we were in bed later on. I had my western novel and jammies. She had her Dean Koontz novel and jammies.

"It's what he needs."

"Maybe it is. But not in these circumstances."

"You're really mad, aren't you?"

"Damned right, I am."

"I'm trying to do the right thing, Felice, whether you think so or not."

"You know something, Robert?"

"What?"

"Right now I don't like you very much."

"Well, right now I don't like you very much, either."

"Tough titty," she said and rolled over on her side and began reading.

But I was too upset to read. I said, "You're always taking his side, Felice. The same way my mother did."

She looked over at me. Her eyes glistened with tears. "He's dying and he's all alone, Robert. And you don't seem to give a damn at all."

And with that, she shut off her reading light and slipped on her sleep mask.

I
spent two hours that afternoon at the law offices trying to persuade the key witness in our vehicular homicide trial to testify. Her name was Beverly Wright and she was having some second thoughts. She was going to be in the news a lot and that frightened her. The reporters would try to make her look like a bad person and a liar - as if she were fabricating her story.

Brad Doucette talked to her for a while, got frustrated, sent me in as kind of the second team, and when I didn't seem to be getting anywhere, put himself back in the game. He spent nearly a half an hour with Ms. Wright and still got nowhere, so then it was back to me.

I couldn't honestly blame her. Prosecuting attorneys are very skilled at making unfriendly witnesses look stupid and venal. The press, too, especially in its ambush journalism mode, can easily do the same.

All you have to do is walk to your car with a number of reporters trailing you and firing questions, and the public just assumes you're hiding something.

But without her testimony, our client had very little chance of proving his innocence. Was our client an arrogant, pushy, self-absorbed bastard? You bet. But, in this case anyway, I believed he was innocent.

"My folks just don't want me to get involved," Beverly told me. "Neither does my son. He's fourteen. He likes Aaron a lot. My son's one of the few people Aaron's nice to. But he still doesn't want me to get involved. Because of the, you know, the publicity. I mean, you know what they're going to call me when they get me up on that stand."

"What're they going to call you?"

"A whore. Right?"

How could I disagree? They might use a cleverer word than that to convey their meaning, but the meaning would be the same nonetheless.

Aaron Grant was a local manufacturer. He was also a prominent Republican, having served as State Chair a few times. He was also married and the father of three, and a lay minister at his church. He was noted for his angry sermons on family values.

Beverly Wright was a member of the same church. She was divorced, with the one son.

Aaron and Beverly had had a thing going for nearly a year now. Aaron went through one of those idiotic transformations middle-aged men sometimes do. This stalwart Republican and family-values man started wearing his graying hair in a tiny pony tail, driving around in a Mercedes sports coupé, and spending a lot of time and money on the riverboat casinos up on the Mississippi.

He was also hopping into bed with Beverly whenever he got the chance.

One more thing about Aaron: while he wasn't an alcoholic, his taste for alcohol had certainly increased this past year. He'd even taken to having a few drinks at lunch, something he'd always frowned upon, both for himself and his employees.

The trouble started with alcohol.

One night, after getting back from the riverboat, Aaron was driving down a dark street when a man suddenly appeared in his headlights. Aaron's car struck the man. Aaron's car killed the man.

An interesting fact: the dead man's blood alcohol content was even higher than Aaron's.

The incident became a scandal — couldn't help but be, given Aaron's standing in the community. Aaron insisted that he had not been speeding, that the man had simply wandered directly into the path of his car.

Here was the part that gave me my first inkling of respect for Aaron: even though he knew that Beverly's testimony as to how much he'd drunk that night could probably save him, he didn't press her to appear in court for him.

Some of his family—values sermons had apparently rubbed off. Aaron was going to save Beverly's family — not to mention his own family — from scandal.

Brad Doucette knew better, of course. Aaron was the kind of guy juries sometimes liked to hang. Too much money. Too much loose living.

He needed a witness, and badly. He needed Beverly. "We've still got three days before the trial, Beverly," I said. "Will you at least please think it over?"

She was a pretty woman rather than a beauty but with great dignity and poise.

"Are you kidding?" she said. "It's all I do think about." Then: "How's Aaron?"

Everybody involved had decided that it would be better if Aaron and Beverly no longer saw each other. So they both asked us frequently for reports on the other person. I felt sorry for Aaron's wife and family, for Beverly and her son, and even for Aaron to some degree. Nobody involved was really a bad person.

She stood up, trim in her white ruffled blouse and blue skirt.

She put out a hand and we shook.

"You're nice," she said. "I appreciate that. Your colleague Brad's a little pushy for my taste."

I smiled. "Brad? Pushy? I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that before."

I
spent the hour after that going through some of my notes about Father Daly. I also added the other newspaper clippings to the file.

Why had Father Daly collected clippings about unsolved murders that had taken place in the past few years? And who was he arguing with at the fishing cabin that night?

The receptionist buzzed me and I picked up.

Gilhooley said, "Thought I'd check in with you."

"I was wondering what was going on."

"I've just been doing my character sketches."

That's what Gilhooley calls the reports he gives me, and that's what they sometimes read like. He supplies me with a one-page description of a person's life. Everything is there —family, education, employment, penchants — writ bold and large.

"Anything interesting?"

"Not much. Gray and Ryan served together in a small town called Holbrook right after getting out of seminary"

"By any chance was Father Daly there, too?"

"No. He first served in a place up near Dubuque. Same diocese, though."

"You were checking out the rectory staff, too."

"Right. Bernice Clancy, zilch. Raised four children. Husband has Parkinson's. Worked as a teacher's assistant at St. Mallory's grade school for eleven years then switched to the rectory and became the housekeeper."