Harlot's Moon (25 page)

I went up the three small front steps and knocked on the door. No answer.

I didn't expect to find the door unlocked — but it was.

I nudged it open and went inside. House smells. Warmth.

Cut flowers. Cooking. Air freshener.

The room was junked up. Furniture had been overturned, the cushions on the couch pulled out and hurled on the floor.

Somebody had been looking desperately for something.

"Hello," I called out.

No response.

"Hello."

I walked through the living room and the dining room toward the sound that still faintly erupted every few moments. The weeping.

When I reached the kitchen, I found him, bent over Bernice's body, sobbing. Somebody had smashed in the side of her head. Blood stained the gray hair.

She lay rigid, displayed much as she would be in her coffin, even to her hands lying across her chest.

The man bent over her was slight and bald with freckles on his pate. He wore a white shirt and dark slacks. His shoes were Hush-Puppies.

"Oh honey, oh honey," he sobbed, rocking back and forth on his heels, as if in rhythm to music that only he could hear.

He seemed startled to see me. He was so lost in his grief, he hadn't heard me knocking.

I helped him up. He rose in reluctant sections, up off his knees to his haunches, and then off his haunches to his legs. He looked utterly baffled, even a bit insane.

"She isn't really dead, is she?"

Then he started crying again.

There wasn't anything I could say.

I helped him gently across the room to a kitchen table and sat Kim down. When he started to get up, I eased him back into his chair.

I began to search through the cupboards, opening and slamming doors until I found what I was looking for. At another time, I'd probably stop to admire all the handiwork. The appliances were all shiny new, there was a huge butcher block island in the center of the kitchen, and the cabinets showed the skill of real carpentry.

I grabbed a couple of glasses and carried everything to the table. I sat down across from him and poured each of us a good portion of his Black & White scotch.

"Did you call the police?"

"What?"

The baffled look again, as if he'd never heard the language

I was speaking.

"Did you call the police?"

"Oh," he said. "No."

"Drink your scotch."

"What?"

"Your scotch." I nodded to the glass in front of him. "Drink it."

"Oh."

He drank. His hand was shaking so badly, I thought he was going to drop his glass. Some of the shaking was probably due to Parkinson's, but not much.

"When was the last time you talked to your wife?"

This time, he didn't say “What?" he just stared at me.

"Listen to me. You need to help me so I can help you."

"She's dead, isn't she?"

"Yes, I'm afraid she is."

He broke again. There was no helping him for some time. I got up and fetched him several squares of Bounty paper towels so he could blow his nose.

"This doesn't make any sense," he said, sounding sane for the first time.

"Maybe it does. Bernice was on to something. I'm not sure what it was — not yet."

"You're the private investigator she told me about."

"Right."

"I've been out of town the last two days. I'm a salesman. I sell pizza ovens. But I call Bernice every night from the road, of course. And she told me about you."

"Where would Bernice hide things?"

"Things?"

"Valuables."

"Oh."

He had slipped back into withdrawal. Every half minute or so he'd explode with a sob. And then he'd stop himself. Just sit there and stare at the table.

"Take another drink."

"I'm not much of a drinker."

"Take one, anyway."

"Maybe I should."

He choked on it and spent the next two minutes coughing.

I didn't like pushing him this hard in these circumstances but I didn't have much choice.

"Where would Bernice hide something valuable?"

The withdrawn look again.

"I need you to listen to me."

"Listen to you?"

"I'm asking a question. Do your best to answer it, all right?"

"Question."

I sighed.

"Please look at me."

After a long moment, he raised his gaze to my face.

"Are you listening now?"

"Yes."

"Where would Bernice hide something valuable?"

"The safe."

"The safe?"

"Sure. The wall safe in our TV room."

Then he noticed what I was afraid he'd notice. When he'd bent over her, some of her blood came off on his white shirt. He looked at it now in horror.

"Oh, my Lord," he said. And immediately got out of his chair and started to walk back to her body.

I grabbed him and pushed him back down in the chair. I took one of the squares of paper towels and handed it out to him. But then he slapped his hand over his mouth and I could see that he was going to vomit all over himself if I didn't move quickly.

I got him to the sink. Barely. He was throwing up before his stomach even pressed against the cabinet that held the double sinks of stainless steel.

I held him the way you'd hold a little kid vomiting and when he was done, I washed his face with a paper towel soaked in dish soap and then I took him back to his seat at the kitchen table.

"Drink up."

"That's what made me throw up."

"No, it isn't. The drink'll help you."

He looked skeptical but he drank anyway.

I said, "I need to get into that safe as soon as possible. Do you know the combination?"

"Sure."

I could see that the vomiting had returned him to reality. Permanently, I hoped.

"I inherited this house from my father. He came through the Depression so he always saved something out of every paycheck and put it in the safe here at home. Didn't trust banks much."

"I need you to open the safe."

"I'm not handling this very well, Mr. Payne. I'm sorry."

"You're handling it a hell of a lot better than I would," I said.

"Really?"

"Absolutely." I'd stayed in bed for whole days following the death of my wife. Body and soul alike had shut down. "We need to hurry."

He nodded and stood up. I noticed how he carefully avoided looking down at his wife's body. He was a little stronger now but not that much stronger.

He led me out of the kitchen and down a hall. There were two bedrooms facing each other across the hall. At the rear of the bungalow was a long narrow room.

A large-screen TV dominated the west wall. Two three-shelf bookcases were pushed together, filled with what looked to be Book Club bestsellers. There were two leather recliners facing the TV.

The dainty patterns of the wallpaper and the nice sheer white curtains lent the room a cozy old-fashioned feel. "We spent most of our nights in here," he said.

He walked over to a print of a forest scene. It was a sentimental, idealized forest, the sort we daydream about escaping to.

A round wall safe lay flat against the wall.

From his shirt pocket, he took a pair of glasses, slipped them over his ears, and then proceeded to open the safe.

Given his condition, I thought that the procedure would take a while. It didn't. Two times to the left, one time to the right.

He reached inside.

He said, "There's something in here that doesn't belong. Something — leather. I'm used to how everything feels."

"I'd like to see it, if you don't mind."

"Sure."

He brought it out and looked at it and then showed it to me.

A leather-covered journal about the size of a hardbound book. I opened it and looked inside.

There was a name written in the upper right-hand corner. "Is that why Bernice was killed?" he said.

"Yes," I said, scanning some of the writing. "Yes, I'm afraid it is."

And my profile had been on the money.

Now I knew where I had to go. I couldn't wait around for the police.

T
he rain stopped minutes later, then started again almost immediately — a silver slashing, and cold like most spring rains.

On the drive over to the rectory, I called the number Information had given me for Mike Timmins, with whom Bob Wilson had allegedly been playing poker the night his wife nearly got pushed down a flight of stairs outside Father Daly's office. According to Timmins, who seemed to be a bright, very forthcoming guy, Wilson had indeed played cards at his house that night, but had left early, by eight-thirty. Wilson would've had time to drive to the school and push his wife down the stairs.

I thanked him. That was the answer I had expected.

After parking at an angle in the darkened alley, I ran up the path between the rectory and church. I knocked hard on the side door of the rectory, huddled beneath the slight roof above the door, trying to keep from getting drenched by the rain.

No response at first. Then I saw a sleepy Jenny, yawning and stretching, coming up the basement stairs and squinting to see who was pounding. She looked young and vulnerable in her jammies and robe. It was Friday night, and not quite nine o'clock.

With the door open, I smelled the remnants of the night's meal.

Jenny covered her mouth for a final yawn. "I'm sorry."

"Is Father Ryan here, Jenny?"

She shrugged. "I'm having a real hard period. I've been sacked out for the past couple of hours. Let me see who's here. You want to come inside?"

"No, I'll wait here."

She pushed her face forward for a better look at me. "You all right?"

"Yeah."

"You don't look all right. You look kind of upset."

"I'm fine. Really."

She nodded, still trying to read my expression. "I'll be right back"

While I waited, I walked down the sloping sidewalk, back toward the alley and the large school that sat on the other side of it.

The windows, some bright with moonlight, others dark as secrets, peered down at me ominously. In one upstairs window I saw a dark shadow move quickly away from sight.

"Nobody's here," Jenny said when she got back, this time with a pair of jeans and a sweater hastily pulled on. "But I just remembered. Father Ryan hears confessions on Friday night, usually till nine-thirty or so. I've decided to attend. Sorry — I don't know where the Monsignor is."

"No matter. Thanks, Jenny. Say, you couldn't lay hands on a key to Father Daly's office, could you?"

"His office? In the school?"

"I've never really checked it out. I'm hoping I'll find something there."

"Like what?"

I smiled. "That's the part I'm not sure about."

"The key's right inside. I'll run and get it."

Which she did. She handed it to me and said, "If we hurry, I can walk to the school with you. I want to go to Confession before Father Ryan leaves the confessional. He makes me feel good."

"No need for you to go with me," I said. "I'll be fine."

We walked across to the church. I left Jenny there and went back across the alley to the school. One of the back doors was unlocked. I opened it and stood in the doorframe, shining my penlight inside.

The back door shouldn't have been unlocked. Not at this hour.

A long narrow hall faced me, lined with metal lockers. Classrooms lay on either side, very near this back door.

Familiar and poignant smells came at me: sweeping compound, chalk, wax on the wooden floors . . . For a moment, I was a boy again, sitting in class and hiding a Ray Bradbury paperback inside my math book.

I stepped inside. Listened.

Furnace and blower were suddenly noisy on the still, warm air. I remembered Bernice saying that Father Daly had his office upstairs in the far west corner.

I started walking down the corridor, the penlight in my left hand, my right hand very near the Luger in my jacket pocket.

The lockers had been dented down the years. Above them were group graduation photographs dating back to the twenties. I saw several decades' worth of hair and makeup styles flash by as I walked past the photos. It was like being in the deepest, darkest depths of a pyramid.

The stairs were around the first corner. I played my light up them. No untoward signs. The steps rose steeply and then turned sharply into another flight.