Irish Gilt (11 page)

Roger came out of his study. “You can stay here.”

“Oh, I can't do that.”

“Do you have classes today?”

“Continental epistemology.”

He widened his eyes and lifted his brows. Then she thought of Josh. Why skip class when she had a chance to talk with Josh afterward?

5

“Well, if you'd come earlier we couldn't have had a drink.”

Boris Henry said this as he led Phil into the bar at the Morris Inn. No one else was there. The early afternoon sun slid through the blinds from the courtyard outside, illuminating the pictures on the wall, which featured famous coaches. Phil studied them while Boris brought their drinks from the bar, heading for a table far in back.

Having folded himself into a chair, he lifted his Bloody Mary in a toast. After taking a sip, he leaned toward Phil, looking earnest. “I'm sure Roger told you how valuable the stolen item is.”

“Where was it stolen from?”

“Right here. From my room. Like a damned fool, I put it in the desk drawer. When I found it wasn't there Saturday night, I called you right away. I suppose I sounded panicked. Well, I am. Calling such a thing valuable doesn't nearly cover it.”

“Who knew you had the diary?”

Henry nodded. “I've thought of that. The provost and Rasp, a man in the foundation. Your brother, of course. And whoever they might have told. But I think I know who did it.”

Phil waited.

“A former roommate of mine is on campus.” He took another swallow of his Bloody Mary. “How much do you know about Father Zahm?”

“Not much. What should I know?”

“Zahm was fascinated by the search for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold in South America. I won't tell you how many different expeditions set out to find it. Spanish, German, even Sir Walter Raleigh. The only gold involved was that they spent in a fruitless search.”

“A legend?”

Henry sat back. “A dream of greed. That is how Zahm sums it up, much as he admired the sense of adventure behind those expeditions.”

“He wrote about it?”

“He did. A little book meant to close the book on it. That is why the diary is so interesting.”

“How so?”

“Despite what he published, Zahm was convinced El Dorado existed.” Another sip from his Bloody Mary. It was like punctuation. “He had found it.”

“Come on.”

“It's all in the diary, and that makes it valuable in the usual sense, not just historically. My thought is that Notre Dame can finance a final and successful expedition.”

“Couldn't you do that yourself?”

“Of course, but it would be like depriving my alma mater of an inheritance Zahm meant for it.”

“And you think your former roommate took it.”

Boris Henry looked around the room. “Just the other night we had a drink together here. Right over there.” He pointed. “We sat there, the three of us.” He shook his head, then finished his drink. “You want another?”

“You go ahead. I'm fine.”

Boris Henry stood and went to the bar with giant steps. He leaned toward the bartender as he ordered, and Phil found himself admiring the drama with which Henry told his tale. He still hadn't mentioned his roommate's name.

When he came back, he went farther afield, telling Phil of his proposal that the university establish a John Zahm Center. “Of course, the diary would be meant for the center. That's what I was talking to the provost and the man in the foundation about. They are interested.”

“In the search for El Dorado, too?”

“I haven't told them what the diary contains.”

“Ah.”

“But Xavier Kittock knew.”

Phil just looked at Boris Henry. Silence, too, is sometimes golden.

“I'll tell you about him.”

So Phil was told the story of Kittock's involvement in a search for sunken treasure. He had come to Kansas City, and Henry, like a fool, had told him about the diary.

“And then I find he has been here, in the archives, doing research in the Zahm papers. Letters that cover the period of the diary are missing.”

“From the archives?”

“A whole folder of them from a box Kittock had been studying.”

“Do they know this at the archives?”

“I told them. I was the one who discovered that a folder was missing.”

“Told who?”

“A man named Greg Walsh.”

“I know him. He's a friend of Roger's.”

“And now he's stolen the diary of John Zahm.”

“Have you confronted him on this?”

“Why don't you and I call on him?” A man with a mission, Henry rose and headed for the door.

“Where do you suppose he is?” Phil followed.

“Not in the archives. I called, and the director said he wasn't there. He is staying at the Jamison Inn.”

“Have you called there?”

“I want to surprise him.”

“When you said you had a drink with him the other night, you said ‘the three of us'”

“He had gotten hooked up with a waitress while he was here. After a while she left, and we sat on.”

It was when they were crossing the lobby that Boris was distracted by excited chatter. A dead body had been found on campus and now had been identified. Boris got to a chair and slumped into it. Phil stood before him. Boris looked up at Phil, and then his expression changed.

“You knew that already, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“And didn't tell me.”

“You didn't give me an opportunity.”

Henry thought about that, as if reviewing their conversation in the bar. Reluctantly, he conceded that Phil was right. “When would you have told me?”

Phil shrugged.

“When we got to his hotel room?”

“Oh, I would have advised against that. The police will be examining his room.”

6

Bernice heard the news when she came to work that morning, but the body had not yet been identified, so it was just a spooky story everyone wanted to talk about. From the windows of the restaurant she could see the bench where the body of the man had been found. Hadn't she sat there with Xavier? She hadn't—they had usually sat at an outside table—but still it gave her a nice tingly feeling. She couldn't wait to tell him when he came for lunch.

There seemed to be a rush on Grace that day. The place was swarming with people, and everyone seemed to be talking about the dead man. It was a little ghoulish, although Bernice was looking forward to doing just that with Xavier. But he didn't come. Maybe the story kept him away. Martha at the cash register kept looking at Bernice, and finally Bernice went over there to see what it was all about.

“They know who it was,” Martha said.

“Who?”

“The man who ate here and always stayed late. You know.”

Bernice just stared at Martha.

“His name was Kittock.”

Bernice went back into the dining area and began to clear tables. She tried to make her mind a blank. Every time she had seen him, every time they had talked, came back so vividly that she could not drive the memories away. Martha was following her with a concerned look, and this conferred an importance on Bernice she kind of liked. Of course, Martha and others would have noticed that she had become friendly with Kittock. It made her almost a widow.

What she remembered most was the time they had sat together at a table outside the Morris Inn, in the back, with the big white reception tent billowing in the wind. It was the closest thing they had ever had to a date. Then that girl had come along, and he had abandoned Bernice. Thank God his friend had invited her to have a drink with them.

“My niece,” he explained the following day.

“I felt like an idiot after you left. You might have introduced us.”

“Maybe next time.”

There would never be a next time, not now.

“I did enjoy our drink together,” she said.

Until Ricardo showed up, that is. She dismissed the memory. What Bernice couldn't understand was how she really felt. It didn't seem to be sadness, yet that was what Martha's expression suggested she should feel. So she adopted a solemn expression and went on working. When the lunch period was over she just wanted to go home.

“Are you all right, Bernice?”

“I will be, Martha.” She bit her lip. What an actress.

She left Henry in day care. She wanted the rest of the afternoon free. Alone, she could explore her feelings and try them out to see which would be the appropriate one. She began to think she could write a story about Xavier. Then Marjorie called.

“Oh, Bernice!”

“Marjorie?”

“Yes.” Marjorie sounded miffed that Bernice hadn't recognized her voice. Of course, she had. “Have you seen him?”

Him? Did Marjorie mean Xavier Kittock? What a weird question. “Of course not.”

“Bernice, I ran into him last night. At a sports bar.”

“You should tell the police.”

“Have the police talked with you yet?”

“Yet? Why should they talk with me?” But now she imagined herself an object of attention, the younger woman Xavier had been so interested in.

“I wonder if you understand how angry he is with you.”

“Marjorie, what in God's name are you talking about?”

“Ricardo! Surely you must see—”

Bernice hung up, really angry. What a silly, nosy creature Marjorie was. And what did Ricardo have to do with what had happened to Kittock?

The question followed her through the house. The phone began to ring again, and Bernice ran back, picked it up, and then dropped it into the cradle again. Then she took it off the hook.

Marjorie was suggesting that Ricardo had been so jealous of Kittock that … Good Lord. That was impossible. Being macho was one thing, but killing someone was something else. Of course, Ricardo had stopped Kittock on a campus sidewalk and thumped his chest, but what did that mean? And he had surprised her in the Morris Inn when she came out of the bar after having a drink with Eggs and his friend, hustling her through the lobby as if he were arresting her. She waited until they were outside before she kicked him sharply in the shin and ran off to her car.

“You better be careful,” he had called after her.

Bernice found that she liked more than she would have admitted the thought that her former husband had decided to avenge himself on Kittock. What would she say if they interviewed her? She meant the television news, not the police. She turned on the set.

Soap operas, but on the hour, local news. The man found dead on the Notre Dame campus had been strangled or perhaps suffocated. A plastic bag had been found. Bernice laughed. She couldn't help herself. It was worse than a soap opera. A comic book. She felt a rush of relief as well. No one would imagine that Ricardo would take his revenge in such a way.

When she went to pick up Henry at day care, Bernice half expected television trucks to be parked along the curb and reporters eager to talk to her, but no one there seemed to have heard of the death on the Notre Dame campus.

“I thought Daddy was coming,” Henry said.

“That's tomorrow.”

Henry looked disappointed, and that irked Bernice. She worked her fingers to the bone for her boy, and all he did was miss his father.

On the way home, listening to Henry's chatter, she wished she had asked Marjorie just how she had managed to run into Ricardo at a sports bar. It seemed an insult. That was how she and Ricardo had met, as Marjorie well knew.

7

When Phil told Jimmy Stewart that Kittock had been staying in the Jamison Inn, they agreed to meet there.

“I drove here along Angela,” Jimmy said when he arrived. “That golf course sure looks inviting.”

“I could get us a tee time for tomorrow morning.”

“Good. I hope I can make it.”

They went to the desk and asked the clerk to call Kittock's room.

“Have you been trying to reach him?” Jimmy asked.

“Several people have.”

“Several.”

The clerk nodded, as if his honesty had been impugned.
Well,
Phil thought,
one of the several was me.
There was no answer in Kittock's room, of course, so Jimmy showed his ID and asked to be shown the room.

“Is something wrong?”

“Come on along and see.”

The second-floor hallway was almost blocked with cleaning carts. There was a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the door of 212. The clerk knocked before unlocking the door and stood aside so Jimmy and Phil could enter. Jimmy flipped the switch as he went in.

The blinds were drawn, but the bed had not been slept in. On the little desk were some papers and several books, but otherwise the room was neat as a pin, and probably had been since the last time the maid cleaned it. Jimmy went into the bathroom. A pair of pajamas hung on a hook behind the door and toilet articles were neatly arrayed.

Phil was holding one of the books when Jimmy emerged. “I hope only your set of prints will be on that book.” Phil dropped it onto the desk, and Jimmy laughed. “What was he reading?”

“A life of Father John Zahm by Ralph Weber.”

“Zahm.”

“Let Roger explain it to you. That was the man Kittock was reading about in the archives.”

The two men stood in silence for a moment, looking around the room. A man now dead had stayed here and had left very little impress on it. Phil moved toward the bed. From a knob on the bedpost a rosary hung. Phil bent over to look. Roger would want to know about that.

The folder of letters from the Notre Dame archives was lying on the desk. Phil said, “I'll take these. Roger can return them to the archives.”

Jimmy thought about it, then nodded. “Well, he seems to have been staying here alone.”

“Why would you think otherwise?”

“We got a call.”

Jimmy told Phil about it downstairs in the bar, where they had Cokes as far from the bartender as they could get. The caller had been a woman evidently trying to disguise her voice. She had said, “If you wonder what happened to Xavier Kittock, you might check with Bernice Esperanza.”