Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03 (29 page)

“The cat, for Saint Yvo, was on here twice, so let's assume the second time was right here.” Because sure enough, if the animal was a dog, it could stand for Saint Margaret of Cortona.

“I think you've done it,” said Jill. “That's what this is, an accusation. I bet the word before that is ‘stolen.' ”

But it wasn't. “I'm missing some of them; I don't know how many,” said Betsy. “There's a lit candle, and rowboat, which I think is Saint MacCald, and a chain, which is probably Ignatius, if the candle is Genevieve—
if
the word Lucy was spelling is
missing
, as in
missing money
. And above them is a cross, which can stand for Jesus, Saint Bartholomew, Saint Peter, Saint Jude, Saint Philip, Saint Andrew—no, Andrew is more like an X than a plus sign. Then Yvo's cat, then a double-bladed ax for Saint Olaf, then the Star of David, which can stand for Caspar, Melchior, or Balthazar.”

Jill frowned. “Why do those last three names sound familiar?”

“They're the three kings who of Orient were. But I don't know which one this star represents.”

“Maybe we're getting into random attributes here. We've got the message: Missing Money equals Keane the Traitor.”

Betsy's eyes widened. “That's brilliant, Jill!”

“What'd I say?”

“Equals. That's what this thing I thought I'd only started to draw is. Two horizontal lines, that's an equals sign! Missing Money equals Keane!”

“So you've solved it, then,” said Jill. “Lucy Abrams left both a name and a message on the tapestry: Her husband Keane was a thief.”

The phone rang and Betsy got up to answer it.

“Hello, Betsy, this is Mandy Oliver. I hate to break into your holiday, but talking to you made me remember something, and I wanted to tell you that your problems matching the tapestry colors may be over.”

“Really? What did you remember?”

“My mother had a little wooden box she kept leftover floss and yarn in. It's such a pretty box that I didn't sell it with her other things. I found it way in the back of a closet today, and in it are tan and gray and orange lengths of yarn. I think they're from the tapestry you volunteered to help restore. I'll bring them to you, if you like.”

“Oh, Mandy, that would be wonderful! Can you come to the shop tomorrow? We'll be open from ten to five.”

“Yes, I can come in the afternoon. See you then.”

F
ather John sat behind his desk, something he rarely did; but he felt this was a situation in which he needed all the authority he could command. On the other side of the desk were Betsy Devonshire, Jill Cross, Ned MacIntosh, and Howland Royce—the last two his verger and a man who had been on the vestry when the Reverend Keane Abrams was forced to retire.

“This is terrible, just terrible,” said Royce. He was a frail-looking eighty and was wringing his hands, which with his arthritis looked a painful thing to do. “But when Keane offered to repay the money and resign immediately, we thought that would be the best way to handle it. He was of an age to retire and was vested in a small pension fund, which he had no access to and so couldn't use its moneys to repay what he'd taken.

“When it turned out he didn't have enough in savings to make total restitution, his wife came to us and begged us to forgive him the rest, not make a public spectacle of him in front of the parish and especially his daughter, who was just starting high school. She looked dangerously sick, and my wife, who was a nurse, had told me Lucy had a heart condition. Lucy was dead a week after we accepted Keane's resignation, and we were so scared the forced resignation triggered her heart attack that we voted unanimously to forgive the rest of the debt.”

“I don't understand,” said Betsy. “Had he stolen an enormous amount of money? Or were his savings that small?”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” said Royce. “The reason he had no savings was because he'd been paying hush money to a string of women, starting two churches back.”

Father John said, “Why wasn't I told about this?”

“What good would it have done?” said Royce. “It was a private thing, and he was good as dead. No need to keep talking about what's over and done with. Or so we thought.”

Ned MacIntosh said, “He should have been arrested. It's bad enough he failed to discern between his discretionary fund and the ordinary funds of the church. It's even more disturbing that he converted at least some of the church's money to his personal use. But using church funds to pay blackmail is beyond my forgiveness!”

“I'm afraid this isn't a situation in which your personal forgiveness matters much,” said Father John gravely.

Royce said in his old man's voice, “I agree, this is a situation in which the church failed both him and its members. And now, because we hid the truth, we may have put Ms. Devonshire in a position of great danger. But I'm afraid that if we reveal the facts now, Trinity's reputation will be harmed, maybe the reputation of the Episcopal church. We have to decide whether we're going to tell everything, or nothing—or do something in between.”

“What do you recommend, Ned?” asked Father John.

MacIntosh replied, “I say we announce that a review of Father Keane's term as rector of Trinity has revealed some irregularities in—well. Shall we just say ‘irregularities,' or should we go further and say ‘bookkeeping irregularities'? I don't think we should get more specific than that.”

Royce said, “We'd better at least say ‘bookkeeping irregularities,' or people will start to ask questions. And remember, I'm not the only person who knows the answers. There are probably eight others who have at least an inkling of why Father Keane resigned so abruptly. That's not counting the women he was paying money to, including one who was a member of this parish.”

“Do you know who the local woman was?” asked Jill.

“No. Keane wouldn't name names.”

“Gentleman to the end,” snorted Betsy.

Royce said, “His wife knew. He told me he had to tell her when all this started to break. He used to lie about how much he was making, but the verger, that was Smith Milhaus, found a checkbook and called her, asking questions. That started things moving. I was a comptroller for Sweetwater Technologies back then, so I volunteered to audit his books. It wasn't hard to find what he'd been up to, and I confronted him. He seemed almost relieved to tell someone, poor devil.”

“Who did you tell?” asked Betsy.

Royce twisted his head in a kind of shrug. “I reported to the vestry that he hadn't been faithful and was paying money—church money—to some women.”

“Do you know anything about a tapestry Mrs. Abrams was working on?” asked Betsy.

Royce frowned at her. “I remember someone found it after they left and said he'd take care of it. I assume that's the one that turned up and started all this mess up again.”

“Is that person still around?” asked Jill.

“No. That was old Milhouse again, and he's dead. On the other hand, three of those vestry members are still living in the area, and so are their wives. I'd like to believe nobody told anyone else, but that would be going against what I know of human behavior.”

“You may be wrong,” said Jill. “My parents were members of Trinity, and I was baptized here, but I never heard anything about why he quit.”

MacIntosh said, “And I never heard anything, either. Come on, Royce, you must have an inkling—”

“No,” said Father John. “We're not here to speculate. We're here to decide what we are going to do about our plan to name the expanded library after Father Keane. We haven't formally announced it yet, but I know Patricia Fairland has been talking about it for weeks.”

“She got a real bee in her bonnet about this, didn't she?” complained MacIntosh. “She didn't used to be such a big noise in the church. Is it because her husband's gonna be the senator from Minnesota?”

“No, it's because she's not working like a dog anymore,” said Royce. “She liked coming to Sunday school. It was only while she was putting her husband through law school that she quit coming to the adult education classes. She taught a class on medieval church art just a year ago. So don't blame her. It could've come from any direction. But what do we do about it? Can we say there's a rule against naming things after someone who's still alive?”

“No,” said MacIntosh. “There are too many of us who know about the auditorium named for Dean Fontaine of Saint Mark's. Last I heard, he's still spending his pension money on fishing gear.”

A thoughtful silence fell. At last Father John said, “Okay, there are enough people in the parish to ensure trouble if we continue with our present plan. My advice is, we announce the financial irregularities and name the chapel after someone else.”

“I think we should name it after the first Native American Episcopal priest in Minnesota,” said MacIntosh. “The Reverend Enmetahbowh.”

“You're probably the only member of this parish who ever heard of him,” said Royce. “I think we should name it after Bishop Whipple, first bishop of Minnesota.”

They looked at Father John who said, “I think we should consult the membership. At least these two nominees have the saving grace of being long dead, along with everyone who knew them.”

Betsy and Jill lingered after Royce and McIntosh left. “Thank you for arranging that, Father,” said Betsy. “I think we've confirmed what I suspected. Mike Malloy will be in touch about tonight.”

 

Even sitting in total darkness, there was no mistaking where they were. “The odor of sanctity,” Betsy's father had called it, that mix of beeswax, incense, stone and mortar, and furniture polish. Also present was a strong scent of Christmas tree.

Betsy was sitting on a stone bench near the entrance to the new church in the wide hall, partly hidden behind the tall and beautiful fir. Beside her was Jill in an alert and patient waiting mode Betsy could only aspire to. There were other police officers hidden around the hall. One, she knew, was partly down the stairs to the basement. Mike Malloy was near the door to the hall; Betsy fancied she could see a faint light from the street glinting off his shoe. Another was inside the new church, which is why the doors to it were open—and why the odor of sanctity was carried to Betsy's nostrils. Two were inside the chapel. Elsewhere in the hall was Lars, Jill's boyfriend, and he'd brought another officer with him.

They'd been there for two hours. Betsy knew what a stakeout was, of course. But she had no idea how difficult it was to sit still for a very long time.

And what if after all she was wrong?

No, she wasn't wrong. It was sad, but she wasn't wrong.

She felt herself beginning to stiffen on the bench and began stealthily to tense and release various muscles, in her arms, her back, her stomach, her legs, her shoulders, her neck. Jill breathed, “Sit still.”

Betsy started to reply, then realized it wasn't because Jill had noticed her squirming but because someone was approaching the outside door.

There was the sound of a key in the lock, then the door opened with a very faint squeak. Booted feet padded softly into the hall, paused, and then the lights went on.

Patricia whirled, but Malloy was guarding the door, his hand coming down from the light switches. “Who are you?” demanded Patricia. Her voice was thick, as if her cold lingered.

“I'm Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy, with the Excelsior Police Department. May I ask what you're doing here?”

“I'm a member of the vestry.”

“And there's a meeting of the vestry at two o'clock in the morning?”

“Now look here—” she began.

“It's over, Patricia,” said Betsy, and Patricia whirled again. Too bad she wasn't wearing the swing coat; it flared so prettily. “We know what was on the tapestry. I'm sure you rearranged the applique while you were in Phoenix so it no longer spells your name. That's it hanging over your arm. Where were you going to put it, in the rest room? That's where you hid it the first time, isn't it, on the hook on the back of the door?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Patricia with a faint show of puzzlement. “I found it after you left and decided to take it along and treat the mildew. I'm allergic, you know, and I couldn't work on it like it was.” She started toward Betsy, her arm with the white-wrapped drape moving outward as if to hand it over, but Malloy took her by the other arm. She gave him a look that might have withered an ordinary mortal, but he only gazed back until her eyes dropped and her arm came back against her coat.

Betsy said, “You hadn't looked closely at the tapestry at first because you're allergic to mildew, but when I showed you those little symbols in the halo, you saw right away that the first three were a shamrock, a lamb, and a flaming heart, the attributes of Saints Patrick, Agnes, and Theresa, whose initials spell Pat, and you realized you were in big, big trouble.”

Patricia replied, still very calmly, “What makes you think I saw at a glance what nobody else saw?”

“Because you knew Lucy liked to hide words in her stitchery,
and
you taught a course about medieval Christian art, which is all about symbology and attributes.”

“And even if I recognized them, so what?”

“Because there was a message in those attributes:
Pat's boy + missing money
=
Keane.
Father Keane did what he could, even stealing money to help you with the cuckoo's egg you laid in Peter's nest. The boy Peter is so proud of, the grandson his mother finally approves of, isn't theirs, is he?”