Stained Glass (27 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

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BOOK: Stained Glass
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In the conference with Cy and Agnes, Jacuzzi the prosecutor waxed philosophical. “In trying to lay it on Borloff and then his brother, he provided us with all the evidence we need to get a conviction. The box cutter, the rope. It reminds me of a play.”
“Running or passing?”
Jacuzzi was not to be distracted. He couldn't believe that the twins could be so identical that people wouldn't know they were talking to one or the other. Apparently, though, that was the case. Margaret Devere Ward, taken downtown to identify Charles Menotti, couldn't believe her eyes. It helped that Fulvio was standing beside her. She
looked from him to the man behind the glass and threw up her hands.
“Was it you I met on the freighter?”
“Of course.”
“But how would he know of all that?”
“I told him. I had no idea that he would impersonate me.”
“What on earth does he have against you?”
“Do you have any brothers?”
Cy and Agnes had explored that with Fulvio. Seldom had ‘sibling rivalry' seemed so apt a phrase.
“He was always in trouble. Many times I was blamed for what he'd done. He ended up blaming everyone else. He wanted our grandfather to support him.”
“What did he say?”
“‘On the toe of my shoe.' When Charles saw all that Devere money going to people he regarded as parasites on our grandfather's fame, he must have gone berzerk.”
“He did get one hundred thousand dollars of it from Carl Borloff.”
Fulvio whistled. “He should have settled for that.”
“He had already killed several people.”
Fulvio became solemn. “He has to see a priest. Is there a chaplain here?”
“Father Dowling has talked with him.”
Fulvio seemed relieved. “Nobody's all bad, you know.”
“Are you including Louellen in the indictment?” Agnes asked Jacuzzi.
“That would be hard to prove. I want to stick with the sure ones.”
Agnes didn't like that at all. She reviewed everything that had been found in Louellen's room; she went downstairs to the morgue to talk to Dr. Pippen.
“Alcohol and drugs,” Pippen said, shaking her head.
“She didn't drink.”
“How do we know that?”
“A woman down the hall. If she never drank, others would have known that.”
“The trouble is, you can start drinking.”
“I don't want her just forgotten.”
“Agnes, if they convict that man they will have convicted the man who murdered Louellen. If he did.”
Agnes knew what she must sound like, even to Cy, even to Pippen, and there was some truth in it. She didn't think the skinny little hooker was looming large enough on anyone's radar because she was black. She went back to the evidence room and had the custodian get out everything.
“You were just here.”
“I may have overlooked something. I'm going to take this to the lab.”
“Sign for it.”
Winston in the lab seemed to wear glasses so he could look over them. When he wasn't doing that, he put them on top of his head. He groaned when Agnes told him what she wanted. “I checked all that stuff, the syringe, the pipe, everything.”
“Do you drink, Winston?”
“Is that an offer?”
“I don't drink. How do you open a bottle of liquor?”
Winston showed her. The cork had a plastic ridged top, and it was twisted off. With both hands? No, you hold the bottle with one hand and twist with the other.
“Where would you grip the bottle?”
“In the middle. There are no prints there, Agnes.”
“What if you held the bottom and twisted different ways with different hands?”
“I've never seen it done that way.”
“I've never seen it done any way.”
Wearing gloves, Winston placed the bottom of the bottle in the palm of one hand, got a grip on the bottle, then put the other hand on the cork. He checked where a bottom grip would have made prints. There still were no fingerprints on the bottle.
“Of course, it was wiped. All this stuff was.”
“Why is the bottle dented on the bottom?”
“So are wine bottles.”
“Did you check in there?”
Winston checked in there and found a print. He grinned as if it had all been his idea. “He must have carried it that way.”
The print matched Charles's. Agnes went back to Jacuzzi with the news. He still didn't want to add Louellen's name to the list of victims.
“I'll picket your office unless you do.”
Jacuzzi had a crooked grin that many jurors found charming. “You're kidding.”
“Try me.”
Louellen's name was added to the list of Charles Menotti's victims.
Cy congratulated her. “I think you've discovered a new right, Agnes.”
“It's only justice.”
“The next time I'm the victim of a mass murderer, I'll insist on equal billing.”
From Cy such kidding was okay. Don't ask her why.
 
 
The Devere Foundation was indeed the link between all the recent murders, and it had generated the second link that was Argyle House. Charles, infuriated by his grandfather's disinterest in him,
had irrationally determined to become the executor of his estate, the heir of Angelo Menotti's fame. He had followed the dispersal of Devere money, all of it connected, as he thought, with Angelo Menotti. That his resentment would turn him into a murderer surprised even him, if you could believe him.
“Bobby? The poor girl refused when I went there to take away the portrait she had done of me. She said it was one of the best things she had ever done. She intended to show it. I couldn't have that.” He looked around the room, but his eyes returned to Agnes. “If only I had known then that Fulvio was back.”
“Your twin brother.”
“Separated at birth. We never got along.”
Charles became uncomfortable when Agnes asked him why he had desecrated Bobby's body as he had.
“Who would think I would do a thing like that? She didn't die of hanging, you know.”
“It wasn't the exhaust, Charles.”
“I know. She was dead when I brought her there. She died in her studio.”
Their struggle when he had tried to remove his portrait had seemed just jostling at first. Bobby had climbed onto his back to prevent him from taking the picture. That had angered him.
“I threw the canvas on her waterbed and grabbed her by the throat. Not meaning to do more than frighten her.” Again he looked away. “It was as if I couldn't remove my fingers from her throat.”
He looked at Agnes as if expecting sympathy.
Was it possible to strangle someone inadvertently? Maybe if it was your first attempt.
“So you hung her stripped body in Amy Gorman's garage and cut it up a bit.”
“I am sorry about that.”
“Why make her body seem that of Madeline Schutz?”
“It confused you, didn't it?”
“How did you get hold of her purse and clothing?”
“I talked a man named Mintz into letting me into her apartment. I was her publisher; she had sent me to pick up a manuscript.”
“I'm surprised you didn't get rid of Mintz, too.”
“By then I had thought of turning suspicion onto Fulvio.”
“Brotherly love.”
“My grandfather thought the world of Fulvio.”
Louellen had to go, of course, because she would know about him and Bobby. Carl Borloff?
“That sonofabitch. Can you imagine making a career out of someone else's work?”
“Your grandfather's.”
“Yes!”
“Wasn't that more or less your own plan?”
“It's not the same thing. My grandfather opposed what he was doing. Not that anyone gave a damn.”
“What about J. J. Rudolph?”
“Bobby told me about her. So I went to Kenosha and joined the firm.”
“Just like that? Do you feel any guilt at all?”
He thought about it. “I'm trying to explain how it happened.”
Does anyone ever stop seeming innocent in his own eyes? That was a problem Agnes would leave to God. Meanwhile, she was glad that Charles would go on trial for all the murders he had done.
“He won't die in prison,” Cy predicted. “He did pretty well in Joliet the first time. He will be free before he loses his looks.”
At the trial, Amos Cadbury himself sat with defense counsel, unsettling Jacuzzi. When had Amos Cadbury ever appeared in criminal court? Or sat next to Tuttle, for that matter. That patrician presence at the defense table had no effect on the outcome of the trial. The best Tuttle could do was argue mistaken identity and go on and on about the unreliability of fingerprints, citing instances.
“He doesn't take advice,” Amos told Father Dowling afterward.
“It was good of you to give moral support.”
“Moral? To Tuttle.” A wintry smile. “I did it for Jane Devere.”
“Of course.”
Willie and Holloway followed the trial with interest. Pretty Boy, as they still thought of Charles, had a lazy arrogance throughout the proceedings of which Holloway approved.
“He doesn't have a chance, so why not enjoy it?”
Willie shook his head. “Can you imagine going back to Joliet?” “Phyllis would never permit it.”
“Your parole officer?”
“Willie, have you ever wondered about the way we attract females?”
“No. You going to marry her?”
“If she proposes.”
 
 
When Father Dowling visited the upper floor of the Devere mansion, Jane seemed to have aged. “I don't know which of them Margaret brought to me.”
“The grandsons of Angelo Menotti.”
A long silence. “I have never gone to confession to you, Father Dowling.”
“You told me you had a confessor.”
“I do. Sometimes I want to confess sins that were forgiven long, long ago. Sins whose effects don't go away.”
“You and Angelo Menotti?”
“How did you know that?”
“You put a case to me once.”
She nodded. “It
was
a kind of oblique confession.”
Sun slanted into the room as she spoke. Father Dowling listened to her anguished story. A young wife having an affair with an artist on whom she'd had a crush as a student at Rosary College. She had persuaded her father-in-law to engage Menotti to do the stained glass windows for St. Hilary's church. She had visited him in his studio in Peoria.
“What a seducer he was.”
“You became pregnant?”
She took a very deep breath. “You must have seen the Menotti traits in James.”
“Are you certain Angelo was the father?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Oh, yes. In compensation, I developed an exaggerated pride in the Devere family. Dear God, how I have tainted it.”
“Your husband never guessed?”
“Father, he was so happy at the prospect of becoming a father. Dear God, how could I have done that to him?”
“I think you handled it well.”
“You do?”
“What was the alternative?”
“I could have told my husband!”
“You could have, yes. I think you were wise not to.”
She subsided into silence. Her eyes went to the Menotti Madonna above her prie-dieu. “Angelo would not have married me if he could have.”
Father Dowling could think of nothing to say to that.
“He was only a seducer. I knew that, and that made it easier for me to deceive my husband.”
Father Dowling had taken a little stole from his pocket and put it over his shoulders. “I'll give you absolution now, Jane.”
“I confessed it long ago.”
“Think of this as a general confession.”
She bowed her head then, and he said the words of absolution, tracing the sign of the cross over her. He rose to go. “I'll bring you communion next Tuesday.”
“Thank you.”
When he had reached the door, she called his name. He turned. “Father, Susan and Fulvio … I think they're in love.” He waited.
“They can never marry.”
Consanguinity? No need to discuss that now.
“Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.”

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