The Widow's Mate (16 page)

He made his way to the Grotto, whispered a prayer for his departed wife, and then went down to the lake, where ducks and geese were everywhere. So were benches, at intervals of fifty feet. These lined the campus walks as well, each having a little bronze plaque commemorating the donor. Amos sat and looked out at the lake and thought of what he had left behind in Fox River.

The horror of coming upon the body of Gregory Packer when he had gone to tell the man that his plans for a driving range in Barrington could go forward was still with him. He had not approved of Melissa's decision to underwrite Packer's venture, knowing what Luke's reaction would be. It was difficult to think that Melissa's support could be kept a secret from her father-in-law.

“I'm going to sell the place now,” Luke had said to Amos.

“But Melissa is living there.”

“She won't want to stay there now.”

“Luke, I can't tell you what a shock it was to discover the body.”

“I know.” Luke seemed to wait for his remark to register. “Amos, there is something I have to tell you.”

Amos listened to Luke's account of driving angrily to Fox River to confront the unwelcome occupant of the garage apartment.

“I would have thrown him down the stairs if he had objected to leaving at once.”

Amos found that he was almost indignant at this revelation. “Luke, why didn't you call the police?”

His explanation of that was halfway understandable. He had been in a rage since he heard Packer was staying in the garage apartment; he had said threatening things to Melissa, and to Maud.

“Maud.”

“A woman I've come to know. A fellow resident.” Luke frowned. “Can a woman be a fellow?”

“I'd have to meet her to know.”

“You will, you will. Amos, there's more.”

So it was that Amos heard of the bloody wrench Luke had picked up when he mounted the stairs to the garage apartment—and then the grisly discovery.

“I got out of there. It wasn't a decision, Amos, I just skedaddled. “He might have been Lord Jim explaining how he had jumped ship. “When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I realized I was still holding the wrench.”

“Where is it?”

“I threw it into the weeds behind the compost heap.”

“Dear God.”

“What should I do, Amos?”

Now, looking out over the lake that seemed unchanged since his student days, Amos wondered if he had ever imagined in his youth that he would face such a problem as this. The wrench must surely be the murder weapon. The police investigation had so far not turned it up. Was it possible that it could lie there in the weeds undiscovered? Amos asked Luke for a more exact description of where he had thrown the wrench. That was when he made the decision that weighed so heavily on him now.

“Do nothing, Luke. It is possible it will not be found. If it is, our conversation will serve to explain what you did.”

Luke slumped in his chair. “What a relief.”

But Amos had felt no relief, not then, not now. Of course, he believed Luke's story. It was absurd to think that he would have used that wrench as a weapon on Gregory Packer and then come to Amos with the account he had just given. The problem was that the wrench could prove decisive in determining who had killed Gregory Packer.

Any hope Amos had that he could simply drive away from the problem and lose himself in the past on the campus of Notre Dame was dashed. For the rest of the day, he took part in a few of the planned events; he had dinner à deux with Father Hesburgh, and it was all he could do not to consult this wise old priest about his troubled conscience.

“Are you still on the advisory council at the law school, Amos?”

“No. Well, I am an emeritus member.”

“And I am president emeritus.” A sweet sad smile settled on the handsome visage of the man who has been called the second founder of Notre Dame. They lifted their manhattans and toasted the passage of time.

In the morning, Amos played nine holes with a hungover Maurice, taking the wheel of the cart as if he were his old classmate's designated driver. Maurice had trouble with math as he reconstructed his score on each hole and then on a par three took his driver with its enormous head, lunged at his ball, and, improbably, sent it sailing toward the green. It landed just in front, rolled toward the hole, and dropped in. They stood looking at what Maurice had done.

Maurice was too elated to crow. He just danced up and down, his eyes aglow. “That's it, Amos. I've never had a hole in one in my life before. This is my last round. I'm going to put my clubs away and dine out on that shot for the rest of my days. I only wish Packer could have seen it.”

“Packer?”

“A man I took lessons from in California. At a driving range.”

“Gregory Packer?”

“Do you know him?”

“I did.”

“Amazing. The son of a gun owes me money. Now, I don't care.”

Amos said nothing further. Back in his room, he showered and dressed for the drive back to Fox River. He had had all the reunion he could handle.

10

Hazel wouldn't let up about the disappearance of his client Sandra Bochenski, so Tuttle stayed away from his office. If he had been a drinking man, the occasion would have called for going on a real toot. He sat next to Mervel of the
Fox River Tribune
at the bar across from the courthouse and, watching the reporter emptying glass after glass, Tuttle felt like taking the pledge. Mervel had just come from an informal press conference across the street.

“They don't know anything,” Mervel said with odd satisfaction.

“No suspects?” The fugitive thought that Melissa Flanagan might have had something to do with the death of the man she had let use the garage apartment came and went. What a tragic woman. First her husband disappeared, then his body was found in a cement mixer, and now a man had been murdered in the Flanagan garage while Melissa was living in the house. Rueful thoughts of long ago when Melissa had been his client added to Tuttle's melancholy. How much had she been told of the woman Wally Flanagan had planned to meet in California and begin a new life with, living in sin together? Tuttle was not given to moralizing, but marital infidelity was one thing he condemned unequivocally. His parents had provided him with a model of what marriage should be, steady and loving and undramatic, until death do us part. Perhaps he himself had never married because he knew he could not realize that ideal. Imagine being tied down to someone like Hazel. He shuddered.

“Have another,” Mervel advised.

“I'm still working on this one.” Tuttle's Guinness was still half full. Or half empty. Or both.

“There must have been a falling-out,” Mervel said.

“What do you mean?”

“Mrs. Flanagan and the dead guy.”

“No way.”

Mervel snickered. “Cherchez the floozy. That's still the best rule.”

“You're drunk,” Tuttle said angrily, getting off his stool.

“Not yet.”

Tuttle threw a couple of bills on the counter and turned to go. He was called back. He was short two bucks. How the devil could Mervel afford to drink in this place? But then he was running a tab.

He was still angry at Mervel for his slur on Melissa Flanagan when he crossed the street. Before he reached the opposite curb, he was nearly run over. He danced out of harm's way and then saw Peanuts Pianone behind the wheel of the car that had almost hit him. Tuttle opened the passenger door and hopped in. “You missed.”

“The Great Wall?”

“Where else.”

In the restaurant, with their table covered with dishes of Oriental delicacies, Peanuts settled down to feeding himself.

“Anything new on Gregory Packer, Peanuts?”

Peanuts shrugged. “Someone bonked him on the head. A messy job.”

Suddenly Peanuts sat upright. He looked around, then frowned at Tuttle.

“You got a cell phone, Peanuts?”

Eureka. A sly smile. He plucked a phone from his pocket and studied it as it went on buzzing. Then he punched a button and put it to his ear. “Yeah.”

Peanuts glowered as he listened, repeated “yeah” several times, and then returned the phone to his pocket.

“What is it?”

“Lucky bitch.”

“Who?” Of course, he didn't have to ask. The only woman other than Hazel who stirred Peanuts to contempt was Agnes Lamb, the black officer, many years his junior on the force. Agnes had long since eclipsed Peanuts—not a great feat in itself, but Tuttle had heard both Phil Keegan and Cy Horvath praise the young officer. “Agnes Lamb?”

Peanuts uttered an uncharacteristic profanity.

“Lucky how?”

“She thinks she found the murder weapon.”

“Who called you?”

A repetition of the profanity. “She wants me there. With the car.”

Tuttle, of course, went along to the Flanagan house, expecting to find patrol cars all over the place, but there was no one in evidence. Peanuts bounced in the driveway and slammed on the brakes. When Tuttle got out, a voice called from above. Agnes Lamb was looking out a window in the apartment above the garage.

Peanuts stayed in the car, but Tuttle went around behind the garage and up the stairs and knocked on the apartment door.

Agnes opened it. “Where is everybody?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Keegan, Horvath, anybody. No one is in. I told them to put it on the radio. So I called whatchamacallit.” Meaning Peanuts. Agnes crossed the living room and picked up the phone.

“How did you get here?”

“A cab. I had an idea, Yo-yo out there had our car, so I took a cab. And I was right.”

“About what?”

“Wait till the lab gets here.”

Agnes dialed and this time was successful. A crew was on its way. When it arrived, Peanuts continued to sit behind the wheel of the car, brooding like Achilles in his tent. Tuttle followed the crew, who followed Agnes into the backyard, beyond the compost pile, where she pointed. Tuttle pressed forward and got a glimpse of the wrench scarcely visible in the weeds.

*   *   *

Photographs of the scene were being taken when Cy Horvath showed up. He looked down at the wrench and gave orders to have the wrench taken to the lab.

He put his arm around Agnes. “Good work,” he said.

11

“It's a living,” Regis McDivitt replied whenever he was asked what it was like being an undertaker. His father had always told him that they were engaged in one of the corporal works of mercy—burying the dead—but, of course, McDivitt's and other funeral parlors made a pretty good thing of it. Regis was the third generation of McDivitts who had prepared the departed for viewing and conducted them to the church for their funeral Mass and then on to the cemetery to their final resting place. The occupation should have induced long thoughts on the contingency of existence and the inevitability of death, but Regis went about his work with a cheerful insouciance, despondent with the sad, even-tempered with the stoics, bubbly with those who seemed to think of death as a swift passage to fun and games elsewhere. The main thing was to be all things to all men.

In the case of the final obsequies of Gregory Packer, it was difficult to know what audience one was playing to. Death by violence was rarer than one would think, at least in Regis's experience, but when it occurred one was prepared for unbridled grief and showy despair from the survivors. But who were Gregory Packer's survivors? There were no relatives, and any friends he had seemed to be of recent vintage.

“Mass of the Angels?” Regis asked Father Dowling.

“No, I think a requiem Mass.”

“Good for you.” The words just came, and Regis backed away lest Father Dowling take offense. Apparently not. You have to be careful with the clergy, an edgy bunch, usually on their dignity. Dowling was unusual, though. McDivitt's had secured a monopoly of St. Hilary's funerals before Dowling's time at the cost of free calendars with saccharine reproductions of religious art of the worst sort and, of course, the name, address, and telephone number of McDivitt, your friendly undertaker.

Although it was a preference expressed only in the privacy of his own mind, Regis preferred an old-fashioned funeral, Latin if possible, the
Dies Irae,
black vestments, a seemly sense of the desolation involved in the death of a human being. Dowling said the rosary at the wake at McDivitt's, and there was a satisfactory turnout, the folding chairs filled with the old people who hung out at the St. Hilary senior center. Regis, assuming his all-purpose expression, loitered in the back of the viewing room, happy that there was a minimum of chatter and an appropriate gloom over the assembly.

Cy Horvath came up beside Regis. “Good turnout.”

“Of course.” The death of Gregory Packer had been a prominent item in the local news during a slack period. Where the body is found, there the eagles will gather—or words to that effect.

The Flanagans had been ushered to the front row: Luke, Melissa, and a cheery little woman who seemed to be with Luke. Regis had put Sandra Bochenski in the front row across the aisle from the Flanagans.

Father Dowling had taken up his position on the kneeler in front of the open casket and begun the sorrowful mysteries when Tuttle the lawyer came in, wearing his signature tweed hat. Regis glared at it, and Tuttle removed it. He looked over the assembly and then headed down the aisle, stopping at the front row left, then taking a chair beside Sandra Bochenski.

*   *   *

Cy recognized the woman Tuttle had joined as the onetime love of Wally Flanagan. Then he was immediately distracted by the entrance of another couple. The man was Marco Pianone, but Cy did not recognize the woman. They settled into a back row. Marco Pianone! The last time Cy had seen Marco at a funeral had been a four-star send-off for a man who had likely been a victim of the family omertà.