The Widow's Mate (6 page)

“Your advertisers interfere?”

“Oh, they don't have to. We anticipate their interference. This story should tell you what I mean.”

Kenner actually looked over both shoulders and leaned toward Father Dowling. He whispered the word. Had the four syllables of the name ever been enunciated more distinctly? “Pi-a-no-ne.”

“Ah.”

“After you read this stuff, if you want to talk about it, let me know.”

*   *   *

They parted, and Father Dowling went back to the rectory and his study. He put the envelope in a desk drawer, lest it draw the curiosity of Marie Murkin. No need to tell her that he wanted to learn as much as he could of the strange events that had involved parishioners of St. Hilary's. All the more so now that Melissa Flanagan had become a regular at the parish center. Thus far, his meetings with her had been brief and ceremonial, the pastor acknowledging the return to the parish of an old parishioner. Perhaps he seemed a novelty to her. Her memories would be of Franciscans.

Nothing in her manner would indicate that she had been through such a series of horrible events. Father Dowling had detected in the accounts of the disappearance of Wally Flanagan the scarcely concealed suggestion that one more disgruntled spouse had decided to light out for the territory (he was rereading
Huckleberry Finn
). Accounts of the frantic wife's speculations as to what dreadful things must have happened to her husband, enclosed in double quotation marks, underlined the skepticism with which the jaded media regarded her explanations. It was the fact that she had not been left destitute—far from it—that obviously puzzled reporters. Apparently Wally Flanagan had not understood the protocol for deserting husbands. It seemed clear that he intended to start over someplace else from square one.

“Not exactly,” Phil Keegan said when they talked about the case during lulls in a Cubs game.

“Why do you say that?”

“He had a girlfriend.”

“That's not in any of the stories.”

“Cy found out about it, and he wasn't likely to feed it to a reporter. He ran into Flanagan and his popsy in a Loop bar.”

“He actually met her?”

“It was the lead he pursued, but it led nowhere.”

“So he must have learned her name.”

Phil nodded, but he was distracted by the game.

“What was it?”

“Cy would remember.”

“Sandra Bochenski,” Cy said later, as if Father Dowling's question were the most natural in the world. But when had Lieutenant Horvath last shown surprise?

“And you tried to trace her.”

“I was told she had relocated to San Diego.”

“Who told you?”

“The doorman of the building in which she lived on the Gold Coast. She might have been just feeding him a story, but you never know. If that was the plan, he never got to California.”

An eloquent Hungarian silence. They both seemed to be thinking of the mangled body that had been discovered in the cement mixer of one of the Flanagan trucks.

“But that was years after he disappeared.”

Cy almost smiled, as if Father Dowling had hit on the important point. The real mystery lay there, in the years between the disappearance of Wally Flanagan and the discovery of his mangled body.

“Any idea what he did during that time?”

“It makes you think, doesn't it, Father?”

It did indeed. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a tale in which a man deserted his wife and lived for years just blocks away, undetected. Had Wally Flanagan spent those unaccounted-for years in Fox River?

Cy didn't think so. “Unless he became a recluse, he would have run the risk of discovery.”

“It's too bad you can't pursue the matter.”

Something in Cy's manner suggested that he had not lost all interest in these long-ago events.

“You were an altar boy here?” Phil Keegan had told Father Dowling of Cy's connection with the couple as pupils in the parish school.

“Not much of one.”

“And Flanagan?”

Cy nodded, but that was all.

9

Tuttle was never thoroughly at his ease in Chicago, but then he found Fox River, where he was on the bottom rung of the legal ladder, intimidating. Nonetheless, the traffic, the buildings, the prosperity, the hustle and bustle of Chicago made him feel like a country bumpkin. He rode up the long escalator at Water Tower Place feeling little of the triumphant enthusiasm with which Hazel had dispatched him on this appointment.

“Mr. Tuttle?”

She rose from a little table in the atrium, a full head taller than Tuttle, and anyone except for the little lawyer from Fox River would have been rendered breathless by the mature beauty of the woman.

“I knew you by the tweed hat,” she explained. “Your assistant told me.”

Assistant? Was that how Hazel described herself? Perhaps he was lucky she didn't call him her assistant. He removed his tweed hat, put it on again, then took it off once more. He put out his hand, and she took it.

“Sandra Bochenski,” she said.

He joined her at the table, a distracted waitress homed in on them, and they ordered coffee.

“I called you because you once worked for Melissa Flanagan.”

Tuttle became wary. That long-ago occasion when his help had been enlisted to find Melissa Flanagan's lost husband represented one of the few peaks in his career. He had been of little help to her, of course, but no one else had any better luck finding Flanagan.

“That was a long time ago.”

“I know.” She looked around. “I wish this weren't so public a place.”

It had been her choice, as far as Tuttle understood. Any place would have been more impressive than his office. “There's a little park across the street. With benches.”

“Good. Let's finish our coffee and go there.”

She went before him on the down escalator, equalizing their heights. They got safely across Michigan and soon were settled on a bench, with the old water tower conferring historical importance on the scene.

“I had an affair with Wally Flanagan,” she said, looking him in the eye.

Tuttle tipped back his tweed hat to conceal his uneasiness. His knowledge of the shenanigans in which men and women got embroiled was largely theoretical. He never took divorce cases, in tribute to the long and faithful marriage his parents had known. What Sandra Bochenski had said would have provided a welcome lead when Mrs. Flanagan was his client.

“Tell me all about it,” he managed to say.

She did. The little park was better than the coffee shop they had left, and Tuttle had the unsettling sense of occupying the role of confessor. She spoke with quiet intensity. She and Wally Flanagan had been in love, so they had decided to run away together and start a new life. He could make a fortune anywhere. She had gone ahead to San Diego and waited. “He never came.”

Tuttle nodded, trying to convey some appreciation of the perfidy of males.

“I waited and waited.”

“Didn't you try to contact him?”

“Where? I called his office, but I couldn't just ask. Weeks passed, and I began to realize that I had been jilted. I felt like a fool, of course.”

“He wasn't here,” Tuttle assured her. “I would have found him if he was.”

She accepted the boast even though he had never discovered her affair with Flanagan. Was she telling the truth? It was not Tuttle's way to look a gift horse in the mouth, but her story made him uneasy.

She said, “His body was discovered here.”

“That was years after he disappeared.”

“I know! I want you to find out where he was during that time.”

“What is your interest?”

“Of course you would want to know that.”

“Any lawyer would.”

“Who killed him?”

Tuttle thought of Peanuts, and his sense that this could be a dangerous client increased. “It could have been anyone.”

“I think I know who it was.”

Tuttle waited; his uneasiness increased.

“I would rather not mention his name now. That can come later. Will you undertake to find out where Wally was during those years between his disappearance and the finding of his body?”

“That is no small assignment.”

“I can afford the expense.”

His uneasiness lifted as memories of the fee he had earned from Melissa Flanagan came back to him. Sandra Bochenski's dress, her manner, and her bearing suggested that she could be a plentiful source of needed income. On any other occasion, he would have snapped at the opportunity, asked for a retainer, and sealed the bargain. Now he hesitated.

“You mustn't refuse me.”

“Why me?”

“Because you already know more than any other lawyer could. You worked on the case.”

“That's true.” Her praise did not warm his heart. Superior knowledge in such a matter as this could put one in jeopardy.

“Well?” She had turned to look directly at him, and he felt at the same kind of disadvantage he always did with Hazel.

“Where are you living now?”

“In Chicago? The Whitehall.”

“The hotel?”

“Yes.” She paused. “I am thinking of moving back to Chicago. I'll be frank. This has become my mission. For years I felt that Wally had made a fool of me. Now I don't know. I can only know if I learn what he did do when he left his wife. How he spent all those years until his body was found.”

“Could there have been someone else?”

She glared at him and looked away. Her expression became tragic. “Of course, I thought of that.”

“Is it possible?”

“You will have to find out.” She turned back to him. “I find it hard to believe, I have to tell you that, but it does seem an obvious explanation, doesn't it? He was in a mood to run away, and if not with me, why not someone else?”

“His wife couldn't believe he would abandon her.”

“I know. He always said she had no idea how unhappy he was with her.”

“Why was he unhappy?”

“It will sound silly.”

“Many explanations do.”

“They had known one another forever, since they were children. His wife was beautiful, popular. Winning her was like a competition, and he won. He came to wish he had lost.”

These were deep waters for Tuttle. He felt a residual loyalty to Melissa Flanagan. Romantic intrigue puzzled him. He might have been a Martian baffled by the way in which otherwise intelligent human beings make fools of themselves because of the flesh. Why couldn't all husbands and wives have the simple love and devotion his parents had had?

Sandra had opened her purse and taken out a checkbook, which she opened on the knee of one crossed leg. She looked inquiringly at him, and he knew he would not have the courage to tell Hazel he had refused the wealthy woman's offer.

“Do you have cash?”

“Only three hundred dollars.”

“That will do.”

“We could find an ATM where I could get more.” She obviously did not object to keeping this on a cash basis.

“No, no. What you mentioned will do.”

“And make you my lawyer?”

Getting married must be like this. She handed him three hundred-dollar bills. Benjamin Franklin seemed a stranger, and three images of him made him more so. Tuttle took off his hat and deposited the money in the band. She watched with a delighted smile.

“So that's the point of the tweed hat.”

“You realize I am going to have to ask you a great many questions?”

“Should I come to your office?”

He thought of the crowded rooms on the third floor of a building whose elevator hadn't worked in years. “You say you're staying at the Whitehall?”

“We could have dinner there tonight.”

“Let's say tomorrow night.”

She took his hand in both of hers. “I can't tell you what a relief this is.”

“I understand.”

She stood, and he wondered if he should accompany her to the Whitehall, but again she took his hand in hers. “I really can't tell you how relieved I am. I feel I should have done this years ago. Until tomorrow? Let's say six thirty.”

“Six thirty.”

And off she went, suddenly just another well-dressed woman in a crowd of people hurrying to hundreds of different destinations. He watched her out of sight and then remembered his car. The hourly rate of the garage in which he had left it was like the monthly payment he had made when he bought it. Tomorrow he would come by train to cut expenses. He took off his tweed hat, made sure Ben Franklin was comfortable, put it on again, and hurried off to repossess his car.

10

“I've retired,” Luke Flanagan said, looking around Amos Cadbury's office almost with resentment.

“So I've heard.”

“Biggest mistake I ever made.”

“Then you've led a flawless life. Please sit down, Luke. You have to realize that my own duties have considerably diminished in recent years. I have become a remote presence to my juniors here.”

“That's what I should have done. Die with my boots on.”

Luke's shirt was open at the neck, no necktie, but that seemed to be the trend now, the wider world catching up with the wily entrepreneur's somewhat flamboyant sartorial style. Today he also wore a sport jacket of many colors and khaki pants. He sat across the desk from Amos, crossed his legs, not without difficulty, and widened his eyes. “Guess why I'm here.”

Amos chuckled. “Last week a client your age sat there and told me he planned to remarry.”

Luke didn't laugh. “You ever think of that?”

“If I ever do, I will reread ‘The Miller's Tale.'”

“Don't know it.”

“Is that why you've come?”

Luke hesitated. “My second biggest mistake was leaving my house in Fox River. Oh, I don't regret turning it over to Melissa, but where I live is full of transplanted old people. They call it a community, but what it is is a business. I should have invested in the place rather than moving in there. Old age is lonely enough without being surrounded by strangers.”