Requiem for a Realtor Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Also by Ralph McInerny

  Copyright

  To John and Mary O’Callaghan

  Part One

  1

  Although Marie Murkin, housekeeper of the St. Hilary rectory, regarded others her age as old, she still thought of herself as young. Well, younger. She dismissed her aches and pains as temporary anomalies, not evidence that time’s creaking chariot was catching up to her. The fact that she was childless was a partial explanation of her attitude. In their children, parents have ever before their eyes a measure of their passage through this vale of tears, but Marie, like the celibates she had cared for, had no such reminders.

  Abandoned by her husband, a ne’er-do-well sailor who had returned after years of absence only to die, she had unconsciously developed a somewhat cynical attitude toward marriage and family life. And, of course, in a rectory, one tended to see the failures rather than the successes. For all that, Marie had no negative premonitions when Stanley Collins showed up at the rectory door and asked to see Father Dowling.

  “I’m not a parishioner.”

  “You’re new in the parish?”

  “I used to live in St. Hilary’s. As a kid.”

  Marie had come to see herself as the filter through which only worthy callers on the pastor could pass. This visitor had much to commend him. He was a handsome man, tall, broad of chest, an interesting face dominated by a mouth that wore a disarming smile. His deference to her stood him in good stead.

  “Father hasn’t returned yet from his noon Mass.”

  “I suppose I should have telephoned first.”

  Marie led him into the front parlor and indicated a chair for him to sit in. The absence of the pastor gave her an excellent opportunity to grill the visitor.

  “Did you mention your name?”

  “Stanley Collins.”

  “There were Collins in the parish.”

  “On Lincoln Avenue. My parents.”

  “Ah.”

  “I have been told that Father Dowling is a canon lawyer.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he served on the archdiocesan marriage court?”

  “That was before his appointment to St. Hilary’s. You want to consult him as a canon lawyer?”

  “You’re the housekeeper?”

  “I am.” Marie’s tone suggested that this title did not begin to tell the story of her role in the rectory. “And have been for many years.” She cleared her throat. “I have been here longer than the pastor.”

  “There were Franciscans here when my parents lived in the parish.”

  “Yes.” This was a sore point with Marie. She had come into her position when the Franciscans were in charge, and she had found them difficult to bring to heel, despite the sandals they wore. Il Poverello would have had difficulty recognizing the clerics who bore his name. A succession of friars had characterized Marie’s first years at St. Hilary’s, and she had seriously thought of resigning when suddenly, as it seemed, the Franciscan hegemony ended and Father Roger Dowling arrived as pastor. With him she had worked out a modus vivendi that seemed satisfying on both sides. Not that he always appreciated the pastoral help she gave him.

  “When will Father Dowling be back?”

  “Oh, we have time.”

  He seemed surprised.

  “Perhaps you could give me some idea of why you want to see Father.”

  The sound of the kitchen door opening and closing brought Marie swiftly to her feet. The key to her effectiveness was to conceal the role she played.

  “There he is! Wait here.”

  She scurried down the hall and stopped Father Dowling as he came into the dining room. “There’s someone to see you.”

  “Oh?” He was tall and thin with a prominent nose, and his eyes softened what would otherwise have seemed an austere countenance. “Who is it?”

  “Lunch is ready. I’ll ask him to wait.”

  “Nonsense.” He went past her, looked into his study, and then continued on to the front parlor. An exchange of greetings and then, as she might have predicted, he issued an invitation to join him for lunch. Good. Now she could listen in as they talked over their meal.

  2

  Lunch was salad and saltimbocca alla romana. Father Dowling was glad to see his guest tuck into it, rolling his eyes in appreciation at the first taste of the veal. Marie had hesitated before disappearing into the kitchen, hands beneath her apron. She knew better than to expect an adequate reaction to her cooking from the pastor who ate whatever was put before him and thought that like God in Genesis, anything she made was good, but the man who had identified himself as Stanley Collins might have been awarding her a cordon bleu then and there.

  “This is better than any I have ever had.”

  Marie did not exactly giggle, but she went through the swinging door into her kitchen, a woman fulfilled.

  “You understand I’m not a parishioner, Father.”

  “We have a few openings left.”

  Collins laughed. “I did live in St. Hilary’s as a kid. My parents lived and died here. As I told Mrs. Murkin.”

  Father Dowling’s eyebrows rose. “I hope you didn’t have to wait long for me to return.”

  A shrug. “Ten, fifteen minutes. I should have called. I had no idea I would be treated so royally. The reason I came—”

  Father Dowling held up a hand. “Enjoy your lunch. We can talk afterward in my study.”

  Did the silence in the kitchen alter? Father Dowling had no doubt that Marie was on sentry duty. Perhaps he should have been more annoyed at her nosiness than he was, but as often as not it helped that Marie kept herself au courant on paris
h business. Not that he would ever tell her that. Nor of course did he want to convey to Stanley Collins that he was criticizing Marie.

  “I am told you are a canon lawyer, Father,” Collins said when they were settled in the study. The lingering aroma of tobacco seemed to surprise him. He watched with wonder as Father Dowling filled his pipe.

  “I hope you’re not bothered by smoke?”

  “Good God, no. Could I have a cigarette?”

  “I can’t offer you one.”

  But Collins had extracted a package from his jacket pocket. He leaned over the desk to light it on Father Dowling’s match and sat waiting until the pastor had succeeded in getting his pipe going to his satisfaction.

  “You were on the archdiocesan marriage court, Father?”

  “A long time ago. Or so it seems.”

  Had Collins come here for advice on an annulment? The very thought filled Father Dowling with unwelcome memories of the bleak years during which he had processed requests for recognition that a marriage had not occurred. In those days, it had been far more difficult to prove such a claim.

  “You understand I am no longer on the tribunal.”

  Collins nodded. How much did he know of Roger Dowling’s ignominious departure from the tribunal? For a moment, the pastor was overwhelmed by the contrast between his former duties and his life at St. Hilary’s.

  “My wife is having an affair, Father.”

  Collins’s cheerful expression was gone. Had he come to confess his wife’s sins?

  “That’s not cause for an annulment, Mr. Collins.”

  “Annulment! I don’t want an annulment.” His look of gloom returned. “My wife says we’re not really married.”

  “Tell me about it,” Father Dowling said, trying to keep resignation out of his voice.

  Stanley Collins and his wife Phyllis had not been married in the Church. They had avoided a Catholic wedding on the advice of a priest who seemed to think that they should not bind themselves so completely until they were sure. This sort of bad advice was all too frequently given of late, in good faith, perhaps, though Father Dowling lamented it. When marriage was regarded as a temporary experiment that is what it too often proved to be. The Collinses had been married in a civil ceremony in Evanston ten years ago, and until quite recently everything had gone smoothly.

  “You never thought of getting your marriage blessed?”

  “I wish I had! Now Phyllis says she is in love with another man, and she wants a divorce so she can marry him in the Church.”

  Life without law would be impossible, but it was not always much better with it. The intricacies of the marriage code were many, and the Church’s attitude toward annulment had seemed to blur of late.

  “Can she do that, Father?”

  “I would have to know more than I do,” he said with the sinking realization that this invited Collins to go on in the expectation that something more than mere advice would be forthcoming.

  “I suppose I have pretty much kept my nose to the grindstone.” Collins was a Realtor, in partnership with a man named George Sawyer, a college friend. “We’ve done pretty well. I always thought I was doing it for Phyllis, and now she complains that I neglected her.”

  “Children?”

  He shook his head, and his eyes drifted along a shelf of books. “We thought we’d wait.”

  Until they had their marriage blessed? Perhaps that, too, had been part of the advice they had been given. Despite himself, Father Dowling was thinking of ways he might shunt Collins on to someone else. But who? There was no point in sending him to the marriage tribunal. There he would be told that his wife could divorce him and, in the present state of affairs, could doubtless have a Church wedding all in white with her lover. He could imagine how all this would seem to Collins: the Church siding with his wife and colluding in the breakup of his marriage.

  “Would it help if I talked with her?”

  “I wish you’d talk to him.”

  Father Dowling waited. He would not ask for the man’s name.

  “You know him.”

  “I do?”

  “Jameson. David Jameson.”

  Father Dowling took the pipe from his mouth. Jameson! “You’re sure?”

  “I am sure. Phyllis makes no bones about it. He’s a dentist and she seems to think she’s trading up.”

  When in doubt, review what has already been said. Father Dowling had Collins go over and over what he had already told him, he himself added a number of irrelevancies about the marriage tribunal, got his pipe going again, and perhaps managed to conceal the surprise the mention of David Jameson had given him.

  Jameson’s dental practice had prospered, and he was a prominent parishioner and a frequent presence at the rectory. The last time they had talked, Jameson had inquired about the possibility of becoming a permanent deacon. He was to all appearances a pillar of the church.

  “How far have things gone with your wife and Jameson?”

  “All the way.”

  No need to pursue that. The phrase left little doubt. Father Dowling had no inclination to ask Collins how he had come by his certainty.

  “Will you talk to him, Father?” Collins asked.

  “Would your wife come here?”

  “Father, she says they plan to be married here.”

  3

  Marie kept her mouth shut when David Jameson was on the scene, literally. She always felt he was examining her teeth when she talked. Among her vanities was the conviction that no one could possibly tell that she wore dentures, but how could you fool a dentist? His manner toward her should have won her heart. He was deferential, flattering, attentive, the soul of courtesy. Yet Marie did not trust his sincerity. Besides, he was what her late and unlamented husband would have called a Holy Joe.

  It was a bitter truth that Father Dowling seemed to like Jameson. He appeared happy to see the dentist whenever he dropped in, gave him all the time he wanted when he did, and accompanied him to the door when he left. Just before leaving, Jameson would ask for Father Dowling’s blessing.

  Watching the gangly dentist bow his head as Father Dowling murmured the formula and made the sign of the cross over him, Marie could have growled. The first time he had done that, he had been about to kneel, but Father Dowling stopped him. On this Wednesday afternoon, Father Dowling closed the door on Jameson and turned to see Marie before she could slip away. Or maybe she wanted him to see her.

  “Did he just leave?”

  “He?”

  “You know who. I thought dentists had to work.”

  “Not on Wednesdays. At least in his case. Did you want to make an appointment?”

  She just looked at him. It was dangerous to think she could best him in banter.

  “Why isn’t he married?”

  “Marie, I had no idea. Does he?”

  “Idea of what?”

  “Your secret passion, of course. Maybe making an appointment at his office would be a way to break the ice.”

  A special place in heaven awaited the housekeeper who could take the teasing of a pastor in submissive silence. She waited him out for half a minute.

  “Or I could ask him to come to lunch some Wednesday…”

  “You know I can’t stand him.”

  “I’m told that is the form it sometimes takes.”

  “How many visitors ask for your blessing every time they leave?”

  “I know, I know. But we mustn’t criticize. Perhaps Dr. Jameson’s example will bring back the practice.”

  “Maybe he has a vocation.”

  “That would be an impediment,” he said, after a pause.

  Marie gave up and stormed back to her kitchen where she made a pot of tea and sat, ready to polish it off unaided when Father Dowling pushed through the swinging door.

  “Marie, I want to tap your formidable memory.”

  She looked at him warily.

  “Do you recall the Stanley Collins who was here on Monday?”

  “What abou
t him?”

  “That is my question to you.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat across the table from her. There was no point in offering him tea.

  “I’ll make coffee.”

  “Let me have half a cup of tea.”

  This was a surprise. He hated tea. She poured him a full cup and when she sat again pushed the plate of tollhouse cookies toward him.

  “Stanley Collins,” she began.

  Sometimes her memory frightened Marie. Things you had no idea you were picking up stuck in the mind, and when one came out, others followed, clinging to it the way paper clips cling to a magnet, one after the other, a whole chain, as if everything was connected with everything else.

  The Collinses who would have been Stanley’s parents had married late, he a childless widower, she a woman on the shady side of thirty who might have been ready to throw in her cards when Frederick Collins made a bid for her hand. She was a teller in the bank where he was a vice president, a terminal post but a respectable one. He wore a suit seven days a week and had no recreation other than feeding the ducks in the park. He was lonely, of course, but so was she. She taught him to play cribbage, and one thing led to another. She must have been in her mid-thirties when they married, and a year later she had Stanley. An only child, they spoiled him rotten; he went to a military high school and off to Marquette for college. Summers he had been in camp, first as a camper, then as a counselor. He wasn’t much companionship for his parents, but perhaps they preferred it that way. And they could not have been exhilarating company for him.

  “He must have inherited a good amount when they died.”

  “When was that?”

  Marie waved a hand. “I’d have to look it up. A long time ago. A tragic accident. One winter day, they were warming up the car in a closed garage and were asphyxiated.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “It’s not what you think. They were on their way to Mass. Their missals were between them on the front seat.”

  “I wonder if Stanley had married by then.”

  Something clicked in Marie’s mind. “Fifteen years ago. It was the last funeral Father Pacific ever conducted. A double.”

  “Pacific?”

  “I know. And his family name was Hug.”

  “How do you remember all these things?”