The Widow's Mate Read online

  “We should all go over to church and recite the rosary for him,” Mimi Popich said.

  Lenore Holland let out a little cry. She was still holding her cards, fanned against her bosom lest anyone see what she held.

  Gino Bacci suggested a moment of silence.

  “Good. Good idea.”

  Chins dropped to chests. Lenore took another peek at her cards before closing her eyes.

  “May he rest in peace,”

  “Amen.”

  “Who wants to go over to the church?” Mimi asked, but she was ignored.

  They would have to keep a collective eye on Mimi. Bursts of showy devotion were often danger signs. Advanced age could make people think they could offset a lifetime of humdrum attention to religious duties with a razzle-dazzle ending. Spending hours kneeling in the church or at the grotto or sighing aloud could be the beginning. Mimi herself had taken to wearing a shawl over her head and shoulders when she stopped by the grotto or went to church, affecting a peasant look as if she were trying to be Saint Bernadette. Usually these enthusiasms burned themselves out like a fever, and the old man or woman was no worse for wear, maybe even better for it, but there was always the possibility that a bout of exaggerated devotion would give way to a compensatory skepticism.

  Gino Bacci, who had done well with his pizza parlor until Domino’s moved into the neighborhood, had been saying fifteen decades of the rosary every day, for the late Mrs. Bacci but for himself as well. That might have been all right, but then he started making Holy Hours in the church. It was when he asked Father Dowling if the church could be left unlocked at night so he could get in that it was clear he needed to be brought down to earth. They hid his beads; they went with him to the church and carried on conversations in the pew behind him. Finally a more desperate remedy was needed. Lenore Holland was called into action. “But I knew Maria,” she protested.

  “All the better.”

  Lenore stuck to Gino like glue, hanging on his arm, babbling away about how much she missed Maria. He tried to get away, but she had a good grip on his arm, and then she was whispering into Gino’s copious ear. They wandered up the path to a bench. For three days, they were inseparable. When he became a pest, Lenore told him to go peddle his papers.

  “I sold pizza.”

  “Do you play cards?”

  “No. But I can learn.”

  “Come back when you have.”

  That cast Gino for the role of village atheist, and he began to make remarks to shock the ladies. They just made faces at him, but Tim Toohy protested. “We have to answer for every word we say. You better be careful.”

  “You think God’s listening?”

  “Of course he is.”

  “All over the world, to everybody?”

  “It’s a mystery.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “It’s a mystery.” Of Tim, Gino was wont to say that he was not a fastball pitcher.

  But Gino, too, was hit hard by the news of the death of Greg Packer, hence his proposal of a minute’s silence for their fallen friend. Friend? Well, you know what I mean.

  “I never know what you mean,” Tim said.

  “Show me how to play bridge.”

  Like many of limited intelligence, Tim Toohy was a masterful card player. He picked up a deck, riffled it, cut it, shuffled, did everything but run the cards up his arm. A friendship was born. Gino would have liked to show Tim how he had sailed a disc of dough toward the ceiling, caught it, twirled it, flipped it up again. Art speaks to art.

  “I suppose there was a falling-out,” Tim said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With the Flanagan woman. He had moved in with her.”

  “Come on.”

  “An apartment over the garage. The one old Luke had meant to live in.”

  “You knew Luke?”

  “I worked for the SOB.” Tim had shocked himself.

  “You were in cement?”

  Tim had been a dispatcher, sending out the trucks. The two men stared across the table at one another. The phrase had brought back the fate of Luke Flanagan’s only son.

  “You know what I thought when they removed the body from the mixer?”

  “I don’t want to hear.” Gino was damned if he was going to let Tim get started on the Pianones.

  “Packer’s death is probably connected with that.”

  “You watch too much TV. Deal the cards.”

  The fact was that Gino had seriously thought of enlisting the help of the Pianones when the competition from Domino’s affected his business. He did talk to Marco, the Pianone who collected his insurance. Marco listened, nodding, saying nothing. The next day he was back. “Sell.”

  “I have been in this location for thirty years.”

  “It’s time you had a rest.”

  Gino sold. The poor devil who bought the place thought he was getting a thriving pizza parlor when Gino, fearing the deal would fall through, told him, “They only deliver,” which was true at the time but unlikely to stay that way, and within a year the buyer had declared bankruptcy. In and out of business so quickly the Pianones hadn’t even bothered to offer him any of their protection.

  * * *

  As soon as Edna Hospers heard, she telephoned Melissa. The phone rang and rang, unanswered. She phoned the rectory and told Marie Murkin the news.

  “God in heaven,” cried the housekeeper.

  “I tried to reach Melissa.”

  “Did you try her father?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Edna hung up and sat at her desk. She was filled with foreboding. Ever since the remark about the Pianone interest in the firm, Edna had felt uneasy about Earl working there.

  Earl had dismissed the possibility that the Pianones might move in on Flanagan Concrete. “Frank’s a Looney. That’s his name. His family used to be in competition with the Pianones, but they got smart and became legitimate. One of the sons is a priest. Frank Looney isn’t going to let those people muscle in on him.”

  That he might not want it was one thing, but how did you resist the Pianones if they made up their mind to do something? Sweet reason was not the preferred method of persuasion with the Pianones. She tried to feel reassured by Earl; after all, if anyone should worry about his associations, it was him, but she felt a lingering unease.

  “Busy?”

  Edna looked up at the smiling face of Gino Bacci. Ever since she had caught him in a classroom with Lenore Holland, he had been dropping in on her unannounced. The business with Lenore was over, whatever it had been, and Gino had developed a bad habit of wanting to talk about religion. His recurrent topic was marriage. “We always said it was for keeps, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why? Because of the kids. Mom and Dad stayed together to raise the kids. That was the idea.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  His smile widened, as if she had just made a bad move in checkers. “Once they’re raised and out of the nest, what’s left of the argument?”

  This was puzzling. Gino had been a devoted family man; he was now a widower. His argument seemed to have no personal point to it. Or did it?

  “Lenore is a widow,” Edna said.

  The smile disappeared. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Edna dipped her head and looked at him. No need to mention how she had found the two of them together.

  He got it. “Kid stuff.”

  He had not been thrown off his stroke for long. There was a second part to his argument. People of a certain age, a man and a woman, well, they’re not going to have any children. So why can’t they just pair off as they please? What’s the difference?

  “Who do you have in mind?”

  “Are you married?”

  “Get out of here.”

  He went laughing to the door, and Edna followed him to make sure he left. He was harmless, and he got a kick out of talking. Maybe
his late wife hadn’t given him much of a chance.

  Before she got the door closed, he pushed it and looked back in. “I came up here to talk about Gregory Packer.”

  “Mr. Bacci…”

  “Gino.”

  “Gino. You’ve caught me at a bad time.”

  He had pushed his way into the office again. He shut the door behind him. When he spoke, it was in a whisper. “I can’t tell them this myself.” He leaned closer. “Tell them the Pianones. They’ll understand. And don’t mention my name.”

  “What possible connection is there between Greg Packer and that family?”

  “Just tell them, okay?”

  And he was gone.

  3

  As soon as Tuttle heard of the murder of Greg Packer, he telephoned the Whitehall to speak to his client, but Sandra Bochenski did not answer when his call was transferred to her room. Maybe just as well. Tuttle folded his cell phone and looked across the table at Peanuts Pianone. It was Peanuts who had offhandedly mentioned the body in the garage apartment at the Flanagan home in Fox River. Tuttle’s first reaction had been one of relief to think that this would free him from his ambiguous clients, but it quickly gave way to anxiety at the thought of losing his most profitable assignment.

  “How would you like to drive me to the Loop?”

  Peanuts looked at him from his narrow eyes.

  “You on duty?”

  The sound that escaped from Peanuts might have been a chuckle.

  “We could have a beer on Navy Pier.”

  The path to Peanuts’s consent was through his belly. At the moment it was chock-full of sweet and sour pork, three egg rolls, and a pot of hot tea, but the drive to the Loop would restore his appetite.

  The car in the lot of the Great Wall was a patrol car, and that enabled Peanuts to zigzag down the interstate at seventy as if they were in pursuit of Public Enemy Number One.

  “Take it easy,” Tuttle cried when Peanuts nearly took the front fender off a car as he cut in front of it.

  Peanuts answered by turning on the flashing lights and siren.

  Geez. Tuttle pulled his tweed hat over his face after checking his seat belt. He kept forgetting that Peanuts behind a steering wheel had the mentality of a teenager.

  When they got off the Stevenson, Tuttle gave Peanuts instructions to the Whitehall.

  “I know where it is.” He meant Navy Pier.

  “I have to run an errand first.”

  “After we have a beer.”

  “No! Come on, Peanuts, I’m buying.” Tuttle had picked up the tab at the Great Wall, too. Even so, Peanuts was pouting when he pulled to the curb in front of the Whitehall.

  Uniformed porters converged on them and then, seeing the markings on the car, stopped, puzzled. Tuttle hopped out and pushed past them into the hotel.

  The little lobby was crammed with baggage, and at a desk the concierge was doing a brisk business selling baseball tickets, excursions, and theater seats to clients who thought they were getting a bargain.

  “Sandra Bochenski,” Tuttle said, elbowing aside a Japanese couple at the registration desk. “Official business,” he added.

  He had to spell the name for the clerk, who fiddled with a computer keyboard and then frowned and fiddled some more. She looked at Tuttle. “She checked out.”

  “Checked out? When?”

  “Today.”

  “What time today?”

  “Early this morning.” The clerk lost interest, and the Japanese elbowed past Tuttle.

  He turned away. Maybe his client had changed her mind and headed back to California. Without telling him? He got out his cell phone and called his office.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you,” Hazel scolded.

  “Any messages?”

  A snort. “Lieutenant Horvath called.”

  “What’s the message?”

  “He wants to talk with you. I told him to try the Great Wall.”

  “Did Sandra Bochenski call?”

  Hazel’s attitude toward his client was mixed. On the one hand, hard cash had been put into Tuttle’s hand, with the prospect of much more. On the other, Sandra was a woman, and Hazel was that most formidable of foes, a male chauvinist in skirts. She seemed to think there was something vaguely illicit in a woman hiring a man. Of course, Tuttle had not leveled with Hazel as to why Sandra had hired him.

  “Why would she call?”

  “Then she didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “I think she left town.”

  “Where should I send the bill?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  He turned off his cell phone before returning it to his pocket.

  Outside, taxis were lined up for half a block behind the patrol car, unable to pull in for passengers. Behind the wheel, Peanuts stared indifferently ahead, ignoring the frantic pleas of the porters.

  Tuttle hopped in. “Let’s go.”

  Peanuts took off with a squeal of tires, and in five minutes they were at Navy Pier, where Peanuts pulled into a convenient handicapped space and shut off the motor. He looked at the Ferris wheel, the people, the excursion boats, and the flags and pennants flying everywhere and grunted approval.

  Tuttle had two beers. Peanuts was on his fourth when the little lawyer pulled out his cell phone and called Cy Horvath.

  Cy wanted Tuttle to make Sandra Bochenski available for questioning.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. About what?”

  “She might help us in an investigation.”

  “The death of Greg Packer?”

  “Have you already talked to her about that?”

  “She left town. Checked out of her hotel in the Loop. Vamoosed.”

  Silence on the line, and then, “At your suggestion?”

  “I’ll forget you said that.”

  “I can always repeat it.”

  “The answer is no. I went to the hotel to talk with her and found she had left.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In the Loop.”

  “Have Peanuts get you back here fast, Tuttle. Or would you prefer that I ask Hazel about your client?”

  “Within the hour.”

  “Drive carefully.”

  4

  Whatever instrument had been used to strike and kill Greg Packer was nowhere to be found in or near the garage apartment.

  “Something heavy,” Pippen said when Cy asked her what it might have been.

  “That helps.”

  “You want guesses?” She tossed her ponytail and looked saucily at Cy. In some possible universe, he would have taken her in his arms and told her he loved her. In the actual one, he simply nodded.

  “That’s right.”

  She rattled off a list: It could have been an ashtray, it could have been a candlestick, it could have been a chair, it could have been a croquet mallet …

  “They’re all accounted for.”

  “All what?”

  “Croquet mallets. In the garage.”

  So something heavy had been used to smash the base of Greg’s skull. The blow did not suggest a professional job, but then a professional would know that.

  Before he called Tuttle, Cy wanted to account for the whereabouts of Melissa Flanagan, just to be thorough. It was really Luke he was thinking of, the irate father figure who had blown up when he learned that his daughter-in-law had let Greg Packer move into the garage apartment. Of course, it wasn’t just the apartment that explained Luke’s reaction. He had long ago cast Greg in the role of the friend who had misled his son. Turning away from the family business had been symptomatic, and leaving his wife might have seemed just a continuation of irresponsibility.

  When he called Luke’s condo in Chicago, a woman answered.

  Cy hesitated, then said, “Mrs. Flanagan?”

  She laughed. “That’ll be the day. This is Maud Lynn.” Pause. “A friend.”

  “Is Luke there?”

  “Would I be in his apartment if he weren’t? Who is this?�
�

  “Lieutenant Horvath of the Fox River police. Let me talk to Luke.”

  “He’s in the shower. The old fool decided to take up jogging and came back half dead. I had to help him upstairs.”

  “Tell him I called.”

  “Any message?”

  Cy hesitated. The woman was obviously a chatterbox. “No, just tell him I called.”

  By the time Luke called back, he would have learned about the death of Greg Packer.

  Cy would have liked to ask Pippen if she’d like a cup of coffee, or maybe a beer across the street. Just to talk, he told himself. Instead he talked to himself. It was absurd to think that what had happened to Greg was somehow connected with the renewed interest in finding out where Wally Flanagan had been during the years after his disappearance, but the thought came nonetheless. Greg had married Sandra Bochenski, who had gone off to California to wait until Wally joined her. It strained credulity to think that Greg had just happened to meet Sandra, who had been fooling around with his old friend Wally.

  Cy shook his head. He had been trained by Phil Keegan, and the cardinal rule of any investigation was not to dream up some story of what might have happened. Stick to what you know. Okay, so what did he know?

  Greg Packer was dead, killed by a blow to the head in the garage apartment of the Flanagan home.

  Melissa and Greg had been an item at the St. Hilary parish center. Cy himself had seen them together and reacted somewhat as he had years ago when Sandra Bochenski came into the Loop bar to meet Wally. Melissa had offered the garage apartment to Greg and discussed with Amos Cadbury the possibility of financing his plan to open a driving range in Barrington.

  Luke, who had never liked Greg, had been furious when he found out that Melissa had let Greg live in the garage apartment.

  Sandra Bochenski, like Greg, had reappeared in Fox River years after Wally’s body was found in a Flanagan cement mixer.

  Inevitably, the manner of Wally’s dying suggested the Pianones, but then the Pianones came to mind whenever there was a gruesome murder. Not that any Pianone had ever been indicted or convicted of murder.

  So where to begin? At the beginning, more or less. What had become of Wally’s old brokerage firm?