Stained Glass Page 7

  “Are you thinking of becoming a Franciscan?”

  “A nun?”

  “I don’t think you’re eligible to become a brother.”

  “I wonder if St. Francis would join the Franciscans if he were alive today.”

  “Our Lord might have similar misgivings about Christianity, Susan.”

  “I’m sure he would. Not that I’m much of a Catholic.”

  “None of us is all he should be.”

  She fell back in her chair, smiling. “What a diplomat you are.”

  “Just a lawyer.”

  She sat forward. “Right. So you’ll figure out a way for me to get rid of that money, won’t you?”

  “Most of my clients are concerned to hang on to theirs.”

  “Well, I’m not one of them.”

  Amos steepled his fingers and brought their tips to his mustached lips. “What you seek to do will seem like a rebuke to your family.”

  Susan made a face. “They already think I’m a fruitcake.”

  “Have you talked this over with your grandmother?”

  “I didn’t dare.”

  “Why don’t we make that the next step?”

  “Meanwhile I get richer and richer.”

  “You can give away your income, Susan. There are no restrictions there.”

  Again she sat back. “You think I’m a phony, don’t you, Uncle Amos?”

  “My dear, I don’t even think you’re a fruitcake.”

  What a lovely laugh she had. Amos felt in proximate danger of receiving another kiss.

  “How is your own work going, Susan?”

  She let her head nod from side to side. “I’m still little more than an illustrator.”

  “The house working out well?”

  Amos had been involved in her buying the house in Barrington. It had seemed a more wholesome environment in which to pursue her art than others she might have chosen. Amos had gotten a fairly detailed account from Captain Keegan of the neighborhood in which local artists worked. Apparently not the most edifying area in Fox River.

  “I have half a mind to share Bobby’s studio.”

  “Bobby?”

  “Roberta Newman. We gave her a Devere grant.”

  The studio was in the district Amos wanted to keep Susan out of. “I am glad you didn’t do that.”

  “Guess who I’ve met, Uncle Amos?”

  Amos waited.

  “A grandson of Angelo Menotti!”

  6

  Susan’s desire to rid herself of Devere money had made Amos uneasy for several reasons. Was it possible that Jane had said something to her granddaughter about her origins? God knows, she had been dishing out hints and enigmatic remarks for years. The interest in Angelo Menotti had grown into something like an obsession, and the seeming significance of Jane’s imaginary legal problems involving heirs had been impossible to ignore. Had it been a breach of confidence to tell Father Dowling about her speculations? She had engaged in similar imaginary problems with the priest. It was all Amos could do not to go over the matter with Father Dowling. Surely the priest must have made the little leap that he had, the leap that Jane seemed to be inviting him to make. One day he went off to Peoria to visit his whilom client.

  “Whilom!” Angelo roared, a hand in the collar of each of the dogs that flanked him. Their bared teeth belied Angelo’s assurance that they were tame as rabbits. “Why have we lost so many lovely words?”

  “Perhaps so we might discover them again.”

  The dogs, thank God, were left outside.

  In the large living room, Amos refused a drink and stood before a portrait. “I would have come all this way just to have another look at this.”

  “I’ll leave it to you in my will.”

  “Better leave it to someone likely to survive you.” Amos had already drawn up Angelo’s will. Had there been a provision for this portrait?

  “Young Jane,” Angelo breathed boozily beside him.

  “She was a beautiful young woman,” Amos murmured.

  “I painted her nude. The clothes came later.”

  “Jane?”

  Angelo gave him a sly look. “Jane Doe, Amos. No one you know.” The twinkle in his eye as he spoke was the equivalent of crossed fingers.

  “I didn’t imagine it was Jane Devere,” Amos lied.

  “Of course not.”

  Amos followed the old man into the studio. Old man? In his nineties, Angelo was still bursting with the life force. What a satyr he must have been when he painted that picture. It was unsettling to remember that he had painted Amos’s wife as well.

  Tacked to a large cork board in the studio were dozens of photographs, Angelo’s wives and progeny. Amos was almost relieved to find no Deveres among them. The photographs did not hold Angelo’s attention for long. He led Amos to an easel and removed the cloth that covered it.

  “Hugh Devere,” Amos exclaimed.

  “A fine young man. He intends to become an architect. I managed to dampen his enthusiasm for stained glass.”

  “So he visits?”

  “Just once. I am working from these.” He showed Amos some charcoal sketches of Hugh.

  “What a talent you have, Angelo. Talents.”

  The artist shrugged. “I want to freshen this.”

  They returned to the huge living room, and Amos accepted the second offer of a drink. They settled down, two old men, no matter the decade or so that separated their ages.

  “You don’t find it lonely here all by yourself.”

  “‘I didn’t know what loneliness was until I married.’ Chekhov. No. I have my work.” He sipped his lethal drink. “And my memories.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t marry Jane Devere when she became a widow.”

  “You’re being crafty, Amos.”

  “Was there ever anything between you two?”

  “A gentleman never talks. Not that an artist is a gentleman.”

  “She has told me that she and August monitored your work on the stained glass windows for St. Hilary’s.”

  “I had forgotten that.” Again the negating twinkle in his eye.

  “Have you heard of the speculation that St. Hilary’s will be closed?”

  “Closed!” Angelo lurched in surprise, spilling some of his drink. He rubbed it into his sweatshirt as Amos told him what he knew. “They can’t do that! I will be buried in that church.”

  In the little octagonal chapel Angelo had designed at Jane’s request, as a resting place for her father-in-law and other Deveres.

  “That was my fee. A place in the floor.”

  “Then you have a double grievance. Perhaps you should make a statement.”

  “Is that why you came?”

  Amos nodded. “That, and to see Jane Doe again.”

  Amos took the statement back to Fox River with him. Angelo had written it out in a magnificent hand. It took persuading to keep “whilom” from the protest.

  Once home, he went into his study, where he turned on the little light that illumined the portrait that Angelo had done of his late wife. After all the years of loneliness, there were moments when the pristine grief at her loss came back, and so it was now. There were tears in his eyes, but then a disturbing thought came. No, no, good God, no. Think well of the dead. This was no portrait of Jane.

  7

  “Always go to the noncoms first,” Tuttle said, holding the front door of the school open so Tetzel could enter ahead of him. “The generals can always wait.”

  The advice had a nice proletarian ring to it but sounded like bunk nonetheless. Tetzel had assumed that they would go directly to the rectory, where, Tuttle assured him, “I am both welcome and well known.” It did sound like an unlikely combination.

  Once inside the school, Tuttle took Tetzel’s arm and down a wide staircase they went, its granite steps chosen to endure the pounding of many feet. The bannister was a little wobbly; the fixtures that anchored it to the wall needed tightening up. On the landing they turned and continu
ed down.

  “This place is in great shape,” Tetzel said, shifting a plastic sack to his other hand.

  “You ever want to buy a school, you could do worse than this.”

  “I’m more likely to buy the church.”

  “Keep an open mind, Tetzel. You are custodian of the public’s right to know.”

  At the far end of the corridor they came into were closed and illumined double glass doors. Tuttle flicked a switch, and the hall was flooded with light. He immediately turned it off, then hurried down the hall. Tetzel followed the lumpy silhouette. The little lawyer obviously knew his way around St. Hilary’s.

  Tuttle came to a closed door on the left of the corridor, lifted his hand as if to knock, thought better of it, and turned the knob. Locked. He tilted his tweed hat to one side and pressed an ear to the door. “Willie,” he whispered. “Willie, it’s Tuttle.”

  There was no reply. Tuttle turned and took the propitiatory six-pack from the reporter’s plastic sack and tapped gently on the door. “Beer time, Willie.”

  After a long moment, there was the sound of a bolt sliding, and a wary face looked out at them over the guard chain. Tuttle held up the six-pack. A moment later, the chain was down, the door open, and they were inside.

  “Of course you recognize the name Tetzel,” Tuttle said, handing Willie a can of beer.

  The little man frowned. “The Bears? No, Green Bay.”

  “The Tribune,” the little lawyer said reprovingly.

  “No shit.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Tetzel got a beer for himself and looked around the snug little apartment. Not a bad deal. Free room and board and a minimum of work. The television in the corner was on mute, and a large comfortable chair was aimed at it. Magazines of an equivocal sort were scattered on the floor on either side of the chair. Against the far wall was a bed, unmade. There was a framed newspaper page above it. Tetzel went to read it. A failed bank job.

  “That put me in Joliet,” Willie said with something like pride in his voice.

  “One of these pictures you?”

  “No!”

  Tetzel was sorry he had asked. Maybe wanted felons visit post offices to see if their picture is on the wall. Tetzel supposed it would be disappointing to find you hadn’t made the cut. Tuttle had pulled a straight-back chair forward and gestured Tetzel toward the easy chair. Willie beat him to it. Tetzel claimed the straight-back, leaving Tuttle standing. No matter; the little lawyer began to pace, explaining the purpose of their visit.

  “You know more about it than I do,” Willie said after listening to Tuttle for several minutes. He had a pretty good grip on the can of beer. Tuttle had stashed the rest in a little refrigerator from which he took a soft drink for himself.

  “You know more than you know,” Tuttle said enigmatically. “Just give us the scuttlebutt you have picked up while going on your appointed rounds.”

  “You make me sound like a screw.”

  “You are a guard. Why else would they want you living right here in the school? It’s probably a requirement of the insurance.”

  Tetzel broke in, convinced that this visit was a pointless detour. “I suppose people were pretty angry to hear the news that the church is coming down.”

  “Of course it’s bugging them. You’d think they were at a wake.”

  “Pretty despondent?”

  An opening sentence formed in the reportorial mind. Senior members of St. Hilary’s parish face eviction from the refuge which for some years has meant companionship, diversion, the opportunity to review and celebrate their long lives. Rebecca’s story of a week ago would be forgotten now, as would Angelo Menotti’s statement to the Chicago Tribune that Amos Cadbury had released, probably to make sure that the cardinal read it.

  “Well, they’re in the dumps,” Willie said.

  “It won’t hit them as hard as it does you, Willie,” Tuttle said cheerfully. “What will you do when you get bounced out of this place?”

  Willie sat forward, crushing the can in his hand. Tuttle took it, arced it toward the wastebasket, missed, pulled open the refrigerator and got Willie another beer. The little man held it in both hands and stared at them. He might have been realizing for the first time that he could be out of a job. The good thief who has found peace as the maintenance man at St. Hilary’s now confronts a prospect that can scarcely please. Will eviction send him back to his old way of life, the life that led him to Joliet?

  They wasted twenty minutes proving that Willie did indeed know less than they did about the threat to St. Hilary’s. “Father Dowling went downtown to talk to the bishop,” he contributed.

  “We’ll be interviewing him,” Tuttle said.

  They left Willie to his worries and went down the corridor to the double glass doors.

  “You’ll want to talk to some of the old people,” Tuttle said.

  “I want to talk to the generals.”

  Tuttle nodded as if the suggestion were his. Through the double glass doors they went and swiftly through what had once been the gym, where their passage was followed by the suspicious glances of the old people clustered in groups.

  “Just in to read the meter,” Tuttle called to them.

  A dapper little man hurried forward to hold the door for them and followed them outside. “I’m Massimo Bartelli, chairman of Save St. Hilary’s. You’re Tetzel, aren’t you?”

  Tetzel nodded.

  “Your paper wrote us up. Any information you need, I’m at your disposal.”

  “Are all the old people with you on this?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “How about the pastor?”

  Bartelli hesitated. “We’re an independent group. Father Dowling isn’t likely to criticize the cardinal.”

  Tuttle broke in, taking Bartelli’s hand and pumping it. “We may be back after we talk with Father Dowling.”

  “Give him a message,” Bartelli said confidingly. “Solidarity.”

  Ahead of them was a walkway that led to the rectory, past the occasional bench, a little shrine with kneelers in front of it, votive lamps aglow. To the left was the church, rising majestically through the trees on the well-kept parish grounds, a place of worship for generations of parishioners, now facing the arbitrary judgment of a distant bureaucrat.

  “Let’s take a look at the windows,” Tetzel said.

  “Good, good. We can say a prayer.”

  The thing about Tuttle, you never knew when his mouth was connected to his alleged mind.

  Inside, the church was cool and softly lit by such daylight as got through the stained glass windows. A young woman was in the middle aisle, her camera lifted. A flash. She turned. Tetzel hurried toward her, fearful this was competition. Had the crafty Rebecca sent a photographer while she remained in the pressroom banging out the story that would scoop Tetzel?

  “Who are you?” he asked the startled woman. “Who sent you?” Her eyes went over Tetzel and turned to Tuttle. Clearly she did not regard them as worthy of her steel. “God,” she whispered.

  8

  The advice of a patron is not to be ignored, but Carl Barloff, at the end of a lengthy conversation with Jane Devere, asked for a repetition.

  “Of course I am serious,” she said, annoyed. “I hope you don’t think I have grown senile.”

  “Hardly that,” Carl said, chuckling, though the thought had crossed his mind. He had come to the old woman before setting out for Peoria to meet with Angelo Menotti, a courtesy visit to inform the artist of the great project soon to be under way although Menotti had no say in the matter, despite the statement released by Amos Cadbury. Was the lawyer trying to renege on Carl’s grant? He was startled to be told by Jane Devere that he must first go to South Bend and consult her grandson, Hugh.

  “The architect,” she explained. “Or who soon will be the architect.”

  There was pride in the old woman’s voice, doubtless engendered by the grandson’s departure from the usual practical and pro
fitable paths trod by Deveres.

  “An artist in the family,” he said unctuously.

  “Two.”

  Did she mean herself? He waited.

  “Susan. Hugh’s sister.”

  “Ah.” Susan Devere. The very name made Borloff uneasy.

  “You’ve never met her.”

  Carl had heard what she thought of him. “Younger or older?”

  “Than Hugh? Slightly more than a year older.”

  “Is she married?”

  “Humph. She is a liberated women. Don’t ask me from what.”

  “So I will go and talk with Hugh,” Carl said lest she send him to Susan.

  “I am putting this whole matter into his hands. He must be informed at every step of the process. At my age one must be prepared for a sudden exit or for a debilitating diminution of the faculties, something you apparently think has already begun.”

  “My dear lady.”

  “Enough of that. Off you go.”

  “Of course, I shall continue to report to you.”

  “Indeed you will.”

  If Carl had a forelock he would have tugged it. How annoying it was that money should be in the hands of the rich. Ah well. He would not repine. Jane Devere’s hand had opened to him and produced a sinecure indeed.

  It was midmorning when Carl approached the city, and a great decision loomed. Should he continue on through the Loop or go around it on I-294? Traffic on the Kennedy Expressway was dense at the best of times, and besides that was unnervingly dangerous, hotshots darting from lane to lane, the whole six lanes of cars hurtling toward the Loop with the determination of lemmings; and it could be even worse beyond, before the sanity of Indiana was reached. He turned onto I-294 and for an hour and a half cursed the decision. ROAD WORK AHEAD. It might have been the sign over hell. Traffic was funneled into two lanes, then one, and crept along. If Carl was averaging fifteen miles an hour he would be surprised. He sought resignation; he turned on the radio and quickly turned it off again; he tried to fill his mind with pleasant thoughts. To no avail. By the time he rejoined I-94 he was a muttering maniac.

  Welcome to Indiana. To Paradiso. The number of vehicles thinned. The semis seemed less intent on driving him onto the berm. His spirits rose, and he settled back. By the time he turned off for the Indiana Toll Road, he was once again the man he thought he was.