Ash Wednesday (29 page)

“Natalie Armstrong. Isn’t she one of the beneficiaries of Helen Burke’s will?”

“Exactly!”

“Eugene Schmidt. Wasn’t he driving the bus that forced Helen Burke’s car into the bridge abutment?”

“The same Eugene Schmidt.” Marie paused. “If that is his name.”

“You don’t think it is.”

Marie put her fingers to her pursed lips, twisted an imaginary key, and threw it away. She did say, “I suppose that is the sort of thing a reporter could find out.”

Rebecca nodded, as if few mysteries could withstand the scrutiny of the press. “Marie, can I regard this as an exclusive interview?”

“You mustn’t mention my name.”

“Agreed. But I have to talk to Natalie Armstrong.”

“Nothing easier. You will find her at the senior center. No doubt in the company of Eugene Schmidt.”

“All the better. Will you promise not to pass this on to any other reporter?”

“I am not in the habit of chatting with reporters.”

“Is that a yes?”

Marie nodded. “More coffee?”

“I will. This is delicious. You should taste the mud we drink in the pressroom at the courthouse.”

Rebecca wanted to know how long Marie had been at St. Hilary’s, what the job entailed. She began to take notes as Marie talked. “This could make a nice little feature by itself. How many people understand the role of a rectory housekeeper?”

“But no mention of …”

“Of course not.”

“He’s dead, you know. He came back and then he died.”

“We’ll just forget all about him,” Rebecca said.

Marie went out on the porch with Rebecca, showing her the walkway to the senior center. As she watched the reporter march off, briefcase slung over her shoulder, her beige beret set at a resolute angle on her head, her sensible shoes an index of seriousness, Marie inhaled deeply. It might have been a prayer of thanksgiving. Whatever happened now happened, and that was all there was to it. She hadn’t told the reporter anything she couldn’t have learned from any number of people. She particularly liked the way she had finessed the matter of Eugene Schmidt’s name. Surely not even Father Dowling could find fault with her on that score.

Madeline hated hospitals, hated to see people weakened by illness and pain, hated the smells and oddly echoing sounds of the place, but of course she could not keep away when she heard what had happened to Jason. How long had it been since she had been here? Not so long that she had forgotten that one never stopped at the great circular desk and asked to see a patient. Inevitably there would be delay. The volunteers who served at the desk preferred doing something rather than nothing. Who could blame them? Madeline thought of those few months when, inspired by Jason,
she had volunteered to help at the hospital several nights of the week. She hurried toward the elevators at the far end of a long hallway whose walls were hung with photographs of long ago.

Intensive care was on seven, at least it had been. When she emerged from the elevator, it was clear she could not bypass the nurses’ station. Where was Jason? She put the question to a nurse in blue.

“Mrs. Burke? Follow me.”

Madeline followed. Did the nurse’s question mean that Carmela was not yet here?

She wasn’t. Jason lay on his back, a mountain of a man on a white bed, under a white coverlet, liquids dripping slowly down plastic tubing to his wrist, a great swami-like bandage on his head. Madeline was left alone with Jason.

“Madeline,” he said, his eyes rolling toward her.

She took his hand. She tried to say his name, but only a sob came forth.

His eye was still on her. “I’ll be all right.”

“Of course you’ll be all right.”

Bedside exchanges in hospitals will never make it into any collection of great conversations, but when the patient is in intensive care, semiconscious, teetering on the edge of the abyss, language becomes merely therapeutic, music rather than meaning, just the sound of another human voice that can reach into the pain and darkness and serve as a lifeline back to normalcy. Jason had recognized her, and that was good—not that she made too much of that, any more than she had of the nurse’s thinking she was Mrs. Burke.

Madeline stayed with Jason for hours, and Carmela did not come. Agnes Lamb and Cy Horvath did, wanting to talk to Jason about what had happened to him, but he was not yet ready for that and didn’t look like he would be for some time. Madeline took a break and went down to the cafeteria and had coffee with them.

“Any ideas?” Agnes said.

“About what happened? No.”

“No enemies?”

“Jason? Of course not.”

“Isn’t he married?” Agnes smiled slyly and her eyes opened wide as she said this.

“Sort of. They’ve been separated for years.”

“I wondered why she wasn’t here.”

A terrible thought occurred to Madeline. “Has she been told?”

Agnes looked at Cy. It was clear they didn’t know.

Agnes said, “I’ll call the office in Schaumburg.”

Madeline was surprised Agnes Lamb knew of that. “Oh, they’ve moved their offices to Fox River. Amos will know where.”

Carmela was told—she hadn’t known; she had been off on a quick business trip to New York and hadn’t kept up with the
Fox River Tribune
—and rushed to the hospital. Madeline rose when she came in. Carmela hardly noticed her but went and stood beside Jason, looking in stunned wonderment at her battered husband. She reached a hand toward him, then drew it back. He had opened his eyes. He mumbled something, and Carmela leaned over him. He spoke again, and she stepped back, glancing at Madeline. Madeline had grown used to Jason’s slurred speech. What he had said was “Ah, my caretaker.”

“What in God’s name happened?” Carmela said when she and Madeline stepped into the hall.

“Apparently someone attacked him, in his apartment, and tried to make it look as if he had been drinking.”

“Had he been?”

“The police say there was no alcohol in his blood.”

“A historic first.”

“Carmela,” Madeline began, then stopped.

“What is happening to this family?”

Carmela, having been treated like an interloper by Helen, could be forgiven for thinking now that she had married into a very strange family indeed.

“Your partner should have called you, Carmela.”

“My partner?” Carmela stared at Madeline. Then she understood. “Oh, Augie.” Another pause. “Yes, he should have. Well, now I’m here.”

She might have been dismissing Madeline, but that wasn’t it.

“Not that I can be of the least bit of help to him.”

She wanted to go. She wanted to flee this scene. Madeline understood.

“I’ll stay for a few more minutes.”

Carmela touched her arm and then walked away, slim, her heels sounding in a businesslike way, her large purse on her shoulder, hand gripping its strap. Madeline went back to Jason.

Madeline kept intermittent vigil for days. From time to time, Carmela stopped by, stayed for a few minutes, patting Jason’s hand, then left. On one occasion, Agnes Lamb went off with Carmela, to have a little chat in the cafeteria.

Carmela consulted her watch. “It’ll have to be short.”

At the bedside again, Madeline asked, “Jason, who was it?”

“Carmela.”

“No, no. Who attacked you?”

He didn’t know. He seemed not to care.

Eventually he was removed from ICU to a room where there could be flowers and other visitors. There was a television set perched high on the wall, but it was always turned off. Agnes Lamb and Cy Horvath came, and Father Dowling accompanied by Father
Pringle, the hospital chaplain. Madeline withdrew discreetly on these occasions.

She began to fear that her constant presence would be misinterpreted. How? She didn’t know how, but it was clear that whenever Carmela looked in and saw Madeline there she didn’t like it. Not that she ever said so. Indeed, quite the opposite.

“Madeline, you’re an angel.”

“There are good and bad angels.”

“You’re one of the good ones. Sometimes I think you should have married Jason.”

“Oh, I thought of it.”

“You did!”

“I also thought of marrying Cary Grant.”

She told the reporter, Tetzel, all she knew, but he had the facts already.

“I want interpretation,” he said urgently. “The human side. Who would do this to that big gentle man?”

“Did you know him?”

Tetzel looked offended. “I have written about him.” He spoke as if his prose had taken Jason out of nothingness and conferred reality on him. Still, it was nice to have someone she could just babble to.

“You’re cousins,” Tetzel said.

“Of a sort.”

Tetzel had an epiphany. “You’re one of the heirs.”

Madeline nodded.

“Cousin and co-heir,” Tetzel murmured.

“That sounds like St. Paul.”

“I’m from Minneapolis.” It was a joke.

She told him that she and Jason had grown up together. She and Jason and Carmela.

“The wife?” “Yes.” “Of sorts.”

He was fascinated by the way she had fixed Carmela up with Jason for a school dance.

“Little old Cupid, that’s me.”

“You never married?”

“Not yet.”

Where did that remark come from?

When the time came for Jason to be released, Madeline had him taken to her new big house.

Amos, having met Agnes Lamb at the hospital, where he had looked in on Jason, asked the officer if he could give her lunch. She was dressed in civilian clothes, a lovely, intelligent young person, and one whose persistency he had come to admire. Twice she had quizzed him about the will, and he had been evasive. It occurred to him now that he should be more cooperative.

“McDonald’s?”

“I was thinking of the University Club.”

When they were in his car, she said, “I’ve never ridden in one of these.”

How easy it was to forget that the way one lived, which after all was simply the way one lived, could look extraordinary to others.

“I’m not a very good driver.”

She smiled.

Their entrance caused a subdued sensation, and Amos walked slowly behind his guest to their table, rather liking the image of himself as an aging roué.

They had shrimp cocktails and a white wine, and Agnes surprised him by talking of John Thomas, the bankrupt who had gone into the pizza business and then into the Fox River, in that order.

“Of course, that’s roped off from us.”

“A cordon sanitaire?”

“Maybe. What’s it mean?”

He told her. “You’re suggesting that there might be a connection with one of our more prominent families?”

“The
family. Who else controls the restaurants?”

“This is just speculation,” Amos Cadbury said.

“We always begin with speculation. Then we see if it can be sustained. But not in this case, or others like it. Oh, we could investigate, even make the case, but nothing would come of it.”

“That is unfortunate. The world is a most imperfect place, Agnes.”

She sipped her wine, her eyes never leaving him. “Tell me about Jason and his wife,” she said.

“It’s all a matter of public record,” Amos said. He might have been reminding himself. He told her what there was to tell, not sparing Helen Burke.

“Gambling and drink both?”

“Mainly drink. And now he has stopped.”

“He told us there had been deliveries of liquor and beer at his shoe store. From whom he didn’t know, or even when it had come.”

“Any signs of a break-in?”

She shook her head.

“And who had keys?”

“The clerk. Eric.”

“Yes, I met him.”

“He denies any knowledge of it. He was the one who ordered pizza from John Thomas, the pizza that never arrived.”

“Very mysterious.”

“Who would want him to fall off the wagon, other than liquor stores?”

“I can’t imagine. There was general relief when his mother’s death turned him around.”

Agnes said, “Is it true that his wife has control of Jason’s money?”

“It was his mother’s wish.” He paused. He did not want to mislead this young woman. “No, that’s not quite true. She didn’t want him controlling his money, but she didn’t specify who should control it.”