Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (9 page)

I decided right then not to let Ryan see anything
more about me, at least not for a long while. “All right,” I said, “let’s get
back on task here.”

“Absolutely,” Ryan said. “Thanks, Karen.”

“Forget it,” I said, with a melancholy smile.
“Really: I mean forget it.”

“You got it, partner.” I was glad to see him
smile, even though it wasn’t his big grin.

“Okay, so what are you getting from Connie’s
story?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m seeing a motive as big as
the sky. I could see myself just flipping out one night and killing him. All it
would have taken is one wrong word or one funny look from that creep. Or one
perverted request too many.”

“Yeah, you could be right. She could have a good
ten years of resentment built up and all of a sudden it busts out.”

“That’s the way I’m seeing it right now,” he said.

“But what about her affect—you know, the monotone
voice, the OCD, the smoking? All of those are ways you keep a lid on things,
right? If she had flipped out last night and killed him, don’t you think we’d
see something weird today that would show her struggling to keep it together?”

“I just don’t know,” Ryan said. “Maybe you flip
out, and that helps you get back on track the next day.”

“Yeah, maybe. But how about the lack of an alibi.
If I was planning to kill him, I’d work something out with Jon earlier. Even if
I wasn’t planning to kill him, the first thing I would’ve done afterwards was
go to him. He’s the one I trust. Then I’d have an alibi.”

“You’re making a bunch of assumptions there,” Ryan
said. “First, you’re assuming she was thinking clearly enough to set up an
alibi. Twenty holes in Hagerty doesn’t suggest clear thinking. And you’re
assuming she’d go to Jon. Maybe they’ve got some kind of close relationship but
she doesn’t trust him to lie for her. Or maybe she doesn’t want to involve him.
You know, she loves him but she wants to protect him. She realizes her life is
over now, and she’s not going to take him down with her.”

“Yeah, everything you say is right. She could be
the one.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so,” I said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Her story rings true to me. She’s
led such a crappy life for so many years, I see her as being numbed to it. You
know, it’s part of her job. And given what she’s had to go through on the
street, having to do Hagerty isn’t that bad in comparison. If he doesn’t beat
her up and doesn’t make her do anything more degrading than she told us about,
she might be okay with it. Sex is part of the job, but he gives her her own
room and she mostly gets to control her own time. It adds up, especially given
her relationship with Jon Ahern.”

“How do you see that?” Ryan said.

“Well, they’re in love. But since sex is one of
her job requirements, she’s not sleeping with Jon. She’s never seen sex as part
of a loving relationship. Sex is one of the things she does to get along. So
she screws Hagerty, like she does the bookkeeping and arranges the hotels.”

“Okay, so what next?”

“Why don’t we have another chat with Margaret? We
can tell her what Connie said about her relationship with her husband. She
might try to push us toward thinking Connie’s the one.”

“Let me find out where she is,” Ryan said, getting
up and heading out to the uniformed officer at the reception desk. He came back
a moment later. “She’s in her room.” We took the stairs to 217 and knocked.

Margaret Hagerty opened the door. She was wearing
the same expensive suit she had on this morning. “Detectives,” she said, with a
slight edge to her voice. Obviously a little annoyed at having to meet with a
couple of municipal workers twice in one day. She was holding her book, her
finger keeping it open to the page she was reading.

“Ms. Hagerty, we’re so sorry to interrupt you
again, but some new developments have arisen we’d like to talk with you about.”

She said, “Have you captured whoever did this?”

“No, ma’am, not yet.” Apparently, she’d seen some
cop shows on TV. “But if we could just come in for a moment to talk with you.”

She sighed. It was a mixture of disappointment
that the case had not yet been solved and skepticism that Ryan and I were quite
up to the task. She stepped back, allowing us to enter, and motioned with her
hand for us to sit as she settled into the soft chair. Ryan took the extra
chair that had been delivered this morning.

“Ms. Hagerty, we’ve had a couple of opportunities
to interview Connie de Marco.”

“I see.”

“And we wanted to talk with you about something
she said, about a relationship with Mr. Hagerty.” Margaret Hagerty’s face was a
porcelain mask. I’d never seen anyone maintain her composure so well when she was
about to learn something truly embarrassing—or, at any rate,
hear
something truly embarrassing about her late husband. “I realize how painful
this whole episode must be, but for us to carry out this investigation we need
to ask you an embarrassing question.”

“I understand completely, Detective. Proceed.”

“Connie told us she had a long-standing sexual
relationship with Mr. Hagerty. Would you like to comment on that?”

A hint of a smile broke the mask on Margaret
Hagerty’s face. “Is that the embarrassing question you wished to ask me?
Whether my husband had a sexual relationship with Connie?”

“Well, yes, Ms. Hagerty. Yes, it was.”

“Detectives, you can both relax. There is no cause
for embarrassment. I am aware that Connie had—what did you call it, ‘a long-standing
sexual relationship’?—with Mr. Hagerty. Yes, Arlen began his relationship with
Connie soon after she presented herself at Soul Savers. He had not yet
concluded his sexual relationship with Gail Something, which followed his
sexual relationship with Jackie Something, which followed more sexual
relationships than I can name. My memory for such things is not what it once
was.”

“So, Ms. Hagerty, these relationships didn’t make
you jealous?”

Margaret Hagerty laughed, her capped teeth white
and perfect. It was the first sign of joy we had seen from anyone in the debate
party since Hagerty had been iced. “Jealous? May I ask you a question,
Detective Seagate?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Have you lived in Montana your whole life?” The
smile was gone, but her eyebrow was raised theatrically.

“Ms. Hagerty,” I said, deciding not to respond to
that question, “could you tell us a little about the relationship between you,
Connie, and Mr. Hagerty?”

“Certainly. Mr. Hagerty and I married six years
ago. Ours was his third marriage, my fourth. Neither of you is quite at the
stage of life Mr. Hagerty and I were in at that time, but I need you to trust
me when I say that, for us, at any rate, sex was not part of our relationship.
I will not elaborate on this point except to note that I entered our marriage
fully aware that Arlen still had sexual appetites, although I can say that our
several less-than-successful attempts revealed his performance could not keep
pace with his desires.

“When I discovered he often found willing partners
from among the young girls who presented themselves at our gates, I was
somewhat concerned. For one thing, if his relationships with these girls became
known, the publicity could have a serious negative impact on the operations and
revenues of Soul Savers.

“For another, these girls are not, by and large,
blushing virgins. The danger of a serious disease cannot be overlooked.
Consequently, when I saw that he had taken a liking to Connie, I did what I had
done with the previous girls.”

“What was that?” I said. As I finished my
question, I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket. I made a mental note to
check it when the interview was over.

“I had her tested thoroughly for every manner of
sexual disease. She turned out to be free of any disease that can hurt male
partners. She has HPV, which could affect other females, but that is, of
course, none of my concern.”

“And about Connie traveling with the debate?”

“It dawned on me, perhaps a year or fifteen months
ago, that having Connie travel with us would be practical. She is a very
efficient worker, and with her along, Arlen would not have to go to the
trouble, the expense, and the risk of retaining an escort on the road. Connie
understood the arrangement, and she is apparently content with it.”

“Apparently, yes,” I said. “And what is Connie’s
relationship with Jonathan Ahern?”

“Connie assured me she is not intimate with Jon,
and therefore there was no danger she would contract a disease that would
infect Arlen. In fact, Connie agreed to my demand that she commit to
celibacy—except for her relationship with Arlen, of course—and I have no reason
to believe she has reneged on the agreement.”

“Did you know Jonathan and Connie are in love with
each other?”

“No, I didn’t,” she said, uncrossing her legs and
re-crossing them in the other direction, “but I’m pleased to learn that. Love
is a beautiful experience when you’re young.”

That’s one of the perks of this job: you get to
meet really interesting people. But Margaret was right, of course: love is for
the young. The young don’t understand Newton’s first law of marriage: if you
can fall in love, you can fall out of love. If you married the guy because you
believed your love was special—he wouldn’t get bored, wouldn’t drift away,
wouldn’t turn into someone so different that you not only didn’t love him
anymore but couldn’t even imagine why you once did love him—well, that just
shows you were too young to get married. Margaret’s way was a whole lot
smarter: get your own money, form a partnership with another person who’s got
his own money, and let him bring his mistress along so he won’t get the clap
and have to cancel a gig because he’s pissing razor blades.

I looked over to Ryan, giving him a chance to ask
Margaret any questions. He shook his head, the gesture appearing to capture his
mood at that point. “All right, then, Ms. Hagerty, thank you very much for your
candor. I hope we don’t have to disturb you again.”

Margaret Hagerty remained in her chair, her face
telling me nothing as she watched me and Ryan leave.

*  *  *

Downstairs in the lobby,
Ryan said, “Could you use a coffee or something?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s getting kind of squirrelly
up on the second floor. How about right here at the bar? It’s on me.”

Ryan nodded, and I got us a couple of club sodas
from the bartender, a fifty-something woman, hair dyed a red I’d never seen in
nature, wearing too much turquoise eye shadow and Raggedy Ann rouge. The
Courtyard had her in a starched white shirt, buttoned to the neck, with a shiny
black clip-on bow tie. I had no idea what kind of tone she was supposed to be
setting.

Ryan said, “Margaret’s a piece of work, huh?”

“Yeah, but I’ve seen weirder.”

“You’re kidding. She’s pimping out Connie to her
husband, and she says she’s glad Connie’s in love?”

“That’s what you’d call irony, right?”

“No,” Ryan said. “That’s what I’d call sin.”

“Yeah, that, too,” I said. “The thing pissing me
off is we’re not getting any straight answers from these people. They start out
talking like they all come from Mayberry, then we confront them and they reveal
a little more.”

“And they’re not even embarrassed or anything when
they get caught lying.”

“Well, don’t ever expect that,” I said. “I guess
if you’re the kind of person who’s pimping a girl for your husband, your
natural reaction when someone calls you on it is to suggest they’re small
town.”

Harsh light from the fluorescent bulbs in the tiny
gift shop next door spilled over into the bar. The bartender was talking with a
younger woman wearing the hotel blazer. She was leaning with her chin on her fist,
elbow on the bar, the other hand lazily stirring her ginger ale, looking like
she talked with this bartender just about every day at this time, and they’d
run out of things to say a long time ago. The woman in the blazer looked at her
watch, her break apparently over, and got up and left, waving halfheartedly to
the bartender.

“So, what next?”

“I think we should talk with someone from Soul
Savers who might be able to tell us who’s being straight with us.”

“Yeah, if anyone is. Let me take a look at the site
again,” Ryan said, pulling out his laptop and booting it. “You want another
club soda?” he said.

“No,” I said, draining off the remainder of my
glass. “I’m good.”

“I’ll get the next one.” Ryan pulled up the site
and clicked on About Us. “How about this?” he said, pointing to the link for
the Board of Directors.

“Yeah, follow that,” I said. We scanned the list
of the six members of the Soul Savers Board. There was an evangelical pastor, a
priest, two presidents of church-related universities, a business leader, and
the founder of Soul Savers.

“How about this guy: Archbishop Brian McManus?”
Ryan pointed to the Chairman of the Board of Directors. We read the little bio
after his name. A Doctor of Divinity from Notre Dame, Archbishop for the
Archdiocese of Denver, covering all of northern Colorado. “He looks legit,”
Ryan said.

“Google him, will ya?” Ryan pulled up the site for
his archdiocese. “Appointed in 1999 by the Pope. He’s officially the Most
Reverend Brian L. McManus, O.F.M. Cap., whatever that means. BA in Philosophy,
Loyola Marymount; MA in Theology, Catholic University; Doctor of Theology,
Fordham University. Pastor in Brooklyn; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Colorado
Springs. Secretary and Treasurer for the Archdiocese, then
the
co-chancellor of the Archdiocese of Chicago
, then Archbishop of Denver.”

Ryan said, “Look at this, will you?
In Chicago he was Secretary of the Archdiocesan Commissions on Ecumenism and
Human Relations, on the Chicago Conference on Religion and Race and the
Interreligious Committee for Urban Affairs. Professor of Canon Law at the
Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, a consultor of the Congregation for
the Clergy.” Ryan scrolled down the page. “It just keeps going. National
Conference of Catholic Bishops. All kinds of committees in Chicago, Denver,
Rome. Four honorary doctorates, served on two Presidential commissioners, on
race and on poverty.”