SISTER

A Novel By

Lawrence De Maria

Sister, a novel by Lawrence De Maria

Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2013

(Revised 2016)

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information, email ljdemaria@aol.com.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by St. Austin’s Press

(305-409-0900)

Special thanks to Nancy Kreisler, Maryellen Alvarez and Deborah Thompson.

Dedicated to Patti, without whose love, support and faith this book

– and others –

would not have been possible,

and to my sons,

Lawrence and Christopher.

Good men, both.

SISTER

CHAPTER 1 - PROM CHECK

Sister Veronica leaned forward and smiled into Carole MacQuaid’s nervous, pretty face.

“Really, Carole? Your Mom said this dress was appropriate?”

“I swear, Sister. She said it was just like the one she wore to her own prom.”

The principal of Ave Maria Academy for Girls in Worcester, Massachusetts, held her tongue. But what she wanted to say was that if Mrs. MacQuaid had worn a similar dress to her prom it was probably the night she conceived Carole. Instead, she said, “OK. Let’s give her a call.”

The girl sighed heavily, defeat on her face.

“Well, maybe not just like the dress she wore. But it is the same color.”

The dress was purple. Bad taste apparently ran in the MacQuaid family.

“I don’t think your mom’s boobs were falling out.”

The girl looked down at her chest.

“I don’t think they are so bad, Sister.”

“They aren’t bad, Carole. You have a wonderful figure. But there is a difference between cleavage and the Grand Canyon.” Sister Veronica was quite sure some of the boys in town had seen the girl’s breasts in all their naked glory, but that was no reason she should look trashy on prom night, purple dress notwithstanding. “You are a lovely girl. Let the boys concentrate on your face for a change.”

All the seniors had to pass inspection. One by one the girls came by the principal’s office, changing in the bathroom, to preview their prom dresses. Sister Veronica was halfway through the senior class. The prom was two weeks away but she wanted to give the kids enough time to make the necessary adjustments. In Carole MacQuaid’s case, she thought, steel cables might be in order.

The dresses did not have to be suits of armor. But they couldn’t be strapless, and the straps had to be at least one and a half inches wide. Sister Veronica had nothing against her girls showing a little feminine pulchritude. It was not unheard of for her to tell a girl she might want to be a little more daring. Cleavage depended on each girl’s attributes. Small-breasted girls were given slightly more leeway in that department. High heels were permitted. Telling a teen-age girl she couldn’t show off her legs would be cruel. But not too high. The girls would probably be scandalized if they found out their principal knew that ultra-high heels were called “fuck me” shoes. I didn’t always wear these skirts, jackets and high-collared blouses that make me look like, well, Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote. These kids should have seen me in a bathing suit. And they’d be really shocked to know I wasn’t a virgin, although it’s been many years since I’ve been with a man. None since long before I took my vows. But I remember how it was. The intensity. The need. A blurry image of a handsome young man swam into her consciousness. I wonder how he is?

“Earth to Sister,” Carole said.

“What’s that?”

The principal realized that her mind had wandered.

“You were staring off into space,” the girl said. “I thought you were spazzing out.”

“Sorry. I was thinking of something. Not that you girls aren’t capable of giving me a stroke. Now, are you going to the prom with that boy from Holy Cross?”

“Tom? Yes, Sister.” The girl looked at her principal for a sign of disapproval. “He’s only a freshman.”

“Nice-looking boy, and polite as I recall. Freshman, huh. Way to go, girl.”

They both laughed. Who am I to cast stones, Sister Veronica mused. Mine was a college sophomore. A Holy Cross boy, too, although neither of us lived anywhere near here back then. Funny I wound up here.

Carole MacQuaid left, disappointed about the dress, but not angry. None of the 133 girls in the school could ever be angry at Sister Veronica. She ran a tight ship, but she was eminently fair, doling out help and praise just as often as discipline. Every week she made it a point to call the parents of at least five students, always finding something positive to say about their children. She only had two decades on her seniors but they, and other students, came to her for everything. Boy troubles, drunken fathers, academic problems. Ave Maria graduated all its students and every single girl went on to a four-year college, including some Ivies. A couple went to military academies. She cherished a wonderful letter from one of her girls, who credited the discipline and guidance she received at Ave Maria for her success in surviving her first year at West Point.

Sister Veronica was only one of three nuns still at the school. They lived on a stipend, with their salaries going back to their religious order with the understanding that it would be used to bolster the pay of lay teachers, and the occasional scholarship for a needy girl. Ave Maria didn’t graduate ingrates. The kids, and their parents, knew how lucky they all were.

The Ave Maria principal was still a very attractive woman, kept trim by 80-hour work weeks and jogging, augmented by long walks in the woods and hills surrounding the school’s 10-acre campus. She also used the treadmill in the small gym in the main school building, which was, in fact, the former mansion of a local Irish bootlegger, who stored Canadian liquor in the basement and a series of Asian mistresses upstairs.

It had been four years since leaving her teaching job in the Boston Diocese to become the youngest principal in the 89-year history of Ave Maria, 40 miles west of the big city. The glass ceiling for women in the Catholic Church was still bullet-proof thick, but her intelligence and drive were common knowledge and the Mother Superior of her religious order — the Sisters of St. Jerome — had little trouble convincing the bishop that her talents were better used elsewhere. It didn’t hurt that the poor man was overwhelmed by a sex-abuse scandal that threatened to bankrupt his diocese, and moving another salary, however minor, out of town didn’t hurt.

Sister Veronica immediately revamped the rather stodgy curriculum of Ave Maria to better reflect the changing ethnic makeup of the student body. What had once been a predominantly white school, heavily populated with Swedes, Italians, Irish, Poles and French Canadians, now had a sizable minority of Vietnamese, Ghanaian, Liberian and Congolese girls. In an effort to make those kids feel more welcome, and to show the entire student body the reach of the Catholic faith, she recruited Rev. Rudolphe Jolly from nearby St. Basil’s to be the school chaplain. Father Jolly, a boisterous and expansive man who lived up to his name and was beloved by everyone, came from Togo, one of the wave of African priests who were filling out the Church’s depleted parish ranks in the United States. Fluent in French, he was an immediate hit with the girls whose families hailed from Quebec and soon had half the other kids learning the language.

The move toward greater diversity initially met some resistance from a few parents and local townspeople. But the opposition quickly evaporated after Sister Veronica asked the head of the local Mafia and a high-ranking State Police officer, both of whom had daughters who loved Ave Maria, to make a few calls.

The peripatetic educator also instituted an early placement program with nearby institutions of higher learning. So innovative was her thinking that other school districts in New England began to emulate her initiatives. And as a fundraiser who, in the pithy words of the head of the local Chamber of Commerce “could charm the warts off a hog,” she had created an endowment that allowed Ave Maria to keep its annual tuition below $7,000. A rabid Boston Red Sox fan, she even managed to get the team to sponsor a four-year scholarship and provide two season tickets. She auctioned off most of the games, raising even more money, although she did keep a couple of days for herself and her staff when the Yankees played at Fenway. Her stewardship was credited with saving Ave Maria from the fate of other private Catholic academies, such as Assumption Preparatory School, which was rebuilt after the deadly 1953 tornado that killed 94 people only to succumb permanently to budget woes many years later.

Ave Maria’s finances were still in precarious shape, she knew. But she was hopeful that might soon change, if the lawyer she recently spoke with was right. The Lord certainly worked in mysterious ways. Often, a bit too slowly, for her taste. There were bills to be paid.

Sister Veronica looked at her watch. Carole MacQuaid was the last girl to stop by with a dress. The building was quiet, other than the normal creaks and groans common to ancient plumbing pipes and heating ducts. It was Friday, and the rest of the lay staff had hurried away for their weekend. The only other two nuns who taught at Ave Maria left to visit relatives in Boston. It was still light outside under a cloudy sky, and a bit chillier than normal for late spring.

The principal was tired. If I don’t do something to get my blood moving, she thought, I’ll fall asleep during N.C.I.S. It was her favorite show. She particularly liked Abby Sciuto, the quirky forensic scientist, a devout Roman Catholic who in her spare time went bowling with nuns. Abby, a free-spirited Goth with a heart of gold, was one of the reasons Sister Veronica looked the other way when one of her students got a tattoo, as long as it was small, not obscene and not visible in street clothes. As for Tony DiNozzo, the irrepressible N.C.I.S. bad boy, he reminded her of her first real boyfriend. Her first and only lover. I hope he didn’t hate me for what I did. Leaving him without a word.

She shook off the maudlin memories. She knew what she needed. She went up to her small apartment on the top floor of the old mansion, the one where the long-dead bootlegger probably kept his mistress in splendor, and changed into a sweat suit. Ten minutes later, she was jogging along a path adjacent to the Blackstone River near Quinsigamond Village. It had started to drizzle and she was glad her sweat suit was waterproofed and she was wearing her Red Sox cap. Because she maintained a good pace, she wasn’t cold. But she knew she would be when she stopped running. She decided to stop at the McDonalds in Quinsigamond on the way home for a large hot coffee.  And, what the heck, since she was there, she might as well get a Big Mac, with fries. What better meal to watch N.C.I.S. She knew Tony would approve.

Almost an hour later, the Ave Maria principal was back where she had started her run, a small grass parking area down a short gravel cutoff that jutted off the highway. She felt good, and rationalized that she’d burned off enough calories to justify her planned fast-food splurge. Maybe she’d even get the little apple pies Mickey D’s sold, two for a dollar. She pulled off her ski cap and shook her head. Rivulets of rain water mixed with perspiration ran down her brow and cheeks. Strands of her hair were plastered to her face. I must be a sight, she thought.

There had been several cars parked in the lot when she arrived. She had passed — and been passed — by other joggers, many of whom she knew. She’d even run almost a mile alongside the slow-poke Rabbi Markowitz from Union Hill’s B'nai Avraham synagogue before apologizing and leaving him in the dust, or rather, mud. But it was dark now. As far as she could tell, she was the only one still running in the rain, which was now heavy.

The lot was almost deserted. There was only one car near her 2005 Hyundai Santa Fe. Some of the girls had teased her about her choice of vehicle. S.U.V.’s and nuns didn’t seem to go together. But it sure came in handy to haul equipment and kids to soccer practice and other sporting events. She again glanced at her watch. A half hour to N.C.I.S. She would be cutting it close, but at least the food would be hot when she turned on the TV.

Sister Veronica reached the Santa Fe and glanced at the car next to hers. The windows were fogged up and she couldn’t tell if anyone was in it. It crossed her mind that the spot would make a great lovers lane once the joggers and walkers left. She smiled. I suppose it qualifies as a form of exercise. She shrugged. Well, I still have my Tony DiNozzo.

As she opened the door to her S.U.V., she could see and hear cars and trucks on the main road. Then the other car’s door opened.

“Hello, Sister.”

It was a man’s voice, vaguely familiar. And the way he pronounced “Sister” was strangely discordant. She turned as the man approached. He was dressed all in black and had something in his hand that glinted as a beam of light from a truck on the main road shimmered through the trees and swept over them. It also briefly illuminated his face and, with a start, she understood why the voice had seemed familiar..

“You!”

The man smiled, and punched her in the chest. And held his fist against her left breast. There was a sharp pain, but only for a second. It was replaced by a strange hollow feeling.

Sister Veronica tried to say something, but couldn’t. She looked down as he withdrew the ice pick. She looked at his face again, which began blurring and shifting, so that his smile became lopsided, like that of the Joker in that Batman movie. Heath Ledger. The man also seemed to be getting taller, until she realized she was just sagging down toward the ground, the strength leaving her legs quickly.

All these years, she thought.

Sister Veronica wasn’t afraid. Even though she knew she was dying.

And why.

CHAPTER 2– BASS AND DREAMS

Nothing clears the mind after a tawdry marital stakeout than matching wits with some bass and pickerel. I decided to head upstate to Greenwood Lake outside Poughkeepsie to do some therapeutic fishing. I would eat my breakfasts at a local diner where the waitresses called everyone honey and the eggs were runny, just like they should be. For dinner I would hit Maloy’s Tavern, a local watering hole in nearby Ellenwood known for good steaks, where I would drink bourbon and swap lies with other fishermen.

Not that I had many lies to tell. I mean, fishing shouldn’t be a fair contest. A well-educated human, armed with the latest spinning tackle and shiny lures against creatures with brains the size of a pistachio should prevail. I consider myself a good fisherman. I did a lot of fishing as a youngster and had good memories of trips with friends. That’s probably why I still like to occasionally wet a line, even alone. It brings back those memories. As we get older, making new ones gets harder.

But during my last two trips to Greenwood Lake, I had managed to land exactly one bluegill that must have been trying to mate with the Rapala lure that snagged him. The sunfish was almost as big as the lure. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of fish in the lake. During my previous trips I could see large swirls in the weeds and lily pads where the pickerel were ambushing shiners, and frequent explosions as bass smashed into insects and frogs on the surface. I probably could have done very well using live bait. But I consider myself a purist. I like to cast artificials. I have lures that mimic shiners, frogs, worms, crayfish, beetles and some things that look like they exploded out of someone’s chest in Aliens. A couple of them are large enough to have conning towers and attract depth charges from a passing destroyer. They wobble, wiggle and weave. They bubble, dart and dive. They chug and pop along the surface like miniature motorboats. Most have multiple sets of treble hooks, with points sharp enough to split an atom. All are terrific for catching tree branches. Not to mention the occasional horny panfish. But the largemouth bass and pickerel in the well-fished lake have seen them all. Peanut brains notwithstanding, they are more wary.

I’d been coming to Greenwood Lake since I was a teen-ager, when it seemed I always caught fish. For the past several years I’ve rented the same two-room, spider-rich cabin in the most secluded part of the lake. There is nothing like rowing across a mist-covered lake in the early morning when there is still a chill in the air and there is the prospect of catching a lunker bass. The row back, sans fish, is not as much fun.

The rental agent said she would leave the key under the mat. It was late on a Friday and I headed to Maloy’s. The kitchen closes at 10 P.M. and I made it just in time to order a burger. I washed it down with three bourbon Old-Fashioneds. I think I’m the only person to order Old-Fashioneds in Maloy’s. I’ve been working off the same bottle of bitters for a couple of years.

I spent Saturday and early Sunday beating the water into a froth with every lure in my arsenal. Even the bluegills ignored me. Perhaps it wasn’t mating season. At night in Maloy’s, I seemed to be the only one without a fish story, true or not. You can’t lie about fish if you didn’t catch one. I couldn’t even brag about the one that got away when it was an old shoe that fell off my hook before I got it into the boat. I was beginning to wonder if a well-placed hand grenade could be considered an artificial lure.

Then, late Sunday morning, I was working some structure near a large fallen tree. The tree and some of its submerged branches had already gobbled up two of my more expensive lures and I had decided to try a weed-less contraption that looked like a can opener. There weren’t any weeds, but I was hopeful that the wire guard around the single hook would prevent a snag on anything. Still, the casting was tricky. There was a small gap between the tree and the shore where the water was darker than elsewhere. I suspected there was a deep cleft or pool. My first four casts either hit the shore or the tree trunk, short of where I wanted to be. I created a lot of ripples, so I sat back and waited 15 minutes until the water calmed. If there was a fish in that pool, I didn’t want to spook it. If there wasn’t, I was going to feel pretty stupid. But feeling stupid went with the territory. After all, I was hoping for a fish that wanted to eat a can opener.

I made a perfect cast into the gap. I let the lure sink and then started retrieving. I got stuck. It wouldn’t budge. I’d obviously caught on to some submerged branches. So much for a weed-less lure. The hell with it. I didn’t want the damn lure anyway. I pulled back hard on my rod, intending to break the line and call it a weekend. I’d head to Maloy’s Tavern and go into my fall-back spiel about the wonders of fresh air.

When the three-pound largemouth broke the water with my lure flashing in its mouth, I almost fell backwards off my seat.

Ten minutes later, after several magnificent jumps, the beautiful olive green fish, its dark horizontal stripe glistening along its flank, was flopping wildly in my boat. I usually practice catch-and-release, but I decided to eat my trophy. The fact that it was fooled by a can opener indicated that its loss would not endanger the lake’s gene pool. I rowed back to my cabin and cooked the bass on the shore next to the dock the way my friends and I had when we came up to the lake on a Red Line Bus in high school. Cut into chunks, soaked in beer, breaded and pan fried in butter over a fire made from broken branches. Ate it with my fingers, too, washed down with the rest of the beer. I’ve had neater meals, but none better. I felt like Natty Bumpo.

I decided to call it a day. Things could only go downhill. I went back to the cabin and cleaned up, then stopped at Maloy’s on the way home for some coffee and homemade apple pie. I was hoping there would be other fisherman there. There were. By the time I left, my largemouth was the size of the Hindenburg. I got back to Staten Island late Sunday night. It had turned out to be a great weekend.

***

Except for the dream. The one I had my first night at the lake. It had been a long drive and I was beat. The late burger and bourbons did the rest. I fell into a virtual coma. If it hadn’t been for the dream, I probably would have slept until noon.

I don’t dream often, and usually don’t remember much of them. Just as well, since the few I do recall more vividly tend to involve someone trying to kill me and I wake up in a cold sweat.  A few years back, the dreams — OK, they were nightmares — featured a lot of thumping helicopters, men with turbans and, for some reason, hissing hand grenades that I couldn’t seem to get away from because my legs weren’t moving fast enough.

I suppose they were tangled in the bed sheets. At least that’s what the shrink at the Veterans Administration suggested. She had heard every kind of Post-Traumatic Stress dream in the book and didn’t think mine rose to the level of disability. That was fine with me, since my occasional heavy drinking and prescription-pill popping seemed to be working as I self-adjusted back to society. The doc was a very attractive woman and I tried to string her along by claiming I had a recurring dream about getting a Dear John letter from a camel, but she wasn’t buying.

My rare bad dream nowadays usually concerns someone trying to carve me up or poisoning me. I don’t need a shrink to tell me where they come from. I’ve had some interesting cases recently. But my legs still never seem to work.

Of course, I occasionally have what you might call an erotic dream. Not the embarrassing teen-age kind where you avoid your mother’s eyes when she does the laundry. Just a run-of-the-mill pleasant dream invariably involving a gorgeous woman, who usually, but not always, looks something like Alice Watts. Or, I’m ashamed to say, Eleni Rahm. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t ever tell a shrink I was dreaming about the daughter of Marat Rahm, the head of the local Russian mob.

But like even the scary dreams, I quickly forget them by my second cup of coffee, and it might be three months before I have another one.

The dream I had on Friday night at the lake wasn’t pleasant. Not exactly a nightmare, because there was an erotic undertone. But neither Alice nor Eleni made an appearance.

Ronnie Frost did.

Clear as a bell. Looking as she did 20 years ago, floating in water with her hand outstretched.

We were swimming in the Silver Lake reservoir on Staten Island. She was sinking and I was trying frantically to reach her. I’m a good swimmer and for once my damn legs were working fine, but she kept drifting just out of reach. Then she disappeared and I woke up.

It’s not unusual for a face from the past to pop up, seemingly unbidden, in a dream. It doesn’t even have to be human. Hell, Scruffy the wonder dog, the best mutt I ever had, once made a brief appearance.

But this was different. There were no grenades involved, but I still woke up in a cold sweat.

CHAPTER 3– LOOSE LIPS

I was sitting in my office on Wednesday when my cell phone buzzed. The caller I.D. said “Narrows Medical.”

“Arman would like to see you.”

It was a voice that sounded like it came from the bottom of a Ukrainian coal mine.

“Is he sick?”

“No. Why? Oh, the phone. I’m calling from the office.”

“What office?”

Maks Kalugin gave me an address in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn.

“You have GPS. We’ll be here all day.”

“I’m a little busy, Maks.”

I wasn’t. I was all alone, reading The New York Times on the web. I didn’t have a client.  Abby Jones, my office assistant, had taken the day off to bone up for her private investigator’s exam. I didn’t expect her to have a problem with it. She was super-sharp former Army military policewoman who had also worked security in my building before I shanghaied her. When she passed the test, we would have a decision to make about her future.

“It’s about Mrs. Capriati,” Maks said. A pause. “Not on the phone.”

He hung up. I got up.

***

The three-story building was on the corner of Hamilton Parkway and Fourth Avenue and Bay Ridge Avenue. The blue awning said “Narrows Medical Center.” I went through the double glass doors into an empty waiting room. On one wall there was a large poster hanging askew. It showed a burly, coarse-featured woman with a finger to her lips. At first I took it for one of those World War II “Loose Lips Sink Ships” posters that warned people not to discuss maritime matters in port, lest the news found its way to the ears of a Nazi spy, who would pass it on to lurking U-Boats. On closer examination, it turned out to be a Soviet worker in overalls saying “Spletnya Neelza!” with a hammer and sickle in the background. I straightened the poster out, on general principles. The only furniture in the waiting area consisted of a wooden bench under the poster and, in the center of the room, what appeared to be a receptionist desk, with all its drawers opened. There were papers and office supplies strewn about. The whole place looked like it had been tossed.

A broad, flat head stuck out from one of the doors down the hallway.

“In here,” Maks Kalugin growled.

I entered a room that also looked trashed. Judging by the diplomas on the wall, which were askew, it was obviously a doctor’s office. Two women were at a makeshift table in a corner working on laptops. Arman Rahm was sitting behind a large desk, leafing through a stack of papers in his lap. With his slicked-back dark hair and high-cheekboned, chiseled features, he was an extraordinarily handsome man, and as usual, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a high-end catalogue. He was wearing light-brown linen trousers, a two-button check sport coat, a light-blue button-down shirt and a wine-colored cashmere vest. His chair was tilted back and his feet, in white-and-brown leather loafers, were crossed on the desk.

“Gatsby, I presume.”

He looked up at me and smiled, showing a perfect set of white teeth.

“Alton, good of you to come.”

I looked around.

“You need my help redecorating?”

“F.B.I. agents never clean up after themselves. Of course, my people are responsible for some of the mess. We swept the building for bugs. I have a cleaning crew coming in tomorrow. Then I’ll get some painters, carpet guys and furniture people in here. We should be up and running in a week.”

“Up and running what?”

“I haven’t thought of a name yet, but it will have ‘Medical’ in it.”

“Why not keep the old name?”

Kalugin made a sound that was probably a laugh.

“Because if anyone Googles it, all the indictments will come up. The idiots who ran this armpit are all facing 20 years in Federal prison.”

“Your kind of people, Arman. I take it someone who worked here ignored the poster out front.”

“What poster.”

“The one with Kalugin’s sister saying ‘Spletnya Neelza!’, which I presume doesn’t have anything to do with German U-Boats.”

“I wish my sister looked that good,” Maks said.

“It means ‘Don’t Gossip!”, Rahm said. “And you are correct. Someone didn’t keep their mouth shut. What did you mean about German U-Boats?”

I told him.

“Same idea. But it wasn’t only loose lips. The doctors who ran this Medicare mill were just too greedy. It’s hard to avoid Federal scrutiny when you are billing for more patients than there are people in Brooklyn. They charged more than $30 million for services that weren't necessary. Hell, they were no-show practitioners anyway. They were hardly ever here and only performed a small fraction of the procedures they ordered. The dolts ran patients through here faster than my girls give lap dances in South Beach.”

I walked around to look at the diplomas, which I also straightened.

“Dr. Aleksandr Golovanov?” I leaned closer to read the small print. “Gee, I didn’t know you could get a medical degree online.”

“He ran the place,” Rahm said. “He paid cash kickbacks to Medicare beneficiaries and used the beneficiaries' names to bill Medicare.”

“Forgive me for saying this, Arman, but why all the disapproval?”

“I like a good scheme as well as the next man,” he said, smiling. “But these dog turds give Russians a bad name. They don’t even read the papers. The Government is cracking down on this sort of thing. I own this building, so I started getting the kind of publicity I don’t need or want.”

“Then why keep it going?”

“Public relations. I’ll turn it into a legitimate clinic. I’ll make money. I mean, we’ll still be dealing with the Government, right. I’ll just fold it into my other medical properties.”

“What other medical properties?”

“Nursing homes, mainly. Which brings me to why I asked you to come over. Mrs. Capriati died.”

I was sorry to hear that. She was a nice lady whose son, Billy, was a wannabe gangster who got himself involved in a turf war between the Rahms and the Carlucci crime family. The Rahms needed Capriati dead before he could testify against them and I had been duped into finding him by Arman’s actress sister, Eleni. I managed to locate him, through his invalid mother, hiding in a Federal witness protection program. Maks Kalugin promptly broke his neck in a Florida condo. The entire fiasco was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the Rahms prevented Nando Carlucci from carving me up in my own basement and nursed me back to health. I laid a guilt trip on the Rahms, who promised to look after Mrs. Capriati. The additional fact that I slept with Eleni Rahm and also met Alice Watts during the case did help assuage any lingering bad feeling.

“What happened?”

“Old age. She went peacefully. We took care of the funeral arrangements.”

“All I asked was for you to take care of her when she was alive. Send money every month.” I glanced at the women working the computers and lowered my voice. “After all, you killed her son.”

“They don’t speak English,” Rahm said. “As for her son, it couldn’t be helped. You know that.”

“And it was quick,” Kalugin interjected.

Arman and I both looked at him.

“I’m just saying,” Kalugin shrugged.

“You cut off his finger and sent it to the Carluccis,” I pointed out, “with his college ring still on it.”

“Anyone can send a finger. It was important that they knew who he was. Besides, he was already dead.”

I decided to leave it at that.

“Anyway, we became quite fond of the old woman,” Arman continued. “When we saw how badly the place was run, we bought it. Then a few more. They come in handy for the families of some of our associates, many of whom are getting old. They are not happy about what’s available locally.”

“Medicare clinics and nursing homes. What’s next? Funeral homes?”

“Actually, my friend, I’ve already made an offer on a couple of them in New Jersey.”

CHAPTER 4 - DIARY

The next day, I was in my office on my iPad scrolling through the digital version of The New York Times sports section. Just reading about the various ankle, hip, elbow, knee and tendon woes of the ancient and ailing Bronx Bombers made me feel old. I once commanded a platoon in a combat zone that was less banged up. I was also thinking about dinner. Truth was, I’d been thinking about dinner since shortly after lunch.

Two cops walked in. I knew they were cops by the way they assumed they could go anywhere, like in my office.

The cops didn’t look New York. And they weren’t Feds, because they both had on sports jackets; one brown, the other green. Their pants matched the jackets, but not the ones each was wearing. But it’s not like they could have switched. Brown jacket was a beefy older guy with some small but noticeable striations on his nose. He liked to drink and I made him for a tough hombre in whatever jurisdiction he came from. Blue jacket was rapier-thin, fresh faced and tried to look stern. Still wet behind the ears, he’d be no problem.

“You Rhode?”

It was brown jacket. He was holding a thick manila envelope.

The name “Alton Rhode” is etched on the outside door of my office suite.  On the desk I was sitting at there was a nameplate that said “Alton Rhode.” The nameplate was not my idea. One of my clients in the office supply business had one made up for me after I successfully proved that his wife’s orthodontist was drilling more than her bicuspids. I swiveled my feet to the floor and turned the nameplate around and made a point of studying it.

“I’m pretty sure I am,” I said, and then pitched the nameplate in the trash, “because if I’m not, then the three of us don’t belong here.”

He sighed, and the badges came out.

“I’m Detective Broderson,” he said, hooking a thumb toward his thin partner, “and this is Detective Huntley. Worchester Homicide.”

He said “Wooster,” which, of course, is the way it is pronounced.

“Massachusetts,” Huntley said.

“I know where Worchester is,” I said. “Even though you guys say it wrong. It should be “War-chester.”

“What do you mean? We live there, for crissakes.”

I wondered if they knew that I went to Holy Cross, the small Jesuit college located in Worcester. If they didn’t, I wasn’t prepared to tell them just yet. It was unlikely they’d traveled this far to sell tickets to the Worcester Policeman’s Ball. It was more likely somebody had been murdered in their fair city. When talking to homicide cops from anywhere, discretion is always the better part of valor, or candor.

“But I’ll let the pronunciation slide,” I continued, “because you have to love a town named after a good steak sauce. Of course, the common name is Worcestershire sauce, but it was originally concocted in Worcester, England. Lea & Perrins is the best. Though I prefer Peter Lugar’s sauce myself. But there’s no beating Lea & Perrins in a Bloody Mary.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He’s bustin’ your balls, Dick. They said he thought he was funny. All those Holy Cross boys are a riot.”

Well, that answered that question. If they knew where I went to college, what else did they know. And why?

They sat down without asking and pulled out notepads. Then Broderson got right to it, wanting to see my reaction. I’d used the trick myself.

“Veronica Frost is dead. Murdered.”

Usually when you are told that someone you haven’t seen in almost 20 years has died, you struggle to sound and look concerned. You might even have trouble remembering what they looked like, or who they were. But not if it’s the first girl you really fell in love with. The one who got away. Or, in Ronnie’s case, ran away. Even after all this time, it hit me like a blow in the solar plexus.

“How?”

“Strangled. Piano wire.”

He said it casually, but was looking at me closely for my reaction. It was another old cop trick. Ronnie had presumably not been strangled. If I was the killer, the false information might have taken me by surprise. My eyes might have given me away. It wouldn’t be proof, but homicide cops don’t only need proof, they need suspicions, someplace to go. I looked over at his partner, who had a curious expression on his face. Broderson hadn’t let him in on the ploy.

“When?”

“A month ago.”

“In Worcester.”

“Yeah.”

So, Ronnie wound up in Worcester, where I went to college. Small world. The irony was palpable. I had been looking forward to her visiting me at Holy Cross when she moved away.

“When was the last time you saw her,” Huntley said.

“Probably 20 years ago.”

“Can you tell us where you were?”

“Twenty years ago!”

“No, pal, on the night she was killed.”

Broderson looked up at the ceiling.

“We haven’t told him when she died, Dick.” He had seen my reaction to the news and filed it away. I was not at the top of his list of suspects. But he was a pro and now tried to rescue the interview from the hole his partner was digging. He gave me the date without looking at his notepad. It wasn’t just another case for him. “The M.E. puts the time of death around 7 P.M.”

Friday, May 3rd. The day I drove up to the lake to fish. The night I had the disturbing dream about Ronnie. That wasn’t something I wanted to tell the cops. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell anyone that, ever. Who would believe me? I almost didn’t believe it myself. It had to be a coincidence. Except I don’t really believe in them, either. I closed out the story about the Yankees and switched to my Lotus Organizer. After a quick glance, I said, “I was staking out the Swan Motel in Elizabeth trying to catch a woman cheating with her orthodontist.”

“Where’s Elizabeth?”

“Just over the Goethals Bridge in New Jersey.”

“Go on.”

“The good doctor showed up to fill her cavity around lunch time. I waited until they came out together, got what I needed and went to my office to download the photos. Then I went to Wagner College to work out in the gym. I was probably home by 6 P.M. I changed, packed some gear and headed upstate to fish. Got there just before 10.”

“Where upstate?”

“About an hour and a half north, Greenwood Lake.”

“I suppose you can prove all of this,” Huntley said, trying to recover.

“I can prove the motel part. You can check my cell phone calls, which will put me at the motel until about 2 P.M. The manager will also remember me, since he spotted me lurking about and I had to grease him forty bucks. My office manager was still here when I left for the gym around 4.”

“Anyone see you at the gym?” Broderson asked.

I couldn’t remember if my pal Dom DeRenzi, the Wagner athletic director, was at the gym that afternoon. I didn’t know if any of the kids working out would remember me.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Maybe you drove to Worcester instead,” Huntley said.

“To kill someone I haven’t seen since college?”

“So you say.”

“In three hours?”

“I’ve seen stranger things.”

“You haven’t seen dick, Dick. Why don’t you let your partner here ask the goddamn questions before I lose my patience and throw you out the window?”

I realized that I was shouting and had come halfway out of my chair. I had been flip up until then because that’s often how I react when I take an emotional hit. The news about Ronnie was beginning to sink in. The young cop shrank back and his partner stood up.

“Sit back, pal,” he said with authority, “and calm down. Nobody is accusing you of anything. Anybody see you up at this lake?”

“Bartender at Maloy’s Tavern. Maybe a patron or two. It was late. And fisherman lie, you know.”

“Mostly about fish,” Broderson said.

“You can check my EZ-PASS. Tolls will put me where I said I was.”

I sat back and looked at the young detective.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just pissed off”

“Catch anything?” Broderson asked.

“Big bass. This big.” I held my hands about two feet apart. “Between the eyes.”

Broderson smiled.

“We spoke to some local cops, Rhode. They think you are a royal pain in the ass, but can’t see you as a murderer. But we have to chase everything down because we’ve got bupkis so far. You were on the job. You know how it goes.”

If they had hit a stone wall, they would be reaching for straws. But I was a pretty obscure straw.

“I’m curious. How did I pop up on the radar? You interviewing everyone Ronnie ever knew? Or just those that went to Holy Cross. And just how did you know that?”

“The Internet is a wonderful thing,” he said. “But we had something else.”

“Her diary,” Huntley said.

“Diary?”

‘Yeah,” he said. “We found it at the bottom of a trunk in an attic. There were several names in it. But you were the one she wrote about the most.”

“Recently?”

A part of me hoped that was true, even if it made me more of a suspect. I had loved Ronnie, and always hoped she loved me. If she was still writing about me, that would prove it. But Broderson brought me back to reality.

“No, the last entry was from about the time you claim you last saw her. Maybe 20 years ago.”

The disappointment must have shown on my face. Broderson didn’t miss it. He’d been there. Most men have.

“There were other men she mentioned in the diary,” he said, not unkindly, “but apparently, you were the only man she was intimate with sexually. I mean, the only one she went past heavy breathing with.”

“It was pretty racy stuff,” Huntley said. “For a nun, I mean.”

CHAPTER 5 - MEMORIES

A nun.

I didn’t see that one coming.

“Of course, she wasn’t a nun when she wrote it,” Broderson said. “She was Sister Veronica, principal of Ave Maria Academy in Worcester.”

Ronnie had never once mentioned to me that she wanted to become a nun. She attended Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island and then went on to Rosemont College in Merion, a suburb about ten miles west of Philadelphia. Both schools were, at the time, exclusively Catholic and exclusively female. But I had the impression when I knew her that she was spiritual without being overly religious.

I first saw her at the Richmond County Country Club, the summer after of my freshman year in college. My family didn’t belong to the club, but one of my several summer jobs was caddying at its golf course. As a result I palled around with guys whose parents were members and that got me invited to the pool on occasion.

She was sitting at a table on the terrace next to the pool eating lunch with three other girls from Notre Dame. They were all dressed in tennis whites, their rackets and bags propped against the low wall that separated the terrace from the club’s main patio. I had just come off the diving board and swam over to the side of the pool where they were. I said hello. Big college frosh trying to impress some high-school juniors. It actually doesn’t get much better than that.

I knew all the girls except Ronnie. All leggy and attractive, with healthy summer tans. But she was drop-dead gorgeous, with short-cropped black hair, and green, doe-shaped eyes. The other girls smiled and said hello. Ronnie just looked at me. One of the girls started to introduce us but their food came and the next thing I knew I was staring at a waiter’s ass. I backstroked away. I was halfway across the pool when the waiter moved. I looked at the table. The other girls were eating their burgers and Monte Cristos. Ronnie was still looking at me. Fortunately, one of the girls said something to her and she turned away just before I hit the back of my head on the opposite side of the pool. I’m pretty sure I got away with it. Then the guy who invited me that day dragged me off to a volleyball game. When I got back to the pool she and the other girls were gone. It didn’t matter. I was sure I would run into her again. But it turned out she wasn’t a member either, and that was the last time I saw her that summer.

“You didn’t know she was a nun?”

I came out of my reverie and looked at Broderson.

“I told you, I lost track of her years ago.”

“Still, you must have had friends in common. And there is an aunt still living in Staten Island.”

“I didn’t even know she had any relatives left on Staten Island after she moved away with her folks.”

I nodded at the manila envelope that was in his lap.

“You want me to read the diary, don’t you?”

He smiled.

“Sharp fellow,” he said, pulling out the diary and sliding it across to me. “Let us know if you see anything unusual in it.”

That’s why Broderson brought it. He never really thought I was the killer. But I could still be useful.

“You want to tell me how she was really killed.”

He smiled.

“I knew you were sharp, Rhode. It was worth a shot, to see your reaction. She was stabbed once, right in the heart.”

It was probably quick, then.

“Weapon?”

“Not recovered. M.E. says it was long and sharp, and not serrated. Most likely an ice pick.”

I clamped down on my teeth.

“Anything else?”

“She wasn’t beaten or raped. They found her slumped by the side of her car, near a trail where she often jogged. And her killer was probably left-handed.”

“Probably?”

“The angle of penetration seemed to indicate that, but it’s not as conclusive as if there had been multiple wounds.”

I knew what he meant. A single wound that appeared to come from the left could be inflicted by a right-handed person approaching from the side. But if there were multiple wounds, all with similar angles, right- or left-handedness could be implied.

I needed a drink. I reached down to open the right-hand drawer where I had a bottle of Rebel Yell and some disposable plastic party cups. The young cop was startled and his hand moved toward his jacket. Even Broderson became more alert and sat up a bit. I might not be a serious suspect to him but he didn’t become an older cop by being careless. They both relaxed when my hand came back holding the bourbon and not a Glock. I put out three paper cups.

“We’re on duty,” Huntley said.

“I’m not on duty in Massachusetts,” Broderson said, nodding at me.

I poured two drinks and passed one across to him. We raised glasses and took long pulls. He smiled.

“With a name like Rebel Yell, I had my doubts,” he said. “This is pretty good.”

“There was a time they only sold it below the Mason-Dixon Line,” I said. “But wiser heads prevailed, although not everyone up here stocks it.”

The young cop looked at us and said, “Shit.” Then he reached for a cup and poured himself a shot. Maybe he’d work out. It was a start. I got up and put on a fresh pot of coffee.

“When it’s done, help yourself,” I said, sitting down.

I got out a pad and pen and started reading.

The diary spanned two years, ending shortly after the last time I saw Ronnie. But it wasn’t comprehensive. On the inside cover she had written: “This is a journal of only the happy things in my life. There is too much that is not.”

The first entry was the most cryptic, and the only one on the first page: Matt left.

Just that. Two words. Two words on one page. I’ve known a lot of Matts and Mathews, but I couldn’t remember one that had any connection to Ronnie. Of course, it might have been someone she knew before I came on the scene. But whoever this Matt was, he was important enough to rate a mention. And since she was writing about things that made her happy, the implication was she was glad he’d left. She was starting a new chapter in her life.

From the dates and entries, it was obvious that there were wide swaths, often months, when she couldn’t find anything pleasant to write about. From what I found out about her family when I knew her, I was not surprised. Most of the entries concerned friends, and a favorite aunt. I was not the only boy mentioned, but Broderson was right; I was almost certainly the only lover in the pages.

About a year into the diary, there was an entry about the first day she saw me.

“Played tennis with Marcy, Anne and Bev today, and then had lunch at the R.C.C.C. pool. A cute boy swam up to talk to us but I never got introduced. But he couldn’t stop looking at me. He was so engrossed he hit his head on the far side of the pool when he swam away! His name is Alton Rhode and he’s not a club member. The girls said he’s a bit of a wild man but they all like him. I hope I see him again. He goes to Holy Cross. A college boy, no less! La de da.”

It occurred to me that teen-age girls probably don’t try to act cool or sophisticated when writing in their diaries. They can act like the nice kids most of them are. Reading Ronnie’s words brought me back to a more innocent time and I felt a profound sadness at what we all eventually lose.

There were perhaps a dozen entries, mostly about school, over the following months. I next appeared early in the following spring:

“Alton Rhode called and asked me out. He was the boy from the pool last summer! I asked him what took him so long. He said the French Foreign Legion wouldn’t give him leave! How am I supposed to say no to someone as nutty as that? We’re going to a movie and then out for a bite.”

***

I remembered it like it was yesterday. I was scrunched in a car with seven other sweaty guys. We’d just finished a half dozen pickup basketball games in the gym at the Sunnyside campus of the College of Staten Island and were heading along Ocean Terrace on Emerson Hill. I’ve always wondered why they called it Ocean Terrace, since it was nowhere near the ocean.

Our destination was a bar in Oakwood where the owner was more interested in our money than our specious proof of age. The car was a big black Mercedes sedan, so the ride wasn’t that uncomfortable, despite the pungent jock smells. The driver was Arman Rahm, who I’d only recently met. I had been prepared to dislike him, given his background, which was no secret. But he was unselfish with the ball on the basketball court and always seemed to find me when I was open. Besides, he had provided me with the phony proof I had in my wallet. He was also unconcerned about the interior of his Mercedes. He had others.

One of the players had to be home early, so Rahm turned off Ocean Terrace and on to Longfellow Avenue, a dead end street where the kid lived. After dropping him off amid the usual vulgar remarks about his manhood, we U-turned and headed to the bar. Our car had just reached the bottom of the street when Ronnie turned the corner and walked past us in the other direction. She was alone, her head down, carrying books. She was even more beautiful than I remembered, with a slow, gliding walk that emphasized her hips.

“Jesus,” one of the other guys said.

As we passed her, my head snapped around and I swiveled violently in my seat. I was sitting in the front next to Rahm and my twisting body interfered with his driving.

“Down boy,” he said, laughing, as the car swerved, almost jumping the curb and hitting a street sign. “She is certainly very pretty, but not worth dying over.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I replied. “I remember her from the country club.”

“Good Lord, Rhode,” he said, pulling out onto Ocean Terrace. “You look like Michael Corleone after he was hit with the thunderbolt.”

None of the other guys knew what he meant, but I did. In The Godfather, the Don’s son, hiding out in Sicily, sees a beautiful peasant girl walking on a hillside and instantly falls for her.

“I didn’t know you were a movie buff,” I said, my neck still craning to keep Ronnie in sight.

“I’m not, really,” Rahm said, laughing again, “but that’s one movie everyone in my family has seen. Coppola filmed the wedding scene on the street we just left, Longfellow.”

I had almost forgotten that Rahm’s father was said to run the largest Russian crime family in Brooklyn and Staten Island. I also knew about the film’s Staten Island connection. But neither mattered to me right then.

“Go back,” I said. “I want to talk to her.”

That brought hoots of derision from the other boys in the car and some very inventive sexual remarks. But Rahm made another U-turn and went back to Longfellow.

“A man after my own heart,” he said.

She was gone.

“I think she lives nearby,” Rahm said. “She’s probably at a friend’s. Do you want to start ringing doorbells?”

I think he was serious, but by now the howls and hoots from the other passengers were at a fever pitch. I told Rahm to head to our original destination.

We had no trouble getting into the tavern. Rahm went first and nobody even asked us for our I.D.’s. We drank an awful lot of beer, although none of it seemed to bother Rahm, who already had a reputation for being able to hold his booze. Later, after we left the bar, he dropped me off last at my house in West Brighton. As I walked away, he called me back.

“Her name is Ronnie Frost,” he said through the window. “She goes to Notre Dame Academy and is a very nice girl.” He smiled. “Obviously not my type. But I would be careful, my friend. Her family is screwed up.”

That, from a kid whose father traveled with bodyguards.

“What do you mean?”

“Her father is a crooked lawyer. Even by Staten Island standards. Harry Frost. Lives on Coverly Avenue, not far from Longfellow. They’re in the book.”

Even back then I realized that if the Rahms knew so much about Harry Frost, he was probably bad news. But I called Ronnie, anyway. Moth to a flame? Maybe. Or maybe I’ve always been attracted to a bird with a wing down, which was indicated by Arman’s remark that she was a nice kid in a screwed up situation.

CHAPTER 6– SILVER LAKE

I poured myself another drink, my third.

“Stuff kind of grows on you,” Broderson said, picking the bottle up. He had kept pace with me.

The light outside my windows was going fast. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

“You got a john on this floor?” Huntley asked.

I told him where the bathroom was. Broderson went to my outer office to make some calls. Alone, I continued reading.

Ronnie and I dated that spring and right through the summer. The diary entries devoted to me became more frequent. Some of them were embarrassing. Broderson was right. She wasn’t a nun when she wrote them. She was a beautiful young girl from a messed up family with a lust for life. I wish she had been a little more euphemistic when discussing the progression of our sex lives together, but she managed to hit all the high spots. The fact that they were included in her diary meant that they made her happy. She was particularly effusive about the first night we slept together, which at the time I suspected, and now confirmed, was indeed her first time.

“I’m glad it was him.”

Not many men get a better compliment in their lives. It was tempered somewhat by the revelation that because of discomfort and nervousness she added:

“I didn’t have an orgasm. I don’t think he noticed. I think he was nervous, too.”

Ronnie was right about that. I had never been with a woman that I was in love with. I remembered that our nervousness had resolved itself the next time we were together. Her diary entry for that night ended with one word:

“Bingo!”

I laughed.

“What’s so funny?

It was Huntley, back from the john.

“Nothing. Inside Catholic joke.”

The candid sexual descriptions ended after a while, not because we stopped having sex, but because it was clear from her writing that our relationship deepened. It was also obvious that she had fallen for me. She wrote that she hoped we had a future together. That had never come up in our conversations, but even as callow a youth as I was, I knew that she might be the one. But the distance from “might” to “is” can be measured in light years when you are in college, so I don’t think either of us felt ready to pull any sort of commitment trigger.

Ronnie had met my parents, who were charmed, and I was anxious to meet hers. But she kept putting me off. Remembering what Arman Rahm had said about her father, I wondered about her home life. Finally, I pressed the issue, telling her I was tired of always picking her up outside her home, or at the corner of her block. The next time we had a date, she told me to ring the doorbell.

***

The Frosts lived in a two-story Colonial on Coverly, in a small Emerson Hill development adjacent to Basket Willow Swamp. The lawn wasn’t unkempt, but it wasn’t as manicured as those of the grander homes that flanked it. The house itself needed a paint job. However Harry Frost made his money, he didn’t seem to be spending it on the old homestead.

Mrs. Frost answered the door. She was a good-looking woman. I knew, from Ronnie, that her mother had just turned 50. But she looked older than that, and I could see a line of gray roots in the part down the middle of her brown hair. She greeted me warmly, if a bit nervously, saying that Ronnie would be right down. I had on pressed khaki pants, a white button-down shirt and my Brooks Brothers blazer. I wanted to make a good impression on her folks. I was taking Ronnie to dinner at the Colts Neck Inn down the Jersey shore. We never made it.

Mrs. Frost led me into the living room, where Harry Frost was watching TV, drink in hand. He gave me a perfunctory handshake without getting out of his lounger. I could smell the booze on his breath. Mrs. Frost invited me to sit on a couch. I did. She engaged me in small talk, occasionally trying to bring Harry into the conversation. That ended when he told us both to shut the fuck up. She admonished him gently, with a nervous laugh. He promptly went berserk, screaming at her. Ronnie rushed into the room, grabbed my arm and pulled me out the door. I could hear her father yelling even after I got into my car. Ronnie started crying.

“Take me to the lake,” she said.

Silver Lake was a huge reservoir that at one time supplied much of Staten Island with its water. Now there were two huge tanks under the reservoir constantly refilled from the Croton Watershed upstate. The lake was now mainly for show. Swimming was banned after a couple of kids drowned in its deep, murky waters. But I knew where there were holes in the fence hidden by brush and trees, so that never stopped me. I’d taken Ronnie there a few times, to a secluded spot. We often skinny dipped and then made love on a blanket. Usually, hormones interceded and we reversed the order. This night there was no swimming at all. I had no sooner put down a blanket when she took off her clothes. It was barely dusk, but I had chosen that spot wisely. Ronnie lay down and reached out her arms to me. Her face and breasts were flushed with desire. Even secluded as we were, she made love with a frenzied abandon that forced me to cover her mouth every time she came. Finally, we lay exhausted. More tears ran down her face. She apologized about her father. Lamely, I told her it was OK. She never spoke about her family or asked me into her house again.

The summer wound down. I had to go back to school for my junior year and Ronnie was starting freshman year at Rosemont. We both realized that we were heading into unchartered waters in our relationship. I knew the dangers. She was beautiful and more worldly. She had become more sexually proficient and experimental. How cool would I appear to her when she was surrounded by all the rich swains from Penn and Villanova on Philadelphia’s Main Line. She promised to remain faithful, but the thought drove me crazy.

But she liked to write and her letters were terrific. Her correspondence was full of fun, and to even my unpracticed eyes, contained sections that only lovers sent. Our phone calls were also intense. My doubts slowly evaporated.

Then the letters and calls stopped, one week before the Christmas holiday break. I couldn’t reach her at school. I didn’t know any of her new friends there, and the school administration, citing privacy rules, was not forthcoming. I called her parents’ house. The line was disconnected. I spent a couple of miserable days at school and finally made it back to Staten Island, only to find out that her whole family had moved away. I tried to find out where they went, but no one knew. I ran into Arman Rahm at a basketball game. He said the family’s disappearance was news to him, and I believed him. Arman has always been a lot of things, including a killer, but his word is good. I did what every red-blooded American boy does in the circumstances. I got drunk, and stayed drunk. I face-planted on neighbors’ lawns. I got into bar fights. But family and friends watched out for me and I eventually straightened out. Next thing I knew I was back at school. It was a busy time for me. College activities. Other girls. Future planning. Eventually, I gave up actively trying to find out what happened. Occasionally, I’d get a bee in my bonnet and tell myself I was going to track her down. Heroically rescue her from some horrible situation. I’d smite a bad guy and she would throw herself in my arms. And invariably something would happen to distract me. I went on the cops. My folks died within a year of each other. The Twin Towers came down. Yeah, I guess you’d say 9/11 was a distraction, as were a couple of subsequent tours overseas when my reserve unit was called up.

I never heard from Ronnie Frost again. But I never forgot her. God, I loved that girl.

***

I ripped the page from the pad on which I’d listed the names in Ronnie’s diary that I’d remembered. I went out to the outer office and made a copy, which I gave to Broderson.

“I checked off the ones I think still live on Staten Island, or at least have family here,” I said. “I occasionally run into one or two of them. If I remembered the married names of the girls, I put them in parentheses. Don’t know their addresses, but they shouldn’t be too hard to track down. As far as I know, they are all respectable citizens with families. I can’t vouch for the ones who moved away.”

“What are you going to do with the list?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t want you interfering in my investigation.”

“You’re on my turf, now, Broderson.”

He looked at me.

“What about ‘Matt’? He’s not on your list. What was he to her?”

Sharp cop.

“Got me. I didn’t know him, which is why he’s not on that list.”

“She was apparently glad he left.”

Very sharp cop.

“What about that Aunt Betsy she mentioned? Didn’t you meet her?”

“No. Have you spoken to her?”

“I did,” Huntley said. “Nice old lady.” He looked at me and smiled. “She remembers Matt. Her nephew.” He paused. “The nun’s brother.”

They saw my reaction.

“You didn’t know she had a brother,” Broderson said.

“Ronnie never mentioned a brother. I met her parents once. I thought she was an only child. I never saw any sign of another kid. Where is he? Does he know she’s dead?”

“Nobody knows where he is, or if he’s even alive. Once he left, that was it. The aunt has never heard from him. Hell, we were only able to find her because she was listed as the next of kin in the records of the Sisters of St. Jerome. She said her sister died years ago and she doesn’t know what happened to her brother-in-law. The church notified Aunt Betsy about her niece’s death, of course, but she was too frail to make the trip for the funeral.”

“She sent a nice wreath and offered to pay for the service,” Huntley interjected. “Like I said, she is a nice lady. But the Church took care of everything. Sister Veronica was well-liked. Funeral was mobbed.”

“But no family,” I said.

“No family.”

I was trying to get my head around the fact that a woman, a girl, really, that I had once loved was murdered, had a brother she never mentioned to me even in our most intimate moments and was buried without any family present.

“Son of a bitch.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Give me Aunt Betsy’s address.”

“Why would we do that,” Huntley said.

“For one thing, you’re drinking my bourbon. For another, you know I’ll find it out eventually, so you will save me some time. That will make it easier to do the legwork that you both hope I will do, and share whatever info I get with you. We’ll probably go over a lot of the same ground, but I have local knowledge that could come in handy. You said you’ve hit a brick wall so far, so what’s the downside?”

“Some of the cops we spoke to around here do seem to think you know your stuff,” Broderson said.

“Aw, shucks. They’ve been bragging about me again.”

After the two cops left, I Googled the murder. As I expected, the killing of a school principal, a nun, was a huge story in Worcester, as it would have been anywhere. It had made the media elsewhere, including New York. I had nailed the horny dentist and my client’s wife at the motel on a Friday, the second day of my stakeout. After emailing the photos to my client’s lawyer, I went fishing upstate. I had not read a paper or checked the Internet, so I missed any mention of Ronnie’s murder.

But I had that dream.

CHAPTER 7 - AUNT BETSY

Aunt Betsy’s full name was Elizabeth Spigarelli. She lived in a small Victorian on Elwood Place, a quiet, tree-lined street not far from Silver Lake Golf Course. She met me at the door holding a cane. I followed her into a small sun parlor where we sat ourselves in front of a small coffee table on which was arrayed an antique silver tea service and a plate of sugar cookies. Off in a corner was another small table with a white lace cloth that draped to the floor. On it was a stained-glass lamp and a silver-framed photo of a man in an Army uniform.

“I don’t get many visitors,” she said, pouring me a cup. “This is a treat.”

I couldn’t remember when I ever had tea at 9 A.M. in the morning. I desperately wanted a cup of coffee, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask a woman using a cane to make me one. I girded myself for a long visit. And before I could even pose a question, she stood up and hobbled off. I should have asked for the coffee.

“I forgot the cucumber sandwiches,” she said when she came back, precariously balancing a small tray in her non-cane hand.

Cucumber sandwiches? A very long visit.

The crusts on the sandwiches were carefully cut off, and they were rolled, held together by little toothpicks with tint paper ribbons. Those ribbons somehow always wind up in my teeth. I hadn’t had a cucumber sandwich since Alice and I attended a wedding reception at a mansion in Newport and I made the mistake of skipping lunch in anticipation of a hearty meal. Alice, who knew the bride, had warned me to go easy on the champagne because I shouldn’t expect “a Caligula-like New York wedding” from the old-line Protestant family hosting the reception. As usual, I should have listened to her. The opulence of the surroundings had misled me. The bride’s father had obviously not become opulent by spending his money freely. The cucumber sandwiches turned out to be about the only food served. I must have demolished two trays on my own, caught in a desperate finger sandwich/champagne loop that left me with a splitting headache. Only the fact that I found a decent steakhouse in town saved the day.

“I hope you like these,” Aunt Betsy said. “And I made the cookies myself.”

Despite the memories, the sandwiches weren’t half bad. And I’ve never met a sugar cookie I didn’t like, so I was prepared to make her happy.

“You said on the phone you wanted to talk about Ronnie?”

“Yes, ma’am. I knew your niece many years ago and just found out about her murder. I would like to find out who did it.”

“You are not a policeman.”

“A private investigator. But even if I wasn’t, I’d want to find out. I have the skill set, and I intend on using it.”

She’d never asked my for identification. Maybe she didn’t care. People her age often don’t.

“I spoke to the police, you know. They came all the way from Massachusetts.”

“Yes. That’s how I found you. I also spoke to Detectives Broderson and Huntley. I didn’t know Ronnie had any relatives on Staten Island.”

“She was a nun, you know.”

I didn’t say anything.

“The church took care of everything. I offered to pay for the funeral. Even bring her back to Staten Island. There is a family plot out in Resurrection Cemetery. You know where that is?”

“On the South Shore. Pleasant Plains.”

“That’s right. It’s a Roman Catholic Cemetery. Dorothy Day is buried there. The social worker. I think they may make her a saint, even though she was a libertine when she was young. But she apparently turned out all right. My niece was just as much of a saint, I think, although I don’t imagine she’ll get the credit due her. You need a couple of miracles to be considered for sainthood.”

I sipped my tea, took a sugar cookie and smiled encouragingly. I popped the cookie in my mouth. Within a second, I realized that I had met a sugar cookie I didn’t like. My smile became less encouraging. In fact, I barely suppressed a grimace. Swallowing was no picnic, either. I took a desperate swig of tea. The old lady didn’t seem to notice.

“Anyway,” she continued, “the church up where she worked in Massachusetts took care of everything. I wanted to go to the service, but I was still recovering from breaking my hip. Slipped on the ice. A lot of my friends are moving to Florida. The only ice they have down there is in cocktails. I’m doing better now, except for the arthritis and some other little things I can’t pronounce. But thank the Lord my Medicare covers them. You caught me on a good day.”

“I’m sure you did what you could. The offer to pay for the funeral was very generous.”

“Well, Ronnie was my sister’s only daughter. My sister was Catherine Mercer, by the way. That is our family name. I thought about taking it back after my second husband died, but I was worried that might confuse the pension people. I get two checks, you know.”

Two dead husbands? I had visions of Arsenic and Old Lace. Was I destined to be buried in the basement, poisoned by an old biddie’s cookies?

Aunt Betsy reached down and took a cookie, her first. She took a delicate nibble. I was relieved.

“Cathy was seven years younger than me. Ronnie looked just like her. They were both so pretty. I just doted on my niece. She was a pip when she was young, full of life. I saw a lot of her when she was young, when things weren’t going so well in her house. This was kind of a safe haven for her. That’s her picture over there, by the way.”

I hadn’t spotted the photo, which was inside an ancient glass-doored secretary. Aunt Betsy started to rise.

“I’ll get it, ma’am,” I said.

“You just stay right where you are, young man. I’m not dead yet. My orthopedist, Dr. Bhupathi, says I have to keep moving to keep the joints loose. I’m just getting use to this cane after the walker.” I’d spotted the walker in a corner. “And please call me Betsy.”

She went to the secretary and brought the photo back.

“She was only 14 or 15, I think,” she said, handing me the frame. “Isn’t she pretty?”

It was a jolt seeing Ronnie’s photo. It was a younger, but just as stunning, version of the girl I’d once loved.

“I didn’t get to see much of her in recent years,” Aunt Betsy said. “Once or twice a year, she’d come down to visit.”

It was almost as jolting to realize that Ronnie had visited Staten Island regularly and I didn’t know about it. I wondered if she had considered looking me up. What would she have said? How have you been? What’s new? I”m sorry I pulled an Amelia Earhart and left you in the lurch? Even without the mystery, I doubted that many nuns looked up their old boyfriends.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Oh, one of the holidays. Last Christmas. Or maybe it was Easter. But we spoke on the phone several times a year, and she was always sending me nice cards and small presents, which was thoughtful. I don’t imagine she had much money.” She picked up the tray. “Please, have another cookie.”

“Thank you, but I’m watching my weight. The cucumber sandwiches were very filling.”

“I know what you mean. So many things have too much sugar and butter in them. It’s not good for you. Dr. Arocho is very strict with me. He’s my internist. I seem to have a lot of doctors. You collect them as you get older, I guess. Anyway, I make these cookies without sugar or butter. I use Splenda and olive oil instead.”

Mystery solved.

“Did Ronnie ever tell you that she was worried, or frightened about something, or someone?’

“No. No. Our conversations were always very pleasant. I’m religious, you know. Go to mass just about every day again now that I can get around more. Mrs. McVey picks me up, and then we go to the Kings Arms for breakfast. I usually have just coffee and toast, otherwise it would be too expensive. Colleen, that’s Mrs. McVey, often insists on paying. She knows I’m on a limited income. I always tell her that we can just come back here and have sugar cookies, but she says she prefers to eat out.”

Mrs. McVey was apparently a survivor.

“Anyway, Ronnie and I talked religion mostly. She was very well educated, you know.”

“Did you know why her family moved from Staten Island?”

“No. And I even asked Ronnie. But she wouldn’t tell me. It came as a shock to me when my sister left. It was just the two of us, but Catherine and I weren’t close, like some sisters are. I mean, we loved each other to death, but I was older and married and out of the house when she was just getting into her teens. Then she married Harry Frost and I never took to him. Neither did my Will, my husband, God rest his soul. Will could spot a phony a mile away, and that was Harry. Good looking and all that, but a slippery one. Then Will was killed in Vietnam and I went into a shell, I guess. My sister was very supportive, of course, but I just wanted to be left alone. I finally came out of it. You have to move on. But things had changed between us. She was having trouble with Harry, besides. But, still, we spoke just about every week on the phone and did the holidays and such. So when they left in the middle of the night it seemed, I was devastated, and worried.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, eventually she called. I couldn’t get much out of her, but I got the impression that Harry had gotten into some kind of trouble and they just had to move. They took poor Ronnie out of Rosemont, a wonderful girls’ college outside of Philadelphia, which she loved, and moved out west somewhere. My sister wouldn’t tell me where. She called me occasionally but would never give me her phone number or address. There was no caller I.D. back then. I suppose I could have hired someone like you to check with the phone company or something but what would be the point? I’m no Miss Marple. If my sister didn’t want to be found who was I to go against her wishes. Besides, I had met a wonderful man and remarried. That’s him over there on the mantel.”

I looked into the next room and could see a photo above the fireplace. Another uniform. Blue.

“His name was Salvatore Spigarelli. A police captain. My first husband was career Army. A Master Sergeant. Wilbert Weichmann. One of the first from Staten Island to die in Vietnam. Didn’t have to go. Had a nice safe recruiting post at Fort Wadsworth, but felt it was his duty after sending so many kids off to that damn war. So, I’m really Elizabeth Mercer Weichmann Spigarelli. Sounds like a United Nations’ meeting, doesn’t it? Sal died of natural causes. Heart attack.”

I had long ago learned that you had to pick and choose from the information old people provided.

“The police said your sister died years ago.”

“Yes. Perhaps five years after they moved. Harry didn’t even have the decency to let me know. I found out from Ronnie, who said the bastard, pardon me, had poor Cathy cremated right away. Ronnie was distraught, of course. Her father had told her he contacted me. A real bastard, and you don’t have to pardon me. It’s the truth. But as sad as it was, my sister’s death freed Ronnie. She only went with them to protect her mother and take care of her. Catherine wasn’t a healthy woman. Living with Harry would be a burden on anyone. My sister was more delicate than me. I’ve buried two husbands. Harry buried my sister. Anyway, after Cathy died, Ronnie left. She was a changed woman. My sister was always religious and in her last years she found solace in the Church. So did Ronnie. She told me that there was so much evil in the world she wanted to help people. That’s why she joined the Sisters of St. Jerome.”

I swallowed hard, thinking that had I made more of an effort to find Ronnie when she disappeared, her life might have been much different. Would it have been better? Who was I to judge? She spent many years doing what she obviously loved. Even the fact that she was murdered couldn’t change that fact.

“I understand that your sister had a son. Did he keep in touch with you?”

“Matthew? Oh, no. He disappeared even before my sister left. A strange one, he was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kept to himself. Very quiet. Except when he was fighting with Harry or killing cats.”

You also had to listen closely to everything an old person said.

“Killing cats?”

“That’s what people suspected. Drove Catherine to distraction. The boy was a bit of a sadist. Hated cats. I think the police investigated after he set a couple of the poor creatures on fire. Nobody could prove anything and his father threatened to sue everyone who said anything. No, it wasn’t a pleasant home in which to grow up.  That’s why Ronnie spent so much time with me. But she was a changed girl after Matthew left. Much happier.”

“Where did he go?”

“Who knows? He was always talking about joining the Army or Marines. He wanted to be a policeman. Even went to that police college in the city. I forget the name.”

“John Jay?”

John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan is part of the City University of New York.

“Yes, that’s it. I don’t think he graduated, though.”

There wasn’t much else to get from Aunt Betsy. I thanked her and stood.

“Young man, can you do me a favor?”

“Of course, Betsy.”

“There is a floor fan in one of the upstairs bedrooms. I forget which. It’s the only thing left up there that I need. The doctors told me not to even try going up those stairs for another month. I’m living on the first floor now. Mrs. McVey’s grandsons brought my bed down and put it in the den. They moved everything down here. There’s a bathroom on the first floor, so that’s not a problem. But the warm weather is coming and I don’t keep the air-conditioning too low because of the electricity. The fan is a big help. Could you carry it down for me? But be careful. There is no railing on the stairs. Some workers removed it because I’m getting one of those electric chair lifts. Should have had it by now, but there was some sort of problem with the insurance. It will be a couple of weeks, they say. The doctors told me not to even try going up. As if I would without a banister. I couldn’t do it even with a banister with this hip.”

I found the fan in the first room I looked. As I left the room I spotted a photo album on top of a highboy. On impulse, I put down the fan and opened it. Turned out it was more a scrapbook than an album. I brushed off the accumulated dust and opened it. Instead of photos, there were clippings from various newspapers, the majority from the Staten Island Advance, as well as birthday and anniversary cards, laminated funeral cards, notes from friends, coasters from restaurants, matchbook covers, postcards, even an odd recipe. Many of the news clippings concerned her husbands. Promotions, awards and the like. But there was a fair amount of material devoted to Ronnie. I opened up a folded crayon drawing of a castle. In childish scrawl was the inscription, To Aunt Betsy, Love Veronica. I felt my throat tighten. There were many other drawings and short notes from an older Ronnie, thanking her aunt for being there for her. It was obvious they were close. I flipped through the entire scrapbook and discovered only one thing that mentioned Ronnie’s brother. It was a yellowed sports story about a high school baseball game between Curtis and New Dorp. It only ran seven paragraphs and his name appeared in the last sentence: “Curtis sophomore southpaw Matt Frost pitched an uneventful ninth inning in relief.” Someone, presumably Aunt Betsy, had highlighted his name, or I might have missed it.

I closed the scrapbook and carried the fan down the stairs. Without a railing, I almost slipped myself.

I didn’t want to let the old woman know I had been snooping through her memories, so I told her the fan was in the last room I looked.

“Isn’t that always the way,” she said. “Please put it in the den.”

After I came out, she asked me if I wanted some sherry.

Right then, I could have used a double Absolute on the rocks, but it was obvious that wasn’t in the cards. And it was also obvious from the hopeful look on her face that Aunt Betsy wanted her sherry, but didn’t want to drink alone if she could avoid it.

“I’d love some.”

She went to get it and I braced myself for some ultra-sweet cream sherry that would probably throw me into a diabetic coma. So I was pleasantly surprised when she returned with a decent bottle of Amontillado and two wine glasses. The sherry had a hint of walnut and a bit of a kick. She gave us both a decent pour and while it wasn’t a double vodka, I would have to say I wasn’t having a bad time. We made small talk, mostly about how wonderful Staten Island had been when she was a girl. It wasn’t as agonizing as it might have been. It wasn’t merely politeness on my part. Aunt Betsy had a pretty good memory. I don’t have anyone her age in my family left, and that kind of reminiscing is something I miss. But finally she ran down.

“Just wait here one second,” she said, heading out into the kitchen.

She came back with a small box.

“Sugar cookies,” she explained. “I always seem to have a lot left over.”

I took them. Perhaps they would come in handy if I ever ran out of bullets.

CHAPTER 8 - ALICE

I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way to the office and picked up two coffees and some donuts. When I got in, Abby was at her desk, studying.

“How’s the cramming going?” I asked as I gave her one of the coffees and the box of donuts, minus one.

“I’m trying to watch my weight,” she said.

“If you want to be a private eye, Abs, you have to eat donuts at every opportunity. In fact, I think donut-eating is on the test.”

Abby was a sturdy-looking black woman who recently had gone on a diet kick.

“Thanks to you, boss, I’m sure to ace that part. What’s in that other bag?”

“Sugar cookies.”

“Hand them over. I like them better than donuts. And they’re not as fattening.”

I went into my office and waited. It didn’t take long.

“God almighty!”

She appeared at my door, holding one of the cookies at arm’s length.

“Where did you get these damn things, the Ku Klux Klan Bakery!”

When I finished laughing, I told her.

“It makes you appreciate cucumber sandwiches,” I said.

“And donuts,” she said, heading back to her desk.

“Shut the door, please. I have to make a call.”

“Give her my love,” Abby said.

***

Alice Watts had decided to extend her sabbatical in Paris for another semester. I won’t say I was overjoyed when she told me, but I understood.

Alice has a Masters in Philosophy and is a professor at Wagner College. She is a favorite of Spencer Bradley, Wagner’s dynamic president, and she wouldn’t have stayed longer at the Sorbonne without his support and encouragement. Her PhD was important to her, and thus important to me. But Bradley and I both knew — we occasionally shared some of his excellent scotch and our thoughts — that at some point it would be hard to keep Alice, who lived in Greenwich Village, teaching on Staten Island.

Not that Wagner wasn’t an excellent school. Bradley, a black man who had rid the college of some residual racism, sexism and unwarranted elitism with, I must admit, some help from me, had turned Wagner into an academic powerhouse. But it was not the Ivy League or the “Big City” that was assuredly in Alice’s future. She was one of the few philosophy instructors that I knew — hell, actually the only one — who made any sense at all. And it had nothing to do with the fact that she was sleeping with me and liked sex more than Simone De Beauvoir. One of the reasons she extended her stay in Europe was to spend some time in Germany on research. Her PhD dissertation-in-progress, tentatively titled “The Moral Philosophical Bankruptcy of Heidegger, Krieck, Heyse and Other Sycophants During the Third Reich,” was just plain gutsy. It was sure to raise hackles among the current crop of philosophers because of the comparisons she raised with many of their politically correct positions.

Alice, knowing that I had survived the rigors of a Jesuit college education, often asked me to look over emailed drafts of her dissertation.

“The Jesuits have their act together,” she had told me. “I’m glad they finally gave us a Pope. They’ve never sold out like Hitler’s Nazi philosophers.”

“I majored in cutting classes,” I told her. “I’m not sure I bring much to the table here.”

In fact, I was a pretty good student, but the only time I made the Dean’s List was senior year, when I bought beer with the money I was supposed to spend on books. The revelation that one didn’t need books to do well in college has colored my opinion of higher education ever since.

“Nonsense. You have one of the most inquisitive minds I’ve ever had the pleasure of trying to confuse.”

“You just want me to correct your execrable spelling and punctuation.”

“Spell ‘execrable’ for me.”

In truth, having Alice a few thousand miles away now, pursuing her dream, presented an opportunity. But I knew I had to call her. I told her what had happened.

“Are you asking my permission to investigate the murder of a woman you were once in love with?”

Even over the phone I caught her teasing tone.

“I’m not sure I am going to do it. But if I do, I don’t want to do it without telling you.”

“You know I wouldn’t try to stop you. And I know that if you make up your mind, you’ll do it no matter what.”

“Yes.”

“So isn’t this whole conversation probably what they would call ‘moot’?”

“Probably.”

“So, what else can we talk about? How about them Yanks?”

“That would be even more depressing. I think the team doctor just went on injured reserve.”

“You are blue, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Her voice had lost its bantering tone.

“Tell me everything, honey.”

I did. When I finished, she said the perfect thing, as usual.

“What a wonderful woman. You have to go.”

“I may not accomplish anything. The police are investigating.”

“It doesn’t matter. My money is on you. I want you to do it. And she would want you to do it.”

“The whole thing is bringing back memories. And feelings.”

There was a long pause.

“Alton, I fell in love with you because of what you are. And part of what you are comes from her.”

“We were just kids.”

“I don’t think you were ever a kid, buddy boy. And from what you just told me, I doubt if she ever was, either. Whatever took her away from you, she deserved better than an ice pick through her heart. Make it right. I’m not worried about losing you.”

“I love you, Alice.”

“I rest my case.”

After we rang off, I did a web search for Harry Frost. I found a concert pianist, a minor league ballplayer, a BBC anchor and a few other reputable citizens. Even assuming Harry might have had a career change, none came within 10 years of the right age. Next, I searched the Frost family name using instantscheckmate.com, a service that checks Federal, state and county databases. I plugged in Harry, Catherine (Katherine, just in case) and Matthew. A minute later I had almost 800 names. I narrowed it down, using approximate ages, with a five-year swing on either side. I still wound up with 326 possibilities. I copied that list and then printed it out. I could hear the printer in my outer office humming and clicking. Abby had set us up with wireless connections. She was back in the office. I waited until I heard the printer stop and then called out to her. When she walked in she was holding a sheaf of papers.

“This is a shitload of Frosts,” she said.

I told her what I was looking for.

“Next time, couldn’t you look for a  Czechoslovakian?”

“Call the Clap,” I said. “This is a job for Abby and the interns.”

That wasn’t a British rock group. Dave Clapper, the chief of staff at Wagner College, is a pal of mine. A former Coast Guard captain who cuts through the usual academic bureaucratic bull like an icebreaker in the Arctic, he had turned me on to using some of the students to do grunt work in my investigations. The kids got some college credit, although I always threw them some hard cash and supplied them with pizza.

“I’m headed out of town. They can use my office.”

With Abby riding herd on them and making calls herself, the list would be manageable. But I didn’t expect much. There are always people who aren’t on any list. And no list is comprehensive. Moreover, people die, move and change phone numbers. They even revert back to their given names, or change them entirely. I thought about that.

“Hold on a second,” I said.

I plugged in the name Mercer, both Catherine and Katherine, with the approximate age spread. Another 187 possibles. The printer started clacking in the other room.

“How about Smith,” Abby said. “I’m not doing anything for the next decade.”

CHAPTER 9 - MONTEZUMA’S REVENGE

I had a few things to take care of before I left. I called Cormac Levine and told him I’d buy him lunch. I could tell by his mumbled response on the phone that he was already eating something.

“Turkey sandwich, with some sort of sprout shit in it. Irene made me take it to work. She’s trying to get me to eat healthy.”

“How’s that working out?”

I heard the sandwich hit the wastebasket next to his desk.

“Pick me up. I’ve been meaning to try that new Mexican joint in Port Richmond.”

He was standing in front of the courthouse in St. George where the District Attorney offices are, wearing a white seersucker suit, pink shirt, red tie, brown socks and black shoes.

“I think you can be seen from the International Space Station,” I said when he got in my car.

“Mike says we have to wear suits,” he replied. “I’m gonna break him.”

Michael Sullivan was the D.A. He’d been through a lot recently, what with the death of his wife, so I knew he was a tough cookie. But I didn’t like his chances of winning a sartorial battle with Mac.

A half hour later we were sitting in the restaurant, ominously named Montezuma’s Revenge, drinking Carta Blanca, the Mexican beer that has a slight licorice taste. I let Mac order for the both of us, figuring I was probably a dead man anyway. After he finished, the waitress, who had to use two pages on her order pad, asked, “Are you expecting someone else?”

“They’ll probably have to hire a couple of more illegal aliens in the kitchen by the time we leave,” I said.

“I think sprouts stimulate the appetite,” Mac said.

While we waited for our food, I told him what I was up to.

“More windmills,” he said. “You never learn.”

“I have to do it.”

“Does Alice know?”

I told him what she said.

“Man, don’t ever let that one go. She’s a keeper. And don’t pork it up with this trip down memory lane. Now, what do you need?”

“From what I was able to get out of the Worcester cops, it seems unlikely that it was a random killing.”

“You think she was targeted? By someone she knew?”

“Either that, or the killer was after a particular type of victim.”

“A jogging nun?”

I knew Mac was being facetious. But if you wanted what he could give you, you had to put up with what came with the territory. In truth, his sense of the absurd wasn’t that different from mine, so who am I to judge? So I played along.

“Perhaps. Or just a nun. Or just a woman. But it would be helpful to know if there have been similar murders. You have access to crime statistics, regionally and nationwide.”

“The Worcester cops sound competent. Especially that Broder guy.”

“Broderson.”

“Whatever. Point is, you know they will check that out.”

“I don’t want to ask them for too much information. Besides, I’m not sure how much they’d share.”

Our lunch came, by way of our waitress and a helper. It looked and smelled delicious. I knew that was no protection against ptomaine or a terminal case of the runs, but I ordered more beer and we both dug in, and were silent for a while. Or at least as silent as a table can be when Cormac Levine is eating. There was a considerable amount of grunting, lip smacking and burps.

“OK, I’ll check it out,” Mac finally said, something green dribbling out one corner of his mouth. It was either guacamole or he was having a seizure. “I’ll go back a couple of years. See if anything fits the profile. If there is someone doing this kind of thing, he usually sticks to the same weapon. If it’s a he.”

“Odds are it is. One thrust, right to the heart. Up and in. Long blade. Cops think it might be an ice pick or something similar. It’s not that easy. Takes arm strength.”

“Yeah. A woman typically slashes with a knife. Downwards. So it’s probably a man. Could be G.I. Jane, though. I hear the Marine Corps is even taking broads in the infantry.”

“Let’s go with the odds on this one, Mac. A man. But don’t ignore the possibility that he used other weapons.”

“If he exists at all. Still could be random, or a local grudge.”

“I’m just covering all the bases.”

“Sure.” A serious look crossed his face. “Don’t you want that taco?”

***

I also had to make sure someone looked in on Scar. As a huge, battered tomcat who skipped right past the feral phase and was now an independent contractor, Scar could take care of himself for a couple of days. I hadn’t even bothered to leave out any food when I went on my weekend fishing trip, but if I was going to be gone for any length of time I didn’t want him adopting anyone else. True, a few other neighbors on my block occasionally threw him some scraps, and, in a pinch, he could make do with an unwary bird or squirrel, but I could tell by the way he treated me with disdain that I was his favorite.

So, after I dropped Mac off, I drove around the corner to the St. George Precinct, better known as the “120”, and pulled into a slot in the rear parking lot. I put my “Marine Corps Chaplain” plaque on my dash. There is no such thing — Navy Chaplains take care of the Marines — and the local cops are familiar with my ruse by now, but I wanted to make sure they recognized my car. I realize that using a familiar ruse to alert the authorities that it’s you probably only makes sense in New York City, but I’d built up a lot of street cred with the cops during my past couple of cases and they were starting to cut me some breaks. Anything to make their job easier.

It was a short walk from the precinct to the St. George Theater on Hyatt Street. Once one of New York City’s premier vaudeville and cinema palaces in the 1930’s, with almost 4,000 seats and one of the largest cantilevered balconies ever built, it closed in 1972. But after more than 30 years it was renovated and turned into cultural arts center attracting some of the top performers in the country. It is also used for  television and film shoots, touring companies from Broadway and the Kennedy Center, the New York City Opera, and all sorts of local productions and events. I know all this because Alice is on the board and I’ve been the victim of many a presentation before the cocktail parties she’s dragged me to. Well, maybe dragged is not the right word. We’ve also gone to several shows. Saw Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, and Don McLean, which were treats. Less so was an opera, which Alice said would do me good. I’m as big a Paul Potts fan as anyone, but that was five minutes on YouTube. The only thing I could say about three hours of opera was that it probably cut a few thousand years off my stay in purgatory, so it wasn’t a total loss.

When I went into the theater it was obvious they were setting up for some sort of show. People were bustling about. I caught one kid in mid-bustle and told him to find Wayne Miller for me. Wayne is the Artistic Director and Production Manager, and he and his wife live up the block from me. He’s always busy, and easier to catch at work than at home. While I waited, I took time to look around. Even someone as architecturally-deprived as I am could appreciate the restored beauty of the St. George.  The theater’s interior is spectacular, with a mix of Spanish and Italian Baroque styles, or so I learned, pre-cocktail. Its foyer has huge stained glass chandeliers and winding staircases that lead up to the mezzanine level. There are paintings and murals, and niches with sculptures. I was admiring one statue when I heard someone walk up behind me.

“How come I always find you looking at sculptures of naked women?”

It was Wayne. Al Lambert was standing next to him.

“With all you artistic types flitting about,” I said, “I don’t dare look at a statue of a naked man.”

“We rarely flit, except with potential donors,” Al said. He and Wayne were two of the straightest men I knew. “How’s the new car running?”

“Like a charm.”

Al once owned a used-car lot, and during the years I was struggling to get my business off the ground went out of the way to supply me with reliable transportation at a good price. He’s now running a Ford dealership and since I was currently thriving had told him to keep an eye out for something a bit more upscale. When you find an honest car dealer, you stick with them for life, wherever they go. I was now driving a new Fusion hybrid with all the bells and whistles. Al even gave me a decent trade in on my Chevy Malibu, which he’d sold to me for a song after it survived a hail storm with only cosmetic damage. I was fond of that car, but I had gotten tired of trying to explain all the little round indentations on the rear panel. Most people didn’t buy my bullet-hole story.

“You in the show, Al?”

In addition to selling cars, Al was a professional singer, one of the best ever produced on Staten Island.

“Nah. Just helping Wayne with the auditions. Got to run back to the dealership now. Good to see you Alton. How’s Alice.”

“Still in Paris.”

“So, that’s why you’re looking at that sculpture.”

After he left, I said, “Wayne I need a favor.”

“Shoot.”

I told him.

“I didn’t know you had a cat,” Wayne said.

“I don’t. He has me. If you can leave out a couple of cans of Bumble Bee every couple of days and maybe some water, I’d appreciate it. Just as a backup. He usually makes other arrangements, but I just want to be sure. I suspect that he’ll have a ball with the cicadas.”

Staten Island was being inundated by billions of cicadas emerging from their 17-year underground life cycle. The loud but harmless big green insects were everywhere.

“He eats bugs?”

“No, but they attract birds. For a few of them, the cicadas will be a last meal. It will be like a buffet for him.”

“Just leave the food and water out? What about if a raccoon or possum gets to it first?”

“Hasn’t happened yet. I think they are pretty wary. Probably think Scar’s setting a trap for them.”

“Scar?”

“Kind of says it all, don’t you think?”

CHAPTER 10 - NANDO’S MOUTHPIECE

I went back to my office. I wanted to find out more about Harry Frost.

When a lawyer leaves Staten Island suddenly without a trace there are only two possible explanations: alien abduction or malpractice. I ruled out aliens. Malpractice can take many forms, but it usually involves client money. To lawyers of a certain bent, escrow accounts are like pots of honey to a badger. I checked with the Staten Island Bar Association and someone got back to me fairly quickly, saying that there was no record of any disciplinary action against Harry Frost, Esq. My call to them was more or less pro forma. The old-boy network is very powerful on Staten Island and the bar association’s list of lawyers it sanctioned probably took up the back of a stamp. Hence the quick reply. It’s an open secret in legal circles that attorneys who skate the ethical line are often nudged toward judgeships where they can do less damage.

I called contacts at both the daily Staten Island Advance and the weekly Register and, after the promise of a couple of lunches, got them to go through their old morgue files. There were a handful of stories in which Frost was mentioned, but they all involved community or bar association events tangential to his practice. They were all so brief that my contacts just read them to me over the phone and I dismissed them. They weren’t worth a cup of coffee, let alone a lunch. But I was stuck for the lunches.

Next, I tried the D.A.’s office. None of the younger D.A.’s remembered a Harry Frost so I eventually got bumped up to the man himself.

“I knew him slightly when I was starting out,” Mike said. “Heard some talk that he wasn’t exactly Learned Hand, ethically. But I don’t think he was ever accused of anything. Officially, that is. I could check.”

“Don’t bother. Something like that would have made the media. I was just wondering if anyone in your shop had a problem with him.”

“Before my time, Jake. Did you try the Bar Association?”

“Just to say that I did. If he wasn’t indicted for anything, what are the odds the bar association would care.”

“I hear you. I’m hoping things will change once the new court complex is built. I guess I benefited as much as anyone from the ‘old boy’ network on Staten Island, but maybe it will prompt a new sense of professionalism in the bar.” Sullivan was referring to the new five-story, $230 million, State Supreme Court building was nearing completion nearby, part of a much-ballyhooed rejuvenation of the St. George area that was scheduled to include the world’s tallest Ferris wheel, a shopping mall, retail shops, a hotel and condos. The new courthouse complex would centralize all the local judicial departments, criminal and civil, which were now spread throughout several communities on the North Shore. “Of course, with our luck, they’ll find Jimmy Hoffa’s bones on site and it will never open.”

The courthouse project had been delayed for years after construction workers uncovered the remains of 19th-century immigrants who had died in the quarantine hospital that once sat on the site. The plan was to rebury them in a memorial green at the complex, where presumably dogs and vagrants will supply fertilizer. As far as I was concerned, all the new courthouse meant was that parking in the area, which is also a commuter hub to Manhattan for tens of thousands of people, would go from unlikely to nonexistent.

“Is it true that the new courthouse will be entirely funded by parking tickets?”

Sullivan laughed. I thanked him and was about to hang up when he said, “Why don’t you try Sam Rosenberg?”

“Nando’s old mouthpiece?”

“Yes. I said I didn’t know Frost well, but I seem to remember that he and Sam had something going. Not partners, exactly, but interests in common. I could be wrong about that, but Sam knows a lot of gossip anyway. It’s his stock in trade.”

“He must hate my guts. I cost him his biggest client, both financially and literally.”

The corpulent Nando Carlucci had broken most laws and quite a few scales in his time.

“Since when do you care about people hating your guts?”

“Good point. By the way, since we’re talking about my popularity, or lack thereof, my credentials came through. I want to thank you again.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Alton.”

We left it at that. Mike thought he owed me, probably forever, for contriving the coverup that saved his career, and probably his sanity, after the Denton murder case blew up in everyone’s face and left bodies strewn all over the borough. Because of the personal tragedies involved, I had never asked him for any special treatment from his office, above and beyond what I always had been able to finagle out of it. But knowing he could make my professional life easier, he had made me a non-paid “consulting detective” to his office, with an I.D. and Law Enforcement Officer carry permit to match. That meant I could take my gun into any American jurisdiction and, more importantly, on a plane. Cormac, acting on Mike’s behalf, had also crafted a letter saying that I was basically always on official business for the N.Y.P.D. Mac suggested that Sullivan probably got the idea (“which is probably as illegal as the deck I had two moonlighting firemen attach to my house”) from the TV show, Sherlock, where a modern-day Holmes character has the same designation. I didn’t care. Whatever bureaucratic doors might still be closed to me, I could easily lie my way past them. The only downside was that I just knew that Mac would start calling me “Sherlock.”

“Give my love to Alice, will you?”

“Will do. You know, Mike, this is the first time I asked for information and you didn’t want to know what I was up to.”

“New strategy. I’m going to try it out for a while. I think I’ll sleep better that way.”

***

I headed back to St. George. I began to think I should move my office there.

Samuel L. Rosenberg was a mob lawyer without a mob client. Since he used to have a very lucrative one, the late, unlamented Nando Carlucci, I was right in suspecting that he would not be thrilled to see me. Even Sam could probably make the case that I was the principal reason Nando was late and unlamented.

Sam was a slippery devil, so I thought it prudent to drop in on him unannounced in his office on Central Avenue just up the block from the D.A.’s office. I had been in the building many times and knew he was on the third floor, although I never had the occasion to meet him there. It turned out he was so slippery his office wasn’t on the third floor anymore. It wasn’t even in the building. The new occupant, some sort of financial consultant, told me that Sam had downsized and was now operating in a smaller office next to a pizza restaurant in West Brighton, near Bard Avenue.

Oh yes, he’d be delighted to see me.

I drove to West Brighton. I thought about buying a couple of slices in the pizza parlor to bring him as a peace offering but decided against it. He might take it as a dig about Nando, who was known to eat two pies at a sitting. I had no trouble getting past Sam’s receptionist. He didn’t have one. I found him buried in paperwork at his desk. He smiled expectantly when I walked in, perhaps thinking I was a potential client. Then he recognized me.

“What do you want, you rotten son of a bitch?”

“Is that any way to talk, Sam? How do you know I’m not a potential client?”

“I would represent Himmler at this point, Rhode, but I draw the line at you. You made Nando Carlucci disappear and he took most of my practice with him. Look what I’m reduced to.”

He waved an arm at his surroundings, which I was forced to admit, were dismal. Early-American Goodwill. There was a brown bag on his desk and a slight pastrami overlay cut through the tomato sauce smells wafting from his neighbors.

“Accident cases. Slips and falls. Workman’s comp. Do you know how much paperwork is involved dealing with insurance companies and the meshugganah Government? I was a respected criminal attorney. And now this?” I wanted to say that no one had ever respected him, and his criminal experience was limited to one crime family. I was pretty sure he’d never actually handled a case at trial. I might have even mentioned that I hadn’t actually been a party to Nando’s “disappearance.” Arman Rahm never told me which landfills he deposited the fat rival mobster in, and I never asked. I probably could have also noted that Carlucci had tried to kill me, several times in fact, but why bother?

“Look, Sam, I’m sorry if I caught you between ambulances, but I need some information. So let’s cut the bull. You’ll never get another meal ticket like Nando, but maybe I can put in a word for you with some people I know. Throw you some business.”

A gleam came to the old shyster’s eyes.

“I have heard that you’re tight with the Rahms. I wouldn’t mind an introduction there.”

“That wouldn’t be a conflict of interest for you?”

“I’ll recuse myself if Carlucci ever shows up. Him and Lazarus.”

So much for Nando.

“I’ll see what I can do.” I sat down in a client chair that could have doubled for lawn furniture. “Now, what can you tell me about Harry Frost.”

“That rotten, thieving son of a bitch. He should rot in hell.”

I suspected that this would be a productive interview.

“I thought you worked together.”

“We worked on some deals before I decided to concentrate on criminal law. Real estate stuff, probate, estates, trusts, that sort of thing. Then one day he took a powder. Left me holding the bag with a lot of angry clients.”

“Why were they angry?”

“A lot of them had money, and I emphasize ‘had,’ when they came to us. You remember how Staten Island was after they built the Guinea Gangplank?”

“You mean the Verrazano Bridge?”

“What are you, some kind of politically correct asshole? I know your name ends in a vowel but I also know you’re not Italian. Besides, it’s just a phrase. I ain’t prejudiced. I saw 42, the Jackie Robinson flick. Liked it, too. So don’t get high and mighty on me. Where was I?”

“Staten Island after the bridge.”

“Yeah. Well, after it opened, a lot of farmland and oceanfront property that wasn’t worth diddley squat before suddenly took off. Big pieces of property. A lot of old-time families cashed in. They owned restaurants on the water, or pieces of the old airport and the drive-in mid-Island, all before your time probably, and they got small fortunes for them. I mean, had they held on they would have gotten even bigger fortunes, of course, but they did OK. Most of them were cheap squareheads, so they thought they were rich. I never could figure out why Staten Island had so many Northern Europeans, but they were hard-working, I’ll say that. Anyway, we got a lot of business from that. You know, families falling out over the windfalls, divorces, somebody dies and the money has to be split up. Typical human bullshit.”

He was revving up. I think I saw where it was all going.

“Large escrow accounts,” I said.

“Huge.  A goddamn gold mine.”

“And Harry dipped.”

“Dipped? He used a steam shovel. After he split, I found out that there was hardly anything left in the accounts. He billed so many hours he would have had to start working for some of those people before Henry Hudson sailed into the Narrows. What he didn’t bill, he siphoned off to dummy corporations, you know, for title research and other crap.”

“How much are we talking about.”

“Almost $3 million, spread out over about 20 clients.”

“I have to ask, Sam. What was your involvement?”

Rosenberg sat back and put his hands behind his head. He smiled.

“You probably won’t believe this, but at one point I was pretty wet behind the ears. Me and Harry weren’t partners, thank God, but I trusted him. I saw just enough money to think everything was on the up and up. He snowed the clients and he snowed me.”

“They must have come after you.”

“They tried. ‘The Jew lawyer must have been behind it.’ But it was pretty obvious I hadn’t done anything but be stupid. Harry’s fingerprints were all over the clients’ funds. Besides, he ran, and I stayed behind. I didn’t have much of a bank account.” He paused and gave me a look. “Like now. The clients got new lawyers but didn’t have all that much money to pay them, so you know how that goes.”

“But they could recover the money, couldn’t they?”

“Sure. Theoretically. If they found Harry. But most of the clients were kind of down on lawyers by that time. Can’t say I blame them. They knew their legal fees would eat up anything they recovered.”

“But it was still a crime.”

“Yeah, So is jaywalking. When was the last time a lawyer on Staten Island got indicted for bilking his clients?”

“So, he got away with it.”

“A crying shame. All that money and I hardly saw a dime.”

CHAPTER 11 - BETA

I got up early Saturday morning, packed and headed to Massachusetts. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, so I probably took too many clothes. But that’s the beauty of traveling in one’s car. You don’t have to pay extra baggage fees. I also put an extra gun and ammunition in a lock box in my trunk. I never know how many bullets to pack, so I erred on the side of World War III.

The drive to Worcester brought back memories not related to the case at hand. When I was nine, my parents rented a place called Red Rock Farm just outside Sturbridge for two weeks in the summer. It was a real farm and I hadn’t gone 20 feet from our station wagon when I stepped in cow flop. In additions to a small herd of bovines, which regularly broke out of their ancient corral and wandered down the road, there were also chickens and ducks, a small stream with little darting trout and 10 acres of wooded wonderland.

We went to Old Sturbridge Village, which was set up to recreate a rural New England town of the 1830s. People walked around the meetinghouses, school, country store, working gristmills and the like in period costumes. There was even another working farm, although I managed to avoid stepping in anything. I remembered being fascinated by how basic life was early in the 19th Century. I thought I had been roughing it because Red Rock Farm didn’t have air-conditioning! We ate regularly at the nearby Publick House, where I discovered Indian pudding topped with vanilla ice cream. I had a wonderful time.

I drove around now but wasn’t able to find Red Rock Farm. I thought about asking someone but decided against that. The farm had probably been turned into a housing development full of McMansions. But the Publick House was still standing as it has, according to the plaque next to the front entrance, since 1771. The property was a lot grander than I remembered. There was now a conference center attached to the original building, and what looked like a motel was just down the path.

I had timed my drive to hit Sturbridge at lunchtime, with my fingers crossed, hoping that Ebenezer's Tavern was still operating in the Publick House. It was, and didn’t look much different than I recalled. I went in happy, but knowing that I’d be melancholy coming out. That’s a certainty when memories involving parents are involved. Most of the tables were occupied with parents and children. The melancholy index spiked.

Even the Tavern menu looked much the same, although I didn’t remember anything called an “Ebenezer Burger.” It didn’t matter. I ordered a half bottle of Bordeaux and an open-faced turkey sandwich with all the trimmings. Except for the wine, that was the meal I ordered every time we went to the Publick House, lunch or dinner. My eyes naturally drifted to the bottom of the menu, where the desserts were listed. My luck held.

“There’s no chance you will run out of Indian pudding, is there,” I asked the waitress, who looked like she could be Mrs. Ebenezer. “This place is pretty busy.”

“No chance, sonny,” she said indulgently. “But I’ll put some aside for you anyway. And we have plenty of vanilla ice cream.”

An hour later I left for Worcester, 20 miles away, pleasantly full. And melancholy

The melancholy didn’t last long. My cell phone buzzed. It was Cormac Levine.

“You wanted to know if there were any murders similar to the one in Worcester?”

“Yeah. You dig up any?’

“Interesting phrasing. I can give you a definite maybe.”

I waited.

“I checked with the one of those new databases they started with all this terrorist bullshit so that various jurisdictions, local and Federal, would be on the same page. I won’t bore you with its name or its acronym, which has more letters than I have piles. It’s not public anyway. A friend of a friend got me into it. It’s in butter , whatever that means.”

“It’s beta.” I spelled it out. “That means it’s in a testing phase.”

“Beta, butter, who gives a rat’s ass. Anyway, there were a ton of stabbing deaths over the last few years. Most involve domestic disputes, of course, with kitchen knives and the like. Murders of passion or convenience. Some gang killings, of course. And a couple of maniacs who were quickly caught. Makes you think the Government should regulate kitchen utensils. But I was even able to narrow it down to stabbing deaths roughly similar to the one that killed the nun. You know, single thrust to the heart with a very sharp, presumably thin blade. Believe it or not, there were dozens. Gotta figure some pros or mob guys still know how to use a stiletto. And a shiv is the weapon of choice in prison, so a lot of cons probably came out with graduate degrees in knifing people. But the killings were all over the country and many of the victims seemed to have it coming to them. But there were four, including Worcester, that involved religious persons.”

“All nuns?”

“No. I wish.” There was a pause, then a bitter laugh. “I can’t believe I said that. What I mean …. never mind. But this is where it gets dicey. Two nuns, a priest and a brother, you know, one of those guys who belongs to a religious order but is not ordained. Didn’t you get taught by them?”

“Yes. Xaverian Brothers. Xaverian High School in Brooklyn. Four stabbing murders, Mac? Religious. That hasn’t raised any red flags?”

“You would think somebody would notice, wouldn’t you. And maybe somebody will once this system gets out of that phase you say it’s in. Probably if they were all nuns, or priests, or whatever, someone might have spotted it. But they weren’t and the murders were spread across the country, over a year. Would you believe California, Colorado, Illinois and Massachusetts? Most serial killers stick to one time zone, at least. And the ages of the victims are all over the lot. That also goes against the serial killer grain. I hate to say it, but they could be random, including your girlfriend.”

I pulled over to the side of the road and fished in my glove box for a pad and pen.

“Give me what you have.”

“Emilio Salazar, 55, pastor of Puertas del Cielo, Gates of Heaven, Roman Catholic Church in Windsor, California, was found dead April 17 of last year next to a stream where he liked to fish. Jeanette LeFebvre, 19, a cloistered nun belonging to the Contemplative Sisters of Fatima in Lafayette, one of Denver’s suburbs, was killed on August 5 in a field adjacent to her convent. Brother Alfred Variale was 88 and living in a retirement home in the Prospect Heights section of Chicago. He was found on December 8th sitting in his wheelchair in his room in front of a TV watching a Bears game.”

“No one saw him killed?”

“They thought he just nodded off. It was a Bears game, after all. Put anyone to sleep. You know nursing homes. Anyone can walk in, most of the time. Our guy probably could have killed a half dozen before anyone noticed. He didn’t use a gun, remember. The staff would have heard that, if not the residents.”

“Jesus Christ. And the one in Denver was only 19? And what was a cloistered sister doing in the field?”

“Apparently the nuns maintain a small garden to raise vegetables and the like. Actually, LeFebvre was called a postulant, that’s a nun in training. It was her day to tend the tomatoes, or something. Postulants probably got all the dirty jobs. And she was training to be a ‘nun,’ not a ‘sister.’ Sisters can work in the community, usually as teachers. Nuns, on the other hand, are usually cloistered. I figure a Papist like you should know that.”

I just loved being lectured on Catholicism by a Jewish detective who hadn’t seen the inside of a synagogue since his own bar mitzvah.

“So,” I said, “the first killing was about 13 months ago, in California. Then three more, including Ronnie, spaced about four months apart. Could it be a serial killer moving east?”

“Where’s his next victim, Iceland?”

“Anything stick out?”

“Well, except for the first one, which was on a Wednesday, all the murders were on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday.”

“So?”

“So, serial killers have to start somewhere. In many cases, their first is close to home. Let’s assume the first killing was a hometown job. Then the next three might indicate he was traveling on or near weekends.”

I thought about that. It was thin gruel, but I filed it away.

“That’s it?”

“Hey, what do you want? You know anyone else who would come up with something like that? So, what are you gonna do?”

“I’m on my way to see those cops in Worcester. But something tells me I’ll be on a plane soon. Can you email me what you have. I’ll want to share it with the cops up here.”

“If they already checked that angle, they’ll be pissed you questioned their competency. If they haven’t they’ll be pissed and embarrassed. Where do you want me to send the bail money?”

“I’ll work my usual charm on them.”

“In that case, where do you want me to send the flowers?”

“I’m guessing they never even heard about that new database. They might even be grateful I’m sharing.”

“Oh, so you intend to ‘beta’ them up.”

“That’s terrible, Mac.”

“How about ‘beta late than never’?’

“Please, you’re killing me.”

“You’re just mad because I said it before you did.” He wasn’t near finished. “Beta me than you?”

I hung up when he spouted a line from Gunga Din.

CHAPTER 12 - WORCESTER

“What makes you think that you’ll have any more success than we will?”

Broderson looked at me as he poured himself another mug of coffee. Mine was cradled in my hands. We were sitting at his desk in the Worcester Police Headquarters on Lincoln Square. As municipal buildings went, it wasn’t a bad looking edifice. But the coffee set a new standard for squad room java.

“Do you have any unsolved homicides in which coffee was involved?”

He laughed as Huntley came over from his own desk and perched on Broderson’s.

“What are you after, Rhode,” he said.

“I thought maybe we could work the Frost case together.” It was hard for me to imagine Ronnie as Sister Veronica. “Now I’m in your ballpark. I don’t want to step on any toes.”

“Just because you gave us a couple of drinks in your office don’t mean we’re gonna bend over and touch our ankles.”

“It was good bourbon. But I see your point. How about if I let you in on something? I know you checked out if there were any similar crimes, but I just stumbled on to something the Feds don’t want anyone to know about yet.”

I had rehearsed that phrasing several times. Even if they hadn’t checked for similar crimes, they wouldn’t admit it now. And any mention of the Feds holding back information from local cops would anger them. I was gambling that they weren’t privy to the new database.

“What do you have?”

I told them about the similar crimes. When I mentioned the beta program they exchanged glances.

“What’s that thing called,” Broderson asked.

I told them. I had to spell the initials out twice before they got it right. Huntley wrote it down and said, “Feds suck.”

They hadn’t known about it.

“Your pal must be pretty wired in,” Broderson said.

“Actually, he was pretty wired out for a while.”

I explained about how I saved Mac’s career by lying when he was accused of throwing a child molester off a balcony, and how he was later dumped from the D.A.’s Squad after an election until wiser heads prevailed. They were stories that I knew wouldn’t hurt me with these cops. All cops hate child molesters and politicians.

“Bottom line, he has a lot of friends. I bet you guys know someone, maybe in Boston, who can get you access to that database in the future.”

“Yeah,” Huntley said. “I went to B.C. with a guy who works organized crime with the Feds. I’ll make a call.”

“In the meantime,” I said, “I’ll give you everything I have on those murders.”

“OK, Rhode, you are proving useful,” Broderson said. “We checked for similar crimes and are still waiting to hear back. You saved us some time. We’ll make some calls. But your friend may be right. Could be four separate homicides.”

“Thinking that way doesn’t give me anyplace new to go. I’m not here just to rehash everything you guys have done. This is just where I’m starting. So, I want everything you have on your murder. The whole file. And if I annoy anyone by nosing around, I want you to get the word out that I’m one of the good guys. I want to be able to tell people that you have my back. That will save me a lot of time. And aggravation.”

“We appreciate your help, pal, but that’s asking a lot.”

“Are you guys flying to California or those other places?”

Broderson snorted

“Yeah, right, on our budget?”

“Well, I am. And I’ll give you anything I find out.”

“You must be independently wealthy,” Huntley said.

“No. Just independent. I told you before, this is personal. Come on, what do have to lose? I can be a royal pain in the ass around here. Instead, I’m offering to do some legwork. Expensive legwork.”

“And you don’t have a client,” he said. “Nobody is paying you.”

“I do some of my best work unpaid. I seem to have a lot of practice.”

“One of the cops on Staten Island told us an interesting rumor about you,” Broderson said. “You really find someone in Witness Protection?”

“Feds suck,” I said, smiling.

The two detectives looked at each other. Broderson, the senior man, nodded. Huntley slid open a drawer and came out with a file.

“There are no crime scene or autopsy photos in this,” he said. “I can get them if you want.”

I stared at him.

“He doesn’t want to see that shit, Dick,” Broderson said.

He was right.

***

Broderson and Huntley let me use an empty interrogation room to study the file and told me where the copy machine was. They had been thorough in their investigation, interviewing dozens of people who knew Sister Veronica, either personally or professionally. None were likely suspects, although I knew that didn’t mean anything. As far as they were concerned, everyone in Worcester past the sixth grade was a suspect.

I read all the statements and cop notes, making some of my own on my iPhone. I also copied some names, addresses and phone numbers. I didn’t need the copy machine; my cell phone camera was just fine. I hadn’t expected to learn anything from the file, which could have been labeled “Brick Wall.” The detectives had pulled in known sex offenders, even though Ronnie’s murder didn’t seem to be a sex crime. They had even interviewed a man who had written a nasty letter to the principal because his daughter had received a “lousy grade” in “Boolean Algebra.” The grade in question was a B+, a mark I would have killed to get in high school, in any subject. Since the daughter was now in Harvard, the father was not considered a suspect. There had never been any allegations of abuse, sexual or otherwise, brought against Sister Veronica or any of the staff at Ave Maria, which didn’t surprise me. But the very fact that Broderson and Huntley delved into the possibility said a lot about the current moral climate and the Catholic Church.

After the murder, several joggers had come forward to say that they had seen Ronnie running alongside a portly man. That man turned out to be a local rabbi, Gil Markowitz, who said he left the Blackstone River before the killing, an alibi confirmed by the owner of a Chinese takeout where Markowitz stopped on his way home to pick up some egg foo young. I made a mental note to ask Cormac, fond of both Chinese food and puns, if a rabbi’s alibi could be called a “ralibi.”

The more I read, the more I became convinced that Ronnie’s murder was not a random act of violence limited to the Worcester area, but was tied to the cases Cormac had discovered.

It was getting late and I decided to visit the crime scene before it got dark. I knew it was a waste of time. But I wanted to see where Ronnie had died. I know some detectives, good, tough, pragmatic detectives, who insist they get some sort of karmic boost from walking the ground where a person was murdered. I don’t know about that. All I do know was that it couldn’t hurt. I also know that a fair amount of crimes are solved by detectives doing things that couldn’t hurt.

I had a reservation at a Hilton Garden Inn that turned out to be only five minutes from the site. Huntley gave me directions from the hotel to the site.

“Can’t miss it,” he said.

I checked into my room and headed to the site. Naturally, I missed the cutoff to the jogging trail. Twice. When I finally got there, the sky had turned threatening. I noticed several cars parked in the spot where Ronnie’s body was found, presumably belonging to the joggers I could see working their way along the path adjacent to the river. She had been spotted by two teen-agers who had pulled into the small lot for some back-seat jogging. Considering their raging hormones, it was to their credit that they got out of their car to check out someone who appeared slumped over by an open car door. By the time the police arrived, the rain had washed away any clues, including footprints and car tracks. Since it was a gathering place for both cars and runners, even on a good day the mixture of tracks would probably have been forensically worthless.

I got out of my car and walked down to the jogging path. As runners finished up, they had to pass me. I stopped all the men and asked a few questions, mostly to study their faces and reactions. None of them looked like Hannibal Lecter. I knew that didn’t mean anything. Ted Bundy was a prolific serial killer and he looked like a boy in a Norman Rockwell painting. In a non-profiling spirit, I also stopped a couple of women, hoping that they may have noticed something, or someone, that made them wary. Women, perhaps feeling more vulnerable, tend to notice things like that. But no one had.

There was a rumble of thunder and the sky began to darken. The first large drops of the approaching storm began to splatter the dirt and leaves. More joggers came up from the river, sensibly trying to beat the storm. It was useless to try to stop them for a chat. Most were sprinting to their vehicles. Soon, no more showed up. I was getting soaked, so I got in my car and turned on the wipers.

The police had concluded that Ronnie had opened the door to her car, turned around and was stabbed. Ambient body temperature indicated she died approximately two hours before the lovebirds showed up. It would have been dark or near dark. If her assailant had come by car, which was likely, she might have assumed he was also a jogger. She might have even been comforted, thinking she wasn’t alone in the woods.

However it happened, Ronnie didn’t fight back. There were no defensive wounds on her hands, or skin under her fingernails. Whoever killed her probably took her by surprise. Either that, or she knew her killer. Of course, one assumption did not preclude the other.

An SUV pulled into the lot next to mine and a man in a jogging rain suit got out. Undoubtedly, a real health nut. Wasn’t going to let a little rain stop him. He had taken only a couple of steps toward the path when a bolt of lightning hit a tree nearby, followed almost immediately by an appalling crash of thunder. My car actually shook. The jogger might have been a health nut, but he apparently wasn’t crazy. He stopped dead in his tracks and jumped back in his SUV and drove away. It was a smart move. The thunderstorm lasted a half hour and the rain came down in sheets. Finally it slowed to just a steady downpour. There was still some lightning and thunder, but now it was in the distance.

Mine was the only car left in the lot. It was quite dark and I reflected that the situation probably wasn’t much different than the night Ronnie was killed. I sat in my car looking out through my rain-smeared windshield, imagining myself as a killer waiting for her to emerge from the river path. Open the door. A quick but savage upward thrust. Get back in the car and drive off. It wouldn’t have taken any more time than it took the lightning bolt to scare the jogger back to his car.

It would have been so easy.

After all, if I was right, the killer had plenty of practice by then.

***

Joggers often vary the time of day when they run. So, early the next morning I went back to the jogging trail by the river. I was dressed for the occasion, since I was almost as interested in perspiration as inspiration. I needed a workout.

It’s hard to chat up joggers while they’re chugging along, but I did fall in step with a few of them and squeezed in some breathless questions. I also corralled one or two joggers as they took a break, usually leaning against a tree. I knew I was spinning my wheels. I really didn’t think my killer was a local jogger, and if he was, the odds were against me “running” into him during the times I was at the river. But at least I got my five miles in.

When I walked back to my car, there was a Worcester police cruiser next to it. Two uniformed cops got out and approached me. One of them had sergeant stripes on his arm. Big smiles, hands resting easily on their holsters.

“How are you doing?” the sergeant said.

“Just dandy. What can I do for you fellows?”

“You can start by telling us why you are back here this morning annoying joggers. And why you want to know so much about the nun’s murder.”

I should have figured that with the recent killing my activities the night before might have made some people nervous. Someone had called the cops and they came back to check things out. I was suddenly very conscious of the small .25 Beretta pistol in my sweat-jacket pocket. I carry it when running, in case I’m attacked by an angry squirrel.

“My name is Rhode. I’m a private detective looking into the murder. I’m carrying a piece and my I.D..”

Their guns came out.

“Turn around and put your hands on the roof of your car,” the sergeant said. Then he came up and patted me down. “Easy does it, pal.”

The other cop moved to the side so his partner wouldn’t be in the line of fire. My gun and I.D. were removed and the sergeant stepped back. A couple of joggers came up from the trail and gave us a wide berth.

“Call Broderson or Huntley in Homicide,” I said. “They’re in this.”

“Keep an eye on him, Tommy,” the sergeant said.

He got in his squad car and picked up his phone.

After everything was straightened out, the sergeant handed me back my gun and I.D.

“Let me ask you something, bud,” he said. “Do you really think this is a productive use of your time?”

“Well, I found out not to mess with Worcester’s finest.”

“Have a nice day.”

I went back to the Hilton, showered and hit the breakfast buffet. Then I called the main Boston phone number for the Sisters of St. Jerome, the order to which Ronnie had belonged. I wanted to learn as much as I could about her recent life. I found out that Sister Veronica had for a time worked in the school that also housed what remained of the shrinking order. I made an appointment to see the Mother Superior, Sister Barbara, at 4 P.M. This made two cases in a row for me hunting a possible serial killer with religious motives. In fact, the last one ended with my name almost being added to a killer’s list. Maybe I was being punished for liking The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons.

I spent the next several hours at the main branch of the Worcester library, reading every newspaper article I could find on Sister Veronica and Ave Maria. I had to get a temporary library card, good for two weeks, to use the system’s computer room, where I went on line to check for additional coverage. There was, of course, a rash of stories about the murder and subsequent investigation. None of them mentioned the possibility of a serial killer, but I knew that would soon change. There were several recent photos of Ronnie, at various local functions and, of course, school activities. I may have been seeing her through rose-colored glasses, but she still looked lovely to me, despite her conservative dress and hair style. Old memories stirred and I quickly pushed them back into the vault. I was now looking at a woman and a nun, after all.

I grabbed a burger at a Shake Shack and then went to my hotel and checked out.

CHAPTER 13 - MOTHER SUPERIOR

The Sisters of St. Jerome headquarters, if you could call it that, was located in a triple-decker house on Stellman Road, in the Forest Hills section of Roslindale, six miles southwest of downtown Boston. From Worcester it took me about an hour, mostly on I-90, the Mass Pike. There was a sign on the well-manicured front lawn that identified it as Casserleigh House. When I pulled up, a small group of kids, of every skin shade, speaking Spanish, were just heading up the stairs. I followed them in. They all peeled off noisily to a classroom, where I could see a woman cleaning a blackboard. She turned and said something to the kids, who immediately quieted. I was reminded of my own no-nonsense Catholic school upbringing. Not a bad thing, I now realized.

There was a sign pointing toward an administrative office, where a very pretty young woman wearing an expensive-looking blue and yellow jogging outfit was working on a computer. She looked up and gave me a dazzling smile. I tried to out-dazzle her while I told her who I was there to see. She picked up a phone, punched a number and said, “There is a Mr. Rhode here for you, Sister Barbara. He says he has an appointment” She listened for a moment, then hung up and looked at me. “She’ll be right over. Please have a seat.”

“Excuse me, but I have to ask. Are you a nun?”

I suppose I should have said ‘sister,’ but it would have sounded weird.

She laughed. It was a nice, throaty, laugh.

“I’m a volunteer here at Casserleigh. Two days a week. I’m a junior at Wellesley.”

“I believe Wellesley is known as one of the Seven Sisters. Maybe you qualify after all. I saw some kids go into a classroom. I know I’m a little rusty on modern Catholicism, but since when did the Church start Sunday School? Isn’t that taking ecumenism a bit far?””

“You are rusty, Mr. Rhode. The Catholic Church has long offered Sunday School classes, although not as widely as Protestant sects. But strictly speaking, what you saw is not Sunday School. We offer English-language classes after mass. Most of the children only hear their native language at home. Mrs. Herrera has the Hispanic kids. I get the French-speakers next week.”

“I’m relieved. You don’t look much like a Sunday School teacher, either.”

She looked me up and down.

“Does your line of bull work on women everywhere, or just inside a convent?”

She was still smiling when she said it.

“Isn’t this where you point out that I’m old enough to be your father?’

She leaned forward and put her elbows on the desk. As a trained detective, I noticed that she did not appear to be wearing a bra.

“I might have, but you don’t look anything like my father. Are you coming on to me?”

A Wellesley girl, she could handle just about anything. Or anyone. I had to laugh.

“Maybe. But I’m not serious. I’m kind of spoken for. I just want to be able to say I did it in a convent. I may never be in one again.”

“I never met a private eye before. Spoken for, or otherwise. I’m crushed.”

“No, you’re not. But since you aren’t a nun, I can say you are one gorgeous young woman without worrying about being struck by lightning.”

“Thank you. Ah, here she is.”

I turned to see a tall, white-haired woman in her 70’s who looked like a Mother Superior from central casting. She gave me an appraising glance. I suspected she had heard some of our conversation.

“I’m Sister Barbara,” she said, putting out her hand. “Nice to meet you Mr. Rhode. I see that Ann has you well in hand.”

“You can’t imagine.”

“Oh, yes I can. Why don’t we go into my office?”

As I turned to follow her, Ann whispered, “Busted, again.”

I followed the Mother Superior through a door to a small inner office and she waved me to a seat. She was wearing a long gray skirt and white blouse with sleeves and a gray cardigan. Sensible, sturdy black shoes.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Rhode?’

“As I mentioned on the phone, I’m looking into the murder of Sister Veronica in Worcester. I understand she once worked here.”

“You also mentioned that you were a private detective. Do you have some sort of identification?”

I took out my license and passed it over to her.

“New York,” she said, passing my I.D. back.

“That’s right.”

“Are you working for her aunt?”

“No. I’m doing this on my own.”

“Why?”

“I knew her when she was Veronica Frost. I want to find out who killed her.”

“Why not leave it to the police?”

“It’s complicated.”

She smiled.

“You were involved romantically?”

Sister Barbara didn’t get to be a Mother Superior by being slow on the uptake.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“About a year.”

“When was this?”

“When I was in college.”

“Sister Veronica went to Rosemont, near Philadelphia.”

“Yes, I know. She was in high school when we met.” That got me a Mother Superior look. “We dated her senior year at Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island.”

She smiled again.

“Don’t look so defensive, Mr. Rhode. I’m not going to smack your hand with a ruler. High school seniors can be quite attractive. We knew that Sister Veronica had a life before finding her vocation. If anything, I believe it made her a better person and a better Sister of St. Jerome.”

“I think she was a pretty good person to start out with,” I said. “But it did surprise me to find out she took vows. I know she went to church and all, but she didn’t wear her Catholicism on her sleeve. I thought vocations came earlier in someone’s life.”

“God’s call can come at any time, Mr. Rhode. I was in my early 40’s.”

“I was just wondering if anything happened after I knew her that set her on the path to a religious order. It may have some bearing on her murder.”

Mother Superior ignored me.

“You said you were involved for only a year. What happened?”

“I went back to school. We corresponded. Then she and her family moved suddenly and I never saw or heard from her again.”

“Did you try to find her?”

“Yes. But they left no trail. And then, well ….”

“Life.”

“Yes.”

“And now, after all these years, you feel compelled to learn what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The “why” again. I was beginning to wonder who the detective was.

“I said it was complicated. I’m not sure myself. I think we both thought we had a future together.”

“You were in love with her.”

“Yes.”

“And she with you?”

“She said so, to me, and in her diary.”

“Diary?”

I told her about Ronnie’s journal.

“Postulants are supposed to get rid of such things. Oh, never mind. We all break some rules. So, the police tracked you down through her journal. Sounds like they know what they are doing.”

“They had a special interest. I went to Holy Cross.”

“In Worcester.”

I nodded. She looked wary.

“And you are not still a suspect?”

“I had an alibi. The cops never thought I was a serious suspect anyway. They were hoping I’d know something. Holy Cross is no more than a coincidence. But I believe in serendipity. It’s almost as if Ronnie is drawing me back, as if she wants me to solve her murder. Does that sound silly to you?”

“No. Now I have a rather delicate question for you. You were wondering whether something happened to her after she left Staten Island. After she left you. Something that may have driven her to a religious life.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that she was driven.”

“I understand. But is it possible that you were the reason she changed her life?”

I had to admit that the thought had crossed my mind. I knew I wasn’t the reason her entire family left Staten Island. But, as Detective Huntley intimated, was it possible our affair had somehow soured Ronnie on human love? Our sex lives had been fulfilling. That much she even put in her diary. And we had fun out of bed. We talked about everything, except her family. We made plans. I believed her when she said she was faithful to me at college. But could I have missed something?

“No,” I finally said. “It wasn’t me. We were happy. If something happened, it came later. As you pointed out, perhaps it was just a calling.”

Sister Barbara looked thoughtful.

“I believe you,” she said. “There is another possibility. Which also may be difficult for you to accept. It is not unusual for a woman who is conflicted about a vocation, and who has never known love with a man, to, how do I put this delicately? Well, for a man they would say he was sowing his wild oats. Trying out the merchandise, so to speak. Don’t look so startled, Mr. Rhode. Surely you realize that not every nun comes to us as a virgin. I myself was married before my husband passed away.”

“I don’t think I was a trial run, Sister. And I’m sure of it after reading her diary.”

“Are you a Catholic, Mr. Rhode? I know you went to Holy Cross, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“I was raised Catholic. Attended parochial schools.”

“And now?”

“I’ve fought in a couple of wars since then.”

“I’ve heard that there are no atheists in foxholes.”

“But plenty of agnostics come out of them.”

“Somehow I don’t think you are a hopeless case, Mr. Rhode. I think I will pray for you.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“Are you married, Mr. Rhode? Or been?”

“No. But I guess you could say I’m in a serious relationship.”

I don’t know why I said that. But Sister Barbara was just someone that you could talk to.

“Does she know that you are investigating this?”

“Yes. In fact, she insisted I do it.”

“Sounds like a remarkable woman.”

“She is. Now, if you don’t mind me getting in a few questions? Before I have to renew my license.”

Sister Barbara laughed.

“Of course.”

“Did Sister Veronica ever mention her parents, or her brother?”

“She told me that her mother was dead, and she hadn’t heard from her father in years. So sad. And until this moment I never knew she had a brother. I only knew about her aunt. Did he pass on, too?”

“I don’t know. He may have. I didn’t know about him either. He seems to have disappeared.”

“How very odd. She never mentioned him to you?”

“No.”

“If he’s alive, I’m sure he would want to know about his sister’s death.”

“Well, maybe I’ll be able to track him down. In the meantime, I’ve taken up too much of your time..”

I stood to leave, and so did she.

“We all miss Sister Veronica,” she said. “Her death is a tragedy. We all felt a loss when she left. She was a mainstay here. Her relative youth and energy were hard to replace. There aren’t all that many of us left in our religious order. We can easily live on the top two floors of this building. We serve a culturally diverse community with a large number of new immigrants. Our English language and literacy classes for adults living in the neighborhood are on this floor. We currently have 48 students from 17 different countries. We also provide homework help and tutoring for local elementary school children. In the summer we run a camp for the kids and focus on reading, computers and art. We also provide rooms for meetings,  and our back yard hosts neighborhood gatherings, barbecues and the like.”

“It must be satisfying work.”

“It is. We do what we can, but we are spread thin. None of us are getting any younger. And like many other service organizations, we have had to curtail some of our activities as government funding has shrunk. And the diocese has its own problems. But, thank God, many people in the community have filled part of the void. I don’t know what we would do without students from local colleges like Ann. And, somehow, we get donations. We must be doing something worthwhile, because it’s not a wealthy area.”

I smiled. It was such an effortless pitch.

“I don’t suppose you’d turn down a donation from me, would you?”

“Catholic guilt is a gift that keeps on giving,” she said, matching my smile. “Just see Ann on your way out.”

Sister Barbara put out her hand.

“Good luck, Mr. Rhode. I hope you find who you are looking for.” She put her other hand over mine as well. “And what you are looking for.”

When I got to the outer office, Ann of Wellesley was just putting down the phone, presumably having just been alerted by Sister Barbara about my impending donation.

“I understand Mother Superior has worked her magic on you, Mr. Rhode.”

“You two make a great tag team.”

Fortunately, I still had much of the cash I’d brought on the trip. I gave her most of it. I could always hit an ATM machine later.

“That’s very generous, Mr. Rhode,” Ann said.

“Well, you can take the boy out of the convent, but you can’t take the convent out of the boy. I was taught by nuns, or rather, sisters, in grammar school. They were some of the best people I ever met. This place brings back some good memories.”

“Here’s another one,” she said, standing up.

She cast a quick glance at Sister Barbara’s closed door and then leaned across the desk and kissed me. It was quick but it wasn’t on my cheek. Then she looked in my eyes. And kissed me again. And not so quickly.

“My name is Ann Moreau,” she said, breaking away. “If you ever become unspoken-for, look me up.”

She shook her head.

“Of all the convents in the world, you had to walk into mine.”

CHAPTER 14– BOSTON

Ann Moreau’s kiss was still fresh on my lips, and on my mind, when I got a call from Detective Broderson as I got into my car.

“Looks like we do have a serial killer on our hands,” he said without preamble. “We checked those other three homicides. All the victims were killed by a thrust through the heart with a thin, rounded blade, probably an ice pick. The depth of the wound was the giveaway. All were about 150 millimeters deep, give or take a few millimeters.” That was about six inches. “And the angle was approximately the same, up and in, right through the heart. Just like Sister Veronica.”

“Even accounting for height?”

“Yeah. That’s the clincher in my mind. The victims ranged from five-six to six foot. But all the wounds were basically the same. So whoever did it knew what he was doing. He adjusted his thrust for height. A pro, maybe.”

“Pros aren’t serial killers. Could be ex-military. Or for that matter, current military. But I like the ex, if he’s traveling around the country.”

“You thinking airline pilot or something really weird? Why not long-haul trucker?”

“If it’s either, it will be almost impossible to track him unless he has some connection to all four victims. Bill Gates would have to write the computer program to cross-check every plane and truck in the target cities on the day of the murders.”

“Well, it’s what we’ve got. I notified the F.B.I.” He laughed. “The bastards wanted to know how we put it together. I didn’t tell them we got a tip from some nosy shoofly from Staten Island. They think we’re geniuses.”

“I aim to serve.” I thought of something. “You said ‘right’ through the heart, Ted. Did that refer to angle, as well?”

“Very good. No, it didn’t. In each case it looked like the blade went in at an upwards angle, left to right.”

“Which, with a single wound, doesn’t prove anything.”

“But with four wounds, in four different victims, we can infer, if not prove, that the killer was left-handed.”

“Think the F.B.I. will infer that.”

“Probably. But in the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation, I’ll give them a call.”

“You just want to gloat.”

“That, too.”

After Broderson’s call, I knew I had a decision to make. I always think better after a stiff drink and with a good meal under my belt. Boston, where both could be had, beckoned. I love Boston and had visited many times, on business and pleasure. My knowledge of the city was augmented by reading about it, mainly in the Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker, which I considered the preeminent private eye series. I get hungry just fictionally traveling around the city with Spenser. Cormac said that I got most of my crime-solving tips from Parker. I told him that if he lost a hundred pounds, found a good tailor and lifted weights instead of donuts he could be my Hawk.

In the later books, Parker’s publisher included a handy book-flap map of the city. On a couple of recent trips, I used it to find spots to visit in my spare time: Long Wharf, Boston Garden, the Swan Boats. Now, I set my sights on Locke-Ober, the city’s storied steak and seafood palace on Winter Street. I’d always wanted to eat there and once got as far as making a reservation that I had to cancel at the last minute. I parked on Tremont and walked over to the restaurant.

It was closed. Not just for the day. Forever.

“Since 2012,” a passerby told me as I stared into the bleak and black interior. My meals at Locke-Ober would now be restricted to rereading a Spenser.

Fortunately, Boston is a city of spectacular culinary fallbacks. A few minutes later I was sitting, Absolute martini in hand, at the horseshoe bar in the Union Oyster House near Faneuil Hall. Close by the harbor, which any place with the word oyster in its name should be, it is allegedly the oldest restaurant in Boston. I seemed to be frequenting a lot of really old places lately. The very nice woman at the door who suggested I wait at the bar came by and said she had found the type of quiet booth I wanted. I don’t mind eating alone, but I prefer not to do it in the middle of a room surrounded by tourists and children. I have nothing against tourists or children, having been both at one time, but I wanted to think. To celebrate my seating good fortune, I ordered another martini, which the bartender said he would send over to my booth.

“Would you follow me?” the pretty lady asked.

“To the ends of the earth,” I replied.

“How did you know where I’m putting you?”

She was good. On the way, we passed a booth with a large plaque.

“The Kennedy Booth," she explained. “J.F.K. always sat there.”

There was a ‘Reserved” sign on the table. I asked her if that was out of respect, or someone was actually expected.

“Both,” she said. “We don’t use it unless we know for sure someone from the family won’t be coming in. His birthday is soon by the way, May 29th. No one but family gets it that day.”

“And November 22?”

“Same.”

“My dad told me that no one of his generation forgot where they were when they heard the news.”

“Mine, too.”

“I wonder who was sitting in that booth on that day. It would have been around lunchtime.”

“God! I never thought of that. Of course, they might not have known he used it back then, if it wasn’t family or friends.”

“But if they did ….”

She shook her head.

“What a memory that must have made.”

I ordered the broiled seafood platter: swordfish, salmon, scallops, scrod and grilled shrimp, served with parsley new potatoes. It was all delicious, even the scrod, which I knew could be cod, haddock or some other whitefish. Someone once told me that “scrod” is merely an acronym for “seaman’s catch received on dock,” or, basically, the catch of the day.

As I ate, I thought things out. The more I thought, the more I became convinced that the answer to Ronnie’s murder wasn’t in Massachusetts. Over coffee, I pulled out my phone. That was another reason I wanted a quiet booth away from the maddening crowd. I believe it’s rude to talk on the phone where someone eating can hear you. I quietly canceled my room in Worcester and reserved one at the Marriott at Long Wharf.

After I finished my meal, I walked it off. Boston is a compact city and you can see a lot of it in an hour by foot. Toward the end of my tour I headed to the Parker House, perhaps the city’s most famous hotel. My parents had taken me there for the famous rolls. Given my experience with Locke-Ober, I was relieved to find out it was still open, although it was now called “The Omni Parker House.” I went into The Last Hurrah bar, where the city’s power elite gather to drink and, for all I know, scheme to close famous restaurants and change the name of hotels. I didn’t see Spenser, Hawk, Vinnie Morris, Susan Silverman, Rita Fiori, Quirk or Belson, but I stayed and had a brandy, anyway. I wished Alice was with me. I felt myself getting morose.

“You’re an idiot,” I said to myself.

“What was that?”

It was the bartender. I guess I’d said it aloud.

“I said I was an idiot.”

“You came to the right place,” he said, nodding down the bar to where a bunch of local power brokers were laughing.

I finished my brandy, walked back to my car and drove the few blocks to the Long Wharf. As I pulled up to the Marriott, I could see the winking lights of jetliners as they descended into Logan across the harbor. When I got to my room, I went over the information on the other murders similar to Ronnie’s and started making calls, setting up my itinerary for a trip west. I took out my iPad and booked a round trip flight to San Francisco, with stops in Denver and Chicago, the other murder sites, on the way back. I gave myself a week. Then I called the cops in each jurisdiction, setting up appointments. If I had to speed up or slow the progress of my trip, at least they would know I was coming.

I wanted to give them time to call a caterer.

CHAPTER 15 - SONOMA

I had a 9:30 A.M. flight, so I set my alarm for 6 A.M. and headed to the gym in the Marriott. It had been a while since I’d worked out. Running around finding out nothing didn’t count. An hour later I was covered in sweat but feeling more human than I had in days. When I got back to my room I checked my iPhone, which I’d left behind. There was a call from Broderson.

“Racking up the overtime,” I said when he picked up. “A man after my own heart.”

“I’m sitting in my kitchen trying to decide between granola and bacon and eggs. My wife’s asleep.  I don’t like the granola’s chances.”

“You called me to vote on your breakfast choices?”

“No, I called you to tell you that some Feebie puke leaked the story to the media. It’s in USA Today and probably everywhere. Goddamn glory hounds.”

“Maybe they want to flush him out. Or warn the public. Could help.”

“Could just as easily send him to ground. How are you doing?”

“I fly out in a couple of hours. I have an appointment to meet the lead investigator on the Windsor murder this afternoon. He didn’t sound overjoyed to hear from me.”

“Must be your sterling personality. Drop my name if you want, and if he gives you too hard a time I can give him a call.”

Thanks.”

After I rang off I started going through the copy of the USA Today that had been outside my hotel door when I got back from my workout. I found the story on Page 3:

F.B.I. Believes Serial Killer

May Be Targeting Religious

By A.C. Shilton

Associated Press

Federal law enforcement sources have revealed that a series of four murders involving Roman Catholic clergy stretching across the country from California to Massachusetts may be the work of a single killer. The murders, in the city of Windsor in Sonoma County, CA; Denver; Chicago and Worcester, MA were all apparently committed with the same weapon and the wounds inflicted on the victims were almost identical. In each case, the victim was stabbed once in the heart.”

The reporter than went into a description of each murder, giving dates and locations, and adding biographical information about each victim. There was nothing in the story that I didn’t know, but it was still jarring to see Ronnie reduced to just another lurid crime statistic. I skipped to the bottom of the story.

What baffles investigators, the sources agreed, is the fact that there is no apparent connection between the victims, other than the fact that they were clergy.

“There is no regular pattern in the times of the murders,” one Justice Department source explained. “The victims didn’t know one another. These weren’t sex crimes. There was no mutilation and they didn’t fight back. Whoever killed them apparently just stabbed them quickly and walked away.”

This source said that even the F.B.I.’s vaunted serial-killer profiling unit was stymied, given the wide distance between the killings and the fact that two women and two men were victims.

“Two nuns, a priest and a religious brother, all from different orders or vocations,” the source said. “Different ages. Different everything.”

The story ended with an appeal to the public for help, complete with a hotline. A hotline. I wished I had one. The Feds had all the fun.

***

My flight out of Logan was on one of the new jetliners that had inflammable batteries. The problem had allegedly been rectified. I’m not normally a nervous flier but I was alert for any sniff of something burning and even though it was early I opted for some Jack Daniels over a free Diet Coke when the beverage cart made its way to me. We landed in San Francisco in one piece, so I guess the fix worked, at least on my plane. I rented a car and drove the 60 miles to Santa Rosa in just over an hour, arriving in late afternoon.

The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office was on Ventura Avenue in a fairly new two-story, concrete block building that must have been built before California’s finances went into crapper. Not that it looked like they splurged on an architect. An information officer directed me to the Violent Crimes Investigations unit on the second floor. Once there, I asked to see Detective John Tyrone. I was told to take a seat and a few minutes later a uniformed black woman came out. She was obviously not John Tyrone. She held out her hand.

“Detective Sergeant Jackie Noyce.”

I had initially spoken to Noyce when I called. She had then switched me over to Tyrone.

“I run the V.C.I. unit. Come on back to my office.”

Her office was the last one down a long hall. We passed a few smaller ones but only one was occupied. A man was bent over a file cabinet with his back to us. Noyce stopped and leaned in with one hand on the door jamb.

“John, your appointment is here,” she said. “I’m going to chat with him a minute, then I’ll send him in.”

“Whatever,” the man said, without turning around.

When we got to her office she waved me to a seat by her desk. I gave her my card, which she put on her desk. The only other thing on it were two silver-framed photos, of girls in their early teens. Noyce’s phone rang. She picked it up and swiveled away from me. She said something in mom talk. It was a personal call. I looked around the room. She had a window looking out at a parking lot. There were plaques and pictures on the window sill and on adjacent walls. She was in many of them, in a blue uniform, not the brown one she was now wearing. In many of the photos, she was standing next to someone else. I thought I recognized one of them. She hung up and turned back to me.

“Is that Bratton in that photo with you?”

“Yes. That’s the day I got my gold shield.”

“So, you’re L.A.P.D.”

“Fifteen years. Want some coffee? It’s almost drinkable.”

It was, although any coffee after my flight and drive would have been like a blood transfusion. I began to perk up.

“I had them flag your name at the desk. I wanted to talk to you first. I’m new to the job. Fill me in.”

I told her what I knew. And the theory I was working under.

“A serial killer, huh. Well, isn’t that a kick in the ass. No wonder we’re having a tough time on our murder.”

“It’s just a working hypothesis.”

“A damn good one. It will certainly get Tyrone’s attention. It’s right up his alley. He’s always looking for the big case.”

“Ambitious type?”

She smiled.

“I have five detectives who investigate homicide, robbery, kidnapping, and assault with deadly weapons. All my people are top-notch. This is a great area to live, so we get a lot of highly-qualified applicants. Tyrone is a sharp cop. Senior man. Very conscientious. Uses his vacation time to go to law enforcement conventions around the country. Pays for his own airfare. We don’t have the budget for that, though I let him put in for hotels and the like.”

I noticed she didn’t say “good cop.” And if Tyrone was the senior detective he probably resented being passed over for the job Noyce held.

“Unfortunately,” she continued, “John thinks private investigators are something one finds on the bottom of a shoe.”

“I get a lot of that. I have a thick skin.”

“You will need it, Rhode. Me, I got no problem with P.I.’s. They can come in handy, especially on a ball-buster like this case. Besides, I might want to go private someday myself, after I leave here. Never know where a reference will come from.”

She picked up my card and put it in her top drawer.

“I hope you told Tyrone what a stand-up fellow I am.”

“All I told him was that he had to see you. Best I could do. I should warn you. He’s in a worse mood than usual.” She laughed. “He just got back from a long Vegas weekend. I don’t think he did too well in one of those poker tournaments he enters.”

“I know the feeling,” I said.

I thanked her and got up to leave.

“Let me ask you, Rhode, why not let the Feds work the case? The family of the Worcester vic hire you?”

“No. I’m on my own. Like I said, I knew the woman in Worcester. It’s personal.”

“Flying around the country can’t be cheap. I knew you guys made a lot of dough. I’m definitely going private some day after I lock up another pension. Got two kids to put through college.”

CHAPTER 16 - SAVE THE TROUT

Detective John Tyrone was seated behind his desk, sitting straight up with his elbows on the desk and his hands clenched in front of him. He gave every indication of being someone waiting to do something he’d been told to do but didn’t like. He was a solidly built, good-looking guy maybe a couple of years older than me. Even though he was sitting, I could estimate he was about my height. His head was shaved and his brown uniform was so pressed and starched it looked like the creases had creases. He wore a Glock high up on his left hip. I resisted the urge to give him a Nazi salute. I spotted a small tattoo on his right forearm. It was an Army unit designation, but I couldn’t make it out. He didn’t stand. I stuck out my hand anyway and said my name. He hesitated, then reached across the desk and gave me a perfunctory shake. He didn’t tell me his name, but since I knew it and it was on a black nameplate in front of him I didn’t let that bother me. He didn’t ask me to sit. That did bother me. So I sat. That bothered him. Something told me there was going to be a lot of mutual bothering over the next few minutes. I thought I’d make an effort to break the ice, anyway.

“What was your outfit,” I asked, nodding at his tat.

He eyed me coldly. Then he told me. I told him what mine had been.

“I was an M.P.,” he said. “You Special Ops guys were nothing but trouble to us. Thought you were God’s gift. Spent half my time locking up you assholes.”

Well, so much for comradely discourse.

“Look, let’s cut the friendly chit-chat,” I said. “I’d like to ask you about the Salazar murder.”

“Confidential.”

That was a new one to me.

“It’s been in the papers. And on TV.”

“Then go read a newspaper and watch TV.”

“Didn’t your boss tell you to see me?”

“Yeah. I see you. She didn’t tell me I had to talk to you.”

“I thought that was probably implied.”

“You thought wrong. My ‘boss’ should have been more specific.”

Tyrone said ‘boss’ so dismissively I suspected he didn’t like Noyce. I wondered whether it was because she was a woman. Or black. Or both.

“Why are you being such a pain in the ass? Maybe we can help each other out.”

“I’d love to help you out,” he said, nodding at the window behind him.

He actually smiled at the witticism. Maybe if I slapped my knee and guffawed, he’d warm up to me.

“I don’t know how to guffaw,” I said.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I might be able to manage a chuckle, but even that would be forced.”

He gave me what I presumed was his hard stare. I stared back at him. I’m a world-class starer. The secret is to think of something else. I started to mentally list the Yankee players who were too injured to play. I knew that could take me into the night. Finally, he blinked.

“You got a permit for that piece under your jacket?” he said, trying to regain the high ground he’d just lost.

I nodded.

He smiled.

“California isn’t reciprocal with any other states,” he sneered. “So you probably brought it out here illegally. Or got it locally. Either way, it’s a felony. So, hand it over. You need a lawyer.”

Tyrone was the first cop to roust me about my gun. The Worcester detectives hadn’t. He was just dying to lock me up. Instead of giving him my gun, I pulled out my wallet and opened it to my latest credentials. I threw it on his desk.

“Read it and weep, Kojak.”

He did. Not the weeping part, which was a bit disappointing.

“How the hell did you swing this?”

“I always buy a table at the Policeman’s Ball.”

“Goddamn New York cops.” He threw my wallet back to me. “Well, I still don’t like private investigators, which is all you are, despite that fancy I.D. All you jerks do is fuck up cases. Why don’t you stick to peeking in windows trying to catch homos corn holing each other.”

I smiled and pointed a finger at him.

“Gee. I thought I recognized you.”

His face got very red. He stood up so quickly his chair fell over.

“Get the hell out of here.”

Another cop stuck his head in the door.

“You OK, John?”

“I think your murder may be tied to three others,” I said.

That seemed to get Tyrone’s attention. He dropped his arm, and most of the attitude.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Bobby. No problem.”

The other cop looked at me. Another hard stare. They probably taught it in the police academy.

Tyrone righted his chair and sat back down.

“Keep talking,” he said reluctantly. “Tell me about them.”

I looked at him and said nothing.

“And I’ll fill you in about the one here in Windsor,” he finally said.

“And if I nose around some,” I said, “and people get annoyed, I can tell them to call you and you can say what a swell fellow I am.”

“I can force you to tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

He knew I had him. His mouth actually turned up in what I assumed was almost a smile.

“Yeah. OK.” He reached into the left-hand drawer of his desk and pulled out a yellow legal pad. “Spill it.”

“All I have on the ones in Denver and Chicago I got off the Internet. Those are my next stops. The one in Massachusetts is the most recent. Just came from there.”

I told him everything I knew. Gave him Broderson’s phone number. He wrote everything down on the pad. When I finished he looked up and said, “So, basically you and the locals cops have shit. Sounds like you were their best suspect.”

“And a dandy one at that, until I proved that at the time of the murder I was staking out a motel love nest, which should make you happy. But things may pick up now with the Feds on board.”

“The serial killer thing.”

“Yeah.”

“If it is a serial killer, you’ll never get him if he stops killing.”

“They rarely do.”

“You clear the victim’s family?”

“Not entirely.”

He looked startled.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, there’s only a brother, who disappeared years ago. Might be dead for all I know. He’s probably not a viable suspect anyway. Too much time has passed. No indication of contact between them. And what would be the motive? Have to be pretty powerful for a brother to kill his sister. That kind of thing is very rare and it usually involves a domestic dispute, a crime of passion. This was cold-blooded murder. No. I think we have a serial killer.”

Tyrone nodded.

“Looks that way. But are they at least looking for the brother?”

“I’m sure they are. But nothing so far. I wouldn’t know where to start. He dropped off the grid.”

“What did you tell Noyce?”

“Just what I’ve told you.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Don’t you get along?”

“She’s OK, I guess. For a political appointee.”

Now, I got it.

“Affirmative action, huh.” I thought I’d play along. “That’s a kick in the ass.”

“You better believe it.”

He realized he might have said too much.

“Not that it bothers me, mind you. I’m close to putting in my papers. Then I’m out of here.”

Gee, everyone seemed like they were ready to retire. I thought about my IRA account. Oh, well.

“The Salazar case?” I prompted.

Tyrone went over to the file cabinet I’d seen him bending over when I walked by earlier. He opened a drawer and pulled out a manila folder and handed it to me.

“You can read it in here and make notes. But it doesn’t leave this room. You have 10 minutes.”

He started to walk out.

“I’d like your impressions, too,” I said.

He seemed annoyed. I think it was his regular look.

“Salazar was found lying on his back next to Pomo Indian Creek, about a mile from his church. It’s a pretty good trout stream. His fly rod was next to him, still in his hand. He still had his creel around his waist.” Tyrone paused. “There were two trout in it, both legal size.”

Tyrone struck me as the kind of cop who regretted that the poor priest was dead and couldn’t be fined for a gaming violation. For my part, I felt an affinity for a fellow fisherman. Especially one who seemed to know what he was doing.

“He had been stabbed once, right through the ticker,” Tyrone went on in his monotone. “Sharp, cylindrical blade, probably an ice pick. At first, we thought it might be gang related.”

“You have a gang problem in Sonoma County?”

“Not for a while. And we aim to keep it that way. But his parish is full of Mexicans, lots of illegals. They work the farms and vineyards. Who knows what those people are up to? But it was a dead end. Then I thought it might be a sex killing. But the Mex priest was apparently not into that kind of thing. He kept it in his cassock, or whatever they call those things they wear.”

I was getting awfully tired of Tyrone.

“Did you check out the local Save the Trout chapter? Tree-huggers can be violent.”

“You got 10 minutes,” he said, walking out.

“Black, no sugar,” I called after him.

“Eat me.”

It didn’t take me 10 minutes to realize that I wasn’t going to get much of anything from the Salazar file. Not that Tyrone had done a bad job. On the contrary, his investigation had been comprehensive, even obsessive. He may not have liked “the Mex priest” but it appeared he took the murder seriously. He hadn’t been kidding about checking out a gang angle. There was an old newspaper clipping describing a 1996 beating and robbery of a teenage boy by members of the Nortenos-affiliated Varrio West Side Windsor gang. The Nortenos, the clipping explained, was a Hispanic gang powerful inside many of California’s prisons. There were a couple of crime scene photos in the file. They showed Father Salazar, a small, dark-haired man with bushy eyebrows, lying on the bank just as Tyrone had described him. The priest had been discovered by two other fishermen working the other side of the creek, who called 911.

The dead man was dressed like a trout fisherman, right down to his rubber waders and yellow, wide-brim fedora with several trout flies attached to its black band. Tyrone noted that Salazar was on his back with his head pointing toward the creek. The lack of expression on his face, the fly rod in his hand and a pattern of footprints leading from the water, strongly suggested that someone may have called to him while he was wading. He then presumably walked out of the water to meet his killer, who had obliterated his own footprints. Tyrone speculated that it was someone the priest knew, perhaps one of his parishioners. But so far he had been unable to find anyone with a motive. No motive, no weapon, no witnesses.

“Time’s up,” Tyrone said walking back into his office. He didn’t have any coffee. “Solve the case, yet?”

“You said you looked at the sex angle, but only from the perspective of this single killing. If someone is targeting Catholic clergy in general, it might not have anything to do with one priest’s lifestyle. Maybe you should cast a wider net.”

“Anything else, pal?”

“Yeah. If it is a serial killer, then obviously Father Salazar was the first of the four. That could mean that the killer lived here. Maybe still lives here. Maybe by comparing the dates of the other murders with the times someone local left town, you could come up with some suspects.”

“How? By car, train, airplane? Lots of ways to leave town. Sonoma is a big county. People travel in and out all the time.”

“I’d just do the major airports. San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and Boston. They’re the most likely. You’re a cop. You can probably get passenger manifests and check them against the dates, see if you spot the same name.”

“And if this alleged serial killer has moved?”

“Then you won’t find anything. But you’d have covered one more base.”

I could tell Tyrone didn’t like being told how to do his job. But he wrote something down on his pad.

“Anything else?”

“No. Thanks for your time, Detective.”

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

CHAPTER 17 - GATES OF HEAVEN

Windsor, where Father Salazar was killed, is only seven miles from Santa Rosa, 15 minutes up Rte. 101. I checked into a Holiday Inn Express and asked for a dinner recommendation. It is wine country and I was hopeful. The desk clerk directed me to the Harvest House, a restaurant attached to a working vineyard. In honor of Father Salazar, I ordered the Trout Almondine accompanied by roasted potatoes, garden vegetables and a glass of the house white, a very good Viognier, a wine I don’t often see on the East Coast. One of my rules is to avoid house wines when possible, except when the wine is produced by the people feeding you. There is little chance that they will serve you anything that they aren’t proud of. Then, exhausted by travel, I went back to my room and promptly fell asleep.

I got up early the next morning and started my first search. For a Dunkin’ Donuts. But before I was successful, I came across a place actually called “Mom’s Diner.” I have an unwritten rule. Never pass up a “Mom’s Diner,” especially for breakfast. There may even be a law against it. I suddenly was ravenous. The trout the night before had been wonderful, but, after all, it was a trout, not Moby Dick. I went into Mom’s and ordered the $3.33 special: three eggs, three sausages and three buttermilk pancakes. And lots of coffee. I consoled myself with the knowledge that my motel had a decent gym.

My next stop was the Catholic Church where Father Salazar was pastor, Puertas del Cielo, Gates of Heaven. It was a one-story wooden building that could have passed for a barn but for the large cross on its roof. A mass was ending, with a couple of dozen people streaming out to the parking lot. A few elderly women, but mostly working men in overalls and ball caps who piled into pick-up trucks. I went into the church, which had an ornate altar that clashed with the simple wooden benches where the congregation sat. The only person left inside was an old woman lighting some candles by the rail near the altar. Real candles, not the electric ones that I find somewhat sacrilegious, as if I have a right to even think that. I asked her where the priest who served the mass was. She didn’t speak English and my Spanish really only works in Mexican restaurants where I use the menu as a crib. But I got through to her and she pointed out a window at a small trailer.

“Sacristía.”

I thanked her and started walking away. Then I turned back and put $20 in the collection box and lit a candle for Ronnie. The old woman smiled at me and said, “Eso es un buen chico.”

When I got to the sacristy the door was closed. I knocked and a white-haired man wearing a Roman collar opened the door. I had my fingers crossed that he spoke some English. I needn’t have worried.

“What can I do for you, laddie?”

“Thank God,” I said.

“Yes, you should, every day.”

I introduced myself.

“I’m Father Michael Walsh.

“Are you the new pastor?”

“No. I’m from Seattle, by way of County Mayo and Baltimore.” He still had the hint of a brogue. “I’m just filling in at Gates of Heaven until they find a permanent replacement for Father Salazar, God rest his soul.”

“It’s a long drive, isn’t it?”

He laughed.

“Come on in, and I’ll explain. Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, please. Black.”

The interior of the trailer was sparse but spotless. There was a pot of coffee percolating in an electric pot sitting atop a small counter by the sink. I had noticed an electric cable running from the church to the trailer. The coffee smelled delicious. Percolated coffee is far superior to the drip kind in my estimation, especially when fresh. A woman was on the far side of the trailer buffing a table.

“That’s Carmelita,” Walsh said as he brought over two mugs of black coffee. “She keeps things shipshape here and in the church. Wonderful woman.” We had sat at a small folding table. There was a plate of cookies on the table. “She made these. They’re called galletas de azúcar.”

I was about to take one, just to be polite, when he translated.

“Sugar cookies.”

“I’m fine,” I said, quickly sipping my coffee. It was fresh. “You were going to tell me how you wound up here.”

“It’s very simple. This parish is poor, as you can tell by the facilities, but serves a devoted flock. But given the shortage of priests, it may take some time for a permanent replacement to be found. The nearest Catholic Church is only 10 miles away, but that would still pose a problem for many of our parishioners, who are quite set in their ways.” He looked at me. “And, sad to say, it might pose a problem to the people who go to that other church.”

His meaning was clear. Those other “Christians” might not be too happy to find themselves in a pew next to the people who tended their lawns and worked their fields.

“Someone should probably tell them that St. Peter won’t be as choosy at the real gates of Heaven,” I said.

“Maybe he will be,” Walsh said, “but not in the way they expect. But don’t get the wrong idea, the pastor of that church comes here to minister as often as he can, but it’s not enough. So, the call went out up and down the West Coast, for any priests who could get away from their own parishes, or retirement homes, to fill in a month here, a month there. I’m an assistant pastor at St. Benedict’s in Seattle and I told the Monsignor that I could use a break.”

“This is a break?”

“It never stops raining in Seattle. Besides, I like these people. They have a generosity of spirit that is refreshing. At this stage of my life I think they do more for me than I do for them.”

I asked Father Walsh what he knew about the murder.

“Only what I’ve been told. I didn’t know the man. There have probably been six other priests filling in, and I don’t think any of them knew him either. He was killed before any of us arrived. I can say that the parishioners thought the world of him. He apparently gave wonderful sermons.” Walsh laughed. “I understand that when he spoke about the miracle of the loaves and fishes he always bragged about the latest steelhead he’d caught. Apparently they were the size of a submarine.  But, say, you should talk to Carmelita. She worked for Father Salazar for years.”

He called the woman over and explained, in English, who I was.

She was a grandmotherly type, short and sturdy in a shapeless blue print dress that was frayed but very clean. Walsh fixed her a cup of coffee.

“Policía?” she asked.

“Detective privado,” Walsh told her.

“Si,” she said, smiling. “Like Magnum, P.I.”

Obviously, she was devoted to TV reruns. I wondered if she knew Tom Selleck had since been promoted to New York City Police Commissioner on Blue Bloods. I thought it best to move on.

“What can you tell me about Father Salazar?”

Carmelita started crying. Wonderful.

Walsh patted her on the arm until she composed herself. And then, over three cups of coffee, she told me, in passable English, nothing I didn’t already know. Salazar was a saint. The old people loved him. The young people loved him. The kids loved him. He didn’t have an enemy in the world. She hadn’t noticed any strangers lurking about. Father didn’t appeared concerned about anything and was looking forward to getting the new fly rod he had ordered on Amazon. Whoever killed him should burn in hell with his gónadas cut off.

“Carmelita!”

“Lo siento, padre,” she said.

Walsh patted her arm again.

***

I spent the next two days trying to find anything Tyrone missed. I sorely wanted to find something. It didn’t even have to be a smoking ice pick. Just a clue I could throw in his obnoxious face. I know it was childish, but childish doesn’t mean unsatisfying.

I borrowed Carmelita for almost a full day as a translator when I spoke to farm workers and their wives. Many were initially suspicious until I convinced them that I wasn’t interested in their immigration status. Even then I had to swear that they would never be called to testify on anything. Not that they knew anything other than that father Salazar was a saint.

I walked the trout stream where he was killed and spoke to every fisherman I found. I visited the town’s barbershops, taverns and general stores; anywhere people gathered and gossiped. All I got for my efforts were some exaggerated fish stories, a decent haircut, some hefty bar bills and an “original Pomo Indian beaded bracelet” I thought Alice might like. There was a Walmart. Where isn’t there a Walmart? But I knew that would be waste of time.

On my last night in Windsor, I was sitting in the Harvest House trying to talk myself into dessert. When I find a great restaurant in an unfamiliar locale, I usually stick with it. What are the odds of finding another? I had just finished my steak with a cabernet and anchovy reduction sauce, and was savoring my second glass of the house red when an attractive young woman came by my table and asked if she could join me for a minute. I’d seen her several times greeting people coming in and assumed she was an employee.

“I’m Laurie Gibbons,” she said, extending her hand. “This is my restaurant.”

“Your winery, as well?”

“My family.”

We chatted for a while and then she said, “I understand you are looking into the murder of Father Salazar.”

That didn’t surprise me. Windsor wasn’t that big a place and word gets around to the locals. I guessed I had been making a nuisance of myself.

“That’s right.”

“Do you really think a serial killer is responsible?”

That did surprise me. I didn’t recall telling my theory to anyone except the local cops. In fact, I’d made it a point not to, lest it color how people reacted to my questions.

“Who told you that?”

“Detective Tyrone told some friends of mine that the police had this new theory and the F.B.I. was involved. He also said that it was OK for people to talk to you about it if you came around.”

Tyrone had kept his word to me, but I was a little annoyed that he had poisoned the well, although I suspected I’d spoken to most of the people before he had, since none of them had mentioned the serial killer aspect to me.

“It’s possible,” I said, carefully. “But it’s still just a theory.”

“Well, I hope they get whoever did it,” Gibbons said. “Father Salazar was a wonderful man. He used to bring us the fish he caught and barter them for some wine and Gravensteins.”

“What’s a Gravenstein?”

“It’s the local apple. This area was famous for them. But most of the land has gone over to vineyards. One of the few large orchards left is on our property. Very tart, but they make the best apple pies. Father Salazar loved them.” She laughed. “He always arrived around dinner time, so I’d also cook up one of his trout or bass for him. I really miss him.”

Naturally, I asked her if she had any ideas about the murder. She didn’t. We spent a few minutes talking about my exciting life as a private eye. I left out a lot. If you tell someone that you’ve almost been cut up by a chain saw or poisoned with nerve gas, you’ll be there all night.

“Your life really isn’t all that exciting, is it?” she said.

“I do get to eat in a lot of terrific restaurants.”

Someone from the bar area called her name and she excused herself. I ordered coffee, and when it came the waiter also put down a large piece of apple pie.

“Compliments of the house.”

“Gravenstein, I presume.”

“Of course.”

I’ll keep looking, but, to date, it is the best apple pie I’ve ever had.

CHAPTER 18 - DRESSED TO DIE

There seemed to be little more to learn in Windsor, so early the next morning I headed back to San Francisco and flew to Denver, to find out what I could about the murder of Jeanette LeFebvre, the young postulant.

I grabbed a coffee and an egg sandwich on rye in the Denver International terminal. I still had half my coffee in a cup and had just picked up my rental car when Alice called.

“How is it going?”

I told her.

“Another serial killer? Are you specializing? Perhaps you should put that on your business card.”

“It’s just a working hypothesis.”

“You will be careful, won’t you?”

“If he exists, I don’t think he is targeting agnostics.”

“They make exceptions, as you found out the last time.”

“I was blinded by her beauty.”

“I thought it was the soda bread.”

“I have more than one weakness. But I will be the soul of caution. I think I’m more at risk from jet lag than anything else. Cormac says I’ve become a Rhode more traveled.”

I heard her throaty laugh, a laugh that made me wish I was in Paris instead of Denver.

“Please tell him for me that’s terrible. But you do seem to be getting around more than ever.”

“You’re forgetting Afghanistan. And a few other charming tourist spots.”

“You were sent there. You had no choice.”

“Speaking of world travelers, when are you coming home?”

I hadn’t meant to say it like that.

“I mean, how is the Sorbonne?”

“I know what you mean, Alton. I miss you, too. The semester ends in June. Then I’m going to take a few weeks in England, visiting some friends I’ve made here. I can’t use my apartment until August 1st.”

Alice had sublet her Greenwich Village apartment to a pair of graduate students at N.Y.U.

“When you get back, you could always stay at my place until they leave.”

“I sense an ulterior motive behind that offer.”

“There’s nothing ulterior about it. I’ve been spending a lot of time in convents. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“That was very good. Would I have to cook?”

“I thought you wanted me to avoid risking my life.”

“I suppose you will insist on having regular sex.”

“There is nothing regular about sex with you, Alice. I’m even thinking about having the bedroom soundproofed.”

“Only the bedroom?”

“You remembered.”

***

Although Jeanette LeFebvre was killed in Lafayette, a suburb about 25 miles north of Denver with its own police department, the local cops had asked for help from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. I suspected I had something to do with that. Nothing gets peoples’ attention like the phrase “serial killer.” The C.B.I. agent in charge of the investigation, a detective named Jack Delaney, had suggested we meet at the crime scene.

“The nuns aren’t used to strangers,” Delaney said when we shook hands outside the Convent of the Contemplative Sisters of Fatima. He was tall and lanky, and looked like he should be riding a horse with a badge on his vest and a lever-action Winchester sheathed on his saddle. “But they know me pretty well by now. Make your job a little easier.”

“I appreciate this, detective. I have to say I’m not used to this kind of cooperation.”

He laughed.

“I made a couple of calls. Some cops in Massachusetts and New York said you can make yourself useful. I’ve been at this too long to turn down any help. Especially on a hair-ball case like this. They said you were the one to connect the murders.”

“I had help with that.”

“They also said you have a personal stake in this.”

“The woman killed in Massachusetts was a friend of mine.”

“That sucks. Sorry. You learn anything in Sonoma?”

It didn’t take me long to tell him what I’d found out. Or, rather, what I didn’t.

“Like I said,” Delaney said. “A hair ball.” He looked at his watch. “Come on. Let’s go in. It’s 4. The nuns have an hour of free time now. I like to be punctual. They lead a very structured life. Everything is scheduled.”

Which might make it easier for a killer to pick a time and target, I thought.

The convent was more modern than I expected. It looked something like a small ski lodge, but with more glass. I asked Delaney about it.

“Actually, you’re not far off. It was only built about 15 years ago by a guy who does ski lodges and chalets. A real religious guy, donated the land and the building to the order. They were in a much bigger building but didn’t need all the room. The money they made from the sale will keep them going for years. There aren’t that many nuns left in the order.”

“One less, now.”

“Yeah.”

Delaney rang the bell. The door was opened by a young Asian girl wearing a short-sleeved brown dress that fell just below her knees. She had on a small cap and veil. He told her that we had an appointment with Sister Teresa. The girl led us down a hallway. Inside, the place was more convent-like. Statues of saints, religious paintings and artifacts on the walls. Simple furniture.

“No ski racks,” I murmured to Delaney.

“Try to behave.”

“Please wait in here,” the girl said, pointing into a small library.

She closed the door behind her as she left. We both went to a window and looked out to a small courtyard where several nuns were sitting in Adirondack chairs, reading. Two others were engaged in a spirited game of badminton. Like the nuns in the chairs, they were wearing full habits, black, with large white cowls. Unlike the girl who answered the door, their skirts reached the ground.

“I thought these sisters were cloistered,” I said.

“Cloistered doesn’t mean dead,” a voice behind us said.

We turned. A middle-aged nun, dressed like the ones in the yard, stood in the middle of the room. We hadn’t heard her come in.

“It’s nice to see you again, Detective Delaney,” she said.

He made the introductions. Sister Teresa was the Prioress of the convent.

“I am also Director of Novitiates. We are shorthanded, so I am forced to wear two hats.” She smiled. “Or cowls, I guess. Please, sit.”

We arranged ourselves around a small table near the window.

“There are levels of cloistering, Mr. Rhode,” Sister Teresa said. “Some insist on strict silence and isolation from the world. The sisters who belong to such orders rarely see anyone outside their convent, including their families. Their lives are devoted to prayer. We, here at Fatima, are considered contemplative. We spend much of our day in prayer, of course, but we do have some interaction with the community. And even the most cloistered orders provide outlets for free time, play and exercise. Here, our sisters have access to a wide range of activities. Our grounds are quite large. We even have a pond where some of the sisters like to fish.”

“I guess I was a little surprised to see nuns playing badminton in full habits,” I said. “I presume the girl who let us in was a postulant, like Jeanette LeFebvre.”

“Yes.”

“And postulants dress differently than you do.”

“Yes. This calling, as you might guess, isn’t for everyone. There is a long period of instruction.” Sister Teresa smiled again. “I believe you called it a religious boot camp, Detective Delaney. Colorful, but quite accurate. The first step toward taking permanent vows is postulancy, Mr. Rhode. Aspirants begin to live with us. They receive a Miraculous Medal, which they will wear their entire lives, and a brown dress with a short veil. They are taught basic doctrinal principles, and then the ropes, so to speak, of day-to-day living. After a year or so, if their calling is real and they want to commit fully to God, they will be admitted as a novice and be permitted to wear the full habit right up until their full investiture and, finally, the perpetual vows that make them full members of the order. The whole process may take years.” She paused. “We want to be sure. We want them to be sure. We are not looking for women who just want to escape life. We are looking for women who want to embrace life. A life in the service of God.” She looked out the window. “Of course, that doesn’t preclude badminton. I’m a pretty good player, myself.”

“Do postulants have specific jobs?”

Everyone in the community works, Mr. Rhode. We do our own cooking, cleaning and the like. We have a gardener, and a service comes in to maintain the grounds and the building, but we grow produce in our own vegetable garden. Postulants are typically assigned to work there, especially if they have a knack for it.”

“Did Jeanette LeFebvre have the knack?”

“Oh, yes. She loved it. I believe she came from a farming family. A wonderful girl. We are all still stunned by her death.” She looked at Delaney. “Any progress in solving her murder, Detective?’

He looked at me.

“It will be public knowledge soon,” I said. “USA Today already broke the story.”

He nodded.

“It looks like there may be a serial killer involved, Sister. There have been other similar killings. Of clergy.”

She absorbed that, then shook her head sadly.

“Are the other crimes local? Should we be taking precautions.”

“The other murders took place across the country,” I said. “Whoever is responsible probably picked your convent, and Jeanette, at random. We don’t know his motive, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about any more. Of course, until he’s caught, it wouldn’t hurt to be vigilant. Perhaps not let anyone work alone in the outlying areas. Detective Delaney can guide you on what to do.”

“We have already instituted that policy, Mr. Rhode.”

“The Lafayette police have increased patrols in the area,” Delaney said. “But I think Mr. Rhode is right. The danger here is minimal, Sister.”

“Would it be possible to visit the place where Jeanette died?” I asked.

“Of course. Detective Delaney can show you.” She stood, and so did we. “If you don’t mind, I won’t accompany you. But if you need me further, I am at your disposal.”

The Prioress walked to the door, then turned.

“This is supposed to be a house of peace. All Jeanette wanted was to serve God and her fellow man. But sinners, like the poor, are always with us. I will pray that you are successful in catching whoever is doing these horrible things. And I will pray for the both of you.”

I might not be making much progress in catching a killer, but I had at least two nuns praying for me. Something told me I needed all the prayers I could get.

***

“You didn’t ask her many questions,” Delaney said as we walked to the vegetable garden on the far side of the property.

“What would be the point? I’m sure you and the local cops covered all the relevant ground in your initial investigation. Cleared family, friends and locals. Who found the body, by the way?”

“One of the other postulants, who was sent looking for her when she didn’t show up for one of the prayer gigs. Poor kid got the shock of her life.”

“Sister Teresa mentioned a gardener and a landscape service.”

“None of them were here that day. All had alibis.”

We reached the garden. Parts if it wound around a small copse of trees and were far enough from the main convent complex to make it possible a killer could have approached LeFebvre without attracting notice. The large plot, about a half-acre in size, looked well-tended. In addition to vegetables that included cabbage, carrots, corn, eggplant, squash, potatoes and tomatoes, there was one small corner patch where flowers bloomed around a small cross. In memory of the dead girl, I presumed.

A bumblebee the size of a C.I.A. drone rose from one of the flowers and flew off. I’d read an article written by some scientists who proved it was aerodynamically impossible for bumblebees to fly. I’d also read another article written by other scientists who said that was bunk. I wondered how much grant money went into both studies. Bumblebees couldn’t read and continued to fly. And there was still no cure for cancer.

I looked through the woods bordering the plot. I could see traffic on nearby roads, maybe 50 yards away. I walked into the brush. It was easy going and I was soon on a residential street. I looked back. I could see Delaney.

“That’s what we figured,” Delaney said when I returned. “Guy parked on the road. Walked in, stabbed her and walked back out. Five minutes, tops. He could see her working in the garden from the road.”

“Her clothes would have made her stand out even more,” I said. “That’s what he wanted. Didn’t have to be LeFebvre. Any postulant would do, because of the outfit.”

“I don’t get it. Is that why you asked those questions about what LeFebvre was wearing?”

“The postulants wear simpler garb. More like a dress. It would be damn hard to hit someone’s heart exactly in the right spot if that person was dressed in a full nun’s habit. That’s why he chose a postulant.”

“Why here? Or the other places?”

I thought about that.

“I haven’t gone to Chicago yet, but from what I know, the murder of Variale fits the pattern.”

“What pattern?”

“All the victims were killed in locations that could easily, and quickly, be reconnoitered. I don’t think our boy sticks around too long. He’s just passing through. Like you said, these women here lead a structured life, almost right down to the minute. Our killer would know that a postulant would be tending the garden, and when. It’s all about timing with him. He wants it quick. No sex. No mutilation. I don’t think he cares who he is killing, as long as they’re clergy.”

***

I drove back into Denver. I’d asked Delaney for hotel and dining recommendations. We’d both skipped lunch, and while it didn’t seem to bother the string-bean Delaney, my stomach sounded like an approaching thunder storm.

“It’s a little pricey, but you can kill two birds with the same stone at the Brown Palace Hotel. Its Ship Tavern has great food.”

The hotel turned out to be a green-awninged, red-brick, triangular building at the corner of Tremont and 17th Street. It looked like a shorter version of the Flatiron Building in Manhattan. Inside, a huge lobby was surrounded on three sides by a soaring atrium. The decorations, carpets and furniture were from another era. I felt like I’d stepped into an Edith Wharton novel.

After dropping my stuff in my room, I headed to the Ship Tavern, ready to eat a bar stool. The bartender talked me into the house specialty drink, a Johnny Walker Manhattan. I have nothing against Johnny Walker, but a Manhattan made with scotch shouldn’t work. But this one did. The second one worked even better. I ordered another local favorite, the Grand Range Buffalo Burger, with all the trimmings. The burger came on a house-made bun and was large enough to explain why buffaloes almost became extinct, if you didn’t know the real reason.

The bartender was chatty. He asked me if I would be in town long.

“Just the night.”

“Where you headed?”

“Chicago.”

“What’s in Chicago?”

“A dead brother.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, pal.”

It didn’t seem worth it to clear up the misunderstanding. There was an attractive woman sitting next to me at the bar, sipping something green in a martini glass. She leaned toward me. I smelled lilacs. She was wearing a strapless white chiffon cocktail dress with a wide black belt and sling-back shoes to match.

“I couldn’t help but overhear,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She had blond hair and little freckles on her cute little nose. As she leaned forward, I also noted some freckles in her cleavage. I caught a whiff of honeysuckle. Donna Karan? Alice sometimes uses that perfume.

“Were you close?”

She had a wide, pleasant face. I wondered if she was a hooker. That didn’t mean her concern wasn’t genuine. Hookers have hearts.

“Didn’t even know him,” I replied. “We had different fathers.”

“Well, it’s nice that you’re going to the funeral.”

“Different mothers, too,” I said.

She and the bartender looked at me.

“That’s really fucked up,” she said, and they both left me alone after that.

CHAPTER 19 - CHICAGO

When I landed at Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport the next morning, I called the city cop I’d previously been in touch with, a homicide detective name Danny Bett.

“Things have changed, pal,” Bett said. “Be a waste of your time and mine to get together. I’m not being a prick. Just go talk to the F.B.I. guys. They’re all over this serial killer thing. Everything we have, they have. Everything we get, they get. If I caught the creep while he was boning my wife, they’d take the credit. For the collar, and the boning.”

He gave me a name and directions to the Chicago office of the F.B.I. and said he’d call over there and let them know I was on the up and up. I thanked him.

“Don’t forget to get a haircut and polish your shoes,” he added.

As I drove across the bustling city, I recalled the first lines of Carl Sandburg’s famous poem:

Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders

To which I could have added: City of Traffic Jams. But I finally reached the F.B.I. building, a modern glass-and-steel, 14-story edifice on West Roosevelt that looked like a cross between a Lego set and a Rubik’s Cube. An all-too-perky receptionist in the lobby took my name, perused my I.D. and asked me what I wanted.

“I would like to speak to someone in the I.R.S.”

“This is the F.B.I., sir.”

“I know,” I said, looking around. “I was just making an observation about how my tax dollars are spent.”

“How can I help you, sir?”

Slightly less perky.

“I’d like to see Special Agent Joseph Loccisano.”

“What’s this in reference to?”

“The Lindbergh kidnapping. I know who did it.”

Her eyes widened.

“Just a moment, sir.”

***

“The Lindberg kidnapping?” Loccisano said, laughing, when he ushered me into his small fourth-floor office. “It will be all over the building in an hour.”

“Wait until they start Googling it,” I said.

Loccisano was a tall, good-looking guy with a thick head of black hair.

“You know, some people still believe Bruno Richard Hauptmann was railroaded into the electric chair,” he said. “Even J. Edgar had his doubts.”

The “Richard” impressed me.

“It didn’t help Hauptmann’s case that they found $15,000 of the ransom money in his house,” I said

“Yeah. I wish we had something like that in this clergy case. I read the stuff the Worcester cops sent over.” He pointed at a folder on his desk. “I’m a little unclear exactly what your part is in all of this, Rhode.”

I told him what I had been doing, and why.

“That’s tough about your old girlfriend. But it doesn’t sound like you’ve made much progress.”

“Have you guys?”

“No,” he admitted.

“What about your crackerjack profilers? On TV they can figure out what a serial killer’s shoe size is by the second commercial.”

“I hate those shows,” Loccisano said. “They raise the public’s expectations to unreasonable levels. Our guys are not having much luck on this one. If there’s a pattern, other than the religious thing, they can’t see it.”

I mentioned Mac’s hypothesis about the first murder, on a Wednesday, being atypical because it was probably done close to the killer’s home.

“The others were on weekends,” I said. “Combine that with the reality that the killer moves from city to city and probably doesn’t stick around. It has to mean something.”

Loccisano shook his head.

“I heard about the airline thing, from those cops in Worcester. They suggested we should look for a left-handed airline pilot who was in Denver, Chicago and Boston on the dates of the murders.” He laughed. “We actually did it! We narrowed it down to pilots flying out of San Francisco, near where the first murder was. Came up with a couple of names. Who had rock-solid alibis.”

That might have been the craziest thing I ever heard. But the fact that the F.B.I. was willing to go down that road was an indication of how desperate they were.

“Tell me about the Prospect Heights murder.”

Loccisano leaned back in his seat and put his hands behind his head.

“Brother Alfred Variale lived in a retirement home run by his order, the Brothers of the Cross, or Traicerian Brothers, which apparently comes from the Latin for the word cross. He had only gone into the home a few months before he was killed, after a long teaching career that included postings in Africa and South America. In the United States he had taught biology and physics at high schools in Maryland and Ohio. We checked everything we could. Not a black mark anywhere against the man. No scandals, no enemies. Not much in the way of family. A couple of nieces and nephews, all in their 60’s, none within a thousand miles of Chicago.”

“I’m having a hard time believing no one saw anything, remembered a stranger, anything. How busy could the place be? I don’t imagine old clergy have that many visitors.”

“That’s what I thought, at first. But the home doesn’t only serve brothers from his order. They take in brothers and priests from other orders as well. And Sunday is a busy day. Local schools send kids in to interact with the residents and keep them busy. Parish groups like the Rosary and Altar Society also stop by with cookies and stuff. Our guy could just walk around and pick someone at random and be gone before anyone noticed. I mean, who goes into a nursing home to kill people who are almost dead?”

Random. There was that word again. What kind of serial killer kills so randomly, basically picking targets of opportunity? I asked Loccisano if he had ever come across anything like that.

“It’s a pattern of sorts,” I said.

“A random pattern, Rhode. Jesus. That’s even better than a left-handed pilot serial killer.” He smiled. “I heard that you were doing this on your own dime.”

“That’s right.”

“You may be overpaid.”

I thanked him and drove my rental car to Prospect Heights, about 30 miles northwest of city center. On the way I reflected on that fact. All the murders seemed to be at a drivable distance from major cities: San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and Boston. Like everything else, I didn’t know what that meant. If anything.

I assumed it was a waste of time, but I wanted to visit the nursing home where Brother Variale was killed.

I knew Prospect Heights was a tony suburb, but I wasn’t prepared for the splendor of some of the homes. The All Saints Home and Hospice was on Euclid Avenue, just down the block from the Memory Gardens Cemetery. Convenient. The home itself did nothing to detract from the neighborhood. It looked like a small castle. All it lacked was a moat. The separation of church and state in the United States doesn’t extend to the tax-free status all religions enjoyed. I always wondered about that.  Well, I suppose it helps a few soup kitchens.

No one stopped me when I walked in, and I roamed the halls at will. I was a bit surprised by that. Variale’s murder hadn’t been that long ago. But I guess it was back to business, or dying, as usual. I looked in several rooms. Several older men looked up expectantly and smiled, obviously hoping I was there to visit. When I moved on, I could see the disappointment in their eyes. Lonely, they might have even welcomed me if I was brandishing an ice pick. Others just stared at me vacantly, or were asleep.

For whoever killed Variale, it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Was he asleep? Or did he look up with a smile trying to place his visitor. Not that it mattered. A quick, sharp thrust and it was over. No sound. Little, if any, pain. But I was sure compassion had nothing to do with it. For the killer, it was all about escape.

***

I had hoped to catch a late flight out of O’Hare, but a major Midwestern storm, which produced tornado warnings as far north as Illinois, had backed up flights by four hours. Mine was finally canceled. I grabbed a bite standing up at a crowded airport Chili’s and managed to get a room at a nearby Motel 6. I fell asleep listening to the orgasmic sounds of a couple in the next room.

The weather, my bad luck and unhealthy eating continued the next day at O’Hare. I didn’t get back to Boston until almost 6 P.M. Friday, a full day later than I expected. I considered picking up my car at the Long Wharf Marriott and heading home. But by now my valet parking bill was so large it made another night’s stay seem more reasonable than driving back to New York in the frazzled condition I was in. I probably would have fallen asleep somewhere in Connecticut. So, I checked in again and walked to Faneuil Hall.

I found a small cafe in the marketplace that served Sam Adams in tankards. I sat outside and ordered a dozen oysters and a crab cake sandwich and tried to decompress. The marketplace was crowded and I watched excited young couples walk as I ate. I thought of Alice, and wished she was with me. I also thought of Ronnie, and wished I had done a better job. If there was a better job to be done. Then I walked back to my hotel and watched the Mets pounding the Red Sox at Citi Field in New York. I found some solace in that, although I would rather it had been the Yankees doing the pounding. But it was inter-league play and the Mets pitcher, a kid named Harvey, was the real deal. He mowed down the Bosox with a combination of 98-mile-an-hour fastballs, 90-mile-an-hour sliders and an 82-mile-an-hour change-up that had some Boston sluggers screwing themselves into the ground because they swung so early. At one point, David Ortiz looked like he wanted to swing twice at the same pitch. I fell asleep in the sixth inning.

I had another dream.

I was swimming toward Ronnie again at Silver Lake. This time I reached her. But she went under. I dove after her, but couldn’t see anything in the dark waters. Then I looked up. There she was, drifting toward a bright light shining through the surface. I rose after her and could almost touch her feet.

Then I woke up. A shrink would probably say that my dreams about Ronnie represented my inability to find out who killed her. To me, it seemed like she was telling me to let her go. We’d probably both be wrong. It might have just been a bad oyster.

I couldn’t get back to sleep right away. I had a sense of foreboding, recalling that my first dream was on the same night I later learned was the night she was murdered. Finally, I nodded off about 5 A.M.

My cell phone went off at 7 A.M. I groggily assumed it was the wake-up alarm I had set on the iPhone. It took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t the alarm. It was Cormac.

After I answered groggily, Mac said, “Jeeze Louise, you don’t sound so hot. Rough night? Wait a minute. I forgot you went west. Where are you? What time is it?”

“It’s 7. I’m in Boston.”

“That’s OK then.”

“It’s still early, Mac. The sun’s not even up. Please don’t tell me you’re at work.”

“Irene is in one of her housecleaning frenzies. I’m safer at the office. What do you mean the sun’s not up? Open the blinds.”

“Mac, for the love of God.”

“Well, I was catching up on the obituaries from yesterday’s Advance, checking to see if I was in them, and came across the name Spigarelli. Elizabeth Spigarelli. Veronica Frost’s aunt.”

I knew old people died, but except for her hip and the arthritis Aunt Betsy didn’t seem to be in too bad shape when I spoke to her.

“You sure it’s her?”

“What? You think Staten Island is crawling with people named Spigarelli. It sounds like a pastry. Of course, I checked. Wake up, will you?”

I had a bad feeling.

“How did she die?”

“The paper said she was found dead in her house after an apparent fall.”

I shook off most of the cobwebs.

“Can you get something more specific?”

“I’ll see if I can get a glance at the death certificate. You think something is fishy?”

“I don’t know. Do you? Why did you call me?”

“Thought you should know. The old lady is being waked at Casey Funeral Home on Slossen. They didn’t list any survivors. Sad. Thought you might want to go if you’re back.”

CHAPTER 20– A FLIGHT OF STAIRS

It certainly was sad. There were only one or two arrangements of flowers in the room where Aunt Betsy was laid out. Three people were sitting in the first row of chairs. She looked 10 years older than I remembered. Death is not kind to the old. I said an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be at the casket, prayers that had been pounded into my brain during 16 years of Catholic education. It came out to about $50,000 a prayer. I chatted with the other mourners briefly. They turned out to be two neighbors and her mailman. We all laughed quietly about her sugar cookies. They said that more people were sure to come that night. That made me feel a little better.

When I got outside, I called a local florist and ordered a large flower basket for Aunt Betsy. Then I called Abby at home to let her know I was back in town.

“Damn,” she said. “I just rented out your office to a chiropractor.”

“I wish you had. I’ve been scrunched in so many airplane seats my back feels like a pretzel. And my brain and my stomach are still somewhere over Ohio.”

“Well, since you already feel shitty, it won’t hurt to give you some bad news.”

“What now?”

She told me that ‘Abby and the Interns’ came up empty.

“We found a few Frosts that fit the general criteria you set, and I managed to get all of them on the phone. That in itself was a miracle. But none of them knew what the hell I was talking about. I suppose one of them could have been lying, but I’m pretty good at sniffing out liars. My no-account brothers are world class bullshitters.”

“Your brother who works for the cable company seems like a good guy. He’s helped me out.”

“Cause he knows I’d crack him one if he didn’t. He’s a typical cable guy. You’re the only one he doesn’t lie to about when he’ll show up. Speaking of showing up, will I see you Monday?”

“Hold that thought.”

I was about to get in my car when someone said, “Hey, hotshot. Stick ‘em up!”

I turned. It was Jack Casey.

“Christ, Case,” I said, “don’t do that. I’m having a bad week.”

We’d known each other since grade school. Jack didn’t look like someone who ran a small funeral home empire on Staten Island. A tough Irishman, he looked like he provided bodies to funeral homes.

“What’s up, Alt? Who are you visiting?”

I told him.

“Nice of you to come. She doesn’t really have anyone.”

“What did she die of, Jack. Papers just said it was a fall.”

“Broke her neck.”

“In a fall?”

“Well, she tumbled down a whole flight of stairs. Probably would have killed a young man.”

I looked at him.

“What’s wrong? You all right?”

“A flight of stairs?”

“Yeah.”

“What stairs?”

“Well, when we got there they had the poor gal laid out on the floor in the living room, but the EMS people said the cleaning lady found her at the bottom of the stairs from the second floor.” He looked at me. “What difference does it make?”

“When is the funeral?”

“Monday at 10. Then burial out at Resurrection. You going?”

“No. And I don’t think she is, either.”

“What are you talking about?”

I explained.

“Shit,” he said.

“My sentiments, exactly.”

***

An hour later Cormac Levine and I were sitting in Mike Sullivan’s kitchen drinking Miller Lites. The D.A. was wearing yard-work clothes and his knees were stained with grass and dirt. And maybe cicada juice. Initially, he seemed glad to be taking a break. I never met any man who wasn’t happy to be interrupted doing yard work. Then I told him why I was there.

“We can’t let them bury her without an autopsy, Mike.”

“Give me your reasoning again.”

“An elderly person falling, per se, isn’t suspicious, although I don’t think anyone likes a relative of a murder victim dying so close to the murder. Still, the fact that everyone assumed it was a natural death is understandable. But they didn’t know what I know. The circumstances reek. She was found at the bottom of a flight of stairs she couldn’t climb. She told me that her doctors warned her against it. There was nothing upstairs she needed. Hell, I even brought down a fan for her, the last of her things she wanted. There was no banister or railing because the chair lift hasn’t been installed yet. I damn near broke my own neck coming down the stairs with the fan. The maid was there because Aunt Betsy couldn’t get up the stairs to clean. She may have died of a broken neck, but she had help.”

Sullivan looked at Cormac.

“What do you think, Mac?”

The two of them had come a long way since Mike fired Mac when he cleaned house after winning the election for District Attorney. Rehired, Detective Levine was now the office sage.

“Makes sense, Mike. I don’t know if it’s connected to the other case, but I think somebody probably offed Aunt Betsy.”

Sullivan sighed.

“I’ll call the M.E., Mac. You call Jack Casey.”

He looked at me.

“It’s never easy with you, is it? How did two nice Holy Cross boys end up in this racket?”

I’d forgotten Mike went there, a year or so ahead of me. His campaign material always emphasized his Harvard degree.

“We are just humble soldiers of God,” I said, “serving our faith through the promotion of justice.”

Holy Cross was a Jesuit school. All incoming freshman got that spiel at orientation.

“Right,” Mike said, rolling his eyes.

“I knew it,” Mac said, “I’m a Jew in a papist cabal.”

I went home. When I pulled my car around the back of my house on St. Austin’s Place in West Brighton, the lawn looked like it was alive, Hundreds, maybe thousands, of cicadas moved about, chirping their love songs. After living underground for 17 years as nymphs, they had emerged to molt, mate and die, all within a few weeks. A miracle of nature. I know some unhappily married guys who would have traded life cycles with a male cicada. The yard was also thick with birds gorging themselves on the red-eyed bugs. I’m not a birder, but I easily identified starlings, crows, sparrows, bluebirds and robins. I even spotted a seagull. The cicada buffet was risky business, at least in my yard. I spotted three small piles of feathers and bones near the deck, where Scar had apparently set up his ambushes. The killer himself was stretched out on my deck looking plumper than I’d ever seen him. Near him there was a bowl full of tuna, untouched, drawing flies.

I took out my cell phone and called Wayne Miller. I told him he didn’t have to feed Scar anymore. He was doing just fine practicing the law of the jungle. I picked up the bowl of tuna. Scar raised his head and gave me the feline equivalent of an “it’s about time you cleaned up this mess” look and then went back to sleep. I dumped the tuna in the trash and went into the kitchen and looked down the hallway to the front door. My mailman and neighbors, who are used to my frequent absences, had pushed mail and newspapers through the slot. My foyer reminded me of one of the rooms in a “hoarder” reality show.

I spent the rest of the day catching up on the mail and domestic chores.

***

By the next morning we knew that Aunt Betsy’s broken neck wasn’t caused by a fall. The fracture wasn’t clean. Someone had twisted her head until the spinal column separated. There was also damage to her trachea that wasn’t consistent with an accident.

The police were embarrassed, but they weren’t convinced her murder was connected to her niece’s. I was, and I told Cormac that.

“Is there any way to tell if the killer was left-handed?”

“I’m way ahead of you,” he said. “I just knew this was where you are going. But the coroner says that can’t be determined. The neck break is consistent with a left-handed killer facing her, grabbing her head and twisting it to his left. But it’s also consistent with a right-handed person standing behind her and twisting the head to his right.”

“What does your gut tell you?”

“I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry. What else?”

“I think the killings are connected. But as one of the architects of the serial-killer scenario, I’m glad it’s you that has to tell half the cops in the United States that they may be chasing their tails.”

It was true. I had traipsed all across the country selling the serial killer theory to anyone who would listen. But the more I thought about it, that theory made less sense. Salazar, LeFebvre, Variale and Ronnie were as different from each other as they could be. Yes, they were all Catholic clergy, but that was the only thing they had in common. A serial killer with a gripe against, say, a priest or brother who had sexually abused them could be expected to target priests or brothers. It was hard to imagine someone who was homicidal about a nun in their past, but even that would presumably let the male clergy off the hook. I was now convinced that all four were killed because they were clergy, but not because the killer was religiously motivated.

As for Aunt Betsy, somebody thought she knew something. That meant that Ronnie was the target all along. The other clergy were probably killed to cover that fact up. Since Salazar was murdered just over a year before she was, it was likely that something happened around his murder that sealed her fate. I couldn’t imagine what it was, but the only avenue of investigation was back in Worcester. I had cut short my activities there because the serial killer scenario was so promising. And obvious, which was probably the killer’s intention all along.

I could hardly wait to tell Broderson and Huntley that I’d sent us all on a wild goose chase.

I called Abby to tell her I was going back to Massachusetts and didn’t know when I’d be back.

“You know, boss, if anyone is trying to follow you, I think you probably lost them.”

CHAPTER 21 - SQUARE ONE

“It’s not impossible,” Huntley said. “I presume people get murdered all the time in New York. It could have been a home invasion or burglary.”

It was Monday and I was back in Worcester, at square one, sitting at Broderson’s desk. Huntley had rolled over a chair.

“Staten Island isn’t really New York. We have the lowest homicide rate in the city. And New York isn’t like New York anymore. The city is down to about 500 murders a year.”

“Whoopee!”

“You mock. It was almost 2,500 not that long ago.”

“Still, they happen.”

“Nothing was taken. It was staged as an accident. The guy slipped up. He should have killed her and broken up some stuff, grabbed some jewelry or a TV. He was being cute. He didn’t know that she couldn’t fall down stairs she couldn’t climb.”

“But he didn’t use an ice pick,” Broderson noted.

“That would have connected him to the other murders. He wanted to hide that. But, like I said, he made a mistake.”

“Why the old lady?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll find out. He made a mistake.”

“If you’re right,” Huntley said, “it blows the whole serial killer thing up.”

“If it’s the same guy,” Broderson said.

“It’s the same guy,” I said. “But I still think he killed the others, too. He wanted to establish a pattern”

“I’m not following you,” Huntley said.

“I get it” Broderson said. “You think Sister Veronica was the real target, but to cover that up he killed the others so we’d all start chasing some mythical serial killer.”

“You have to be shitting me,” Huntley said. “That makes no sense. Why the cross-country killing spree? Why not just find people to kill locally.”

“Too dangerous,” I said. “You’d have connected the dots a lot quicker if a bunch of clergy started getting murdered in Worcester. Or even New England. Besides, I don’t think the killer is local. I think he started out west and for some reason worked his way east. But she was the ultimate target.”

“You’re talking about one screwed-up mother,” Huntley said. “If he exists.”

“Or a very calculating one,” Broderson mused. “Which means he has a motive we don’t see.”

“I’m not buying all this, Rhode,” Huntley said. “No offense. But the only thing you seemed to have accomplished is to rack up frequent flier miles and convince everyone that there is a deranged serial killer with a grudge against clergy. Now you say it’s not a real serial killer, only some nut case who travels around the country killing clergy to cover up the victim he was always after. We have no motive, no murder weapon, no suspects. We’re back to square one. Me, I still think it has something to do with the gay thing at the school.”

“We already ran that down six ways from Sunday, Dick,” Broderson said. “There is nothing there.”

‘What gay thing,” I asked.

“Oh, God, don’t tell him, Ted. He’ll work his magic and bring the whole diocese down on us.”

“What gay thing?”

***

Nancy Baker was assistant principal at Ave Maria when Ronnie was murdered. She was now the acting principal and I met her in Ronnie’s old office. Her desk was almost bare, as were the walls and windowsills. I commented on the lack of decoration.

“Sister Veronica didn’t have much stuff to begin with,” Baker explained, “and I suppose we stored it somewhere. And I’m not going to be here much longer. I didn’t see much sense in filling up the place with crap I’d only have to move when the new principal arrives.”

Baker was a 40ish woman of medium height. Her hair was light brown, as were her eyes. Her arms, face and what I could see of her legs when she came around her desk to greet me showed the healthy tan of someone who spent time outdoors. She had fine, strong features and in a few years she would be described as “a handsome woman.” But she still had enough sparkle in those eyes to be called pretty. She was dressed conservatively and I saw no jewelry but small onyx stud earrings and a gold wedding band.

“Aren’t you applying for the job?”

She smiled.

“That’s right. You’re not from around here, are you?”

“New York.”

“Then you don’t know my story?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, it’s no secret. I’m gay, and I was fired last year. It was in all the local papers.”

“What happened?”

“I live with a woman. Monica is my life partner. We’ve been together almost 20 years. Her mother died last year. We were very close. She was almost like a mother to me. Anyway, Monica’s family thought it only proper to list me in the obituary as Monica’s companion.”

I wondered where this was going.

“Someone saw the obit,” she continued, “and wrote a letter to the diocese, saying I wasn’t fit to teach the girls at Ave Maria because of my lifestyle. I was let go. Moral turpitude. After 15 years with a spotless record.”

I could tell by the glistening of her eyes that the wound was still raw.

“I’m sorry. I guess you fought the dismissal.”

“No. I had no case. The Catholic Church was legally within its rights. They can dismiss anyone they want on religious grounds. If it wasn’t for Sister Veronica, that would have been the end of it. She went to bat for me. Took the fight right to the bishop. Threatened to resign unless I was reinstated. She pointed out that I’m not even Catholic. She wanted to know why I was being singled out when the Church in Massachusetts didn’t fire pedophile priests who had repeatedly abused children. She was fearless, even when some people started a whisper campaign that she was a lesbian herself.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I said, smiling.

Baker gave me a high five.

“Right on,” she said. “But just for the record, Sister Veronica was straighter than a plumb bob. Took real courage to go out on a limb for me the way she did.”

“With her gone, are you in jeopardy again?”

“No. Once the diocese hired me back, they boxed themselves in, especially when Sister Veronica made me assistant principal. Too many local politicians jumped on my bandwagon. After the fact, of course. But there’s no way I’ll be principal. I’m still a hot potato. Especially since Monica and I decided to make honest women out of each other. We were married in January.” She held up her finger. “Sister Veronica came to the wedding.”

“Congratulations. Now, I know you’ve probably been asked this by the police, but can you think of anyone who might want to hurt Sister Veronica?”

“You mean because of what she did for me?”

“That, or anything else.”

“Well, there are a lot of crazies out there. But I can’t imagine someone would go after her because of her stand. I mean, why not go after me? And I had other supporters. Doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Or to me, I had to admit. I suspected that Broderson and Huntley had run a little scam. Sent me off on a wild goose chase to get me out of their hair. I wouldn’t have blamed them. I was becoming a bit of a pain in the ass. I thanked Baker and was about to leave. But I grasped at another straw.

“Were there any girls with whom Sister Veronica was particularly close?”

Nancy Baker thought about it.

“All the kids loved her. We had to bring in grief counselors.” She paused, thinking. “I know Carole MacQuaid took her death very hard.”

“Why?”

“Well, Carole was one of those kids who liked to push the envelope and Sister Veronica somehow allowed her to get away with just enough so that she didn’t rebel. I think they had a special bond. Her grades improved and she really blossomed.”

“Do you think I could talk to her?”

“Why? She’s only a kid.”

“No particular reason. I’m just trying to get a handle on things. If they had a special bond, maybe Sister Veronica told her something in confidence, as a way of establishing trust.”

“I wouldn’t want you to upset Carole. This is an important time for our seniors. The prom. Graduation. I want them to have good memories. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course I do. I’ll be careful. I know it’s a long shot. But Sister Veronica might have mentioned something that could help me.”

“I’ll ask Carole. But if she says no, I won’t force her to speak to you.”

“I understand.”

I hoped the kid would agree, but I was prepared to get to her no matter what. Baker shouldn’t have told me her name. I gave her my cell number and then went to get something to eat. I was halfway through a decent Reuben sandwich in a nearby Perkins when she called me.

“Carole said she will speak to you. She has soccer practice after school at Johnson Smith Soccer Stadium at Holy Cross. The college lets us use it after their classes end. She can meet you there around 4.”

She wanted to give me directions, but I told her I knew where it was. I finished my lunch and headed over there. I was early, but that gave me the chance to spend some time at my old school, which I’d been meaning to do.

Holy Cross is a small college, with about 3,000 students. The beautiful 170-acre campus was intimate, without being crowded. After parking in an outer lot, I walked to my old residence hall, Wheeler, which like many of the older buildings, was ivy covered. I went to Kimball, the main dining hall, which had been the center of campus life. I passed several new facilities that hadn’t been there in my day, including a science building with a glass atrium. There weren’t many people about; school was out. I was glad. The sight of hundreds of excited, eager students bustling on the way to their future would have been depressing to me, an old alumnus delving into his past. I went to St. Joseph Memorial Chapel and sat in the back. I’d never spent much time there as a student, but I wanted to say a prayer for Ronnie.  I’m not religious, and my last prayers were probably made under mortar fire, but I didn’t feel the least bit hypocritical or silly. It seemed the right thing to do. I even lit a candle.

On the way to the soccer stadium I passed Fitton Baseball Field, where years earlier I learned I couldn’t hit a curve ball, and Fitton Football Stadium, where I once sat and watched football games and learned that cheap vodka and warm hot dogs sometimes don’t mix.

CHAPTER 22 - SIN CITY CALL

I felt like a pervert watching the Ave Maria girls in red gym shorts and blue T-shirts scrimmaging at the soccer field. I was the only man in the stands. In fact, I was the only person in the stands. I caught a couple of the coaches looking over at me. Maybe they would think I was a scout. Maybe I’d be arrested.

At the first water break I walked over to one of the coaches and asked for Carole MacQuaid. She started to ask me my business when Carole jogged over.

“It’s OK, Mrs.Carruthers,” the girl said, “I told him to meet me here. Can I have a few minutes?”

Carole MacQuaid was what my mother would have called zaftig. Not that she appeared overweight; her body parts were in pleasing proportions to match her most obvious attributes, both of which were staring me in the face. Her exertions on the soccer field had left her with a healthy sheen of perspiration on her skin, and two damp crescents under each breast, which had the effect of calling even more attention to their size. I made an effort to concentrate on her above the neck. She was a pretty kid, with more delicate features than her luscious physique seemed to call for. We went and sat in the first row of the stands, where the kids had left their gym bags and backpacks. She found her bag and pulled out a candy bar.

“Want some,” she asked. “These are good for energy. Those power bars suck.”

It was a Milky Way, never a favorite of mine. I declined and she took a bite.

“I want to thank you for seeing me,” I said.

“You’re a real detective?”

“Yes.”

“Is that fun?”

“Sometimes, if I find out things. Lately, not so much fun.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

I opened my jacket.

“Wow. That’s awesome. Have you shot anyone?”

“Not recently. Mostly I’ve been shooting myself in the foot.”

She looked confused, and finished her candy bar. She pulled out another. I thought I’d better move the interview along before she went into a diabetic coma.

“How about some of this,” she said, holding up the candy.

It was an O’Henry Bar. My favorite. I didn’t want to be impolite.

“Sure.”

She broke it in two and gave me the larger piece. I decided that there was hope for the younger generation.

“I’d just like to ask you a few questions about Sister Veronica,” I said when we finished our treat.

“Sister Veronica was great.”

She teared up.

“Listen, I don’t mean to upset you.”

She took a deep breath. Her breasts swelled against her T-shirt. I kept my eyes on her face, but I would have had to have been in low orbit to miss them entirely.

“No, that’s OK. I like talking about her. She was always doing stuff for us. She came to all our practices. We used to sit right here. She could talk to you, you know? Not talk down, you know? She was a regular person.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Well, school stuff, mostly. She was the principal, after all. But also personal stuff. Boy problems. You know.”

I suspected that Carole MacQuaid had plenty of boy problems.

“Any particular boys?”

It was needle in a haystack time.

“What do you mean?”

“Did she have a problem with any of your boyfriends? Or any of the other girls’ boyfriends?”

She looked at me as if I was crazy.

“Are you kidding me? You think one of the boys killed her? Never happen. She liked all the guys I went with. She didn’t judge people.”

“What else did you talk about? Her family?”

“Nah. Not that I recall.”

There were shouts from the soccer field and players ran by us.

“Hey, MacQuaid, who’s the hunk,” one of the girls shouted as she went by.

Hunk?

Carole laughed.

“You are pretty good-looking, you know that? I think I’ll tell them that I have an older lover.”

“I’m honored,” I said. “Just don’t make me too old.”

“You look like you’re in good shape. Do you work out?”

“Some. I run a lot and leap tall buildings with a single bound. Now, what else did you talk about with Sister Veronica?”

“A lot of technology stuff. She was trying to keep up with the latest, you know. I used to tease her about her cell phone. Flintstone model. Told her she needed to upgrade. Not that it mattered. She was always forgetting to take it with her. Half the time we were together she had to borrow mine. It’s the latest iPhone and I have unlimited calling, so I didn’t care.”

Broderson had told me that Ronnie’s cell phone records had turned up nothing useful. Mostly local calls and a couple to Aunt Betsy on Staten Island. I doubted that any calls she made on borrowed cell phones were any different. But I asked, anyway.

“When was the last time she used your phone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe about a month ago.”

“Do you know who she called on your phone?”

“No. I didn’t pry, if that’s what you mean?”

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

“Can I look through the list of past calls?”

Carole reached into her backpack and brought her iPhone out.

“Knock yourself out.”

I started scrolling through.

“Good Lord,” I said. “It’s lucky you have unlimited calling.”

She laughed.

“Yeah. I make a lot of calls. But mostly I text.”

It didn’t seem possible that anyone, even a popular teen-ager, which from the looks of her, she undoubtedly was, could make that may calls, and text beside. Most of the numbers were local, and had names attached to them.

“Did you let anyone else use your phone besides Sister Veronica?”

“Since she used it?”

“Yes.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Can you look through these old calls and pick out the numbers that she might have called.”

“Jeez. There a zillion calls.”

“Yes. But they are listed by date. What dates did she use the phone?”

“How would I remember that? All I know is that it was here, at practice.”

“Well, do you practice every day?”

“Oh, right. It was a Monday.” She checked the calendar on her phone. “Here it is. Looks like she made only one call. To a 702 area code. Where’s that?”

“I don’t know,” I lied, looking over and memorizing the number. Every private eye knows that 702 is Las Vegas. But there was no reason to tell the kid that. A nun calling Sin City. It would be all over the school in an hour. “How long was the call.”

Carole checked.

“Almost 15 minutes.”

“Did you hear any part of that conversation?”

I thought she might get annoyed again, but instead she looked thoughtful.

“No. Now that you mention it. She walked away and stood off to the side that time, like she didn’t want to be overheard. That’s the only time she ever did that.”

“Did she say anything about the call?”

“I don’t think so. I kinda remember that she seemed happy afterwards. But she was usually happy, so it probably doesn’t mean anything.”

We heard shouts and laughter from the field and turned to see what was going on. A yellow Labrador had joined the scrimmage and now sat in the middle of the field chewing on a soccer ball. The team was arrayed around the dog in a circle and was slowly closing in.

“That’s Rusty,” Carole said. “Sheila’s dog. He’s usually pretty good, but sometimes the temptation is too great, I guess.”

The circle closed. Rusty suddenly sprang up, ball in mouth, and darted effortlessly between two of the laughing girls. He went under the stands with his prize.

“That pooch has the moves,” I said.

“Get another ball,” one of the coaches yelled, and the practice resumed.

I turned back to Carole.

“Sister Veronica didn’t call anyone else?”

“No. The rest are mine.”

I heard a shout. The new soccer ball rolled over to where we were sitting. Before one of the girls could run over to get it Carole jumped up and kicked it back. Her legs were as strong as the rest of her. The ball sailed all the way to the goal.

“Nice kick,” I said.

“I’m the top scorer for our team,” she said proudly. “Got a partial scholarship Xavier.”

“That’s great, Carole. Good school. Can you think of anything else that might help me.”

Her brows furrowed in concentration.

“No, I’m sorry.”

A coach yelled to her.

“Listen, I have to go.”

“Sure. Thanks for all your help. Good luck in college.” I gave her one of my cards. “If you think of anything else, please call me.”

“Anything else?”

Her smile told me she wasn’t talking about the case. Jesus.

“Good luck in college,” I said again.

She laughed, and started walking away, but turned. Now she was serious.

“I hope you catch whoever did it, Mr. Rhode. And don’t shoot him in the foot, the creep. Shoot him in the balls. Sister Veronica was the best.”

CHAPTER 23– FIVE MILLION REASONS

I checked back into the Hilton Garden Inn that I used on my first visit to Worcester. I had already gotten a phone call from American Express questioning the use of my card all over the country. They thought it might have been stolen. Even though I told them it hadn’t been, charges at a new hotel might prompt another call. When I got to my room, I tried the 702 number in Las Vegas. A woman answered.

“The law offices of Stetson Principato. How may I help you?”

Ronnie had called a lawyer. I didn’t know which lawyer, so I went in order.

“I’d like to speak to Stetson.”

“I’m afraid he’s in court. May I take a message?”

“How about Principato? He’ll do.”

There was a long pause.

“Stetson is Mr. Principato. That’s his name.”

“No one can be named Stetson Principato. Even in Las Vegas.”

“He is,” she said, archly. “Now, how can I help you?”

“You can tell Mr. Principato to call me back.”

I left my name and number and told her that it was very important. I got my iPad from my suitcase and went down to the Uno Chicago Grill that was part of the hotel. The Uno’s are chain restaurants, but if you avoid the crazy dishes they offer, such as the “Rattlesnake Pasta,” you can usually get a decent meal. And the bar looks like a real bar. I sat in a booth and ordered a local craft beer called Harpoon and a sliced sirloin topped with “chimichurri, a blend of cilantro, oregano, Italian parsley, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice & red wine vinegar.” There is chimichurri and there is chimichurri, so I told my waiter to put the sauce on the side, just in case.

While I waited for my meal, I sipped my beer and Googled Stetson Principato. There were scores of news stories, citations and references about him. I found out more than I wanted to know about his education, professional associations and charitable work. I went to his website. His specialty was wills and estates, to the exclusion of almost everything else. My steak came. I put a dab of the sauce on it. It was excellent. While I ate, I pondered. Wills and estates. That meant money. The root of all evil. More importantly, the root of motive. My waiter came over and asked if everything was all right. I ordered another Harpoon and noticed that I had finished all the chimichurri in the little side bowl he’d given me, so I asked for more.

“Of course, sir,” he said, with a weary inflection that indicated I shouldn’t have asked for the sauce on the side to begin with.

I went back to my pondering. I had a funny feeling that I was finally on to something.

***

I had just walked into my room after dinner when Principato returned my call. After an exchange of greetings, I told him who I was and asked him flat out why Ronnie had called him.

“I’m afraid that is privileged information.”

“You do know she is dead, don’t you?”

“Yes. Some nut job is killing members of the clergy. The media is calling him ‘The Ice-Pick Killer’.”

I hadn’t heard that one, but, of course, it was inevitable.

“I’m pretty sure the lawyer-client privilege doesn’t follow the deceased into the grave,” I said, “especially when murder is involved, but I won’t press the point right now. You handle wills and estates. Can I can assume this has something to do with money?”

“Well, I guess that’s not privileged. Her father died a month ago, just before we were going to prepare his will.”

“Harry Frost?”

“Yes.”

So the elusive Harry Frost wound up in Las Vegas. And died a month ago. And then Ronnie was killed.

“You were his attorney?”

“Well, I was many years ago, when I specialized in real estate. I handled some work for him, but then the market in real estate out here softened and I decided to concentrate on probate law. I hadn’t seen Harry professionally in quite some time, but I bumped into him. When he found out what I was doing, he said he was thinking about making a will and asked me to take care of it before he went away on his trip.”

“What trip?”

“Oh, some around-the-world gambling cruise. He said he’d be gone for almost a year. He had some health issues. I think he was reflecting on his own mortality. Turned out he waited too long about the will.”

“So, he died intestate.”

“Yes. Since I did have a relationship with Harry, the court appointed me to handle the estate.”

“Did you know he was a lawyer?”

“No. He seemed to have a lot of legal knowledge, especially about real estate, but he never said that. Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You’d think someone like that would know the importance of a will.”

“Was Sister Veronica an heir?”

“I’m not sure I …”

“Come on, Mr. Principato. That has to be a matter of public record. Save me a trip.”

“Yes. In fact, she was the only heir we were able to locate.”

“I’m curious. How extensive a search does the court require you to make?”

“When someone dies intestate, we’re obliged to look for anyone even remotely connected to the deceased: spouse, children, siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles, great uncles or aunts, nieces or nephews, cousins of any degree, or the children, parents, or siblings of a spouse who predeceases the person in question. Hell, everyone but the family dog. It might have taken us some time to find Sister Veronica, but Harry mentioned to me he had a daughter who was a nun.”

“Did he say he was planning to leave his estate to her?”

There was a pause. Principato was probably debating whether something he wasn’t told was privileged.

“We hadn’t gotten that far. Listen, I told the police all this right after she was killed.”

Something clicked. What, I wasn’t sure.

“Bear with me, counselor. I’m just trying to get some facts straight. How much money are we talking about?”

“Listen, Rhode …”

“I’m sure that’s also public record and I can find out. But if you help me out here, I may be able to make you some serious money.”

The magic words, especially to a lawyer.

“Mr. Frost did very well in local real estate,” Principato said. “He sold just before the market collapsed and put his cash in diamonds and gold. Smarter than a lot of people out here, me included. Then he bought up distressed properties for a song and started renting them out. He also prospered in the casinos. He finished high up in a couple of those Hold ‘Em poker tournaments. The estate is now worth almost $5 million.”

Five million reasons to kill.

“And Sister Veronica was due to get all of it?”

“She was his direct descendant, and, as such, entitled to the entire estate.” Principato said. “Frost’s wife died years ago.”

“How did you contact her?”

“I called her.”

“Did you have her direct number, or her cell?”

“No. I just called the main number at the school. Why?”

The Worcester police probably looked into Ronnie’s cell phone records. She probably picked up the lawyer’s call on an extension at the school. Cops would have no way of knowing.

“Nothing,” I said. “And you gave her your number.”

“Of course.”

“How often did you speak to her after your initial contact?”

“Just once, I believe. What are you getting at?”

Ronnie used Carole MacQuaid’s iPhone for that call. The cops couldn’t have known that, either.

“What about Harry’s son, Matthew? Ronnie’s brother.”

“We knew about him. Sister Veronica told me about him during our initial call, and urged me to find him. She was a good woman and wanted him to get his fair share. She had no idea where he was, or if he was even alive. I didn’t like telling her what we found out.”

“Which was what?”

“Matthew Mercer Frost was dishonorably discharged from the Army for abusing prisoners in Iraq. Then he disappeared without a trace. I was glad to hear it. I wanted the daughter to get the money, rather than some war criminal. Like I said, I didn’t relish telling her about her brother, but when she called I had to. She took it hard. I got the impression she knew something about him but had hoped he changed his stripes.”

Principato had become very forthcoming.

“You mentioned something about serious money, Rhode.”

“I’ll get to that. What happens if Matthew Frost eventually turns up?”

“Well, if you’re missing seven years you are presumed dead, although it’s not a legal designation unless someone petitions the court. It has to be a relative. Not strictly necessary, but it’s cleaner that way. Speeds things up a bit. I asked his sister to do that. She was reluctant, but I finally convinced her. She was planning to come out here to file the papers right after the school year ended. But, of course, then she was killed. I guess I’ll have to ask the aunt now. She’s the only one alive still in line.”

He didn’t know.

“You’re talking about Elizabeth Spigarelli, on Staten Island.”

“I can see you’ve done your homework, Rhode. She wasn’t easy to find. Been married a few times. We only had her sister’s maiden name to go on, which came in handy looking for the brother, too. This whole thing will come as a shock to her, I imagine. I think she’s pushing 80. Well, I suppose it’s never too late to hit the jackpot.”

“You haven’t contacted her?”

“There was no need. The daughter was a direct descendent. Children have precedence.”

“Don’t bother calling Mrs. Spigarelli. She’s dead.”

“Balls. I was hoping to put this all to rest soon.”

“What happens now?”

“Well, in Nevada, when someone dies without a will, and there are no survivors, there is a three-year waiting period, then any unclaimed property or money escheats to the state. It goes into a fund supporting education.”

Sure it would, I thought, just like the billions spent on the New York Lottery that have been long plundered by Albany politicians to keep the state solvent.

“Matthew Frost won’t wait that long. He’ll be waltzing in to your office fairly soon, I imagine.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Matthew Frost killed both Veronica Frost and her aunt. He’s still alive.”

It was the only thing that made any sense. It all started falling into place. I even had a momentary flashback to when I read the yellowed sports article in Aunt Betsy’s dusty scrapbook: “Curtis sophomore southpaw Matt Frost pitched an uneventful ninth inning in relief.” Matthew Frost was left-handed, like the “Ice Pick Killer” was presumed to be.

“He’s the serial killer!”

“No, not really. I mean he killed them all, but he had a plan. The other clerical victims were killed to make it look like his sister wasn’t the target. She stood between him and all that money. And I bought it.”

“My God! Can you prove any of this?”

“Sure,” I said, even though I didn’t have any idea how to do that.

“Wait a minute. Why kill the aunt? His claim is superior to hers. For that matter, why kill his sister. They could have split the inheritance.”

“I don’t know. Maybe because he’s crazy. Because he is a hater. Because he wants the whole $5 million. This is a guy who set fire to cats when he was a kid and committed war crimes. I’m glad he won’t see any of the money.”

“That’s true. If you can prove what you say, no court will honor his claim.”

“He can’t have it anyway, counselor. Harry Frost was a crooked New York lawyer who bilked his clients out of $3 million, which I’m sure he washed through the casinos in Vegas. His victims are the ones who deserve his estate. There is even a lawyer on Staten Island who will be very interested to know where Harry finally landed.” The thought that I would have to tell Rosenberg about the money stuck in my craw. “That’s where you come in. I’m pretty sure there will be a substantial finder’s fee for anyone who aids in the recovery of the money.”

I was winging it, but it was possible. I even hoped it was true. I smiled at the thought of Rosenberg and a Vegas lawyer duking it out over who got what. I could probably sell tickets.

“That’s all well and good,” Principato said, “but what are you going to do now? I’m not looking forward to having a mass murderer coming to my office.”

Good question. I didn’t know. If Principato’s extensive search didn’t turn up a live Matthew Frost, what chance did I have? He’d probably changed his name. And then there was the inconvenient fact that despite my certainty I couldn’t prove anything.

“I suppose I’ll try to convince the police to look for Matthew Frost instead of some religious nut.”

I wasn’t looking forward to that, having been the main proponent of the serial-killer theory.

“I should tell you, Rhode, that the detective who told me Veronica Frost was murdered seemed quite convinced it was the work of a serial killer.”

Something clicked again. And now I knew what it was. It hadn’t registered when Principato first said the police notified him of Ronnie’s murder.

“What did you say?”

“I said the detective seemed ….”

I cut him off. None of the cops I’d spoken to had mentioned any contact with Principato. As far as I knew, I was the only person who knew about him, unless Carole MacQuaid checked the 702 number, which I doubted.

“He told you she was the victim of a serial killer?”

“That’s right.

“Right after she was killed, you said earlier.”

“I think it was the next day. I remember thinking it was good police work to track me down that quickly.”

I took a deep breath. I had a sick feeling.

“Which detective called you, Broderson or Huntley?”

I wanted it to be Huntley. I liked Broderson a lot more.

“I don’t think it was either of them. They don’t sound familiar. I’d have to check. Is it important?”

“Please check.”

“Hold on. I’ll ask my secretary. I know I put it in the file” While we waited, he went on. “I remember he was a sharp cookie. I’m not really sure he bought into the serial killer thing. He thought like you. Wanted to know if anyone else was in line for Harry Frost’s money.”

“And you told him about her aunt.”

“Sure.” There was silence. “Oh, Jesus.”

Principato had just realized he’d probably signed Aunt Betsy’s death warrant.

“Not your fault, counselor.”

“Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”

“I need a name.”

I heard some noise in the background.

“Thank you, Darlene,” he said. His voice was shaky. “OK, Rhode. I was right. It wasn’t one of those guys you mentioned. It was a Detective John Tyrone, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department.”

CHAPTER 24 - RETIREMENT, SORT OF

I flew out the next morning. At this rate, I’d be better off if someone did steal my Amex card.

When I got to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, there was a small, but loud, party going on in the squad room. Bowls of chips and peanuts sat on several desks. Cops were mingling with cups filled with ice and liquor. Some desks had shifted slightly to allow for an aluminum table in the center aisle. On one end of the table was a large cake. On the other was a makeshift bar where one of the cops was chopping up some ice in a small cooler. I walked over asked him what was going on.

“Retirement party for one of our detectives.”

I moved down to the cake. It was inscribed: GOOD LUCK, JOHN.

I went back to the ice chopper.

“Tyrone?”

“Yeah.”

I looked around. I didn’t see him, or Noyce.

“Where’s Noyce?

The cop laughed.

“Probably working on her speech” He laughed. “She hates giving them.”

I thanked him and walked to Noyce’s office. She looked up from her desk, where she was writing something on a card.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Where’s Tyrone?”

“In his office doing some last minute packing. He’s leaving. If you have something on Salazar, Detective Mackie is handling it now.”

“I heard you hate making speeches.”

She looked at me.

“This is your lucky day,” I said, closing the door behind me. “Or, maybe not.”

***

Tyrone was packing some things into a box on his desk. Noyce walked in first.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” he said. “Tell them to save me some booze.”

Then he saw me.

“What the hell do you want?”

“Everybody keeps saying that. Aren’t you glad to see me, Matt.”

His eyes widened.

“Is it true, John?” Noyce asked. “Are you really Matthew Frost. The brother of that nun murdered in Worcester?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. What has this asshole been telling you?”

“Well, in a nutshell,” I said, “I told her you killed your sister. And three other people to make it look like it was a serial killer, starting right here in Sonoma County with Father Salazar.”

“Are you insane?” He looked at his boss. “Noyce, I know you got your job because you’re black, but you can’t take this guy seriously.”

“I just ran a quick check of your vacation time, John,” Noyce said. “You were at a convention in Boston when the nun was murdered. I also checked your other convention trips. They match up with the dates and cities of the other killings.”

“Pretty clever, Matt,’ I said. “Covering up your murders by timing them around law enforcement conferences. Using your own vacation time to make it seem you were just a dedicated cop. Did you scout out your victims before you left, or once you got to those cities? I guess there’s nothing you can’t find on the Internet nowadays. I bet when they check your computer here or at home, they’ll find some interesting searches. Even if you used a hotel computer, they’ll find out how you targeted Lefebvre and Variale. Noyce tells me she let you expense some stuff. You shouldn’t be such a greedy bastard. You were hoping to get $5 million. You should have gone into your own pocket. You left a nice little paper trail.”

Tyrone ran his hand along his jaw. Left hand. I kept my eye on that hand. His Glock was on his left hip. It hadn’t meant much to me the first time I saw him. But it meant everything now. The strap over his Glock was snapped shut. I wondered how fast he could undo it and draw.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. All you have is a bunch of coincidences. This is insulting, Noyce. Is that what they taught you in the affirmative action classes at the police academy? I’m getting out of here. You can shove your fucking retirement party.”

“Already shoved,” I said. It had become very quiet. For the first time, I think Tyrone/Frost noticed that the noise from his party had subsided. “Come on, Matt. You’re a cop. You know how cops hate even one coincidence, let alone a whole bunch, including the fact that you and ‘Matthew Frost’ are both left-handed, like the ‘Ice Pick Killer’. They’ll be all over you like a duck on a June bug.” I always wanted to say that to someone. “Don’t you want to hear about your two colossal mistakes?”

“Oh, yeah, hotshot. What were they supposed to be?”

“You called a lawyer named Principato in Las Vegas,” I said, “and told him that Sister Veronica had been the victim of a serial killer targeting the clergy.”

The first real doubt crept into his face. But he gave it another shot.

“Why wouldn’t I? It was all part of my investigation. I thought he might know something.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said. “Just one problem. You called him the day after she was murdered.”

“So?”

“So, that was long before anyone thought any of the murders were connected. There was no way you should have even known she was dead and that Principato was handling your father’s estate. Somehow you found out that Harry had died ….” I stopped short. “You son of a bitch, you killed him, too.”

“I don’t get it,” Noyce said.

“I didn’t either, until just now. Why kill his sister and the others if he didn’t know when his old man would kick the bucket?”

All of a sudden, it fell into place. I remembered Noyce telling me that Tyrone liked to go to Vegas to play in poker tournaments.

“My guess is that he ran into his father at one of the poker tournaments they both frequented in Vegas. Found out he was sitting on a pile of money and took it from there. How was your reunion with dear old dad?”

I could tell from Tyrone’s expression that I was right.

“What was my second alleged mistake, genius?”

“You killed a helpless old lady on Staten Island. Broke her neck to make it look like she fell down the stairs. Except she couldn’t climb those stairs. The Staten Island cops have now classified it as a homicide, another one you will answer for. I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to place you on a plane to New York at the time.”

Noyce had remained quiet, content to absorb everything Frost said. Or maybe she didn’t want to set him off. He looked like he was about to blow.

“Think you got it all figured out, hotshot, don’t you? Why would I kill that old bag?”

“Because without Ronnie, with ‘Matthew Frost’ still missing, Aunt Betsy was next in line for the money. You couldn’t take the chance it would be disbursed before you made your miraculous reappearance. I wonder if you were relieved when Principato told you she was the only family left. I bet you had mixed feelings. You’re such a sick bastard you probably were disappointed there weren’t more relatives to kill.”

“That would make me one devious son of a bitch.”

“Leave your mother out of it. She was a decent lady. It must have broken her heart to know she gave birth to such a twisted son.”

Tyrone’s cheek twitched. I kept an eye on his left hand.

“You couldn’t show up in Principato’s office too soon after Harry and his daughter’s death. He might have been suspicious. That’s why you had to make sure he thought a serial killer was involved from the start. You were gambling that the Worcester cops wouldn’t get around to Principato for a while, and by that time everyone would be looking for Jack the Ripper. Meanwhile, with the aunt dead, you knew you had three years before the money reverted to the state of Nevada. Plenty of time to ditch the Tyrone persona and become Matt Frost again.”

I shook my head in mock sympathy.

“You’re going to need a very expensive lawyer, Matt. Too bad you won’t be able to use Harry’s millions. He was a scumbag like you. Stole it all. I’m arranging for it to be returned to the clients he bilked. You won’t see a cent of it. Another byproduct of killing Aunt Betsy.”

Frost looked at us with an almost reptilian intensity. Then he concentrated his gaze on me.

“I should have killed you the first day I saw you.”

“John, or Matthew, or whatever your damn name is,” Noyce said, “you have the right to remain silent, you …”

“Shut up, bitch” Matthew Frost said. “You’re one of the reasons I decided to go for my old man’s money. Not only did you get the job that should be mine, but I knew you were too incompetent to ever catch me. Hell, I bought an ice pick in every city I visited and just chucked them in the nearest river. But I didn’t want to buy one here where people might remember, so I borrowed one from our kitchen. Cleaned it up real good after Salazar, of course, and just put it back. I mean, who’s gonna look for a murder weapon in a police station? Right under your black nose. It’s been used at every office party since. I saw O’Hara using it a little while ago. For my own going-away party. I got a kick out of that.”

I thought of the cop in the squad room who was chopping ice when I arrived.

“Well,” I said. “You are going away.”

“Fucking New York hotshot.”

“Sticks and stones may hurt my bones.”

“You couldn’t leave it alone. My sister must have been some lay. She was always so high and mighty. Turned out she was like every other gash.”

He was angry, but still not quite yet where I wanted.

“Who was John Tyrone? Somebody else you murdered?”

He moved the box on the desk to the side. His hands momentarily were out of sight behind it. I tensed and heard Noyce suck in her breath. My shoulders ached from strain and a trickle of sweat ran down my back. I glanced at his holster. The snap holding the gun was now undone. Smooth. I wondered if Noyce noticed. I couldn’t worry about her. It was my play. I didn’t even want to shrug my shoulders to relieve the tension. It wouldn’t be long.

“Tyrone? Can’t lay that one on me. He died before I was born.”

“How did you steal his identity?”

“Piece of cake. I was an M.P. sergeant in Iraq. They arrested me because I had a little fun with some towel heads. If you ask me, they all should get a stick shoved up their ass.”

“Jesus,” Noyce whispered.

“Army pussies didn’t see it that way. Took my stripes and sent me back to the states. While I was awaiting my court martial they put me to work reconstructing the files of some dead soldiers from the Korean War. There had been a big fire at some records building in Kansas City. I came across Tyrone. He was killed when the Chinks came in. His body was never found. Orphan. No family. But he had an active Social Security number. I got six months and a Dishonorable Discharge that I knew would follow me around forever. So after I got out, I sent away for a duplicate of Tyrone’s Social Security card. Then I dummied up some discharge papers and a fake service record to fit the years I was in. You can dummy up anything, from a Medal of Honor citation on down. Veterans get a lot of breaks from cops. Once I got on one shit-heel police force, none of the others even checked. And here I am.”

“But I’m sure you still have your old Social Security card and other I.D.,” I said, “to convince the lawyer in Vegas you are entitled to your father’s money. You’d show up, maybe cry some crocodile tears about your father and your sister, and waltz off into the sunset with $5 million. It was a great set-up. I’m almost sorry I ruined it.”

His right cheek twitched again. I was getting close.

“You were right, hotshot. I ran into my father in a casino. Man, I was surprised he was even alive. The son of a bitch didn’t even want to talk to me. His own son. The great Harry Frost. Still acting like a big shot. Still pickling his liver. Told me to get lost. I hated the old bastard. I asked around about him. Found out he was loaded. So I sucked it up and told him I wanted to reconcile. He laughed in my face. Said he knew what I really wanted but I’d never get a cent of his money. That’s when I decided to kill him.”

“What I don’t get,” I said, “was why you killed him before Ronnie. It would make more sense if she were dead before anyone could contact her.”

“You think I’m dumb? I planned to kill her before the old man. But then I found out he was going on this gambling trip around the world for almost a year. Screwed up my schedule. I had to get to him before he left. I told myself it didn’t really matter if the lawyer in Vegas could still be convinced she was just a victim of a serial killer. That’s why I called him. I didn’t count on you finding out about him.”

“It’s amazing that a twisted psychopath like you got past the Army psychiatrists to begin with. When they put the straight jacket on you in the loony bin they’ll be doing case studies for years. Matthew Frost. Killer of helpless cats and nuns.”

Some spittle appeared at the side of his mouth.

“I think he’s rabid, too,” I said.

“Shut up, Rhode,” Noyce said, nervously.

“Nobody is putting me away, you motherfucker.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Noyce said, sensing what was going to come next. “I have officers at every exit.”

“I’m sorry I spoiled your retirement party, Matt,” I said. “But I’ll send some cake to you in the psych ward. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave the ice pick out of it, though. Your days of handling sharp objects are over. What am I talking about? They’ll have you in a rubber room in a straitjacket, sucking baby food through a straw.”

That did it. Frost’s mouth opened and he howled like a wild animal as he went for his gun, just like I hoped and expected. I drew my .38 Taurus revolver, which because it only has five rounds in the cylinder makes it light and fast out of the holster. I put all five into his chest before he got his first shot off, which went harmlessly into the ceiling as he fell backwards into his chair and toppled over. Some plaster rained down and his right foot wound up on his desk, where it hit the box he had been filling. It fell to the floor and its contents rattled across the floor, including a couple of medals.

“Jesus Christ!”

It was Noyce. Her Glock was only half out of her holster.

“I’m a New York hotshot,” I said. “He was right about that.”

The smell of cordite was strong. I could hear cops running in the hallway.

“Sarge, you all right!”

“I would prefer not to get shot to pieces,” I told her.

“I’m fine,” she yelled. “It’s all over. Put your weapons away. We’re coming out. Call an ambulance.”

CHAPTER 25 - BIT OF A STIR

The ambulance wasn’t needed. Matthew Frost was effectively dead when he hit the floor.

I said my goodbyes, went out, got a cheeseburger and flew home.

Well, not exactly.

Even with the best of intentions, one can’t shoot a police detective five times in his own station house during his retirement party without creating something of a stir. Or, as the local prosecutor and the state police captain who interviewed me both put it, “a world-class shit storm.”

I wasn’t held in custody. In fact, the D.A.’s office paid for a motel room and kept a patrol car outside my room to keep the media away from me. And to make sure I stuck around.

As with all police investigations, there was a lot of down time, which I put to good use.

I called Broderson in Worcester.

“Son of a bitch,” he said after I filled him in. Then he laughed. “I bet you thought it was one of us, didn’t you?”

“If it’s any consolation, I was hoping it was Huntley.”

“I can’t wait to tell him that,” Broderson said.

Next on the list were Delaney in Denver and Loccisano in Chicago.

“I can’t believe it was a cop,” Delaney said. “Jesus. I even spoke to Tyrone and traded notes on our murders after you left.”

“I bet he was delighted to talk about a serial killer.”

“Every other word, the son of a bitch.”

Loccisano was annoyed.

“You should have come to us with it right away,” he said.

“Next time.”

I called Principato, gave him Rosenberg’s phone number and told him to sit tight. I also told him that the Vegas cops might want to look more closely at how Harry Frost died.

“He had cirrhosis,” he said.

“His liver had help.”

I reluctantly called Rosenberg on Staten Island because he knew who Harry’s bilked clients were. I told him he would be hearing from Principato and that the victims probably could be made whole. I could almost hear Rosenberg salivating over the phone, so I also told him that I would be keeping an eye on him. He mentioned that a finder’s fee on $5 million would be considerable and he certainly would be amenable to sending some of it my way.

“Are you trying to bribe me, Sam?”

“Just having a conversation, Alton.”

Now, I was Alton. Well, it was certainly better than the “you rotten son of a bitch” from our last conversation.

Finally, I called Alice and told her everything.

“The poor girl. What a family. It’s to her credit that she rose above everything and devoted her life to helping others. Are you all right?”

“I think so.”

“You killed her brother.”

“Somebody should have done it a long time ago.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“Why did you fly to California? Couldn’t you have just called the police or the F.B.I.?”

“I needed one more flight to get platinum status on my frequent flier card.”

“I’m serious, Alton.”

“I was hunting a shadow for two weeks. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure. I wanted to be there at the end, if there was an end.”

An even longer pause.

“You wanted to make sure there was an end.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m coming back early,” Alice said. “Don’t try to talk me out of it this time.”

“I won’t. I need you.”

***

It was a week before Noyce said I was in the clear for shooting Matthew Frost. It didn’t hurt that she, the commanding officer, witnessed the whole thing, and that I probably saved her life. Or that Frost as Tyrone wasn’t a beloved figure among his colleagues. The fact that I quickly proved he had murdered five other people, including a local priest, was icing on the cake. By the time some Special Agents from the F.B.I.’s San Francisco office showed up to take most of the credit, everyone was pretty anxious for me to leave town. I was getting a lot of media attention everyone else thought were rightfully theirs. I got my gun back, promised to return for any legal proceedings, which I suspected would never happen, and drove to San Francisco, where I caught a red-eye to Boston.

I slept the entire way. No dreams.

EPILOGUE

I was alone in my office, staring out the window. The sun was going down but New York Harbor was still busy. I suppose it is always busy. Two big Moran tugs were easing a container ship around the bend into the Kill Van Kull, the tidal strait between Staten Island and New Jersey. It looked like an impossible feat of navigation, but Bayonne was still in one piece, so all those tug captains obviously knew their jobs.

A Staten Island Ferry was just passing the Statue of Liberty on its way to Lower Manhattan’s South Ferry Terminal, only recently restored after Hurricane Sandy. A Navy destroyer, or frigate, I forget the difference now, was just gliding under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. It looked so small compared to some of the freighters and tankers it passed, although I knew it probably had firepower equivalent to an entire World War II fleet. A huge seagoing yacht, almost as large, passed the warship in the opposite direction. It was undoubtedly owned by a hedge-fund bigwig who probably avoided enough taxes to pay for one of the destroyers protecting his private jet, house in the Hamptons and offshore bank accounts.

I looked down at a 185-foot-long wreck whose prow jutted halfway into Front Street, courtesy of Sandy. I could just barely make out its name on the port side: John B. Caddell. The ancient single-hull tanker had been moored at a pier in Rosebank waterfront until the tidal surge sent it on its last voyage. There had been a story about it in the papers. A Staten Island judge had declared the rusting hulk abandoned and it was sold at auction. The Caddell was built at the beginning of World War II and saw service as a fueler for warships. After the war, the tanker, named after the owner of the Caddell Dry Dock Company that still is in business, plied New York Harbor delivering gasoline. A workhorse, it was on its last sea legs before Sandy, but I thought the $25,000 price it brought at auction was a sad end for a vessel that had survived the U-Boats. It would be broken up for scrap and probably wind up as rebar in some highway.

Sic Transit Gloria.

I heard the door to my reception area open, and a moment later Arman Rahm and Maks Kalugin walked into my office. As long as I had known them they always walked into whatever room they wanted to without asking. I smiled at the thought of someone telling them to knock first.

I turned from the window. Arman, who was carrying a small tote bag, took a client chair and I went behind my desk and sat. Maks leaned up against the wall by the window I’d just left. I half expected the wall to give way, but it didn’t.

“What happened to the cactus?” he asked.

He was standing in the spot the plant, given to me by Nancy Robart at the Staten Island Botanical Garden, had formerly occupied.

“It died.”

“Hard to kill a cactus.”

“I guess I didn’t water it enough.”

He shook his head and then switched his gaze to the doorway. I wasn’t expecting any more visitors but Maks always expected trouble, which is why everyone he wasn’t planning to kill always felt safer in his presence.

“How’s the Rahm Institute of Medical Malpractice doing, boys?”

“I’m beginning to understand why Golovanov and the others were able to steal so much,” Arnan said. “I’m making more money from the clinic run honestly than from some of my less-distinguished enterprises. Did you know that doctors charge Americans $5,000 for a colonoscopy that costs $400 in Iceland? And Medicare picks up most of the tab?”

“They shit icicles in Iceland,” Kalugin said.

“What did you finally name the place, Arman?”

He smiled.

“The Carmichael Clinic. Porgie is thrilled. I installed his wife as Nursing Supervisor. She’s a hell of a nurse and a very capable administrator. Possibly the most-scrupulous woman I’ve ever met.”

Porgie Carmichael was once a small-time hood with a long-suffering wife and a couple of nice kids. He was never a shooter. When the Carluccis ordered him to kill me he refused and they beat him to a pulp. I asked the Rahms to find him a place in one of their legitimate enterprises and Porgie, who had augmented his hood income by working on fishing boats, was now running their marina operations.

“I like it,” I said. “Sounds classy.”

Arman opened the tote bag and brought out a bottle of 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle's bourbon, which the last time I looked — and only looked — went for $300 a bottle. I reached into my drawer for some paper cups.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said and pulled three heavy crystal rocks glasses out of the tote. “This is the finest bourbon on the planet.”

“I thought you stuck to vodka.”

Recently, Rahm had regaled — and bored — me with the qualities of his latest discovery, Versailles Vodka, made from “pristine Norman spring water and filtered six times.”

“I’m feeling very American tonight,” he said.

“You are American,” I said.

“And the vodka I like is French, Alton. Please don’t ruin the moment.”

“I’m not sure about the ice in my fridge. It probably smells like the meatball sub that’s been in there since Christmas.”

“No matter. If you tried to put ice in this fine bourbon I would have Maks shoot you many times.”

He cracked the seal on the bottle and poured three drinks. Even from where I sat I could smell the rich aroma of the aged whiskey. He slid my glass across the desk to me and then brought one over to Kalugin. Maks looked at it cautiously. I knew his taste in liquor ran to vodka filtered, maybe once, through canvas.

“You know, I knew him back then,” Rahm said. “Matthew, the brother. He was a warped son of a bitch. Always figured there was something wrong with him.”

“Right to the end,” I said.

“Rosenberg tells me that you were also able to recover much of the money Harry Frost stole,” Arman said.

“So, you hired Sam.”

“If he was good enough for Nando, he’s good enough for me. I gave him some work. I try not to overburden all my lawyers. And as shysters go, he’s not bad. Totally greedy and amoral. My kind of counselor.”

Perhaps only on Staten Island could the lawyer for a mobster who tried to kill you wind up as your attorney.

“It would be nice if the families Frost bilked saw most of the money,” I said. “I told Rosenberg I would keep an eye on him.”

“I’ll have Maks have a heart-to-heart with him. I think that will be more effective.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Rosenberg also said you turned down a substantial portion of the finder’s fee, Alton.”

“Not exactly. I gave it to the school where Ronnie taught. Ave Maria. In her name.”

Kalugin grunted. He had several grunts. This was his grunt of approval.

“Why didn’t you at least use some of it to cover your expenses?’

“It didn’t seem right. I got plenty of frequent flier miles out of it, though.”

“When is Alice coming home?”

“Next week.”

“Good.”

Arman stood up. So did I. We walked over to the window together and stared at the harbor.

“This never gets old,” he said, “does it?”

Russians like harbors.

“Never.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Rahm said. “Why did Frost go for his gun inside a police station? He must have known he couldn’t get away. It was suicide. Especially against you.”

“Rhode goaded him,” Kalugin said. “He wanted to kill him.”

Rahm looked at me closely.

“Is that true, Alton? You went in there to kill him.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Benn Donn,” Kalugin murmured. “Like a Russian.”

Rahm turned and looked at the harbor again. He raised his glass.

“To Ronnie,” he said.

“To Sister Veronica,” I said.

We all drank.

“It is a beautiful night,” Rahm said quietly

“Yes, it is.”

The End

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***

Alton Rhode returns in GUNNER. Here is an excerpt:

Prologue

From his rental car across the street, the killer watched as the man clearing the snow from the driveway paused every few minutes to lean on the shovel handle to catch his breath.

The man in the car shook his head and mashed his cigarette in the ashtray, immediately lighting another one. It wasn’t a long driveway, but the old guy should know better. Typical of a spring snowstorm, the accumulation was wet and heavy. Each shovelful probably weighed 30 pounds. Kids were roaming the neighborhood asking residents if they wanted their sidewalks and driveways cleared. As a teen-ager, the assassin had made good money doing just that when he was sent to live with relatives in Boston. He wondered what the kids charged now. Probably a fortune. Hell, he thought, I once cleared over a hundred bucks in one day, and there were just two of us doing it. Whatever the cost now, the man should have hired some young muscle. He’s overweight and obviously out of shape. His face is mottled red with the exertion. Might have a damn heart attack.

And, the killer knew, he wouldn’t get paid if the man did a face plant in his driveway slush. He smiled. Maybe I should give him a hand, just to make sure he lives long enough for me to ace him.

It was getting dark, and that was good. The man lived, apparently alone, on a quiet street in a secluded neighborhood, Eltingville, on Staten Island’s south shore. The assassin in the car had reconnoitered the job for days. He was quite sure that no one would pay any attention to a well-dressed white man walking up to Panetta’s door. This would be a piece of cake. The guy didn’t even have a dog. He could never understand why anyone living alone didn’t have a dog. But he was happy when they didn’t. He loved dogs and didn’t like killing them, something he’d had to do a few times. Dogs didn’t turn on you like most of the people in his life. He smiled at the memory of the dogs he’d had before he went into the Army. Hunting dogs. Labs and pointers. Smart as all get out. He was a crack shot, with good dogs. Life in rural Kentucky was just about perfect before the family lost the farm to foreclosure. Maybe someday he’d get a job that involved killing some Wall Street types or bankers, who he blamed for all the country’s ills. He often fantasized about doing some pro bono work along those lines on the side. He lit another smoke. Shit. I’m probably working for some of those pricks half the time, he thought in disgust.

John Panetta finished his shoveling and slowly trudged into his house. Some cars turned onto the street. Most pulled into driveways. People probably coming home from work. There was a train station nearby with a commuter lot. The killer liked the neighborhood. It wasn’t what he expected on Staten Island, so near to Manhattan. It was his first time in the borough, although he did know someone who lived there. His platoon leader in Afghanistan. I wonder how the Skipper is doing, he thought. Love to see him. But that just wasn’t in the cards.

The killer waited another 45 minutes until the street quieted down and then got out of his car and calmly walked across the street to Panetta’s house. He carried no weapon on his person. There would be something suitable to use in the house. In his pocket was a plastic bag containing some hairs and skin fragments from a man long since buried. The dead man was black. The killer wasn’t a racist. He was only playing the racial card to throw the cops far off the scent. Staten Island was a conservative borough, he’d been told. His other instructions had also been clear. Make it look like a home invasion. Take some cash and the guy’s watch, which would go in the plastic bag, and then in the nearest body of water, which wouldn’t be a problem. It was an island, after all. The killer knew that murders were rare on Staten Island. He had done some homework with recent crime statistics. Only six people had been murdered the entire previous year in the borough. He had a hard time getting his head around that figure. Six! Out of a population approaching half a million. It was so safe, he might have to move here. True, robberies had jumped 16 percent, to 476, a figure that had local law enforcement in a froth. As he approached the front door, he smiled. He knew of cities with many fewer people that would have loved such a low robbery incidence. He wondered where the Panetta hit would fit in. Homicide or robbery? Probably both. Jesus, he was going to boost the murder rate in Staten Island by about 15%! If he were in sales, he could put that on his resume.

The killer had no idea who John Panetta was. Or who wanted him dead. It didn’t appear to be a mob hit, despite the victim’s name. Guy’s a nobody. Living too openly and too modestly. Shovels his own walk, for God’s sake.

Moreover, he didn’t care. All Panetta was to him was $20,000. He did wonder, however, why a nobody rated such premier treatment.

It started snowing again as the killer ascended the steps to the porch. Not that he was particularly worried about leaving any traces, but he appreciated the fact that the snow would cover any footprints. Looks like it would be a couple of more inches. He put a smile on his face and rang the doorbell.

Panetta opened the door. He looked past the man standing on his porch.

“Damn it! Wouldn’t you know? It never fails. I just finished shoveling.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the killer said.

***

“Hey, Howie! Take a look at this.”

Howard Caduceus put down the prescription pill bottles in the dead man’s medicine cabinet.

“Nothing special in the bathroom,” he said, walking into the bedroom. His partner, another homicide detective named Charles Palermo, was standing by an old chest of drawers with his back to the door. The only other furniture in the room was a metal-framed bed. “Aspirin, Cipro and Crestor, the same statin I’m on for my cholesterol. I’ll check with his pharmacy and doctor to see if anything is missing, but my guess is whoever killed him never came up here. Probably panicked. Not that I think this guy had much to steal.”

Caduceus was an experienced homicide cop who always kept an open mind. But he was fairly certain that the murder they were investigating was straightforward. A break-in gone horribly wrong. The victim’s wallet had been rifled and his pockets turned inside out. From markings on his wrist it looked like his watch was also gone. The forensic boys downstairs were dusting for prints and bagging and tagging whatever they could find on the body and the room in which it was found. They’d come upstairs later. After the post, the M.E. would announce the official cause of death, but Caduceus knew strangulation when he saw it.

Palermo turned around. In his gloved hands was what looked like a black felt jewelry case.

“What’s that?” Caduceus said.

“This what I think it is?” Palermo said, handing the open case to Caduceus. “It was in there under his socks.”

Inside the case was a medal on a thick pale-blue ribbon. The medal itself was a five-pointed gold star surrounded by a green laurel wreath. It was suspended from a gold bar inscribed VALOR, on which stood an eagle.

Caduceus turned the medal over and saw another bar on which there was an engraving: THE CONGRESS TO JOHN PANETTA, U.S. ARMY.

“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Better tell the boys downstairs to be extra careful, Charlie.”

Caduceus knew that Panetta’s murder might still be straightforward, but it was also going to create a shit storm.

***

In Dallas, where he now lived, the hit man had been checking the Internet for any news related to the killing.

There was nothing the first day. Or the second. Apparently nobody missed the poor old guy.

Finally, on the third day, Panetta’s death was reported. Except it wasn’t on the Internet.

The killer was in his kitchen having his regular breakfast of black coffee, two poached eggs and rye toast while he watched CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose, the only news he could stand; all the others, in his opinion, having turned into entertainment shows. The broadcast started off with a 90-second recap of the day’s top headlines. The fourth item concerned “the brutal murder of a Medal of Honor winner in New York City.”

The killer stared at the screen. There was a clip of Panetta’s house, easily recognizable, now surrounded by yellow crime scene tape. Squad cars and media trucks were parked out front and officers could be seen walking in and out. Uniformed cops kept small clusters of the curious across the street.

A somber voice-over explained how Vietnam War vet John Panetta “winner of the nation’s highest award for valor” had saved his entire company during a North Vietnamese attack outside Saigon by sticking to his machine gun even after being severely wounded “only to be strangled during an apparent robbery in his own home.”

“Those cocksuckers,” the hit man said aloud. “Those rotten cocksuckers.”

***

If you would like to read all of GUNNER, here is a link:

GUNNER

Lawrence De Maria’s thrillers and mysteries:

ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES

JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS

COLE SUDDEN CIA THRILLERS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lawrence De Maria began his career as a general interest reporter (winning an Associated Press award for his crime reporting) and eventually became a Pulitzer-nominated senior editor and financial writer The New York Times, where he wrote hundreds of stories and features, often on Page 1. After he left the Times, De Maria became an Executive Director at Forbes. Following a stint in corporate America – during which he helped uncover the $7 billion Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme and was widely quoted in the national media – he returned to journalism as Managing Editor of the Naples Sun Times, a Florida weekly, until its sale to the Scripps chain in 2007. Since then, he has been a full-time fiction writer. De Maria is on the board of directors of the Washington Independent Review of Books, where he writes book reviews, features and a regular blog column:

THE WRITE STUFF (MY BLOG)

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 - PROM CHECK

CHAPTER 2– BASS AND DREAMS

CHAPTER 3– LOOSE LIPS

CHAPTER 4 - DIARY

CHAPTER 5 - MEMORIES

CHAPTER 6– SILVER LAKE

CHAPTER 7 - AUNT BETSY

CHAPTER 8 - ALICE

CHAPTER 9 - MONTEZUMA’S REVENGE

CHAPTER 10 - NANDO’S MOUTHPIECE

CHAPTER 11 - BETA

CHAPTER 12 - WORCESTER

CHAPTER 13 - MOTHER SUPERIOR

CHAPTER 14– BOSTON

CHAPTER 15 - SONOMA

CHAPTER 16 - SAVE THE TROUT

CHAPTER 17 - GATES OF HEAVEN

CHAPTER 18 - DRESSED TO DIE

CHAPTER 19 - CHICAGO

CHAPTER 20– A FLIGHT OF STAIRS

CHAPTER 21 - SQUARE ONE

CHAPTER 22 - SIN CITY CALL

CHAPTER 23– FIVE MILLION REASONS

CHAPTER 24 - RETIREMENT, SORT OF

CHAPTER 25 - BIT OF A STIR