Ice Shear (20 page)

My alarm rang. It was time to get up for Danielle's funeral. I rolled over and hit the clock hard, banging my wrist. I could hear my father in the shower. I pulled the covers back and made the bed, knowing my father had done the same thing: the military trained him and he trained me. I heard him shuffle across the hallway to his room and I made my way to the bathroom, the cold from the wood floors seeping through my socks. My father kept the thermostat low during the night as a way to save money and build character. In another hour the house would be plenty warm. Not so warm a sweater wasn't needed, but warm enough that your fingers didn't turn blue.

My father didn't restrict the hot water, thankfully, and I took a nice long shower. I had so much hair that it pulled my neck back when it was wet: my hairdressers didn't so much style my hair as keep it from achieving critical mass. Maybe after the case was finished I would get my hair cut. And shave my legs again, although there was really no point until spring.

Out of the shower and blown dry, I made a fast dash to my room—cold, cold, cold—and put on the suit I'd laid out the night before. Black and conservative, the skirt hit my knee even when I sat. My little trick was the tailoring, which took the business out of it and made me feel ever so slightly feminine. I had a bunch of these suits, purchased during my FBI days, and had worn this one to Kevin's funeral. I had pulled it out the morning of his service and discovered that it slid down my hips and was a half shoulder too big. I couldn't fix it or buy another, so my jacket slumped sideways through the day, even when I worked to keep my back straight and to meet everyone's eyes and thank them sincerely for their condolences, their cake, their support. It fit again now, even with the Glock holstered under my shoulder, and I finished by pulling my hair up into a French twist, applying some nude lipstick, and fixing pearls around my neck. I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to appear competent, trustworthy. Like a cop.

I went downstairs. I could hear my father in the kitchen, speaking softly.

“I know, right. . . . Uh-huh.” As I walked in he raised a cup of coffee to me. “Look, I gotta go.” He took a sip from his cup. “Yup . . . take care. . . . Bye.”

I put some cinnamon bread in the toaster and poured myself some coffee, and stood against the counter at the opposite side of the kitchen.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Your mom.”

I choked on my coffee, barely avoiding spitting it on my shirt. “Mom?”

“You sound like a sulky teenager. Your mom and I talk. You know that. She's an early riser, probably the only thing we have in common.”

“So how often do these little chats happen?”

“I don't keep a calendar,” he said, sighing. “When there's news. When something big happens. We've been divorced twenty years, which is enough time to get over things, even for a grumpy bastard like me.” He raised his coffee cup to me. “You should try it sometime. It's been what? Three years?”

“Since Kevin died. You know that. I'm a little busy, and she'd probably just tell me to balance my chakras.”

“Your aura does seem a little off,” Dad said, and then more seriously, “You okay? You look fried.”

“Just tired.” Not the truth, but I didn't have time for grief over Kevin right now.

“I boiled some eggs for you and cut up some carrots. A few corn muffins are in there, too.” My father handed me a paper grocery sack as my phone buzzed. It was Dave.

“There's enough for him, too. And a thermos of coffee.” I pulled on my boots and dropped my toast, wrapped in a napkin, into my purse.

I yanked on the front door twice before the glaze of ice that covered it gave way. Halfway down the walk my phone rang again. I patted down all the pockets of my coat as well as my suit, pulling it out of my purse right on the fifth ring.

“Hi,” Hale said. “Don't hang up.”

“Assuming you're calling regarding our case, I'm not going to hang up.”

“The way you laid into me, I figured it was even odds, but in your role of liaison . . .”

I lost the second half of the conversation climbing into Dave's car. “Hale,” I mouthed to Dave, who made a face at me before relieving me of the bag of food.

“What?” I said.

“I said that Marty and Ray's folks have boarded their flight, so they'll arrive in plenty of time for the funeral. Phil asked if the Jelicksons could be banned, Marty included.”

“No.”

“That's what I told him. I'm going to be sticking with the Brouillettes until we get to the church, since they know me and trust me.”

I rolled my eyes, and Dave mouthed, “What?”

“Anything else to report?” Hale asked.

“Not for the funeral,” I said. “I can brief you on our interview with Jackie and Chuck DeGroot later.”

“I've got a second now.”

“I don't have time for you right this minute.”

Hale sighed. “Debriefing later would be fine. I'll see you directly.”

I hung up the phone and broke the news about the Jelicksons' arrival.

“Great,” Dave said, his mouth full of egg. “They'll probably firebomb the church and make you one of their old ladies.”

“Or they could make you their old man. Mrs. Jelickson's coming, too, don't forget.”

“She's going to whisk me away from all this.” Dave waved his arm expansively, taking in the gray snowbanks that lined the streets and the old boardinghouses beyond them. “She's going to throw me on the back of a Harley, drive me to sunny California, and support me in the manner I've grown accustomed to.”

“I think that's what Danielle was hoping, and look how well that turned out.”

Dave pulled into the lot of Saint Agnes, parking close to one of the exits. A half-dozen cars dotted the parking lot, mostly Lincolns and Buicks from the eighties with one white late-model Honda tinged gray from salt and dirt. By the time of Danielle's funeral Mass, the lot would be packed and cars would be parked all the way down the hill. In the shadowy early morning, even the little old ladies who attended funerals for fun were still at home, picking out their black dresses.

The two of us walked across the gravel of the parking lot to the church. I accidentally skidded slightly across the rocks, then skidded intentionally, remembering how much I'd enjoyed it when I used to go to church with my parents.

“Monsignor Ottario told us to cool our heels until Mass was over,” Pete called across the parking lot. He gestured over to a white van parked in front of where the Catholic high school once stood. The diocese had demolished it after they figured out it would cost more to keep it closed than to knock it down. “That's the FBI truck. They tried to check IDs for the people going to seven
A.M.
Mass, but Mrs. Reilly—you know the one? was a union whip?—well, she and a few other old ladies told them to go hang. Monsignor backed 'em up, and the agents let 'em go.”

I savored the idea of a few retired seamstresses sticking it to The Man, but realized I was The Man, too, and shouldn't be encouraging that kind of behavior. We heard the organ inside cranking out the recessional, “Now Thank We All Our God,” and went out front to intercept Monsignor. The front doors swung wide and Monsignor exited, gesturing two agents off the steps and several feet away. He greeted everyone who came out with a vigorous handshake, leaning over to talk with some and helping the weaker ones down the stairs. A few of the ladies shook hands with the FBI agents and gave them an earful about civil liberties. Norm Finch nodded as he passed.

Monsignor was out of hands to shake and was heading my way.

“So this is what I need to do to get you to church, June,” he said. Monsignor Ottario had been Father Ottario through much of my life, coaching my class through our first confession. I had been fearful, my ten-year-old mind coming up with all kinds of sins I'd committed that were unforgivable. Father kept it short and sweet, sidestepping my efforts at self-flagellation. After I had left the pews filled with my classmates and come up to the confessional as slowly as I could, I said the line I had memorized: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”

He seemed to be considering me in all of my sinfulness. “Which team do you want to win the World Series?” he asked.

His line of questioning threw me off. “The Mets?”

“You've nothing to be sorry for. Go in peace,” and I wandered in a daze back to my seat.

He had presided over Kevin's funeral, and stopped by three or four times, ostensibly to visit my father but somehow always catching me when I was home. He'd talk church gossip and church business—he was involved in the diocesan investigations into priests' sexual misconduct, which he took seriously. He'd eat stale coffee cake, take my hand, and say a prayer. I hadn't been the praying type for a while, but in my grief I found solace in this person who was a trusted part of my childhood.

Now I needed him to trust me and give me access to the church. “Monsignor, we need to get in there and do a sweep before the Mass. It's an intrusion, a serious intrusion, but until we know who we're dealing with—”

“Sure, c'mon in.” He unbuttoned the top of his cassock as we climbed up the stairs, not waiting to see if I would follow. I waved the others into the church and ran to catch up to Monsignor, who threw questions over his shoulder as we hustled up the center aisle about my dad, Lucy, my health, and if I ever spoke to Kristen, my best friend from high school who had moved to California. Although his hair was gray, he moved quickly, and could still catch teenagers skipping school before they knew what hit them. Only the center front pews had the lights on and the church was chilly, two cost-cutting measures to keep it from closing. Monsignor would stop to straighten missals and flip up kneelers, and gave a quick sign of the cross as he passed the altar.

“I need to ask you to put the lights on through the whole church,” I said. “And do you want to accompany us when we search the altar?”

“I've got a conference call with the diocesan lawyers at eight and have to get ready for the funeral.” He stared past me to where the agents were leading police dogs up and down the pews, flashlights scanning below the seats. “Are there animals in my church?”

“Dogs that are on loan from the state troopers K-9 unit. Don't worry—they're better behaved than most troopers.”

“I trust you, June.”

“I appreciate that, Monsignor. But I also need a minute of your time to ask you a few questions.”

“Later would be better.”

I halted in front of a statue of Saint Agnes, a bank of votives before her. “Actually, doing it before the service would be a big help.”

Monsignor raised an eyebrow at me, mischief evident in the flickering light of the candles. “Okay, boss, it's your show.” He walked back to me. “I can give you a minute.”

I flipped to my list so quickly the paper cut across my middle finger. I blotted it on my notebook and soldiered on. “Did you know Danielle?”

“She came to after-school Catholic Ed, so I saw her, but only talked to her at the big events, stuff the teachers brought me in for. It seemed as if she didn't know how to talk to other girls, and they didn't seem like they knew what to do with her, either.”

“But she knew how to talk to boys?”

“They went out of their way to talk to her. I heard Jimmy McCollough ask her to fool around in the empty bingo room, but she said, ‘Not in a million years,' before I had to step in. I also heard one of the kids' fathers ask her to go to a hotel with him. I was grabbing a smoke out back”—he waved in the direction of the confessionals, and I assume the parking lot beyond. “She said, ‘Is the hotel in New York City near Saks?' I shut down that discussion immediately, and that father and I had a long conversation regarding the sanctity of marriage and where teenage girls fit into that equation.” Monsignor shook his head. “I told Phil, and he yelled, but not at her. More like
near
her. He aimed most of his anger at me.”

“And Danielle's mom? Any sense of how they got along?”

“I know that back in high school Danielle didn't like all her mom's travel, but that was when she was a kid. She was proud of her mom.”

“She told you that in confession?”

Monsignor grinned. “Juniper, if the killer himself told me his sins in confession, I wouldn't tell you.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “So how did you know?”

“She and I got stuck next to each other at an Ancient Order of Hibernians dinner, right after she was thrown out of Catholic High. It seems she liked to time her high school expulsions with her mother's campaigns, when she could get Mom's attention.”

I wondered if Danielle had done that last year, when Amanda Brouillette had been defending her seat. I could imagine how that conversation at the Hibernians' dinner went. I'd found myself confiding in Monsignor Ottario because he made it clear that he'd heard it all before—more than once—and your sins? Kind of boring. While he kept his eyes on the divine, his feet were firmly planted on the ground.

“Did you give her any advice?”

“I suggested she might want to figure out what course she wanted to chart, instead of charting a course against her parents. She had a hopeless attitude, convinced that her parents had all the major accomplishments covered. The Brouillettes emphasized how they were self-made and she should be, too, even as they handed her everything. She felt they cut her off at the knees whenever she tried to stand on her own feet. I tried to explain that money and power were not the only goals one could have in life.” He paused, considering his words. “I had hoped that with her move to California and her entrance into UCLA, she was finding her way.” He raised his thumb toward the sacristy. “We done?”

“Not quite,” I said, and Monsignor gave me a
hurry up
motion with his hand. “Have you seen Danielle recently?”