Murder at the National Cathedral (12 page)

Smith looked around the table. The nice gray-haired woman went grayer still, and Smith repressed a small sense of satisfaction. The blunt, unpleasant words of the report had had their predictable effect on others, as well. Some feigned disinterest by looking away. One man’s face was drained of blood; Smith wondered if he would be the latest Episcopalian to become ill. “How horrible” … “Sad” … “Barbaric” … “Brutal,” said the chapter members.

“Do the police feel that anything in the report is useful to their investigation?” Smith was asked.

“I haven’t discussed that with them at length,” he replied. “They’re being very cooperative with me, particularly Chief Finnerty. He and I go back a long way. He really doesn’t have any obligation to share this information, but he seems to view me as having an official capacity. I haven’t dissuaded him.”

“You will handle the defense if someone from the cathedral is charged?”

“I haven’t committed myself to that yet,” Smith said. “I suppose, like all of us, in a way, I’m hoping that it will turn out to be a stranger, or at least someone not close to the cathedral. I have promised the bishop, however, that I will be as helpful as possible. That is still my intention.” Bishop St. James’s smile spilled over with appreciation.

Smith and the bishop met privately following the chapter meeting. St. James handed Smith a letter of introduction to the archbishop of Canterbury as Smith had requested. “You’re likely to see Reverend Malcolm Apt,” St. James told Smith. “It may be difficult to see the archbishop in person, but this letter might help. I’ll call Apt.”

“I was intrigued with something you said during Paul’s funeral,” Smith said as he slipped the letter into his jacket pocket. “Was Paul ever a chaplain?”

“Yes.”

“Navy, I take it.”

“Right.”

“When?”

“Evidently, soon after he was ordained. He rarely spoke of it. Maybe once, twice, as I recall. He did love that verse, though, and liked to use it when comforting the bereaved.”

“How long did he serve?”

“I have no idea, Mac. Why?”

“Just want to know as much as possible about him. Well, I have to go. I’ll call when we return.”

St. James placed a hand on Smith’s shoulder. “You know how grateful I am.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Have a safe trip, and don’t spend all your time on this. Remember, it is your honeymoon.”

“Annabel will see to it that I don’t forget. Good night, George.”

Smith’s next meeting was with Tony Buffolino, the former Washington narcotics detective who’d been dismissed from the force for taking money from a South American drug dealer. A highly decorated cop, Buffolino had never touched any of the loose and plentiful dirty money available to narcs until a flood of bills for cancer treatment of a son washed him against the wall. As his attorney, Smith managed to quash criminal charges, but couldn’t stave off Tony’s dishonorable discharge from the MPD. For a time, Buffolino blamed Smith for making that deal. He’d loved being a cop, loved it even more than the freedom Smith had won for him. Then, after years without contact, Smith had called him in to help with the investigation of the murder of the presidential candidate’s aide at the Kennedy Center, and found him a job when the investigation was over.

When Smith walked into Tony’s Spotlight Room at noon, he found the cop-turned-restaurateur sitting at the bar. The establishment, sandwiched between two topless clubs on
lower K Street, was open only at night. A young Hispanic swept beneath tables on which chairs had been stacked. The PA system played Sinatra. A heavy smell of tobacco and perfume hung like the red velvet drapes behind the small bandstand on which a set of drums and several electronic musical instruments stood abandoned like tools of war awaiting the next deafening battle. Illumination came from spotlights covered with red and blue gel. “Las Vegas Comes to D.C.” a poster outside read.

“How goes it, Tony?” Smith asked as he joined him at the bar.

“Mezza-mezza,”
Buffolino said. He looked up from the copy of
Variety
he’d been reading. “How come you never come in here, Mac?”

“Here I am.”

“I mean at night when the action’s going. You and Annabel come to the gala opening, then I never see you again. I got a dynamite show in here for a couple ’a weeks. The chick singer is a knockout, Mac, and I got a mimic who does the wildest obscure people you ever saw.”

“That sounds safe … for a mimic,” Smith said. “How is Alicia?”

Buffolino looked around before saying in a low voice, “Wonnerful. Loving and kind and drivin’ me nuts.” He sighed. “Things were good till we got married. You marry ’em, and they change.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve heard that. And you should know, since this is not your first time around. Give her my best.”

“I will. Same to Annabel. So, what brings you here? You sing? Always wanted to do stand-up comedy?”

“I was wondering if you were up to a job.”

“PI stuff? Nah. Thanks, though. Too busy with the joint.”

“Well, that settles that.”

“You want a drink?”

“No, thanks.”

Buffolino yelled in pidgin Spanish at the cleaning boy to bring them coffee.

“Not for me,” Smith said, standing.

“Sit a minute, Mac. Relax. Coffee’s not a drink. Good for your nerves. Keeps them hummin’. I kind of miss us talking.” He grinned. Buffolino was a handsome man in a coarse, thick-featured way. He had sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes—bedroom eyes, they were once called. His was a fighter’s face.

Smith ignored the liqueur Tony was offering but sipped the steaming hot mug of coffee set before him. “Too early in the day for anisette,” he said.

“Might keep you awake, uh?”

“Something like that.”

“What’s the case, the priest?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“When I’m not too busy, I watch a little TV. Your name came up. Somebody charged?”

“No, but on the assumption that someone will be at some point, I’m lining up what ducks I can.”

“What would you want me to do?”

“Check into Father Singletary’s background. Everything. Discreetly, though. I have to go out of town and don’t want to lose time here. Annabel and I are leaving tomorrow for London on our honeymoon. We’ll be back in a week. I have to find someone who can move on it. Need a report ready when I return.”

“Yeah, well, Mac, maybe I could do it. Be good to get away from here for a while. Maybe good for Alicia ’n me, too. It’s too close bein’ together all the time. Yeah, I’ll do it. What’s a week? Besides, if I have to tell you the truth, and to you I
do
have to tell the truth, I’m not exactly what you’d call busy. Business is lousy.”

“Sorry to hear it.” Smith stood and clapped Buffolino on the back, then handed him an envelope. “A retainer. And the particulars on what we know so far.”

Buffolino looked at the check. “This is a tenth, huh?”

“It’s a third.”

“Yeah? Okay, but only for you.”

“Me and a house of God. Do you good to get out of this place and try another. Thanks. See you in a week.”

“
Ciao
, baby.”

Smith’s last commitment before he and Annabel left for London was at the Sevier Home in Georgetown. He never seemed to find the time to visit his mother as much as he had promised himself he would, which always prompted a nagging feeling of guilt that was uncomfortable—and unnecessary, he reminded himself whenever it set in. For this visit, he had blocked out most of the afternoon.

They spent a good deal of it out in the gardens surrounded by English boxwood and huge azalea bushes, holly, and black walnut trees. Josephine Smith always insisted that her son stop and read a plaque in the ground along Azalea Walk:

These times with his mother were always peaceful. They could also be inspirational or amusing when he was depressed. His mother was an unfailingly optimistic person. Her standard response to “How are you?” was “Wonderful. I got up this morning, took a breath, and it worked. What more could I ask for?”

They finished their visit by sitting on the expansive porch that overlooked the gardens. They were alone; another resident of the home played the piano—badly—on the other side of the window behind them. “Well, how does it feel to be a married man again?”

“Good,” Smith said, taking his mother’s hand in his. “I’m a very lucky man to have someone like Annabel.”

“I wondered how long it would take you to come to that conclusion,” said his mother. “You certainly dragged your feet.”

He laughed. “Mother, you and Dad sent me to law school so that I would learn to weigh all the facts and not make snap judgments.”

“No matter, it makes me feel good and proud that you and Annabel are now married. I never did like the arrangement you had.”

“Why not? It worked very nicely.”

“I like things tidied up, Mac. And the law to go with love. Marriage does that.”

“Yes, it certainly does. I really have to be going. I still have things to do before we leave.”

“London,” she said wistfully. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been there.”

“We’ll go soon, the three of us, maybe in the spring. The weather is better then.”

Each knew what the other was thinking. As healthy and vivacious as Josephine Smith was, the reality that she was in the final phase of her life could not be denied. Would she be alive to take to London in the spring? Mac mused. He dearly hoped so. Although he didn’t spend nearly enough time with her, he liked the fact that she was there, alive, that her first breath in the morning continued to “work,” and that she was available to him. He didn’t look forward to the day when she wouldn’t be.

After Mac and Annabel’s plane had passed Cape Cod and they had been served caviar and smoked salmon, Mac showed her the written autopsy report. When she was finished reading, she said, “Charming prose style. Anything in here strike you as unusual?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“The item about the weapon having been swung on a horizontal plane.”

“Yes?”

“Paul was sitting in the pew when he was found. It seems to me that if you’re going to hit a man while he’s sitting, the blow would tend to come from over his head. You’d hit him more toward the top of the head, not the side.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, it also seems to me that unless the murderer was crouching, it’s unlikely that Paul was seated when he was killed, as the position of the body suggested.”

Annabel thought for a moment. “Or he was hit by a short person. Then again, it’s possible that Paul was struck while standing and fell into the pew.”

Smith shook his head. “No, he was sitting there, neat and proper. Sure, he was leaning against the wall, but his body was not in a position that would have resulted from falling there.”

“What conclusion do you come to?” she asked.

“I have to assume that because the blow was delivered in a horizontal plane and not from above, you are right, that he was probably standing when he was hit. Then it doesn’t make any sense that if he came upon an intruder, was hit, and fell to the floor, the intruder would take the time to prop him up in the pew. Hit-and-run assailants don’t rearrange bodies, they just hit and run. It could have been someone he knew, but it was almost surely someone who knew the cathedral. When you add to this the lack of blood, it points to his being murdered somewhere other than in that small chapel and brought there.”

“Even so, who would bother to do that? Why would someone do that? Wouldn’t there be blood where he was killed?”

“Yes, there would be, unless the murderer did a hell of a good job of mopping up. MPD’s been scouring the cathedral,
but that’s a lot of ground to cover and a lot of dark corners.”

“Chances are it didn’t happen far from that chapel. Paul was not heavy, but he certainly wasn’t a wisp of a man. Maybe the garden outside Good Shepherd.”

“Maybe, although the M.E.’s report said his clothes were clean, no grass stains or dirt.”

“That doesn’t mean they weren’t there. I remember you delivering a lecture to one of your classes about how often routine things like that are missed during autopsies and clothing analysis.”

“I know, I know, and you’re probably right. It’s not likely to have happened far from the chapel.”

She put caviar, chopped egg and onion on a crustless toast wedge and savored it. Smith disliked caviar and had given his small jar of beluga to her, a ritual they always went through when flying first class. “Did Terry Finnerty raise this when you talked to him?”

“No. He simply handed me the report. No, that’s not true. He handed me the report and asked me a lot of questions. I get the feeling he’s being nice to me, is cooperating because he sees me as a conduit into the cathedral. He’s going to be very disappointed.”

As the shiny, immaculate black Austin taxi took them from Heathrow Airport to Duke’s Hotel in the heart of London, Annabel snuggled close to her husband. “I’ve never been on a honeymoon,” she said.

“Nor will you ever be on another one,” he said.

They fell silent; she knew what he was thinking, that he’d spent his honeymoon with his first wife in London many years ago. They’d stayed at the Savoy, a favorite hotel of Smith’s. He’d considered suggesting the Savoy for Annabel, too, but thought better of it. Too much like bringing a new wife into the home of a former one. He and Annabel had stayed at Duke’s on their last trip to London, and decided
the little jewel tucked away in the middle of the St. James’s district suited them perfectly, with its elegantly furnished suites, attentive staff, and convenient location.

The driver pulled into the tiny courtyard in front of Duke’s and, as London taxis are designed to do, turned around, if not on a dime, certainly on a ha’penny. They were greeted with reserved but real enthusiasm at Reception. On previous visits, Mac had always signed them in as Mr. and Mrs. Mackensie Smith. This time he did it with quiet, proud conviction, and legitimately.

It was ten o’clock at night London time, but five hours earlier by their body clocks. The hall porter took their luggage to what would be their honeymoon suite, number 25 on the fourth floor, and Mac and Annabel walked into the small, cozy lounge. Gilberto, the barman, came around from behind the bar and shook Mac’s hand, kissed Annabel on the cheek.