Pious Deception (7 page)

“First snowbirds of the season,” Wiggins said, pointing to its Ohio plates as the Caddy continued down the street. “Usually the white-hairs from up north don’t light here till winter.”

“I guess to be a real snowbird you have to have escaped snow, huh? What about the Vanderhoovens? They’ve wintered in Phoenix for the last five years. Could Austin have been involved in something with them?”

“Possible. Philip’s got connections, conservatives with money. He does some of their investing. I reckon when he settled here that first winter it was easy as slipping a slick hand into an old glove. I’ve heard rumors he’s handled a bit of mob money, all on the up and up. Word is he’s too smart and too well entrenched to chance anything shady.”

“While you’re checking, see what you can find about the archdiocese.”

“Right.”

Kiernan took a swallow of coffee. It was cold, but not cold enough to mask the weak, bitter taste. Strong fresh-brewed coffee was one of the things she missed most when she traveled. “So, Stu, here’s another possibility. Maybe the killer, if there was a killer, chose this method of death to shine light on Austin Vanderhooven’s sex life. There was a pair of red lace bikini pants in his drawer.”

Wiggins whistled. “How big were they? Can you rule out that he dressed up in them himself? I reckon guys who hang themselves for kicks don’t fret about an unsightly panty line.”

Kiernan’s breath caught. Normally she would have laughed at a comment like that. “When his mother saw the bikinis, she assumed they belonged to a girlfriend.”

“Guy’s got a girlfriend, too? I thought these guys took vows of chastity.”

Kiernan shrugged. “This one’s open to interpretation. According to his father, the romance was nothing more than an adolescent fling—well before his son ever thought of the priesthood. He could be right, of course, but, according to the Vanderhoovens the girl lived with Austin in San Diego. She wrote to him when he was in graduate school in New York. And now”—Kiernan paused—“she’s here in Phoenix.”

Stu raised his eyebrows. “Okay, I’ll see what I can find on her. And?” The eyebrows went a notch higher.

“Here’s his calendar. Most of it’s pretty straightforward: altar guild meetings, a talk at the Knights of Columbus. But there are one or two questions. This, for instance.” She pointed to the words “Hohokam Lodge” inscribed in one square of the calendar. “Know anything about that? Apparently he was there last Saturday. And this Saturday, tomorrow, it looks like he was planning to go some place called Cerrito del Oro—”

“Little hill of gold.”

Kiernan nodded. “But there’s a line through that, and above it he’s written ‘McKinley.’ ”

“Anything else? You’re looking at a battalion of employees here. I’m glad the Catholic Church is paying.”

“These names: G. Hayes, Maria Vasquez, Ann Applegate, Joe Zekk.”

He wrote down the names, one under another, then flipped his pad shut and laid it on the table. “Now tell me, with all you’ve given the boss to do, what is there left for you?”

“The doctor who signed the phony death certificate. Dowd said he was a friend of Vanderhooven’s, ran with him three mornings a week. If there’s anyone who should be able to tell me about Austin Vanderhooven it should be him.”

“You think he will?”

“If he wants to go on practicing medicine he will.”

B
ACK IN HER MOTEL
room, Kiernan slid a foot into her running shoe and propped it on the edge of the table to tie the lace. It was too hot outside for running shoes but she had no choice. It was too hot for jeans, too, and for her long-sleeved yellow shirt. She held the phone between ear and shoulder. She was at the point of hanging the receiver up—it had rung twelve times—when a harried female voice answered. “Dr. Necri’s office. Doctor isn’t in. Can I put you on hold?”

“Doesn’t he have patients scheduled?”

“I’m rescheduling now. Hold, please.” The button clicked and elevator music came on.

Where was Necri? Doctors did not disappear Friday mornings, not with patients scheduled. As one of her professors had said, “Half this business is based on trust. Patients will sit in your waiting room for hours, because they believe in you. But cancel an appointment without good reason and patients will suddenly realize you’re merely human. Their implicit trust will be gone. Never again will they automatically believe your diagnosis, or that the medication you prescribe is bound to work. Whatever there is to the placebo effect will be gone. They’ll question more, heal slower, and be potential pains in the ass.”

So why was Elias Necri making his patients wait now? Had the sheriff gotten to him already?

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” the woman said.

“When will Dr. Necri be in?”

“At one.”

“This is Dr. O’Shaughnessy,” Kiernan said, playing one of her trumps. “Where can I call Dr. Necri? Is he at the hospital?”

“Oh,
Doctor,
I’m sorry. He didn’t leave a number.”

So much for trumps. “Tell him I will be in his office at one.” She hung up and dialed Bishop Dowd’s rectory, hoisting the second shoe up for tying as the phone rang.

Dowd’s housekeeper announced that the bishop had left at twenty to eight, as he did every Friday morning.

Kiernan dialed again.

“Archdiocese of Phoenix, Rita Gomez speaking,” a scratchy voice said over a scratchy connection.

“This is Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. Bishop Dowd is expecting my call.”

There was a pause before the woman said, “His Grace is out right now. Can I take a message?”

The edginess was evident in her voice. Had Dowd come in at all? Had the sheriff called on him, perhaps taken him to the scene of the hanging? “It’s important that I reach him. Is he at Mission San Leo?”

“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “He, eh, wouldn’t be there on Friday morning. He’s, uhm, with the Sheltons at the Self-Help Center downtown.”

Deciding to see where this story led, Kiernan asked, “Where is the Self-Help Center?”

“Near Sixteenth and Buckeye.”

“Is Bishop Dowd in charge?” That would fit Stu Wiggins’s description of him as a man with a highly visible finger in half the local pies.

“Oh, no. They just call him when they have an emergency.”

“A bishop? What kind of emergency?”

“Oh, well, the Sheltons. They know they can count on him. Such a good man. With all his responsibilities it’s not easy for him to drop everything and run down there. Not many bishops would do that. Not time and time again.”

And not thirty-six hours after his subordinate was found hanging in the church! Rita Gomez had relaxed audibly when she talked of the needy Sheltons, as if slipping comfortably into a small pocket of truth. Kiernan asked, “What has the bishop done for the Sheltons?”

“Just about everything there is. He’s found them jobs, good jobs. He’s gotten them food more times than I’d care to say, even though they can get dinner at the Self-Help Center like all the rest of them. Sometimes he even gets them Knights of Columbus funds, and they’re not supposed to go to the same people more than twice in a six-month period. They just don’t know how lucky they are to have a man like Bishop Dowd.”

“Taking advantage, huh?”

She could almost hear the woman clicking her teeth together, deciding whether circumstances justified the indiscretion pushing to escape her mouth. “He could find them seats in the choir of angels, and they’d complain about the noise.”

Kiernan laughed. “It sounds like they’ve been around for a long time. But there are plenty of deserving poor, so why did the bishop choose to help them? Were the Sheltons in his parish when he was a priest?”

“No, no. In eighteen years I’ve never seen them in church. They’ve always been Self-Help people. To tell you the truth, if it weren’t for the bishop, those Sheltons would probably have moved on by now. They’d be somebody else’s problem.”

“Like the Bible says”—Kiernan bit back a grin; if Sam Chase could hear her, of all people, quoting scripture, he’d be laughing himself out of his chair—“the poor will always be with us. And the Sheltons will keep having crises, right?”

Rita laughed. “They’ll be moaning when they’re lowered into the grave.”

“So,” Kiernan said, “there’s no pressing need for the bishop to spend today of all days with them, is there?”

But Rita Gomez was not bullied. “Bishop Dowd is with the Sheltons,” she repeated.

Kiernan took a breath to calm her voice. “Rita, I’m here to clear up the questions about Father Vanderhooven’s death. Bishop Dowd hired me. And even if he’s too fine a man to think of these things, you and I know that a scandal will destroy the bishop’s career. Rita, it’s vital to him that he call me. I’m going to leave you my number. And if you think of anything that will help, please call me.”

It was hardly a victory, but neither was it suitable for the defeat column. Not yet. But it still left the question
Where
was Dowd? Was he with the sheriff at Mission San Leo? Or was he avoiding her for some reason?

For form’s sake she dialed the Self-Help Center. Dowd hadn’t been there this morning. Then she grabbed her purse and headed into the parking lot. The scorching air hit her, searing her skin. It was too hot, too dry, to breathe. All around, the sun ricocheted off automobile chrome and mirrors.

The Jeep had to be the hottest place she had ever been—worse than the Maharatha plains of India before the monsoon. She had been there only a few days, on her way to Nepal, four … no, five years ago. She hadn’t been dressed for the weather then either. But then the error had been due to ignorance and impulsiveness. After she got fired as a pathologist with the coroner’s department she’d packed two pairs of jeans and her passport, left northern California for good, and headed west to find the truth—something to replace the truth she had expected forensic pathology to reveal. All her teenage years she had viewed forensic pathology as her mother had the Church; she’d been so sure that if she was familiar with every toxin, if she could discern the minor differentiations in skin coloration well enough, if she could spot the smallest needle mark, then death would be unable to hide its secrets from her. Maybe Moira’s death would shed its veils, too.

She pulled into traffic, grateful for the blast of air, albeit hot, through the window. The Valley of the Sun was laid out like a
T
. At the west end of the crossbar was Phoenix proper; at the east, the road to the Superstition Mountains. The wealth of Scottsdale and Camelback Mountain lay at the junction, the suburb of Tempe and her motel below, and Mission San Leo way down at the bottom. And nothing, she thought in disgust, was near anything else.

Kiernan tapped her forefinger hard against the steering wheel, waiting for the light to change. Already the traffic was heavy. Treeless seven-lane thoroughfares ran between walls of stucco block or covered fiberglass whose shade of tan changed from one housing development to the next. For a short distance one of the irrigation canals ran beside the street.

When the light finally turned green, vehicles surged forward like flood waters and raced to the next traffic light, a mile away. In the turn lane to her left, drivers sat idling anxiously; when the green arrow opened their flood gate they sped forward, close as one drop of water to the next.

“Ridiculous,” Kiernan muttered. But she, too, pressed hard on the gas pedal the instant the light changed and kept the pedal floored as the automatic transmission struggled to shift.

At least the freeway was empty. But there was no need to reread Sam Chase’s warning about speed. She had closed the window and put the air-conditioning on high; with the drag from that there was no chance of hitting sixty. She would turn it down, she promised herself, just as soon as the Jeep cooled.

But it was still on high when she passed the blue-and-yellow gas station. In contrast, the pale stucco houses of Azure Acres with their green-brown grass or pebble gardens appeared faded. And plopped in the midst of them, Mission San Leo looked like a relic of the forgotten past. Perhaps if there had been patrol cars with pulser lights blinking crimson on the whitewashed walls …

There were no patrol cars, no technician’s vans. No sign of the bishop’s big black Buick. No Mercedes or BMW with M.D. plates, either. No sign of life at all. Where was the sheriff?

This second chance to search Vanderhooven’s room was a gift not to be ignored. Vanderhooven must have had an address book, letters, phone bills—something that would lead Kiernan to Cerrito del Oro, McKinley, Hohokam Lodge. Just like an autopsy, she thought. You go in, you observe, you record, you take all the right samples, you close. Then the lab findings come back and you wish you could take another look.

Kiernan rounded the corner and pulled the Jeep to the curb by the alley that ran behind the church and the rectory, Vanderhooven’s home. The alley was deserted. Tan walls, like the ones along the main roads, concealed the dwellings on either side. The pavement was almost invisible under the red desert dirt; and tall, brittle, sun-bleached weeds and scraps of paper stood poised as if they had stopped momentarily and would be blown on. But there was no wind. The alley went on, block after block, as far as the eye could see. It had an overexposed look, like a photo forgotten on a windowsill.

Kiernan pocketed her keys, license, and emergency cash, and Vanderhooven’s keys. She stuffed her purse under the seat and swung down to the ground, feeling anew the blast of midday heat. The air smelled dusty. She swallowed and began loping down the dirt-covered alley. Halfway, she slowed to a walk. Arizona in July was definitely not loping country.

Behind the rectory, she paused, glad for Vanderhooven’s key and the semblance of legitimacy it and her contract with Dowd gave her. An out-of-state private detective couldn’t be too careful. Draw too much attention to herself, slip into a merely off-white shade of illegality, and some local sheriff would delight in notifying the licensing authority in California. Her legal arrangement with Stu Wiggins would provide some protection, but only some.

She unlocked the gate. The backyard hadn’t been abandoned, not quite. Minimum maintenance, the type you get from a cheap gardening service. Faded grass mowed short but left shaggy at the edges. Minimally watered. The cement patio by the kitchen door was bare—no planters, no chairs, no tables, no barbecue.