Requiem for a Realtor (27 page)

When Marie and Phil talked about the case, Father Dowling could no longer take part, and it was an effort not to call attention to the fact that he was not chiming in. Marie, of course, noticed.

“I know what you're thinking. They're just sins, and sins can be forgiven, and that ought to be enough.”

“Is that what I'm thinking, Marie?”

“You probably think that Judas repented even while he was hanging himself.”

“I had no idea you were a mind reader.”

“Some minds are easy to read.”

But no mind can be read, not really. Each of us is a mystery to himself and even more so to others. Much as he wanted to be certain that George Sawyer's failure to confess the crimes for which he was being held was proof of innocence, he could not exclude the possibility that George had made a bad confession and received an absolution that was ineffective because he had concealed mortal sins.

*   *   *

The following day Shirley Escalante came to the rectory. Marie brought her to the study and left her there, obviously having failed to find out the purpose of the visit. When the door closed, Shirley began to cry.

“Oh, Father, I feel so awful. If I hadn't told the police about that key…”

“I advised you to do that, Shirley.”

“I know, I know. But I feel that I'm the one who put him jail.”

“You know better than that. I am told that he will be tried for the murder of Bob Oliver first, and there may be no reason to try him for Stanley Collins's death.”

“But I told them his reaction to Bob Oliver's visit to the office. That is why they began to make inquiries at that hotel. And then they came and found those moccasins in his office.”

“And his handkerchief in the truck.”

Shirley took a deep breath. “Even so, I just cannot believe he did such a thing. When he and Mr. Collins quarreled, I always took Mr. Collins's side, if only in my own mind, but George Sawyer was in his way a good man. Mrs. Sawyer was as upset about Bob Oliver's visit as she was.”

“Mrs. Sawyer?”

“She stopped by the office that same day.”

“Did the Sawyers leave together?”

“No, she had already left.”

“And the key was back in your drawer.”

“I didn't know that right away.”

“What did she say about Bob Oliver?”

“Oh, she wanted to know what he had done while he was there. She seemed angry that I had let him look in the offices. She went into her husband's and shut the door. Brooding, I suppose. What difference did it make that a reporter had been there and taken photographs? I was glad when she finally left.”

“What time was that.”

Shirley thought. “Four? When did you come?”

“Before five. Four-thirty, probably.”

“And that's when I found the key.”

“Let's review that whole afternoon, Shirley.”

He made a little chronology as she reconstructed it, Susan letting herself in at four, George coming after four, Father Dowling coming after he left.

“She let herself in?”

“She seemed to think the office would be empty.”

“I suppose it isn't surprising that she would have a key to the office.”

“She worked there, before I came.”

12

Hazel was in seventh heaven when she heard of the money Phyllis Collins would now have, and Tuttle did not cast a cloud over her assumption that he had triumphed unequivocally. Oh, there was a check, a very large check, but it represented all he would ever see of the money that had finally come to the widow Collins. His wild dream of being put in control of her money was dashed during the first moments in Amos Cadbury's office. The amount of her monthly stipend brought a little gasp from Phyllis Collins.

“I have invested the money over the years, Mrs. Collins, and I would advise you to simply leave it as it is.”

Cadbury handed Phyllis a sheet on which was recorded the initial amount set aside for Stanley Collins and how it had grown in the intervening years. Reading it over her shoulder, Tuttle could have wept. Of course, Cadbury had papers prepared, and Tuttle knew better than to suggest that she not sign them, or at least take them home to study them. The monthly income that was now hers had completely bedazzled her. Tuttle could hardly blame her.

Throughout the meeting, Amos Cadbury more or less ignored Tuttle's presence. But then he produced a check for Phyllis to sign, made out to Tuttle. She scrawled her signature on it as Tuttle's eyes rounded at the amount. Cadbury put the check in an envelope and handed it to Tuttle. And then they actually shook hands.

“I think you will agree that things have turned out well for Mrs. Collins.”

Tuttle agreed.

He went down in the elevator with Phyllis Collins, listening to her sing the praises of Amos Cadbury. She seemed to think that the lawyer had made her a present of all that money. Tuttle put his hand on his chest in order to feel the reassuring crinkle of the check in his pocket. This was the check that Hazel now regarded as if it were a sacred object.

“I'm going to get this into the bank pronto.”

“Good idea.”

“Are you still her lawyer?”

“I've done what she hired me to do.”

“Good man.” Tuttle ducked out of range as she tried to kiss his cheek. She left for the bank, singing “Anchors Aweigh.” Tuttle went into his office, closed the door, got settled behind his desk, and sought the comforting darkness of his lowered tweed hat. How sweetly sad was success. He had not known much of it, but the few times luck had turned his way had been oddly disappointing. He shook away such melancholy thoughts in order to commune with his departed father.

But the uncustomary meditative mood persisted as his thoughts shifted to George Sawyer. An indictment for the murder of Bob Oliver had been brought in, Murdstone had pleaded his client not guilty, no surprise there. Tuttle pushed back his hat, feeling once more the twitch of avarice. Inspiration had struck. He scrambled out of his chair and hurried from the office. On the stairs, he told himself that there was no way Hazel could have finished at the bank and be returning, still it was with genuine relief that he slid behind the wheel of his car. He was about to turn the key when a noise in the back seat caused him to freeze. He turned slowly to find Peanuts sleeping in the back seat. No need to wake him. He started the car on the second try and headed for the Frosinone.

When he parked in the alley behind the hotel, Peanuts did not waken, and Tuttle left him in repose as he went through the open door used by the crew still working on the elevators. Before entering the lobby, he looked around the elevators to see if Primo Verdi was on duty. He was. Was this good or bad? Well, he'd find out.

“Want to register, Tuttle?” Verdi said.

“I never vote. Is Flora around?”

Verdi closed his eyes and groaned. “I wish she weren't.”

“I want to talk with her.”

“Good, take her away. She's driving me nuts.”

“How so?”

“She's been subpoenaed to testify in George Sawyer's trial.”

“Just why I'm here.”

Verdi was already busy on the phone. He held the receiver to his ear and looked abstractedly across the lobby.

“Flora? Tuttle, the lawyer, is coming up.”

He immediately put down the phone. “Two nineteen.”

“Second floor?”

Verdi just looked at him. Tuttle headed for the stairway, a beautiful ornate stairway rising in a gentle curve under a massive chandelier.

A head appeared as he approached the door of 219, looked first away and then toward Tuttle. He got to the door before she could close it.

“We have to talk about your testimony.”

“Go away. I won't testify. I'll tell them I'm sick.”

Tuttle nodded. “No, I will tell them. Let's talk it out.”

She stopped pushing on the door, and he let himself in. He looked around the suite, showing approval.

“Much better than a jail cell.”

“Jail cell!”

“Well, let's not talk of that yet. It's where you'll end up if you refuse to honor a subpoena.”

She began to wail, but this caused no consternation in Tuttle. Dealing with Hazel had diminished his fear of the female of the species. He let her wail for a few minutes. When she tired of it, he began again.

“We have to run through the questions that will be put to you on the stand.”

“I haven't given you a dollar.”

“You're right. Give me a dollar.”

She hesitated and then went for her purse. She handed Tuttle a dollar. “Primo says you're worth every penny of that.”

Tuttle shook his head. “A bitter man. Now then. In your own words, tell me about George Sawyer's asking you about Bob Oliver.”

“That's all there is. He asked me if I knew Bob Oliver.”

“And you said yes.”

“I thought it was a referral. Don't tell Primo that.”

“Our conversation is protected by the lawyer-client privilege. Think of me as a priest.”

She laughed. “What religion?”

“But it wasn't a referral?”

“No. He wanted to talk about Bob Oliver.”

“How did he act? Angry?”

“Oh, no. He wanted to know if anyone else had been looking for Oliver.”

“Did he say who?”

Flora made a face, indicative of thought. “I got the impression that it was a woman. Maybe he was an angry husband. Not that he acted angry.”

Tuttle led her through as complete a recall of her conversation with George Sawyer as she could muster.

“That wasn't so bad, was it?”

“I still want to call in sick.”

Tuttle had been folding the dollar bill she gave him and it had taken the form of a paper plane. Not that he thought it would fly.

When he went out to his car, he stood in the alley, wondering why Flora had gotten the impression that George Sawyer was a wronged husband. He pulled open the door of his car, got in, and was nearly frightened out of his wits by the awakening Peanuts.

“Good Lord. I forgot all about you.”

“Where are we?”

“On our way to dinner.”

As they ate at the Great Wall of China, Tuttle explored with Peanuts the possibility that there was something wrong with the Sawyer marriage. After all, the Collins marriage had been a mess. Peanuts nodded through it all, not really listening.

“I'll have to look into it,” he said to Peanuts.

“What?”

13

One of the charms of the priesthood, Amos Cadbury had always thought, is its reminder that sins can be forgiven. Saints develop a conscience so sensitive that it would strike the average person as scrupulous, but Amos took that as proof that the remission of sin did not coarsen one's sense of good and evil. Such thoughts occurred when Father Dowling enlisted his aid.

“I could not myself hire an investigator, Amos. The truth is I feel sheepish asking you to do so. But George Sawyer's persistence in claiming his innocence raises the possibility that someone else is guilty of the crimes he is charged with.”

“A plea of not guilty is not really a claim of innocence, Father.”

“Captain Keegan assures me that Sawyer does claim to be innocent.”

Father Dowling must know that most criminals claim to be innocent, but Amos felt inclined to indulge his old friend. It seemed right that a priest should give credence even to so incredible a claim as Sawyer's.

“So what would you want an investigator to do?”

“If I knew, I wouldn't need one.”

What Amos instructed Aloysius Parker to do when he hired him was to look into every aspect of the evidence against George Sawyer. It was thus that he learned of the testimony that Flora was expected to make against George Sawyer.

“There's no doubt that he was at the Frosinone asking about Oliver.”

Whenever Parker spoke he acted as if he were reading from the notebook he held open in his hand.

“You talked with Flora?”

Parker turned a page and nodded. “Say he wasn't asking for the reason the prosecutor will try to establish. Why else would he be asking about Oliver?”

Flora had told Parker that her first impression was that Sawyer was an irate husband, and that was the spoor he pursued. He had turned up some lurid facts, if they were facts, about Mrs. Sawyer. Wanda Janski told him that Stanley Collins had said to her that he once had a fling with his partner's wife. But it was Sylvia the photographer who linked Bob Oliver and Susan Sawyer. Literally, in a photograph.

*   *   *

“This was taken last year. He doesn't look too enthusiastic, does he?”

The photograph had been taken on the street, outside a building in which Oliver had been researching a feature. When they exited the building, the woman was waiting for Oliver. In the photograph he seemed more embraced than embracing. Sylvia had finished up a film with shots of Oliver and the woman.

“When I teased him about it, he just called her an old flame. So I went to the archives and matched the picture I had taken.”

The woman was Susan Sawyer.

*   *   *

When Amos summarized Parker's report for Father Dowling, he emphasized that none of it was of much help to George Sawyer. Parker had simply turned up further proof of the fragility of human nature, and neither Father Dowling nor the courts were in need of that.

“I did pass it on to Murdstone, for what it is worth.”

“Poor Parker,” Father Dowling said. “What a way to make a living.”

14

The trial of George Sawyer for the murder of Bob Oliver opened with several days devoted to the boring process of jury selection. Murdstone, advised by psychologists, palmologists, and psychics, sought to put in the jury box men and women suspicious of logic and sequential reasoning. Father Dowling looked in on both days. Susan Sawyer sat conspicuously behind her accused husband. On the second day, Father Dowling waited for her in the corridor outside the courtroom.