Apostle's Cove, page 11
“Mostly out of loyalty to Clyde. And for Sunny. And she was already pregnant with Moonbeam. And, I guess, because she seemed to really need me. Turned out to be the worst decision of my life.”
“You killed Chastity,” Larson said. “Seems to me a worse decision.”
Boshey eyed him steadily. “Not a decision. Just happened. Look, if we’re going to talk anymore, I want my lawyer.”
“That’s okay. We’re done here,” Cork said.
Axel lay back down and returned to staring at the ceiling.
* * *
Larson called it a day. Cork had paperwork on his desk related to the budget he would present to the commissioners at their next meeting. Before he could begin, Deputy Marsha Dross knocked at his door.
“Still here?” he said.
“Just finishing up my shift. But I’m glad I caught you. There’s something I think you ought to know.”
“What’s that?”
She stepped in and sat down. “I was ten-seven at the Pinewood Broiler for a late lunch. I was seated at a front window, and I saw Lucy Martinelli just standing on the sidewalk, kind of frozen.”
“Rocky’s wife?”
“Yeah. She was just standing there in front of the Rialto Theater, staring at a poster for one of the coming attractions.”
“I’ve seen that poster. A movie called Child’s Play. I understand it’s about a doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer. The demon toy on that poster is scary enough to make any parent think twice before giving their little girl a doll this Christmas.”
“I don’t think she was really looking at the poster. She seemed to be just sort of disoriented, so I went out and asked her to join me for lunch.”
“Do you know Lucy well?”
“We knew each other in high school, both of us were lifeguards on Gull Lake. Rocky was a lifeguard there, too. In those days, he was drop-dead gorgeous, a hunk. We were all interested in him, Lucy and me and pretty much every other female lifeguard, but Lucy was way more serious. There was something a little scary about him, even back then. And I could see that he was just a player. I worried about her because she seemed so fragile. Then she ended up marrying him.”
“You said she looked disoriented. How so?”
“Such a faraway look in her eyes. So I asked her if everything was okay. Instead of answering she asked if I’m happy being single.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I was quite happy with my career and didn’t at the moment feel the need for a husband in my life. I asked her how things were with her and Rocky and the kids.”
“And?”
“She said they were in God’s hands now.”
“God’s hands? What did she mean?”
“She claimed she experienced a miracle. She’d been purified. Made a virgin again.”
“What?”
“I know. And she told me she’d been given a new name. Magdalene.”
“Given by whom?”
“An angel of the Lord. I told her I didn’t understand. She said it didn’t matter. She and Rocky go to St. Agnes, don’t they?”
“She’s a regular and brings the kids,” Cork said. “But I haven’t seen Rocky there in forever.”
“What she was saying, it all sounded very biblical. But before I could press her any further, her father comes storming in. Wild Bill grabs her, tells her he’s been looking for her everywhere. I said we were just having a quiet lunch together, and I asked him if Lucy was okay. He tells me to mind my own business and hustles her out of there. Look, I just thought maybe you’d want to know and maybe because she goes to your church, you might want to follow up with your priest. And maybe you could talk to Rocky, too. I just want to be sure Lucy and the kids are okay.”
“Thanks, Marsha. I’ll take it from here.”
“If you talk to Rocky, I’d rather you didn’t tell him it came from me. We’ve never been very…” She looked for the right word and settled on, “… collegial.”
“You’re not alone in that,” Cork said.
He called home and told Rose he would be late and not to wait dinner on him. Then he went to the home of Rocky Martinelli. When the suspended deputy opened the door, Cork heard a chaos of children’s voices coming from inside. Martinelli gave him a cold look.
“Don’t suppose you’ve come to apologize, Sheriff?”
“Is Lucy here?”
“Why?”
“Your wife was downtown today, apparently looking pretty lost. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Like I told you before, she’s staying with her father for a while. Maybe you should be talking to him.”
“An associate confided in me that Lucy’s claiming she experienced a miracle, Rocky. She claims to have become a virgin again.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Who told you that?”
“I’d rather not say. She also claims an angel gave her a new name. Magdalene. And, Rocky, she said her children were in God’s hands.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Do you know anything about this?”
“I don’t. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go spreading rumors.”
One of Rocky’s three children, a little boy with a snotty nose and hair falling into his face, pulled at his father’s pant leg. “Joey took my sandwich.”
“I’ll make you another one. Now get back to the kitchen.”
The boy glanced at Cork without a hint of curiosity and vanished into the distant chaos.
“Look, whatever’s going on with Lucy, I’ll take care of it, okay?”
“Fine.”
Just before Martinelli slammed the door, Cork heard him mutter, “Shit.”
* * *
“She’s been…” Jo thought a moment. “Vacant, I guess, lately. Distracted whenever I talk to her at church.”
They lay in bed. Cork had come home in time to read his daughters to sleep. He’d eaten a bit of the macaroni and cheese Rose had made for dinner and reheated for him. Then Rose had gone up to her room to settle in with one of her gothic romance novels, and he and Jo had called it a day as well. Now they lay in bed talking quietly in the dark. Cork had confided to Jo about Lucy Martinelli.
“I just figured that, like all mothers with young children, she’s feeling overwhelmed,” Jo went on. “I got the sense that Rocky never helps out much at home. But obviously it’s more than that.”
“There’s a lot of anger in that man.”
“Do you think he’s aware of whatever’s going on with Lucy?”
“He pointed me toward Wild Bill, so I don’t know.”
“Everything you’ve told me, it all sounds very biblical, just like Marsha said. Maybe you should check that out, Cork.”
“With Saint Jag, you think?”
“I’d start there. If I wanted to get something off my chest, I’d go to him over Father Kelsey.”
Cork lay a long time thinking about secrets, the kind that people probably confessed to the priest and the kind they held locked deep inside and confessed to no one. He considered Chastity and her mother and their arguments. He considered Rocky Martinelli and his wife’s bizarre claim. He considered Wild Bill Gunderson and his affair with the commissioner’s wife, and Bernadette Polaski and Axel Boshey, and he thought about all the lies involved, and, not for the first time, about how the secrets people tried to keep, especially in a place like Aurora, never stayed hidden for long.
Jo was asleep by then, but he laid his arm across her belly, across the rounding that was the baby she carried. He couldn’t feel the child move yet, but he felt the warmth of the body that held it. Then he moved his hand up and felt the slow bump of Jo’s heart, a heart as true as any he’d ever known. He trusted that no dark secrets were hidden there, and he thought to himself that he was a lucky man. No, not just lucky. Blessed.
CHAPTER 22
Saturdays always felt special in the O’Connor house, but when the children came bouncing onto their parents’ bed that morning shouting, “Ghosts and goblins and witches, Daddy!” Cork remembered that this Saturday would be more special than most.
He put a pillow over his head and said, “I can’t hear you.”
“You promised!” Jenny sang, and Annie echoed, “You promised!”
Cork uncovered his head. “Promised what? I don’t remember any promises.”
“Halloween, Daddy!” Jenny said. “We’re going to decorate for Halloween.”
“Halloween? Never heard of it. But if it’s goblins you’re interested in, here’s one.” He made an awful face and let out a howl.
“Daddy!” Annie cried, falling back, but laughing.
“All right, all right,” Cork said. “We decorate today, but after lunch. I have something to do first thing this morning. Where’s your mother?”
“Her and Aunt Rose are fixing breakfast,” Annie said.
“Your mother’s cooking?”
“Not really,” Jenny said. “Mostly she’s just drinking coffee and talking. Get up, Daddy! It’s late.”
He found Jo in the kitchen, still in her bathrobe sitting at the table, a half-empty mug of coffee in front of her. Rose stood at the stove, where bacon was sizzling and popping in a frying pan.
“Did you sic the kids on me, Jo?” Cork asked.
“I did encourage them to wake the lazybones, if that’s what you mean.”
“It’s Saturday. I get to sleep late on Saturdays.”
“Not when the kids are crazy to put up scarecrows and witches.”
“And carve jack-o’-lanterns,” Rose said, turning from the stove with a pair of tongs in her hand. “We picked out pumpkins yesterday at the IGA.”
Jo said, “Jenny told me Halloween is her favorite holiday after Christmas.”
Cork poured himself a mug of coffee from the pot sitting on the coffeemaker. “Not a holiday.”
“I’ll let you explain that to her. In the meantime, you’re committed.”
Cork sat at the table. He could smell the bacon and realized he was hungry. “Got a couple of things to take care of first.”
“Like what?” Jo asked.
“Carole Anderson at the hospital lab said she’d have the toxicology results for Chastity Boshey ready for me this morning. I’ll pick those up.”
“Any chance you’d let me in on the result?”
“You know better than that, Counselor. Then I’m heading over to St. Agnes. I want to talk to Saint Jag about Lucy Martinelli.”
“Lucy?” Rose said. She’d been lifting the bacon from the frying pan and setting the pieces on a paper towel, but now she turned. “What about Lucy?”
Although Rose was a good-hearted person, Cork knew that she was also a lover of gossip. In a small town, who wasn’t? But he knew, too, that if he swore his sister-in-law to secrecy, it was a pledge she would keep.
“I don’t want this going any farther than this kitchen, Rose. Okay?”
“You have my word.”
He explained to her what Marsha Dross had told him.
“Married to a man like Rocky Martinelli, it’s bound to drive any woman over the edge. But what about the children? Are they in any…” Rose thought about her choice of words and finally settled on “Should we be concerned about their safety?”
“At the moment, I don’t think so. But I’d like to talk to Father Jude, get his take on it, if he has one.”
“We’ll do our best to hold Jenny and Annie at bay until you get back. But,” Rose said, aiming the hot tongs at him, “you have promises to keep.”
“And miles to go before I sleep,” Cork said, lifting his coffee for a sip.
* * *
The priest’s red Jaguar was parked in the church lot. Cork found Saint Jag in his office, working on a computer. The office in many ways reflected the complexities of Father Jude Monroe. There were photographs on the wall: Monroe in his football uniform, poised to throw a long bomb; Monroe in rappelling gear on the lip of a sheer cliff; Monroe posing with the Pope. In all of them, he was handsome in a way that Jo and Rose had confided many women of St. Agnes found uncomfortably attractive.
“Morning, Cork.” The priest offered him a golden boy smile.
“At work on Sunday’s homily, Jude?”
“Father Kelsey will be in the pulpit tomorrow. Just catching up on paperwork. Not here for confession, are you?”
“A couple of questions about one of your parishioners.”
The priest lost his smile. “Not Bernadette Polaski.”
“No. Lucy Martinelli.”
The priest turned from his computer and held his hand out toward an empty chair. Cork sat down and said, “What can you tell me about Lucy?”
“Why do you ask?”
“For one thing, she was looking pretty disoriented yesterday. She’s claiming to have experienced a miracle.”
“What kind of miracle?”
“She says that she’s been made a virgin, and an angel has given her a new name. Magdalene. I’m wondering if she might have talked to you about this. Or anything else that might shed some light on her situation.”
Saint Jag frowned, then spent a few moments considering his next words. “Her father’s Bill Gunderson. What do you think of him?”
“Wild Bill? He’s always been a self-absorbed son of a bitch. What has that got to do with anything?”
“His wife drowned when Lucy was quite young and he raised his daughter alone. What kind of husband and father do you imagine a man like that might be?”
“No Mister Rogers, I’m sure.”
“Father Kelsey told me that Gunderson used to attend St. Agnes. Since I arrived here, I haven’t seen him in church once.”
“He was never a regular,” Cork said. “After the scandal, he stopped coming altogether. You know about that, yes?”
“Bedding the wife of a commissioner, I understand.”
“That’s right. But even though her father wasn’t especially devout, Lucy was always here. Baptized, confirmed, married in this church.”
“Lucy has come to me several times for counseling. We’ve talked a lot about her childhood. I can’t go into detail, but she’s struggled with issues from her past. I’ve encouraged her to seek professional help, therapy, but she’s been resistant. Afraid of the stigma. You know how a small town can be. But she’s also afraid of her father.”
“Rocky told me she’s staying with Wild Bill right now.”
The priest seemed to puzzle this. “I may have to make a visit.”
“What about her husband? Has she talked to you about him?”
“I can’t go there, Cork. Too many privileged conversations in that regard.”
“Rocky didn’t seem to know about his wife’s fantasies.”
“Like his father-in-law, he’s more Catholic in name than in practice. He almost never comes to mass. So I don’t know if he’s aware of his wife’s state of mind. He’s one of your deputies. Is this something you might talk to him about?”
“I have. He seemed ignorant. There are no real legal grounds at the moment for me to pursue it any further. But let me ask you this. Do you think she presents a danger to herself or her children? I’m asking as an officer of the law now.”
“There’s nothing I know that would lead me to believe she’s a threat in that way. She’s just very confused sometimes. As soon as I can, I’ll head out to her father’s place and talk to them both.”
Cork stood up and thanked the priest.
“See you in church tomorrow?” Saint Jag asked.
“I’m ushering.”
That golden boy smile returned. “Place in heaven for you, Cork.”
* * *
Shangri-La. That’s what Aphrodite McGill called her home on Apostle’s Cove. It was an odd-looking structure, built in the late 1960s by a wealthy architect who’d spent a good deal of time in Asia and who, everyone in Tamarack County speculated, was tripping on LSD the whole time he was at work on the place. The result was a bizarre mixture of Prairie School design and pagodas. He’d been a kind of guru as well, attracting a gaggle of misfits and malcontents searching for a place that might reconnect them with nature instead of a modern world, a place where they might finally fit in. Shangri-La, most of them came to realize, was not that place, and gradually they drifted off in search of other elusive Edens. But one disciple stayed, a free spirit who called herself Aphrodite and who, while in residence at Shangri-La, had given birth to a daughter. There was no father listed on the birth certificate, but she’d married the crazy architect, so most folks in Aurora assumed it must have been him. When he died of a barbiturate overdose, he left Shangri-La to Aphrodite, along with his substantial financial holdings. Aphrodite and her daughter were set for life.
Apostle’s Cove is a small inlet on Iron Lake a couple of miles south of Aurora. It was so named because an early missionary, who’d come to the wilderness to convert the heathens, had briefly established himself there. The rigors of life in that far north wilderness, so the story went, led to madness, and he ended up claiming to be one of the twelve Apostles, St. Peter to be exact. In the end he was hauled back to wherever it was he came from. But the cove retained the name that hinted at his unsettled state of mind.
Shangri-La had been built on a point of the cove. From the vast back terrace of the estate, the distant lights of Aurora were visible, as Aphrodite was fond of saying, “like the sparkle of fairy dust.” The front of the grounds opened onto the county highway, and passing vehicles were treated not only to the view of the flat roofs and jutting pagodas but very often to the sight of Aphrodite’s pink, flower-decorated VW bug, which she parked conspicuously in front of her home. She’d had several Beetles over the years, all of them pink and all of them named Tinker Bell.
When Cork pulled into the circular drive, he saw that a shiny black pickup sat behind the current iteration of Tinkerbell. In a county like Tamarack, black pickup trucks were a dime a dozen. He parked, rang the front doorbell, and from inside heard the melodious notes of three little gongs. It took a while for Aphrodite to open the door. When she did, she wore only a silk kimono, her feet were bare, her toenails painted cinnamon red. Her raven hair was swept up in a bun, held in place by an ornate Japanese pin. Loose tresses trailed down the nape of her neck like little black snakes. Her eyes were a bit unfocused. But she didn’t look at all like the crazy woman who’d attacked Cork in the sheriff’s department the day before. She wore lipstick and eye shadow and face powder and a rather pleasant perfume.
