William Kienzle - Man Who Loved God

“Tom,” Father Tully asked, “what was in the letter?”

“Letter?”

“The letter you just got from Barbara … the letter you’re holding.

Adams slumped into a chair. As he did so, the now crumpled letter fell from his left hand to the floor. The priest bent to pick it up. “Okay if I read it?”

Adams nodded.

Tully read the handwritten letter aloud.

Dearest Tom,

Of course I’ll marry you. I wasn’t quite prepared for all you said today. After I recovered from the surprise and shock, I realized what a generous and loving proposal you made. I’m flattered-and grateful.

But you may not want to marry me after I tell you something I want you to hear from me and from no one else.

Here the handwriting became somewhat less legible. As if she were reluctant to go on-or at least undecided as to whether to go on.

I told you there was no love or lovemaking between me and Al. That is the truth. But I created the impression that you were my one and only partner. That is not true.

While I was with you, I was having affairs with Jack, Lou, and Marty, your three execs. It pains me even to read this as I write it. I honestly didn’t know which one of you four was my child’s father. I notified each of you about my condition. At Al’s wake I made a separate appointment with each of you.

I was desperate. I needed money for me and the child. It wasn’t that Al had left me-us-penniless; I wanted enough so we’d never have to be concerned about financial security. The other three were married. What I wanted from them was financial support-not marriage.

As I talked to each of them I fabricated office scuttlebutt that hinted that they were guilty of some banking crime. It was sheer blackmail on my part.

Not only did I strike out on the crime charge, but I learned that two of them are incapable of fathering a child. And the third had no reason to think he was the father.

But one thing may be of immediate importance. In bluffing my way to blackmail, I accused Jack Fradet of financial skullduggery-to provide a golden parachute for himself if or when he was let go. That charge seemed to touch a raw nerve. He looked like he wanted to kill me on the spot. So I backed off, more in fear than anything else. Then he calmed down. Regardless, I think I got close to a major problem for the bank and for you.

I feel better now that I’ve told you; I know you’ll be able to handle it-

“Of course …” Adams interrupted the priest’s reading. “I couldn’t understand why we were showing such a profit. But he wasn’t building a golden parachute. No, more than likely he was creating a false sense of security: he was paving the way for a takeover.”

Father Tully nodded, and returned to the letter.

Any other secret I may have is mine alone. Just please trust that there is no other problem that will interfere with the happiness of our marriage-that is, if you still want me.

None of you four knew about the others. There is always the possibility that they will learn. That’s why I wanted you to hear it from me.

I await your response.

With love,

Barbara

Oh, my! Father Tully had suspected something was going on between Barbara and the executives, but-oh, my!

He puzzled over her statement, Any other secret I may have is mine alone. One would think that after the first momentous secret, there couldn’t be too many more. Evidently, the final secret seemingly was not of a nature liable to disrupt an otherwise happy marriage.

Father Tully could not know what only Joyce Hunter’s husband and daughter knew-that Barbara was a lesbian.

“Would you?” the priest asked. “Would you have married Barbara knowing what is in this letter?”

Adams blinked several times as if returning from profound abstraction. “Would I have married her? Of course. She was carrying my child. I am not without sin. Who is?”

Silence.

“I am grateful to you, Father,” Adams said finally, wearily. “You and you alone stopped me from doing something foolish and wrong. How did you know …? How did you know what I was about to do? How did you know where I was?”

Tully pondered the questions. All that was on his mind, all that had come to him in an extended blinding flash was not yet coordinated to the point where he could explain it logically.

But he would try to address Adams’s questions. “The police were working on the theory that if they found the father of Barbara’s child, they would also have her killer-the idea being that the father didn’t want the baby, so he killed both mother and child.

“But when you claimed that you were the father and also claimed that you hadn’t killed Barbara, I believed you were telling the truth. That destroyed the hypothesis that the father of the child had killed its mother. As good a theory as that was in providing a motive for the killing, since you are the father and you did not kill Barbara, there had to be another motive for her murder.

“Then you told me you had just received a letter from her. You said you’d call me right back. When you didn’t, I called you. Your secretary said you’d left your office.

“Why would you have done that? Why hadn’t you returned the call? It had to have something to do with that letter. Barbara had to have written something that greatly disturbed you-enough to force you to some sort of action. Maybe she guessed who her killer would be? Whatever, it was something cataclysmic, I was sure of that.

“I called Sergeant Mangiapane and then I got here as fast as I could.”

The priest had Adams’s attention. “But how did you know where to find me? If you had been a minute or two later, I would have done the most foolhardy thing in my entire life.”

“That was more luck than anything. I was looking on your desk for Barbara’s letter when I spotted the word you had written on a scrap of paper.”

“‘Judas’?”

“Yes-Judas. An odd word to scribble. But it told me you were after someone you felt had betrayed you. I recalled what you had told me at your banquet: how your bank was not one of the conglomerates, but that the big banks were always out looking for smaller banks to devour.

“You were dedicated to keeping the bank financially alive and well. Yours is a family bank and you are dedicated to keeping it that way. You even belong to the Independent Bankers Association to join with other independents who want to avoid forced mergers.

“I knew from talking to Jack Fradet and others at your dinner that his job as comptroller of this bank is, among other things, to gather information and to assess the financial status of the bank. If he gave you the wrong information, misinformed you, the bank could be weakened-a ready victim for a takeover.

“He’s the one who could best play the traitor. You went looking for him. I went looking for you.”

Adams nodded slowly. “When I read in Barbara’s letter about Fradet’s reaction to her bluff, everything fell into place. I had thought the bank was having some extraordinary good fortune. That misinformation led us into one mode of business while we should actually have been going in the opposite direction. He deliberately set us up for disaster.

“After I read her letter I immediately checked the books. Now that I was looking for it and knew what to look for, I saw what Jack had done. I could have killed him!” He shook his head sadly. “I almost did.”

“And this gives the police a different motive for Barbara’s murder,” said Father Tully. “She died not because she was carrying the killer’s child, but because the murderer believed-falsely-that Barbara Ulrich was onto his game.”

“Now … if only they can prove it,” Adams said.

“What’s going on here?” A demanding Zoo Tully stood in the doorway.