Bryan Gruley - The Skeleton Box

“So the guy was your basic household lawyer for years, then in the 1990s he starts taking on these errands for Eagan, MacDonald.”

“For the archdiocese,” Joanie said.

I was trying to think about all of it, all at once: Mrs. B dead. Nilus. The murdered nun. Tatch’s camp. Breck. The digging. Tatch and my mother in jail. The piece of what appeared to be a map. The rosary. The archdiocese. Breck again.

Joanie clapped a hand on my thigh and leaned in close enough that I glimpsed pale freckles through the laces at the neck of her jersey.

“Wake up, Gus,” she said. “Why are you here? Why do you care about this guy? What does all this have to do with what happened to Phyllis Bontrager?”

“My mother knows something.”

“About these pedophile priests?”

“No.” I shifted my legs so that her hand came off my thigh. “About a nun who was killed in Starvation a long time ago.”

I told Joanie about Sister Cordelia and the man who had been accused of killing her, Breck’s grandfather. I told her about Nilus and his womanizing. I left the lockbox out of it.

“Is that why you asked about meeting with the archdiocese?”

“I wanted to know more about Nilus.”

“Good gut, then.”

“Maybe. Interesting that Eagan, MacDonald is their law firm.”

“Why?”

“The firm’s been quietly buying up land on a corner of the lake. It’s not prime land, it’s not even on the water, but all of a sudden everybody’s interested in it.”

“And you’re thinking…”

“I wonder if they’re buying it for the archdiocese.”

“Because…”

I hesitated, not sure I wanted to say it yet. “I don’t know. We can ask tomorrow.”

“You mean today.” She leaned back to look at the clock on her stove. “Holy cripes, it’s almost four-thirty.”

Through the blinds on her sole window I heard traffic stirring on the Chrysler Freeway. Her new look aside, Joanie was now the Joanie I remembered, shoving me toward conclusions, as she had when she was at the Pilot and we were looking into the past of a hockey coach. She unfolded herself and stood, the Rats jersey falling to her knees. “You know,” she said, “I don’t miss Starvation much. But I do miss you.”

“Sure, as long as you don’t have to work for me.”

“Time for bed, eh?”

I looked around the room. There was nothing but hard-backed chairs. No sofa, no armchair, not even a beanbag chair.

“Hell,” I said, “maybe we ought to just go get some breakfast.”

“You don’t like Pop-Tarts?” She slid onto the bottom step of the ladder to her loft. “I’m going up. What about you?”

The silence that followed probably was shorter than it seemed to me. “I’ll be OK,” I said. Joanie regarded me for a second, then started up the ladder. She was cute and tough and passionate, which made her beautiful, in her way. I made myself think of Darlene in Dad’s tree house the night her mother died.

I watched Joanie climb away from me.

She stopped at the top. Something, maybe a pipe, made a lurching sound inside a wall. “Nothing has to happen, Gus.”

“I know.”

She waited. I stayed. “All right,” she said. “See you in three hours.”

My cell phone woke me.

“Damn,” I croaked. I’d thought I had turned the thing off. I jumped up from where I had dozed off on a wool rug with my coat balled up beneath my head for a pillow. The phone was in my coat. I pulled it out and answered.

“Where the hell are you?” Luke Whistler said. I checked the stove clock. Not quite seven. On the floor at the foot of the loft ladder lay the Rats jersey Joanie had been wearing earlier, covering the boots I’d taken off to sleep.

“I had to run an errand.”

“At seven in the morning? You know your mom’s in jail?”

“I do.”

I heard a chair squeak through the phone. Whistler was at the Pilot. “Got the coroner’s report.”

“They released it?”

“Not publicly.”

I glanced up at the loft, turned my body away, lowered my voice.

“How come you bullshitted me about Breck?” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I asked you if you knew Breck. You said no. But you’ve been checking up on the guy.”

“You going through my mail?”

“It’s Pilot mail, pal.”

“OK, boss,” Whistler said. He sounded annoyed, but I didn’t care. “You got me. Although I didn’t really lie. I didn’t, and don’t, know this character. But I was trying to get to know him, for a story.”

“What story?”

“He’s supposedly in hot water with the state. They might disbar him. Which wouldn’t be good for the born-agains’ tax appeal.”

“First I heard of it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure it’s true.”

“Do me a favor and keep me posted.”

“I will. Sorry. Really. If you can’t trust a fellow scribe, who can you trust? It’s me and you and the rest of the world, right?”

“What about the coroner’s report?”

“Confirmed homicide,” he said. “Blunt trauma to the head, from a blow and from falling to the floor. She had a pretty bad gash above one eye, but that wasn’t the cause.”

“It wasn’t just a heart attack or something?”

“Everybody dies of heart attacks,” Whistler said. “A guy gets shot in the head, he dies of heart failure. Could be the break-in artist freaked out, so it wasn’t premeditated. But it’s a dead body. Your pal in the pokey may have a problem.”

“Have they charged him yet?”

“Nothing yet. And the cops ain’t talking a lick. I got in the sheriff’s face a little and your girlfriend threatened to usher me off the premises.”

“My ex-girlfriend.”

“Really? I don’t get that impression.”

I wasn’t about to engage Whistler on Darlene and whatever Tawny Jane had told him across the pillow.

“You don’t think they really believe Tatch did it, do you?” I said.

“Nah. I think they want him to give up the other guy. Meantime, some of the local yokels have been making noise about that Tex kid not playing in the big game. D’Alessio’s got them all riled up, saying this is all Dingus’s fault, he arrested the wrong guy. They’re getting up a posse to go demonstrate at the Jesus camp.”

“When?”

“This afternoon. People got signs in their windows: ‘Free Tex.’ Why’s he called Tex anyway?”

“Long story. Does Tatch have a lawyer?”

“Had that Flapp guy for a few hours. Then Breck took over. He supposedly told the cops Mr. Edwards isn’t going to say a word.”

I heard Joanie stir, glanced up, saw her naked shoulders, white as winter.

“Can you do me a favor?” I said. “Check on my mom.”

“Sure thing. By the way, your boss called.”

“Philo?”

“He sounds barely old enough to drive.”

Philo must have been calling about that board of directors meeting. I couldn’t believe that that collection of wide-assed retirees collecting per diems for telling the CEO he’s a genius would have the guts to switch the Pilot to online publication only. They would sit around their mahogany table the size of a rowboat and make their speeches about the future of newspapers until one of them motioned to table the subject until the next month’s meeting so they could all retire to the Knife and Fork Club for filets and cigars.

“Hey,” Joanie said. She was leaning over the edge of her loft, blanket bunched beneath her chin. “Who you talking to?”

I ignored her. “OK, thanks, I’ll check in later.” I ended the call.

“You want to shower?”

I looked at the phone, saw it was almost out of power, clicked it off. “No thanks,” I said. “Could we get some eggs before our appointment?”