The Mill River Recluse Page 30

  “Just the same, after I take Daisy home, I think I’ll come back and stay the night,” he said. “You shouldn’t be left alone anymore.”

  “No, Michael, tomorrow is Sunday, and you’ve got services to prepare. I’ll be fine, really. I insist that you go home.”

  She was adamant. Despite his concern, the last thing he wanted to do was upset her. Perhaps one more night alone wouldn’t hurt anything.

  “All right,” he said finally, “but I don’t like the thought of your being here by yourself. Tomorrow, I’m going to make arrangements for a nurse to be here all the time.”

  A sigh was the only indication that Mary had heard him. After a moment, she turned her head on the pillow. “Michael, could you raise the bed a bit more,” she said. “I can hardly see out the window.” He turned the crank at the side of her hospital bed, slowly raising it into an upright position. It had started to snow, the kind of large, fluffy flakes that precede a major storm.

  “Michael?”

  “Yes?”

  “There is one last thing I need to tell you, something you don’t know, that I intend to reveal to the others in town as well.”

  She raised her head to look at him. Her expression simultaneously acknowledged his surprise and prevented him from speaking. In a gravelly voice, she half-whispered her most private secret, the answer to a question he had asked himself for sixty years.

  As she waited for his response, he blinked rapidly. “I wasn’t sure, but recently, I’ve suspected as much,” he said finally. “It means so much to me to finally know.”

  “I wanted to tell you earlier, but I couldn’t. Somehow, the time wasn’t right. But after the trip into Rutland, everything changed.” Mary smiled and leaned back, watching the patches of white fluttering outside her window. “Isn’t the snow beautiful?”

  “Yes, it is.” He was barely able to speak.

  “You need to promise me, Michael, that you won’t sit here all night. There’s no need. Do you promise?”

  “Mary, I--”

  “Please promise me, Michael.”

  He put his head in his hands. “I promise. I’ll stay only until you fall asleep.”

  “And you’ve got the letter and gift?”

  “Yes, Mary dear.”

  With a loud miaow, Mary’s cat jumped up on the bed. The Siamese curled up next to her, nudging her hand for attention.

  “Hello, Sham-Sham,” she said, stroking the cat’s head. “When I’m gone, you’ll find him a good home, won’t you?”

  “Of course, Mary, of course.” He reached over to her, smoothed a strand of gray hair away from her face. She smiled with her eyes closed.

  “Michael?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you for being my friend. Thank you…so much.” Her voice was soft and a bit slurred. She drifted into sleep before he could reply.

  He was so afraid now, afraid that she would be gone by morning, afraid of being without her. He wanted to stay, to break his promise to her, but he had never broken any promise to her. He couldn’t start now, especially if his promise to go home was the last he would ever make to her. He would leave, make sure Daisy got home safely, and return to the marble mansion at first light.

  Father O’Brien looked down at Mary as he put on his coat. Sham purred and stared at him with sleepy blue eyes. He said a silent prayer and made the sign of the cross as he stood above them.

  “God bless you, Mary dear,” he whispered, trying to muster the strength to force himself back downstairs and out into the night.

  Chapter 21

  The town hall was almost full.

  Father O’Brien stood quietly in a doorway off the main meeting room. While new additions—a kitchen and a wing for the town offices—had been constructed within the last dozen years or so, the original central meeting room of the town hall building was old, as old as Mill River itself. Inside, the wooden walls stretching up into exposed beams were wonderfully acoustic. The dull floorboards, worn by thousands of footsteps over many decades, creaked as people shuffled in from outside.

  The town hall was used for various gatherings throughout the year—the Rotary Club and the Kiwanis held their meetings there. Members of St. John’s played bingo in the town hall every Thursday night. Senior citizens came to watch old movies on Saturday afternoons. The old building was the rainy-day site for the town’s semiannual yard sale and the regular site for the annual town meeting in March.

  The merry throng in the main meeting room greeted each new arrival. Women carried covered dishes to the kitchen at the far side of the building while the men joined clusters of others already talking and laughing. Children darted through the crowd playing tag and hide-and-seek.

  Father O’Brien held Mary’s small brown package in his hands, and he turned it over and over, slowly, feeling the edge of the taped paper. Watching the townspeople assembling for the meeting, Father O’Brien knew that he should be among them, visiting, making small talk. He was Mill River’s only priest, after all. But he was afraid--no, he knew--that if he opened himself up to conversation, he would be peppered with questions about his upcoming announcement. And about Mary.

  He would lie low until it was his turn to be heard. It was just as well. His current emotional state would make socializing with all of those people difficult.

  For him, this Town Meeting Day was a somber occasion. It was the day he would keep his promise to Mary.

  “Well, Father, I dunno how much more excitement this little town can take.” Fitz came up to lean against the doorway beside him. They’re all dying to know about your announcement. I know more than most, and I’m pretty curious myself, if truth be told. And add to that the whole mess with Leroy this past weekend, well.” Fitz shook his head. “It’s the most that’s happened in Mill River in years.”

  “That’s definitely true,” Father O’Brien said. “I saw the article in the Gazette yesterday.”

  “Yep. The Herald had a story on it, too. And we’ve got TV stations out of Burlington calling for interviews. We’re just now in the beginning stages of the investigation.”

  “The Gazette said that Leroy will be charged with arson and attempted murder.”

  Fitz nodded. “Yep, and whatever else we can make stick. We’re not quite sure yet, but he’ll be in the hospital for a while longer, so we’ve got some time to pull everything together.”

  “You feel certain he was really the one who started the fire?” Father O’Brien asked.

  “Personally, I’m dead sure of it,” Fitz said. “And I think we’ve got all the evidence we’ll need to prove it. The whole back of the bakery was covered in fresh graffiti, and the fire department says the cause of the fire was a Molotov cocktail chucked through the back window. We executed a warrant on Leroy’s car and found black spray paint, beer bottles, an empty gasoline jug--everything he’d need to make homemade bottle-bombs. From the way he was sprawled outside the building, we think one of those bottles exploded on him. Burned his face and hand pretty bad. But here’s the kicker—somebody made a bogus burglary call just before the fire. The boys and I rushed out to Doc Richardson’s and scared the poor man half to death before we realized what was going on. I called dispatch as soon as I could after the fire and had them trace the 911 call. Turns out it came from Leroy’s cell phone, and he was right downtown here when he made it.”

  “Oh, dear,” Father O’Brien said.

  “It’s pretty damning, if you’ll pardon the expression,” Fitz said. “He tried to hide his number with one of those fancy extra services the cell phone companies offer, but those features don’t work with the 911 system. It was stupid of him not to know that.”

  “Why would he have wanted to burn the bakery in the first place?”

  “We’ve had some ideas about motive,” Fitz said. “I thought at first that he wanted to get back at me for putting him on desk duty. Hell, he should’ve been grateful I didn’t fire him after he wrecked the Jeep. But yesterday, we searched his house, too, and y
ou’ll never guess what we found.”

  Father O’Brien raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

  “A whole stack of magazines, you know, porno magazines, but with Claudia Simon’s face glued in over the faces of the women.”

  “Claudia Simon? The teacher?”

  “Yep. He had a bunch of photos of her, some of ‘em with the faces cut out. He must’ve been watching her for months. We think he might’ve been in her house at some point, too. When we looked through his clothing at the hospital, we found a pair of women’s underwear in his coat pocket, probably Claudia’s. Kyle said Leroy came on to her real strong a few weeks ago, but she rejected him. As best we can tell, Leroy heard about her starting to date Kyle and snapped.”

  “So he was trying to get rid of Kyle?”

  “Maybe, and Claudia, too. She was at Kyle’s place above the bakery the night of the fire.”

  “Oh, dear,” Father O’Brien said again.

  “It’s just plain nuts,” Fitz agreed. “By the way, none of what I just told you has been made public yet, so keep it to yourself, would you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Father O’Brien said.

  For several minutes, he stood with Fitz, watching the crowd in the main meeting room. Daisy was among those moving about. He noticed that she carried a small notebook as she made her way from person to person.

  “I guess Daisy’s taking orders for her St. Patrick’s Day potion,” Fitz said.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Father O’Brien said. “But look, it’s different this year. People aren’t trying to avoid her.”

  Fitz watched Daisy for another moment. “I’ll be darned,” he said. “I guess more than a few folks read the Gazette article and realized she might be more credible than they thought.”

  Daisy, along with Fitz and a few firefighters, had been quoted in the article in the Gazette. She had recounted her chance encounter with Leroy in the woods and her call to the Mill River police. Curious to hear from her just what she had seen, the people in the meeting room greeted her warmly and invited her into their conversations.

  “I thought it was an animal,” she said to a group of people nearest the doorway, “but it was a man dressed in black.”

  “You think Leroy had anything to do with Daisy’s trailer burning last November?” Father O’Brien asked.

  “Seems probable,” Fitz replied. “He was wearing a ski mask the night of the fire, and she actually saw him messing around behind the bakery. Called Ron to report it before we all had to leave for the burglary prank. Leroy might’ve had it in for Daisy, too, because last October, she filed a complaint with me about him. Said he’d threatened to kick her dog after it took a leak on the wheel of his car. Apparently, she was the only witness. I didn’t know whether what she claimed was true, but I made Leroy apologize to her anyway. The whole thing sort of blew over, but her trailer burned down less than a month later. Suspicious, huh?”

  “She was adamant about having seen a man running away from the fire that night,” Father O’Brien said.

  “I know,” Fitz said. “A man dressed in black. And when she called the station early Saturday morning, she told Ron the guy she saw behind the bakery was the same one that had run from her trailer the night it burned. I don’t know if we’ll be able to prove anything, but we’ll be asking Leroy about Daisy’s fire once he’s well enough to be interrogated. But anyhow, the similarities are proof enough for me and, from the looks of it, some of the others in town.” Fitz squinted down at his watch. “It’s just about four, so I’m going to say hello to a few more folks and then call the meeting to order. Why don’t you sit with Ruth and me at the supper afterwards?”

  “Sure thing,” Father O’Brien said. Fitz grinned and headed toward a podium at the front of the meeting room. As the elected moderator, it was his responsibility to chair the meeting.

  Alone again, Father O’Brien looked over the crowd. Kyle Hansen was there, sitting with his daughter on one side and Claudia Simon on the other. Rowen was such a doll, chattering away to Kyle and Claudia as they looked down at her with bemusement. Father O’Brien was grateful that the little girl still had her father, especially knowing what Fitz had revealed to him.

  “So, Miss Simon,” Rowen said, looking at Claudia across her father’s lap, “are you going to marry my Dad?”

  Father O’Brien had to stifle a laugh as he watched Claudia’s face puckering and reddening. “Rowen, honey, you’re not supposed to ask questions like that,” Kyle said to his daughter, smiling. “It’s embarrassing.” Claudia was smiling, too, although she looked more flustered than anything else.

  “Sorry,” Rowen said, more to Kyle than Claudia. “But Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  Rowen dropped her voice almost to a whisper, as if sharing a special father-daughter secret. “I like Miss Simon a lot. And if you get married, she could be my new mom, and I wouldn’t have to call her ‘Miss Simon’ anymore.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well,” Kyle said, with mock seriousness, “I’ll definitely take that into consideration. You know, Miss Simon and I haven’t known each other too long, so I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. But, I’ll tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I like her a lot, too.”

  “Could everyone take their seats?” Fitz called from the podium. There was no microphone, and he spoke loudly.

  Father O’Brien slipped out of the doorway. He passed the crowded front row of chairs, stopping briefly to greet a middle-aged man in a gray suit. As he expected, the last row of chairs was still almost empty, and he lowered himself into a seat. The din of conversation dropped off as others sat down. Fitz took up a gavel at the podium and rapped three times.

  “The meeting will come to order,” Fitz said. “I’d like to welcome everyone to the annual Mill River Town Meeting. Our agenda is much the same as in past years. We’ll elect town officers for the year, then debate and vote on the town and school budgets. Oh, and I believe Father O’Brien has an announcement he’d like to make. My Ruthie and some of our other fine ladies are working to set up our potluck supper, which we’ll have after the meeting.”

  At Fitz’s mention of his announcement, many people turned in their seats to look back at him. Father O’Brien only smiled. The room began to buzz again.

  “Our first order of business is the election of the Town Clerk,” Fitz said, but Father O’Brien was already tuning out the police chief’s voice. He was thinking about the envelope in his breast pocket and the brown package in his lap. Subconsciously, he pressed a hand against his pocket to make sure that the envelope was there. He felt it and his reading glasses, too, and was reassured.

  The meeting passed in a blur. From time to time, Father O’Brien heard Fitz’s voice booming, “Is there any further discussion?” or sometimes, “Forward your ballots.” There was heated debate over whether there was enough money in the school budget to hire an additional teacher’s aide and purchase new books for the library. In the end, the library lost.

  About an hour and a half into the meeting, Ruth Fitzgerald and several other women began setting warmed covered dishes on a long table on one side of the meeting room. There were hams and fried chicken, homemade stews and baked beans and potato salad. The long table could accommodate only a fraction of the numerous side dishes and casseroles, and the many desserts would have to wait in the kitchen until later.

  From his seat at the rear of the meeting room, Father O’Brien could see the heads turning toward the long table. Even the adults were starting to fidget and whisper. He was wondering whether Ruth had brought any tart cherry pie for the potluck supper when he heard Fitz ask, “Is there any further business before we hear from Father O’Brien?”

  The room grew very still as the curious faces turned back toward him again.

  Fitz waited a few moments. Hearing no requests, he stepped out from behind the podium. “It’s all yours, Father,�
� he said, and sat down in a chair off to the side.

  Father O’Brien rose and walked to the front of the meeting room. At the podium, he felt the expectant attention of four hundred people. He straightened his shoulders and looked out at the many familiar faces. He had been alone in front of a crowd so many times during his life, and yet, this time was different. The enormous sense of responsibility and loyalty he felt threatened to crush him into the old wooden floor.

  He placed the brown package on the podium in front of him before taking his reading glasses and the envelope out of his pocket. With trembling hands, he unfolded his glasses.

  It was time.

  “About a month ago,” he began, “Mill River lost one of its longtime residents. Mary McAllister lived in the white marble house on the hill—all of us have seen it a thousand times. But not more than one or two of you ever saw Mary. That was the way she wanted it, but not for reasons you might imagine.

  “I knew Mary well. I was introduced to her and her husband’s family shortly after I was assigned to St. John’s. That was more than sixty years ago. Mary’s wedding was one of the first I ever officiated. Not even a year after that wedding, she’d lost her father and her husband. Her husband was abusive, and he disfigured her before he himself was killed in a car accident.

  “You may be wondering why Mary was so reclusive. You see, Mary suffered from social anxiety disorder. She was terribly nervous around other people, and it only became worse as she got older. Physically, she went to pieces around strangers. When I first met her, doctors didn’t know how to help someone with her condition. It wasn’t even recognized as an illness. Back then, people with Mary’s condition were usually put into mental hospitals and rarely got out.”

  Father O’Brien paused. The people facing him were listening attentively. They appeared—at least temporarily—to have forgotten the feast covering the long table.

  “But Mary was lucky. Her husband’s grandfather, Conor McAllister, was a kind and decent man. He loved Mary as a granddaughter. He felt responsible for what his grandson had done to her, and he made sure that no one sent her away to a mental hospital. Conor gave her enough money to enable her to be financially secure for the rest of her life. He also asked me to look after Mary once he was gone. He was old, he said, and worried that once he died, Mary would have no one.