Sign of the Cross Page 5

  “Hardly. I’m thirty years older than these girls. I don’t try to get them in a clinch.”

  “How well did you know Leeza Rae?”

  “Not very well. I had spoken to her a few times. She came to the centre as a part-time staff person some months before, I believe. She seemed to be a troubled young girl. Not surprising, I suppose, with the boyfriend in jail.”

  I knew the answer but I asked anyway. “In prison for what?”

  “Rape.” He practically spat out the word.

  “And this guy was still locked up at the time of the murder?”

  “Yes. That was my understanding.”

  “And what did you do after the dance?”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Looking for my alibi, are you then? I helped clean up afterwards, stacked chairs, took some items to the basement. Made a couple of trips back to the rectory with borrowed trays and things. Nothing much else.”

  “And how long did this go on, the cleaning up?”

  “I don’t know. An hour would it be? Not sure,” he answered.

  “You were seen doing all this good work, I assume?”

  “Ah. Your tone betrays a bit of exasperation with your client, Mr. Collins. But yes, of course I was seen. We were all pitching in. I wasn’t under anybody’s eye constantly, but I was in and out.” He leaned forwards with an amused look on his face. “The police were satisfied that I was where I was supposed to be.”

  “And after the ball was over, what did you do then?”

  “Mike O’Flaherty and I went back to the rectory, had a shot of whiskey each, and I went to bed. I assume Mike did the same.”

  “Is there anything else I should know, that you haven’t seen fit to tell me?” I asked as I got up and made ready to leave.

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “Do something for me, Father. Write up your version of events at the dance and any contact you ever had with Leeza Rae. Don’t leave anything out, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Just drop it at my office in an envelope with my name on it.”

  He nodded.

  I started for the stairs, then turned around. “Beautiful sound, your choir.”

  “Thank you. Keep that foremost in your mind, Mr. Collins. I’m a choirboy.”

  Chapter 3

  Way back in history three thousand years, in fact ever since

  the world began,

  There’s been a whole lot of good women sheddin tears over a

  brown-eyed handsome man.

  — Chuck Berry, “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man”

  I

  The day after my choir loft summit with Burke, I went to the St. Bernadette’s Youth Centre to see what I could glean from staff members who had attended the dance on the night Leeza Rae was killed. I decided not to phone first. Sometimes a cold call is more effective, and I wanted this probe to be as low-key and casual as possible. I started with the executive director, Sister Marguerite Dunne. She was a tall, distinguished-looking woman in her early sixties, with short iron-grey hair and shrewd green eyes. Sister Dunne was in civilian clothes — maybe all sisters are these days — but she wore a large silver cross around her neck. The nun had an aura of unshakeable confidence and authority. She seemed amused by my explanation that Rowan Stratton and other board members had asked me to gather some information about the night of the killing, in case parents of the students voiced any concerns. But she did agree to talk.

  Leeza Rae had come to St. Bernadette’s in January of 1989. One of the staffers met Leeza somewhere, after the boyfriend had been packed off to jail, and invited her to the centre. She volunteered for a few weeks, then was taken on as a part-time staff member. She got along fairly well with the others but, perhaps understandably given her history with an abusive partner, she tended to be easily upset and angered. There were no serious personality clashes, the nun hastened to say.

  “Now, on the night of the dance, Leeza was there how long? Did she stay till the dance was over?”

  “Yes, I’m fairly sure she did.”

  “Did she leave by herself?”

  “I didn’t see her leave.”

  “Who did she dance with, do you remember?”

  “I saw her dancing for part of the night. She also spent some time chatting with people and discussing the music with Ty MacDonald. But she danced, yes. I couldn’t tell you the names of her partners.”

  “Did she dance with any staff members? Or priests?”

  “Staff members, I don’t think so. They were quite busy, though they may have had a dance or two. Priests, yes. Father O’Flaherty anyway. She danced with him a couple of times.”

  “And Father Burke?”

  “I believe so, but I couldn’t say for sure.”

  I asked Sister Dunne who was around the building after the dance. She said all the organizers stayed to clear up. Among the people she saw lugging things in and out was Burke. Eileen Darragh was there the whole time afterwards and would be the best person to say who had been doing what.

  The other staff interviews were much the same. There had been nothing unusual in Leeza Rae’s demeanour. She was not a bubbly person, but she had been “on an even keel,” in the words of Rudi Martini, the man on the door.

  Eileen Darragh had a bit more to offer about the dance. She seemed to be the powerhouse, running the youth centre while Sister Dunne carried out her duties as a teaching principal of the choir school. I finally found Eileen becalmed when a scheduled meeting fell through. She remembered our hurried introduction at the church fair, and we shook hands. Eileen worked in the outer area of the director’s office, where she had a desk, a typewriter, computer, filing cabinets, and other accoutrements of office life. A black-and-white photograph of the centre hung on the wall beside her. There were several photos on the opposite wall, some in black and white, some in colour, showing groups of children staring into the camera.

  “Thanks for seeing me, Ms. Darragh.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you managed to find me at my desk. And it’s Eileen.”

  “I’m Monty. What can you tell me about Leeza Rae?”

  “Leeza Rae.” Eileen shook her head as she remembered. “Oh, Monty, there was a girl with problems. Some of them she brought on herself. That boyfriend. The gang rape of a young girl, fifteen years old. Thank God, the law made quick work of him. Serving time in Dorchester now.” Eileen sighed. “I should be more Christian about him, shouldn’t I? But there are certain things a woman cannot bring herself to do. Like take the side of a rapist. But don’t let me get off the subject. You were asking about poor Leeza. I met her a few months after the boyfriend was sent up the river. She was working as a cashier at the Windsor Street Sobeys, where I buy my groceries, and I started to chat with her. She was only a temporary replacement and was at loose ends. Of course I started going on about the centre and what we offer. She told me, not in any great detail, thank the Lord, about the boyfriend, Vic. And how she had taken the bus up to Dorchester to visit him! Imagine that. Well, the poor thing. Anyway I invited her to drop in any time. Hoping of course she would meet somebody better than Vic. She started coming in, volunteering on the desk, and later applied for a part-time staff position.”

  “How did she fit in?” I asked.

  “Not too badly, really. We had to tone her down a bit, smooth out some rough edges. But that’s what we’re here for, to help young people.”

  “Was there anyone in particular she was close to here?”

  “Me, to an extent,” Eileen answered, “which makes me ask myself, over and over, whether I should have seen warning signs. But it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”

  “Now, Eileen, the night of the dance. Did you notice anything unusua
l about Leeza? Anything different in her mood or behaviour?”

  She looked thoughtful. “Nothing I can put my finger on.”

  I heard footsteps outside the office. Eileen looked up and blushed a bright pink. “Oh, hello, Father.” The footsteps halted momentarily, then continued on. Eileen turned away to burrow in her handbag. When she surfaced her face was still pink but this could have been from bending over the bag. She had a tissue in her hand.

  “Who was that?” I asked innocently. “Am I taking up somebody’s time?”

  “No. It was just Father Burke.” She blew air into the tissue and tossed it into her waste basket. “Now, where was I? Leeza Rae. She may have had something on her mind, but I could be imagining it. When tragedy strikes, I think we tend to look back and find significance in things we would have forgotten otherwise. But Leeza chatted with people, had a few dances. I can’t really say there was anything unusual.”

  “Who did she dance with, can you recall?”

  “Several of the young men. She had a couple of dances with Tyler MacDonald. Other than that, I don’t know.”

  “Did she dance with any of the priests?” Either of the priests, I meant.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “No?” I asked.

  “Well, maybe with Father O’Flaherty. That man never gets tired of dancing. But I didn’t see them together myself.”

  “And Father Burke?”

  “No, I’m pretty sure about that. He hardly knew Leeza.” Protecting him, I wondered, or trying to blot out the image of the priest in the arms of the younger woman?

  “Did you see her leave, Eileen?”

  “I’ve tried to remember that. I think I saw her leave alone. If only I could remember more clearly.”

  “I appreciate this, Eileen. I’ll let you get back to work.”

  She saw me looking at the pictures on the wall as I got up to leave. “St. Bernie’s in the olden days,” she explained. “We were an orphanage, you know.” Yes, I remembered that now. The St. Bernadette’s Home for Children. “The orphanage ceased operations in, what was it, 1979? By then there weren’t as many orphans, or abandoned children to be more accurate, so the archdiocese closed the orphanage. The building sat empty for a long time, then it was resurrected as the youth centre. And choir school, of course.”

  “How long have you been here, Eileen?”

  “I’ve been here all my life. Do you believe that?”

  “You mean —” I gestured towards the group photos “— you were here as a child?”

  “Yep. That’s me. In 1968. I was eight years old then.” A plain, slightly overweight child, with a round face and lank dark hair, stared morosely at the camera. I had been estimating her age at around forty. She was in fact ten years younger. “I look a bit like a lost soul there but I wasn’t really.” She gazed intently at her former self.

  “What was it like for you, being brought up in an orphanage? I can’t imagine it, I’m sorry.”

  “Few people can imagine it, I know, those who grew up in families. But it wasn’t all that bad. They did their best. You hear horror stories about places like this, but nobody was treated badly here. At least not by the standards of the time. People sometimes forget that what is not acceptable now was the norm back then. Some of the nuns were strict, and some were a little too free with the strap, but others were kind.” She swallowed, clasped her hands together and went on. “It wasn’t like being in a family of your own, but they did their best for us, God love them. And I’m still here! No wonder I tend to — well, some people say I’m a bit bossy here, Monty. They may be right. St. Bernie’s has been my whole life, and sometimes I forget I don’t own the place!”

  II

  I wasn’t getting a lot of useful information about the last hours of Leeza’s life. And I knew virtually nothing about her death. What had been done to her body to convince the police, or Moody Walker at least, that this was a religious killing? The details would not be available from the police unless, well, unless my client was charged with the murder. But the police were not the only ones who had seen the victim’s body. The technicians at the morgue would have seen it, as would the pathologist who performed the autopsy, and the people at the funeral home. Stratton Sommers often used a private investigator for surveillance and matters that required clandestine activity. But the Burke file was not being circulated around the office and I suspected Rowan would not want to bring in a private eye. I decided to handle this my own way.

  If there was one person in the world I could rely on to do something right and keep quiet afterwards, it was my wife. Estranged wife. She may have been the one person in the world I did not want to be in the same room with for more than five minutes, but I had faith in her abilities and her discretion. Maura knew a number of people who toil away at the kinds of tasks the rest of us take for granted, necessary but unpleasant work that we may not want to hear about. She was frequently at the side of underpaid workers in their struggles for better conditions and job security. Did she perhaps know some of the people who had handled Leeza Rae’s body once the police and the crime scene people had finished with it?

  To maintain solicitor-client privilege, I would retain Maura as a lawyer working as part of a team for Burke. That way, nobody could say we had waived his right to confidentiality by revealing something to an outsider. I called the rectory but Burke was out. I heard from him an hour or so later.

  “Hello, Father Burke.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Collins?”

  “I’m not comfortable operating with so little information about the murder scene. If there were religious or ritualistic aspects to the killing or to the scene, I want to know what they were.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. Burke eventually spoke. “Yes?”

  “I do not want to stir anything up when I go looking for this information. Nor do I want your file going outside a very limited orbit.”

  “Right.”

  “So what I would like to do, with your permission, is retain someone I can trust to be very discreet. My wife.”

  “Some class of husband-wife confidentiality, you mean?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. She is a lawyer and a law professor.”

  “Ah.”

  “She would be one of your solicitors, so there would be no breach of confidentiality. And she has ways of getting information out of people without them realizing what she’s doing. Finally, and this is crucial, she keeps her mouth shut. Except when she’s tearing strips off me.”

  He laughed, in a rather unpriestly manner. “Sounds like my kind of woman.”

  “I meant she can be very, well, assertive. Verbally.”

  “Yes, I get the picture. She gives you a tuning now and then, does she, Montague? More women should be like that. The world would be a finer place. Do what you think is best, counsellor. And if you ever want to get information out of me, send her over.” Click.

  I took that as my authorization to retain Maura on his behalf and I wrote an ass-covering memo to that effect for the file. Now it was time to endure the sort of verbal abuse that a lawyer expects to receive from a judge, or opposing counsel, but that he hopes he will not have to suffer from the person he once pledged to love and honour until death. I dropped in at my wife’s office at the law school.

  Maura MacNeil was admittedly an attractive woman. She was probably twenty-five pounds over her ideal weight and, to give credit where credit is due, she didn’t give a damn. She had dusky brown hair to her shoulders, grey, slightly almond-shaped eyes, a generous mouth, and a deceptively sweet face: the “pretty face” that people are apparently not supposed to mention — for reasons I have never understood — in connection with a zaftig figure.

&nbs
p; It had been a while since I’d been in her office but the place never changed, except for the addition of more and more books to the piles on the table and floor. The wall to my left was covered with banners exhorting people to wake up to poverty, injustice and exploitation; wickedly funny cartoons lampooned the exploiters and their lackeys in government. The wall opposite contained gorgeous photos of her native Cape Breton, and a poster of the Men of the Deeps, the coal miners’ choir, of which her dad was a member. The men wore their helmets and their lights were shining. Alec “the Trot” MacNeil’s daughter was writing furiously at her desk.

  “Good morning, Professor,” I began. “What’s the rule against perpetuities? I’ve forgotten, and I need it for a case I’m working on.”

  She looked up. “Oh, it’s you, Collins. We’ve all forgotten the rule against perpetuities. Nobody needs it. So move on to your next point.”

  “I need you.”

  “Well, I don’t need you. But your children do, so I guess you’re going to be a part of my life into perpetuity, aren’t you?” “Looks that way.”

  She got up from her desk and cleared an armload of journals from one of the chairs. “Well? You don’t have to stand there. Have a seat.”

  Emboldened by what I perceived almost as kindness, I ventured a compliment. “You look bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked today.”

  “I have a fever of a hundred and four!” she retorted.

  Shit. I decided not to waste any more time. “Listen, Maura. I’d like to retain you on a murder file I’m working on.”

  “Murder? You don’t get many of those at Stratton Sommers.”

  “I’ll explain. Can we get together? Maybe you could bring the kids over for dinner tonight.”

  “Is your place still all torn up? How long does it take to get some floors refinished? I don’t relish sitting there and getting dust all over my arse, just for the privilege of eating overcooked spaghetti and listening to you.”

  “So,” I sought clarification, “you’re inviting me to your place then.”