Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

to the end of the block. There was an alleyway that led down the side of the brownstone to the church yard. There was a gate with a padlock at the near end, and another where it connected with the church.

“What are you thinking?” She had her skeptical face on.

I smiled. “I’m not. I just want to know what the place looks like.”

We walked back up Lafayette and made our way through the large, iron gates that guarded the entrance to the House of the Almighty. There was a gravel path that led, among lawns, to the Gothic arch of the main door. To the left, attached to the main nave, was a house built in a similar style, also made of gray stone, though the gabled roof was of dark slate tiles. The door was a cheerful, fire engine red, with a shiny brass knocker in the middle.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Is he at home having tea, or is he doing God’s work?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she followed me around the side of the church, through the grounds. There were a lot of trees, mainly plane trees, though there were some poplars and cypresses too.

“This was my mom’s church,” she said. “When I was a kid, we used to come here on Sunday.”

A footpath ran along the side of the building. At the end, where the main body of the church ended, there was a sharp angle to the left. It had the depth of the nave, maybe forty or fifty feet, and formed another angle with an old red brick building that looked as though it might have been a coach house or a stable. A number of fruit trees had been planted in the lee of the walls.

The footpath continued past this recess until the grass was replaced with concrete, and two steps led down to the iron gate that we had seen at the end of the alleyway. I surveyed all this and asked, “Did your dad come with you?”

“No, he used to go to the synagogue.”

We started back toward the front of the church. “How come you went with your mom and not your dad?”

“I went to both. Sometimes it was one-week mom, one-week dad. Sometimes it was months. They were never sure how to handle it and they were never sure how best to please God.”

“I never got it,” I said.

“Never got what?”

“Three religions, all devoted to the same god, all trying real hard to please him, and instead of being grateful, he gives all three of them a real hard time.”

She gave a small laugh. “He gave the oil to the Muslims, the banks to the Jews, and the empires to the Christians, but the tortured souls He distributed evenly amongst all three.”

We had reached the main entrance. The massive doors stood open onto an impenetrable darkness. I stood looking at the dark arch. “Do I gather you are an atheist?”

She shrugged. “Do I need a label? I read all the holy books and came to the conclusion they were all written by men. Mostly men who had been too long in the desert, suffering from dehydration.” She looked at me with a bland smile. “Hydrate a man and put him in a lab, he will tend to talk more sense.”

“Or a woman.”

“There’s that.”

“I feel a disturbance in the Force. I think he is in the church, doing God’s work.”

We stepped through the portal into the cool, echoing darkness. Our footfalls seemed to slide up the walls and scamper around the vaulted ceilings. Two rows of arches supported on marble columns separated the aisles from the central nave. A red carpet led to the vast, golden altar, where archangels and saints stood watching, with apparent indifference, as Jesus, raised up on a vast wooden cross, continued his two-thousand-year ordeal of suffering and self-sacrifice.

There was a figure kneeling before the altar, dressed in black. He heard the echo of our feet approaching and when we came to a halt behind him, he crossed himself and stood. As he turned, I said, “Father Padraig O’Neil?”

“That’s my name.” He smiled. We showed him our badges and told him whom we were. He remained impassive and asked, “How can I help you, Detectives?”

“Do you recall a young attorney who used to volunteer here about twelve years ago, name of Sean O’Conor?”

His face lit up. “Sean? Do I remember Sean? Well, of course I do! A rare and wonderful young man, but if you’re looking for him, I’m afraid I have no idea where he is.”

When Dehan spoke, she had a harshness to her voice that made me look. “We’re not looking for him, Father O’Neil. We’d like to talk to you about him. Is there somewhere we can speak, in private?”

He noticed her tone too and frowned slightly. “Of course, let’s go through to the rectory, we can talk there.”

He led us to a small wooden door at the end of the North Transept. He unlocked it with an old, chub key and ushered us through.

The rectory had the same feeling of hushed reverence and contemplation as the church, but without the distant, vaulted echoes. We were in a broad, carpeted hallway with the front door on the left; probably the bright red one I had seen earlier. There were a couple of rooms up ahead with tenuous sunlight filtering through half open doors, and a wide, solid mahogany staircase on the right that climbed to a landing over our heads.

Father O’Neil closed and locked the door behind us.

“I was going to have some tea.” He smiled. “It’s hard to shake the habits of the old country. Would you join me?”

Dehan said nothing, but I thanked him and he asked us to go into the parlor while he spoke to Mrs. Doyle about