Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

it. And that’s what the whole game is about, as I’m sure you remember.”

Tom laughed. “I haven’t had time to give it much thought, Father. But speaking for myself, I find it comforting that my lust for coffee ice cream may not be an inherent flaw in my character.”

“Ah but it is! And if Miss Pearce is correct, it’s hardwired right into our brains. Imagine that! Original sin may actually exist after all.”

“They’ll burn you at the stake, if you talk like that from the pulpit.” It had been years before Tom had come to appreciate how much of a renegade Father Gauss was in his chosen field, and to understand what that must have cost him.

“Yes, that would be imprudent. But it’s interesting, don’t you think? That the devil may be with us all the time. Only he’s hidden in our genes!”

“I’ll have to ask Miss Pearce what she thinks of your twist on her research.”

“I’m sure you’ll have that chance.”

Tom smiled. “You don’t miss much.”

“And you hide very little, Tommy.” Gauss leaned forward and placed a calloused hand on Tom’s where it rested on the oar. “Now why are we out here in this boat, when we could be up in the rectory having a sip of scotch?”

Tom gestured at Luke. “Got a serious fisherman on my hands.”

“So I’ve heard. Jack Thompson’s telling your ‘one that got away’ story all over town. But you didn’t come here to go fishing. Not in this leaky tub.”

Tom saw no point in evasion. “My little brother wants to know where you were on Saturday night.”

“On my knees praying for skirt-chasers in Smokey the Bear hats.”

Tom looked at Luke, whose attention was fixed on the rod tip and the line trailing in the water. “So I can tell him to take you off his list?”

Gauss lifted his face as if seeking guidance in the wispy clouds that drifted overhead. “Does your brother’s curiosity have anything to do with the dead man fished out of this cove the other day?”

Tom nodded. “He’s checking up on everyone who was at the funeral. You didn’t go in, but you were seen outside in the parking lot.”

Gauss remained silent.

“I’m sorry, father, but there’s not much else to go on. Anything you know about the deceased could be helpful.”

Gauss leaned back and rested his forearms against the thwarts. “There may be things I know about Mr. Pearce that your brother doesn’t. But nothing that would be useful to your brother’s inquiries. Idle gossip, on the other hand, has a way of harming the innocent.”

Tom wasn’t sure what to make of the comment. “But you knew Billy Pearce,” he pressed.

“Oh, yes. His name had a habit of coming up in the conversation of certain parishioners who came to me for counseling over the years. I always suggested that they drop him. Mr. Pearce took umbrage at that advice when he heard about it.”

“What did he do?”

“Showed up at the rectory one evening… to ‘seek counsel,’ he said, ‘on the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance.’ But what he really had in mind, and got, was an opportunity to come on to me in private and then make trouble.”

Tom opened his mouth and left it open.

“Oh, don’t be naïve, Tommy. It’s an occupational hazard. Comes with the territory. Pearce should just have headed into the big city and found his way there. He was too smart for the crowd he hung out with here. The pack always knows when you’re not one of them. In his pack, that could be dangerous.”

“What happened after he took offense?”

“A little trouble with His Eminence. Nothing more.”

“Did you hear from Pearce after that?”

“Nothing from him… a little about him from time to time. Tittle-tattle, mostly.”

“Like what? If you can say.”

“Like that he murdered his parents and made it look like an accident, and that he was terrorizing his sister to try to get her to agree to sell the family estate. That sort of thing.”

CHAPTER 10

Father Gauss wondered if he should have told Tommy Morgan the rest, just to be done with it. Better than having him figure it out for himself; and he would, with God knows what consequences. Gauss paced the Bishop’s conference room, stifling the urge to light a cigarette and blow the smoke under one of the tapestries. The Bishop’s assistant had given no reason for the summons. But it wasn’t hard to imagine what it might be. Gauss read the newspapers, and he knew he wasn’t the first to get the call.

The last time he’d been inside the Chancery had been thirty years ago on a tour for recent graduates of the diocesan seminary. It looked much the same now as it had then, except for the pox of don’t do this and don’t do that signs and the absence of ashtrays—heavy mahogany furniture, ancient oil paintings of ancient prelates, clunky metal candlesticks and cut glass bowls crammed with wilting flowers. The décor was largely unaltered since the Edwardian period of the Chancery’s construction, and the atmosphere was even older. It was feudal.

Gauss fingered a pack of menthol cigarettes and eyed a dusty umbrella stand near the framed oil of Pope Pius XII. It would have to do. Vacuuming the minty smoke into his lungs and tapping the ashes into the umbrella stand, the distracted priest sought to clear his mind. But it was an hour before anyone entered the room. A plain young woman in non-ecclesiastical black—boots, jacket, hair and lipstick—came in first. They call it Goth, he reminded himself. She dragged a luggage trolley with a couple of machines strapped to it, also black, and plugged them into an outlet beneath the conference table.

“Got a card?” she mumbled, fumbling with wires and knobs.

“A what?”

“A business card,” she elaborated.

Gauss made an impatient gesture toward his roman collar, which was as much as a card might have said had he had one.

A young man in a navy blue Brooks Brothers suit came in next