community groups he served on. The housekeeper affirmed that he followed his pattern his last few days. Well, almost. “He had taken to longer lunches away in the afternoons. And was late for supper a few times, which was not like him.”
Heat drained her coffee cup and made a note. “Every day?” she asked.
“Let me think. No, not every.” Nikki waited while the woman thought and then wrote down the days and times she recalled while Mrs. B. poured her a refill.
“What about his nights?”
“He always heard confessions from seven to seven-thirty, although not many customers these days. Changing times, Detective.”
“And after confessions?”
The housekeeper’s face pinked and she rearranged the sugar bowl and creamer on the tabletop. “Oh, he’d read sometimes or watch an old movie on TV or meet with a parishioner if someone needed counseling-drugs, abused women, that sort of thing.”
Nikki sensed a dodge and asked another way. “Was there any time that he wasn’t working? What did he do for recreation?”
Her face reddened a bit more and she said to the creamer, “Detective, I don’t want to speak ill of him; he was flesh, as we all are, but Father Gerry, he liked his drink and he would spend his evenings most nights having his Cutty at the Brass Harpoon.” Another note to follow up on. If he had been a regular at a bar, even if it didn’t lead to suspects, it meant friends, or at least drinking buddies, who might have some insights into a side of the padre the old woman wasn’t privy to.
Nikki then got to the awkward question she knew had to be asked. “I told you this morning where we found the body.” Mrs. Borelli nodded in a small, shameful way. “Do you have any indication that Father Graf was… involved in that lifestyle?”
For the first time, she saw anger in the woman. Her face grew stony and her eyes were riveted on Heat’s. “Detective, that man took a vow of celibacy. He was a holy man doing God’s work on earth and he lived a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience.”
“Thank you,” said Nikki. “I hope you understand, I had to ask.” Heat then switched gears, studying the pages she had generated, and said, “I notice yesterday, the day you last saw him, as well as the day before, he left immediately after breakfast instead of conducting his usual meetings and office work. Any idea why he changed pattern?”
“Mm, no. He didn’t say.”
“You asked him?”
“Yes. He told me to butt out. Joking but not joking, either.”
“Did you notice any changes in his mood?”
“I did. He was sharper with me. Like the butt out joke. The Father Gerry I knew would have said that and I’d have laughed. And so would he.” Her lips drew tight. “He was definitely on edge.”
Heat had to come at it again. “And you have no idea where this tension came from?” When she shook no, Nikki asked, “Anybody argue with him? Threaten him?”
“Not the past few days, as I recall.”
Odd answer from the woman who seemed to recall everything about him. Nikki made a note to come back to that one later. “Any problems at the church?”
“There are always problems at the church,” she said with a chuckle. “But nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Any new people around? Strangers, anyone coming by at odd times, anything like that?”
She rubbed her chin and shook no again. “I’m sorry, Detective.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Nikki. “You’re doing fine.”
Fatigue and the stress of a traumatic day were starting to draw the old woman under. Before she faded, Heat opened the manila envelope of stills Raley had pulled from the security cam at Pleasure Bound. The housekeeper seemed glad for the change of tasks. She cleaned her glasses and studied each of the faces carefully before shaking her head and turning the next page. About halfway through the array, Heat noticed her react to one-not a large reaction but a hesitation. Nikki flicked a look at Hinesburg, who nodded; she’d caught it, too. “Something, Mrs. Borelli?”
“No, not so far.” But she looked at the photo one more time before she turned it facedown and flipped to the next. When she finished the stack, she said none of them looked familiar. Nikki had a feeling Mrs. Borelli might be going to confession soon.
They quit the kitchen, and Heat asked if Mrs. Borelli would mind walking her through the rectory so she could see firsthand the things that had been disturbed. “Where did the missing St. Christopher medal live?”
Before the housekeeper could reply, Sharon Hinesburg said, “The bedroom,” striving for relevance.
“Before we go up there,” said Mrs. Borelli, “I want to show you something.” She beckoned for them to follow, leading them into the study, where she gestured to a cabinet that doubled as the TV stand. “I told your CSI folks about this. After they got here, I looked around and found this cabinet door cracked open just a smidge. And take a look inside.” Nikki was about to stop her from pulling it open, but she could see that the door and its glass front had already been dusted for prints. There were two shelves inside. The lower was filled with books, a mix of paperbacks and hard-bounds. The shelf above was completely empty. “All his videos, gone.”
“What sort of videos were they?” asked Heat. She noticed that the TV rested atop a dinosaur VHS player, and to its side sat a compact portable DVD unit with red, yellow, and white cords jacked to it.
“A bit of everything. He liked documentaries and someone gave him the Ken Burns Civil War, that’s gone. I know he had Air Force One. ‘Get off my plane,’ over, and over, and over…” She shook her head, no doubt banking that as a fond recollection of the dead pastor, then looked back to the empty shelf. “Let’s see, there were also a few PBS things, mostly Masterpiece Theater. The rest were personal, like videos people took at weddings and gave to him. Also some videos he shot at some of his protest marches and rallies. Oh! The pope’s funeral! He was at the Vatican for that. I suppose that’s gone, too. Would that be valuable, Detective, would someone want to steal that?”
Nikki told her anything was possible and asked if she would write down a list of all the videos she could recall, just for a complete record or in case, by some unlikely chance, any of them showed up in someone’s possession or at a flea market.
The crew from the Evidence Collection Unit was nearly done upstairs, and so the three of them were able to go through the whole house, except for the attic, where the ECU was still at work. One of Detective Hinesburg’s observations had been correct, and that was that Mrs. Borelli was a housekeeper who took her job as a mission. She knew where everything went because she was the one who put it there and made sure it stayed clean, dusted, and in place. The anomalies were subtle and would have been lost on the casual visitor. But for the woman who went so far as to square the edges of stacked undershirts in bureau drawers and to align gleaming shoes on the closet floor, with tassels front, any disturbance was a Disturbance in the Force. With the guidance of her schooled eye, it was clear to Detective Heat that someone had definitely given the rectory a once-over. And that with the low degree of disruption to the house, it sure felt like a professional job.
That opened a whole new front. It certainly cast major doubt that the death of the priest had been a dominance session gone awry. Nikki knew better than to get ahead of the investigation, but the whole torture thing, combined with a search of the rectory, was pointing less toward a sexual proclivity and more toward someone trying to find something out. But what?
And what was Captain Montrose’s search about the night before?
Heat met up with the lead ECU detective, Benigno DeJesus, coming out of Father Graf’s bathroom, where he had just logged and bagged meds from the cabinet. He recapped his findings, which corresponded to Mrs. Borelli’s: the missing videos, moved clothing, doors slightly ajar, and the absent holy medal. “Something else we found,” said DeJesus. Atop the priest’s dresser he indicated the dark brown velvet box, hinged open to expose the tan satin liner.
“This where the St. Christopher was?” asked Nikki.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Borelli from behind her. “It meant so much to Father.”
The ECU detective lifted the empty box off the dresser. “Got something a little unusual.” Heat knew and liked Detective DeJesus and had worked scenes with him often enough to read his understatement. When Benigno said something was a little unusual, it was time to pay attention to Benigno. “Underneath the doily.” And when Heat
