The Skeleton Box

TWENTY-NINE

When’s the last time you were here?” I said.

Mom and I had left the courthouse and, at my insistence, walked down Main to Estelle, then turned north and gone six blocks. We stood now behind the empty rows of varnished wooden pews in St. Valentine’s Roman Catholic Church. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to go there. Maybe to jog Mom’s memory, maybe to make her feel things she preferred not to feel. Maybe for me. It felt like the only way.

“Funerals and weddings,” Mom said. “But Sunday Mass, not lately.”

“It seems like a nice church.”

“It’s a building. They knocked the other down and they can knock this one down, too.”

Stone columns embellished with gold-leaf carvings rose four stories to a vaulted ceiling painted sky blue with stars of gold. An enormous crucifix, Christ’s head lolling to his right, hovered over the marble altar. A statue of St. Joseph was missing three fingers. The patterned rugs running the length of the church were worn to a pinkish gray.

“There was quite a row over the stained-glass windows way back when,” Mom said. “The archdiocese said they were too expensive. Nilus ordered them anyway. There were special collections every Sunday for years to pay for them.”

“So the parish paid for Nilus’s guilt.”

She walked to one of the windows, unlocked a transom, and pushed it open. Cold air blew into the church.

“Look,” Mom said.

I walked over and leaned my head down so I could see out the transom. All I saw was a stand of snow-covered scrub pines at the bottom of a slope. “What about it?”

“That’s where the old church was. See the foundation?”

In the middle of the trees, two jagged outcroppings of concrete jutted up from the snow.

“Right.”

“That’s where Nonny was. For six years, until…”

Her voice trailed off.

“So what else is there, Mom?”

“This is not about me, Gus. It’s about Phyllis.”

“No. You know it’s about you. You’ve always known it.”

“I wish I wasn’t afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of being somebody else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Some days I can’t remember what I did ten minutes ago. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone out to get the mail only to realize I’d already gotten it earlier. But I can remember everything from ages ago as if it was yesterday.”

“Why don’t you just tell me then? What else?”

“Son. I was seventeen years old and an accessory to murder.”

“No. You didn’t know you were burying a nun.”

“Not then. But later.”

“What do you mean?”

“That priest. That despicable man.”

She met him in a conference room at a law firm on Shelby Street in downtown Detroit. It was the summer of 1971.

Father Timothy Reilly sat at one end of a long table. Beatrice sat to his left. The room was warm and smelled of cigar smoke. The priest wore a dark jacket and shirt with a Roman collar. He thanked her for coming. He told her that Father Nilus Moreau had recently died in a hospital on the Keweenau Peninsula.

“He was a friend when you were a girl?” the priest said.

“Yes,” Bea said. “We lost touch.”

“I see. He remembered you, even at the very end.”

“That’s nice. Is that why you asked to see me?”

She’d heard from a lawyer named Eagan that a priest who’d once met her when she was a child wanted to see her the next time she was in Detroit. She wondered why, but she wasn’t eager to make the trip merely to satisfy her curiosity. When the lawyer called again to say the matter was “of a pressing nature” and mentioned Father Nilus Moreau, she decided she’d better get in the car.

Reilly didn’t answer her question. Instead he said, “Your own husband died recently?”

“Last year.”

The priest made a sign of the cross. “May his soul rest in peace.”

“Thank you.”

“Beatrice,” Reilly said, “I need to take you into my confidence. What I’m about to say is of a rather delicate nature.”

“A pressing matter.”

“Indeed. I believe you also knew Sister Mary Cordelia Gallesero, did you not?”

The question startled her. She sat back in her chair. “Yes, Father. Why?”

Reilly folded his hands on the table and leaned over them toward Bea. “Forgive me for being direct,” he said. Then he told her that, based on a confession Father Nilus had given as part of his last rites, she apparently had been party to the death of Sister Cordelia.

“No. That’s ridiculous,” Bea said. “Nonny-Sister Cordelia disappeared when I was a girl. I missed her terribly.”

“Nonny. Yes, of course. I don’t mean, child, to imply that you participated in the actual murder of Sister Cordelia.”

“Murder?”

“We now believe she was murdered.”

Bea felt nauseated. “By who?”

“It’s not clear, unfortunately. What is clear, at least as Father Nilus confessed it to his God, is that you were involved in the disposal of the good nun’s remains.”

It all came rushing back: the humid evening forest, the smell of the earthworms, Nilus’s shiny black shoes at the rim of the hole.

“No,” was all she could think to say.

This was a crime, the priest explained, almost certainly a felony, and if she were to be convicted, she could land in prison. That would be especially tragic now that her husband had died, he said, because there would be no family left to care for her young son.

Bea felt the queasiness well in her stomach. “Father, what are you saying? I didn’t know what Father Nilus was burying there. I didn’t know what-”

“So you were there?”

She felt faint. She told herself to catch her breath. “Where?” she said.

“You don’t know where? Beatrice, God is listening.”

“Father, no, this… this can’t be-he said they were vestments and other old things. It was just a penance for me to dig a hole, to remind me I came from dirt.”

“Father Nilus took you into his confidence.”

“He did not.”

“Are you certain?”

She heard impatience in Reilly’s voice.

“I am certain. I did not know that”-now her voice caught-“that Nonny was… was there.”

“I see. His recollection differed.”

“Then he lied.”

Reilly offered his handkerchief. She waved it away.

“Beatrice, think. Why would a priest lie on his deathbed, standing at the gates of Heaven?”

Reilly rose and walked to a credenza that held a tray with glasses and a pitcher of water. He poured Bea a glass, set it down in front of her, and sat down again.

“Please, Beatrice, don’t worry,” he said. “You were only a child.”

“I was.”

“And you had sinned.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were doing penance because you had confessed to a sin. A mortal sin.”

Bea swallowed hard.

“But look,” Reilly said, “the fact is, the church has no desire to unearth this regretful episode. There is nothing to be gained. You are a good, practicing Catholic who I assume has earned God’s forgiveness. Let me ask you this: Could you by chance recollect where Father Nilus buried the poor Sister’s remains?”

She thought about this, decided she could answer yes.

“Why do you ask?” she said.

“Well, we’ve thought that, perhaps if we could discreetly locate them, we could give Sister Cordelia the proper religious burial she deserves.”

“But you don’t plan to tell the police?”

“So many years on, Beatrice.” He shook his head. “This is no longer a matter for men, but for God.”

Bea picked up the glass of water and drank. She set it down empty. “I’m sorry, Father,” she said. “I don’t remember.”

“Are you sure?”

“It was dark. We were way up on a hill somewhere in the woods where I’d never been before. It was a little scary, actually. I just wanted to get home.”

“Nilus told us the northeastern corner of the lake.”

“Maybe he remembers then. I don’t.”

The priest stood. Bea did, too. “Would you like my blessing, child?” he said.

“That won’t be necessary.”

He made a sign of the cross before her anyway. “I trust you’ll keep all of this to yourself,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“We may be in touch, from time to time.”

She walked up Shelby and turned right on Lafayette, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed. At Woodward she turned left and walked to Sanders, the ice-cream parlor. She took a stool at the counter and ordered a Coca-Cola with ice. She took a pen out of her purse. She flipped over the placemat and, on the blank back, drew a map.

“You remembered?” I said.

We’d sat down in the pew at the very back of St. Valentine’s. A painting on the wall next to us showed a woman wiping Christ’s face as he carried his cross.

“It was impossible to forget,” Mom said. “The big stump. The double-trunk birch.”

“And you gave pieces of the map to Mrs. B and Soupy’s mom.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “Louise. She was so sorry.”

“Because she’d talked to Bev-to that woman doing the history with Whistler?”

Mom looked as if she might cry again. “Louise came to me to apologize. She was a basket case. But I didn’t care. She said she hadn’t given the lady much. She so wanted my forgiveness. But I would not give it. All I could think about was my fear.”

“It’s all right, Mom.”

“No, it’s not. Never. I never should have done that to my friends. It’s just-I was alone. I wanted someone else to know, just in case.”

“In case that bastard Reilly did something.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“I don’t-no. I do know. Because I didn’t want that life.”

“What life?”

“I didn’t want to be the girl who helped bury a murdered nun, who helped a murderer and the terrible men who hid him. I didn’t want to be the girl who cheated on her boyfriend. I just wanted to be Bea, Gus’s mom, and live in the yellow house on the lake, like Rudy and I had always planned.”

The shadow of a smile crossed her face.

“We used to go fishing,” she said. “Do you remember throwing your pole in the lake?”

It was a casting pole with a button on the reel that let the line out when you flung the pole forward. I was four or five years old. I hit the button but didn’t hang on to the pole. My dad was about to jump in after it until Mom grabbed him and they fell over laughing in the rowboat.

“Yes,” I said. “Pretty stupid.”

“I was happy, Gussy. That’s all I wanted.”

A happy family. I thought of my next-door neighbor, Oke Anderson, sitting down to dinner with his family. I took one of Mom’s hands.

“And you hoped the rest would go away,” I said.

“I could’ve just drawn Reilly the map. But when he said it was ‘no longer a matter for men,’ I just… I decided I wasn’t going to tell him anything. I’m not sure why. But I didn’t like what he said, or the way he said it.”

We sat there for a while, Mom’s hand in mine.

“So,” I finally said, “what happened the other night? Can you remember?”

She sighed. “I remember this. I remember sitting at the dining room table that morning and Phyllis telling me I was imagining things.”

“You were worried about the burglar not taking anything.”

“Turns out I wasn’t paranoid.”

A noise awoke Mom in her bed that night. She wondered if maybe she’d been dreaming. She’d been dreaming a lot lately. In her dreams, she could remember what she’d had for breakfast and where she’d left her handbag.

She drifted back to sleep. She didn’t know how much later, maybe an hour, maybe ten seconds, she heard a thump. She thought it came from the bathroom. Had Phyllis come over tonight? “Phyllis?” she called out. There was no answer. She thought she must have been mistaken about Phyllis being there. She went back to sleep.

She woke again later, needing to use the bathroom. She tried to push the bathroom door open but it stopped against something. She walked around to the door at the other end of the bathroom. Phyllis was sprawled across the Me Sweet Ho rug, unmoving, her eyes closed. Blood had splattered on the rug and pooled on the floor around her head. Her cell phone lay on the floor.

“Was she alive?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean you don’t think so?”

“No. She wasn’t alive.”

“How long had she been lying there?”

“I have no way of knowing. I was asleep.”

“So you called nine-one-one?”

“When I saw her lying there, I knew I was right to be afraid. I knew they’d come looking.”

Whistler hadn’t expected to find anyone there. After he slid into the bathroom and Mrs. B saw him, he must have panicked. When he’d panicked in the past, he’d put his fist through computer screens. The pinkie ring must have made the gash above Mrs. B’s eye. That’s why Dingus demanded it, I thought.

“And you called?” I said.

“Phyllis was dead, but I called. I had to hurry.”

She went back to her room. She dug the lockbox containing the piece of map, her rosary, and the newspaper clipping out of the back of the closet. She threw her boots on and ran through the big yard, across the road, and up the hill to Dad’s garage. She put the lockbox in the trunk of the Bonneville, neglecting to close the lid tightly, and stood there for a few seconds, willing herself to remember. Then she ran back to her house.

“You panicked,” I said. “And you lost your boot.”

“I couldn’t stop. I could hear a siren. I had to get back. The next morning, I saw the one boot at the back door and couldn’t remember what had happened to the other.”

“But you remembered where the lockbox was.”

“Yes.”

“And you called nine-one-one before you went up to the garage?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Just making sure you remember correctly. That’s a hike to get back before-”

“I know, Gussy. That’s how I lost my boot.”

She let go of my hand and stood and walked back to the transom. I followed, stopping a few feet behind her.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“Why?”

“I might as well have killed Phyllis with my own hands.”

“No. Let it go, Mom. There was nothing-”

“Stop.” She spun to face me, her eyes filling with tears. “Stop telling me everything I did was all right. I made choices. Now my best friends are gone.”

“It wasn’t just your-”

“Stop, goddammit.” Her voice echoed through the church. “You know the truth now. All right? I told you the truth. Everyone knows the truth. Are you all happy now? Are you free? Has the truth set you free, Gus?”

I stepped close and wrapped my arms around her. I whispered into her ear, “I’m glad you told me the truth.” I held her longer and tighter than I had in years.

She sighed as she loosed my embrace. “I’m glad you’re glad,” she said. “Now can you take me home, please? I can’t stay in this place any longer.”

I dropped her at her house. Someone had plowed her driveway. I thought maybe I ought to stay awhile, but she told me she wanted to be alone. After all she’d gotten through for so long, I figured she’d get through this, too.

The last story for the final print edition of the Pilot went from my computer screen to the printing plant five minutes before deadline.

“Good-bye,” I said.

I supposed somebody in Traverse City would plant a “Note to Readers” on the front page telling them Media North was ceasing publication of the Pilot. The note would thank subscribers for their loyalty and vow that coverage of their “region,” never mind their county or their town, would continue unabated, because nobody was more devoted to the news than Media North.

There were no speeches or tributes or weeping staffers standing around with undone ties and dangling press passes. There was just me and the reek of toner and the buzzing of the lamps.

The single story I wrote concerned Judge Gallagher binding both Breck and Whistler over for trial. Of course, I couldn’t report what happened in the judge’s chambers. But I did plan to tell Darlene what Mom told me about her long-ago meeting with Reilly.

After sending the story, I dialed into the Pilot voice mail system, in case there was a message I wanted or, more likely, one I didn’t want my bosses to hear. There were fifty-six messages in all. One by one I deleted them after listening to a few seconds of each, until I came to message twenty-two.

“Anyone checking on those whackaroonies at the Christian camp?” the muffled male voice said. “They’re all agitated with the county. Maybe they’re just messing with us, and now they made a big damn mistake.”

Something about it bothered me. I played it again. The voice was muffled enough that it seemed to be intentional. In the background, I heard a clicking sound. I figured out how to turn up the volume and played it again. And then once more.

I knew that clicking: Whistler’s ring on his steering wheel. And then I thought, Holy shit, I’ll bet it was him, not D’Alessio, who tipped the cops that Tatch didn’t show up for that hockey game. Whistler had heard me talk about it at the hospital that night. D’Alessio probably hadn’t given it another thought.

I saved message twenty-two and made a mental note to tell Darlene about that, too.

Once I’d deleted the other messages, I packed up my Tigers beer stein, a few pens, a legal pad, a stapler, a box of paper clips, and a package of printer paper. I went up front and gathered up Mrs. B’s photographs.

I snapped the lights off at twenty-six minutes past five. I was almost out the door when I remembered my keyboard. I’d written hundreds of stories on it and liked the feel of the keys. I went back and unplugged it and tucked it under my arm.

Seven hours later, I had to bring it back, because I had one more story to write. It was too late for the paper but I posted it online before I headed over to the celebration at Enright’s.

UPSET! RATS SINK PIPEFITTERS, GO TO MICHIGAN STATE FINAL

By A. J. Carpenter

Pilot Staff Correspondent

In a triple-overtime thriller that ranks with the biggest upsets in Michigan hockey history, the Hungry River Rats of Starvation Lake beat the Pipefitters of Trenton, 2–1, to advance to Saturday’s state championship final.

Goaltender Dougie Baker stopped a play-off record 71 shots in a performance River Rats Coach Dick Popovich called “absolutely stunning.” Highlights included a diving glove save on a breakaway by Pipefitter star Bobby Hofmeister with 18 seconds remaining in the second overtime.

The victory marked the first time the River Rats (23-6-2) had ever beaten the Pipefitters (27-3-1). The teams came into the game ranked #7 and #2 in the state, respectively.

The Rats’ other star was on the ice for less than ten seconds. Team scoring leader Matthew “Tex” Dobrick wasn’t expected to play due to a severe ankle sprain.

But Dobrick showed up in uniform, skated in the team’s pregame warm-up, and appeared at center ice for the opening face-off before retiring to the bench, in obvious pain, for the rest of the game.

“Tough kid,” said Pipefitters Coach Ron Wallman. “We came into the building figuring he was a scratch, and seeing him out there messed with our heads.”

A packed Starvation Lake Arena exploded nearly four minutes into the third overtime when Ethan Banonis banged in a rebound for the win.

“It’s a great moment for a great town,” Popovich said. “But we still have work to do.”

The Rats will play for the state title in their home rink at 5 p.m. Saturday against the top-ranked Austin Painters (28-0-3), who beat Fife Electric, 6–3, in the earlier semifinal.

The Rats have played for the state title only once before. In 1981, they lost to the Pipefitters, 2–1, on a questionable overtime score allowed by goaltender Augustus Carpenter.