“And get jerky,” Saul added.
Seventeen
HYPOTHETICAL
Eight minutes after leaving the McCaw brothers and chatting for a few moments with Stu Frey, Goldie walked into St. Mark’s Catholic Church to find Father Fitzsimmons hurriedly putting on his overcoat and getting ready to leave.
“Goldie!” he said, concerned, taking his earmuffs out of his coat pockets. “I just got a call from one of my parishioners. She said there was gunfire down on River Street.”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “I just came from there.”
“Everyone alright? What happened?”
“Some guy named Horace Mason went postal on his wife Alice.”
“Went what?” Father asked, never having heard the expression before.
“Everything’s fine,” she assured. “The sheriff diffused it. No one was hurt.”
“Oh. Thank goodness!” he said, relieved. “But where did you say Horace went?”
“It was a domestic thing,” she replied. “They’re both goin’ to need some counselin’, but not now. Right now, they’ve just gotta calm down.”
The young priest thought for a moment. “I don’t know the name Mason. They’re not congregants, but maybe I can get their information from the sheriff and offer to lend an ear to one or the other this afternoon.”
“Yeah. That’d be good,” she agreed.
He started to slip off his coat. “So, what brings you here today?”
“I-I need to talk to you about somethin’. At first, it might sound a little crazy.”
“Oh, you mean like living with a gangster, trespassing onto closed city land, or going into a dangerous abandoned mine?”
“Yeah. Like that,” she confirmed.
“Okay,” he said, putting his coat and earmuffs aside and sitting in a pew, “then I’d better sit down.”
She likewise took off her coat and glanced around the simple, quiet church to make sure no one was in earshot, but remained standing.
“Since she was here at the Thanksgiving potluck, I assume Martha Eggleston told you she has doubts about the circumstances of her husband’s death.”
“She’s a woman in grief,” he nodded.
“She told you about all the caffeine Bucky drank the day he died, didn’t she. So he couldn’t have fallen asleep.”
“I don’t like to repeat what people tell me,” he replied. “A priest has to be a strong holder of confidences.”
“That means yes.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yeah, it does. Otherwise, why make such a big deal about how you keep confidences?”
Father looked at her, slightly exasperated, knowing she was right. “Go on,” he urged.
“You ever been over to the historical society?”
“Yes.”
