I couldn’t tell which the real grievance was—sex or education. Maybe both. “Did Annie reveal where the money came from?”
“Stella demanded, she had a right to know, and Annie said Mr. Mandel gave it to her, a present to help with college. And Stella asked what special favors Mr. Mandel asked for to help send Annie away. Annie slapped her, can you believe that? Hitting her own mother? So Stella had to fight back. It went on and on, night after night, the fighting, the shouting—the Jokiches even called the police—until the night, well, the night Annie died.”
“Don’t you see? If it was Mandel who gave Annie the money, then he was the older man in her life, not Boom-Boom.”
“She was so promiscuous, who knows how many people she took her pants off for,” Betty spat.
Her rage and her obsession with Annie’s sex life seemed to swirl around like a cloud of gnats, annoying but impossible for me to come to grips with.
“Who told you Annie slapped Stella?” I asked instead.
“Stella, of course. Annie would never admit she did one wrong thing in her life. And then of course the night she died she actually came at Stella with a kitchen knife.”
“Or so Stella claimed,” I said dryly. “If Stella went through Annie’s things hunting for her pills, why didn’t she find the diary when she found the two thousand dollars? Did you see the diary when you were searching Annie’s clothes after the trial?”
“What do you mean, searching?” Betty’s face quivered.
I meant she probably hoped there was another envelope full of cash. “Looking for mementos,” I suggested hastily. “Even if you had your differences, she was your husband’s sister, you must have wanted a keepsake.”
Betty still looked suspicious, but she said, “I wasn’t looking for the diary, for anything special, I mean, just what clothes could go off to the church rummage sale. She must have spent half her paycheck at Victoria’s Secret. Only a girl like Annie would own underclothes like those. I threw out the pills—I didn’t think Stella needed to stumble on those again when she got home—but I didn’t take the drawers apart, why would I?”
“So you didn’t see the diary,” I prodded.
“Stella told me when she found it last week, it was on its spine, wedged against the back of the drawer. You had to take the whole drawer out to see it, and I didn’t do that when I was clearing things out.”
“Did Stella show you the diary?” I asked.
“She’s given it to someone to keep safe, so you can’t get your dirty Warshawski fingers on it. She knows you want it.”
I inspected my Warshawski fingers. They didn’t look that dirty.
“Father Cardenal?” I asked.
“Never mind who she gave it to, it’s none of your business.”
“Why did you leave the house standing empty all that time that Stella was away?” I asked. “Frank could have sold it, used the money to buy Stella an apartment when she got out.”
“We didn’t expect her to be gone so long, you know, the lawyers, Mr. Scanlon, they all told us a good woman like Stella, never in trouble with the law—Mass every Sunday, First Friday devotions almost every year—they told us she’d be home within three years.”
“Mr. Mandel told you?” I asked.
“That’s what everyone said.” Betty scowled.
“Who in particular said she’d be out in three years?” I repeated.
“It was just the talk, Father Gielczowski, Mr. Scanlon, everyone who knew her, they all knew she didn’t mean to kill Annie, it was an accident, she shouldn’t have been in prison so long, that’s all I meant. They all said the judge would reduce the sentence, but then he didn’t.”
“What did Scanlon have to do with Stella’s trial?” I asked.
“Mr. Scanlon pays attention to everyone in this neighborhood. He’s in church every Sunday, pays for the prizes at the bingo. When Ferrite Workers S&L wanted to foreclose on Daddy, who do you think made them refinance us instead? If Frankie keeps his grades up, Mr. Scanlon’s going to get him into a good baseball camp this summer, one where the real scouts come and see the boys play.”
“Sounds like Santa Claus,” I said dryly, wondering what Scanlon got out of it. Frank’s offhand revelations about Father Gielczowski made me think about the horror stories that had come out of Penn State University. How many sports programs, sports camps existed as a cover for grown men to abuse boys?
I should have kept the thought to myself, but I made the mistake of asking Betty if she’d had the talk with Frankie Junior, the one where you remind your children that they don’t have to let people touch them, no matter how many promises they give about baseball careers.
“How dare you?” Betty’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Are you going to start making up smut about Mr. Scanlon so you can screw up Frankie’s chances? If you hurt him the way Boom-Boom did Big Frank, I swear on my mother’s grave that you will be sorry you ever were born.”