“Equally enticing,” I said. “Does a later dinner imply we enjoy a matinee?”
She sat with me on the steps, took a sip of the beer, and handed it back. I was pretty sure she was surveying my landscaping skills. “I knew you were angling when you cut the grass.”
“Did you notice the patterns I mowed?” I said.
“Amazing.”
“Out front, I cut a little heart with an arrow through it.”
“What will the neighbors say?”
“It’s Cambridge,” I said. “They find us as eccentric as everyone else.”
“Okay,” she said. “But only on one condition.”
“I wear a lacy thong?”
“Ha,” she said. “Just don’t mess up my hair, big guy.”
I threw the tennis ball long and far for Pearl, stood, and opened the back door wide for Susan. She walked on ahead of me into the coolness of her house and tossed her T-shirt into my face.
“Race you upstairs,” she said.
11
The next morning, I called on Father Conway at the Immaculate Conception Church in Revere. Conway was a youngish guy, mid-thirties, with a long, thin face and close-cropped dark hair. He wore a clerical collar on his clergy shirt and black-framed glasses that we’d called birth-control specs in the service. He looked a lot like a young Fred Gwynne, minus the bolts in his neck.
“At first I was thankful the church was abandoned,” Conway said. “But then they brought those men out in bags. I’ll never forget the firefighters standing at attention as they loaded them in ambulances. It was a horrible morning.”
Up front stood the requisite organ and an all-star lineup of saints along the walls, holy water in a marble baptismal font, and a large wooden cross draped in white. The carpet in the sanctuary was very old, the color of a putting green. The church smelled as fresh as a grandmother’s coat closet.
“I was there yesterday,” I said. “For the memorial.”
“I wanted to attend,” Conway said. “But I had two funerals this morning. And a wake tonight.”
“Plenty of security in your work,” I said.
“And yours,” he said. Smiling. “It’s been a busy and hard summer. When I counsel people I often talk about how our troubles could be much worse. Often it’s the small things that pressure us most.”
“Life,” I said. “Just a temporary condition.”
Conway smiled at me and nodded. I sat in the second row of pews and he sat in the first. His left arm was stretched out lengthwise as he turned around to talk with me. He looked very relaxed and at home in the musty old church.
“Did you ever hear any theory from the arson investigators?”
“No.”
“Any theories of your own?”
“With a church that old, I would assume something electrical,” he said. “I don’t believe anyone ever found out. And it seems now they never will.”
“Investigators have ruled out most everything,” I said. “Including electrical.”
“Arson?”
“Some believe it was set,” I said. “But there’s no evidence. The worry is that if it was arson, the same person is loose and setting new fires.”
“I don’t know why anyone would set fire to the church,” he said. “Plenty of people were very upset about it being sold. They wanted it protected.”
I nodded and tried to give the impression I’d known that all along. I kept nodding so he wouldn’t suspect.
“The archdiocese had been wanting it shut down for years,” he said. “That church was started by German immigrants, but for the last twenty years was mainly an outreach for the homeless and drug abusers. I’d been there for only three years, but we were growing, bringing in young families in the South End. It was becoming a viable church again. As you know, some parts of the South End transition slower than others.”
“So why would they close it?”
“After all the scandals and our numbers dwindling,” he said, “we needed the money. This isn’t your parents’ Catholic Church. Things have changed a great deal.”
“I had expected to become more devout as I grew older. Somehow that hasn’t happened.”
“A Farewell to Arms,” he said. “The old man playing pool with the young lieutenant.”
“A literate priest.”
“I took an American lit course while at BC,” he said. “Some things actually stick. May I ask, are you Catholic, Mr. Spenser? You look to be of Irish stock.”
“My mother was Catholic,” I said.
“Did she take you to Mass?”
“She died in childbirth,” I said. “Her brothers, my uncles, took me some when we moved to Boston. My father had lost all faith. Except what he found in whiskey bottles.”
He nodded.
“Can you think of any reason someone would want to burn the church?” I said. “Did anyone in the neighborhood hold a grudge or ever make threats?”
“No.”