Death Wears a Red Hat Page 34

  Mind Over Murder

  The Father Koesler Mysteries: Book 3

  “Six hundred thirty-nine dollars and two cents for liquor? Six hundred and thirty-nine dollars and two cents for booze! This is unprecedented! This is unheard-of! This is crazy!”

  On this sleepy first Monday in July, June’s liquor bill was an eye-opener for Father Robert Koesler. Until finding the bill among the papers on his office desk, he had been going through the motions of beginning another somnolent summer week.

  In her office, down the hall from Koesler’s, St. Anselm’s parish secretary Mary O’Connor half-smiled and half-winced. It was so unlike Koesler to become excited over anything, let alone shout, that she was torn between laughter and the natural anxiety that anger usually generates. Since placing the bill on his desk, she had expected some sort of audible reaction. But not at this decibel level.

  She heard his resolute footsteps approaching her office.

  “Mary . . .”Though he had already offered Mass, including a brief homily, eaten a light breakfast, and read the Detroit Free Press, for the first time this morning Koesler was fully awake. “What is the meaning of this liquor bill? Did you see it? Cases of Chivas Regal, Crown Royal, Stolichnaya, Beefeaters, and Jack Daniel’s! We don’t stock these expensive brands in the rectory. And certainly not by the case! There must be some mistake!”

  “There’s no mistake,” she offered meekly.

  “There’s no mistake.” He wanted to make certain his ears as well as his eyes were functioning. He hoped they weren’t, but feared otherwise.

  “No, Father, there’s no mistake.”

  “Well, then, who? I certainly didn’t order them!” He looked at her quizzically, as if discovering a hitherto undisclosed spendthrift side to her character.

  “Oh, no, Father.” His gaze was transparent; the intent behind it obvious. “Not me!”

  “Not you?”

  “Not me!”

  “Then who?”

  “Deacon Les.”

  “Deacon Les?”

  “Yes.”

  He paused to absorb the impact of this news. Deacon Lester Schroeder was in his final seminary years, and theoretically, in his concluding glide pattern toward becoming a Catholic priest. As a practicum, deacons—not those choosing the office as a permanent state, but those passing through it toward the priesthood—lived and worked in a parish in order to experience what presumably would be their life’s work.

  Deacon Lester Schroeder had selected Father Koesler and St. Anselm’s in Dearborn Heights for his pre-priestly parochial training. Reluctantly, Koesler had accepted him. Reluctantly, because, with weekend Mass help from priest friends, Koesler felt quite self-sufficient at St. Anselm’s. In addition, he was not eager for the company of the emerging young cleric who thought he could foretell the future with clarity while knowing absolutely nothing of the past.

  “So,” Koesler replied, after the reflective manner of Charlie Chan, “it was Deacon Les.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Where might I find God’s gift to the grape and grain at this very moment?”

  “I believe he’s in the living room.”

  “Thank you, Mary.”

  Koesler turned and strode toward the rectory’s living room with its Chaucerian characters marching along seemingly endless Canterbury trails on the wallpaper. The design had been selected by Koesler’s predecessor. Koesler disliked it but, characteristically, did nothing about replacing it.

  There was Lester Schroeder, suave, debonair, with just the proper measure of aftershave lotion to proclaim his presence before one entered it. He was sunk into the overstuffed white couch, feet on the coffee table, assiduously writing on a notepad.

  “Oh, Les . . .” Koesler forced his voice into a conversational tone. It was not easy. He thought he might hurt himself.

  “Oh,” Les looked up with a winning smile, “ ‘morning, Bob.”

  “I’ll come right to the point, Les: to understate, I’m upset about this liquor bill for last month.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.” Koesler consulted the bill. “Six hundred and thirty-nine dollars and two cents!”

  “Oh.”

  “Les, that is approximately what I have budgeted for the parish for at least half a year, if not much longer.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you realize how we are going to have to stretch the booze you ordered?”

  “I guess not. It’s gone.”

  “Gone!”

  “Well, yes.”

  “What did you do? Pour it out upon the ground in some exotic ritual?”

  “No, they drank it.”

  “They? Who?”

  “My visitors.”

  “You mean those hirsute, jeans-clad young people I find wall-to-wall on the floor most evenings?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Les”—it was as if scales were falling from Koesler’s eyes—"until now, I thought you were the Pied Piper. But now I see you are the Prodigal Son.”

  “Oh?” Schroeder was uncertain as to whether Koesler was reprimanding or complimenting him.

  “From now on, Les, the booze pump is turned off. Your friends can have anything from iced tea to Pepsi. But no hard stuff.”

  “Not even beer or wine?”

  “Not even beer or wine.”

  “Well, then,” Schroeder shrugged elaborately, “that will spell the end to the youth ministry in this parish.”

  “C’mon, Les. You can do it without leaning on alcohol as bait.” In his inner heart, Koesler knew Schroeder couldn’t do it.

  “I guess I can try,” Schroeder affirmed, fanning the embers of his self-confidence.

  “Oh, by the way, Bob,” Schroeder perked up, “you may get some feedback from something I said in my homily at yesterday’s Mass.”

  Koesler sighed and braced himself. “What might that have been, Les?”

  “I told them that as a result of my kerygmatic catechesis, they must respond as the people of God, experience an existential metanoia and become a transcendent faith community.” He looked expectantly at Koesler.

  There was a pause. “I don’t think I’m going to get any feedback from what you said to our ‘people of God,’ Les,” Koesler said, at length. “I don’t think anyone understood your trenchant statement.”

  “Well, if you think not, Bob . . . “

  “I think not, Les.”

  They were interrupted by a hesitant, apologetic knock at the living room door.

  “The mail is here, Father.” Mary O’Connor spoke just loudly enough to be heard.

  “Saved by the mail call, Les,” said Koesler as he began the return to his office.

  “Whatever you say, Bob.”

  Koesler fingered through the mail. Almost all of it was junk mail. A company that sold sacramental wine, assuring the purchaser that all company trucks had Catholic drivers. An offer of communion wafers made by contemplative nuns, assuring the customer that the wafers had been touched solely by consecrated virginal hands. Koesler thought it must have been simpler at the Last Supper.

  “Damn!” The expletive escaped involuntarily. The envelope’s return address was that of the Tribunal, the archdiocesan matrimonial court. Over the years, Koesler had come to associate the word Tribunal with bad news. And at the mention of Monsignor Tommy Thompson—director of the Tribunal—Koesler always heard in his mind the menacing chords that accompany Scarpia’s entrance in “Tosca.”

  Koesler wondered what this bit of bad news could be. Probably, he mused spiritlessly, another notary job wherein the Tribunal would order him to visit some innocent parishioner to ask largely irrelevant, sometimes embarrassingly personal questions regarding a broken marriage involving some relation or friend. The damned inquisitive Tribunal. Forever poking its bureaucratic nose in other people’s lives.

  With symbolic vehemence, Koesler ripped the envelope from seam to seam.

  Slowly shaking his head, he read the contents. The case referr
ed to in this communication was nearly a year old. It had begun when a Catholic woman visited Koesler with the announcement that her husband had deserted her. She wanted an ecclesiastical separation. Koesler had assured her it was perfectly all right for her to continue her sacramental life without permission from the Tribunal. After all, her single state was not of her doing. But, as a member in good standing of the conservative Catholics United for the Faith, she demanded ecclesial permission. Well, to Caesar she had appealed; to Caesar she would go.

  Except that, along the red-tape way, her husband had effectively disappeared. Koesler had made several fruitless attempts to locate the husband.

  This was the third Tribunal request for information on the status of the case. In response to the two previous requests, Koesler had explained the husband’s disappearance and promised that if the reluctant spouse were ever found, Koesler would make sure the Tribunal would be among the first to know. Now, he would have to waste time making yet another written statement to that effect.

  At the bottom of the official document, Koesler noted the stamped signature, “Msgr. Thomas Thompson.”

  The three menacing chords resounded in Koesler’s ears.