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(back to page 7)
"Arthur Schmeiling," Vi said.
"Who's that?" Mo asked.
"He was pretty mad, wasn't he?" Bruce asked.
"But he wouldn't kill anybody." Vi said.
"Who wouldn't?" Mo asked. "Why was he so mad?"
"He should have known better than to even ask," Bruce said.
"Ask what?" Mo said.
"He and Elaine were married at St. Anne's," Vi said.
Mo looked from Bruce to Vi. "What are you two talking about?"
"Father O'Bannon wouldn't marry the Schmeiling girl at St. Anne's," Bruce said. "She was shacking up with her intended."
"I don't blame him," Vi said.
"They found a priest in Madison to do the job, of course. But Daddy was pretty steamed about it. Said he'd never darken the door of St. Anne's again as long as Father O'Bannon was there."
Mo picked up a reporter's pad from her desk and took the pencil from Bruce's hand. "How do you spell 'Schmeiling'?"
"Playing detective again?" Bruce grinned as he lifted his coffee mug to his lips.
"Playing journalist again. S-C-H...?"
"M-I-E-L-I-N-G," Bruce finished.
"E-I," Vi corrected him.
Bruce shoved to his feet. "I'm going to go put the squeeze on Sy Monroe to run a bigger ad."
"Good luck," Vi said. "He's been running that sixteenth of a page for longer than you've been alive."
"Hope springs eternal."
Mo checked her watch. "The council meeting on highway expansion is supposed to start in ten minutes. I guess I'll have to tell them about Father O'Bannon. I don't imagine they'll have the meeting after that."
Mo drove the two miles out county highway KK to the old Mitchell Town Hall. As she pulled into the gravel parking lot, she took a quick inventory of the cars--Jacob Risley's BMW, Dan Weilman's shiny silver Cadillac, Andy Krueger's Chevy SUV, William Heiss's dusty old Volvo, Frankie French's ancient Volkswagen camper van, Martha and Horace Adamski's vintage '57 T-bird, and Wallace Pierpont's battered Ford pickup.
"Well," Andy said from the front of the hall as she walked in. "I was wondering if the press was going to show up."
"You didn't happen to see the good Father wandering in this direction, did you?" Dan asked as Mo crossed the empty hall to the stage. "I hate to start without him."
The floor was littered with wood fragments, and sawdust covered everything. Exposed two-by-four studs marked where carpenters were apparently attempting to shore up the wall of the crumbling old building.
The five members of the town council plus Risley sat around a small table on the stage. Frankie French, in his fringe jacket and leather headband, slouched in a folding metal chair to stage left, his short legs extended in front of him, feet crossed, the long laces of his hiking boots untied.
She stopped at the foot of the stage. "I'm afraid I have terrible news."
Sunlight filtered through the dirty windows, leaving the stage partially in shadow. The men had covered the table with papers, and Risley had set up an easel behind him.
She waited for Frankie French to look up from his paperback book. "Father O'Bannon has been murdered."
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Andy Krueger said, crossing himself.
Discovered by his young altar server, Father O's body lay on the floor of the sacristy-his throat slit.
(This text ends on page 27 of the paperback book.)
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