The Skeleton Box Read online

  Gallagher sliced through the tape and peeled it back from the top of the pouch. “The zipper’s a little rusty,” he said. He pulled on it hard and it tore open with a puff of reddish dust. Gallagher perched his horn-rims on his forehead and peered into the pouch. With two fingers he pulled out a yellowish envelope. He set the pouch aside and squinted at the envelope seal.

  “Please be careful, Your Honor,” Dingus said.

  “Agreed, Your Honor,” Repelmaus said. “I respectfully submit that these materials be left alone until their relevance and admissibility can be properly adjudicated.”

  Gallagher slid a fingernail beneath the seal. The envelope opened. The judge bent slightly and the envelope dipped below his desktop to where we couldn’t see it. He paused, apparently reading. Then he straightened and set the envelope on his desk. In one hand he held some pages that had been folded in thirds.

  “This is a letter, or appears to be,” he said. “Written in what looks to be pen, in a rather florid hand, on the letterhead of St. Valentine’s Roman Catholic Church, Starvation Lake, Michigan.” He flipped to the last page. “It is signed by Father Nilus Moreau.”

  “Without objection,” he said, “I’m going to read the first page.” He waited, but by now even Repelmaus had given up objecting.

  The judge read.

  “Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. I have succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, to the venal allure of physical pleasure, to the enrapture of lust and all that goes before it, and with it, and alongside it. I have let sin reign in my mortal body and I have obeyed its desires. I have committed atrocity and tolerated it and sought the false and sinful asylum of denial. I have made company with men who would do the same, while demanding my silence and wicked acquiescence. I seek your divine mercy and everlasting forgiveness as I write these things down on the twenty-first day of August in the year 1950—”

  Mom pitched forward over her knees, her hands clenched into fists at her breast. “Mom,” I said, reaching across her shoulders, “are you all right?”

  Gallagher looked up. “Beatrice?”

  “Go ahead, Horace,” she said. “Just go ahead.”

  Nilus met Sister Mary Cordelia at a convent in Midland, when he was an associate pastor at St. John Bosco Catholic Church. She was, he wrote, “as pure and delicate and lovely as a begonia open to the sun.” And merely eighteen years old when she became pregnant with Nilus’s child.

  She refused an abortion. Her habit kept her from showing early but, before her belly became impossible to hide, Nilus arranged for her to stay for the rest of her pregnancy with his sister in Sandusky, about eighty miles east. In May 1933, Sister Cordelia gave birth to a girl who was immediately moved to an orphanage in Midland and then, the following year, to a different Catholic orphanage in the town that would soon become Starvation Lake, where Nilus had become assistant pastor of St. Valentine’s. Sister Mary Cordelia followed. She became a teacher at St. Valentine’s and helped at the orphanage.

  Nilus and Cordelia vowed to remain chaste and be thankful that they had not been discovered, so they could take secret joy in watching their daughter blossom, if from a distance. Each night, they prayed that the family who adopted the child, unnamed in Nilus’s letter, would never take her away.

  “There followed several years of acute and unremitting pain as I struggled to sustain my faith while longings for Cordelia insisted themselves upon me,” Nilus wrote. “It was then that Elizabeth Whistler entered into my life and lured me into the compounding of mortal sin that would damn my soul to eternity, Lord, if not for the saving grace and mercy which I pray you will bestow upon your unworthy servant.”

  It was the fall of 1942. Bitsy Whistler was a member of the Women’s Guild at St. Valentine’s. She saw Nilus on occasion at bake sales and pancake breakfasts the guild organized. “Elizabeth was a woman with a heavy soul,” Nilus wrote, “having lost her heroic husband in the world war.” She sought Nilus’s advice—or so Nilus said—and, soon, counsel turned to consolation, which turned to love, or what passed for it between a despondent woman and a priest who labored under the weight of knowing he had made a mistake with the most important decision of his life.

  Initially, Bitsy agreed to a quiet abortion of Nilus’s child and moved south, to Clare, where she stayed with a cousin who convinced her that an abortion would be a sin for which she could never atone. When she returned to Starvation Lake in the spring of 1944, she brought with her a boy—also unnamed in Nilus’s missive—who the townsfolk assumed was the son of her late husband, conceived on a leave shortly before his death at Bataan. Nilus gave Bitsy a job in the sacristy cleaning the chalices, cruets, and other furnishings used at Mass and paid her himself, in cash.

  It wasn’t long before Nilus and Bitsy were trysting again. After every few assignations, Bitsy would demand that Nilus increase the amount of money he paid her. Fearing exposure, and too weak to resist her enticements, he complied. “I was remiss, dear Lord, in countenancing the presence of Satan himself, or herself, in the person of Bitsy Whistler,” Nilus wrote. “I was weak, weak unto my soul, weak in the flesh.”

  I looked at Whistler. He was shaking his head in disbelief, or denial.

  “It was on such an evening, with my will at its most frail, that my sins came to bear the terrible fruits to which I confess. It was six years ago, almost to this day.”

  Sister Cordelia had gone to the sacristy looking for Nilus, to tell him their secret daughter had done well in a waterskiing contest. The sacristy was dark, but she heard voices inside. “She found us, O Lord, she found us,” Nilus wrote, “and my life will never be the same, God forgive me, God forgive my soul.” Cordelia, enraged, flung herself at Nilus. Bitsy stepped between them. The women struggled. Bitsy, the larger, took hold of Cordelia’s cowl and thrust her away. The nun spun backward and smacked her head on the corner of a counter, crumpling to the floor. In seconds, blood had soaked her veil.

  “You must forgive Elizabeth, Lord, for what happened next, for she knew not what she was doing,” Nilus said.

  Whistler came out of his chair. “No,” he said. “He’s lying.” Darlene jumped up and grabbed him by the shoulders. He tried to wrestle free, but Dingus stepped between them and slammed Whistler back down into his chair.

  “Bullshit,” Whistler said.

  Dingus snapped handcuffs off of his belt and said, “Judge?”

  “My mother did not kill that nun.”

  “Are you finished?” Gallagher said. “Do you want to hear the rest?”

  “He’s lying, I’m telling you.” He looked around the room as if someone might sympathize. “Goddammit. All right, I’ll settle down. But Nilus is lying to save his own ass.”

  “We’ll never know, will we?”

  “I know,” Whistler said.

  Gallagher resumed reading.

  Bitsy went to a closet and removed a black cassock. She folded it upon itself several times and, kneeling in the spreading puddle of Cordelia’s blood, placed it tight over the nun’s face.

  “I told her no, Lord, but I was too weak, too selfish, too fearful for my own welfare, to stop her,” Nilus wrote. “I thank you, dear Lord, that Cordelia did not appear to suffer.”

  “Liar,” Whistler said.

  Mom was doubled over now, quietly sobbing.

  Nilus and Bitsy buried Cordelia in a crawl space beneath St. Valentine’s. Two years later, in 1946, Bisty and her young son moved downstate.

  “With temptation removed, I redoubled my efforts to dedicate myself to you, Lord, by raising the necessary means to build a church that would give you greater glory.” Nilus wrote. “Circumstances arose, however, in which the Archdiocese of Detroit felt obliged to direct my actions. And so it is at the urging of Father Timothy Reilly that—”

  “Your Honor,” Repelmaus said, “I demand that this, this, this proceeding, whatever it is, be adjourned now, before more rank speculation and unconfirmed evidence is allowed to slander the good name of my client.”
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  Gallagher looked at him. “You have a client named Father Timothy?”

  “Actually, Your Honor—”

  “Let me guess: attorney-client privilege?” Gallagher said.

  “Father Timothy Reilly,” I said, “was the spokesman for the archdiocese quoted in the stories about Wayland’s murder in 1950.”

  “You may leave now, Regis,” the judge said.

  “Your Honor, you can’t be—”

  “Bailiff?”

  When the door had closed, Gallagher read the rest of the letter.

  Nilus told Father Timothy about the nun buried beneath the church. Father Timothy, Nilus wrote, came to see him one night that August of 1950. He told Nilus that someone tearing down the old church might find the remains. He suggested that Nilus disinter Sister Cordelia and rebury her somewhere she would never be found.

  And so, on August 21, 1950, he had.

  His letter didn’t say that my mother had helped.

  “Some confession,” I said. “He blames everybody and everything but himself for the murder of a nun and the subsequent cover-up.” I looked at Breck. “I’m sure you noticed there’s no mention of your grandfather.”

  “I am not surprised,” Breck said.

  “Mr. Whistler,” Gallagher said, “are you the son of Father Nilus Moreau?”

  Whistler had turned pale. “Technically.”

  “Horace,” Mom said. “I’ve had enough.”

  “I can imagine,” he said. “Mr. Whistler, it would be prudent for you now to keep in mind that anything you say can and will be used against you.” He turned to Eileen Martin. “Ms. Prosecutor, do you plan to file charges against this man?”

  “I need to confer with the sheriff,” she said.

  “Then do so expeditiously. And what of Mr. Breck?”

  “You have his plea, Your Honor.”

  “And a paucity of evidence. However, I suspect Mr. Breck may have information that could be useful to your investigation. Did you hear that, Sheriff Aho?”

  Dingus was whispering with Doc Joe. “Sorry?” he said.

  “Sheriff, you ought to listen up,” Gallagher said. “You haven’t exactly covered yourself in glory these past few weeks.”

  Dingus’s mustache twitched. “Yes, Your Honor. May I interrupt?”

  “Interrupt.”

  “That ring,” he said. “I’ll need it.”

  Whistler grabbed his pinkie ring with the other hand. “First I want a lawyer.”

  “They’ll confiscate it at the jail,” Gallagher said.

  “Doc Joe, you’ve got the gloves on,” Dingus said.

  The coroner held a gloved hand out. Whistler slipped the ring off and handed it over.

  “So,” the judge said, “when we return to the courtroom, I will bind Mr. Breck over for trial in the hope that he might find ways to be helpful.”

  “Noted, Your Honor,” Eileen said.

  Gallagher placed the pouch back in the box and closed the lid.

  “These items are now sealed until the court rules otherwise,” he said. “Deputy Catledge, please cuff the prisoners. Sheriff, I turn Deputy Esper back over to you for whatever you must do. But now let’s get back in court—everyone but you two.”

  He meant Mom and me.

  “Why?” I said.

  “You can leave through my clerk’s office.”

  “What are we supposed to do, Horace?” Mom said.

  “As your son said, solve the case.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I trust you’ll figure it out.”

  Everyone stood. Mom and I watched the others file back to the courtroom.

  “Wait,” I said. “Darlene.”

  I started toward her. She turned around and came to me. Dingus didn’t try to stop her. We embraced, Darlene burying her face in my chest.

  “I had to go myself,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s almost over.”

  We held each other for a long minute. Dingus finally took Darlene by an elbow.

  “Careful, Dingus,” I said. “You don’t want to lose your best deputy.”

  Gallagher was last to leave. “Take care of your mother,” he said. “And Bea, you take care of your son.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  When’s the last time you were here?” I said.

  Mom and I had left the courthouse and, at my insistence, walked down Main to Estelle, then turned north and gone six blocks. We stood now behind the empty rows of varnished wooden pews in St. Valentine’s Roman Catholic Church. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to go there. Maybe to jog Mom’s memory, maybe to make her feel things she preferred not to feel. Maybe for me. It felt like the only way.

  “Funerals and weddings,” Mom said. “But Sunday Mass, not lately.”

  “It seems like a nice church.”

  “It’s a building. They knocked the other down and they can knock this one down, too.”

  Stone columns embellished with gold-leaf carvings rose four stories to a vaulted ceiling painted sky blue with stars of gold. An enormous crucifix, Christ’s head lolling to his right, hovered over the marble altar. A statue of St. Joseph was missing three fingers. The patterned rugs running the length of the church were worn to a pinkish gray.

  “There was quite a row over the stained-glass windows way back when,” Mom said. “The archdiocese said they were too expensive. Nilus ordered them anyway. There were special collections every Sunday for years to pay for them.”

  “So the parish paid for Nilus’s guilt.”

  She walked to one of the windows, unlocked a transom, and pushed it open. Cold air blew into the church.

  “Look,” Mom said.

  I walked over and leaned my head down so I could see out the transom. All I saw was a stand of snow-covered scrub pines at the bottom of a slope. “What about it?”

  “That’s where the old church was. See the foundation?”

  In the middle of the trees, two jagged outcroppings of concrete jutted up from the snow.

  “Right.”

  “That’s where Nonny was. For six years, until . . .”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “So what else is there, Mom?”

  “This is not about me, Gus. It’s about Phyllis.”

  “No. You know it’s about you. You’ve always known it.”

  “I wish I wasn’t afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Of being somebody else.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Some days I can’t remember what I did ten minutes ago. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone out to get the mail only to realize I’d already gotten it earlier. But I can remember everything from ages ago as if it was yesterday.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me then? What else?”

  “Son. I was seventeen years old and an accessory to murder.”

  “No. You didn’t know you were burying a nun.”

  “Not then. But later.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That priest. That despicable man.”

  She met him in a conference room at a law firm on Shelby Street in downtown Detroit. It was the summer of 1971.

  Father Timothy Reilly sat at one end of a long table. Beatrice sat to his left. The room was warm and smelled of cigar smoke. The priest wore a dark jacket and shirt with a Roman collar. He thanked her for coming. He told her that Father Nilus Moreau had recently died in a hospital on the Keweenau Peninsula.

  “He was a friend when you were a girl?” the priest said.

  “Yes,” Bea said. “We lost touch.”

  “I see. He remembered you, even at the very end.”

  “That’s nice. Is that why you asked to see me?”

  She’d heard from a lawyer named Eagan that a priest who’d once met her when she was a child wanted to see her the next time she was in Detroit. She wondered why, but she wasn’t eager to make the trip merely to satisfy her curiosity. When
the lawyer called again to say the matter was “of a pressing nature” and mentioned Father Nilus Moreau, she decided she’d better get in the car.

  Reilly didn’t answer her question. Instead he said, “Your own husband died recently?”

  “Last year.”

  The priest made a sign of the cross. “May his soul rest in peace.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Beatrice,” Reilly said, “I need to take you into my confidence. What I’m about to say is of a rather delicate nature.”

  “A pressing matter.”

  “Indeed. I believe you also knew Sister Mary Cordelia Gallesero, did you not?”

  The question startled her. She sat back in her chair. “Yes, Father. Why?”

  Reilly folded his hands on the table and leaned over them toward Bea. “Forgive me for being direct,” he said. Then he told her that, based on a confession Father Nilus had given as part of his last rites, she apparently had been party to the death of Sister Cordelia.

  “No. That’s ridiculous,” Bea said. “Nonny—Sister Cordelia disappeared when I was a girl. I missed her terribly.”

  “Nonny. Yes, of course. I don’t mean, child, to imply that you participated in the actual murder of Sister Cordelia.”

  “Murder?”

  “We now believe she was murdered.”

  Bea felt nauseated. “By who?”

  “It’s not clear, unfortunately. What is clear, at least as Father Nilus confessed it to his God, is that you were involved in the disposal of the good nun’s remains.”

  It all came rushing back: the humid evening forest, the smell of the earthworms, Nilus’s shiny black shoes at the rim of the hole.

  “No,” was all she could think to say.

  This was a crime, the priest explained, almost certainly a felony, and if she were to be convicted, she could land in prison. That would be especially tragic now that her husband had died, he said, because there would be no family left to care for her young son.

  Bea felt the queasiness well in her stomach. “Father, what are you saying? I didn’t know what Father Nilus was burying there. I didn’t know what—”

  “So you were there?”

  She felt faint. She told herself to catch her breath. “Where?” she said.