The Perfect Patsy

Four

Four

IT’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT by the time I head for Gladys‘ apartment, the raw emotions of the Becket family still fresh in my mind. As I drive, I’m desperately trying to figure out a way to tell her what I need to tell her.

I’m hoping Gladys can help make some sense of all that’s happened.

After all, she’s Nate’s girlfriend. She knows him better than anyone, right?

Right?

Gladys lives in an old, sprawling Victorian house that’s been converted to apartments. Hers is on the ground floor, of course, to accommodate her wheelchair. When I arrive, I see the Mystery Machine, so I know she’s at home. Not only that, but the light is on. I remember her mentioning that she’s a night owl and typically only sleeps four hours a night. One of the curses of being a genius, I suppose.

I texted before I left the Beckets, telling her I needed to see her right away. I knock on the door and she opens it immediately, obviously waiting for me since receiving my text. She looks scared as she asks, “Dad, is everybody OK?”

“Let’s sit down, sweetie, OK?” I say.

“Sure,” she says guardedly. I follow her into the living room, decorated in vintage mid-century modern. The only thing that appears out of place is a white marble obelisk sitting on her coffee table.

It contains the ashes of Gladys’ parents, killed by Richard Davenport in a hit-and-run accident when she was only eight years old.

I sit in a chair, and she parks herself across from me, waiting for me to answer her original question.

“Dad,” Gladys says, “why are you here? Why haven’t you answered my question? Has something happened to Mom?”

“Helen is fine, Gladys,” I say. “And Nate is fine too. But there has been a tragic incident.”

“What?” she asks.

I swallow before I say, “A young woman—I don’t think you know her well but you’ve met her, I’m sure—Ashley Becket was found dead tonight.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says softly. “I didn’t know her very well, but I’ve met her, I guess a time or two. Oh, poor Rick. I know he’s been worried about her. He’s mentioned a few times when we’ve been gaming that he would appreciate anybody who would pray for her doing so.”

“Did he ever say what he was worried about?” I ask, gently probing to see what she might already know.

“No,” she replies, shaking her head. “He just mentioned she needed some help straightening out her life. I didn’t think a whole lot about it, because, well, most freshmen in college need help straightening out their lives.”

I smile at this because, while she is correct, she herself was hardly the typical college freshman, entering MIT as she did at 16.

“What happened to her, Dad?” Gladys asks. “And, why are you here? I mean, I hardly knew Ashley.”

I’m trying to out-think a genius, and know I’m hardly up to the task. But I avoid answering her question by asking, “Gladys, that incident a couple of weeks ago at Sprockets. What was that about?”

She looks down at her hands. “Oh. You saw that.”

“Helen and I both did. It looked pretty intense. I mean, you threw a milkshake on him.”

“It was his milkshake. He wanted it. I gave it to him.”

“Gladys,” I say firmly. Gladys looks up and sighs.

“OK,” she says. “You know I told Nate a few weeks ago about my past.”

I nod. “Yes. But I thought everything was OK?”

“So did I. After he found me in the church and said he loved me and didn’t care anything about my past, I thought the worst was over. I thought we’d just go forward together.” She smiles wistfully. “We’d talked about a future together before then. That’s one of the reasons I told him. I thought he was getting ready to pop the question.”

“Has something happened since then?” I ask.

“Not any one thing,” she says. “But Nate hasn’t been himself. I mean, we’ve talked several times, I helped him get his new business off the ground, we’ve even been out a few times. But he’s been acting really strange. Distant.”

“He hasn’t been to Mass with you, I’ve noticed,” I say.

“He’s always said he had to work. I never questioned it because he is the only crime scene cleaner in this part of the state. And with Myer College coming back in session, there’ve been a lot of parties to clean up.” She shakes her head. “But I just have a bad feeling that there’s something else.”

Gladys must have picked up on something in my expression, because her eyes narrow and she says slowly, “Dad, why did you start by telling me about Ashley, and then change the subject to Nate and me?”

I look my surrogate daughter in the face and know that what I’m going to tell her next will cause her world to crumble. It breaks my heart to say anything, because she’s lost so much in her short life.

But she needs to know the truth. And I’d rather she heard it from me, instead of seeing it on the news or on the Internet.

“Gladys, Nate is the one who found Ashley dead,” I say quietly.

Her eyes quickly fill with tears. “Oh gosh, I am so sorry to hear that. He’s got to be upset. I’m gonna give him a call right now.”

As she reaches into the side pocket of her wheelchair where she keeps her phone, I put my hand out to stop her. At my gesture, she freezes. “Gladys,” I say gravely, “Nate can’t take your call right now.”

“Why not?'' Gladys says, but from the look in her eyes, she’s beginning to see the truth.

I am about to answer when there’s a knock at the door. Gladys checks through the peephole specially installed at the height of her wheelchair and then opens it to a very sympathetic-looking Mae Trent.

“Mae, what are you doing here?” Gladys asks.

“Martin phoned me from the hospital and said that you might need some company,” she says as she bends over to hug Gladys. Then, looking at me she asks, “Is he right?”

“Yes,” I say, “I’m glad he called you.”

“Mae, will you tell me what’s going on?” Gladys says loudly. “I cannot get a straight answer from Father Tom!”

“Gladys,” I say carefully, “The reason that Nate can’t talk right now is that he is at the hospital being checked out for injuries and possible drug exposure.”

“Oh, no!” she cries. “So he was hurt trying to help her? Did somebody kill her in front of him or something like that? Are you sure he’s OK? He didn’t get hurt, did he? You’re not lying to me, are you?”

“No, Gladys, Nate has not been injured. Ashley was already dead when he found her.”

“So what, in the street or something?” Gladys asks, confusion replacing worry in her tone. “I know that the neighborhood where he lives can be a little sketchy. Was she somewhere near his apartment?”

I can’t dance around the truth any longer. I get up from my chair and kneel in front of her, taking her hands in mine. I glance at Mae, then look the blue-haired genius in the eye. “Sweetie,” I say with as much gentleness as I can muster, “she was in his apartment.”

She says nothing for a moment, then asks with a voice chilling for its lack of emotion, “Where in his apartment, Dad?“

I take a deep breath and say, “In his bed, without any clothes on.”

Instantaneously, her sadness turns to rage as she says under her breath, “Well, that explains it, doesn’t it?“

“Explains what?”

“The distance. Cancelling dates. Letting my calls go to voicemail and not returning them. Not responding to my texts. He was supposedly working all the time, he never had any money. I’ve wondered about that but didn’t want to seem like some sort of gold digger, so I just kept saying I’d pay for stuff. He told me he was working late, and I really thought he was, you know, working an extra job to save up money for a ring or something.”

“Maybe that’s all it was,” Mae says reassuringly.

She shakes her head. “No. It all makes sense now. I didn’t understand yesterday. Now I do. This is all about me. All about my past.”

“Sweetie,” I say, “I don’t—”

“You don’t get it, Dad!” she screams and pounds the armrests of her chair. “When we talked yesterday, I asked him why he hadn’t been taking my calls and he gave some sort of bullshit about doing something that would make a really big impression on me and even the score between us, or something like that.” She closes her eyes as tears begin to trickle down her face. “Even the score. That’s what he was doing. He was screwing Ashley to get back at me.”

“Now, Gladys, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I say weakly, not able to say anything else.

Fortunately, I am soon reminded of Mae’s background in dealing with people who have suffered trauma as she chimes in, “Father Tom is right, Gladys. There’s no need to try to process anything right now. I’ll stay with you tonight and we can work on this together. OK?”

Gladys looks at Mae and, biting her lip, nods. I stand up and bend over to hug her. She flings her arms around me and sobs, “Thank you. I’m glad you’re the one who told me. It’s less humiliating.”

“I’m so sorry, my daughter,” I whisper, and kiss the top of her head. “I’m so sorry this happened.”

“I thought he loved me,” she whimpers. “I guess . . . I guess I’m lucky I found out now.”

I stand up and make the sign of the cross on her forehead as a blessing. “Mae,” I say, “can you step out with me for a moment?”

“Sure,” she says. “I’ll be right back, Gladys.”

Gladys nods and Mae follows me out. She closes the door and says, “Yes, Father Tom?”

“What did Martin tell you when he called?” I ask.

She takes a deep breath. “Not much. Just that Nate was in the emergency room, in police custody, and I’d better get to Gladys’ apartment. He didn’t tell me about Ashley.” She pauses, then asks, “Do the police think Nate killed her?”

I nod. “Detective Conway placed him under arrest at the scene.”

“But that’s impossible,” she says incredulously. “This is Nate we’re talking about.”

“Well, unless he can come up with an explanation for how she wound up dead in his bed, and her blood on him, he’s in a lot of trouble.”

Looking back at the closed door, Mae says, “Why do you think she was there? Do you think it’s like Gladys said?”

“Mae,” I say, “that’s a question only Nate can answer. And whatever that is . . .” I trail off, just shaking my head.

“Martin mentioned to me that he hoped you’d stop by the hospital and check on Nate. I can handle Gladys if you feel you need to do that.”

“He was my next stop.” I reach in my pocket and hand her one of my cards. “My cell phone’s on there. Call me if you need anything.”

She nods. “I’ll send you my number in a few minutes.”

I say, “Thank you,” and turn to leave.

“Father Tom,” Mae says. I turn back to her and she continues, “People are going to hear about this. I mean, by this time tomorrow, it will be all over the parish. I’ve already had a couple of people from the gaming group text me asking if I knew what was going on at Nate’s—they’re scanner buffs, they like to listen to the first responder channels. It’s going to be bad.”

I sigh. “I know, Mae. And it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.”