Page 49 of Dead to Rites

Then I made myself pull in a breath and say, “You’ve seemed really worried since Father Frank died. I’m no expert, but it feels like something more than grief to me.”

Nell made an odd little gesture with one hand, not quite a wave, but she didn’t say anything, so I continued.

“I’m not asking because I think you had anything to do with what happened to him. I’m just asking because if there was something you were going to tell him, something maybe you’ve been hiding, then it might help me to understand what’s going on.” I paused for a breath, then added, “And whatever you tell me, it’ll be in confidence. I’ll handle it however you need me to.”

Even before I’d finished speaking, Nell’s eyes had begun to well up. She fished a Kleenex out of her cardigan pocket and dabbed at them, drew in a hitching breath, and then just sort of overflowed.

“I’m so — so sorry,” she said between hiccupping sobs. “I really didn’t mean to do it, but everything seemed so overwhelming, and I had nowhere else to turn.”

“Didn’t mean to do what?” I asked gently. If I’d known her better, I might have reached over and given her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, but I decided the better approach was to sound as calm and nonjudgmental as I could.

“Take the money,” she said, and dabbed again. She wasn’t wearing any eye makeup, so she hadn’t turned into a raccoon the way I would have, but her eyes were red, her lashes tangled with tears. “It was just awful after Ben died. His medical bills just about wiped us out, and it didn’t seem as if I could keep up no matter what I did.”

For a second or two, I just stared at her. Then it clicked.

Nell Whitaker was the parish secretary, and that meant she probably handled the money that came in from the collection basket and any other donations made to the church. I doubted it added up to Wall Street numbers, but I guessed it was enough to be tempting to someone at the end of her financial rope.

“You took the collection money?” I asked, and she nodded, fresh tears flowing that she tried to wipe away with an increasingly sodden tissue.

“Not all of it,” she replied. “Just a little from the petty cash when I needed it. Maybe twenty dollars one week and fifty another. No one seemed to notice, and the bills never seemed to stop, so I just kept…taking what I needed.”

I sat there quietly, not sure what I should say. Telling her it was all right would have been a lie. Petty larceny, sure, but it was still something that could have gotten her in a good deal of trouble.

“I always meant to put it back,” she went on. “But then I realized it had added up to over eighteen hundred dollars, and there was no way in the world I’d be able to pay back that much. The whole thing was just making me sick.”

“That would have been a lot to keep to yourself,” I agreed, and she pulled in a gasping little breath, clearly trying to get herself together.

“I finally decided I was going to tell Father Frank,” she said. “I made an appointment to talk to him — not in confession, just a meeting in his office. I’d told my sister what was going on, and she agreed to loan me the money so I could pay back the parish. I was going to see him last Friday.”

An appointment she’d never been able to keep, because Father Frank had been murdered the night before.

“I was so sure someone would find out and call the police,” Nell told me. “I was waiting to get arrested…but nothing ever happened.”

Then she burst into tears again, wiping at her eyes with the sodden tissue. Belatedly, I remembered that I had a little pack of travel Kleenex in my purse, so I reached in and extracted one from the pack and then handed it over to her.

“Th-thank you,” she said.

I didn’t tell her it was nothing, mostly because I could see that she would have appreciated any act of kindness right then, no matter how small. Instead, I waited until her sobs had died down into sniffles and gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Taking eighteen hundred dollars over the space of a couple of years to cover medical bills isn’t anything like murdering a priest,” I said gently. “The police wouldn’t even be looking at the parish petty cash unless someone told them to. If you can pay it back, then you should come clean to the diocese. I think freeing yourself of the burden you’ve been carrying for the past two years will be worth whatever consequences you might face.” I paused there, choosing my next words carefully. “And I think Father Frank would have understood.”

Those quiet words unleashed another round of sobbing, but it felt different this time, release instead of despair.

“Thank you, Lorelei,” Nell said after she’d recovered herself. “It’s been so awful to hold this inside me, to be surrounded by people I know would judge me if they knew the truth.”

I wanted to believe that Sacred Heart’s parishioners would be more forgiving than that, but I didn’t know them well enough to say one way or another. Rather than give her any false reassurances, I asked, “Can you tell me anything about who else had been meeting with Father Frank? The people you said weren’t on the regular schedule, I mean. I don’t need to know what those meetings were about. I just want to know who he was seeing.”

Nell blotted her eyes one more time. The travel tissue looked as if it was about to give up the ghost, but I could tell the tears were done, and she was now ready to ponder the questions I’d asked.

“He’d been seeing Meg Lindley more often than usual,” she said after a few seconds. “They’d always meet in his office, not in the confessional. I think it was once or twice a month for at least the past eight months or so, maybe a little more. They’d be in there for an hour at a time. I never knew what it was about, but I just assumed she was helping him with something or another, since their family is so involved with the church. Diane was there sometimes, too, before or after Father Frank’s meetings with Meg.”

Somehow, I managed to keep my expression neutral. “Diane Lindley was there?”

Nell nodded. “Yes. Sometimes Diane drove Meg over and waited, or Diane would meet her there and walk her in. Meg’s ninety, you know. Diane looks after her.”

Diane seemed to look after a lot of people. “Of course,” I said.

Another sniff, and then Nell balled up the tissue she’d been clutching and put it in her pocket. “I should really get back to my desk,” she told me. “We’re usually not too busy in the morning, but — ”