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No, probably not. Still, I filed the tidbit away, just in case.
And according to Roz, Terry Gallego was a bit of a mystery. She’d moved to Prescott about five years ago when her son was still a baby, but it sounded as if she hadn’t made a lot of friends and mostly kept to herself, even though she seemed to be fairly dedicated about attending.
Again, I didn’t view her as a prime suspect. She’d looked utterly devoted to her son and didn’t seem like the sort of person who went around bashing innocent priests on the head.
Unless…he’d made a move on her?
Almost as soon as that thought popped into my head, I banished it to the depths where it belonged. Father Frank wasn’t a predator. He was a kind man who’d met a fate he hadn’t deserved.
I would have bet both the bar and Hazel’s house on that.
And the Lindley family had been in Prescott forever. Meg had taught at Lincoln Elementary for forty-plus years and, according to Roz, was about one step down from sainthood.
“Her grandson Wes owns a small construction business,” she continued. “He’s a good guy, super-devoted to his grandmother.”
I’d already witnessed that for myself at the reception, but I supposed it was good to hear it from Roz as well, if only to confirm that the affection was genuine and that he hadn’t been putting on a show for the other parishioners.
“He actually did some work here,” she added. “Hazel had him fix some moldings in the back hallway a couple of years ago. He’s good with these old buildings and shows them the proper respect. So many contractors want to update things instead of just maintaining them the way they’re supposed to be.”
I could see why Hazel would have hired someone like that. Her house — well, my house now, although I had a feeling I’d always think of it as her place no matter how long I lived there — was a monument to careful maintenance and restoration. There’d been some accommodation to modern creature comforts in the kitchen and the bathrooms, but the rest of the place looked like it should be in a museum.
“That’s good to know,” I said. “I guess he’s the person I should call if the building here needs any more repairs.”
“Yes, Wes is definitely the one to call,” Roz replied. “He knows how Whiskey Row is put together — the building shares a wall with the place to the south, and there used to be some kind of connecting door for the operation that ran here in the twenties. He sealed it up while he was here, since Hazel always disliked that door.”
I could imagine. Not that there was anything wrong with the business that shared a wall with us, a store that sold touristy stuff like mugs and T-shirts and some Native American jewelry that might or might not have been authentic, but when you were storing gallons of booze on the premises, it kind of helped to have things feel as secure as possible.
“Is Wes married?” I asked. “I noticed at Father Frank’s reception that he didn’t seem to be with anyone.”
I was asking out of curiosity more than anything else, but then I realized that Roz might have thought I had some kind of ulterior motive.
Ew, no.
But she only said, “They’re not official or anything, but people have seen Wes’s truck parked outside Terry’s house a good bit over the last six months or so.”
Those words were spoken so neutrally that I couldn’t tell for sure whether Roz approved of them as a couple. Not that it mattered — they were two grown adults and could do as they liked.
But I’d exhausted my list of the people I’d met at the reception, and Roz didn’t seem to have anything further to add, so I thanked her and headed home. Something in her voice and expression told me she thought this was all a wild goose chase, and maybe it was. After all, even though there had been around a hundred people at the vigil and the reception that followed, I knew that wasn’t the full complement of Sacred Heart’s congregation. There had to be scores more who could be suspects but just hadn’t crossed into my orbit.
Well, there wasn’t much I could do about that. I’d just have to keep digging and hope for the best.
Adam picked me up at seven that night, as we’d arranged. To my surprise, he had a bouquet of flowers for me. Nothing fancy, just some mixed stems that he’d probably gotten at Trader Joe’s, but I was still touched by the gesture.
Let’s just say that my last couple of boyfriends hadn’t exactly been the hearts-and-flowers type.
We took his pickup truck — I was kind of surprised he didn’t drive something sportier — to a place downtown called Papa’s. I’d driven by it a few times but hadn’t eaten there, mostly because I hadn’t gone to any real sit-down restaurants yet and had only been getting takeout. It was dark and clubby inside, with fun painted stripes on the wall, and the aroma of red sauce and Parmesan that hit my nose when Adam opened the door for me was absolutely fabulous.
“Have you been here before?” he asked after the hostess seated us and gave us a couple of menus.
“No,” I replied. “I haven’t been getting out all that much.”
“Then I’m glad I could be the one who introduced you to the place.”
Our waitress came by, and Adam and I agreed on a bottle of Chianti. Then she left us to peruse the menu, which was filled with so much yumminess, I wasn’t sure where to start.
“How have you been feeling?” he asked after our server came back with the wine, poured some for us, and had us order — chicken parm for him, baked ziti for me.
I lifted my wine glass and cocked an eyebrow at him. “I thought this was a date, not an examination.”