Read Online Working Murder by Eleanor Boylan - Free Book Online

singing lessons he couldn't afford
     and, as I would platitudinize to his father, “after all, it's his life.”
    I said: “My ‘handsome heap’ must look a mess.” I touched my hair self-consciously,
     wondering why I couldn't take an offhand compliment more gracefully.
    â€œNot a bit—you could go on as the empress in L'Aiglon. I was hoping you and Dad
     might come north for this. Is he here?”
    â€œYes, upstairs. Do you remember your cousin Tully?”
    Tully nodded at Jon, then put his finger to his lips. A few heads had turned
     disapprovingly. Jon took my arm, whispered “Let's go aloft,” and piloted me to the
     stairs.
    I said: “I didn't realize you knew Lloyd.”
    â€œI didn't, until last year. My voice coach told me to go listen to his choir at St.
     Bernard's. When I introduced myself, the Saddlier-Cavanaugh connection came up. Lloyd
     was a great choral director. Wait till you hear his High Requiem tomorrow.”
    I was spared having to say that I would not hear it by our arrival at more seating
     upstairs and by Sadd's delight at seeing Jon. He adored his son, despite the fall of
     genes that had made them so different. Henry was filling coffee cups from an urn that
     stood at one end of the room. A dozen or more persons had found their way here, and one
     of them, a hunched figure in a chair near the urn, looked as if he had found his way
     from a soup kitchen. He was clutching a coffee cup and staring into space, a shriveled
     man who could have been sixty or ninety, encased in a deplorable overcoat buttoned to
     the neck.
    Jon said, as we sat down on the folding chairs being placed for us: “There's poor old
     Marty Cavanaugh. I should go speak to him, but he's so skittish.”
    â€œMarty?” Sadd looked across the room with interest. “Son of Martin and Sara?”
    â€œI don't know whose son he is, Dad. He's just your old-fashioned family drunk. Lloyd was
     good to him. Marty used to go over to St. Bernard's sometimes on Sunday morning to get
     out of the cold and listen to the music. Lloyd would always take him out to breakfast.
     Did you know that St. Bernard's is up for some kind of papal award because of Lloyd?
     It's one of the few Catholic churches in New York that still keeps the authentic
     Gregorian chant with full choir.”
    â€œThat's interesting,” I said, my eyes on the hunched figure across the room.
    â€œAnd refreshing,” said Jon. “All you get in most churches today is the congregation
     bleating in the pews.”
    â€œWho's bleeding in the pews?” asked Sadd. I knew his attention had wandered to where mine
     had.
    â€œBleating, Dad. Singing off-key and not knowing all the lyrics.”
    I said the “lyrics” of hymns had always been my downfall as Henry approached, balancing
     three cups of coffee. He distributed them, shook hands with Jon, and said, as he sat
     down:
    â€œThat sad-looking creature over there is Martin Cavanaugh, Junior. I introduced myself
     and when he told me his name, I said ‘you must be Jim Cavanaugh's nephew’ and he said
     yes and kept drinking his coffee—which is spiked to the hilt, by the way.”
    Jon waved to someone across the room and excused himself. Sadd and Henry and I looked at
     each other. Tully's recounting of the events of that summer was still perking.
    Sadd said: “Martin would be one of those cousins in Patchogue. He'd have known Ellen.”
    â€œAnd Jim,” said Henry. “Wouldn't you love to pump him on the subject of the mausoleum?”
    I said: “We shouldn't all converge on him. Jon described him as ‘skittish.'”
    â€œI'd describe him as drunk,” said Henry.
    â€œJon also said Lloyd was good to him.” Then I added: “I wonder if Lloyd remembered Jim
     Cavanaugh.”
    â€œToo bad we can't ask him.” Sadd drained his coffee. “But I doubt it. Lloyd's father was
     a much