"Is he going to croak?" Pewter was ready to leave if he did. She wasn't big on the moment of death. It was too messy for her fastidious tastes.
"No, he's going into shock. Susan is trying to keep him warm," Mrs. Murphy replied.
"What about him?" Pewter walked over to sniff the groaning Brother Mark.
"Don't know." Mrs. Murphy listened, hearing a siren in the distance. "Let's hope he lives so we can find out what really happened and why."
Tucker, firmly planted between Harry and Brother Mark, said, "I'd be happy to rip his throat out."
Harry now heard the siren. "I've never been so happy to hear that sound in my life."
Brother Handle, floating in and out of consciousness, raised his head for a lucid moment. "Hail Mary, Mother of God, full of grace—" He dropped his head again.
40
It was a simple scam. Straightforward," Coop said to Harry and Susan. "We were closing in, but you two jumped the gun. You know, Harry, sometimes you're too clever by half."
"You said a mouthful." The Rev. Jones smiled.
The four gathered in the St. Luke's rectory office, the fire crackling in the large fireplace.
"How's Brother Handle?" Harry asked Herb, who had been to the hospital that morning.
"He's got a hell of a gash but he was lucky. Just missed his kidney."
Harry watched the four cats play with Tucker and Owen, lots of fake puffing up while the dogs snapped their jaws. It was all very ferocious.
"So the motive was money after all." Susan sighed.
"Yes and no." Coop rubbed her hands on the arms of the club chair. "Mark wanted money. Nordy wanted money and fame. It was his idea in the first place. He'd cover the story; it'd be big news before Christmas, you know, a hopeful, religious story. The story would run as long as he could come up with interesting angles, string it out, which he did. And he was right, the footage was used all over the country by network affiliates. He thought this was his ticket to the big time, a huge metropolitan market."
Harry wondered, "Who would have thought those two would be partners?"
"College. They knew each other at Michigan State, which was no secret. They'd kept in touch. They'd run a little scam in college printing false I.D.s. Neither one was especially honest, obviously. When Nordy started broadcasting from Channel Twenty-nine, Mark, or I should say Brother Mark, the smarter of the two, hooked back up with him. He was disconnected in the monastery. He felt Brother Handle and the other monks disdained him, but he had nowhere to go. He'd burned his bridges behind him. He needed money and he knew from his life outside the brotherhood that he wanted a lot of money. His five years as a brother apparently taught him nothing about the Ten Commandments." Coop wryly smiled.
"Maybe he thought they were the Ten Suggestions." Harry noticed the animals leaving the room.
"Why did he kill G-Uncle?" Susan folded her hands together.
"He cried about that," Coop said flatly.
"Crocodile tears," Susan bitterly replied.
"No, I think he feels some remorse. As you know, he was your great-uncle's apprentice, following him everywhere. Brother Prescott stuck Mark with Brother Thomas because Thomas had such patience. No one else could get along with Mark for very long. Brother Thomas taught him how to keep the plant going, taught him the guts of the place. He learned the wiring and the plumbing. Brother Thomas, pious as he was, suspected the bloody tears. He was going to discover how it was done and he knew the only person, apart from himself, who could rig that up would be Mark."
"But how did Mark do it?" Harry could hear a door down the hall slowly opening.
"When the statue was taken off her base this summer, Brother Mark drilled into her a little each night. First, and this was the easiest part, he hollowed out her head. He painted the inside with a hard sealer to prevent the blood from eventually seeping through the soapstone. He covered the outside hole with epoxy made to look like stone. Special-effects people do this kind of stuff all the time.
"Nordy linked him up with special-effects people he'd met through covering film shoots in Virginia. Mark learned what he needed to know via e-mail.
"Then he drilled a line from the head down to the base. That wasn't so difficult, either, just time-consuming. He ran a copper tube from the head to the base.
"Again he drilled out a big section in the base to hide all that coiled copper until he could dig a narrow ditch down to the pumphouse.
"He had to do that at night. He could work on the statue during the day while she was off her base, since Brother Thomas would come and go. Digging the ditch for the copper line was the hardest part, and he had to do it by hand."
"Then there was blood in the black box behind the pump?" Harry asked.
"No. Water. He'd send a little water up the copper tube, warm water, to meet the blood, and gravity did the rest." Coop admired the plan.
"Ah, that's why he picked winter." Susan got it. "In warm weather she'd cry all the time; he'd have to replace the blood."
"Right. This way he could make the miracle last longer yet be a little unpredictable. He could refill the head. The plug unscrewed once he would scrape off the bonding glue. He only refilled her once, replaced the glue with his special-effects touches—makeup for statues! It was very clever. And remember, he stole one container full of blood types. He didn't know when he could steal another. Sooner or later Brother Andrew or Brother John would have caught him."
"Then why in God's name did he remove Thomas's body? That was so disrespectful!" Susan's face reddened.
"He panicked." Coop dropped two perfectly square sugar cubes in her coffee.
Herb's secretary, Linda, had brought a large silver service, placing it on the coffee table. Her office was just off Herb's, and the handy kitchen was next to that.
"Why? Why would he panic?" Harry thought the procedure grisly.
"You. You have a reputation for ferreting out secrets. He knew the morphine would stay in the body for a time, so he thought he'd get rid of the body in case there was an exhumation. He also figured that no one would find the body until springtime and he'd be long gone. He underestimated you in that."
"Susan, too," Harry said.
"Actually, we have to give credit to the cats and dogs." Susan paused. "Coop, give them credit in your report."
Reaching for a chocolate-dipped shortbread cookie, Herb asked, "Then why did Mark kill Nordy?"
"Greed. Nordy pushed him. Nordy pushed everybody. They argued about the fifty-fifty split. According to Mark, Nordy declared the money would be a trickle if he hadn't gotten national coverage and then set up the Web site. There's the ring of truth to it."
"Was my uncle really praying in front of the statue?"
"According to Mark, he was. Perhaps he knelt down out of habit. Mark followed him. All he had to do was reach around and cover his mouth with chloroform. When he passed out, Mark pumped him full of morphine. Those allergy needles barely leave a mark. Thomas had a flashlight; he was intending to look around. He was suspicious. Mark took the flashlight and put it back in the supply room."
"How much money did they make?" Herb, always struggling to balance the budget for St. Luke's, had to ask.
Coop leaned forward. "So far they'd taken in over half a million dollars."
"What!" Harry nearly spit out her tea.
"Religion is big business. Selling cures and hope is even bigger." Coop shrugged. "The Bakkers built an empire on it, as have Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. These people or their organizations, if you will, make millions every year. Now, I'm not saying that Falwell and Robertson are crooks, only that we can't even imagine all the lonely and frightened people sitting watching TV who pick up the phone, use their credit card, or write a check."
Herb glanced up at the ceiling. "Don't suppose there's a miracle waiting to happen at St. Luke's Lutheran Church, do you?"
Harry stood up. "I don't know about a miracle, but I believe there's a sacrilege in progress."