“Um…” said Dooley.
“No, Dooley, I don’t know why Father Reilly is hugging his housekeeper as if they’re a long-married couple,” I said, anticipating his question.
“Maybe he’s very grateful that she keeps his house clean?” Dooley suggested.
But then things got a little weirder still when Marigold now buried her face in Father Reilly’s chest and gave free rein to her emotions by having a good cry, the priest patting her back consolingly and murmuring such evergreens as ‘There, there’ into her ear.
“If I didn’t know any better, Dooley,” I said after observing the twosome for a few more moments, “I’d say those two are definitely a couple.”
“I told you, Max—didn’t I tell you?”
“Yes, you did, Dooley. You called it.”
“Oh, that’s so nice. I like couples. They make the world a little brighter and always put a smile on my face.” He sighed. “Love is grand, isn’t it?”
“Love is grand, Dooley. But priests in Father Reilly’s church unfortunately aren’t allowed to marry, so this display of public affection is very much not done, I’m afraid.”
“So… Father Reilly isn’t allowed to hug his housekeeper?”
“He can hug her as much as he wants, but that’s pretty much as far as he’s allowed to go—his church pretty much has decided to draw the line there.”
“So…”
“So no kissing or … anything else.”
Dooley laughed.“What else is there, Max? Kissing is what people who love each other do!”
“Absolutely,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “Yes, kissing is exactly what they do. Nothing more.”
“Well, they’re not kissing yet,” said Dooley, referring to the priest and his housekeeper. “So his church will be very happy.”
“Found something!” suddenly a voice rang out nearby. We all hurried to the edge of the pond, as the diver had resurfaced and was holding something in his hand. It was a pink and shiny object, and looked very much like…
“Angel’s phone!” Marigold cried, then burst into tears once more. The diver handed the phone to Angel’s distraught mother, who nodded and said, “It’s my baby’s phone!”
“So she definitely was here,” said Odelia, who’d come hurrying up from her search of the nearby area.
“All is not lost, Marigold,” said Father Reilly. “For all we know she simply dumped her phone in the pond and…”
“And then what?” She suddenly turned on the priest. “You should never have yelled at her, Francis—this is all your fault!”
“I’m sorry,” said the man of the cloth, who looked as upset as his housekeeper, which surprised me a little. I mean, it’s one thing to have a general affection for the members of one’s flock, but Father Reilly seemed to take this thing with Angel very personal. There was even a lone tear trickling down his rosy cheek, which he quickly brushed away with the back of his hand.
Before long the diver surfaced again, and all eyes turned to him once more. But the man shook his head.“Nothing,” he said. “Except for three rusty old bikes.”
“Oh, Francis!” Marigold cried, and this time buried her head in the man’s shoulder.
“I don’t understand,” said Odelia. “So her phone is in there but…”
“Did you search the whole area?” asked Chase.
The diver, who’d hoisted himself up onto the pond’s edge and was removing his diving gear, answered in the affirmative. “Searched every inch, Detective. Nothing.”
“But that’s impossible,” said Marcie. “I mean, surely if the dogs tell us that the trail stops here…”
“Are these trained police dogs, ma’am?” asked the diver as he gave Fifi and Rufus a critical look.
“No, they’re regular dogs,” Ted said.
“Well, there you go, sir. Only a police dog, trained in the search for a missing person will be able to give you the information you need, not your regular mutt—no offense.”
I thought Rufus looked a little rueful, but Fifi looked indignant.
“I can tell you right now that I did not make a mistake, sir!” she yelled, though her barking didn’t seem to affect the diver in the slightest.
“I think the key must be in those three rusty bikes, Max,” said Dooley. “You better tell Odelia to tell that diver to bring up those bikes so we can take a closer look at them.”
“Oh, Dooley,” said Harriet, dismissing my friend’s comment out of paw.
“So you found this pond, Rufus,” said Brutus. “Which we’ll attribute to beginner’s luck. But you better step aside now and let the actual police dogs pick up the trail, okay?”
“I don’t understand,” said Rufus. “I’m sure that the trail stops here. I’ve walked all around the pond and nothing. I can’t pick up the girl’s scent anywhere. Plenty of other scents, mind you, but not Angel’s particular scent.”
“Almost as if she vanished without a trace,” said Fifi, then slowly raised her head to look upward. And since it’s very hard not to look up when one of your small company looks up, we all followed suit, and soon found ourselves staring up at the treetops—pine trees if I wasn’t mistaken—and that small patch of blue sky visible beyond the foliage.
“Aliens,” suddenly said Dooley. “Angel was abducted by aliens. And of course they left her phone, since that’s ancient technology for them.”
“I hate to admit it,” said Harriet, “but I think for once Dooley just might be onto something.”
“Aliens,” Rufus murmured. “What do you know?”
I saw how Shanille had joined her humans and was offering her support by giving them gentle nudges with the top of her head. I walked over and said,“Shanille, can I ask you something?”
“Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something, Max?” she said.
“Your Father Reilly and Marigold,” I said, trudging on regardless. My curiosity had been piqued and it simply had to be satisfied, pronto! “Are they an item?”
Shanille looked up sharply at this.“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she snapped.
“It just seems to me as if they’re very, um, well, tactile. More tactile than I would have expected from a priest.”
She glanced up at her humans, who stood staring at that pond, as if hoping Angel would suddenly pop up like the Lady of the Lake, holding perhaps not Excalibur but at least one of those three rusty bikes.
“Not here,” Shanille barked—if a cat can bark, of course—and walked off into the woods. And since I figured she meant for me to follow her, that’s what I did. Once we’d removed ourselves from the pondside melee, she turned and said, “You can’t tell this to anyone, Max.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering what could possibly be so big that she was swearing me to secrecy.
“But swear to it, Max.”
“I hereby solemnly swear I won’t tell anyone what you’re about to tell me, Shanille,” I said, deciding to go through the rigmarole and satisfy Shanille’s weird demands.
She looked off into the middle distance, as if wondering how to formulate her next statement, then decided to come right out with it.“Yes, Francis and Marigold are a couple.”
“And Angel…”
“Is their daughter.”
“And does she know…”
“No, she doesn’t—and that’s the thing. Marigold has been wanting to tell her ever since she was old enough to understand, but Father Reilly made her swear not to.”
“But why?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Max? The Catholic Church doesn’t allow its priests to have affairs with their housekeepers, and much less have kids with them. And so if this became known, and how could it not become known if Marigold told Angel, who would immediately post a heartfelt and extremely poignant update on Facebook, Snapchat, Tik Tok, Instagram, Whatsapp and Telegram, then that would be the end of Father Reilly as parish priest. He’d be suspended and would have to find another job.”