He found just about what he had expected to see.
Tom Adams, jacketless and, for him, disheveled, held a gun pointed squarely at an obviously terrified Jack Fradet. Adams stole a quick glance at the priest and just as quickly returned total attention to the cowering Fradet.
“Tom!” The priest was almost shouting. “Put the gun down. Please! It’s not worth it. He’s just not worth it. There are better ways. You’ll just ruin your life. Everything you’ve worked for will go down the drain. Please. Put down the gun!”
“Father’s right,” said a commanding voice from the office doorway. “There’s a desk in front of you, Mr. Adams. Put the gun on the desk. Carefully please.” The cavalry, in the person of Sergeant Mangiapane, weapon drawn, had arrived. Father Tully breathed a half sigh of relief.
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand what this traitor has done.” Adams, still holding the gun, spoke in an imploring tone.
“I think I do,” said Father Tully. “But the place to settle this is in the courtroom. Not here.”
From the maelstrom of thoughts whirling through the priest’s mind, one was suddenly uppermost: he knew what kind of a person Tom Adams was at his core. “Tom, what you’re thinking of doing is a sin-a mortal sin. It’s murder. You’re going against one of God’s commandments. God does not want you to do this, Tom. I’m a priest and I’m telling you: God wants you to put that gun down.”
He did not turn his gaze from Fradet. But Adams moved slightly. Then, slowly, he lowered the gun and laid it on the desk.
“Now, Mr. Adams,” Mangiapane said in a calm, steady tone, “I want you to step back from the desk.”
Adams did as he was ordered. Mangiapane stepped forward, picked up the gun, then holstered his own. He patted down both Adams and Fradet, the former in a seeming daze, the latter in a state of shock. Mangiapane turned to Father Tully. “What’s going on here, Father?”
“Fraud, I think, at the very least,” the priest said. “And maybe lots more. Sergeant, seeing as how I’m the one who called you in on this, would you humor me? I need a few favors.”
Mangiapane’s cocked eyebrow evidenced his uncertainty.
“Could you give me a little time alone with Mr. Adams, make sure that Mr. Fradet doesn’t leave, and, finally, get my brother over here?”
Mangiapane deliberated. While such a procedure was in no police textbook he’d ever studied, he could find nothing substantially problematic in these requests. Neither Adams nor Fradet was armed. Adams was not likely to step out an eleventh-floor widow. Fradet could be detained in one of the other offices. And, in fact, Mangiapane himself dearly wanted his superior officer here as quickly as possible. “You got it, Father. But make it snappy. Zoo was heading in when I left. I’ll call him now; he should be here in a couple of minutes.”
Mangiapane left the office with Fradet literally in hand. As he made his way through the outer office, he ordered a host of spectators back to work.
“Tom,” Father Tully asked, “what was in the letter?”
“Letter?”
“The letter you just got from Barbara … the letter you’re holding.
Adams slumped into a chair. As he did so, the now crumpled letter fell from his left hand to the floor. The priest bent to pick it up. “Okay if I read it?”
Adams nodded.
Tully read the handwritten letter aloud.
Dearest Tom,
Of course I’ll marry you. I wasn’t quite prepared for all you said today. After I recovered from the surprise and shock, I realized what a generous and loving proposal you made. I’m flattered-and grateful.
But you may not want to marry me after I tell you something I want you to hear from me and from no one else.
Here the handwriting became somewhat less legible. As if she were reluctant to go on-or at least undecided as to whether to go on.
I told you there was no love or lovemaking between me and Al. That is the truth. But I created the impression that you were my one and only partner. That is not true.
While I was with you, I was having affairs with Jack, Lou, and Marty, your three execs. It pains me even to read this as I write it. I honestly didn’t know which one of you four was my child’s father. I notified each of you about my condition. At Al’s wake I made a separate appointment with each of you.
I was desperate. I needed money for me and the child. It wasn’t that Al had left me-us-penniless; I wanted enough so we’d never have to be concerned about financial security. The other three were married. What I wanted from them was financial support-not marriage.
As I talked to each of them I fabricated office scuttlebutt that hinted that they were guilty of some banking crime. It was sheer blackmail on my part.
Not only did I strike out on the crime charge, but I learned that two of them are incapable of fathering a child. And the third had no reason to think he was the father.
But one thing may be of immediate importance. In bluffing my way to blackmail, I accused Jack Fradet of financial skullduggery-to provide a golden parachute for himself if or when he was let go. That charge seemed to touch a raw nerve. He looked like he wanted to kill me on the spot. So I backed off, more in fear than anything else. Then he calmed down. Regardless, I think I got close to a major problem for the bank and for you.
I feel better now that I’ve told you; I know you’ll be able to handle it-
“Of course …” Adams interrupted the priest’s reading. “I couldn’t understand why we were showing such a profit. But he wasn’t building a golden parachute. No, more than likely he was creating a false sense of security: he was paving the way for a takeover.”
Father Tully nodded, and returned to the letter.
Any other secret I may have is mine alone. Just please trust that there is no other problem that will interfere with the happiness of our marriage-that is, if you still want me.
None of you four knew about the others. There is always the possibility that they will learn. That’s why I wanted you to hear it from me.
I await your response.
With love,
Barbara
Oh, my! Father Tully had suspected something was going on between Barbara and the executives, but-oh, my!
He puzzled over her statement, Any other secret I may have is mine alone. One would think that after the first momentous secret, there couldn’t be too many more. Evidently, the final secret seemingly was not of a nature liable to disrupt an otherwise happy marriage.
Father Tully could not know what only Joyce Hunter’s husband and daughter knew-that Barbara was a lesbian.
“Would you?” the priest asked. “Would you have married Barbara knowing what is in this letter?”
Adams blinked several times as if returning from profound abstraction. “Would I have married her? Of course. She was carrying my child. I am not without sin. Who is?”
Silence.
“I am grateful to you, Father,” Adams said finally, wearily. “You and you alone stopped me from doing something foolish and wrong. How did you know …? How did you know what I was about to do? How did you know where I was?”
Tully pondered the questions. All that was on his mind, all that had come to him in an extended blinding flash was not yet coordinated to the point where he could explain it logically.
But he would try to address Adams’s questions. “The police were working on the theory that if they found the father of Barbara’s child, they would also have her killer-the idea being that the father didn’t want the baby, so he killed both mother and child.
“But when you claimed that you were the father and also claimed that you hadn’t killed Barbara, I believed you were telling the truth. That destroyed the hypothesis that the father of the child had killed its mother. As good a theory as that was in providing a motive for the killing, since you are the father and you did not kill Barbara, there had to be another motive for her murder.