Holy Fitz: Fracktown Gumshoe, #2

By Debra Gaskill

The women in the life of private investigator Niccolo Fitzhugh aren’t making things easy for him at all.

His mother has told Father O’Malley, the priest at St. Rita, he would investigate—for free—the case of Aileen O’Connor, who lost $50,000 to con man Benedict St. Giles and who believes she’s part of a rebirth of the Catholic Church. 

Then Fitz’s beloved wife Gracie leaves him for two weeks to fend for himself to take a group of students to Vienna,—and Father O’Malley ends up dead. 

The case brings another problem—FBI Special Agent Fiona Rafferty who has been on St. Giles’ tail since another priest was found dead. Even worse: the history she has with Fitz since she was a new police officer in Fawcettville, could explode in ways that put his life —and his marriage—in danger.

Can Fitz resist the temptation that Rafferty poses? And can he rescue O’Connor before the worst happens? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debra Gaskill
• Release date: Jul 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781536597370

Debra Gaskill

Debra Gaskill is the former managing editor of the Washington Court House (Ohio) Record Herald, which earned two Associated Press General Excellence awards during her tenure. She was an award-winning journalist for 20 years, writing for a number of Ohio newspapers covering the cops and courts beat, and the Associated Press, covering any stories thrown her way. Gaskill brings her knowledge of newspapers to her Jubilant Falls series. The mysteries 'Barn Burner' (2009), 'The Major's Wife' (2010), 'Lethal Little Lies' (2013), 'Murder on the Lunatic Fringe' (2014) and 'Death of A High Maintenance Blonde' (2014) all center around crimes committed in the fictional small town Jubilant Falls, Ohio, and often center around the damage family secrets can do. 'The Major's Wife' received honorable mention in the 2011 Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards and 'Barn Burner' was a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award at Killer Nashville.. Her next series, featuring the private investigator Niccolo Fitzhugh, brings her cops and courts experience together in a mystery that "creates complex characters and places them in real settings" according to customer reviews. That series includes Call Fitz (2015), Holy Fitz (2016), Love Fitz (2016), and the 2018 Silver Falchion Award winner for Best Suspense, Kissing Fitz (2017). Gaskill has an associates degree in liberal arts from Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, Va., a bachelor's degree in English and journalism from Wittenberg University and a master of fine arts in creative writing from Antioch University, Yellow Springs. She and her husband Greg, a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, have two children and three grandchildren. They raise llamas and alpacas on their farm in Enon, Ohio. Connect with her on her website, www.debragaskillnovels.com, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Book preview

Prologue

F iona! Fiona, talk to me!

She was sprawled across the ground. Her service weapon slipped from her hand and her arms hung, rag-doll like, along her side as blood pooled beneath her neck. Her eyes locked on mine, and her mouth moved but no words were formed. I couldn’t lift her or search for where the bullet entered— blood seeped through my own fingers as I held my right hand over a bullet wound in my left bicep.

Her eyes, wide with terror, followed me, but her arms and legs didn’t move. If she lived, something told me she’d likely be paralyzed. I leaned over, close to her face, tears rising in my eyes.

Fiona! Please! Say something!

I love you, Fitz. I always did, she whispered.

You saved me once—it’s my turn to save you. Stay with me, Fee. Stay with me.

I staggered to my feet and, leaning against the chapel’s partial stone wall, lurched to the corner to see where the shooter went.

The country road was empty. Did he get away? I clung to consciousness like a man changing his mind halfway through suicide, knowing somehow, it was already too late. It was the chaos behind me, the sirens, the gunfire, and the yells of the SWAT teams that kept me alert.

I staggered back to Fiona and leaned over her, pressing the button on her shoulder microphone. The stars seemed to whirl in the sky and I teetered on the edge of consciousness.

Help! Officer down! Officer down! We’ve been shot! We’re behind the chapel.

The voice at the other end responded but I couldn’t understand it, because the ground suddenly tilted and everything went black.

Chapter 1

G ood morning, Mr. Fitzhugh ! Mary Margaret chirped like the goddamned birds outside my bedroom window on mornings I need to sleep in late.

It was going to be one of those days.

For Christ sake, Mary Margaret, call me Fitz. How many times do I have to tell her? It’s almost our standard greeting as I stomped past her desk.

My name’s Niccolo Fitzhugh, but nobody calls me that. Everybody calls me Fitz, except my wife Gracie. She and my family are the only ones who calls me Niccolo—especially when they are pissed off at me, which is frequently.

I'm a dick, a private dick. I do a little bit of everything—a little criminal investigation, a little insurance work, but mostly it’s cheated-on wives and their lawyers who want me to find out who hubby slips it to on the side.

Some say I’ve gone soft with success, but that’s bullshit. I haven’t lost the edge that twenty years as a cop taught me. There’s always a Glock inside my jacket and a brand new Kahr P9 around my ankle—and I’m not afraid to use either one.

What I have gotten is bored. Every case that’s come my way in the last year has been predictable, easy and even lucrative—enough to hire staff. These weren’t the folks I was used to dealing with, the pimps and whores, drunks and junkies, the dumb-ass crooks and down on their luck losers that made up my days as a cop. My clients were the educated, polite, sober folks who didn’t have the balls to confront the errant husband or wife—just the checkbook to have me do it.

My God, it’s boring. That boredom was starting to seep into all areas of my life, spreading like the mold under the sink in the office john, and into places I never thought I’d expect.

Gracie calls Mary Margaret Cleary the high price of my success. A couple months away from her college graduation from a Catholic women’s college with a degree in Victorian literature, my homely secretary has no concept of police work and will probably die of terminal virginity.

With my history with women, needless to say, Gracie was an integral part of hiring her.

Juggling the walk-ins and the appointments, Mary Margaret opens the office at eight in the morning, when the calls for my services start coming in. She also keeps my books, leaving me free to handle my increasing caseload—boring cases, but cash-bringing boring cases.

Yes, sir. Again, our standard exchange.

I rolled my eyes and stepped into my office, a glassed-in cell, the former domain of a bank manager when my office served as the Fawcettville National Bank and Trust. Across the back wall was the teller counters, decorated by Gracie with stray artwork and antiques; behind that was the vault, where I kept the files.

Your mother called for you this morning, Mr. Fitzhugh, Mary Margaret called after me. She needs you to call her back. Right away.

I poured myself a cup of coffee from my Thermos and ran one hand across my unshaved cheeks. I could have used a hell of a lot more sleep than what I got. I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass walls of my office. I was too old for this late-night shit.

Yeah, I know, I answered. She called the house just as I was leaving.

The night before, I wasted half the night sitting in one of Fawcettville's dive bars taking cell phone video as one of the hospital oncologists, drunk out of his mind, slipped twenty-dollar bills into a stripper’s g-string. And while every man, especially a man in the midst of an ugly divorce, was allowed to go out and get a little crazy, I happened to know this doctor hadn’t shown up to check on his patients for two days. As other physicians covered for Dr. Dumbass and his wife built her case for half the marital assets, he was on his phenomenal bender. The hospital administration hired me to build a case for termination. It wasn’t going to take long.

I connected my cell phone with my desktop computer and began to download the video. In a moment, I would email it to the hospital’s human resource director and let her take it from there. Then I could sit back and wait for another big, fat check.

Mary Margaret appeared in my doorway, a wad of phone messages in her hand. Father O’Malley from St. Rita’s called you, too. He wants to come in as soon as you can see him.

Seriously? This guy’s name is Father O’Malley? The allusion was lost on Mary Margaret. I sighed. Get him in here as soon as he wants. What’s the rest of my day look like?

Alicia Linnerman called you. She has a possible case on a former county employee she wants you to look into.

I nodded. Alicia is the county prosecutor and a woman I can only describe as a great broad.

I’ll call her right now.

Mr. Fitzhugh, you really need to call your—

Alicia picked up on the first ring.

Morning, Fitz. Her voice was low and husky, with a come-hither tone that could get me in lots of trouble if I let it.

Morning, Alicia. I understand you have something for me? Talking to Alicia automatically dropped my voice down an octave, slowing it to the level of a Barry White ballad.

Oh, I do, I do—along with a possible fraud case. An employee from the county utilities department filed for disability. He says his back was irreparably damaged after improperly he lifted sewer covers over the two years he worked for us. I heard pages from the case file rustle in the background. We don’t believe he’s truly disabled. I thought you would be able to get this guy with very little trouble.

Can do, my dear.

Drop by later this afternoon and I’ll get you the details.

Sure.

And Fitz?

How are you and Gracie doing?

Great. Just great.

Oh. That’s too bad. Alicia had a thing for bad boys—and me specifically. She needed to get over that, and fast. As bored as I’d become with my life, Alicia Linnerman could be more temptation than my marriage could handle. Even I wasn’t that stupid. We chatted for a few minutes before hanging up.

Mary Margaret was still standing in my doorway, her shoulders sagging.

What is it now?

You’ve got other calls from some attorneys looking for help on divorce cases. I told them you would take a look at your calendar and get back with them as soon as possible. The details of each case are included on the messages. But you should really call your mother. Mary Margaret laid all but one of the phone messages on my desk.

I pointed at the slip of blue paper in her hand. So what’s that one?

She pushed her thick glasses up her nose and held the message close to her flat chest. This one’s personal, Mr. Fitzhugh. The person Father O’Malley wants to talk to you about—she’s my grandmother.

IT WAS JUST BEFORE lunch when Father O’Malley, Mary Margaret and her mother, Bridget Cleary, sitting in a circle around my desk.

The problem, Mr. Fitzhugh, is my mother, Mrs. Cleary said. Like most of Fawcettville, I knew Bridget from high school—she’d been the homely friend of my younger, wilder and better-looking sister Katie—or Mary Katherine, as Ma and Pa called her when she was caught doing something she shouldn’t have, which was frequently.

Mary Margaret’s sartorial problems could be traced to her gene pool. Like her daughter, Bridget also wore big, thick glasses and hadn’t benefitted from orthodontics or good taste in clothing. She was a little younger than me, by about five years, but looked ten years older. She married Harvey Cleary just out of college and he had the audacity to die of a heart attack soon after Mary Margaret was born. Harvey’s funeral was the last time Bridget ever dressed up for anything, retreating into their clapboard house in Fawcettville’s Irish neighborhood to raise her daughter and sink further into frumpiness. As far as I knew, no male ever crossed that threshold again.

Today was no different. She wore the standard uniform of every first-grade teacher I ever knew: a white short-sleeved T-shirt beneath a dumpy denim jumper that hung down past her knees. Ankle socks with red Keds sneakers made her thick legs look more so. Bridget hadn’t quite realized that it was June, and she wasn’t addressing a room full of six-year-olds. Her words were short, spoken slowly and clearly in a sing-song rhythm.

I wanted to choke her from the moment she opened her mouth.

My mother has started attending the new Catholic church in town, St. Matilda’s.

Why is that a problem?

Father O’Malley shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. As I’ve told Mrs. Cleary, the problem is that it’s not a real Catholic church. The bishop believes it’s a cult.

A Catholic cult? In Fawcettville? Now I’m interested.

Fawcettville, Ohio, was a Rust Belt haven for Catholics whose heritage harkened back to Italy, Germany, Hungary or Poland. From birth to death and every celebration in between, St. Rita’s was the center of many these folks’ lives.

St. Rita’s had seen nearly as much local history come through its doors since it was built of native limestone in the 1800s. The immigrants who first came to the area to work in the potteries thanked God for their good fortune at St. Rita’s. The church had seen as much pain, too. After the potteries closed, those immigrants went to work in the steel mills; when those closed, St. Rita’s congregation, along with Fawcettville at large, entered a long, drawn-out economic night. It wasn’t until the fracking industry came to this part of the state that things once again began to turn around in F-town.

Flammable drinking water seemed to be a price folks here were willing to pay for regular wages.

Unfortunately, yes. Father O’Malley ran his finger between his clerical collar and his throat. "And the man who set himself up as the, ahem, abbot, has a rather questionable past, as well." 

Like what?

He claims to reject the changes which came about as a result of Vatican II—still holds Mass in Latin—

That’s not a crime, Father, I said. My own mother prefers the Latin mass—and she can still recite it from memory.

It’s a crime when he’s bilking little old ladies out of their savings! Mary Margaret cried. She sat up very straight in her chair and pushed her thick glasses up her nose. This man stole more than fifty thousand dollars from my Grammy! And that’s just not right, Mr. Fitzhugh! That’s just not right!

He got her to donate the money to fund his abbey outside of town. Bridget Cleary joined the conversation in her slow, first-grade voice and put her hand on her daughter’s knee. Mary Margaret calmed down. They found some old farmhouse with a barn and have started building a chapel with the money my mother gave him.

What’s Grammy’s name? I asked, making quick notes.

Aileen, Bridget said. Aileen O’Connor. What concerns us most is that this supposed abbot has taken my mother out to that farm and she’s living there. She’s in the beginning stages of dementia, unfortunately. He’s convinced her that since she’s widowed and her children are grown, she can enter his abbey as a nun or something. Unfortunately, she was out there for nearly a month before I realized it. I think it’s an effort to get the rest of her money from her.

What’s this fake abbot’s name? I rubbed my forehead. This is looking more and more like a con—and the case that could shake me out of my boredom.

He goes by Abbot Benedict St. Giles. Mary Margaret laid a stack of papers on my desk and pushed them toward me. I’ve been doing research on fake priests. There’s a guy in Ashtabula named Roger Clark and he’s been charged with fraud before, while posing as a priest. I’ll bet this is the same man.

In Fawcettville, a town filled with surnames that spanned central and eastern Europe, a name like Roger Clark would stand out like a sore thumb. No wonder he chose a cheap soap-opera moniker like Benedict St. Giles.

Why don’t you go to the police? I asked.

Bridget Cleary sighed and started her slow, sing-song answer. I’m embarrassed, frankly. I just want her out of that place and away from that man. I know she’s most likely lost her money, but, I’d be happy to get her back and into a nursing home where she belongs.

How did she end up going to services at St. Matilda’s?

Mary Margaret spoke up. "Grammy played bingo at St. Rita’s twice a week, then she and her friends would go have pie and coffee. Her friends were everything to her! Even when her cataracts got bad and couldn’t drive anymore, they came and got her.

One of those friends, who said they really missed the Latin mass, went out there for a service. They figured out right then the whole place was fake and wouldn’t go back, but St. Giles zeroed in on Grammy. He had somebody come pick her up for services every day. Before we knew it, that awful man had her living out there. Mom checked Grammy’s savings account—she’s signed on it with her—and found the fifty thousand gone.

"As her priest, I advised Mrs. Cleary that such a large sum of money is probably enough to call the