Melia Ridge

By William Florence

In the thrilling follow-up to Emerald Ridge, a PI and his fiancée head from Oregon to Rome—to find answers to mysteries both personal and political . . .
 
Max Blake’s fiancée, Caeli Brown, lost her archbishop uncle to gunfire—at least, that’s what they thought. So they’re puzzled when they receive another postcard from him. What’s going on? Is Uncle Jack dead or not?
 
Max and Caeli are soon on the road to the Vatican’s Secret Archives Building in the heart of Rome, where they meet a mysterious prelate with a fixation for world domination—a man who may well hold the key to determining who actually shot American President John F. Kennedy in 1963—in this gut-wrenching, surprising, and sharply witty tale of international mystery and intrigue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781947290228

Book preview

PROLOGUE

A Niggling, Worrisome Past

The majesty, the spectacle, the trappings of power – all are difficult to ignore.

Admirers, and especially the true believers, continually remind you of the simple fact that the church endures. Witness the long lines at the Città del Vaticano, day after day.

But if you take the time to study the centuries-long abuses and shockingly sordid history of the church, you’ll discover all too quickly that its zealous minions will do damn near anything to further the excesses of the faith, or at least the faith as they see it and shape it. And if Shakespeare was correct and the past truly is prologue, this legion of underlings, many thousands strong through the millennia, will go to extraordinary lengths to protect those who represent the venerable institution and toil in its vineyards, for good or for evil … not only in the past but in the present day as well.

Consider this random listing of known transgressions:

Book-burnings and imprisonments and the incessant rewriting and reconstruction of history;

The mournful saga of the Crusades and the slaughter of untold hundreds of thousands of so-called non-believers; 

The wanton destruction of churches, synagogues, temples, and varied places of worship of those faiths deemed unworthy;

Witch-hunts and religious wars resulting in the deaths of shocking numbers of innocents – millions of them through the ages;

The slaughter of native peoples around the globe – from Ireland to the Hawaiian Islands and throughout the African, European, and American continents, both North and South, including what eventually became the United States;

All-out, all-in wars against so-called heretics of all stripes and creeds across the far-flung reaches of the globe;

The historical exploitation of church indulgences, which constitutes a gut-wrenching retelling of vicious abuses and excesses;

The World War II concentration camps run by the Catholic Ustaše, which participated in the murders of people of all genders and ages, children included;

The indifference of the Pius XII, often called Hitler’s pope, while the Nazis ran roughshod across two continents;

The church’s involvement in the Rwanda massacres of the 1990s …

You get the idea.

It’s a litany not of the saints but rather of grave-faced, relentless, unrepentant sinners.

A selective recounting, you say?

Ah, but there’s so much material to select from, with long centuries of history to cull, despite the repeated efforts of those at the helm to make it all disappear. 

Look up the sad tale of John Wycliffe, or the detailed history of the Knights Templar – never mind the myths and the accounts of revisionists or those trying to make a buck through hucksterism or movie deals or simple deceit. Take a moment to wrap your mind around the church’s dealing with Galileo Galilei, or Joan of Arc, or Jan Hus, or William Tyndale, or the true story behind the Inquisitions. These days, with a wireless connection and a ready-made internet library at your fingertips, getting to the heart of the matter is as easy as a few keystrokes and a click with a plastic mouse.

Raise these topics, of course, and the faithful, forever bleating like sheep trailing the wandering shepherd, protest vociferously that much of this recounting is culled from the distant past – the Dark Ages, which have long since been relegated to the dusty pages of a shameful if narrow slice of selective history. And while countless reports regarding the predatory practices of certain members of the clergy have come to light in shocking detail in more recent years, those missteps, too, also are just as easily dismissed by the faithful. These halo-blind followers repeatedly maintain that we should not condemn the entire institution because of the malevolent depravity of a few sick individuals … this despite the repeated attempted whitewashes from those in charge, at least some of whom have been tried and convicted for their efforts to thwart justice.

To save you some time:

In 1992, exactly 350 years after Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II apologized on behalf of the church for its denouncing of the brilliant scientist and philosopher’s lifetime of achievements and for locking him up for the final nine years of his life.

This recent John Paul, you should know, was something of an apology machine. During his years as pope, he formally apologized not only for the Galileo debacle but also for the church’s roles in the murders of Muslims during the Crusades, for its involvement in the African slave trade, for its ongoing silence and blind eye during the Holocaust, to those who were convicted during the Inquisition, for the church’s role in the religious wars that took place after the Protestant Reformation, and for its historical treatment of Jews, women, and most everyone else who suffered at the heavy hand of the dogmatists through the centuries.

Case closed and the record set straight … right?

Not quite.

Upon John Paul’s death in 2005, his successor, Benedict XVI, decreed that the original verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune.

As the wise man said, you can look it up.

I recount this slice of a sordid past not because I want to disparage the institution (I do not) but merely to point out that when something is rotten, in Denmark or in Rome, you can’t sit idly by and pretend that the cogs and the pulleys and the wheels and the wires are still in place, humming nicely along, benefiting all of mankind.

They aren’t, I’m sad to report, and from recent first-hand experience. If you have some time, I’ll tell you about it – including the church’s tenuous connection to the shocking death of an American president more than five decades previous.

I can’t promise an easy journey in this telling. But I will promise that it’s the truth … or at least it’s as close to the truth as I could get, given the fractious circumstances.

Judge for yourself. 

ONE

The Mills of God Grind Slowly

Ever stop to contemplate how your life can turn on a dime?

A shift of the winds, an unexpected diagnosis, a glance in the rearview mirror (or a failure to glance behind you) – even the arrival of a single postcard in the mailbox: Snap your fingers and everything you know, everything you trusted or once took for granted, vanishes.

Bang.

Just like that.

Caeli’s Uncle Jack, the former Archbishop of Armagh, was alive.

But who could tell in the initial rush of revelation whether this was good news or bad – a fact to celebrate or one to curse?

As I look back, contemplating the significance of the disclosure from the safety of time and physical distance and large bodies of water that even now help to separate the varied combatants who lined up to stake a claim, it was damned difficult to absorb and not much fun to speculate about when the news arrived.

I’ll admit that I suspected the worst when the postcard showed up in the mailbox with a Vatican stamp attached. That’s likely because I’d previously seen an identical postcard, one with a British stamp, and recognized its significance.

Of course, learning that Caeli’s uncle was alive was one thing – an inconvenient truth. Learning that he was under the protection of the Holy Roman Church, which historically has gone out of its way to shield legions of scoundrels and villains and other shady characters who’ve populated the hierarchy of the august institution for millennia, was another consideration entirely.

Jack a scoundrel?

You bet. That’s exactly what he was – and he remains so in my mind.

Until a few weeks ago, I never would have placed those two words – Jack, as in Caeli’s uncle, and scoundrel, as in miscreant and blackguard and scalawag – in the same sentence, paired with one another in the way that, say, Arm & Hammer or Simon & Garfunkel or Smith & Wesson are associated.

But that was before the events on Mutton Island, the 185-acre bird sanctuary off the western Irish coast, and Jack’s efforts to overthrow the British government’s rule in Ulster through force and violence and madcap adventure and misguided revolution. (You can read the fine details in Emerald Ridge, my accounting of the sordid tale, the background of which might help with what took place in its aftermath and even here, in this telling.)

The thing of it is, Caeli and I both were certain that Uncle Jack was dead, killed by steady, unrelenting machine gun fire on the island, along with his trusted right arm, Michael Corbin, and other like-minded revolutionaries who followed in the archbishop’s terrorist-inspired footsteps and decided that the best way to unite the two Irelands would be to restart the historical mayhem of The Troubles.

Yeah. Exactly. What the hell was he thinking?

What the hell were any of them thinking?

We were there, Caeli and I, along with our two bodyguards-on-loan, Elmore and Leonard, planted on the barren, windswept island in a pelting rain, trying to rescue Uncle Jack from himself.

It turned out that Jack didn’t want to be rescued.

Or at least, not then, he didn’t.

But the situation took an enormous roundabout turn, unexpected and sure as hell unappreciated, when unnamed church officials stepped up to institute a capture of their off-the-reservation red-robed warrior, slamming him with a tranquilizer dart instead of a bullet and whisking him off Mutton Island and into waiting hands in Rome before any of us – or at least before Caeli and I – were able to see through the subterfuge.

I found this out weeks later when Jack sent Caeli a postcard depicting William Butler Yeats’s tombstone in Drumcliff churchyard, County Sligo, with the final three lines of the great poet’s 1933 masterwork Under Ben Bulben engraved on the stone monolith:

Cast a cold Eye

On Life, on Death,

Horseman pass by.

It was the same message that started the events leading to our arrival in Ireland and eventually on Mutton Island – the same message, delivered on an identical postcard, that resulted in, among other things, our ownership of a large estate on the Irish coast, near Limerick.

I eventually was able to confirm that church bigwigs, hoping to avoid the scandal that would accompany a rogue archbishop spraying gunfire across the land he so fondly called home, brought the once honorable and most reverend Sean Jack O’Lennox, the archbishop of Armagh, back into the fold, rather than allowing the Irish authorities and global media wolves to wail and gnash their collective incisors, along with their cameras and keyboards and flash drives and internet connections, on his sorry carcass.

Among other heinous deeds, Caeli’s uncle was responsible for the murder of his longtime friend and church associate, the Rev. Monsignor Donald McBride. And yet, although church officials were cognizant of that horrendous crime and dozens more, they still took Uncle Jack in and placed him under their protective blanket in the notorious Secret Archives Building at the Vatican, where he was assigned to while away his days in peace and penance, doubtless told to account for his sins and misdeeds while sorting through mountains of paperwork that date back centuries.

Or so we initially were led to believe.

Somehow, at some point, all was not as it seemed and he slipped away just long enough to smuggle out the Yeats postcard, which he sent to Caeli. I retrieved it from the mailbox when it arrived days later and, rather than turning it immediately over to her, tried to determine whether Jack was, in fact, the miscreant of this latest endeavor, or whether it was all some sort of twisted joke, perpetrated on poor Caeli by a decidedly malevolent prankster … one other than her uncle, of course. 

That question brought me to Roberto Fierro, the late Vinny Fierro’s brother, a man we were previously unaware of despite our long association with Don Vincenzo and his son, Fredo.

I’d called Fredo when the postcard first arrived and asked if he could recommend anyone who understood the workings of the church in Rome. I was looking for an insider, someone privy to the Vatican’s secrets. He told me to hang up, hang tight, and answer the phone when it rang again, which it did 20 minutes later.

Don Roberto, Freddy’s uncle, and Vinny’s younger brother as it turned out, was on the other end. I learned in time that he was a man who thoroughly understood the mysterious, secretive workings of the church … perhaps even better than the pope himself.

Yeah. It’s who you know, all right.

So I laid it out for him during the phone call: the postcard, the context, the idea that the unsigned mailing may well have come from Caeli’s uncle – even though Caeli’s uncle, the one-time archbishop of Armagh, was supposedly dead, an event we’d witnessed as the guns were blasting away and the wind was howling and the birds, impervious and majestic, were soaring above the noise and chaos below.

I can’t prove it, but I suspect he’s still alive and is being held at the Vatican – perhaps because he set this up as a fallback, or perhaps against his will, I told him. I need to find out.

Let me see what I can learn, he’d said and severed the connection.

The whole conversation didn’t take but a couple of minutes, and most of that was me providing background … the same background I’m offering here.

He called again, long days later.

He is under house arrest, Don Roberto said matter-of-factly.

Son of a seagull, I muttered, and he laughed softly.

This surprises you – even if you suspected it was true?

We saw him die, I said. We were there. We watched it happen.

"Another reason, I think, to believe the polizia when they say even eyewitness accounts are notoriously … unreliable. Yes?"

In this case, at least, I said.

He laughed again, heartily this time.

I have been able to learn, through favors owed and others to be paid, this relative of your fiancée, Miss Caeli Brown, is restricted to the Vatican grounds, at least for now.  But he is under constant … what is the word?

He paused here, considering his options, and then said, "Yes, I have it. He is under constant surveillance from the pope’s own Guardia Svizzera, along with that of another exceedingly powerful force at the Vatican, which has also taken an interest in your archbishop, it seems. At least two men are assigned permanently to watch over him, both in …"

I got the long pause again, and it dragged on for half a minute or more this time. I wasn’t in a position to help or otherwise make a suggestion to allow him to move forward again because I wasn’t certain where he was going.

How good is your Italian, truly? he asked at last.

I can work my way around a menu all right, I said, choosing to be a bit more modest than was necessary.

"This is not my understanding, Commendatore Blake, but I appreciate your reluctance to … open up. Still, my command of your own language fails me this time. The Italian phrase is poliziotto in borghese," he said. 

Yes. I understand, I said. A plainclothes officer, sans the official uniform.

"Ah. Si. My English is mostly good, the product of a generally excellent education. But I sometimes pause over words that are not used often, or at least not by me," he said.

I do the same in Italian, I said.

"So how did you know borghese?"

That’s me, more or less, I said, although, to place a fine point on my current occupation, I’m actually a private detective in my spare time.

He mumbled in Italian.

"Fin qui tutto bene, ma …"

But he must have caught the language slip, so he tried again in English.

Not to place too fine a point, to borrow your own phrase, he said, "but a private detective is a investigatore privato in Italian. It’s not quite the same – you would agree?"

"Si. Vero. But it’s also true that neither one, a plainclothes officer or me while I’m in my private detective job, wear a uniform, which was my point."

"Molto bene, he said. Capisco. My brother spoke well of you, and often. I have heard of the arrangement he made with you and Miss Brown, to provide consiglio to young Fredo."

Does that surprise you – or concern you, perhaps? I asked.

At this stage, I knew precious little about the man, despite polite inquiries, and was fearful that close family ties might mean that bad blood would leak into Freddy’s relationship with his uncle, who for all I knew had sought the role for himself.

Maybe Roberto already despises both Caeli and me, I thought. Maybe I can’t trust a thing he says.

But he instantly put me at ease.

Not worry, he said, adding quickly, Did I say that correctly?

Almost, I said. "You either want ‘Not to worry’ or ‘No worries.’ Both forms are essentially the same thing. Non c’e problema."

"Yes, I see. Molto interessante. This is what happens when you grow old, as I have. My mind isn’t what it once was, and my … –  I got the pause again here – … my aptitude for something new is also not what it once was."

He drew a deep breath before continuing.

"You have nothing to fear from me, my friend. Don Vincenzo and I were brothers, it’s true. And although we were far different – or is it different by far? – with varying interests, we had much in common and remained generally close. But he was in Oregon, in exile, I like to think, and I was here, in Roma, tending to different parts of the same ship. From what I understand, Fredo is happy in America. I do not understand how or why that is so, but he assures me he is quite content, as did his father, many times through the years."

Fredo is American through and through, Don Roberto, I said. He doesn’t think of himself as Italian, although I suspect he’s proud of his heritage.

Yes. I know, he said softly. He even thinks in American … in English, I mean. But, as they say in your country, not to worry. He chuckled at that, an indication that his aptitude for learning wasn’t so slow after all.

Then he added this:

Just so you know, Professor Blake, I have spies everywhere, and I see everything – not just events inside the church.

That’s encouraging to know, I managed after a moment, wondering where he was going with the line … and why.

This time he laughed at my expense.

Come now. It’s not as bad as that. He mumbled some words in Italian that I didn’t catch, despite the exceptional quality of the telephone connection, before adding, "Chief among my spies are two longtime guardia del corpo – men who protected Don Vincenzo and who now devote their lives to his son."

Elmore and Leonard, I said.

Yes, your adopted names for the pair, as I understand, he agreed. I, of course, know them by their real names, along with their families and, in the case of Marcus, at least – Elmore to you – his place of worship and reading materials and a great deal more. His partner, the man you call Leonard, is a great deal harder to read, harder to know – especially from such a long distance. But I could tell you much about him as well, if you cared to know such things. I could even tell you his given name.

I was surprised at the admission and couldn’t help myself from nudging him gently along.

So you were snooping on Don Vincenzo through his bodyguards? I said, striving for a lighthearted tone, although I’m sure that it sounded like a statement rather than a question to him.

But he laughed again, which came across as a soft tinkling on the line, seasoning added to a juicy steak.

On my brother? Hardly, Professor Blake. You must watch too much American television or see too many of the British 007 spy movies. It was one of the kindnesses I paid to Vincenzo. There is a word in English explaining what I was doing, with my brother’s consent, of course, but it escapes me. It means, let me see, in English …

Vetting, I suggested before he could get there.

"Yes. That is the precise word I was seeking. Grazie. It was one of the services I provided for my brother, and now for his son. I know all about you, of course … and about your fiancée, Miss Brown. Would you like me to take a moment and share? Your favorite wine, perhaps, or your fondness for fast American cars with far too much horsepower – you really should look more closely at Italian automobiles, you know – or your choice of German firearms, although why Americans insist on the use of firearms at all is a mystery to me, yes?"

No need, I said, without bothering to provide an explanation to any of his observations. But I am curious: Did you do this particular line of vetting for Don Vincenzo, or for Don Fredo?

He laughed again, and I could visualize him waving the question off from thousands of miles away, even if I was unable at that point to attach a face to the voice.

It is not important. Enough of this, he said easily. You wanted to know about whether the man who sent Miss Brown the Irish postcard was in fact her late uncle. And I can tell you with full confidence, the man who was once the archbishop in the north of Ireland is as alive as either one of us. He mailed this most curious message to your home in Oregon precisely … would you care to know the exact date?

I muttered another soft curse, and he again laughed gently.

You have plans, no doubt, to … to do something with this knowledge, or perhaps about this knowledge, he said. May I ask what it is?

Sure, I said. Ask all you want. But at this stage, I have no idea what to do or even what say about it – not to Caeli, anyway, and especially not to you.

You do not trust me?

I have no reason not to trust you, I said. But your interests lie elsewhere. Beyond that, I don’t know what to do with the information, if anything.

Yes, I see. You are concerned your actions now could upset your Miss Brown. I share your unease, although … she also could find the truth by some other means and learn that you knew of the situation and chose not to share it. This would be another consideration for you … something to chew on, yes? But of course, I am overstepping my … what is the word?

Bounds, as a rule, I said, thinking to myself how much his voice and verbal intonations, and even his English lapses, reminded me of his brother. Your assessment is correct. Still, I need time to process this, before I make a decision about what to do next.

I understand, he said. Should you need my assistance, on this matter or in anything I might do for you and your intended, or for the newly anointed heir, I would trust you to ask – no need to use Fredo as a broker.

Most excellent, I thought, though I’ll confess here to not thoroughly thinking through the full ramifications of his offer.

As much as I’d enjoyed my friendship with Don Vincenzo, a man deemed by the FBI to be the capo di tutti capi of the entire western seaboard of the United States, I used to joke that it was good to have friends in low places. But with Don Roberto, I figured, just the opposite was true – or so I thought in that moment, anyway.

What I said to him was this:

"Grazie mille, Don Roberto. Si è più gentile."

"Non è niente, he said. It is nothing."

We parted with an exchange of private telephone numbers and a promise to remain in touch as needed. I knew only, as I swiped the red button on my smart phone and the clock started ticking as to what I’d decide to tell Caeli when she got home, if anything at all, that I could take the matter at hand in a dozen different directions, none of which would be ideal.

Looking back, I simply wonder whether I should have kept my big mouth shut entirely and destroyed the damn postcard in the fires of hell itself.

Allow me to note one other point of interest before kicking this portion of the story down the highway. During our initial telephone conversation, Don Roberto mentioned that in addition to the Swiss Guards, the elite force that protects the pope, a second Vatican contingent, one he referred to as powerful, had taken an interest in Caeli’s uncle.

I only wish that I’d been paying greater attention at the time.

TWO

Breaking (the news) Badly

I waited two full days to let Caeli know what was going on, and then only after Roberto Fierro, the late Don Vincenzo’s younger brother, provided at my insistence detailed photographic evidence that Uncle Jack was in fact ensconced at the Vatican.

I felt awful about the delay in relaying the news. But I wasn’t about to take a chance of floating the idea that Jack might be alive and capable of mailing out messages, either of distress or reassurance, without absolute proof. Can you imagine Caeli’s reaction if I’d told her that, based on a guess and a hunch and a mere postcard sent from Vatican City, I was guessing that her uncle was possibly alive … and then we found out later that, well, not so much?

Not gonna happen – not on my watch.

The photos arrived, after some back-and-forth from Rome, showing three distinct images of a furtive Uncle Jack, his face pale and his eyes sunken and haunted, scurrying across the papal grounds close to St. Peter’s Basilica. 

True, it wasn’t a video capture. But you still got the sense that he was walking hurriedly and that he also was being followed. In two of the three photos, it was easy enough to spot two middle-aged men in nicely tailored suits who didn’t appear to be tourists and certainly weren’t priests, tagging along in reluctant pursuit. Their clothing alone suggested Italian gumshoes of one sort of another, although whether they were employed by the church (a distinct possibility) or by some other organization (and a dozen or more sprang instantly to mind, Interpol especially, considering Uncle Jack’s immediate past misdeeds), it was impossible to say with no more evidence than what I now had in my hands.

A third photo showed Uncle Jack running, actually running, with two Swiss Guards in comical pursuit, given the elaborate uniforms they wear.

How Don Roberto came by the pictures, I have no idea, and I asked him about it when he called. He demurred, giving me the Italian equivalent of I have my ways, and I was forced to reluctantly let it go. But there was no doubt that the former archbishop, or at least his doppelganger, was upright and moving, if not looking particularly comfortable while doing so.

How did Caeli react?

Let’s just say that she took the news better than expected, although her anger rose gradually as she thought it through.

Looking back, I can speculate that some of Caeli’s ire was directed at me – for keeping the cat in lockup for as long as I did. Still, I’ll tell you here, just as I explained it to her at the time, that I considered my conduct to be wholly admirable.

Still do, in fact.

With photographic evidence in hand, I had every intention of telling Caeli about my conversations with Roberto Fierro and the confirmation that not only was her uncle alive and scurrying but also that he was at least temporarily safe within the confines of the Vatican’s stout borders inside the urbs aeterna, the Eternal City.

I was just trying to figure out a good time, and a decent setting, to spill what I’d learned.

But nothing is easy. Hell, nothing is ever easy. And if in similar circumstances you ever find yourself looking for the perfect place and the perfect time to drop a perfect bomb as large as this one, well, good luck to you, buddy. Years could slip by.

I spent some additional time with the photographs, enlarging them after placing them into the enhancing software program on the computer, fine-tuning their clarity and sharpness, and then printed them out on a high-quality digital machine with better-than-average resolution. I was tempted to call Don Roberto once more and ask him whether he or his people could provide any additional details about the content of the photos or the context in which they were taken, particularly relating to the identity of the two likely detectives who appeared to be keeping an eye on Caeli’s uncle during his hurried stroll around the grounds. But I figured after a brief pause that the whole affair would be better placed in hands other than my own.

If Caeli wants to do something about it, well then, she can do something about it, I reasoned … rather lamely upon reflection.

Caeli was at the salon, getting her nails trimmed and buffed and painted and polished and whatever else they do to a woman’s nails these days, while much of this behind-the-scenes subterfuge was taking place. She eventually returned in a congenial mood, all else being equal, to the stacks of partially packed moving boxes and discards that cluttered the house – and that’s saying something. Moving is hard work. Moving to a foreign land, one that’s an entire ocean plus an entire continent away, prohibits your taking along much of what you own and is even more difficult.

What’s for dinner? she asked when she entered and caught me at the computer. I thought you’d have cooked up a gastronomical storm while I was out – or at least put on some stir-fry.

I could only hope that she was kidding as I glanced up nervously, perhaps even guiltily, from my perch behind the monitor.

She waited a beat, and when I didn’t automatically produce a ready-made dinner from my back pocket or a desk drawer, she tried again.

Yes, I see. Now that I’ve failed to smell any earthly delights – fresh salmon, or a tender pork chop, along with some steamed veggies and fresh fruit and a dollop of your exquisite homemade whipped cream, topped off by a well-aged bottle of wine – I’ll guess you have something else in mind.

At least she was smiling, and I did my best to match the tone she’d set.

Of course I do – now that you’ve given me some ideas, I said, and sure, I was scrambling here because the last thing I’d been thinking about was dinner.

Truth be told, the entire business with Uncle Jack and whether he was still alive or rotting in some dank grave outside of Dublin, as originally advertised, had occupied most of my thinking for the past several days, and I didn’t want to let on that I was otherwise preoccupied, particularly where Caeli was concerned.

She didn’t look persuaded, likely because my cover-up efforts were inadequate.

So you’re now about to tell me to pick out a restaurant and you’ll swipe the plastic – do I have that right? she asked, somehow managing to keep her tone playful.

I was actually picturing the Riverside – for salmon or pork chops, or both, I said, thinking quickly. If that doesn’t sound good, we can go anywhere you’d like: Sol’s, Bumper’s, the RingSide, maybe – close by or downtown – Salty’s, Tad’s, the Portland City Grill …

Some wonderful suggestions – let me think about it, she said, adeptly cutting me off while momentarily admiring her nails. She turned her hands around to show me, smiling nicely, allowing me to nod appreciatively, then took note of my posture in front of the computer and edged closer.

What are you working on? I thought you’d be packing, seeing as you weren’t cooking.

And there it was.

I know better than to lie outright to Caeli. She can easily read my best poker face, knowing when exactly to hold and fold and sweep up every chip on the table. I also have learned through the years to refrain from attempts to hide the truth from her – even with the best of intentions. There’s just no percentage in it.

I decided in this case to ease into it.

Did you know that Vinny Fierro had a younger brother? I asked her.

A younger brother? No. How did you learn that?

I sidestepped the question.

So you probably didn’t know this younger brother, whose name is Roberto, by the way, is very much alive and is, by all accounts, a legal scholar, with the Vatican his particular specialty?

Maybe the better question is why you’d know this, she said this time, and the shininess of her nails was now forgotten.

You’d better sit down, Caeli, I said and gestured to one of the nearby chairs. I’ve got some good news, along with some bad news, too, and I’m not even sure which is which. Nor am I certain how to tell you what I’ve learned during the past couple of days – not yet, anyway. Lord knows I’ve given it enough thought.

She smiled uncertainly at me, thinly and briefly, and she sat with a concerned look tugging at the corners of her mouth and her eyes and then edged her petite frame closer to the computer screen, and to me.

Why don’t you begin at the beginning and go on ’til you come to the end – then stop? she said, paraphrasing Lewis Carroll. It’s the kind of advice that good newspaper editors tell beginning reporters who have trouble getting everything they’ve just learned into their story in a timely fashion.

Right, I said. But something tells me that, well … that this won’t be as simple as letting you know what happened at last night’s city council meeting.

I had that much correct, at least, and smiled at her, radiating what I trusted would pass for hope and compassion and support and concern.

She didn’t seem to reciprocate, rolling her wrists over in a gesture that indicated Let’s get on with it.

I did my best.

Here’s the deal in a nutshell – good news and bad news both, I said for openers. According to my sources in the Fierro clan, your Uncle Jack is alive. He’s in Rome, and for reasons that I don’t yet understand, he’s been entrenched – perhaps detained is a better word? – at the Vatican, of all places.

Her eyes grew as round as the pictures of Jupiter that you see in the astronomy books, the ones where the gigantic planet is fiery and angry, with the superstorm swirling around and around.

Say that again, she whispered.

So I repeated the information word for word, starting with Your Uncle Jack is alive, and then explained in brief how Don Vincenzo’s previously unknown-to-us brother confirmed the details after my call to Fredo to locate a source for confirmation revealed Roberto’s existence.

She was briefly stoic when I finished, no doubt contemplating the tectonic shift in the universe. Then her anger kicked up a notch, most likely both at Jack and the various church officials who’d orchestrated what seemed to be her uncle’s secret capture and perhaps even his kidnapping (what else could it be?), before she again turned her attention, and her irritation, in my direction.

When, exactly, did you figure this out?

Well, I began lamely, I guess it started when the postcard arrived. And that was, let me see, a few days ago. Four? Five, maybe?

A postcard? What postcard?

Didn’t I tell you about the postcard?

That’s a detail you left out, she said, and a sense of calm seemed to settle over her. I was happy to see it. Calm is Caeli’s normal demeanor, and it’s a far more pleasant mantle for her to wear than, say, confusion or (and far worse) anger.

Why don’t you start again, and this time tell me all of it, she said, with no need for the question mark at the end. Her tone was soft and patient, as a kindergarten teacher might address her charges on the opening day of school. 

I’ve got to say that I love it when she does exactly that to someone we’re working over for information on one of our cases for the Blake & Brown Detective Agency. But I absolutely hate it when the technique is pointed at me.

Still, I went through it again, starting this time with the postcard’s arrival, blank except for our mailing address, and my uneasiness at immediately sharing it with her – even though it was addressed to her, even though Uncle Jack, as we both called the one-time archbishop, is Caeli’s kin and not mine. 

You have this postcard?

I do, I said and pulled it from the pile of papers on the desk.

She examined it carefully, front and back, and looked on questioningly a moment later.

I was trying to protect you, I said. I didn’t want anybody taking advantage of your …

I paused here, searching for the correct word, and she gave me the wrist-roll again – Let’s have it, Max – and I obliged as best I could.

I don’t know … your, ah, vulnerability, I guess. 

I got The Look for that one, and every man who has ever gotten The Look knows exactly what I mean.

As an aside, Caeli is an expert at The Look, which varies only slightly from what the Italians call malocchio – the Evil Eye – which Caeli also excels in mustering when needed, despite her Irish background.

Do I look particularly vulnerable to you, Max Blake? she asked.

No. Absolutely not – of course not. You are the last person to …

I got The Look again, concentrated this time, a truly disdainful glare, and I stopped talking, something I should have done far earlier, and gave her the opening to take the floor.

But she didn’t take it, or at least not at first. I could see the hurt in her eyes, along with the questions that had jumped into her head: about her uncle’s motives for starting the insanity of his proposed revolution in the first place, and what he’d been doing since his rescue or capture or kidnapping or whatever you wanted to call it, and what exactly had prompted him to dispatch yet another postcard to alert her, and me, to the situation … if, in fact, that was what he was doing.

Right then, anything seemed possible. For all I knew, one of Uncle Jack’s cronies might have sent the postcard, with Jack himself none the wiser – exactly what had happened the last time we’d received a message purported to be from Jack.

I can’t believe this, she finally said. And I don’t know what to do about it – not right now.

I wanted to tell her to trust her heart, as well as her head. Instead, I said nothing, giving her the space to reason things out in her own good time.

That was my plan, at least. But she wasn’t going to let me off the hook – not for long, anyway.

What do you think? she asked.

About what, exactly?

About what I should do next.

You or us, Caeli? Because you know that whatever decision you make, whatever path you decide to take, I’ll stand with you – even if that’s not your first choice, even if I’m not invited.

She looked at me with dark, penetrating eyes, no doubt calculating exactly what I’d just offered would mean for her, long term and short, and I started counting seconds off in my head. I got to 12 when she spoke again.

OK. So what do you think we should do – if anything?

I took that as a good start and gave it some additional thought, trying to place the situation into the perspective of that moment, given Caeli’s initial reaction to the news.

It’s clear that someone wanted you to know – wanted us to know, I eventually said. My guess? Uncle Jack’s talking this time, not a surrogate. But that’s only a guess.

She nodded, absorbing the observation.

Was he telling us he’s still alive? she asked. Or do you think he wants us to ride to his rescue – if, in fact, we think he needs rescuing?

Hard to say. Best I can offer is that he made it clear the last time we were in this position that he didn’t want us to ride anywhere to save him – certainly not to Ireland. And, last I looked, the postcard is blank: no message, no clues.

"So this is all … what, exactly? He mentioned that first postcard to somebody he knows