Page 66 of Dead to Rites

He stopped then, and I sat there quietly, just listening. I knew better than to interrupt.

“He was hiding something that ate him alive for the better part of fifty years. He never told me what it was. I asked him once when we were sharing a bottle of whiskey one night, about ten years before he died. He said — ” And Hal broke off there, jaw working visibly. But then he steadied himself and went on, “He said, ‘We hit somebody, Hal. It was a long time ago. We hit somebody, and we drove home as if nothing had happened.” That’s all. That’s the only time he ever said anything to me about it. And I never asked again, because he was crying and drunk and was my best friend, and I didn’t want him to feel worse than he already felt.”

Still, I didn’t speak. I just sat with him and let him unburden himself of something he’d kept secret for decades.

“I’ve been wondering about it ever since then,” Hal went on. “Wondering who, wondering when. I never went looking because Donald was my friend and Meg is a wonderful woman. I’ve never been able to make myself really dig into it. But I’ve thought about it. And when Frank was killed, and I heard Meg had been seeing him weekly for months, I sat in my pew at his funeral, and I knew. I knew what she’d been telling him. I couldn’t take communion because the man who was my best friend did something terrible, and I haven’t been able to make peace with what I know I should do.”

He shifted in his chair and looked over at the photo of him and Donald again.

“I don’t know who killed Frank,” he told me. “I really don’t. But if you find out, and it has something to do with what happened all those years ago, then I need you to be careful with Meg. She’s ninety. Whatever she did, she’s paid for it every day for the better part of sixty years. Be gentle with her if you can.”

I made myself nod. “You’ve done the right thing, Hal,” I said, although I held back on my theories about Wes and the Lindleys. No point in adding to Hal’s pain.

Rather than say anything else, I got up from my chair. He followed me to the door.

What he said then surprised me.

“Ms. Cosgrove, your aunt was a fine woman.” His voice was low, but still almost urgent. “She was kind to Donald in his last weeks, when a lot of people stopped coming around. I wanted you to know that.”

“Thank you,” I said, since I didn’t know how else to reply, and then slipped out.

When I got to the Mercedes, I sat in the driver’s seat for a moment, processing everything I’d just heard. It was all still hearsay, a story told by a man when he was drunk and not thinking. The police probably wouldn’t want to hear a word of it without some more evidence to back it up.

But it was another piece.

I started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

The bar was quiet that afternoon, typical for a Monday. As I served the few regulars and tourists who came in, I couldn’t stop my brain from hearing those words over and over again.

We hit somebody and drove home.

As best I could, I tried to do the math. Donald Lindley had died ten years ago, and he told Hal that story ten years before he died, so that conversation had taken place twenty years ago. The crime itself was even older still, “a long time ago,” according to the man who’d been carrying his own burden of guilt. That meant it had probably happened during the Lindleys’ early married years, maybe sometime in the late 1960s.

Mack appeared at the end of the bar as I was pouring a pair of Malbecs for a couple who’d just come in. “You look like a woman who’s just been told something she can’t unhear,” he said.

“That’s one way of putting it,” I said in an undertone. No one was anywhere near me, but I still knew I needed to keep it down when I was talking to one of the bar’s resident spirits.

“Anything I can do?” he asked, and he looked genuinely sympathetic.

“No yet,” I replied. “But maybe soon.”

I stepped out from behind the bar to take the glasses of wine over to the couple waiting for them, and when I turned around again, he’d disappeared.

About an hour or so after that, Father Frank appeared as well, sitting on his stool. I looked over at him and murmured, “Hit and run. That’s what Meg Lindley’s been keeping inside all these years.”

I hadn’t really expected him to answer me, and he didn’t. But his sad eyes closed, and his shoulders slumped, and I knew that I’d guessed correctly.

Then he vanished.

I had to wait until closing time to go over to Marsh & Hollow, since Roz had left at six and I didn’t want to leave Alix alone at the bar. Luckily, Jude had texted me earlier to say he was staying late at the bookshop to do some inventory, so I knew I wasn’t inconveniencing him.

He opened the door and let me in. Flannery strolled over and rubbed against my legs once before vanishing into the stacks.

Cats and ghosts. They were both pretty good at disappearing.

“How’d it go?” Jude asked.

So I told him everything Hal had said, how Donald had confessed that he and Meg had hit someone decades ago and fled rather than report the accident, how Hal had been carrying the burden of that knowledge ever since.