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“And so, because you drank yourself senseless, you weren’t here for our parishioner Meika Keller. She came looking for you here at ten o’clock last night. Said you had agreed to see her.”
What? What was he saying? Meika Keller? Had she been talking to Brennan recently? Yes, of course. It was just . . . when? Yesterday, wasn’t it? He tried to clear his head.
“What did she say to you?” the bishop asked now.
“Say to me? When?”
“For the love of God, Brennan, wise up here. What did she want to talk to you about?”
“I don’t ….” It was coming back to him through the haze now. The woman had been chatting with him at Saint Mary’s University, where she was a professor and Brennan a part-time lecturer. As Meika was leaving the campus, she asked if she could come and speak with him. Could she meet him that night after a charity event of some kind that she had to attend. That would have been last night.
“What time is it?” Brennan asked now.
“It’s too late, Brennan. That’s what time it is.”
“No, no, I’ll see her. Just let me . . .”
“Was it a confession she asked for, Brennan? At least, tell me that.”
He tried to reconstruct the conversation with Meika Keller. She was usually cheerful, witty, full of personality. She had always struck him as unflappable. Yesterday, though, her manner was different. There was something on her mind and it must have been serious, if she wanted to meet Father Burke at ten o’clock at night.
“I’m thinking yes, Dennis, she may have wanted to see me in the confessional. Well, I’ll track her down now and apologize and hear what she has to say. Maybe help put her mind at rest.”
“No, you won’t, Brennan.”
Something in Cronin’s manner gave Brennan a chill. “What is it, Dennis?”
“At seven thirty-five this morning, Meika Keller’s body washed up on the beach at Point Pleasant Park.”
