Chapter 47

Friday, December 11, 1964

My conversation with Sean was depressing. I was getting nowhere, other than a growing conviction that nothing was what we thought and that Dingo Dave, weird personality and all, was the victim of misinformation. 

There was something else. I had been thinking all along that the murder, if that's what it was, had to do with the belief that the Fox had a taste for boys. Sean hit on it, unwittingly. Maybe the murder had something to do with his background as a Nazi, as a member of the SS. 

It was just a thought, but it kept me up all night. 

TGIF. My plans after school were to go home for dinner, then to a meeting, and back to the sem.  At this point, especially on weekends, I could sleep at the house—on the couch—but that was getting a little weird, at least in the eyes of the kids. So I made the trek back and forth, staying at the house every now and then. On the couch. 

Dinner was welcome, appearing more normal all the time. I talked over my thought that the death of Father Fox might have had more to do with his history as an Nazi or SS member than the suspicion that he liked boys. The team was fascinated.

"It's the nuns," said Butch. 

"They aren't nuns. They're sisters, or religious women," corrected Sarah. "But why are you suspecting them?"

"They're German, you know." 

"Except for Sister Angela, she's Italian," I said. 

"But the cooks are German," Butch said. 

"Which tells us nothing," I said. "Maybe they even liked his background."

Butch was quiet for a while. "Didn't you say he deserted?"

My turn to pause. "I did. Maybe that was the problem. Perhaps we should look into the nuns' background. Correction, the good sisters' backgrounds. But how?"

"I have a few connections," said Sarah, the ex-novitiate. "Let me look into that."

"Okay, then, A couple of the priests have German backgrounds. I should look into that." I paused. "Somehow."

"What about Polish backgrounds," said Sissy. "Or French. Or Russian. Or Czech. Countries that were terrorized by the Nazis."

"You're creating more work," I said. "But good. You're going with the idea that somebody didn't like his Nazi background. Where'd you learn that?"

"Duh, World History, you know."

"Any Jews on the staff?" asked Butch.

"Not to my knowledge," I said drily. "But there is some interaction with the Jewish community. One of the major donors is a Jew. A few of the upperclassmen, including Dingo Dave, learn Hebrew at the synagogue. Maybe ..."

"Bingo," said Butch. 

"No Bingo," I said.  "But you do get to place a piece of corn on your Bingo card. We are going everywhere and getting nowhere. Let's go back and start at the beginning—with the victim. I think that's a rule of investigation somewhere. My understanding is that he was born in the USA to a college professor at St. Edmund's University in Austin, Texas. It's a Congregation of Holy Cross institution, so we should be able to get some information, at least on the dad. Sarah, can you pin this down, pin down the names of his parents, their marriage, his birth et cetera. Once we do that, we can start looking for what happened to him in Germany."

"Good plan," said Sarah. "I'm not working tomorrow. If my offspring are not doing anything, I'll take you along and show you how to hunt, library style."