“It could have been lost up there any time. Black Rock Park wasn’t like it is now in those days. People went up there all the time—”
“Could that lavaliere have belonged to Cheryl Cass?”
“No,” the Cardinal said.
It was a very definite no, and this time it was Gregor who was surprised. “How can you be sure? From everything I’ve heard about this Cheryl Cass, she was an extremely sentimental woman.”
“Of course she was. I suppose, given the circumstances of her life, she was bound to be. People who have very little joy in their lives hang onto what they can. That lavaliere was from the junior prom at Cathedral Girls’ High that happened the month before Black Rock Park happened.”
“So?”
“So Cheryl Cass didn’t have a lavaliere from that prom. She didn’t go to that prom. She never went to any prom, as for as I can tell. I know this sounds cruel, Mr. Demarkian, but there wasn’t anyone who would have asked her.”
Gregor mulled this over in confusion. “From what I understood,” he said, “she was a very popular girl.”
“No, no,” the Cardinal told him. “Not popular. Judy Eagan was popular. She was popular even though her family was dirt poor. So poor she had to borrow prom dresses from her friends. That’s character for you. Peg Morrissey—Peg Monaghan now—she was popular. And Kath Burke who’s now Sister Scholastica. Cheryl Cass was—uh—well, it wasn’t that boys didn’t take her out, you know, but they only took her out to, uh—”
“Get laid?”
The Cardinal was actually blushing. “I’ve got to hope that mostly they didn’t. But yes, that’s about it. The boys took her out when they didn’t have anything else to do, or when their, er, hormones got in a twitch. But real dates, no. And not a prom, not the way proms were looked at in those days. It would have been too important.”
“It was a prom at Cathedral Girls’ High, you said. Cheryl Cass would have done her own asking.”
“She would have been turned down.”
“You’re very sure.”
“I’m surer than you know. It was the junior prom—Peg’s and Kath’s and Judy’s year. I was one of the chaperons.”
“All right.” That seemed to take care of that. Cheryl Cass had not had a souvenir lavaliere to lose in Black Rock Park because she hadn’t been at the prom where the lavalieres were given. There might have been another way she could have gotten one, but that road looked full of unnecessary complications. Gregor changed course.
“Tell me,” he said, “about Andy Walsh’s goat.”
The Cardinal laughed. “Andy’s goat again? You don’t know how sick I am of Andy’s goat. He was probably going to give it Communion , you know. I’m almost sure of it.”
“I’m not so worried here about what he was going to do with it in a practical sense, Your Eminence. It’s just that something occurred to me. Peg Morrissey told me yesterday that Andy tended to have reasons for his more outrageous behavior—”
“If you could call them reasons.”
“She seemed to think he must have been using the goat for some purpose important to him, not just to make you crazy. And she said something else that stuck with me. She said Andy Walsh liked to find out embarrassing things about people and then twit them, in public. In roundabout ways, if I understand it right.”
“That’s true,” the Cardinal said. “You mean you think Andy might have been meaning to make some point to someone—I’m getting messed up, here. Let’s see. You think the goat must have symbolized something to someone—”
“Let’s say goat was a kind of code, the way people sometimes have pet words for things. I used to know a couple in Washington who used the term “intellectual discussion” when they meant sexual intercourse.” The Cardinal winced. Gregor went on. “It was a catchphrase between them, a private joke. I was wondering if the goat could be something like that?”
“If it was a private joke, I couldn’t know about it, could I?”
“I don’t think it could have been all that private. It would have had to be an allusion that at least a limited number of people would have recognized.”
“You mean the Colchester Five?”
“Six,” Gregor said blandly. “I’d have to add you to the suspect list. You had both means and opportunity—”
“What about motive?”
“You’ve got the only known motive I can see. Come to think of it, I’d have to add Father Declan Boyd to the list, too. Make it the Colchester Seven.”