“Dan?” Chickie called out.
“He’s not here,” Aaron called back. A door opened down the hall and Aaron came out, dressed in good slacks and a good sports jacket and a black sweatshirt. “You’re later than we thought you would be. He had to go out. How are you?”
“Prostrate, my dear, just prostrate. You have no idea—”
“He has four broken ribs,” Mary said straightforwardly. “And a big Ace bandage around his middle. And he finds it difficult to walk. He’s supposed to take painkillers.”
“Oh, he must love that,” Aaron said.
“I’d love a chair,” Chickie said.
Aaron waved them in the direction of the office he’d come out of, and they followed him there. Mary looked around with a certain amount of curiosity. She had been over here before, but she’d never paid much attention to the place. Offices, after all, were offices. Now it seemed odd to her that the walls were so bare and so clean. In the offices at St. Anselm’s, there was stuff everywhere. There were even books in stacks on the floor.
“So,” Aaron said, “I thought that as long as I had the afternoon free, I’d try to tidy up Scott’s files, and it’s impossible. None of it makes any sense. You don’t happen to remember somebody named John Strodever, do you?”
“Of course I do,” Chickie said.
Mary helped Chickie ease down in the only chair other than the one next to the computer, that Aaron was using. It was not a good chair. It swiveled.
“You ought to remember him, too,” Mary said. “He was the man who started the lawsuit. You know. Against the archdiocese. Because of the priests who, uh—”
“We get the picture,” Chickie said quickly. “Mary’s right. He was the first one. Later, there were a whole slew of men coming forward, but Strodever’s the one who started it.”
“Is he gay?” Aaron asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Chickie said. “Why would I know that? How could you possibly expect me to know that?”
“Look at this.” Aaron tapped the computer screen, and Mary saw Chickie give him a withering look. Of course, Chickie had just sat down. His ribs were broken. He didn’t want to get up again.
Mary went around the side of the desk herself instead, and looked at Aaron’s computer screen. She seemed to be looking at the photograph of a bill of some kind, rather than an ordinary computer document.
“What is that?” she asked.
“It’s a memo,” Aaron said. “It’s been scanned into the computer. Look. September 9. You see that?”
“Yes,” Mary said.
“Now watch this.” Aaron tapped at the keyboard. Mary saw the screen blink and throw up what seemed to be the same scanned memo. “What’s this?” Aaron asked.
“It’s the same memo,” Mary said.
“You think so? Watch this. Let’s go back to number one.” He went back to number one. “Now,” he said. “Read the heading. After ‘subject.’”
“‘Payment schedule in the settlement of the case of John Strodever, et al. vs. the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.’” Mary read.
“Okay,” Aaron said. “Read the next line.”
“‘Plaintiffs,’” Mary read. “‘John Thomas Strodever, Michael Charles Wheelan, Stuart Carl Dodd, Stephen Thomas Roderick.’”
“Okay,” Aaron said. “Now for number two.”
“‘John Thomas Strodever,’” Mary read obediently. “‘Michael Charles Wheelan, Mark Henry O’Mara’—wait.”
“Yes, exactly,” Aaron said triumphantly. “Wait.”
“There’s an extra name,” Mary said. “Is it just the one?”
“Just the one,” Aaron said. “Why do you think that is?”
“It’s probably nothing,” Chickie said. “One of the documents was a draft, that’s all, and they left somebody out or put somebody in that they shouldn’t have, so they rewrote it.”
“If that’s all it was, why would Scott have scanned them into the computer? And where did he get them? How could he get them?” Aaron shook his head. “It isn’t like Scott was part of the lawsuit. And I don’t know any of these names. I don’t think it’s plausible that he was trying to look after somebody he didn’t know.”
Chickie shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “It’s no problem how he got them, for God’s sake. Scott was a book and publications designer. He worked for all sorts of people. He did year-end reports for companies, and for law firms, too, when they put out those big glossy booklet things they like to to advertise how wonderful they are. Where is the memo from? It’s a law firm, isn’t it?”