They were right. It was a possibility I didn’t like to entertain. Nevertheless, it was feasible, of course, that some gangster or gangsters had gained access to the rectory and had abducted the priest and his cat for monetary gain. Or they could still be in there, victims of what is generally referred to as a home invasion. But then a thought occurred to me. “Why would anyone target a priest?” I asked. “I mean, Father Reilly isn’t a bank manager, or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He’s not rich, and he doesn’t have rich relatives willing to pay through the nose.”
“You don’t know that, Max,” said Harriet. “Father Reilly may be a dark horse.”
“He doesn’t look like a horse,” said Dooley. “Though he does make a sound like a horse sometimes, when someone tells him a funny joke.”
Father Reilly did have a very pronounced laugh, but that still didn’t make him a horse. But I saw what Harriet meant. “You mean he might have some money tucked away somewhere.”
“Money or valuables,” said Harriet. “And these crooks could have found out and decided to hold him for ransom until he agrees to hand over his fortune.”
“I don’t think Father Reilly is rich,” said Kingman, adding his two cents to the discussion. “If he were, he wouldn’t be a small-town priest. He’d be a bishop by now, or a cardinal, or even the Pope. He wouldn’t stick around here.”
“He would, because he’s an honorable man,” Harriet argued. “The way I see it,” she said, and got that faraway look in her eyes she often gets when she’s about to tell a long story, “is that Francis Reilly comes from a long line of very rich men.”
“Why not women?” asked Dooley. “Women can be rich.”
“Shush, Dooley,” said Harriet. “I’m talking.”
That, she most certainly was.
“So he comes from a long line of European princes—the Reilly’s. Or maybe a long line of Irish noblemen. At any rate, his family is rich beyond measure. But young Francis understands that money isn’t everything, and so he tells his mommy and daddy that he wants to be a priest. And even though they had hoped for him to become the next Bill Gates or the next Jeff Bezos, they support the path he’s chosen.”
“I didn’t know Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos were Irish?” said Dooley.
“Dooley, shush. So Mommy and Daddy Reilly give young Francis their blessing, but the moment he starts priest school—”
“I think you’ll find it’s called a seminary,” I interjected, risking Harriet’s ire for interrupting her story.
“Fine. Seminary. Whatever,” she said with the sigh of a much-put-upon cat. “So Francis Reilly goes to the seminary when the news arrives that his parents have both passed away.”
“Poor Father Reilly!” Dooley cried.
“No, rich Father Reilly, for he inherits the entire family fortune. So now he’s rich, but he’s also a priest. So what does he do?”
“He gives all his money to the dog shelter,” said Dooley.
“What?! Are you nuts? Who in their right mind gives money to a dog shelter!”
“Our thoughts exactly,” I said with satisfaction.
“No, he keeps the money for a rainy day, because he knows that one day he will be a priest no more. One day he’ll reach the ripe old age of sixty-five and need his nice little nest egg to retire on. So he invests his money in a balanced investment portfolio consisting of US Treasury bonds and ahigh-yield savings account and goes about his priestly business… until the bad men come knocking!”
Her story had us all on the tips of our toes. Though I saw one minor flaw.“Priests don’t actually retire at sixty-five,” I said. “At least not like the rest of us.”
“Cats don’t retire either, Max,” said Kingman with a grin.
“So when do priests retire?” asked Harriet with a frown.
“It depends on the diocese,” I said.
“The dio-what?”
“It’s the district a priest is assigned to. Some retire at seventy, others at seventy-five. Like I said, it all depends on the diocese.”
“Seventy-five!” Dooley said. “That’s a long time to wait for retirement.”
“That’s it then!” Harriet cried. “Father Reilly must have been tired of waiting for his retirement, so he’s gone in search of a better diocese!”
“You’re forgetting that Father Reilly was going to leave the church so he could marry Marigold,” I said. “In which case he doesn’t have to change dioceses.”
“Okay, so maybe he took Marigold to Florida for a vacation,” said Harriet with a shrug. “And Shanille tagged along, wanting to work on her tan.”
“Of course she did,” Kingman scoffed. “Because Shanille is the kind of cat who likes to work on her tan!”
“Fine. If you have a better idea of what happened, let’s hear it,” said Harriet.
But Kingman didn’t have a better idea, and neither did any of us.
“So all in favor of doing things my way?” said Harriet.
And since we all know that Harriet always gets her way, we dutifully stuck our paws in the air. Looked like the house-to-house canvass was on. Or rather: the pet-to-pet canvass.
CHAPTER 14
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