UnCatholic Conduct Read online

  “If they’re in violation of their signed agreement, absolutely. You’ve done this before. Fraud isn’t new territory to you.”

  “Who’s committing fraud here? They’re afraid they might be open to public scrutiny and accused of hypocrisy? Are they blind? Where have they been living for the past twenty years while the Church has been raked over the coals for one scandal after another?”

  “Perhaps that’s why they’re taking this matter so seriously.”

  “It’s a farce.”

  “You don’t have to agree with it, politically. You just have to understand the dos and don’ts of the contract and write your report. Three months—four months tops.”

  “I’ll never survive in that school for four months!”

  “Listen, Kidd. If you think you can investigate ninety-five people in less than four months, be my guest. But it better be a damn thorough job.”

  Jil swore under her breath. Padraig heard it anyway.

  “What amalgamation is he referring to?” she asked, switching the subject.

  “I suspect this is the real crux of the issue.” She heard the squeak of the hinge as Padraig leaned back in his chair. She pictured his thoughtful look as he stroked his beard with one hand. “The government pays for two separate school boards—the public and the Catholic. Parents opt to send their kids to the Catholic board for a real Catholic education, and their tax money goes with it. Trouble is, if the staff aren’t Catholic enough to justify a real parochial experience, why should the government pay for two boards? They’d stand to save a lot of money by combining the two.”

  “I think I heard something about that in the news.”

  “The super is probably getting pressure from upstairs to clean up this mess. Because the teachers won’t be the first to go in an amalgamation.”

  “No, of course not. They’d still have the same number of students, so they’d likely need all the teachers.”

  “Except the religion teachers,” Padraig said with a wry smile.

  “And the bigwigs would be next,” Jil finished.

  “Exactly.”

  “I see. It always comes down to money.”

  “Well, money and sex. You start Tuesday. First day of school. I’d recommend brushing up on Catechism while you’re at it.”

  “Fine,” Jil muttered.

  “All right then.”

  “What am I driving?” she asked as an afterthought.

  Padraig sighed and looked down. For a second, she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he muttered, “Your own vehicle.”

  “What the hell? I’m undercover in Rockland and you’re not even giving me a cover car?”

  “If you need one, you can borrow mine.”

  Jil caught her breath as she realized—

  He met her eyes and nodded tiredly. “I sold the last one this week. To pay the overhead.”

  Jil swallowed. Two agents dismissed, one office at the back of the floor rented out to an accountant, and no more cover cars. Next step, folding up the sidewalk.

  “Okay,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “And you might want to leave your gun at home.”

  Years ago, he’d given her his father’s old pistol and had made her get a license and target practice. She’d fought him on every single step. “One day you’re going to need this, and you’ll thank me,” he’d said. So far, she hadn’t thanked him.

  “Remember, school starts at 8:02.”

  “Of course it does. I’ll be there.”

  Padraig cleared his throat, seeming to decide whether to tell her something else.

  “What?” Jil asked impatiently.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “I wasn’t going to mention it because I thought it might distract you, but I figure you’ll find out anyway.”

  Jil waited, heat gathering behind her eyes. She already resented this assignment. Secrecy wasn’t going to make her feel any better. She sat back in her chair, resting her feet on the desk.

  Padraig sighed. “When you were a teenager, your caseworker wanted to send you there.”

  “Barbra?”

  “No. The other one. Beatrice.”

  Jil made a face.

  “She thought it might benefit you. They have a boarding program for kids in foster care, to give them a competitive advantage, or some other bureaucratic nonsense.”

  “So why didn’t I go?” She hated it when Padraig knew things about her life that she didn’t.

  “I said no.”

  “Why?”

  “I told your case manager that your mother had been a secular woman, and she wouldn’t have approved of her only daughter being put in a Catholic school.”

  “Mum was Catholic,” Jil protested.

  “Aye. I lied. But I knew you might have a bit of trouble there, considering…”

  Jil felt her cheeks getting hot. Of course Padraig had figured that out as well, before she had. “So I ended up with Elise instead.”

  “She’d already said she’d take you, and I thought it was probably for the best.”

  “Her place was definitely better than a boarding school.” She made an effort to smile.

  “Still call her on Sundays?” Padraig asked gently.

  Jil swallowed hard. “I do my best.”

  “Ah, well. I’ll let you get back to work.”

  She hung up the receiver and picked the folder back up. Usually, she loved getting these. A new identity, a new life to try on for size—make adjustments to—live for a while. Almost like getting to know a new friend. The pretext documents, legal-sized folders in multiple colors—some heavy and thick, some light and nearly empty, like some lives…it didn’t matter. She’d never met an assignment she couldn’t do, or a personality she couldn’t wear. Not to mention a car she couldn’t drive. The cars were definitely a perk—or used to be.

  But this? A Catholic schoolteacher in the Religion Department? She didn’t think she could pull it off. The irony of having to commit fraud—pretend to be someone she wasn’t—in order to investigate it, never ceased to twinge her moral sensibilities. She almost reached for the phone again but remembered the look on Padraig’s face when he mentioned a paycheck. A four-month job would bring in a hefty sum—particularly if she could unearth something to back the suspicions of the superintendent.

  The fact that Padraig all but told her to abandon ship meant that things were pretty dire. She wondered how many weeks had gone by without him drawing a salary. For a brief second, she wondered if she should try to find something else—do something else.

  But how could she leave the only person who’d ever been there for her?

  Padraig and the agency were more important than any internal dilemmas she might face, so she set back to work, determined to get through this come hell or high water.

  “Who am I?” she muttered to herself.

  Here it was—her new life. Padraig had put some work into this file. It was more organized than usual, which meant he’d known about this for some time. Which meant he’d been keeping it from her—deliberately.

  Gritting her teeth, she opened the cover file.

  “Julia Kinness.” Well, at least she’d be able to wear her monogrammed shirts. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Kinness.”

  No new address, which meant she didn’t have to vacate her house. Not exactly deep cover, then. Birthday: July 2, 1981. Close enough. False Social Insurance card, driver’s license, and credit card—in an envelope. She took out her extra wallet, slipped the cards into it, and put a twenty-dollar bill in the billfold pocket. Julia Kinness now had a purse.

  Parents: Michael and Janet Kinness, born in Ireland. Oh, very original, Padraig. No siblings. No grandparents. No husband. Well, at least that wasn’t much of a stretch. She didn’t have to pretend to be straight and Catholic in one assignment, then.

  A copy of her own university degree, doctored to change her name and major. Her own criminology credentials had
been swapped for religious studies with a minor in philosophy. The pretext docs failed to include her two-year diploma in police foundations and her advanced certificate in fraud investigation. Instead, they’d forged her a teaching certificate.

  Sighing, she put the certificates to one side and plodded through the rest of the folder. A copy of the teachers’ contract. A forged note from a priest, attesting to her ongoing Catholic virtue. Now, if that wasn’t ironic, she didn’t know the meaning of the word. A map of St. Marguerite’s. Her timetable. A complete list of the names and addresses of all ninety-five staff members—in alphabetical order.

  Feeling about fifteen years old, and without a locker, Jil gave the timetable a glance-over. First period: spare. Second: Grade Twelve World Religion. Okay. The silver lining in all this mess—she only had to teach one course, which gave her the afternoons to herself, and the evenings to check off her targets.

  So she was now Julia Kinness—probably the closest cover she’d ever had to her actual identity. For four months, she would be this woman. She’d answer to her name, tell her story, and live her life, which could make dating rather complicated…

  The calendar on her desk said Thursday. That gave her exactly four and a half days to review her course material and scour her own extensive bookshelf for a brushup on Catholicism.

  “I’m going out,” she announced to Mary, the receptionist, as she strode past her to the front door.

  She pretended not to notice the small grin that laced the corners of Mary’s mouth.

  Chapter Two

  Tuesday morning dawned gray and rainy. Jil struggled to find her bleeping alarm clock and knocked a box of Kleenex and her reading glasses to the floor.

  While the water ran in the shower, Jil took a hard look at herself in the ornate oval mirror in her bathroom: her eyes, shadowed with fatigue, her messy bedhead of hair that wouldn’t curl no matter how hard she tried, petite build that was getting curvier by the year. Though she was still on the friendly side of thirty, her hips were crossing the border. Could she pass as a first-year teacher? Would they know, by the way she stood or the way she spoke, that she hadn’t set foot in a high school since high school?

  The water finally steaming, Jil stepped in, reveling in the hot, pulsing stream. She closed her eyes, ducked her head under, face raised into the rain head. She was never going to get out…never…

  She’d almost been able to convince herself that she might be able to step out sometime in the next hour, when the water abruptly turned freezing.

  She jumped out of the icy water and into her first day at St. Marguerite’s.

  *

  The high school didn’t look that forbidding from the outside. Three pods of sandstone brick, one wing with five stories, one with three. It was a bit misshapen, actually, with the requisite Canadian flag and Rockford Catholic School Board banner. An outdated placard announcing “St. Marguerite’s” hung over the entranceway. The building seemed to have been constructed in pieces, one layer being added upon another, constantly shifting as the old was taken out and replaced by the new.

  Jil parked in visitors’ parking and hurried into the building just as the bell rang. She’d made it halfway through the atrium—an unfortunate shade of seafoam—when a woman’s voice came over the PA. “Good morning, staff and students. Please stand for our national anthem and morning prayer.”

  Jil proceeded to the main office but was stopped by a glare from a tall, imposing gentleman sporting a loud purple tie and a slightly less loud purple shirt. His raised hand clearly indicated that everyone around him should stop in reflection. Late students, hats in hand, bowed their heads.

  Jil looked away from the purple-tied man, to the seafoam floor, as the first triumphant strands of “O Canada” blared from a speaker directly above her head. A woman’s voice belted out the lyrics, switching expertly from French to English.

  Trying to look patriotic, Jil discreetly checked the place out. The atrium was a huge expanse of space—the central hub from which all three wings originated. A sign on the wall indicated Green building to the left, Red building to the right, and Blue building somewhere halfway in between.

  She suppressed a smile. The seafoam tiles continued down all the halls. No blue or red in sight. High ceilings. Lots of light. And lots of crucifixes. And statues. Mary, holding a baby Jesus; Mary in a virtuous pose, serene and loving, Jesus gazing up at her adoringly. Farther down the hall, a painting of St. Marguerite next to a portrait of Pope What’s-His-Name. And outside the office, a statue of Jesus, arms outstretched, as if to welcome all the delinquent students to the building.

  A loud squeak cut off the end of the anthem, and a different woman’s voice began.

  “Let us pray.”

  The students, if possible, bowed further, their hands clasped. Mr. Purple-tie looked as if he belonged in a church pew, his face swathed in prayer.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

  Jil swore in her head as everyone around her made the sign of the cross—some more reverently than others. She hurriedly followed their example, amazed at how easily it came back.

  “Lord, thank you for this day. Let us remember your shining example as we embark upon a new year. Let us remember your generosity and kindness as we, the older students, help the younger students find their way in this new place. Let us remember your lessons as our teachers teach us. Let us see your face in all our neighbors. Help us to do our best each and every day. St. Marguerite, pray for us. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

  Jil kept her hands firmly clasped through the final sign of the cross and cursed Padraig once again for sending her here.

  “Please be seated for a number of morning announcements,” the PA commanded.

  Mr. Purple-tie strode off. Jil took this as a sign that she too, was allowed to finally get to the office.

  Chaos.

  Students filled every chair and bench, and frazzled office staff tried to direct each new and lost soul to where she or he should go. Tripping over two backpacks on her way through the fray, Jil considered the possibility of coming back later. Of course, she had no idea where to go in the meantime, or who to ask.

  “Excuse me, Miss?” one tiny, frightened boy whispered. He looked about eleven or twelve—not fourteen.

  “Uh, yes?” Jil tried to put on her best teacher face.

  “D’you know where G104 is? I missed the orientation. Everyone else got their schedules, and I didn’t get mine till this morning. I’m supposed to get my locker number, but it’s in my homeroom. And I don’t know where G104 is.” The boy bit his lip, and Jil saw he was trying hard not to cry.

  “Uh…hang on a second.” She squinted to see the sign through the leaded glass of the office window. “G104. I’m guessing that’s Green building?”

  “Maybe,” the boy whispered.

  “I’m new here too, so we’ll just have to figure this out together. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Gideon.”

  “Okay then, Gideon.” This kid was starting off high school with enough problems without adding a name like Gideon to the mix.

  Jil steered him out of the office and into the atrium. “Green building—this way.” They turned left and were immediately confronted by two different staircases—one leading down, the other leading up.

  “Let’s try down,” Jil said.

  Gideon followed quickly to the bottom of the stairs, where a classroom door read G108.

  Gideon looked up at her hopefully. “Right floor.”

  “Wrong room, though. Let’s try farther on.”

  They walked down the hall to a T, and Gideon’s face lit up. “Hey, Jamie!” he called.

  “Hey, Gid! You’re in this homeroom? Science?”

  “Yeah! Is it G104?”

  “Yeah!”

  Joyfully, Gideon scampered down the hall toward his friend. “Thanks, Miss,” he called over his shoulder.

  Jil smiled and headed bac
k to the office, where the din had not subsided one iota.

  “Can I help you, Miss?” the tall, genteel woman behind the desk inquired.

  “Yes, my name is Julia Kinness. I’ll be substituting for Miss Barnes.”

  “Oh, yes. Such a shame for her.” The administrative assistant obviously knew something about Miss. Barnes’s absence that she did not. “This is your first day, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, thank you for coming on such short notice. Pity you missed the staff meeting and orientation, but never mind.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last week. You’re half-time or full-time?”

  “Half-time. Mornings. Spare period one and Religion period two.”

  “Right then, you already have your schedule. That’s a blessing. By the way, dear, teachers call them ‘Prep’ not ‘Spare.’ I take it you’re first year.”

  Jil smiled sheepishly. She’d have to pay more attention. She thought of Rick or Chet in her position and smiled more.

  “Just have a seat there. I’ll let the principal know you’re here.”

  Jil sat in a recently vacated seat and wondered if Mr. Purple-tie was the principal. He looked to be in his mid-fifties and had the requisite bark. She hoped not. In a moment, she saw him stride through the double doors and head directly into an office to the side that read Mark Genovese—Vice-Principal.

  “Take off your hat, please,” Mr. Genovese boomed to an older boy with low-riding jeans and an oversized baseball hat.

  The student rolled his eyes and removed his hat. “Sorry, sir,” he said when Mr. Genovese took a step toward him.

  The guy was huge. Well over six feet, maybe six four or six five, and built like a football player. He had enormous shoulders, rippled and defined, a head full of graying hair, and clothes that could only have been purchased at Mr. Big & Tall. Though why he chose purple remained a mystery.

  From behind him stepped a younger woman, clad in a chic black pantsuit, her intense green eyes focused on Jil. As she approached, Mark Genovese sidestepped out of the way, almost without looking at her. The woman’s soft blond strands were cropped stylishly short, and the tousles framed her delicate face.