“Donating money to build an addition on a Catholic elementary school is kind of suspicious, especially if your own kids don’t attend that school,” I gently pointed out to her. “Did your dad and your uncle go here?”

Violet looked uncomfortably at Trey and then at me. “They went to boarding school in Connecticut.”

“Of course,” Trey mumbled.

I checked the time on my phone and saw that it was a few minutes after eleven o’clock. Perhaps Father Fahey had written down a two-digit number in his red notebook to account for Ann Simmons, services rendered. But the plaque on the school was proof enough to convince me that the favor he’d done for her was a big one, one worth millions. I glanced up at the sky. The moon had waned down to a little more than a half—a waning gibbous, to be precise. A visual reminder of the clock running out.

Even though I felt like I might fall asleep standing upright, I couldn’t risk getting killed in an accident on the way back to Violet’s house. It had never been more urgent to just keep pressing forward. “Let’s go,” I told Trey and Violet. “This can’t wait until tomorrow.”

We walked past the creepy white statues of various blank-eyed saints out in front of the rectory. From the patchy lawn below, it looked like everyone inside the building had turned in for the night. But when I tilted my head up toward the rectory’s second floor, I saw the cyan glow of a TV screen through the horizontal blinds hung in the windows. Someone was still awake inside, although the only residents of the rectory I knew of were Father Fahey, elderly Father Nowicki, and a visiting priest from Africa.

Ignoring the business hours for the church office posted near the front door, I pressed the doorbell three times in fast succession. The night was so quiet that all of us cringed as we heard the shrill ring ripple through the three-story rectory. Moments later, I held my breath as I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Trey stepped up alongside me and gripped my hand so tightly it felt like he was trying to cut off circulation to my fingertips.

The locks on the door twisted open, and we found ourselves face-to-face with Father Fahey, who wore a threadbare brown terry-cloth robe and held a mug of tea. While he hardly looked happy to see us, he took a long look at Trey, most likely recognizing him and assuming we were there for an unpleasant reason. Nonetheless, he greeted us through the screen door with a polite smile. “To what do I owe this late-night visit?”

I tugged the earbuds out of my ear, jammed them into my coat pocket along with my phone, and flashed the red notebook at him with a frown. “We need to speak with you.”

His smile faded when he saw the notebook in my hands. “I’ll let you in because it’s my duty,” he told me. “But I hope that the three of you come in the name of the Lord and don’t have any ill intentions.”