J.M.J.

A/N: I'm back early! Thanks for not giving up on me during the wait and for continuing to read this story! Thank you also for following and/or favoriting it! Most especially, thank you to ErinJordan, Cherylann Rivers, Candylou, Ritu, Caranath, Highflyer, max2013, BMSH, and DusktoDawn21 for your reviews since I posted chapter 9! I always appreciate your feedback and encouragement!

Chapter X

St. Vincent's Mission

Frank was trying to keep his eyes open, but it wasn't easy. After a whole night of being awake and the only suspicious thing happening was the guard letting Callie in the gallery, Frank was more than ready for a few hours of sleep. Fenton could tell it as soon as he saw his older son's sleepy expression the next morning.

"Why don't you head on back to the hotel?" Fenton suggested. "I think I can handle what little more needs done here."

"Okay, Dad." Frank stifled a yawn. "It might sound weird, but I sure hope the burglar decides to hit this place again soon. I don't know how many more nights like last night I can take."

Fenton smiled. "Where did Callie go?"

"Back to her dorm, a couple of hours ago," Frank said. "There was nothing happening, and so I finally convinced her that she needed her sleep more than she needed sit around this place." He crossed his arms over his chest. "What's Plan B in case staking out the gallery at night doesn't turn up anything?"

They were interrupted before Fenton could reply by the dean of San Luca, the art school, approaching them. Monsignor Caro was a small Italian priest of about sixty-five years of age. He'd been completely cooperative with the detectives, but right now he had a worried frown on his face.

"Excuse me, Mr. Hardy," he said. "I don't understand how, but there's been another piece of artwork taken last night."

"What?" This information was too much for Frank's tired brain to take. "That's impossible. There wasn't an inch of this place left unguarded for more than a few seconds at a time."

"I'm sure there was not," Monsignor Caro agreed, "but somehow the thief has taken yet another piece of art."

"Where did this happen?" Fenton asked.

"I'll show you." Monsignor Caro ushered them to a wing of the student art exhibit. There, sure enough, was an empty spot on the wall where a painting had been.

Fenton surveyed the area critically. The painting had been fairly small, approximately ten by twelve inches. It had been on a piece of canvas that had been placed in a frame without glass. Both the frame and the canvas had been taken.

"How could nobody have noticed this missing until now?" Frank ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "What good is it having an army of guards if none of them even notice something like this?"

"I don't know how it wasn't noticed, but stealing it would have been easy for one of the guards," Fenton pointed out. "It would have only taken a second to take it off the wall, break the frame, roll up the canvas, and hide it and the pieces of the frame in his clothes. The cameras would have recorded that."

"We haven't gotten any of the other burglaries on tape yet," Monsignor Caro replied. "Even so, let's go look at the recording."

The three of them made their way to the security office, where the feed from all the security cameras was playing on computer monitors. After Monsignor Caro explained what they wanted to see, the security guard found the camera that was recording the scene of the crime and began searching through it for the moment when the painting disappeared. They located it at about three fifteen in the morning. However, far from capturing the burglary, there was a glitch that lasted for about two seconds and the painting was gone.

All four men watching the video shook their heads in bewilderment. Without having to be told by either the detectives or the dean, the security guard played the short section of video over several times, slowing the speed down dramatically.

"I just don't understand it," he said finally. "The glitch makes it look like the camera was tampered with, but if you watch the guards on the tape, their timing does get out of sync or anything, and the time stamp is all right. How could have somebody done it?"

"I guess it wouldn't be impossible," Frank admitted. "They could have knocked the camera out for exactly one cycle of the guards, and then changed the timestamp. We'd have to work out the timing of the entire recording to see if there's a discrepancy."

Fenton sighed. "I guess I'll have to get on that. This has to be an inside job. Go on back to the hotel and take a nap, Frank. Then I want you to start interviewing the guards to see if there's anything suspicious about any of them. I especially want you to have Callie point out the guard who let her in. It might have been an innocent mistake, but even if it was, he might have let some other unwanted visitors in."

HBHBHBHBHB

"Thanks for coming with me, Em," Iola said, as she and Emily got out of Iola's car at the Northport Marina. "I don't know what I'm hoping to find here, so I'm glad you're willing to humor me."

Emily shrugged and laughed. "No problem. I don't blame you, really." She took in a deep breath of ocean breeze. "This would be a nice place to take a date, especially at sunset."

Iola frowned. "Don't remind me. We're trying to find out that Joe and Rhonda weren't here on a – a date."

"Yeah, but if the facts show otherwise, we can't deny them," Emily pointed out.

"Right," Iola admitted, "but you can't stop me from hoping that we heard wrong that they came up here."

"Well, let's get working on it," Emily said. "The sooner we can satisfy ourselves what Joe was really up to, the sooner we can go to your detective friend and tell him the whole messy story."

"Right. It'll be quicker if we split up." Iola pointed northward along the marina. "I'll take that way. You go the other way. Call me if you find anything."

Emily nodded, and the girls went their separate ways. Iola had heard that Joe had taken Rhonda for an evening drive up the coast to the marina in Northport the night before everything had blown up. If Iola could find something – anything – to tell her that that wasn't true, then maybe everything else she had been told about Joe wasn't true. If so, that would bring another slew of problems, but Iola would rather deal with them than what she had. Besides, she needed to know the truth.

She wasn't sure what she expected to find. She was thinking she would just go around and ask whoever she saw that looked like they spent a lot of time around the marina whether they had been there that night and whether they had seen a couple matching Joe's and Rhonda's descriptions. It was a long shot, she knew, and even if all of them said they hadn't seen anyone like that, it wouldn't prove that they hadn't been there.

Most of the people she asked gave her a funny look and said they hadn't been there that night before hurrying off as if they thought Iola must be some sort of weirdo. The few that admitted they had been only said so reluctantly and immediately followed it up by asking why. When Iola explained, they all shook their heads.

Iola was getting discouraged when she met an elderly man dressed like a sailor, sitting on the edge of a dock and watching the boats out in the water. He looked like a promising person, so she went to him and crouched down at his side.

"Hello," she said to him in a friendly voice.

The man turned to look at her and smiled. "Hello, miss. Can I do something for you?"

"I was wondering if you spent much time here at the marina," Iola told him, "and if you were here on Thursday night, by any chance."

"I s'pose there's no harm telling you I'm here just about every night," the man replied. "Is there something in particular that happened Thursday?"

"Maybe," Iola told him. "I was wondering if you saw a friend of mine that night. He's twenty-two, blond, blue eyes, tall, very handsome. He would have been here with a young woman with dark hair."

The man thought for a few moments. "There was a young fellow like that, come to think of it. Only he was alone. He kept walking up and down the docks like he was looking for something, or maybe waiting for someone. I remember him because I asked him for change for the vending machine and he gave it to me."

Iola felt her heart speed up hopefully. "He was alone? You're sure? Maybe the woman he was with had just stepped away for a minute."

"It'd be an awful long minute," the man said. "I watched him for a couple of hours. There wasn't much else to watch around here that night, you see. He didn't talk to anybody all that time except me. Maybe he meant to meet a girl here, but if he did, she sure stood him up."

"Thank you. Thank you so much." Iola felt as if she could have hugged the man. This was the best news she had had in well over a week. It also came with a terrible responsibility, she realized – she'd been wrong. She'd been grossly unfair to Joe, and now he was in all kinds of trouble – and possibly danger – because of it. This was something she would never be able to make up to Joe. Still, she would try. She didn't know the whole truth exactly, but she realized now that if her information was wrong in one regard, it was probably wrong in more. It was high time she went to Sam Radley with what she knew.

HBHBHBHBHB

"Your destination will be on the right." The automated Google Maps voice from Tony's smartphone made both Tony and Joe look to the right eagerly.

"There it is." Joe pointed with his right hand at a small, rundown building with a picture of the Good Samaritan painted in one window and a picture of a priest in the other.

There was no place to park in front of it, so Tony turned the corner and parked on the less busy side street. Then each of the two friends looked all around them, half-expecting to see a sniper pointing a rifle at them from the roof of the building across the street, but there was nothing except a normal crowd of people walking up and down the street.

"Let's leave the bags in the car for the moment," Joe said. "After your cousin or whatever he is hears my story, he might tell us to beat it."

"At least we're in the Bronx," Tony reminded him cheerily. "Even if Father Giovanni does kick us out, we can still go find Rhonda's apartment and check it out, which is the main reason we're here, anyway."

"Right," Joe agreed.

He pulled the baseball cap he had borrowed from Tony lower over his face. If there were any Black Rose people around here, they had probably followed him and Tony from Bayport and no attempts to disguise himself would do any good. Even so, no sense taking unnecessary chances.

There seemed to be a near constant stream of people coming in and out of the mission. Some of them were wearing old and tattered clothes, but most were dressed far better, especially those coming out. Joe glanced up at the sign above the doorway as he went through, which read "St. Vincent's Catholic Mission." At least half the building was one main front room. There were several tables set up where people were eating gratefully, and other tables where they were playing card games or board games. Several people were standing about, talking.

A dark-haired young man who was a year or two older than Joe and Tony approached them and greeted them. "Welcome to St. Vincent's. What can I do for you?"

Tony held out his hand. "I'm Tony Prito. Father Beretta is expecting us."

"Oh, Tony!" The young man smiled even more broadly and shook Tony's hand with energy. "I heard you were coming. I'm Mario Beretta. Father Giovanni is my uncle. I guess that means you and I are relatives of some sort, too. It's good to meet you."

"You, too," Tony replied. "It looks like your mission here is pretty successful."

Mario nodded and looked around the room. "We're very blessed to have a lot of volunteers who help out, and even more people who donate food and clothes and money." He glanced at Joe. "And you are?"

"I'm a friend of Tony's," Joe replied, purposely not giving his name until he knew more about Mario. "Is Father Beretta here? We'd like to talk to him."

"Oh, right." Mario beckoned for them to follow him. "He's in the office in the back. There's a lot of paperwork that goes into helping people."

He led them through a door that opened into a longer hallway than Joe had expected. Evidently, the building went farther back than it had looked from the street. There were doors all along both sides of the hall. Mario knocked on the first one to the right, and a voice promptly invited him to come in.

They found that the small room had been made into an orderly office. There was a single window on the far side of the room, and a desk with a chair sat in front of it, facing the door. The right wall had two bookshelves pushed up against it which were full of books, and the left wall was bare except for a print of Jean-François Millet's The Angelus and a print of a painting of the same priest from the window of the mission with a plaque on the frame identifying him as St. Vincent de Paul. Although Joe didn't notice them when he first entered the room, a copy of the Divine Mercy painting hung on one side of the door and a painting of the Immaculate Heart on the other. There was a crucifix hanging above the doorway.

A priest was sitting at the desk. He had clearly been typing on the computer in front of him a moment before, but he had stopped his work to speak with whoever had come to his door. He was younger than Joe had expected him to be, being in his mid-thirties, but Joe could see the family resemblance between him and Mario.

"Father, this is Tony, and this is –" Mario paused, hoping Joe would supply his name, but when Joe didn't, he went on, "a friend of Tony's."

Father Giovanni stood up and shook the Bayporters' hands eagerly. "I'm very glad to meet you both. Thanks for coming. I can always use all the help I can get here, although people are always very generous in helping us. You didn't tell me that you were bringing a friend, Tony." He looked at Joe. "What's your name?"

"Father," Tony spoke up right away, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you he was coming, too. I hope it's no bother. There's something we need to talk to you about privately."

"Of course," Father Giovanni said. "Mario, it looks like we'll have to do some rearranging in the bedrooms. Perhaps you can take care of that."

"I'll figure something out," Mario replied and left the room.

"I'm sorry there's no place to sit." Father Giovanni turned back to his two visitors. "One of you can take my chair, if you'd rather."

"No, that's fine," Joe assured him. "My name is Joe Hardy. Hopefully, you haven't heard of me lately."

"I can't say that I have," Father Giovanni replied.

"I've gotten myself into a bit of trouble, and I could really use some help." Joe explained the entire situation as briefly as he could, but even so, it took time to tell it all. Father Giovanni listened with his arms crossed over his chest and didn't interrupt once. When Joe had finished, he wrapped up his story by saying, "So, you see, I need a place to lie low for a while. Tony thought you might help and that we could trust you to not say anything about this to anybody. I know it's a lot to ask. I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me stay, at least for tonight, but I understand if you don't."

Father Giovanni nodded. "Certainly, you can stay tonight. I don't know if this is the best place for you to stay permanently, though. There are a lot of people who come and go here – we don't turn anyone away. That includes you, of course. If you want to stay, you're welcome, but it might not be easy to keep your presence here a secret."

"Yeah, I thought of that," Joe said. "But I think it will be easier here than anywhere else. I mean, I don't know where else I can find that I don't have to show an ID or anything."

"That's true," Father Giovanni agreed. "Maybe you could fit in easily. I have three young men here who are volunteering for the summer. They're seminarians studying to be priests. Mario is one of them, and like him, the other two are around your age. Most people who come in here won't find some more young men volunteering strange. Most of them probably won't ask for any more than your name, and if you only give your first name that will be enough for them."

"Maybe we could even do one better," Joe said. "Mario mentioned that you have a lot of paperwork to do. I could help you out with that and stay behind the scenes so that most people who come in here won't see me. I think it's best if the people who know about me are kept to a minimum."

"No doubt, although I'll have to tell some people," Father Giovanni said. "Mario and the other two seminarians will need to know who you are and enough of why you are here so that they won't ask too many questions or talk to too many people and ruin your cover by accident. They're the only volunteers who stay here, so no other volunteers would have to know. If these Black Rose people were the only ones involved, I'd say no one else would have to know, but since the police are also involved, I will have to tell my bishop and get his permission to help you."

Joe's hopes sank. "There's no way your bishop's going to let you help and not make you go to the police."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Father Giovanni encouraged him. "If the situation is what you say it is, helping you is in the best interests of justice. I'll talk to the bishop as soon as I can. In the meantime, you're welcome to stay here. And if you're serious about helping with paperwork, that is an offer I can't refuse."