Brother Odd

missing."
        Brother Timothy, master of the mechanical systems that kept the abbey and school habitable, wasn't one to arrive late for Matins, and certainly wasn't a man who would run off for a secular adventure, in violation of his vows. His greatest weakness was Kit Kat bars.
        "He must've been the one I nearly fell over last night, at the corner of the library. I have to speak to the police."
        "Not yet. Walk with me," said Brother Knuckles. "We need a place don't have a hundred ears."
        I glanced toward the courtyard. Brother Leopold had vanished.
        With his fresh face and Midwestern directness, Leopold in no way seems calculating or sly, furtive or deceitful.
        Yet he has an unsettling way of arriving and departing with a suddenness that sometimes reminds me of a ghost materializing and dematerializing. He is there, then isn't. Isn't, then is.
        With Knuckles, I left the grand cloister and followed the stone passage to the guest cloister, from there through the oak door into the main parlor on the ground floor of the guesthouse.
        We went to the fireplace at the north end of the room, though no fire was burning, and sat forward on armchairs, facing each other.
        "After we talked last night," Knuckles said, "I did a bed check. Don't have no authority. Felt sneaky. But it seemed the right thing."
        "You made an executive decision."
        "That's just what I done. Even back when I was dumb muscle and lost to God, I sometimes made executive decisions. Like, the boss sends me to break a guy's legs, but the guy gets the point after I break one, so I don't do the second. Things like that."
        "Sir, I'm just curious… When you presented yourself as a postulant to the Brothers of St. Bartholomew, how long did your first confession last?"
        "Father Reinhart says two hours ten minutes, but it felt like a month and a half."
        "I'll bet it did."
        "Anyway, some brothers leave their doors part open, some don't, but no room's ever locked. I used a flashlight from each doorway to quick scope the bed. Nobody was missin'."
        "Anybody awake?"
        "Brother Jeremiah suffers insomnia. Brother John Anthony had a gut full of acid from yesterday's dinner."
        "The chile rellenos."
        "I told 'em I thought maybe I smelled somethin' burnin', I was just checkin' around to be sure there weren't no problem."
        "You lied, sir," I said, just to tweak him.
        "It ain't a lie that's gonna put me in the pit with Al Capone, but it's one step on a slippery slope I been down before."
        His hand, so brutal-looking, invested the sign of the cross with a special poignancy, and called to mind the hymn "Amazing Grace."
        The brothers arise at five o'clock, wash, dress, and line up at 5:40 in the courtyard of the grand cloister, to proceed together into the church for Matins and Lauds. At two o'clock in the morning, therefore, they're sacked out, not reading or playing a Game Boy.
        "Did you go over to the novitiate wing, check on the novices?"
        "No. You said the brother facedown in the yard was in black, you almost fell over him."
        In some orders, the novices wear habits similar to-or the same as-those worn by the brothers who have professed their final vows, but at St. Bartholomew's, the novices wear gray, not black.
        Knuckles said, "I figured the unconscious guy in the yard, he maybe came to, got up, went back to bed-or he was the abbot."
        "You checked on the abbot?"
        "Son, I ain't gonna try that smelled-somethin'-burnin' routine on the abbot in his private quarters, him as smart as three of me. Besides, the guy in the yard was heavy, right? You said heavy. And Abbot Bernard, you gotta tie him down in a mild wind."
        "Fred Astaire."
        Knuckles winced. He pinched the lumpy bridge of his mushroom nose. "Wish you never told me that 'Tea for Two' thing. Can't keep my mind on the abbot's mornin' address, just waitin' for his soft-shoe."
        "When did they discover Brother Timothy was missing?"
        "I seen he ain't in line for Matins. By Lauds, he still don't show, so I duck outta church to check his room. He's just pillows."
        "Pillows?"
        "The night before, what looked like Brother Timothy under the blanket, by flashlight from his doorway, was just extra pillows."
        "Why would he do that? There's no rule about lights