It wasn’t until Honey pulled out of the county complex on Wednesday that I noticed Luke’s truck idling in the driveway, a few spaces behind where her car had been parked, a half dozen spots from where the sheriff’s patrol car had been. There were tears on his cheeks when I started walking toward him, but he was quick to brush them away before rolling down his window. “She’ll be okay,” he said right away, as if I were the one in need of reassurance. “Abby’s strong,” he added. “She’ll get through this.”

Generally speaking, I’m proud of my son. But at that moment, my maternal pride hit an all-time high. I hope Luke never loses his generous spirit toward others. I hope he’ll always be as fiercely loyal to his friends as he is today. And as to Abby Kendrick, I also hope he’s right.

Harry’s Jeep is parked on the street, in front of the chapel’s main entrance. I pull in behind it and cut the engine, then walk around the stone building to the small graveyard in back. He’s sitting in the snow, leaning against a leafless tree, his legs stretched out in front of him. He’s facing Father McMahon’s headstone, the old schoolbag serving as an armrest. He looks up and musters a smile and a small wave as I approach.

“How long have you been sitting here?” I ask.

He checks his watch. “Sixty seconds or so.”

I laugh. “You’re in a time warp, Harry. I just left your apartment. I’d have seen you if you were only a minute ahead of me.”

“I haven’t been to my apartment yet,” he says.

Harry spent last evening at the cottage with me. He opened a bottle of wine and boiled a couple of lobsters while I made a salad and sliced a loaf of sourdough. We ate a late dinner in the living room, close to the woodstove, and then decorated a Charlie Brown tree, one Harry had cut down in the woods behind the office. Luke got home at midnight and regaled us with tales of the fabulous young woman he’d just met—we have an endless supply in this town, it seems—before laughing out loud at our yuletide efforts. Harry left about an hour later and I assumed he was going home to bed, as any normal person would. I should know better by now.

I squat beside him, look closer at his face. He has the beginnings of a mustache and beard. His normally ruddy complexion is pale. And his eyes are bloodshot. “You haven’t slept,” I venture.

“Not yet,” he says.

“Not yet? It’s seven-thirty in the morning. What are you waiting for?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Doing what?”

He thinks about it for a few seconds. “Breaking and entering. In the night.”

I stare at him.

“In a private dwelling,” he adds.

“What the hell are you talking about, Harry?”

“I paid a little visit to Derrick Holliston’s bachelor pad.”

He can’t be serious. “Holliston’s been in the county jail for a year. Hasn’t someone else rented that place by now?”

Harry shakes his head. “I worried about that too. I thought I’d have to knock on the door and introduce myself to the new tenant.”

“What? You were planning to knock on a stranger’s door in the wee hours of Christmas morning and ask if you could take a look around?”

He shrugs. “Turns out it wasn’t necessary. A slightly overserved neighbor of his was just stumbling home when I got there. He said that unit’s been vacant since the cops carted Holliston out of it. And once I got inside, I knew why. It’s a dump.”

“How’d you get in?”

He takes his left hand from his coat pocket; it’s bandaged. “Broke a window in the kitchen door,” he says. “It was pretty easy.”

“What possessed you to use your hand?”

“I didn’t,” he says. “I used a brick. I cut the hand when I reached in to flip the deadlock.”

“Cat Burglar of the Year?”

“It was dark,” he says. “Could’ve happened to the best in the business.”

I can’t squat any longer—my middle-aged hips are complaining—so I kneel on the snow beside him. I’ll have to put up with wet leggings for a while. “Help me out here, Harry. Why in God’s name did you break into Holliston’s old apartment?”

He reaches into his schoolbag and pulls out a sack—a faded blue pillowcase. “Go ahead,” he says, “have a gander.”

Cash. The bottom third of the pillowcase is filled with cold, hard cash—bills of almost all denominations. More ones than fifties, but plenty of everything in between too.

“The coins are on the bottom,” Harry says, “mostly quarters. A year’s worth of trips to the Laundromat.”

“Let me guess.” I tear my eyes from the mound of money and look back at him. “You’re thinking this is last year’s Christmas Eve collection.”

“I’m not thinking anything,” he says. “I know it is.”

“You think it is, Harry, but you don’t know it. You can’t know it.”

We seem to say that to each other a lot lately.

“Oh, yes, I can.” He reaches into his schoolbag again, pulls out a second pillowcase—a mate of the first—and hands it over.

I know without looking, but I peer inside anyway, to make sure. And there it is: the monstrance. Tommy Fitzpatrick described it to a tee. A solid-gold stand, about a foot tall, its gleaming surface intricately carved. And the small, off-white wafer—the host—is still inside the monstrance’s circular window. I look up at Harry and then back to the pillowcase. I’m numb, and it’s not because of my wet knees. “The cops would’ve turned Holliston’s apartment inside out looking for this evidence,” I tell him. “Geraldine would have seen to that. How did you find it?”

He taps his temple. “Kidneys,” he says. “Holliston told us he was an electrician in a prior life, remember?”

I’m blank for a few seconds, but then I do. Even so, I shake my head at Harry. “If Holliston’s apartment has a suspended ceiling, you wouldn’t be the only one to notice. The cops would have dismantled it first thing. That’s Evidence Collection 101.”

“It doesn’t,” he says. “The ceiling’s plastered. And it’s intact. Or it was, anyhow, until I got there.”

It occurs to me that Harry probably needs a good lawyer. Maybe Bert Saunders is available. “What did you do to the ceiling?” I ask. I’m not sure I want to know, though.

“Took it down,” he says.

“Took it down?”

“Not all of it.”

Oddly enough, this doesn’t make me feel much better.

“Just one corner,” he adds. “The only spot that had been hollowed out.”

I stare at him. Again.

“Holliston did a good job,” he says. “I’ll say that much for him. Maybe he was a plasterer in a prior life too.”

I look down at the monstrance but don’t say another word. I can’t. The implications of this discovery are just beginning to hit me. I have to remind myself to breathe.

Approaching footsteps break the silence, the steady crunch of boots on snow. It’s Monsignor Davis. He’s in formal robes—it’s Christmas, after all—but they’re mostly hidden by a heavy gray coat. And his purple beanie has been replaced—or perhaps covered—by a warm woolen hat. “You’re getting to be regulars around here,” he says, smiling at us through the snowflakes.

“It’s a temporary obsession,” Harry tells him. “Don’t go signing us up for catechism class.”

The Monsignor laughs. “Don’t worry,” he says, “you’d scare the children.”

“Now you’ve hurt my feelings.” Harry wags a finger at the Monsignor as we both stand. “Not very Christian of you.”

Monsignor Davis laughs again, shaking his head. “Paying a visit to Father McMahon?” he asks us.

Harry nods. “And to you, too, whether you like it or not.” He holds out a pillowcase, the one full of money. “Here,” he says, “this is yours. And I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you I didn’t have it until a couple of hours ago.”

The Monsignor looks into the sack, then at me, then at Harry. “Glory be to God,” he whispers. “What is this?”

Neither of us answers. We wait.

It takes about thirty seconds, but then his expression changes, the explanation dawning on him. “But there’s no way to know,” he says. “Is there?”