The Missing Madonna

by Carol Anne O'Marie

  “No.” Mary Helen could feel her dread growing. “As a matter of fact, I was just beginning to wonder myself. It’s just not like Erma not to have called today to chat.”

  “Not a bit,” Caroline agreed.

  In her mind’s eye, Mary Helen could see her nod her head of beautifully coiffured champagne hair. She wondered crazily if Caroline was wearing her hat and gloves.

  “And what is more, it is not a bit like her to leave without saying something to her family and friends. She just isn’t that kind of person, unless . . .” Caroline left the sentence unfinished.

  “But you say Lucy isn’t worried?” Mary Helen asked, trying not to overreact.

  Caroline hesitated. “If you ask me, she’s pretending not to be. You know, today is the day the two of them are supposed to go to class up there at Mount St. Francis. When Erma didn’t call, Lucy tried her, but there was no answer.”

  Unexpectedly, Mary Helen’s heart turned over, but she said nothing.

  Caroline continued, “She says she is sure Erma has just forgotten today is Monday and has gone somewhere. She thinks we will all feel foolish for having made such a fuss. But I can tell by the way Lucy’s talking that she’s starting to worry too. Why, we managed a whole conversation without even one pun or one of her atrocious jokes. Now that shows worry, if you ask me!”

  “What do you think we should do?” Mary Helen asked.

  “Lucy said she will try to get in touch with her the first thing in the morning. I am of the opinion that if we haven’t heard anything by tomorrow evening at the latest, we should get together and do something about it.”

  “Maybe we should call somebody this evening,” Mary Helen said, thinking immediately of her friend Kate Murphy. Although Kate was an inspector in Homicide, and so far this was, at most, a missing-person case, she knew Kate would know how to help them find their friend.

  “We have called everyone we can think of. Unless you mean the police department.” Caroline’s voice rose a notch. She was frightened, Mary Helen could tell. No wonder Lucy was playing it down. No good would come of getting everyone upset. They’d all be better able to function intelligently if they kept calm.

  “No, I didn’t mean the police. I meant her relatives or other friends.” Mary Helen fudged a little, hoping the end justified the means.

  “Oh, yes, then we have called everyone we can think of.” Caroline sounded a little calmer. “In my opinion,” she said, “if the woman cannot be located by tomorrow, we should go to her apartment and have a look around. We may stumble across a letter or note or something that will tell us where she is, or at least that she is all right. Are you game to go along, Sister?”

  Game? Mary Helen was absolutely dead set to get involved. She was extremely fond of good old Erma Duran, and she was still curious about that upset she had noticed while they were in New York. What was the problem she had overheard Erma and Lucy discussing? What would they “work out”? Could there be some connection between that and Erma’s seeming disappearance?

  Get involved? Of course she would! It was the only decent thing to do. Furthermore, it was more than a matter of decency. It was a matter of conscience.

  May 8

  Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

  On weekday mornings the college began serving breakfast at seven. Even though she had already been to the alumnae office, Mary Helen was one of the first in line. She felt in her jacket pocket for the slip of paper with Erma’s address. She double-checked: The Mission District, 400 block of Sanchez.

  Taking her toast and half a grapefruit into the dining room, Mary Helen searched the tables hoping to spot her friend Eileen. She found her sitting with Sister Cecilia near a set of windows overlooking one of the college’s formal gardens. Outside, the morning was already beautiful. The spring sun was just beginning to touch the row of funnel-shaped petunias that bordered the lawn. A row of sweet alyssum ran behind them, their grayish leaves glistening with drops of early-morning fog. A bed of yellow and gold marigolds circled the marble statue of the Blessed Virgin. Above, the sky was a bright, cloudless blue. All in all, it was a perfect day for an attack of spring fever and a perfect opening for Mary Helen.

  “I feel like playing hooky,” she said, sliding into the chair across from Eileen. “It’s much too nice a day to stay home. We should go somewhere.”

  “We just came back from somewhere.” Eileen eyed Mary Helen’s grapefruit.

  Since she found it nearly impossible to eat grapefruit without squirting those around her, Mary Helen put it aside for later. She wanted nothing to distract Eileen’s attention. Much to her surprise, it was Cecilia’s attention she aroused.

  “You’re absolutely right, Mary Helen.” The president smiled nervously. “It is much too nice a day to stay home. Where are you thinking of going?”

  “Oh, just for a little ride. Sightseeing, maybe, as if we were tourists. Visit someplace we seldom go, like . . . say”—she paused for effect—“like Mission Dolores . . .” Mary Helen let the phrase ride on the air.

  Eileen looked at her perplexed. “Mission Dolores? Why on earth? Besides, we have jobs, old dear. Remember?”

  “What a grand idea!” It was Cecilia who seemed enthusiastic. “I’ll bet it’s beautiful out the Mission today.” Her eyes glowed. “I was born and raised in the Mission,” she said.

  Mary Helen gulped. She might have known. The Mission District was home to many of San Francisco’s notables. She could feel the college president warm to the bait.

  “Would you like to go?” she asked, trying not to sound as if she had caught the wrong fish.

  Cecilia shook her head. “No, thank you. I’d love to, but you know I can’t. What would people think if I took a Tuesday morning off? Besides, I have several meetings today and . . .”

  Mary Helen didn’t hear the rest of the answer. She was trying too hard to suppress a sigh of relief.

  “And neither can we!” Eileen rose from the table. “We have responsibilities, too, even if our age entitles us to be legitimately part-time.”

  “What is the point of being part-time unless we are gone part of the time?” Mary Helen addressed her friend’s fleeting back. “We owe it to them to go. It keeps them honest!”

  It took her until nearly ten o’clock to convince Eileen that a ride to Mission Dolores was exactly what the two of them and the system needed.

  Fortunately, the convent’s green Nova was free and Mary Helen signed it out on the car calendar “till late.”

  “How late?” Eileen followed her toward the back door.

  Mary Helen pretended not to hear. At her age, she could act a little hard of hearing. It worked for Therese, who was a full ten years younger.

  As the pair passed the kitchenette just inside the back door, Mary Helen heard voices. It was Therese with a couple in tow.

  “Hi, Sisters!” Patricia Boscacci turned quickly and moved across the room, giving them each a big hug.

  Mary Helen liked Pat. She had graduated from Mount St. Francis almost twenty years before, but she still could easily have been mistaken for a coed. It was hard to believe that the petite, perky lady with curly honey-brown hair had four children, two of them teenagers.

  Behind her stood her husband, Allan, quietly smiling. Allan towered over his wife. He was as calm and contained as she was vivacious and talkative. To Mary Helen they seemed a perfect pair, although she had to admit she sometimes felt a twinge of sympathy for Allan.

  The man was the successful head of a large electrical firm somewhere in the city. Although he had a degree in electrical engineering, his wife always considered him an electrician. Pat loved the Sisters and was a very active alumna. Therefore, whenever there was an electrical problem at the college—from a balky socket to the whole heating system—she arrived with Allan.

  “What’s the problem today?” Mary Helen asked.

  “It’s the icebox,” Therese said, pointing to the refrigerator.

  Allan looked at her, wishing,
no doubt, that it was an icebox so they could call the iceman and not him.

  “The freezing compartment is out of whack,” he said, running his fingers through his thick black hair. “But I think it’s because the machine is a little off kilter.” He pointed to the floor. The tip of a screwdriver stuck out about a fourth of an inch from the side of the box.

  “It looks like the work of Luis, the handyman,” Mary Helen said, thinking once again that Luis had proven not to be as handy as he might have been.

  “I’ll send a couple of men over as soon as I can to fix you up,” Allan said.

  “Where are you two off to?” Pat, who had lost interest in the refrigerator, noticed the car keys.

  “We thought we might just sneak away for a little while,” Mary Helen said softly, hoping Therese would be too absorbed in the freezing compartment to pay attention. “Today seems like a perfect day for an outing.

  Therese rolled her dark eyes. “I would have thought—since some of us have been out and about so much—that a perfect day might be the day we could stay at home!”

  * * *

  Mary Helen drove quickly down Turk Street and cut over Divisadero to Castro. Even on a Tuesday, Castro Street, the heart of San Francisco’s gay community, was crowded. Bumper-to-bumper, Mary Helen edged the Nova toward 18th Street. She knew it was a little out of the way, but it would give her a chance to pass Sanchez and see how close they were to the 400 block.

  “Watch out,” Eileen shouted. A truck with side panels announcing TINY TOTS DIAPERS—WE’RE CHANGING THE CITY pulled away from the curb. It was followed by two male jaywalkers, hand in hand, who cut in front of the car, giving the hood a friendly pat.

  “Are you really sure you want to do this?” Eileen asked, once she had recovered her voice.

  “Of course,” Mary Helen answered with more confidence than she felt. “The Mission is beautiful.” And indeed it was. The whole district was a charming mixture of old Victorian and Edwardian homes, with a few stuccos from the thirties looking as though they had been backed into the narrow lots in between.

  Mary Helen found a parking space on 16th and Dolores, right next to the old Notre Dame Academy. Some years back, the massive convent and high school had been converted into a center for the arts.

  “It’s like a summer’s day,” Mary Helen said although she had to admit it was not like a summer’s day in most of San Francisco. Summer in the City was notoriously foggy. Wasn’t it Mark Twain who had said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”?

  He must not have visited the Mission District, sheltered as it was from the ocean, in the lap of Twin Peaks. The weather there was always mild. Why, an island of palm trees ran down the middle of Dolores Street. It could have been Los Angeles!

  The two nuns paused for a moment to look at the whitewashed adobe Mission San Francisco de Asis, probably the oldest building in the City. Adjacent to it, and at least four times its size, was Mission Dolores Basilica.

  In the alcove atop its towering facade, junipero Serra stood, in full Franciscan habit, looking down. His stone hands were clasped behind his back. Mary Helen wondered crazily what the saintly friar must be thinking about up there, gazing down on all he had started.

  Before the light turned green, a Grayline tour bus pulled up to the curb. Japanese tourists, complete with sun hats and cameras, filed off the bus.

  “They must have emptied an entire village,” Mary Helen murmured to Eileen.

  “Do you still want to sightsee, old dear?”

  “Why don’t we have a little lunch first?” Mary Helen glanced in the general direction of her wristwatch, hoping Eileen was hungry and wouldn’t notice that it wasn’t yet eleven o’clock. “There are lots of quaint little places in this neighborhood.”

  Mary Helen drove up 16th a few blocks and turned left on Sanchez. Slowly she cruised the street.

  “Where in the name of God are you going?” Eileen turned in the passenger’s seat to look at her. “You have passed three delis, two coffee shops, a health-food restaurant, and Just Desserts is right behind us on Church Street.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Mary Helen, if it is not too much to ask, what are you up to, exactly?”

  “There’s where Erma lives.” Mary Helen pointed to a small two-story building on the corner. The first floor housed a storefront. Above it were living quarters. A string of carved rosettes ran between the curtained square bay windows. Probably in the twenties, the greengrocer or the butcher and his family had lived there, over their shop. Today, the shop had been converted to a trendy-looking restaurant with ALPHONSO’S BISTRO written in white script on its awning. The top story had probably been divided into apartments.

  Eileen folded her arms and stared straight ahead. “I wondered what all this was about,” she said. “I should have known. You just could not wait until Erma called.”

  For a moment Mary Helen was hurt. This wasn’t a matter of impatience or even curiosity. This was a matter of genuine concern. While she took several tries at parallel parking, she told Eileen about Caroline’s phone call. Eileen followed her across the street, muttering apologies that Mary Helen graciously accepted.

  The mailboxes by the front door told them that the upper floor had been divided into two apartments—Erma’s and one belonging to an A. Finn. Mary Helen pushed Erma’s doorbell and waited. She pushed it again and held it a little longer. Still no answer.

  “She’s not at home,” she said, managing to push A. Finn’s bell before Eileen noticed. When A. Finn didn’t answer either, Mary Helen walked toward the restaurant’s side window.

  Inside, everything was dark. Obviously the bistro had not yet opened for lunch. Putting her face to the window, Mary Helen cupped her hands around her eyes. There was a crack of light coming from under a door in the back. Someone was in there. With her car keys she tapped on the plate glass.

  “What are you doing?” Eileen had caught up with her.

  “There’s someone in there,” Mary Helen answered without taking her face away from the window. “Maybe he—or she—saw Erma today. Leaving her apartment, or something.”

  “From the back of the restaurant? With the door closed?”

  Ignoring her friend, Mary Helen watched a door at the far corner of the darkened room swing open. A squat man crossed the room, wiping his hands on his spotted butcher’s apron.

  Frowning, he pointed to the red CLOSED sign still hanging on the glass door.

  Mary Helen waved. For a moment the man squinted at her. She could almost see his mind working. Two old ladies in blue tailored suits, no makeup, no jewelry, small crosses on the left lapel.

  “Oh, Sister!” He unlocked the glass front door. “Sorry,” he said, opening it, “we don’t start to serve until eleven-thirty.” He glanced at his watch. “About twenty minutes. You want to come in and wait?”

  “We’re not here to eat, really,” Mary Helen said, trying not to stare at the top of the man’s head, although it was difficult not to. His pate was bald, yet one long piece of hair had been stretched back and forth in a series of V’s across his crown. The top of his head looked for all the world like someone had threaded half a black shoelace, then plastered it all down with brilliantine.

  Eileen nudged her. “We were wondering if you had seen Erma Duran this morning. The woman in the apartment above.” She pointed.

  “Yeah, I know Erma, all right.” The man opened the door wide so the nuns could step inside. “She’s lived there for years. Since way before Tommy died. In fact, I’m the landlord. Own the whole building. Come on in.”

  The Sisters stepped farther into the darkened bistro. The delicious smell of sautéing onions was beginning to permeate the whole room. Mary Helen’s mouth watered. Inside, small tables covered with white cloths were arranged close together. Napkins, like stiff little bishop’s miters, stood at each place. A milk-glass bud vase holding a real carnation and a frond of maidenhair was in the center of each table.

  The walls we
re covered with deep red flocked wallpaper; the burgundy carpet was thick and plush. The whole place looked exactly as Mary Helen imagined a high-class bordello might look. Here and there an imitation hurricane lamp stuck out from the wall. Two or three large ferns in brass planters completed the decor.

  “Then you’ve seen Erma today?” Eileen asked hopefully.

  “No, she hasn’t been around for the last couple of days. She took off last Saturday, right after she got back from the Big Apple. Leaves me awful shorthanded. Thank God we’re closed on Mondays.” He wiped his hands on his apron again.

  “Erma works for me too,” he added, in case the nuns hadn’t gathered as much. “She’s my hostess. Been doing that since before Tommy died.

  “Somebody’s been trying to get her all morning too. I can hear her phone ringing, but she’s gone. To visit relatives,” the man offered before Mary Helen had a chance to ask.

  Just as Caroline had said, she thought. And that caller is no doubt Lucy. Poor thing must really be concerned.

  “When do you expect her back?” Mary Helen asked.

  The man shook his head. Not a hair on it moved. “Don’t know, Sister,” he said sadly, “and I really miss her around the place.” He brightened. “She said she’d call and let me know.”

  “Well, thank you. I hope we haven’t bothered you, Mr. . . . Mr. . . .” Mary Helen realized belatedly that they hadn’t even bothered to introduce themselves.

  “Finn. Al Finn.” He stuck out his broad hand. “I’m Alphonso, the one on the awning.”

  “Ai for Alphonso.” Eileen cocked her head and ended her sentence somewhere between a question and a statement. It was an old Irish trick that had helped her out of many a tight situation.

  The man didn’t know whether to answer or explain. He chose to explain. “My name is really Aiphonsus. My folks were from the old school. You know, name a kid for the saint whose day he was born on. My birthday’s the first of August.”

  “St Aiphonsus Liguori.” Eileen beamed. “You were lucky, really. You could have been born on September twenty-ninth.”