“It’s Friday night. Let’s go out to dinner. There’s a new Chinese place on Clement.”
“I’m serious,” Kate said. By now she was warm enough to take off her coat too.
“I’m serious too. Let’s just have a relaxing evening together. No cooking, no dishes.”
Kate had to admit it sounded like a good place to start. “Why don’t we have a drink here first?” She stopped. She couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth.
That was what her mother had always said. Probably to save money. The suggestion had always struck Kate as tacky. Now here she was, saying the same thing. Not because they couldn’t afford it, though, but because it was just cozier to have cocktails at home.
“Swell.” Jack went to the kitchen. Kate followed him. “I should probably take a bath before we go.”
“Hell, if I have to take a bath, too, let’s go out big and romantic.” Jack mixed a vodka tonic for Kate and poured himself Scotch on the rocks. He brought the glasses into the small sun room off the kitchen.
“You’ll never guess who dropped by the Hall today.” Kate followed her husband into the room. They settled back on the overstuffed couch. The flowered chintz made the room seem warm and cheerful despite the dense fog whirling past the windows.
“How many guesses do I get?”
“None. I’ll tell you. Our two nun friends, Sister Mary Helen and Sister Eileen.”
“About that missing OWL friend of theirs?” Jack hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Jeez, I forgot to call Honore about that.”
Kate nodded, then sipped her drink. “I gathered as much. Too late now. I put in a call to him this afternoon. Poor unsuspecting slob said to have them call him on Monday.”
Jack smiled. “Wait till the guy gets a load of those two.”
“Oh, he did. Apparently Mary Helen couldn’t wait. The two of them went right over.”
“And Honore called you?”
“He nearly came through the phone, shouting ‘Why me? You know damn well this should go to cops at the Mission Station.’ I guess when I told him I had two older nuns, he thought he could sweet-talk them, calm them down. Charm them, actually. What he expected was sweetness and light.”
“And what he got was gangbusters!” Jack snorted.
Kate knew her husband was delighted. Don Juan Ron Honore had finally met his match. Not only would he be unable to charm these two woman, he would hardly be able to control them.
“What did he do with them?”
“What any normal, red-blooded police inspector would do. He gave right in and told them to come back if their friend wasn’t located within the next few days.”
Chuckling, Jack shook his head. “Damn, I wish I’d been there to see that ugly face!” He rose and took the two glasses for a refill.
“Should we?” Kate asked.
“A bird cannot fly on one wing alone,” her husband said and winked. “And that’s an Irish saying. A good Irish girl like you should know that and not have to be told by your Eye-talian husband.”
“How was your day?” Kate called after him. “And speaking of days,” she added before he could answer, “did you pick up something for your mother for Mother’s Day? It’s Sunday, you know.”
“Jeez, no.” Jack reappeared in the doorway and handed Kate her glass.
“Do you want to take her out for dinner or a fancy brunch or something like that instead?”
Jack ran his fingers through his thick, curly hair. “That reminds me, hon, Ma called at work today. Wants us to come to dinner at her place on Mother’s Day.”
“Isn’t that a little backwards? Shouldn’t the children be giving the party?”
Jack shrugged, then settled back beside her on the couch. “Whatever turns you on! Speaking of which . . .” He kissed her gently on the forehead.
Kate recognized the look on his face, but at the moment she didn’t feel a bit romantic. Jack sat back and looked at her. “Why the frown?”
“I was just feeling kind of sorry for your mother. Fixing her own dinner on Mother’s Day, and everything.”
“She loves it. Nothing makes her happier. Besides, she’s never satisfied with anyone else’s cooking. You know that.”
“Well, it’s not right.” Kate felt angry and she wasn’t sure why.
“What’s not right?”
“It just doesn’t seem very . . . very”—she sat up straight, searching for the right word—“appreciative.” She wondered for a moment whether her children—if and when she ever had any—would appreciate how much she wanted them. “And you’re so callous about it.” She glared at Jack, suddenly angry with him.
He shook his head. “I can’t figure you out. First you can hardly put up with my mother’s mothering. Now you’re mad because I’m not appreciative enough. Did I miss something?”
Sinking back down on the couch, Kate kicked off her shoes and pulled her legs up beside her. Jack had a point, she knew, and she felt a little foolish. Snuggling closer to him, she put her head on his knee. “Sorry, pal,” she said. His strong fingers kneaded her backbone. She had the sudden urge to purr.
“Didn’t that pamphlet say we should relax?”
Kate nodded her head.
“Let Dr. Bassetti introduce you to his foolproof method, lady. First let me check your vital signs.” His cool hand touched her forehead. “No fever.” He felt for her wrist. “Pulse steady.” Playfully, he patted her hip. “No apparent deformities. Dr. Bassetti recommends a romantic dinner for two, then plenty of bed rest with the aforementioned doctor.”
Kate giggled, then sat up. She felt suddenly warm and lovey. She wasn’t sure if it was Jack or the vodka on an empty stomach. “I’m so lucky to have you,” she said, pressing her lips against her husband’s ear. “And I always take my doctor’s advice. I’ll be in and out of the tub before you know it.”
Eyes closed, Kate felt the warm bath water ooze over her shoulders and relax them. The faint smell of strawberry bubble bath rose in the steam. Wriggling her toes, she slid farther down into the tub. The water licked at her chin. Without opening her eyes, Kate took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She imagined the tiny ripples it made on the surface of the bath water. She felt drowsy.
“You look like a bubble dancer in the final act.”
Kate’s eyes shot open. Jack stood by the side of the tub, smiling down at her. He had a glass of wine in each hand.
“What in the world?” Kate sat up in the tub. A few stray bubbles still floated around the sides.
“Dr. Bassetti has done some more research on your problem, lady. Maybe you won’t even need to see this busy gynecologist.” He set the wineglasses beside the tub. “If we are going to eat romantic, why not start romantic? In the movies the lead and his lady always take a bubble bath together, sip champagne, then send out for pizza.”
“And may I ask just how that would solve my problem?”
“Babies come from romance. It always looks real romantic.”
“That’s in the movies. And you’ve got wine, not champagne, plus we need a lot more bubbles.” Kate watched with trepidation as her husband took off his robe and climbed over the bottom end of the old-fashioned tub.
“I hope these claw feet will support both of us.” She eyed the legs holding up the tub.
“Wouldn’t that be something?” Facing her, Jack lowered himself into the water. “How about a little more hot water?”
Kate twisted, but couldn’t turn around enough to reach the faucet. Feeling his foot beside her hip, she giggled, then twisted some more, making room for his other foot. Now where would she put hers?
Slipping, grunting, and laughing, they both managed to fit into the narrow tub. Kate could feel Jack’s toenails against her back.
“Isn’t this romantic?” he asked, with a silly grin on his face. He bent over the side of the tub and picked up the two glasses. “People must have been smaller when they built this tub.”
Kate tried to sip her wine,
but she banged her elbow on his knee. “Or maybe they didn’t see the same movies.”
By adjusting her hips she moved closer to her husband. She grabbed his waist with her heels. “Now what?” she asked and bent forward to kiss him. All she could reach was his nose.
“Ouch!” He’d cracked his elbow against the edge of the tub. “We better get the hell out of here.”
Kate started to laugh. She could feel Jack’s foot groping for a place to steady itself. It slipped off her thigh. “Are you afraid the legs are going to go?”
“No, I’m afraid we’ll get so stuck in this damn thing that the fire department will have to use jaws to get us out.”
Kate was laughing so hard she could hardly speak. “I wonder,” she said, “if the boys would also deliver the pizza.”
Saturday, May 12
Feast of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, Martyrs
On Saturday morning Sister Mary Helen awoke feeling uneasy? As far as she could remember she had slept well and had not had any disturbing dreams. Yet the feeling was there and it filled her whole body with the cold, lonely, unsettling squeeze of dread. It was Erma, of course!
Outside, a steady rain now hit against her window. The gutter at the end of the convent building gurgled. Poor Luis had forgotten to clean out the pine needles—again.
She recognized the hum of the vacuum cleaner. It was drifting up from somewhere downstairs. Vacuum cleaner! She must have overslept. Suddenly awake, Mary Helen checked the alarm clock on her bed stand. It had stopped. Fumbling for her glasses, she focused on her wristwatch. Nine o’clock! She sat up, shaken. If she hurried she’d just have time to dress, gulp down some breakfast, and get to Erma’s apartment for the ten-thirty meeting.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” She stared accusingly at Eileen the moment she found her. And she spotted her, reading the Chronicle, in the coffee room off the college kitchen.
“I thought you could use the extra rest,” Eileen answered placidly, looking up over the morning paper. “And I knew I was sure to run into you here if I just stayed put.”
“Do you know what time it is? We’ve got to hurry!” Impatiently, Mary Helen blew on her coffee.
“Not we, old dear. You.” This time Eileen didn’t even look up.
* * *
“When you’re in a rush, nothing works right,” Mary Helen fussed, sitting in the driver’s seat of the convent’s Nova. She pushed on the automatic garage-door opener. The thick door didn’t budge.
“You try it.” She handed the opener to Eileen, who aimed it first at the door, then at the ceiling, and finally halfway in between. Although the overhead motor made a growling sound, the door still did not move.
“Poor Allan Boscacci.” Eileen shoved the broken opener into the glove compartment. “Therese will have him on the horn before night falls.”
“What do we do now?” At the moment, Mary Helen didn’t care about anyone else’s problems.
“When in doubt, bail out.” With a determined look on her face, Eileen headed for the heavy door.
She must be picking up that corn from Lucy Lyons, Mary Helen thought, following her. Between the two of them, they were able, with much grunting and puffing, to push the door open.
* * *
The nuns arrived at Erma’s apartment just in time for the meeting. “As a matter of fact, we are a few minutes early,” Eileen remarked, passing their wet raincoats and dripping umbrellas to Lucy. Caroline, Noelle, Mr. Finn, and Erma’s daughter stood just inside the dim living room.
“I’ll hang these over the bathtub,” Lucy said, then grinned. “With all the other drips.”
She just can’t help herself, Mary Helen thought, hoping Eileen hadn’t heard the crack. Yet even she couldn’t help smiling at the spry little woman disappearing into Erma’s bedroom.
“Everyone is right on time,” Noelle began before Lucy returned. She motioned for the group to sit, which they did. All, that is, except Erma’s daughter, Ree. The girl stood by the living-room window, sniffling and nervously glancing first at the street below, then toward Noelle, then finally around the living room at the assembled group.
“The boys said they’d be here,” she explained, tugging at the back of her overblouse.
“That’s fine.” Noelle peered over the top of her half glasses. The blue of her silk scarf accented the blue of her eyes and made them even more penetrating.
“Shall we begin?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued, “I trust we were all successful.”
Who would dare be otherwise? Mary Helen wanted to ask, but thought better of it.
“Would you like to give the first report, Caroline?”
Caroline, looking pert in her saucy little rain hat, paused until she had everyone’s undivided attention. Even Ree, who must have noticed the silence, turned from the window and sat on the sill.
“The college’s alumnae office was most helpful,” she began, with a smile toward the nuns. Fat chance they wouldn’t be, thought Mary Helen, smiling back.
“Lucy and I went though the alumnae records for the late thirties. As you know, that was when Erma graduated.” She glanced toward the window to include Ree. “We found your Aunt Barbara.”
Drawing in her breath, Caroline swallowed. The silent room grew even more still with expectation. Next to her, Mary Helen could feel Mr. Finn shifting forward. Across the room, she noticed Eileen crossing fingers on both her hands. Her own stomach roiled.
“Unfortunately . . .” Caroline began. Suddenly, the room seemed to deflate. “Barbara—whose maiden name, incidentally, was Barbara Quinn—has not heard from Erma. And, frankly, she is quite upset. She feels that if Erma were in the area, she would surely have called. I’m afraid that rather than solving anything, our investigation has simply upset another person.”
Noelle let Caroline’s observation ride on the air without comment. “I contacted the St. Louis Police Department, which graciously checked the city’s hospitals for me.” Noelle paused long enough to light a cigarette. Mary Helen was surprised she had waited this long. “Fortunately, Erma’s name was not on any of their lists.” She moved an ashtray from the coffee table to the arm of her chair.
“I didn’t get nowhere, either, with the union.” Blinking his eyes, Finn put his elbows on his knees and clenched his hands together. “I called the waitresses’ union and the bartenders’, too, just in case.
“Gal on the phone didn’t know nothing about Erma, ‘No record of her applying for membership here,’ she says.” Finn’s voice cracked and, for a moment, Mary Helen wondered if he was going to cry. Instead, he bent forward, resting his forehead in his hands.
For several seconds, the six women sat staring at the top of his threaded pate. The poor fellow, Mary Helen thought. He really does care for Erma. Funny, Erma had never mentioned him. Relationships, she remembered reading somewhere recently, are a pervading and changing mystery. How true! For the present, the relationship between Erma and Finn surely was a mystery—to her, at least. And that didn’t seem to be the only mystery the group had discovered. A sudden chill made Mary Helen hug herself.
“Now, now!” Lucy’s voice cut through the gloom. “Let’s not get down in the dumps,” she said, in what Mary Helen thought must be a superhuman effort to be optimistic, even for Lucy. “It’s not all bad news. After all, Noelle called the police and hospitals. And there was no word of Erma there. So far as we know, nothing bad has happened to her.”
Trying to push away apprehension from the edge of her mind, Mary Helen forced herself to nod at Lucy.
Encouraged, Lucy looked hopefully from person to person. “Think positive!” Her voice rose higher. Mary Helen couldn’t help but notice the hint of anxiety. “We can’t let ourselves even imagine that something has happened to our friend.”
Across from her, Mary Helen watched Eileen, who was visibly trying to cheer up. “Lucy is right,” she said. “We must have faith that everything will turn out just dandy. We’ll get nowhere unless we keep our s
pirits up.”
Lucy picked up steam. “After all, the Sisters have been praying,” she said.
Eileen nodded. For a fleeting second, Mary Helen feared the two optimists might break into a duet of “Pack Up Your Troubles.”
“Besides”—Lucy’s eyes were wide behind her horn-rimmed glasses—“we still have to hear from . . .”
As though on cue, the roar of a motorcycle thundered through the small room. Over the noise, Lucy finished her sentence: “the boys,” she shouted.
“What the hell happened to Ma?” A deep voice ricocheted off the walls of the narrow staircase, as heavy footsteps stomped up toward them.
The vision that loomed on the top step was something, Mary Helen imagined, that could have come right out of a B movie about the Hell’s Angels. Stunned, the group just stared.
“I asked you guys a question.” Hands on hips, the thick-bodied young man glared back at them, his bare chest swelling inside his leather vest. Actually his chest was the only thing about him that was bare. The rest of him was covered with hair and leather and chains and tattoos.
“Where the hell is the old lady?” he shouted at no one in particular.
Recovering from the initial shock, Caroline pulled herself up to her majestic best “You must be Junior,” she said so icily that even Junior froze on the spot Mary Helen cringed. As if they weren’t having enough trouble! All they needed now was a verbal battle. Although if there was to be one, she had no doubt whatsoever about who would win.
“We can fully appreciate your concern for your mother,” Caroline continued, bestowing a look of regal understanding on the peasant before her. “And we sympathize. It is plain to see that you care about the old lady, even though, I believe, that is a misnomer. Your concern is further attested to, of course, by the fact that you have immortalized her on your thorax.” She pointed a long finger toward his chest.
Junior frowned, puzzled. Mary Helen knew he wasn’t quite sure whether he had been complimented or insulted. She swallowed the urge to laugh.
In the uncomfortable silence that filled the room while he was trying to decide, Ree sniffled nervously. “This is my brother,” she said, motioning at a young man nearly hidden behind Junior. “This is Buddy.”
The Missing Madonna Page 9
