“Of course not.” All the smart-aleck answers were making Mary Helen a bit impatient. Besides, there was a sharp wind whistling along on Divisadero Street. Before long she and Eileen would freeze to death. “We are simply trying to help locate your mother.”
“Hey, don’t get mad.” His hand touched her jacket sleeve, the tips of his fingers bloody where he had torn at his nails. “It’s just that another cop, a black dude, was here already asking questions.”
Mary Helen was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps she had rashly judged Inspector Honore.
“Like I told him, I want to help. I love my mother.” For the first time Junior’s dark eyes met hers. If she wasn’t mistaken, they were misty.
Another paper tiger, Mary Helen thought, listening to Junior confess about fighting with his mother when she had refused to lend him any more money.
“What time was that?”
“About ten, maybe ten-thirty, Saturday morning.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, pretty sure. I remember looking at her clock when I got there and asking her what time she had to be at work. She said she didn’t have to go to work on Saturday till they opened for dinner.”
“You were very angry with your mother,” Mary Helen stated, then studied his eyes for a reaction. She was trying to pick up any clue she could.
“Yeah, I was damn mad. See, I needed the money bad,” he repeated. “I owed some guys. You know how that is.”
Mary Helen nodded, although she had no idea how that was or why a grown man would expect his mother to pay his debts.
“I cussed at her. Not bad, just a little. She smacked me on the back of the head, just like she always does when I cuss. I let her. I never would lift a finger to hurt her. I love my mother,” he said again.
After a few moments Junior’s eyes narrowed, making him look, Mary Helen thought, positively dangerous. “If anyone knows what happened to her,” he said, “it’s that bastard Finn.” He clenched his fist “If he hurt her, I’ll kill him.”
* * *
As they pulled away Mary Helen checked the rear-view mirror. Junior and his friends were in front of the garage. Unless she was mistaken, they were each holding a can of beer.
“Oh, my, my!” Eileen fastened her seat belt and turned back to look as they merged into Divisadero. “A body wouldn’t want to run into those chaps in a dark alley.”
“Your body and half the bodies in San Francisco,” Mary Helen said, “if you are judging by appearances.” She caught herself. You, above all others, old girl, should know better than to judge a book by its cover! She frowned, wondering if Junior’s toughness was merely a veneer covering nothing more than soft putty or if it was indeed genuine.
* * *
Buddy Duran lived in a garage apartment on Clayton Street in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury District The neighborhood, which had been the hippie center of the sixties, had just enough hearts and macrame hangings left dangling in bay windows to remind passersby of the era.
Most of the sturdy old homes, however, had been renovated and repainted to accentuate the ornate Victorian architecture. Buddy’s building was one of them.
Even before the young man opened the narrow front door, Mary Helen smelled what she recognized from a workshop on drugs as the distinctive odor of marijuana. She wondered if Inspector Honore had beat her here too.
“Hi, Sisters,” Buddy said, a euphoric look in his unfocused eyes. His flannel shirt was covered with clay dust.
“I hope we’re not disturbing you.” Mary Helen tried to look concerned.
“No, I’ve been creating all morning, when I didn’t have company.” He opened the door just wide enough for the nuns to see into the room and pointed to a lump of clay on a makeshift table. “Right now, I’m just taking a . . . a coffee break.” Buddy giggled. “Come in.” He threw open the door. “Welcome to my studio apartment.”
The room was a mess. Unwashed dishes were stacked helter-skelter in a narrow, stained sink. Beneath it, McDonald’s cartons, Chinese-food containers, and a half-empty coffee cup with something growing on the remaining half cluttered the grimy floor. A hot plate held several pots. A few pieces of dirty underwear lay at the foot of an unmade bed.
“Make yourself comfortable.” Buddy motioned grandly toward two patched beanbag chairs. “Can I get you something?”
Quickly Mary Helen shook her head. She wasn’t quite sure which she wanted to avoid the most: getting in and out of the beanbag chair or discovering what Buddy was prepared to serve them.
“No, thank you, Buddy. We don’t want to keep you from your work.” She smiled toward the clay. For the first time, she noticed dents pushed in where eyes should be and the beginning of a short nose.
Dreamily, Buddy’s eyes followed hers. “Recognize it?” he asked.
Mary Helen didn’t want to stunt his creativity by telling him that to her it looked like nothing more than a blob of red clay with a couple of holes in it “Well, it does look familiar,” she said instead.
Beside her, Eileen cocked her head this way and that “A woman,” she said finally, with that Irish lilt that made a statement and a question sound alike. Right or wrong, the inflection would save the artist from hurt feelings and Eileen from embarrassment.
But the pleased smile on Buddy’s face told them that Eileen was right on the mark.
“Your-mother?”
Mary Helen could tell it was another wild guess.
Buddy nodded and stared at the clay, a silly grin playing on his face. Eileen was batting a thousand.
“Poor Mama.” He stared at the clay. Suddenly tears filled his eyes.
“When did you last see her?” Mary Helen put her hand on the young man’s bony shoulder, gave it a pat.
He frowned as if he were trying to recall details from a dream. “Saturday—the day Finn said she left”
“I see. What time where you there?”
He frowned, trying to concentrate. “About quarter to eight or so. I had to be at work at the museum by nine.”
“May I inquire why you were there so early in the morning?” Mary Helen asked a little hesitantly.
Buddy wasn’t the least bit hesitant in answering. “I brought over my laundry. But she never gave it back.” He pointed to the shorts on the linoleum floor. “I’m running low.”
“You rang her bell at seven forty-five on Saturday morning?” Mary Helen had been a schoolteacher too long. She couldn’t help herself. “After she had just come home from an exhausting trip to, New York the day before?”
Buddy winced and looked hurt by the tone of her voice. “If I get there early she fixes my breakfast,” he said. “I hope she hurries home.”
At that moment, Mary Helen herself felt the urge to kill.
* * *
“Do you know, Mary Helen, if we read it in a novel, we wouldn’t believe it.” Eileen stared out the car window.
“Read what?” Mary Helen checked the oncoming traffic before turning right onto Oak Street.
“About Erma’s two sons, of course.” Eileen sounded annoyed. At what, Mary Helen wasn’t sure. “No one deserves those two characters!”
“I’m sure Erma loves them.” Mary Helen swerved to avoid a car merging from her right. On Oak Street it was hard to take the right-of-way, even if it was legally yours.
“To a fault, if you ask me!” Eileen’s Irish was up.
“And in their own strange ways, both of them seem to love her too.”
Eileen snorted. “That reminds me of a ditty one of my in-laws from back home used to sing.” Her rich contralto filled the small Nova. “ ‘He held the lantern while his mother chopped the wood. He held the lantern, just like any good boy should.’ ”
Mary Helen was glad the windows were rolled up.
“ ‘He . . .’ ” Eileen stopped midnote. “Something has been pestering me since we left Buddy’s and I just realized what it is. His laundry! Do you remember seeing any men’s laundry, clean or dirty, in Erma’s apartment?”
Mary Helen shook her head.
“What do you suppose that can mean?” Eileen turned in the seat to face her.
“It could mean that someone was in the apartment after Buddy says he was.”
“Junior was,” Eileen chirped in. “You do remember.”
“I have the feeling Junior wasn’t in the mood to deliver.”
“Oh, dear, Mary Helen, do you suppose Buddy went back and picked up his laundry and for some reason neglected to tell us?”
Suddenly Mary Helen felt as if she had been laundered and someone had washed out all her starch.
* * *
When they arrived, Alphonso’s Bistro was obviously not yet open. The shade on the glass front door was pulled halfway down and a throw-away paper was still in front of it Inside, the place was pitch-black. Yet the aroma of browning ground meat escaping under the door made Mary Helen’s stomach growl. She checked her wristwatch. No wonder. It was already eleven.
Obviously Mr. Finn was in the kitchen. Or one of the cooks. She tapped on the glass and waited. Bight after they talked with him, Mary Helen would suggest that Eileen and she could treat themselves to lunch in one of the quaint eateries in the neighborhood. They deserved it She had read about one place that had North African food, whatever that was. Not giraffe steak or hippopotamus stew, she hoped.
When no one answered her second tap, Sister Mary Helen walked around to the apartment side of the building. She pushed Finn’s doorbell and waited but not for long. He opened the door, motioned them in, and hurried back up the stairs to the phone down the hall. Following him up the stairs, the two nuns stood in the entrance way, looking around.
Not that there was much to see. The layout of Finn’s apartment looked like half a flat. Apparently Finn or some previous owner had divided the flat into two apartments. He had the front half, Erma the back.
The furnishings in the living room were sparse but clean. Actually, except for a pile of newspapers on a vinyl hassock, the place did not look lived in at all.
Although she couldn’t make out the words, Mary Helen could hear Finn mumbling in the hallway.
“Listen!” Eileen whispered, nodding toward the mumbling. Her hearing was exceptionally keen. In fact, there were days when some swore that she could hear the grass growing in Ireland.
Mary Helen strained, but still nothing was clear.
“He’s placing a bet,” Eileen mouthed when she realized Mary Helen couldn’t hear. “Probably talking to his bookie.”
What in the name of God do you know about bookies, Mary Helen wanted to ask, edging closer to the hallway in the hope that she, too, might catch the conversation.
It was too late. Almost immediately Finn reappeared, blinking.
“Morning, Sisters.” He wiggled his toes in his stocking feet. “What brings you to this neck of the woods so early?”
“I just can’t stop thinking about Erma.” Mary Helen suddenly realized how hungry she was. There was no sense wasting time. “If it isn’t an imposition, may I look through her apartment again, maybe even have you show me what she did that last day, just in case we missed something?” The detectives in her mystery stories always did that. If it worked for Spenser or Rebecca Schwartz, why not for her?
Wearily Finn shook his head, then sat down to put on his shoes. “It’s no trouble but it’s no use either. Like I keep telling you, Erma don’t want to be found. She left to get away from those lousy kids of hers. Said she’d call when she got settled. So far she ain’t . . . called, I mean.”
The nuns followed Finn down the stairs to the front door of his apartment. “Let’s see now . . . You wanted to see what Erma did that last day. Well, like I told you, it was Saturday. She come down here to tell me she was leaving.”
He pointed to the closed bistro door. “Since we’re down here already, why don’t we look here first?” He rumbled with the key in the single lock. It didn’t take much, Mary Helen noticed, to get the place open.
Inside, Alphonso’s Bistro smelled even more delicious than it had from the outside. The cook had obviously added onions to the beef.
“Now what is it you want to look at, exactly?”
Faced with the direct question, Mary Helen wasn’t sure. “Just around.” She waved vaguely.
Finn shrugged his consent, or at least Mary Helen assumed that was what his shrug meant. Smiling her thanks, she made her way across the darkened room and into the stainless-steel kitchen. Eileen and Finn followed.
A tall Mexican man wearing a high chefs cap was standing over the cast-iron gas range. At a center cutting table another, younger, fellow was chopping. Both glanced over at her, but after a perfunctory smile they went back to their work.
Mary Helen opened several doors that proved to be closets. One held paper goods, another clean linens, yet another cleaning supplies. She tried the door next to the deep sink, one the help probably used for washing heavy pots. Turning the knob, she pulled, but it didn’t budge.
“Let me get that.” Finn took an old-fashioned key from a hook beside the door. “This door’s to the basement,” he said. “I keep it locked because the stairs are so steep. Someone falls and—wham!”
He swung back the door and felt for the light switch. Mr. Finn was not exaggerating. The stairs were almost vertical. Grabbing the rickety wooden railing, Mary Helen was glad she wasn’t subject to vertigo.
“If some bimbo opens this, thinking it’s the broom closet and breaks her fool neck, they’d sue the hell out of me.”
Pushing her bifocals up the bridge of her nose, Mary Helen peered down into the basement. “Did Erma ever go down there?”
“Yeah, sure, every once in a while. We keep our extra supplies down there.”
“How do you get them in?” Mary Helen hoped she sounded like Spenser.
“There’s a door at the back of the basement,” Finn told her. “Stairs lead down to it from the alley behind the building. Want to take a look?”
Sister Mary Helen ignored his question. “Did Erma go down there the day she disappeared?” she asked, hoping the answer was no. The longer she stood at the top of the steps, the more forbidding they looked.
Finn scratched the bald V’s on the top of his head. “Now that you mention it, she did. The cooks were starting to get the dinner going when she came down to tell me she was taking off. As I remember it, one of them ran out of sugar or ice or some damn thing. Everybody had their hands full.”
Mary Helen glanced quickly at Eileen, hoping her friend could resist saying, Had his or her hands full.
Fortunately she did, and Finn continued. “One of the cooks asked Erma if she’d go down. Was it you, Chico?”
Chico turned from his skillet. ‘Yeah, man, and she did. Erma is good people. I miss her around here.”
“Are you sure she came back up?” Mary Helen looked hard at Finn.
“Sure, I’m sure. Like I told you, I saw her just before she left for St. Louis.”
“What time did you say that was?”
“She took off just before the dinner shift. About three o’clock, I’d say. I told her I’d cover for her.”
“Who drove her to the airport?”
Finn’s hazel eyes clouded. “I been thinking about that since you said it yesterday. It gets so busy in here I didn’t get the chance to look out. Maybe she called a cab.”
Mary Helen made a mental note to suggest to Inspector Honore that he check with the taxi companies.
“Do you mind if I look around in the basement?” she asked without the slightest idea why.
“Hell, no. Be my guest. Except there’s nothing much down there to see.” Finn shook his head. “I don’t know what you’ll find down there to help you out.”
Neither do I, Mary Helen thought. But she was desperate for a clue, any clue, that could lead them to Erma.
“Are you coming?” she asked Eileen.
Her friend barely repressed a shudder. “I’ll stay topside, in case someone has to call 911. And for the lo
ve of all that is good and holy, old dear, watch your step!”
Much as Mary Helen hated to admit it, Finn was right. The basement held nothing much worth seeing.
The concrete floor sloped toward the narrow door, which must lead to the alley. The small window at the top of the door was boarded over, probably to protect against vandalism. Mary Helen could hear the rhythmic throbbing of machinery somewhere in the building. Single dusty light bulbs ran down the center of the ceiling, casting deep shadows in the corners of the room.
The whole place smelled of stale dampness and mold. Water-damaged cartons lined wooden shelves against one wall. An old-fashioned ice maker, tilting slightly, took up several square feet of floor.
Adjusting her glasses, Mary Helen looked around, not at all sure what she was looking for. She heard a soft, rustling sound in the corner. Her scalp tingled as she imagined what could be rustling. She stiffened as she wondered how in the world she could get out of the basement gracefully. She wouldn’t for a moment want Eileen or Mr. Finn to think she was squeamish.
“Hurry up out of there, Mary Helen,” Eileen called down the stairs. “I am a positive wreck wondering what you are into.”
“Oh, all right! If you insist!” Mary Helen grabbed the rickety banister. Good old Eileen! You could always count on her in a pinch.
* * *
The moment Sister Mary Helen stepped inside the door of Erma’s apartment, she shivered. The air was beginning to hold that nobody-home chill, and a film of dust had settled on the tops of all the furniture. Depressing!
Hands in pockets, Finn rocked on the soles of his feet, blinking nervously at one nun, then at the other. His whole demeanor said that the apartment depressed him too. “Where do you want to look?” he asked.
Mary Helen wasn’t at all sure, although she hesitated to admit that to Finn. Or to anyone else, for that matter.
“How about the bedroom closet?” It was the first thought that popped into her mind. On second thought, the closet might be a good place to start. A person packing in a hurry could easily drop something on the floor and never know it. She headed for the back room, Eileen close at her heels.
The Missing Madonna Page 15
