Death Goes on Retreat
Page 4
“I don’t think he did fall. See those cuts?” Father Moreno pointed to a series of gashes on the dorsal side of the dead man’s arm. “It looks to me as if he was defending himself against someone with a sharp weapon. Like a switchblade. Or a long, sharp knife of some sort.”
“How do you know that?” Felicita sounded put out. Mary Helen didn’t blame her. If Greg Johnson was dead, of course Felicita wanted it to be accidental.
“Ten years in Juvie,” Father Moreno said simply.
Any semblance of Tom’s usual smile had vanished. “What are you saying, Ed?”
Moreno shook his head. “That it looks to me like— foul play.”
Andy Carr’s face was grayer than his beard. “Shouldn’t we give him the last rites or whatever we’re calling it now? Lord, there are four of us priests—well, four and a half, if you count Mike—standing here gawking at the poor devil.” Andy looked as if, any minute, he might join Mike Denski. “Shouldn’t we give him absolution or something?”
“Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine . . .” Monsignor McHugh began the familiar ritual of the Sacrament. No one seemed to notice that he was using Latin. “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” A resounding “Amen” rose among the redwoods.
The regal old man made the sign of the cross over the body of Greg Johnson. “By His most loving mercy, may the Lord forgive you whatever wrong you have done . . .” The monsignor was mixing and matching his sacraments and his languages. Surely under the circumstances, the Lord did not care. Certainly, the grisly remains of young Greg Johnson did not care either.
At Sister Felicita’s suggestion, the group had moved to St. Jude’s dining room to await the sheriff.
“It’s a very small department and very understaffed.” Felicita’s voice shook as she poured mugs of hot coffee for everyone. “There are only a half a dozen cars to cover the entire county. I’m not sure how long we’ll have to wait.”
“It seems to me that a dead body would be a priority.” Although he was still deathly pale, Mike Denski was now able to speak. “How many dead bodies are discovered in these mountains?”
“More than you’d expect.” Felicita crumpled into a chair. “We’ve had some awful murders in these hills.” She frowned, trying, no doubt, to remember. “What was that one’s name? Miller? Muller?”
“Herbie Mullin,” Ed Moreno said. “That happened twenty years ago. You’re not suggesting it’s something like that again?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Felicita said quickly, as if the mere mention of a psychotic killer might bring one around.
“I haven’t thought of Mullin for years.” The monsignor stared out the dining room window with glassy eyes. “Poor old Henri. Such a good, gentle man. May he rest in peace.”
“Henri?” Mike asked. Obviously he was the only member of the group who did not know that Father Henri Tomic, a priest from Los Gatos, was Herbert Mullin’s thirteenth victim.
Ed Moreno filled him in. “A priest-killer would be in hog heaven with this group,” he added in an attempt to lighten the mood. No one took up the banter. If anything, his reference to a serial killer darkened the gloom.
Through the large picture windows, Mary Helen watched a hot ball of sun begin to show over the treetops, burning off the morning fog as it rose. She checked her wristwatch. It was just after seven o’clock. Could so much have happened in just one short half hour?
Andy Carr cleared his throat. “That name, Greg Johnson. Something about it rings a bell.”
“It should.” Mike pulled nervously at his long sideburns.
Andy turned his needle-sharp eyes on the young priest. “Why’s that?”
“Because he was one of the seminarians arrested in a Gay Rights demonstration.”
“Sure! Now I remember.” Andy shifted his large bulk. “The creep got himself arrested and the archbishop was on my tail.
“ ‘It may create a grave scandal among the faithful, Father, if news that one of our seminarians was arrested were to leak . . .”’ Andy did a perfect, if irreverent, imitation of the prelate.
“Is he—was he—gay?” Mary Helen asked. If he was, what on earth was he doing with Laura the evening before?
“Hell, no,” Tom Harrington said with a knowing grin. “He’s a dyed-in-the-wool troublemaker. That kid is well aware of the Church’s official stand on homosexuality and what a difficult position he would put the archbishop in.”
He studied the toes of his Gucci loafers. “On the one hand, many of the Church’s staunchest supporters—and I could also say wealthiest—oppose anything even touching on the subject. Yet many of the City’s gays are Catholic. If the truth were known, the archbishop himself is unsure about his own pastoral position with the gay community.
“If you ask me, the kid got his kicks from watching Absolute Norm squirm. Old Greg was no innocent, idealistic seminarian, you know. He was a real good pot-stirrer. After the incident with the demonstration, the Arch sent him to me for an internship, figuring, I guess, that the kid had a flair for muckraking, so why not use it in the media?”
“Did it work?” Eileen always liked a happy ending.
Tom shook his head. “He was more interested in the office secretaries than he was in the office equipment.”
A chuckle went around the room. Once again all the color drained from Mike Denski’s face. “Doesn’t it strike you as callous . . . no, ghoulish . . . to sit here and laugh when Greg is—”
“Lighten up, Mike,” Ed Moreno said, not unkindly. “We’re not laughing at Greg’s death. If you believe what you preach, Greg is laughing at us. You know that death is what life is all about.”
Mary Helen felt a sympathy for the young priest. Accepting death, especially sudden and violent death, takes a great deal of hope and trust in God’s promises. Hope, like all other virtues, demands years of practice.
“Then, all of you, that is all except Father Moreno, knew the young man?” Eileen asked in that Irish statement-question way of hers.
“Oh, I knew Greg Johnson, all right.” Ed pushed his coffee mug forward for a refill. “When Happy Harrington here couldn’t handle him, he came to do some time with me in Juvenile Hall. I’m the one he finally told that he was leaving the seminary. And it was the right decision. The kid did not have a vocation to be a priest.”
“More than likely, it was his mother who did,” the monsignor said softly. “Poor Marva. Wait until she hears this.”
“I think that the archbishop always thought it was my fault,” Ed said. “Like I gave Greg a shove or something.”
“Did you?” Mike asked the question that was on Mary Helen’s mind.
“Actually,” Ed Moreno said, sounding a little defensive, “I did the kid a big favor. It just wasn’t for him.”
“It’s really quite a coincidence,” Mary Helen said.
“What is, Sister?”
“That all you priests knew the young man. And that we Sisters met him here last night. Then his body appears . . .” She let her words trail off.
Ed Moreno ran his fingers nervously through his thinning hair. “Do you mean it’s a coincidence, or do you mean it seems suspicious?”
Sister Mary Helen frowned and cocked her head as if she had not quite heard. That’s one of the advantages of growing old, she thought, stalling for time.
His question was a legitimate one. She really should answer it. Yet, for some reason, she did not know how.
In the distance, a car door slammed. Tom Harrington looked relieved.
“Odd the dogs aren’t barking.” Felicita rose slowly from the table.
And that there are no police car noises, Mary Helen wanted to say, but caught herself. It was too soon after her “slightly hard of hearing” act.
Andy Carr checked his watch. “I guess we were a priority after all, Mike. It only took them a half hour to get here.”
“Who’s ‘them’?” Beverly threw open the kitchen door.
“You’re the ones who are early,” Beverly snapped, her plain, red face screwing up into a scowl. “Besides, who were you expecting, Sister? Chef Boyardee?”
“Good one, Bev.” Ed Moreno laughed.
Beverly fixed the group with her small coffee-brown eyes. “I’m here early because I have things to do,” she said, her voice suddenly flat and angry, “and I want to do them in peace and quiet. So don’t start bugging me to hurry up and fix your breakfast. I’m not in the mood.” She pulled the door closed behind her.
“I had better go in and tell her what happened,” Felicita muttered.
“I’d leave that to the sheriff.” Tom Harrington gave a crooked smile. “After all, he’s the one trained for combat duty.”
Beverly slammed drawers and cupboards while Felicita absentmindedly refilled the coffee cups until, finally, Eileen put her hand over hers. “I think my back teeth are beginning to float,” she said softly.
“Of course. Sorry.” Felicita created a mountain of toast using the dining room’s toaster. She even managed to slide in and out of the kitchen without incident, for butter and jam.
When the sheriff arrived at last, there was no mistaking it was he. The squeal of tires was followed by the heavy thud of the car door. The high-pitched voice of the police dispatcher squawked out into the morning stillness.
“Sister Felicita?” The man’s immense frame filled the doorway of St. Jude’s. His tan shirt and forest-green pants gave him a woodsy look. When she didn’t answer immediately, he studied his notebook with narrow agate eyes that seemed too small for his head. Almost as if he had been given the wrong pair, Mary Helen thought.
All at once, he was staring at her. Unwittingly, she stared back. She had never in her life seen such a big police officer. He didn’t even look “regulation,” if there was such a thing.
Not only was he extremely tall, probably about six feet four or five, but he was also broad, with thick hands and feet that seemed even wider than they were because of his highly polished paratrooper boots.
His nose, set a little high on his sunburned face, gave him a sniffing look. And his light hair was clipped so short that it was difficult to tell its exact color.
He ambled toward the group. With each step his holster rubbing against his basket-weave belt made a creaking sound. “Which one of you ladies is Sister Felicita?” he asked impatiently.
“I am she,” Felicita answered, as if she wished she weren’t.
“You say you found a body?” He sounded as skeptical as if she’d reported finding a Martian.
“Yes, Sheriff.” Felicita seemed to recoil.
“Actually, I found the body.” Mary Helen adjusted her bifocals so she could read the name badge pinned to his shirt pocket. He wasn’t the sheriff at all. He was a sergeant. Probably one of the few, if Felicita was to be believed. Sergeant Eric Something.
He must have noticed her checking his badge. “I’m Sergeant Eric Loody, ma’am,” he said with what struck Mary Helen as a supercilious smile. “Loody rhymes with duty.”
A mnemonic device for the old lady, Mary Helen thought, feeling her hackles rise. She took a deep breath. All that coffee must be affecting her nerves. Surely, the deputy meant nothing invidious by it.
“How-do, Sergeant Loody,” she said, wondering what Father Ed Moreno would make out of that name.
“And who are you?”
Quickly, she told him, then began to relate the circumstances stances of her grueling—and gruesome—discovery. “I woke early this morning,” she said, “and decided to enjoy the mountains and perhaps to make the stations.”
Loody frowned.
“The Way of the Cross?” she offered. When he still looked puzzled, she hurried on. If she took the time to explain every devotion of the Catholic Church, it would be a very long day indeed.
“Anyway, Sergeant, I changed my mind early on. Too steep. And went instead to Madonna Grove, where I found . . .” She stopped. She had to. Her mouth was dry and she felt nauseated.
With a hostile-sounding sniff the officer shifted his gaze toward the priests around the table. “Who are you guys?” he asked.
The monsignor rose, his handsome face almost as white as his hair. “Con McHugh,” he said, offering a hand, which Loody failed to take. Apparently sergeants do not shake hands with potential suspects, Mary Helen told herself.
Deftly waving the same hand, McHugh included the other four men. “We are all priests from the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” he said, “here at St. Colette’s to make the annual priests’ retreat.”
Loody’s eyes swept the group. “Padres, huh?” he said flippantly, then flicked his eyes toward Eileen. “And you’re a nun, too, without the penguin suit?”
Eileen’s soft wrinkled face colored. From the parentheses forming on either side of her thin, tight lips, Mary Helen knew her friend was hopping mad.
“What’s your name, ma’am?” he asked with cold courtesy.
“Sister Eileen,” she said in a brogue so thick, one could slice and serve it.
Mary Helen stared at Loody in disbelief. It had been so long since she had run into one that, for a moment, the term escaped her. She had thought that by now the breed was extinct. Could it be that in this day and age, they had stumbled upon an—an—anti-Catholic bigot?
In the distance, a second car screeched to a halt and Mary Helen heard heavy, hurrying footsteps approach the dining room. The door swung back and a second officer stepped inside.
With a strange sense of relief, Mary Helen shifted her attention to the new man. Although dwarfed by Loody, he was tall, young, and clean-shaven with a friendly, open face and candid blue eyes.
“This is Deputy Foster,” Loody mumbled almost grudgingly.
Foster’s face colored, as if he were unused to the title. He touched the brim of his brown Stratton in a stiff cowboy salute that looked as if he’d copied it from a western sitcom. In Mary Helen’s opinion, however, the hat wasn’t a cowboy’s hat at all. If anything, it made Foster look, for all this world, like a doughboy right out of World War I. Of course, his fresh-scrubbed face didn’t help much either.
“Just picked up the one-four on the radio,” he announced to Loody and everyone else within earshot. “What’ve we got?”
Loody sniffed. “Don’t know yet, Foster,” he said. “I was just about to find out.
“Anyone else on the grounds except you people?” Loody asked, making “people” sound as if he had trouble finding a noun to define their lot adequately. His small eyes jumped from person to person.
Counting to eight to see how many we are, Mary Helen thought, uncharitably.
As if on cue, the kitchen door swung open. “I’m Beverly Benton.” Was Beverly eavesdropping?
“Are you a nun too?” Loody asked with a sneer.
Beverly caught him with a glare that could sear metal. “No,” she said, “I am not. I just work here.”
Loody gave a noncommittal grunt. “Don’t any of you get any ideas about leaving the place,” he said severely.
Then, turning toward a red-faced Foster, he spoke loud enough for all to hear. “Get down their names and addresses, Deputy. All of them. These guys in their pious getups don’t fool me for one minute. I know about their kind. If you ask me, the murderer is right here in this room.”
Felicita groaned aloud.
“By the time I’m finished with them,” Loody growled, “they’ll wish they’d never tangled with the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department.”
If Mary Helen didn’t know better, she’d think they were caught in one of those frozen, deep South dramas with the sheriff and Bubba and the Klan.
Before Deputy Foster had quite finished his task, Loody announced in a pugnacious tone that he was cordoning off the retreat house. No one was to leave. No one was to enter until further notice.
“But the other nuns.” By now
Felicita looked as if she might faint. “They are on their way home from Bakers-field. And priests will be arriving . . .”
“No one is to leave and no one is to enter the premises until I say so.” Loody gave a satisfied sniff. His holster and belt creaking, he left the dining room, following a grim-faced Felicita.
Deputy Foster, avoiding direct eye contact with anyone, smiled sheepishly. Then, without a word, he left too. No doubt they were going to view the victim.
“I wonder which one of you did it?” Beverly said, nibbling on a piece of cold toast. Her face was more flushed than usual and wisps of straw-colored hair escaped from her topknot.
“One of us?” Monsignor McHugh sounded genuinely shocked. “Surely, you don’t think . . .”
“You were the only ones who were here, weren’t you?” Her dark eyes riddled them all. “I wouldn’t put it past any one of you.” Giving the door a hard jab, she disappeared into the kitchen.
For a long moment the group sat in stunned silence watching the door swing. The monsignor was the first to recover. “How in the world could she think that one of us killed that unfortunate young man?”
“Greg Johnson may turn out to be the lucky one after all,” Ed Moreno said.
“Lucky?” Mike looked as if he might lose the little bit he’d eaten. “Why lucky?”
“He is dead, my boy. We are alive and held captive with Heavy Bevy and . . .” It took him a minute, but he came up with a handle. “Eric the Rude.”
Even Ed’s epithet was unable to lighten the mood. The seven religious sat in what Mary Helen considered an unholy gloom. Still, who could blame them?
Like it or not, they were all suspects. As Beverly had so flat-footedly pointed out, they were the only ones on the premises when Greg Johnson was murdered. Which proved nothing, of course. The hills around the retreat house were open to anyone with the courage to climb them. Or were they? Was the property fenced? Odd that the victim was someone they all knew, however briefly.
“It’s a long road that has no turning,” Eileen said, breaking into her reverie.
“What does that mean?”