Death Goes on Retreat

by Carol Anne O'Marie

  Or at all, Kate thought, wondering just how she could bear it if someone came to tell her that her son, John, was dead. The very idea catapulted her stomach into a spasm.

  She had been teary for three full days after she took him to the baby-sitter for the first time. Her decision to go back to work was an agonizing one, but one she felt was right for all of them. Once it was made, she wrestled for weeks with child care. Her mother-in-law was still a little cool about her choice of Sheila Atkinson. But Kate felt that Sheila was best for John. She was an old friend. John liked her and enjoyed playing with her children. Plus, they lived only a few blocks away. Kate knew that her tears were ridiculous, but she had shed them nonetheless.

  Even now, eight months later, she still felt a pang when she dropped him off. Perhaps the cruelest blow of all was that John enjoyed being there. Each morning, he threw her the briefest bye-bye kiss and ran cheerfully down the front walk to Sheila’s without ever looking back.

  “Do you know the Johnson woman?” Gallagher interrupted her woolgathering.

  “I don’t really know her,” Kate admitted. “I know who she is and when we meet in the Safeway or at the cleaner’s, we say ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’ She’s lived in that pink house up the block forever. In fact, my father used to call it the ‘pink palace.’ Maybe because it’s two stories high and painted what he considered an odd color for a house.

  “Anyway, I’ve seen Marva Johnson around the neighborhood since I was a kid. As far as I can remember, there never was a mister. Only the two kids, Janice and Greg. Both went to St. Thomas grade school, although neither one was in my class. Both are younger than I am.”

  Kate was going to say “much younger,” but maybe that wasn’t true. When you are in elementary school, the age difference between first-graders and eighth-graders is light-years. Somehow, when you’re twenty-nine and thirty-six, the difference doesn’t loom as large.

  Gallagher turned his head to peer at her over his horn-rimmed glasses.

  “What is it?” Kate wished he’d keep his eyes on the traffic.

  “Do you know this Little?” he asked, running the light on yellow.

  Kate shook her head.

  “Then, this guy has got to be the luckiest damn cop in Santa Cruz—no—in the whole state of California. Or maybe he’s one of them psychics. Don’t they have a lot of psychic types over there in Santa Cruz? I mean, Kate, if you don’t know each other, how in the hell did he manage to pick you out of all the cops in San Francisco to call? How did he manage to hit on a neighbor of the victim’s mother to ask to do this particular favor?”

  This was the part of the explanation Kate dreaded. She knew well Gallagher’s opinion of Sister Mary Helen and Sister Eileen’s becoming involved in crime, any crime, least of all homicide.

  “Well,” Kate stalled, “it was a coincidence, of sorts. You see, Greg Johnson’s body was found on the grounds of St. Colette’s Retreat House and it so happens that . . .”

  Gallagher’s whole body stiffened. Even the tips of his ears turned red. Whether or not it was her imagination, Kate felt his heat warming her entire left side.

  “I hope. No! I hope to hell that this is not leading where I think it is.” Gallagher’s voice was dangerously calm.

  “It is.” Kate waited and felt a sudden perverse pleasure—like sticking a pin into a balloon and waiting for the bang.

  Gallagher ranted and sputtered for several blocks, lamenting the state of the Catholic Church, liturgical change, women’s ordination, the pope’s wanderings, modern convents in general, and these two nuns in particular.

  “You sound like a regular old tight-ass,” Kate said, tuning out the familiar tirade. Was Denny worse, or was it that while she was on maternity leave she had forgotten how irascible he could be? One thing was for sure, neither her absence nor her presence improved his disposition. She was glad when he finally petered out and they drove the last few blocks to the pink palace in silence.

  “Lead the way.” Denny came around behind her.

  A faded brown Mercury, shaped somewhat like a landing barge with pontoons, was parked in the driveway. Apparently Mrs. Johnson was home.

  Gripping the banister, Kate mounted the slippery terrazzo steps leading to the front door. This was a part of her job that she truly hated. Her words, no matter how gently put, would shatter a life. Thank God there were a dozen steps. She needed time to summon up the courage to say them.

  She pushed the doorbell. Marimba notes echoed through the silence. They were followed by a series of quick, nervous footsteps.

  “You’re doing the talking. Right?” Gallagher looked unusually pale. He was no good at breaking bad news either.

  Kate nodded. The front door opened a crack. A wary brown eye peered at them over the night chain. “Yes?” The voice was low and gravelly like the voice of an aging smoker.

  “Mrs. Johnson? It’s me, Kate Murphy from down the block.”

  Recognizing her, Mrs. Johnson closed the door enough to slide off the chain. When it reopened, the muscles in her face were tense. Her lips stretched over her teeth in a forced smile.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Mrs. Johnson tugged at the front of her blue woolen cardigan, then folded her arms around her in a protective bear hug.

  Before Kate could answer, the woman pulled the door wide. “Come in,” she said, with a sudden need to defer the news. “It’s freezing out there.”

  The inside of the pink palace was anything but palatial. The decor was eclectic, although Kate guessed it had been designed more by circumstances than by choice. Much of the furniture had a “late fifties” look mixed with several pieces not quite old enough or expensive enough to be called heirlooms.

  The living room had a rich, loamy smell, since what Mrs. Johnson lacked in interior decoration, she made up for in houseplants. On every table, shelf, and nearly every ledge water stains showed beneath pots of violets. There were pink, pale blue, purple, and white violets; sprawling African violets; lavender Persian violets; miniature violets like tiny jewels in clear, square Lucite containers.

  The room itself was a veritable hothouse. The furnace thudded, reminding the unaware that it was creating most of the effect.

  “Sit down, please.” Mrs. Johnson ushered them to a slip-covered sofa that shared a wall with a large television set. She faced them from a padded rocker, presumably “her chair.”

  Kate shed her coat and introduced her partner. “Mrs. Johnson,” she began, wishing she didn’t see the panic in those flat brown eyes or the thick, knuckled hands twisting and untwisting the edge of the sweater. “I’m afraid I have come with some very bad news for you—”

  “Greg.” Mrs. Johnson’s hoarse voice cut her off. “It’s Greg, isn’t it?” Her eyes narrowed into a hard stare. “My boy is dead, isn’t he?”

  Kate nodded.

  The woman bolted up from her chair, leaving it rocking violently. Then, as if she didn’t know where to go, she sat down again. “How did it happen?” she asked.

  “He was . . . murdered. Stabbed,” Kate said as gently as she could. “I’m so sorry.”

  A tear ran down Mrs. Johnson’s stony face. Kate tried to put her arm around the woman, but the narrow shoulders were rigid. “Let me get you some tea, Mrs. Johnson,” Kate said. “Or perhaps some brandy. You’ve had an awful shock.”

  Mrs. Johnson shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said, then added, “There’s bourbon under the sink.”

  Kate returned from the kitchen with a hefty shot of liquor in a jelly glass. “Is there anyone who can stay with you?” she asked. “Janice, maybe?”

  The woman snapped in indignation, “Janice moved away and doesn’t come around any more than she needs to since she married that good-for-nothing husband of hers.”

  “Good-for-nothing?” The last time Kate saw Janice Johnson passing her front window, she had been stylishly dressed and elegantly coiffured. If anything, Janice Johnson appeared to be very well heeled.

  Mrs. Joh
nson took a small sip of her drink. “I simply asked her about having children, is all. I could tell she was mad. Feeling guilty, I wouldn’t doubt, but instead of admitting it, she told me it was none of my business. I told her that as a good, God-fearing mother, it was my business.” Mrs. Johnson shook her head sadly.

  “And I am ashamed to tell you the kind of language she used to her own mother. I never allowed either of my children to use God’s name in vain, you know. I had my strap for that kind of talk. So, I know she didn’t pick it up in this house. It must have been from him. And no wonder. Do you know what he does for a living?” The woman didn’t wait for an answer. “He sells drugs.”

  “He’s a drug dealer, ma’am?” Gallagher asked.

  “Not the kind you mean, Officer. Although he’s just as bad. Worse, if you ask me. He sells drugs to pharmacies and doctors and he doesn’t care a fig what kind they are. He sells birth control pills, those condos, or whatever you call them.”

  Kate knew exactly what she meant, and from the sound of Gallagher’s muffled cough, so did he.

  “I told Janice that husband of hers was doing the Devil’s work for him.” She began to rock. “And now Greg’s gone, too. I knew it. I knew something awful was going to happen.” Her hands were shaking. “I warned him about it.”

  “About what?” Kate asked, realizing that Mrs. Johnson was in shock. But maybe they would uncover some small truth that she could pass on to Detective Sergeant Little.

  “I warned him,” she repeated, almost to herself. “I told him about that girl. ‘You cannot tempt the Lord, thy God,’ I said.”

  “What do you mean?” Kate prodded gently.

  “Exactly what I said. With those immodest, low-cut blouses and her tight jeans and that wild hair. Looking like a streetwalker.” She fiddled with the top button of her cardigan. “That girl was nothing more than an occasion of sin for my boy, and I told him so, too,” she said with a triumphant gleam in her eye.

  “And what did your son say to that?” Gallagher spoke at last. As the blustering father of five grown children, he had plunged head-on into hair length, curfew, dropping out of school, premarital sex, and drugs. But Kate was sure that even he knew better than to insult his sons’ girlfriends, let alone meddle in his daughters’ marital intimacies.

  Mrs. Johnson’s face tightened. “I would be ashamed to tell you the filth that came out of my son’s mouth, Inspector.” She was crying now. “But I knew it was the Devil talking and I told him so. ‘Fornicators, idolaters and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone,’ I said.”

  The furnace thudded again and Kate bloused out her sweat-soaked shirt.

  “And he left here saying that he was over twenty-one and that he’d do as he pleased, even if it was to marry that girl!”

  “What is her name?” Kate asked, feeling a certain sympathy for “that girl.”

  “Laura Purcell.” Mrs. Johnson spat it out as if it were a curse.

  “What was it you warned Greg about, Mrs. Johnson?” Kate tried to steer her back to her original statement.

  The woman snapped, “Sin, Kate, temptation, damnation. I just told you.”

  “Yes, but prior to that, you said, ‘I knew it was going to happen. I warned him.’ What did you mean?”

  “That he would end up dead, of course.”

  “And why is that?”

  The narrow face twisted into an acid grin. Her eyes shone. “Because the wages of sin is death, dearie. Because the Lord God said in his wrath, they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever.” She shook her head sadly.

  “But she wouldn’t let him go, even if he came back to his senses. No, they were too steeped in their sin. And with him in the seminary once . . .”

  Kate hadn’t realized that Greg had studied to be a priest.

  “I begged him to come back to God; to come back to the Church. But, no. He was running around at all hours, sleeping anywhere. My Greg would have been a good priest and he would have made it, too, if it hadn’t been for that Father Harrington.”

  “Father Tom Harrington?” Kate recognized the name of the archdiocese’s official spokesman. She often saw him on television and his picture was frequently in the San Francisco Catholic.

  “They call him ‘Happy Harrington,’ you know.” Mrs. Johnson’s voice held a twist of bitterness. “But I have other names for him.”

  “Why is that?” Kate asked.

  Mrs. Johnson took another sip of bourbon and went on as if she hadn’t heard Kate’s question. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that if it isn’t that girl, he’s the one responsible for my Greg’s death. In fact, I wouldn’t put it past him and that girl to be in it together. My Greg was fine, just fine, until they assigned him to work with that one.”

  Her head jerked up and she stared at the blank television screen. “It was afterwards that my son started having trouble with his vocation. They sent him to work in Juvenile Hall. Greg never would tell me, his own mother, what happened. He lied to me. He said nothing happened.” Her voice dropped. “He didn’t learn to lie in this house. I took care of liars. Something awful did happen, I know it. I hold that one responsible.”

  “You hold Father Harrington responsible for what, Mrs. Johnson?”

  “For Greg’s fall from grace.” Her words came out in a sort of hiss. “For his turning to sin, for his leaving the seminary.”

  From somewhere a grandfather clock struck the hour. Its low, vibrating bong filled the room like a death knell.

  “The Devil is all around me.” Marva Johnson shivered in the stifling room. “But God is my shield, my protector. He took my son and I am glad. ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ I would rather see my Greg dead than living in sin. I would sooner kill him myself than let him continue on the path to perdition.”

  She stood up abruptly, moved toward a window ledge, and plucked a wilted leaf from the base of a furry African violet plant. “The Lord said, ‘If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fires. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it from you . . .”’

  The woman turned and fastened her gaze on Kate. It was then Kate knew that what she suspected was true. In that moment, she caught the unmistakable laser glint of a fanatic burning in Marva Johnson’s flat brown eyes.

  “The mother from hell,” Gallagher said as soon as they were back on the freezing sidewalk. “The next time one of my kids gets the gall to complain, have I got a comeback.” He unlocked the door. “That old lady gives me the creeps,” he said. “How about you?”

  Kate nodded. “You really never know what’s going on in somebody’s head, do you?”

  Billows of fog rolled up the boulevard and Gallagher switched on the headlights. “You’re right. To look at her, you’d think she was Whistler’s mother. Then she opens her yap, and she’s a bucket of nuts with those Bible quotes bouncing around like popcorn. If you ask me, she’d be the perfect candidate for that bunch that was going to stone the gal taken in adultery.” Gallagher ran his hand over his balding pate. “What are you going to tell Little?”

  “I don’t know.” Kate watched the car lights make small tunnels in the drizzle. “That the victim’s mother accused his girlfriend, one Laura Purcell, of murder? That she accused a leading priest in the archdiocese? That she said with quite a bit of conviction that she’d gladly have done it herself? That she’s unbalanced? I don’t know. What should I tell him?”

  “All of the above, Katie-girl.” Gallagher let out an exaggerated sigh. “Jeez, I’m glad the whole damn mess is on his plate and not on ours.”

  They drove a few blocks in silence, listening to the tires swish against the wet streets. “Be sure you tell him—hear me good, Kate—be damn sure you tell him, that no matter what he thinks to the contrary—not to let those two nuns get involved. They look pious and helpless, like two o
ld sweethearts, but we know better. They are nothing but a pair of colossal pains in the you-know-where. Are you listening to me, Kate?”

  Kate nodded, but said nothing. She had the feeling that despite Gallagher’s warning, Sisters Mary Helen and Eileen were already in this, knee-deep.

  Directly after lunch, Detective Sergeant Bob Little set up his command post in the small gift shop off St. Colette’s main lounge. It struck Mary Helen as a strange place, but she supposed the detective had his reasons. Maybe he figured it would be harder to lie in a room filled with religious pictures and statues. To her way of thinking, if you murdered someone, lying about it, even with a saint staring at you, was small potatoes.

  “Be around somewhere so we can find you” was all that Little said to the group. Yet, one by one, they inexplicably wandered into St. Colette’s lounge and huddled together in a remote corner of the room as far away from the gift shop door as possible.

  Someone had tried to make the enormous room cozier by grouping goldenrod and Chinese-red couches in small conversational squares around coffee tables. Here and there, a teakwood table, a silk scatter pillow, or a porcelain figurine of a geisha girl in a kimono reinforced the Oriental color scheme.

  “There’s strength in numbers,” Eileen said, climbing over Con McHugh’s long legs. She perched on the end of a hard vinyl couch.

  Mary Helen followed her, taking care not to step on Tom Harrington’s highly polished Gucci loafers. She settled down on the other end.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Ed Moreno edged his wiry body between Mike Denski and Andy Carr. “See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil,” he said, referring, of course, to the three of them squeezed together on the couch.

  “Who’s which?” Mike asked, his eyes darting from Andy to Mary Helen.

  “Who cares?” Andy said rather savagely.

  “Well, we know you’re not ‘speak no evil,’ ” Ed quipped. Even Andy smiled.