Death Goes on Retreat

by Carol Anne O'Marie

  “Yet, I simply cannot believe . . .”

  “Do you know her, Con?” Andy asked softly.

  The monsignor’s cheeks flamed. “Not really. Greg introduced me to her last night.”

  “Last night?” Tom blurted out. “Where the hell did you meet Greg last night?”

  For a moment the old man looked stung; then, with a regal toss of his winter-white head, his gaze met Tom’s. “I was taking my usual walk before retiring, and Greg and Laura passed me in Greg’s car. Since I know both him and his mother, common courtesy prompted him to stop and say hello.”

  “What time was that?” Andy asked.

  The monsignor stiffened.

  “Whoa, fellas.” Ed Moreno raised one hand. “We are beginning to sound like something right out of Top Cops.”

  Andy Carr looked offended. “Hell, Ed, we’re only trying to get a handle on what happened.”

  Unexpectedly, Ed Moreno turned his attention to Mary Helen. “If anyone has a handle on anything,” he said, “I’m putting my money on this woman.”

  “Me?” Mary Helen was genuinely startled.

  “You!” he said with a knowing grin. “You’ve had quite a bit of experience.”

  One by one, Mary Helen saw signs of recognition in the other priests’ eyes. Only Felicita was in the dark.

  “Sister here has collaborated with the San Francisco Police Department on several occasions,” Ed explained.

  Felicita looked as if she might faint.

  “So, Sister,” Ed taunted, “what are your thoughts? Who do you think our murderer is? One of us? Laura?”

  “I do not have the slightest idea,” Mary Helen said curtly. And she didn’t.

  Not for the first time, she wished she had the enviable powers of some of the detectives who peopled her murder mysteries. She wished that in the presence of the guilty, the hairs on the back of her neck would stand up, or that her mustache, if she had one, would twitch. It would make life so much simpler.

  Unfortunately, at the moment she had no sensation whatsoever, except that of being totally and absolutely exhausted.

  With a minimum of urging from Sister Felicita, the group piled their dishes in the sink. The leftover ones spilled onto the serving cart.

  “Beverly’s not going to be very happy in the morning,” Ed Moreno remarked, balancing his plate on the stack.

  “At least she’ll have something concrete to complain about,” Felicita answered with a toughness that hadn’t been there yesterday.

  The group dispersed quickly, leaving the three nuns alone in the large, empty kitchen. “Has anyone looked in on Laura?” Mary Helen asked without thinking.

  The expression on Felicita’s round apple face more than answered her question. “Besides you, I mean,” she added quickly.

  “Not that I know of. That nice Sergeant Little said that he’d wait until morning to ask her any questions.”

  Nice, yes, but wise? Mary Helen wondered. Questioning her today, hysterical though she was, might be a waste of time. On the other hand, he could receive the real answers to his questions. Regardless, it was too late now.

  “I think I’ll bring her over another hot toddy to make sure she sleeps.” Felicita was thinking aloud.

  “By now, the poor thing might welcome visitors,” Eileen offered hopefully.

  Mary Helen could tell that Eileen was dead to chat with the girl. She herself was, too. Felicita peered at them through her rimless glasses. “If she’s awake, maybe you can talk to her and discover what really happened.”

  Mary Helen was startled, although she knew she shouldn’t be. After Ed Moreno’s remark about her involvement with the police, Felicita expected a miracle. The way those priests gab, it’s a marvel any of them can keep the seal of confession, she fumed.

  “I have no way of discovering what really happened,” she said.

  But Felicita refused to be dissuaded. She placed the steaming cup on a tiny plastic tray and led the small procession across the parking lot to St. Philomena’s Hall and Laura’s bedroom.

  Under a thin sheet, the girl was curled into a fetal position with her auburn hair fanned out across the pillow like a halo of flame. Crumpled tissues had rolled out of her partially clenched hand. Her halter and shorts formed a small white pile on the rug where she had dropped them. The room was dim and the soft, low rustle of her breathing was the only sound.

  “She’s asleep,” Felicita whispered, unnecessarily.

  Since none of them had the heart to wake her, Felicita cautiously closed the door and left Laura in peace, at least until morning. In the hallway, she stared down at the tray in her hand. “Would either of you be interested?” she asked.

  “You take it and go off to bed.” Eileen’s face crinkled into a sympathetic smile.

  “After I call St. Anthony’s I’ll probably need it,” Felicita said.

  “St. Anthony’s?”

  “That’s the convent where the nuns are staying until this mess is settled. Mother Superior is beside herself with all the negative publicity, and Sister Timothy is acting as if I should do something about it!”

  Without another word, Felicita turned on her heel, and with her black scapular flapping behind her, disappeared down the long, silent corridor.

  Outside, the setting sun had changed the distant wooded hills into gray silhouettes, stark against a peach backdrop. “What about you, old dear?” Eileen asked. “You must be dragging. Do you want to head for bed too?”

  Mary Helen was tired, yet she doubted that she’d sleep right away. It was still too warm and her mind was too full.

  “How about a short walk?” she suggested, and Eileen silently fell into step. A soft breeze sent a shower of golden oak leaves across the acorn-strewn path.

  After several minutes, they settled on a wooden bench overlooking an oval pond. Someone had hollowed the space out of the hillside, filled it with water, then added large orange-gold and black carp. Fragrant white water lilies floated beside flat pads. Cleverly, the pond’s creator had topped it with chicken wire to keep out swooping birds and scooping beasts.

  Probably that same someone had hammered into the ground a small iron sign that declared BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.

  Mary Helen stared vacantly at it, her thoughts anything but still. Instead they swam and splashed through her mind like the fish in the pond.

  Who killed Greg Johnson and why? Was it Laura Purcell? Although they knew little about her, she seemed like a hardworking, wholesome girl. Besides, the two of them had acted as if they were very much in love. What motive could Laura have to kill him?

  The tail of a carp broke the surface of the dark water. . . . Was it one of the priests? Did one of them share a secret with Greg, one so deep and so savage that it made murder a necessity?

  Of course not! There was no reason to believe that either Laura or one of the clergy stabbed that young man to death.

  “A penny for your thoughts.” Eileen’s voice was soft. “Or are they the fifty-cent variety?”

  “We don’t even know how Greg Johnson came to be at the retreat center this morning,” Mary Helen stated.

  “It’s a sure bet it wasn’t voluntary,” Eileen said.

  “No, I mean he must have come in a car, but whose? What time was he killed?”

  “Won’t the forensic team know?”

  “They will,” Mary Helen said. “But how will we?”

  “Sergeant Little may tell us?”

  “Why would he?” Mary Helen asked, and for once, Eileen was stumped.

  “What about Beverly?” Eileen was off on a new tack. “How does she fit in, or does she?”

  “It was the oddest thing. Before I found the dogs . . .” Mary Helen stopped. She felt her stomach roil.

  Eileen looked as if she might say something sympathetic, but Mary Helen glared. Even a hint of sympathy and she knew she’d go to pieces. Another hysterical female was the last thing this investigation needed.

  “Before I went up the mountain
trail,” Mary Helen said, rephrasing her sentence, “I noticed Beverly and Sergeant Loody together in the kitchen. They were talking, and the conversation was heated.”

  Eileen’s gray eyes lit up. “He burst out of that door when you started screaming. Almost as if he were guilty for being there and wanted to look as if he were on the job.”

  “Are you making that up?”

  Eileen looked offended. “As they say back home, ‘Two thirds the work is the semblance.’ ”

  “No, not that part. The ‘looking guilty’ part.”

  “Well, he did burst out of that kitchen. And Beverly is such an angry woman.” Eileen brightened. “Maybe they are in cahoots!”

  “Wishful thinking,” Mary Helen said. “Only in mystery stories are the two least likable characters the murderers. And not always then.”

  A persistent mosquito buzzed near her ear. She swatted at it. “It’s either move or become a late dinner,” she said, slapping again at her neck.

  A fearless blue jay eyed the pair and hopped closer to the bench. Cocking his head, the bird gave a raucous caw.

  “Maybe they’re all trying to tell us to go to bed.” Eileen pushed up from the bench. “Things are always clearer after a good night’s sleep.”

  Deep shadows covered the pathway. The sky, or what little of it showed between the tall evergreens, had turned a graphite gray. Something rustled in the underbrush. Probably a squirrel or a chipmunk settling in for the night, Mary Helen thought. She wished she’d remembered to bring a flashlight.

  “Too, too, too,” a low call echoed above them. The gigantic black pupils in a pair of glossy yellow eyes stared down from a branch. Eileen grabbed Mary Helen’s arm. “An owl.”

  From somewhere below came the sound of slow, deliberate footsteps. Pine needles crunched. Twigs cracked. The two nuns froze.

  “Maybe a deer?” Eileen whispered.

  Mary Helen listened. “Too heavy.”

  “A big deer?”

  “Not enough feet.”

  The steps passed close below them. Mary Helen felt Eileen stiffen. She braced herself. It was too dim to make out anything but a large hunched form. The murderer perhaps, stalking another victim?

  The vanilla smell of pipe tobacco wafted up on the night air.

  “It’s the monsignor!” Eileen let out her breath. “Didn’t he say he usually walks before bed?”

  “Let’s wait,” Mary Helen suggested. “If we call out, we’ll probably scare the poor man to death. We don’t need another dead body.”

  When they were sure that the monsignor was safely out of earshot, the two quickly made their way toward the parking lot. Fortunately, Felicita had remembered to turn on the night lights.

  “I wonder if the monsignor telephoned Greg’s mother?” Eileen nodded toward the pay phone just inside St. Agnes’ Hall. “And I wonder how Kate made out with her today. I am feeling a little guilty for putting Kate in that position. Why don’t you call her?” Eileen suggested, digging in her coin purse for change.

  “Why me?” Mary Helen protested, but they both knew it was more for form than for anything else. Mary Helen was dying to call Kate Murphy.

  “Dammit! What now?” Jack Bassetti said when the phone rang. He stared across the table at Kate as if it were her fault; as if she had somehow willed it to ring right in the middle of their discussion. Their argument, really.

  If I could have, I would have, Kate thought, staring right back.

  “Hold that thought,” Jack said gruffly, and went into the front hall. He picked it up on the fourth ring. Kate heard him attempt to sound polite. Thank goodness the baby was asleep. Little John was so sensitive to everything around him. Their angry voices would surely have upset him.

  “It’s for you,” Jack growled.

  Kate recognized Mary Helen’s voice immediately and knew exactly what she wanted. She cut short the old nun’s apologies for calling so late and for getting her involved again and plunged right into her interview with Marva Johnson.

  “What was it she accused Laura of, exactly?” Mary Helen asked.

  “Of leading her son astray. Of generally being his downfall. Nothing specific. ‘An occasion of sin’ is the way she put it, I think.”

  “What do you suppose she meant by that?”

  “That they were living together, I assumed.” Kate flushed, remembering a time when, before they were married, Jack and she had lived together. Mary Helen was not judgmental then, nor was she now.

  She did seem genuinely shocked when Kate told her Mrs. Johnson insinuated that Father Tom Harrington might have had something to do with the murder.

  “What possible reason?” she asked. “Did she explain?”

  Kate didn’t have the answer. “Something that happened when Greg was assigned with Father Harrington?” she guessed.

  “Do you think there is any truth in that?”

  “I wouldn’t discount it completely, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in it either. Remember Marva Johnson actually said that she’d sooner have done it herself than let Greg continue on the road to perdition.”

  Kate heard Mary Helen groan. “What do you make of it?” she asked.

  “I’d say that the woman is a bit of a religious fanatic,”Kate said. “You know, very sure, very righteous.”

  And we all know there is absolutely no cure for self-righteousness, Mary Helen thought. Thanking Kate for her time, she hung up.

  “Another murder, right?” Jack said, the moment she reentered the kitchen. “I rest my case, Kate. Where does the victim’s mother live? Right on our own block. And you want to raise a kid in this city?”

  Kate wanted to kick herself for telling him about Greg Johnson. It gave him more ammunition for the battle they had been waging for months. Like most battles, it had started with a small scrimmage. Jack was assigned a child rape case. Actually, the little girl was about the same age as their John. Jack was deeply moved, as well he might be. The case was appalling. Kate admitted that much.

  The fight escalated. Jack watched her bundling up John for the baby-sitter, and threw in the weather. “We both grew up here,” Kate countered, “and neither of us has terminal frostbite, do we?”

  “Hon,” he had said one night, “several of the guys in my detail are buying in Cordero. I think that’s where the O’Connors live, too, isn’t it?” he asked, tossing in a detective from homicide. He proceeded to make the small Marin County suburb sound as if it were the safest city in America.

  “Whitebread!” Kate announced, unmoved.

  “Where is this kid going to play?” he asked one Saturday. “On Geary Boulevard? Talk about telling a kid to go play in the traffic.”

  “Where the hell do you think I played,” Kate shouted. “And all the other kids that grew to old age in this neighborhood?”

  “That was then. This is now,” Jack said in that annoyingly patient tone of his.

  Over the last few weeks the subject had become open warfare. Undoubtedly, tonight they were having the most decisive battle of their marriage. Kate did not want to move. She loved San Francisco. She loved this old house that had been her parents’. She wanted to live right here. She wanted to raise her family here with streetcars and fog and ethnic diversity and all the charm and beauty and culture that San Francisco offered.

  “I’m not suggesting New Zealand, for chrissake, Kate. It’s only twenty minutes away.”

  Kate would have hollered about traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge if their front doorbell hadn’t rung. “Who the hell is that?” Jack shouted, stomping out of the kitchen.

  “Ma!” Kate heard him say. “What are you doing out this late at night? What’s wrong?”

  “What am I? Some sort of Cinderella. I turn into a pumpkin at midnight, Jackie? Besides, it’s only a little after nine o’clock.” Loretta Bassetti pushed her way past her son and headed for the lighted kitchen. “It’s my bridge night. I was at Mrs. Molinari’s around the corner. It was her turn. When I went into her kitchen for a glass of w
ater, I could see your kitchen light still on.”

  And you were trying to find out why, Kate thought.

  “Since I was so close, I decided to pick up my good Dutch oven. God knows when you’d return it, and I need it for your sister Angie’s birthday dinner on Friday night. You haven’t forgotten your sister’s—” She stopped mid-sentence. Her glance jumped from the table, cluttered with dinner dishes, to the stove, where her pot sat, still unemptied and unwashed.

  “What’s wrong?” She crinkled her short nose, as if to sniff out the tension.

  “Wrong? What do you mean?” Jack smiled stiffly.

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? This is your mother you’re talking to, Jackie. It’s nine-thirty at night. You two are still sitting at the table, the dishes not done. The faces on you look like you have just received a death sentence.” She caught her breath. “Something is wrong with the baby?”

  “No, Ma. The baby’s fine.”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Kate?” Her bright brown eyes grew large, panicky.

  “Loretta, the baby is absolutely perfect. In fact, he’s upstairs sound asleep.” Kate flushed. For a minute, she thought her mother-in-law might climb the stairs to make sure. That’s all she needed tonight, Mrs. B. in full bustle.

  “Sit down, Ma,” Jack said, trying hard to sound hospitable. “Let me fix you a cup of coffee.”

  “Not on your life.” His mother clutched her handbag in front of her bosom like a shield. “If the baby’s okay, then I’ve walked in on the middle of a fight. So, I’ll go.”

  But not before you’ve put in your two bits’ worth, Kate thought.

  Predictably, Mrs. Bassetti dived right in. “Every young couple has fights. It wouldn’t be normal not to. Best for the in-laws to stay out of fights. Only muddies the water. But remember”—she shook a pudgy finger in warning—“it is not good to go to bed angry. So, I’ll let you settle this before you’re up all night.”

  “Ma, sit down. Really, we are not angry. We are not even fighting. We were discussing.” Kate knew from his expression that he wasn’t even fooling himself.