"What does Mr. Molina think of his wife's occupation?" Temple inquired demurely.
Pilar's sniff was a snort this time. "No Mr. Molina. Maybe there never was one. Who is to say? All I know is that Mariah Molina is in the third grade at the school, and I have never seen a wedding band on her mother's hand."
"Many widows don't wear wedding rings," Matt pointed out charitably. '
"More divorcees," Pilar answered with scorn. "Some even have the nerve to come to church and up to the communion rail. You can't tell anymore who is who and what is what. Even the church is confused. Priests and nuns are priests and nuns no longer, and married people get dispensations--"
"I think you mean 'annulments," Matt suggested quickly, obviously stung by her dismissal of ex-anything.
Pilar didn't pause for corrections. "No wonder poor Miss Tyler is dead. Nobody respects anything about the church anymore. Next they will be slaughtering nuns and priests in their beds, like in the heathen countries. I only pray that
Miss Tyler did nothing foolish with her will, like leaving her money to all those cats, instead of to Our Lady of Guadalupe."
"Lately she'd been saying that she would, hadn't she?"
Pilar eyed Temple with skepticism. "Old ladies are tyrants around the parish priest. They want attention like a small child, and they use the promise of their money to get it. Father Hernandez was foolish to anger Miss Tyler."
"What could he say?" Temple asked. "Apparently a cat in heaven is not a kosher Catholic concept."
"He could have talked around the matter, without lying. Instead, he told her no, no cats in heaven. Now there may be no dollars in the development fund. In my day, a priest did not have to scramble for money; the Sunday baskets were full. We were all poor, but we all gave what we could. Today churches must rely on the rich, like any other beggar. Are you done?"
The question came so sharply it sounded like an accusation. Temple studied her empty plate with its free-form design of syrup contrails.
"Yes," she admitted, only to have the plate whisked away.
"And you, Mr. Devine, do you want more?"
Temple frowned. She had not been offered more.
"This was plenty," he said, looking up at Pilar with that six-million-dollar-man smile. "The toast was wonderful."
"More coffee?" Pilar coaxed.
"Perhaps a bit more coffee, if it's not too much trouble."
"No trouble," Pilar said, clumping to the stove in her lace-up shoes.
When she returned to refill Matt's cup, she gave Temple a cursory glance. "I do not suppose that you want anymore."
"No," Temple said, too amazed by the byplay to consume anything at the moment.
She analyzed the situation. Pilar treated Matt like a favorite pupil, but Temple like some unwanted playmate dragged home from school unannounced.
And Matt Devine just sat there, soaking up this female consideration like he was born to it. Maybe Pilar could smell a priest; certainly Matt knew exactly how to handle a devout woman who lived to cater to the clergy, particularly the male clergy.
Temple sipped the last bitter drop of coffee in her cup. She had pictured priests as totally isolated from women, but in a parish setting, she saw, they were surrounded by them, utterly off-bounds, of course, but interacting daily, and even in the most intimate domestic setting with a housekeeper.
She had assumed that celibacy went hand in hand with innocence, with perhaps a secret and noble struggle underneath. She would expect a priest's ignorance to render him slightly gauche and awkward, despite the education of the confessional. Matt Devine was neither gauche nor awkward in this setting. He knew his way around these women like a master thief knows the layout of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He knew how to handle them without seeming to, without their noticing it any more than they should. He was forever "Father"; they relied upon him and deferred to him and considered him their own.
Pilar didn't think about all this, of course; she just reacted from instinct, as did Matt.
Temple's own instincts grew uneasy at this insight. Matt's background made him a smoother customer than she had thought, smoother than maybe he realized himself. He was a performer of sorts- after all. A spiritual prestidigitator.
He was beginning to remind her a lot of a missing magician named Max Kinsella.
Chapter 22
Hissturbing Questionsss
The door to the kitchen snapped open and a wizened face peered around the dark walnut doorjamb.
"Psst!" Sister St. Rose of Lima hailed Matt and Temple loudly enough to pass for a screaming steam kettle.
Pilar's stolid back remained turned to the room as water ran and her elbows cranked in and out over the sink. Apparently no dirty dishes lasted longer than an angelus bell in a Catholic kitchen. Temple mourned the last sweet licks of syrup on her plate that were disappearing under a baptism of sudsy water, leaving a plate that would now be squeaky-clean and innocent, unlike the rest of them, except maybe for Sister St. Rose of Lima, whose ancient, baby-doll face was wrinkled with unconcealed conspiracy . . .
Temple and Matt rose quietly and went to the door, where a whispered conference revealed that Sister Seraphina wished to meet them in the rectory while the lady lieutenant--that is the way Sister Rose put it with an awed precision--was interviewing Miss Wilhelm in the convent.
Temple and Matt exchanged one mystified glance and went out, not speaking until the warm light of day was bestowing hot haloes of amber sunlight on their heads.
"Sister Seraphina is showing signs of giving Lieutenant Molina as much trouble as I do." Temple mused. "I thought nuns were sworn to respect authority."
"Authority isn't as obvious as it once was," Matt said, "neither religious nor civil. I'm sorry to learn that Lieutenant Molina is a member of this parish. It could prejudice her."
"In pursuing the case?"
"In pursuing my past."
"Why do you think she'll bother to do that?"
"In her own way, she's as curious as you are and she has all the official means of prying at her fingertips. I suppose the crucified cat points to a religiously troubled killer, Why not me?"
"Listen, Devine, you are trouble, you are not troubled."
"I thought I was the self-defense teacher."
"In matters of physical prowess, in criminal matters, I'm the expert. Why do I feel that 'prowess' is something that has to do with 'lady lions' on the African savannahs and not me?"
"You've got plenty of prowess," he assured her, "in unexpected areas."
Matt paused at the rectory door, then pulled the wrought-iron hinges open with a mighty tug, as if he expected the door's weight and was ready for it.
They submerged themselves in another passage through cool interior shade, in a peace perfumed with lemon oil and candle wax and a faint odor of old incense.
Voices drifted into the silence like swimmers floating onto a deserted shoal, striving voices, one male, and one female.
Matt's pace quickened as he made for Father Hernandez's office door. Once there, he paused and turned to Temple with an expression of firm regret.
"I'd better go in alone."
"She summoned both of us."
"Yes, but--"
Beyond the door, Father Hernandez's voice rose to an angry rail, reminding Temple of the keening associated with an Irish wake. There was nothing Irish about this place, this time, this cast of characters, although the wake notion was all too apt with Blandina Tyler soon to become the centerpiece of her own.
Matt slipped through the door without seeming to open it.
Magician! Temple's resentful thoughts hissed after him. Subtle and self-concealing, discreet. The bitter words surged back and forth in her mind like angry surf. Max had confided nothing, revealed nothing unnecessarily, had shut and locked doors behind him that he never came again to open, and too many of them bordered Temple's emotional premises.
She waited outside this new closed door, unable to keep from overheating snatches of di
alogue; unable to avoid dissecting and interpreting it.
Father Hernandez's voice came louder, deep and uncontrolled, a berserk organ rambling in a minor key. It ebbed and flowed in time to her softer mental surf. Temple could picture him pacing, his dramatic cassock skirt straining against his long, lean strides, his figure erect despite its distress. He did not look like a bendable man in any respect. Yet the voice was unkempt and slurred, touched with the tequila's thick, tart tongue.
Seraphina's mission was obvious to Temple whether she was invited in or not: to restore reason, if not sobriety, to Father Hernandez before Lieutenant Molina sat him down and peeled his mind like a Muscat grape fat with foreign intoxicants.
"I have failed," he raged in a three-penny-opera voice, rich and sonorous for sermons and now directed at himself like an accusing Greek chorus that would be heard through closed doors no matter what. "A serpent is loose in our little Garden of Eden, of Gethsemane."
Sssserpent loossse, As in Eden. But a serpent sounded more at home in Gethsssemane, the garden of purely human betrayal, Temple thought.
Matt's calm murmur--so damned priestly--was harder to decipher. Maybe Temple was irreverent to put it that way in her mind; maybe it was immaterial and irrelevant to care how she put it to herself. She paused before the sealed door, guilty but determined. Matt was the core of her concern. What would this crash course in troubled Catholicism do to him?
"Falsely accused!" Father Hernandez's best pulpit tones cried. "There is a Judas among us."
How he hissed the incriminating words! Falsssely accusssed. A Judassss among usss.
"Scandal!" the drunken voice raved.
Sssscandal, Temple heard.
"This is the Man!"
Thisss isss the Man.
Could Father Hernandezsss be the hissing caller? Certainly his rich, Hispanic voice, blurred by liquor and desperation, broadcast a susurration that an old woman on a phone might mistake for hissing.
"Snakes!" he ranted.
Ssssnakesss. On the phone. In the parish. In the pastor's raving words.
Matt's voice suddenly came clear and strong, urging control and sanity, banishing the bad dreams, or the memories?
Did Father Hernandez harbor bad memories of driving an elderly parishioner to distraction and ultimate death before she could change her will and cut the church from it like a plump plum doomed to wither on the apostolic vine?
A priest who killed? How? How, when he was drowning himself in tequila and paranoia?
Temple couldn't stand it. Eavesdropping was not her long suit--in hearts, clubs. Or even when it came to aces up her sleeve in spades. She needed to confront her suspicions in person, which is no doubt why Max's disappearance had so thoroughly confounded her. Her hand reached for the dark iron doorknob, then turned it.
The overheard dialogue clarified the instant that she entered the somber study. She felt as if she had walked onto the set of a play and the actors were now enunciating with Masterpiece Theatre perfection for her benefit. Certainly the scene was striking.
Father Hernandez was facing Matt, as dark and brooding as a tragic hero in his coloring, his old-fashioned black cassock, his tortured priestly passion.
"Some priests walk away," he was saying. Bitterness and regret seasoned his accusing voice. "I cannot."
Ssssome priessstsss, the snake hissed in Eden, in Las Vegas.
Matt, as innocently blond as any first-communion angel of seven years in a winsome white suit, answered the challenge with a lift of his head and his voice. "Some priests stay when they do more damage than if they left."
That reply caused Father Hernandez to recoil, to sink into one of the upholstered armchairs designed for the comfort of his flock and put his face in his hands.
In the ensuing silence, Sister Seraphina wrung her wrinkled old hands and glanced from one man to the other.
"We must give each other the benefit of the doubt," she urged. "We must support each other in our separate ways."
Father Hernandez withdrew his hands and turned to the peacemaker, his red-rimmed eyes empty and wounded.
"Separate is different for all of us. Don't worry, Sister. I will pull myself together for the police lieutenant." He smiled as he shook his head to clear it. "She is only a parishioner, after all. I have heard her confession." That assertion made Temple blink. She would love to hear--even overhear--C.R. Molina's confession. "I have always been able to appease my parishioners," he added with a touch of the old arrogance, "Except for Miss Tyler."
"A priest's role is not to appease," Matt put in.
"Walk in my shoes, Fisherman!" Father Hernandez's black-coral eyes blazed. "What is most unappeasable is Satan, and he is out there, be certain of it."
Shoesss of the Fisssherman. Mossst unappeasssable. Ssssatan. Isss. Csssertain.
Temple heard hisses, and there was no one there----only a conscience-wracked parish priest. Conssscience-wracked parisssh priessst. And Ssssissster Sssseraphina. And Matt Devine, who could not possssibly be party to this cssselebration of disssassster and doubt.
"You look tired, my dear," Ssssissster Sssseraphina whissspered to Temple.
She was; no point in denying it. She was even beginning to look forward to the nexssst ssstage of Csss. R. Molina'sss inquisssition. My asss, Temple thought, fed up with suspicions that hissed through everybody's most unconscious word choice. Pardon, she thought again contritely, in deference to the religious environment. Balaam'sss asss.
Lieutenant Molina found them, of course, even in the refuge of the rectory, about ten minutes later. She skeptically eyed the assembled foursome, then addressed only Father Hernandez.
"I'll need to ask you some questions. Alone."
The other three left without any parting pleasantries. No good days or goodbyes. It was obviously not a good day, and they would obviously see each other again.
"I should talk to Peggy," Sister Seraphina muttered as much to herself as to Temple and Matt on the way back to the convent.
"So should I," Temple said. "We," she added in deference to Matt.
He was more intimately involved in this death than she, after all. Temple had only fed Blandina Tyler's cats-once. Matt had administered her last sacrament.
"Why?" Matt asked, his eyes distant and troubled.
"She's the only one who's going to tell us what really happened to Miss Tyler. Molina won't."
"What would Peggy know?" Sister Seraphina asked with a wrinkled brow.
"She should know as much as Molina saw fit to tell the victim's only relative. I'm hoping that will be time of death, the method, maybe even a speculation on the motive."
At this pronouncement, Sister Seraphina and Matt exchanged a lightning glance. They were doing a lot of that lately, Temple had noticed. She wondered if the same suspicions that danced the polka in her active imagination were making a slow, reluctant saraband through their minds: Father Hemandez had a lot to lose if Blandina Tyler had lived to leave Our Lady of Guadalupe out of her will. That worry could have turned him to the bottle. Could it also have goaded him into the unreasonable acts bedeviling the convent and its neighbor: the crude calls, the midnight ramblings and rustles, the brutal attack on Peter? Could it have caused him to kill the old parishioner before she acted on her threat?
Sister Rose admitted them to the convent, and they returned to its one public room, where Peggy Wilhelm nursed a cup of tea that smelled of apple and almonds. Not even hot, pungent herbal tea could steam the pleats of worry from Peggy's pleasant round face.
She stirred at their entrance. "I'll have to contact the neighborhood funeral parlor--Lopez and Kelly, isn't it?"
Sister Seraphina nodded.
Peggy went on. "I don't know when the police will . . .release the body, but no doubt the funeral people can see to all that. I'll have to go back into the house and . . . pick some Clothes for the funeral, feed the cats."
"I'll go with you," Sister Seraphina said promptly.
"I'll feed the cats," Temple
volunteered. "I know the routine."
Matt said nothing. The practicalities of death were always women's work, Temple supposed. He was designated to come along later, in cassock and vestment, to intone and bless and bury; only he didn't do that kind of work anymore. Father Hernandez would have to do it, whatever his condition--or involvement.
"What," Temple asked, unable to restrain herself any longer, "did Lieutenant Molina tell you about the . . .crime?"
Peggy's eyes were as dull as tepid tea, scummed over with sorrow and shock, their expression deadened. "The medical examiner at the morgue will determine the cause of death. I found her at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck, with numerous bruises and contusions. She could have tripped on a cat, or several cats, but the lieutenant admitted that she didn't like the severity of the marks around her head and throat. Her cane was broken into several pieces. I guess it didn't take much to kill Aunt, either way: accident or murder. It must have happened after midnight, the lieutenant said. I was sleeping in the downstairs back bedroom, and no one next door at the convent heard anything."
"Whose rooms are nearest the Tyler house?" Temple asked.
"Only Sister Mary Monica's," Seraphina said in wry tones.
Matt nodded wearily. "She's virtually deaf."
"Convenient," Temple noted grimly. "If it was murder, it looks as if the killer knew the neighborhood. But was he--or she--the one who made the nuisance calls and harmed the cat?"
"Paul's the roamer," Seraphina said suddenly, nodding at the statue-still ocher figure of a sitting cat on the windowsill.
"Peter rarely goes out. He's the homebody."
"Then someone came inside the convent to get him," Matt realized with growing alarm, "Someone who had easy, unchallenged access to the place."
They mulled that without comment. Temple's mental list included Father Hernandez, the loyal but narrow-minded Pilar, even Peggy Wilhelm, who was often at her aunt's house and often visited the neighboring nuns who were her backup cat feeders. And she had been at the scene of the crime the whole time, ostensibly asleep. So if Father Hernandez was suspect, why not a nun, or assorted nuns? Even virtually deaf Sister Mary Monica?
Cat on a Blue Monday Page 18
