Murder Makes a Pilgrimage

by Carol Anne O'Marie

  No sooner had Eileen ordered room service than someone rapped sharply on their door.

  “That was surely speedy.” Eileen moved toward it.

  Mary Helen’s heart jolted. Too speedy. She slipped into her bathrobe. “Who’s there?” she demanded, and was relieved to hear the clipped British tones of Comisario Ángel Serrano.

  With perfect courtesy, the comisario excused himself for disturbing them, asked a few perfunctory questions about their comfort, and then, refusing a seat, zeroed in like an expert marksman on the reason for his call.

  “I am here because I am concerned about your safety,” he said. His sharp black eyes roamed the room as if they expected to find danger lurking under their unmade beds. “My niece, María José, tells me that you are aware of her identity. She also reported to me that you were hurt during yesterday’s outing.”

  Mary Helen held out both her hands, determined not to show him any more.

  “Heaven knows what might have happened if Pepe hadn’t been there to catch her,” Eileen added.

  “Where were you, Sister?” He focused on Eileen. She blinked at his unexpected question.

  “I was ahead of Sister Mary Helen—on the way down, that is. I had turned a corner and momentarily lost sight of her. All I heard was her cry out.”

  “Did Pepe pass you on his way up?”

  Eileen shook her head. “No one passed me,” she said. “Sister and I were the cow’s tail of the group.”

  “Then how did Pepe happen to stop Sister’s fall? Did he grab you from behind?” Ángel’s eyes leaped to Mary Helen.

  “I think so,” she stammered, remembering the terrifying sensation of free-falling. “I fell forward. I had my eyes covered. Instinct,” she added deliberately. She didn’t want him to imagine for a moment that it was cowardice. “I felt hands grab me. Pepe must have spun me around. It happened so fast, so unexpectedly, that I wasn’t aware of anything except the faint musky smell and two strong hands grabbing me.”

  A sharp knock at the door startled her.

  “That must be room service,” Eileen told the comisario, who was suddenly alert.

  The waiter wheeled in a table and miraculously produced three chairs. It took some doing, but Ángel was finally induced to join them.

  “Only café!” he said, pouring about an inch of coffee into his cup, then filling it up with hot milk. “My wife is after me to reduce.” Inhaling, he tried with no apparent success to pull in his little round belly.

  After two deep swallows he placed the empty cup back on the saucer. “Today, Sisters”—he was back to business—“you go to La Toja with your tour. It is about fifty-six kilometers to the south. I will once again send María José on the bus. Do not take any chances. If you sense anything out of the ordinary, you are to notify her. Officer Zaldo will drive behind the bus as a backup.”

  Mary Helen’s mouth went dry. “Am I to assume that you think we are in some sort of danger?” she asked, having trouble getting her tongue around the words.

  “Not at all, Sister. I am assuming that yesterday was a freak accident. I am, however, taking no chances. I was going to cancel this trip, but since I have no way of knowing that the murderer is one of your group, I have decided to let it go on as scheduled.”

  After the comisario had left, Mary Helen and Eileen sat for a few moments in an uneasy silence. Even after a night’s rest, Eileen’s face was pale and strained. “Do you think one of our group is the murderer?”

  “I don’t know.” Mary Helen tried not to let her own panic show. “Who had a reason to kill Lisa? When we know that, we’ll know—”

  Eileen studied her pensively. “Something is bothering me, rather like an itch that I can’t reach,” she said.

  “What is it?” Mary Helen broke off the corner of a croissant, piled it with berry jam, and popped it into her mouth.

  “It’s Lisa herself. We know very little about poor, dead Lisa. Heidi told us that she’d changed in college. But we are not sure from what to what. Where did she go to college? Another thing, don’t you think that picture business is odd?”

  “What picture business?”

  “That picture you found in their room. How many people do you know that take a ‘before’ picture of themselves on a trip to Europe?”

  “One, to date,” Mary Helen admitted.

  Eileen’s gray eyes narrowed. “There is something there that is very, very”—the word eluded her—“peculiar,” she said at last.

  The sharp ring of the phone caught them by surprise. It was María José reminding them that the Pulmantur bus would pull into the Plaza del Obradoiro and meet them in front of the Hostal de los Reyes Católicos in about twenty minutes.

  “What’s our plan for today?” Eileen asked while they gathered up their coats, umbrellas, and pocketbooks.

  “Why don’t we switch? You try the DeAngelos, and I’ll see what I can pry out of Heidi.” A shooting pain in the small of her back made Mary Helen flinch.

  “What is it?” Eileen hadn’t missed her grimace.

  “Nothing really. I must have knocked against something in the tower.”

  “Let me see.”

  “There is probably nothing to see.”

  Eileen insisted on looking anyway. She sucked in air. “Ouch,” she said.

  “What is it?” Mary Helen was impatient to tuck her blouse back into her skirt.

  “You have a nasty-looking bruise in the small of your back.” Her cold fingers touched the spot lightly. “About the size, shape, and, I daresay, color of a ruby seedless grape.”

  “That is about where I felt the jab yesterday,” Mary Helen remembered. “Could it be from someone’s thumb or a knuckle?” she asked.

  “A thumb, a wide knuckle, or perhaps—” Eileen’s brogue was thickening.

  A sudden draft of cold air across her back made Mary Helen shiver.

  “Perhaps,” Eileen said thoughtfully, “it was made by someone’s heavy ring.”

  The two nuns were in front of the hostal before any of the other tour members or even the bus arrived. At ten o’clock in the morning the Plaza del Obradoiro already was crowded with what looked more like tourists than townsfolk.

  To the left of the cathedral, three young men wearing woven panchos, and with the traditional chullos of Peru covering their heads and ears, huddled together near the door to the archbishop’s palace. One played a drum, one a guitar, and the third blew a plaintive melody on a reed flute.

  Starving students, Spanish style, Mary Helen thought, before her attention was caught by a bevy of young nuns descending the cathedral steps. Their blue habits set them apart from the regular churchgoers.

  There was something refreshing in the way they were laughing and teasing one another, something that made her yearn for her own nuns. For the second time that morning Mary Helen felt a wave of homesickness.

  “Let’s vow that if we get out of this mess, we will never leave Mount St. Francis College again,” she said, but Eileen raised her hand.

  “Vow to whom?” she asked. “God certainly isn’t going to buy that one!”

  Eileen was right, of course. It was simply the stress of the situation. Mary Helen jerked her thoughts back into line. Today she must summon up all the energy she could and begin to solve this mystery!

  The nuns in blue hurried across the plaza toward where Eileen and she stood. Eileen had noticed them, too. “I’ll wager it’s a feast day of some sort,” she said.

  Mary Helen racked her brain. Today the hours of the office were seasonal. Nectarius, a third-century bishop, was noted but certainly not celebrated. “What feast day?” she wondered aloud.

  From Eileen’s frown, Mary Helen knew that her friend was dredging up some little-known fact from that phenomenal memory of hers.

  “There’s a Spanish order called Handmaids of Mary or Servants of Mary. If I remember correctly, twenty or so years ago, Pope Paul the Sixth canonized their foundress.”

  “How in the world do you remember tha
t?”

  “Because her name was María Desolata something or other, or Soledad in English. I remember thinking at the time about the California mission being named Soledad and wondering where Junípero Serra had pulled that name from—”

  “Let’s just ask them,” Mary Helen cut in. She had followed Eileen’s labyrinth about as far as she intended to go.

  Fortunately one of the young nuns spoke passable English. By the time the other members of the tour group finally assembled, Mary Helen and Eileen stood amid a sea of nuns in blue, learning more than they needed to know about St. María Desolata Torres-Acosta, who, indeed, had been born in Madrid and had founded the Handmaids of Mary to serve Spain’s poor.

  When he spotted them, Bud Bowman laughed and pointed. “Birds of a feather,” he said.

  Mary Helen smiled politely at his attempt at good humor. It was all she could do, however, to keep that smile in place when she overheard Bootsie snip, “Or you could say, ‘Water seeks its own level.’ ”

  As the group boarded the bus, an umbrella of rain clouds was moving in to cover the remaining few patches of blue sky. Pepe swooshed the door shut, and a tense silence enclosed them all. Couples isolated themselves from the others not only by their silence but by space.

  Pepe, realizing that Heidi was alone, slid into the seat next to her. Drat it, thought Mary Helen who, once the bus was under way, had fully intended to slide in next to the girl. The trip would take the better part of an hour. Surely in that amount of time she’d have been able to pump out some information.

  María José cradled the microphone. ”Buenos días, peregrines.” Her dark glance darted around the bus. “I see that everyone is with us,” she said, “so near, yet so far away.” She motioned the DeAngelos to move up closer to the rest of the group.

  Reluctantly they complied, only to have the Fongs move to another seat. When they did, the Bowmans shifted, too. María José watched in astonishment as the couples jerked from seat to seat.

  Crazily, Mary Helen was reminded of the little square computer disks jumping around on Shirley’s screen when she pushed the “clean up” command. Shirley and her computer! At the thought of her faithful, efficient secretary, yet another wave of homesickness tumbled over Mary Helen.

  Tough up, old girl, she chided herself. Soon this will all be over. And “the sooner the quicker,” as old Sister Donata liked to say. A soft rain washed the tour bus as it pulled onto the wide highway leading south to the island of La Toja.

  Healthy green countryside spread out over low hills. Vines with leaves the color of deep red wine grew up from the stony ground. Pink roses and brilliant yellow and tangerine dahlias climbed up rock walls.

  “Look at that.” Eileen pointed to the narrow dirt road that ran alongside the highway. Two middle-aged women rode a donkey. A third walked behind, balancing a tub of freshly cut lettuce on her head. To their left, parked in a stone carport, looking for all the world like an anachronism, was a bright red Opel!

  “You’d think they’d carpool,” Eileen said, turning her attention back to María José, who had once again taken up the microphone.

  “The west coast of Galicia offers some of the most beautiful scenery in all of Spain,” María José declared. “We are on our way to the resort paradise of La Toja.”

  Mary Helen chanced a quick glance around the bus. “From the looks on the faces, you’d think she just said that we were on our way to the Inferno,” she whispered to Eileen.

  “This whole pretense is an inferno to someone,” Eileen remarked wisely. Mary Helen agreed.

  Undaunted by the general gloom, María José explained that rias were the inlets cutting deep into the shoreline. In this part of Galicia the estuaries seemed to go on forever.

  Like a genuine tour guide, she reminded them all to look again for the hórreos set on six stone pillars and that if in a ria, they saw a strange kind of raft with a hut on it, these contained cages and were mussel beds.

  As the bus wound along the corniche road to La Toja, even the gloomiest of the group was lifted by the beauty. The salty smell of the ocean filled the bus. Gigantic waves surged against the cliffs, and the Atlantic stretched in silvery splendor to the horizon.

  The bus pulled into a paved lot and parked beside a row of other tour buses. María José straddled the aisle. “We will meet at the Gran Hotel in three hours for our lunch,” she said with a smile. “In the meantime, have fun. There is the beach. Souvenir stalls. Snacks. Anyone who wishes can come with me to La Toja Cosméticos to buy some black jabón or soap.”

  “Black soap?” Eileen made a face.

  “It’s really excellent for your complexion,” Bootsie said in a slightly superior tone.

  When they finally disembarked from the bus, the day had turned almost balmy. An expanse of blue sky dotted with tiny cotton-ball clouds faded into the shimmering ocean.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” Cora asked.

  Mary Helen did. Her task was to pump Heidi, but how in the world could she refuse anyone’s attempt at companionship?

  “Not at all,” she answered. While she waited for Cora to catch up, Eileen scurried ahead. Bud, beating a quick retreat toward the beach, waved.

  “Bud hates shopping,” Cora said pleasantly. “He says that he married me for better or for worse, but not to go shopping with.”

  Mary Helen snickered.

  “It was funny about the first four thousand times he said it.” Cora, shading her eyes against the sun, located her husband on the shore.

  “He’s watching the fishermen,” she said. “He should be good for at least two hours.”

  Two hours of shopping! For a fleeting moment Mary Helen was tempted to follow Bud’s example. Unfortunately she had her task before her.

  “Heidi is alone,” Mary Helen said. “Maybe we should ask her to join us.” She turned to find the girl, but Pepe already had her in tow, and Heidi appeared happy to be there.

  Pepe swaggered along talking softly, and Heidi’s giggle floated on the sea breeze. Mary Helen was aware that none of this escaped Cora.

  She scouted the crowd to see how Eileen was faring. The DeAngelos, following María José, strode along a treelined road at a fast clip. Eileen, walking as quickly as her short legs allowed, tailed them. The four, like a line of quail, zigzagged toward the black jabón.

  Content that Eileen, at least, was making progress, Mary Helen resigned herself to Cora.

  They sauntered by a flea market of stalls in companionable silence, examining shells, handcrafts, and the myriad trinkets on display. Mary Helen bought several inexpensive key chains with spiny murex shells dangling from them. These she’d bring home to the other nuns.

  Understandably Eileen and she had been so preoccupied with the events of the last few days that they had almost completely forgotten about souvenirs. Not that the nuns would expect gifts under the circumstances. But with any luck at all, this whole thing would be solved before they left for home and the nuns never need know that there were circumstances!

  Cora filled her shopping bag with T-shirts, lace mantillas, brightly painted ceramic plates, dolls dressed in Galician costumes, and several things that Mary Helen was unable to identify.

  “Will you be able to carry all that?” she wondered aloud.

  Cora stuffed in yet another set of painted napkin rings. “That’s what Bud is for,” she said.

  Sated at last, Cora pointed down the road toward La Toja Cosméticos. “Let’s give that soap a try,” she said, and Mary Helen agreed.

  As they strolled along, several Gypsy women, arms loaded with bargain souvenirs, tried to sell their wares, but even Cora had tired of shopping.

  “Are you sleeping well?” Cora asked, putting her heavy bag on the ground for a rest.

  “Pretty well,” Mary Helen said. “Why? Are you having trouble?”

  Cora’s watery blue eyes focused on her, and she put her hands on her broad hips. “How can anyone sleep well after what’s gone on?” she asked. “Aren’t yo
u afraid we’re all going to be murdered in our beds?”

  “Not really.” Mary Helen fudged a little. “Whoever murdered Lisa, and we don’t know for sure that it was one of our group, must have a motive. People don’t kill without a reason.”

  Cora looked doubtful.

  “Even serial killers have a reason, twisted though it may be.”

  Cora’s expression moved from doubt toward terror.

  “Not to say we have a serial killer in our midst,” Mary Helen added hastily. “I was just making a point,” which even she was beginning to lose.

  “Heidi did it!” Cora blurted out.

  Mary Helen couldn’t believe her ears. “Heidi? What makes you think Heidi killed Lisa?”

  “She had plenty of reason. Did you notice how much attention that young man Pepe was paying to Lisa? And today do you see he’s with Heidi? Mark my words, she is enjoying his attention.”

  “Everyone enjoys attention,” Mary Helen conceded, “but to kill for it? I’m not sure about that.”

  Narrowing her eyes, Cora gave it some thought. “Then Bootsie did it!” she said.

  “What reason does Bootsie have?” Mary Helen was beginning to get used to Cora’s blunt accusations.

  “Plain as the nose on my face,” Cora said. “Jealousy! Did you see how Lisa flirted with all the men. Even my Bud, the old goat. And if you ask me, that Roger enjoyed it.”

  “Roger is a college professor,” Mary Helen reasoned. “Over the years lots of young women must have developed crushes on him. Bootsie must surely take them all with a grain of salt. If she murdered every coed who was attracted to her husband . . . Well, you see what I mean.”

  Cora nodded. “Rita! It must be that little Rita then. You know, Sister, she’s tiny, but I’ll bet that with all that exercise she does she’s a lot stronger than she looks.”

  “What do you think is Rita’s motive?”

  “Did you notice that her husband the doctor—”

  “Dentist,” Mary Helen corrected absently.