A Novena for Murder (12 page)

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“You’ll want your money back.”

“Try me,” Jack said, afraid she might be right.

“I know we agreed to try not to bring work home.”

“You must admit rape and murder do not make for relaxing dinner conversation.”

Kate smiled. “But I just can’t get today off my mind.”

Jack took another sip of his martini. His eyes paused on her face. “Okay,” he said, “let’s have it. What happened?”

“We had another murder at the college. Hasn’t it made TV yet?” Kate picked up her glass and twirled the long stem between her thumb and forefinger. “A young woman, Joanna Alves. She was the sister of Professor Villanueva’s secretary. Sister Mary Helen found her in the chapel—head bashed in.”

“Hot damn,” Jack swore softly. “Any suspects?”

“Not really. Leonel da Silva is our best bet so far. At least he had motive and opportunity to kill the professor. He won’t even deny he did it. But we don’t have enough to charge him. So this morning he gets out, and this afternoon the Alves girl is dead.” Kate took another sip of her martini. “And Sister Mary Helen may drive me bonkers.”

“How come?”

“She’s got her mind made up he couldn’t have done it.”

“Maybe she knows something you don’t know.”

“No. I don’t think so. It’s her intuition. She says he has ‘nice eyes.’ ”

“Did you tell her about Baby-Face Nelson?”

“I was tempted to—but you know something, Jack?” Kate shrugged her shoulders. “She’s right.”

“Right?”

“He does have nice eyes. Something is bothering the guy for sure,” she said. “Can’t put my finger on it, but he just doesn’t have the look of a murderer.”

Jack drained his glass. He was just about to launch into a firm, logical argument about the “criminal look” being a fallacy, but he thought better of it. This was not at all the way he had planned the evening. Tonight he wanted romance, not logic. He decided to make the best of the situation. Maybe he could back into the proposal.

“That nun is sharp,” he said. “Maybe she’s right. Got the feeling she doesn’t miss much.”

With the long glass rod, Jack restirred the pitcher of martinis. He topped Kate’s glass and refilled his own. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she picked up something between you and me.”

Kate’s mouth took on a straight-lipped fix. Jack recognized the fight sign. Go easy, he thought, lying back on the soft couch. Gently, he ran the heel of his hand up her rigid spine.

“Is that what this is all about?” Kate gestured toward the darkened living room. “Meeting that nun yesterday made you feel guilty about us living
together, so you are going to ask me to marry you? Again!”

“Yes and no,” Jack answered calmly.

“What do you mean—‘Yes and no’?”

“Yes, it is all about asking you to marry me, again.” Jack put special emphasis on the
again
. “And no. No one made me feel guilty. I feel guilty all by myself. What I can never figure out is why the hell you don’t.”

Kate stared indignantly. Jack met her stare. “Do you know there is an official name for people like us?” She did not answer. “It’s POSSLQ: Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters.” He paused dramatically.

A smile played at the outer edges of Kate’s tight lips. Humor was always the chink in her armor. Jack pressed his advantage. “It’s true,” he said. “The Census Bureau invented the word. Do you want to go through life being my POSSLQ? On Valentine cards I can write “Roses are red, Violets are blue. Will you be my POSSLQ?”

Kate giggled. Relaxing, she kicked off her slippers and curled her legs up on the couch. Jack filled her empty glass. Snuggling closer to him, she began to twist a few strands of hair. Jack put his arm around her. Neither spoke for several moments.

Finally, Jack broke the silence. “Kate, I love you,” he said. “You love me. Why not get married?” If he couldn’t get her with romance, maybe he could do it with pure reason.

“Did your mother call again?”

“No,” he said, “but even if she had, it’s me who wants to marry you, not my mother.”

“I’m too tired to get into this tonight,” she said.

“That’s an excuse.”

“Maybe. But I can’t explain it Maybe I’m not so sure myself. I know I love you. When and if I marry, there would be no one else I’d even consider.” She smiled at him.

Damn that melting smile, Jack thought, pulling her a little closer.

“I love my job,” she said. “I worked to get where I am, and I do it as well as any man!”

“Some things you do much better,” he said, hoping to lighten her mood.

“I’m not kidding!”

“Maybe we could work something out.” The suggestion sounded feeble even to him.

“Maybe you could stay home and have the babies?” she said. Swinging her legs off the couch, Kate shoved her bare feet into her fuzzy blue bedroom slippers and pushed herself up off the couch.

No, this wasn’t the way Jack had planned the evening at all. He’d give it one more try. Reaching up, he caught her hips and pulled her onto his lap. He ran his hand down her thigh. “That is a possibility we haven’t considered.”

Turning toward him, Kate nestled comfortably into all his hollows. He could feel her body begin to relax. She fits perfectly, Jack thought, his arms enveloping
her. I just can’t let her go. He nuzzled his face into her fragrant hair. The blunt edges tickled his nose and chin.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you, too,” she whispered back, “and I can smell the rice burning.” Kate ran the tips of her fingers gently up the back of his neck.

Jack tingled all over. “What the hell,” he said. “Who likes rice, anyhow?”

S
ister Mary Helen woke up feeling furious. Morning Office in the Community Room did not help.

“I don’t see why we can’t pray in our own chapel.” Sister Therese’s high-pitched whine before coffee made even placid Eileen flinch.

“Because the police have it cordoned off,” said Sister Anne, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Head bowed, she studied the tips of her toes wiggling in her doe-colored Paiutes.

“Well, I don’t see why we couldn’t stay in the back. This is the fifth day of my novena, and I’d like to say my prayers in the chapel. This place is certainly not conducive to my recollection,” Sister Therese said, taking in Sister Anne’s lotus position.

“We can’t go to the chapel because they are trying to find clues to the murderer,” Anne said. White-faced, she leaned back against the arm of the upholstered chair. She rested her hands on her knees and closed her eyes.

“Well, they certainly don’t think one of us did it, do they?” Therese looked as though she had suddenly sniffed something sour. “Really, it was a shame that it had to be one of us who found the body.” She rolled her eyes toward Mary Helen.

Mary Helen could feel both her eyebrows and her blood pressure rise. Fortunately, Eileen began intoning the Morning Office for the Dead.

After prayers, Eileen approached Mary Helen. “You look like a thundercloud,” she said, as the two began the climb from the Sisters’ Residence to the college dining room for breakfast. “Were you able to sleep at all last night?”

“Not much. I just couldn’t get yesterday off my mind. What’s that line from
Romeo and Juliet?
‘Death lies on her like an untimely frost. Upon the sweetest flower of all the field’?”

Eileen put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. Halfway up the hill, Mary Helen stopped to catch her breath. Ahead, slits of yellow light from the narrow windows pierced the dense morning fog. That same wet fog swallowed up the underbrush on the hillside and clung to the tips of the evergreens. The low moan of a foghorn floated in from the Gate.

“And what about you?” Mary Helen asked. “Did you sleep?”

Eileen shook her head. “I am still unable to believe it. And I can’t seem to stop blubbering. It’s like a horrid nightmare. The professor. Then Joanna. Poor, dear Marina!” She dug into her jacket pocket for a Kleenex.

Sister Anne, hands thrust deep into the pockets of her green corduroy car coat, caught up with the pair. She padded along beside Eileen. “Hi, you two,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “How are you doing?”

“Terrible,” Mary Helen snapped, suddenly annoyed. No one should be cheerful on a day like today. But one look at the young nun’s face made Mary Helen regret her impatience. “How about you?” she asked, softly.

“Terrible,” Anne answered, all pretense gone.

“I’ll bet you are.” Vividly, Mary Helen recalled Anne and Inspector Gallagher leading Marina into the sacristy yesterday. The three of them had come through the back door. Marina’s eyes were glazed, her slim body rigid. But she had insisted on seeing her sister’s body. Softly, Marina had begun to whimper like a frightened, wounded animal. Then with one blood-curdling wail, she had shattered the silence. The shrill echo had filled the chapel and reverberated against the stained glass windows—like a moment frozen out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. Mary Helen had closed her eyes and covered her ears. “Dear God, make all this go away,” she had prayed. But of course, nothing had gone away.

“I suppose you eventually got Marina to sleep?” Eileen said.

“You could call it that, I guess. The doctor finally had to give her a shot. I just came from checking on her. She’s still out.”

Anne didn’t look up, but continued to speak in a
low, flat voice—as though she could hardly believe the reality of what had happened.

“What do I say when she wakes up?” Anne stopped and stared at the two older nuns. All the animation had left her face. Her lips formed a tight, straight line. Mary Helen had never seen that expression on Anne’s face before. It took her only a moment to realize it was deep, unabated anger.

“What do I say to someone whose own sister, just a few days ago, was full of life and hope, and today, for no apparent reason, is a cold, mutilated corpse?” she asked, kicking a small, flat stone in the driveway. It bounced over the hillside and disappeared into the low, soupy fog. “What do I say to someone who believes in God, trusts us, and whose sister has just been found murdered in our chapel?”

“Love, there’s nothing to say,” Eileen answered quietly. “There is just no way in the world to explain the mystery of evil.” The answer sounded so pat, so superficial, but unfortunately, so true.

“I know,” Anne said, “but the whole thing makes me so damn mad!”

Mary Helen shared the emotion, although she might not have expressed it in exactly the same words.

As the three neared the rear door of the chapel, Mary Helen noticed a rough rope barring it. A sterile, black-and-white coroner’s seal profaned the door. A small army of policemen in business suits had already invaded the peaceful campus. They swarmed everywhere—measuring, photographing,
questioning. Mary Helen could feel her Irish blood begin to boil. Crazily, a favorite quote from
The Moonstone
jumped into her mind. “Do you feel an uncomfortable heat in the pit of your stomach, sir? And a nasty thumping at the top of your head? I call it detective fever.”

“Eileen. We have to do something about this!”

“About what, old dear—the mystery of evil, or about Anne’s being angry?”

Mary Helen glared. Eileen shrugged. “You needn’t look at me like that. Those were the last two things I can remember being said. Which one is the antecedent of ‘this’?”

“Neither. We must do something about putting a stop to the murders on this campus.”

“And how, in God’s name, would you suggest we do that?”

“By finding the murderer.” The dismal moan of a foghorn punctuated the last sentence.

“And just how do you propose we do that, when the entire San Francisco Police Department doesn’t seem able to?”

“By investigating on our own. What do you think, Eileen?”

“ ‘You may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb,’ ”. Eileen said.

Anne stopped to remove a small stone that had caught in the thong of her moccasin. “Which reminds me,” she said, “with all that happened yesterday afternoon, I never got a chance to tell you about the lists.”

“Lists?” The change of subject came too fast for Mary Helen.

“Yes. Remember, I asked Marina for a list of people Joanna interviewed? Well, I got it, plus the list the police asked for, the one of the people the professor had helped. I was going to give them to you, but then . . .” Anne left her sentence unfinished.

Slowly, she rose and faced Mary Helen. “I’ll go to my office and get them, and you two can start with your investigating.”

“Not ‘you two.’ We three,” Mary Helen said. A determined dimple pitted each of her cheeks.

“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you? Why not leave it to the police?” Anne asked.

Detective fever would be too hard to explain. Mary Helen decided to get to the heart of the matter. “Because I’m like you,” she said, “and this whole murder business makes me so damn . . .” The word just shot out. But when it did, it tasted so good she said it again. “This whole murder business makes me so damn mad!”

They were just finishing breakfast when Sister Therese whizzed by, brandishing the
Chronicle
. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to the banner headlines. “This paper is nothing but a scandal sheet.” She rolled her eyes toward Eileen, who, as librarian, always felt obliged to defend the printed word.

“No doubt about it, two murders at our college may be a scandal,” Eileen said, “but no one can deny
they are also news. And you must admit that’s a nice picture of Cecilia.” Even she had to admit later, however, that HOMICIDE HITS HOLY HILL in 72-point did smack a little of the sensational.

After Therese left, Mary Helen took her last swallow of coffee. “Where are the lists?” she whispered.

“My office,” Anne whispered back.

“How about meeting there in twenty minutes?” Mary Helen looked at the other two. “We can go over the lists and decide what to do.”

Both nuns nodded.

Anne put on the kettle for hot water, and the three were just settling around her large desk when the public address system clicked on. “Sister Mary Helen, please report to the Sisters’ Residence parlor, at once,” a tunnel voice announced.