A Novena for Murder (13 page)

“What now?” Mary Helen pushed away from the desk.

“Sister Mary Helen, please report to the Sisters’ Residence parlor, at once,” the voice repeated, then added, “Inspector Gallagher will meet you there.”

“Oh, oh,” Anne said. “Do you think he knows about our getting these lists?” She shoved the papers toward the middle of the desk.

“Don’t be silly,” Mary Helen said. “How could he?”

“Shouldn’t we tell the police we want to help?”

“Why bother them with it?” Mary Helen asked, fooling not even herself. “We are doing nothing wrong. We are simply interested citizens helping
our police force. It’s the decent thing to do. After all, it is our duty. Why, Inspector Gallagher will be grateful.”

“Good night, nurse, Mary Helen,” Eileen said. “You had better stop before you begin to believe it yourself.”

“Don’t you think I’m right?” Mary Helen turned toward Eileen.

“Old dear, you don’t want to know what I think,” Eileen said, then added, smiling, “what is it you want us to do while you’re gone?”

“Why don’t you go through the lists? Maybe pick out the names that appear on both papers. We can start to call those people.”

Mary Helen left the two huddled over the desk.

Mary Helen walked quickly down the driveway toward the Sisters’ Residence. She hugged the right edge of the road, leaving the student drivers enough room to speed up the hill. No sense being run down by a ten o’clock scholar, she thought, watching out for the few cars racing up the hill.

She stopped for a moment to admire the formal gardens. The primroses spread an elegant apron of color in front of the main building. They look so perky and well-mannered, she thought; in fact, the whole campus looked so stately and safe it was hard to believe what had happened here. An unmarked police car swished by. The grim faces of the two officers brought her back to reality.

Both Inspectors Gallagher and Murphy were waiting in the parlor when the old nun arrived. Kate smiled warmly when she saw Mary Helen. “Sit down, Sister,” she said, motioning toward an overstuffed chair.

Gallagher squirmed. He seemed too big for the tiny parlor. Finally, he perched on the edge of a straight-backed mahogany chair. “We’d like to ask you a few more questions, Sister,” he said.

“I think I told you everything I know last night,” Mary Helen said, remembering her hour-long session in the sacristy.

“There’s one thing we wondered about.” Kate took out her narrow note pad. “When you reported the body, why didn’t you tell us who it was?”

“I wasn’t really sure,” Mary Helen answered.

“You weren’t sure?” Kate interrupted. “You mean you had never seen the girl before?”

“Not exactly. I saw her once over the side of the hill. She looked like Marina, and so I asked Eileen who she was.”

“Over the side of what hill?”

Reluctantly, Mary Helen explained her special spot to Kate. She thought she glimpsed a look of camaraderie cross the young woman’s face when she mentioned her addiction to “whodunits.”

Why not? Hadn’t she heard that it was a notorious fact that detective stories were the favorite reading of statesmen and college presidents? Why not police inspectors?

“I saw her with Tony, the gardener.”

“What were they doing?” Kate looked up from her notes.

“Kissing—but in my opinion, not too affectionately.”

Gallagher cleared his throat. “Could you explain what you mean, Sister?”

“Yes, Inspector. Tony grabbed her and gave her a very rough kiss. It didn’t look much like love to me. And by the time you are my age, you begin to recognize love when you see it.”

Kate changed the subject. “What did you tell me you were doing just before you found the body?” she asked.

Gallagher turned and frowned at Kate. Mary Helen couldn’t tell if he was surprised or frustrated. In either case, she didn’t blame him. Tony the gardener seemed like an excellent choice of suspect to her. For a moment, she wondered why Kate didn’t pursue the subject. Then it dawned on her. Of course! She had struck a chord. Kate suspected that she had picked up the chemistry between Jack and her. Well, she had.

“What were you doing just before you found the body?” Kate repeated. Her eyes avoided Mary Helen’s.

“I told you. I was looking up Dom Sebastiao in the library.”

“How did you happen to know that the statue was Dom Sebastiao?”

“Leonel told me.” As soon as she mentioned Leonel, Mary Helen knew she had made a mistake. Kate looked up from her notes.

Gallagher rose. Putting his foot on the chair, he bent forward, and his face came close to Mary Helen’s. “When did he tell you about the statue, Sister?”

Sister Mary Helen resisted the temptation to tell him to get his foot off the good mahogany chair. “The day after the professor’s . . .” She hesitated a moment, recalling the scene in the man’s office.

“Skull was bashed in?” Gallagher finished the sentence. “Just like that young girl you found last night?” He took his foot off the chair.

In her mind’s eye, Mary Helen saw the professor again, his cold face wreathed in an ever-widening halo of red. Then, Joanna, legs dangling, her delicate features splattered with dried blood. Both skulls crushed. Were they both killed with a statue? Could Leonel have done it? Was that what Gallagher was getting at? Mary Helen put her hand over her mouth, fighting nausea.

“Sister, are you okay?” Kate slid her arm around the nun’s shoulder. Mary Helen didn’t trust herself to speak. She simply nodded.

“We’re finished for now,” Kate assured her. “You may go. We’ll get in touch with you again, if we need you.”

Stiffly, Mary Helen rose from the chair. Forcing a smile, she bowed toward the two inspectors. Silently, she left the parlor.

“Poor gal,” Kate’s voice floated down the hall behind her. “You’ve got to admit, Denny, she’s feisty, but she’s got plenty of heart.”

“Not the best quality for police work.” Gallagher tried hard to sound tough.

“But top-notch for a nun,” Kate said.

By the time Sister Mary Helen returned to Anne’s office, the college bell was tolling noon. After a quick lunch, the three nuns met again, huddling in the small basement office with door closed, candles lit. Mary Helen’s spirits rose.

“We look for all the world like a scene from the French underground,” Eileen whispered. She snatched the thought right out of Mary Helen’s mind. Anne bit her lower lip.

“This is a wonderful list!” Mary Helen scanned the sheets of paper Eileen handed her.

“The professor didn’t have many on his,” Eileen said, running her finger down the first nine names.

“That’s all he helped?” Mary Helen asked. “Maybe he wasn’t such a philanthropist, after all.”

“The poor devil really wasn’t here very long.” Mary Helen could have counted on Eileen to defend him. Eileen didn’t believe in speaking ill of the dead.

“But he was the head of the department?”

“Actually, we had a terrible upset in the history department several years ago, and had to get in several new people. Villanueva came highly recommended, as I understand it.”

“Then, he wasn’t someone who had worked himself up through the ranks?”

“Not at all.”

“Interesting!” Mary Helen said.

“What do you mean by ‘interesting’?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what Kate Murphy said when I finished my statement last night, and as long as we are into investigating . . .”

Anne’s giggle filled the small office. Quickly, she made a cup of tea and two cups of instant coffee. “Let’s get back to the list,” she said, setting the mugs on the desk.

“Well, Professor Villanueva’s nine people were on Joanna’s list,” Eileen continued. “Then she had another maybe two hundred or so of her own.”

“Now you know as well as I we couldn’t possibly call all those people,” Eileen said, not stopping for breath. “Anne and I were just wondering what to do when I suddenly noticed a small dot by some of the names.” She shoved the papers toward Mary Helen.

Good old Eileen, Mary Helen thought, adjusting her bifocals. Who else would notice a speck that size? All that dusting had come in handy.

“How many with dots?” Mary Helen asked.

“About thirty.”

“Plus the professor’s nine makes thirty-nine. Divided by three equals thirteen phone calls each.”

“Good God, Mary Helen!” Eileen’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t we have enough trouble without putting thirteen anything on a list? I divided the thirty-nine
into three lists, all right. Two have twelve names; one has fifteen.”

“Who gets the fifteen?”

“You do. This investigating business was your idea.”

“We put Kevin Doherty on your list,” Anne said. “I got his phone number from Marina.” She slipped a small piece of scratch paper toward Mary Helen.

Mary Helen had almost forgotten about Kevin Doherty, the young man Joanna had met at the University of San Francisco. The plot was thickening. Had Joanna been with Kevin before she died?

Mary Helen shoved the scrap of paper into her pocket. “Now for the phones,” she said.

“Well, Anne has one here. I have one in my library office and, Mary Helen, you can use the one in the convent.” Eileen had obviously thought the whole thing through.

“Wait a minute, you two,” Anne said, as the older sisters stood to leave. “What am I supposed to say when I get these people?” Apparently, Anne was going along with the idea, but had not yet caught the spirit of the hunt.

“Just ask them about Joanna. When was the last time they saw her—if they knew the professor, et cetera. Play it by ear.”

“You’ll do fine, love. Don’t worry.” Eileen patted her hand.

“I have this awful feeling we shouldn’t be doing this,” Anne said.

“Nonsense,” Mary Helen said. “We owe it to our
college.” At least that’s my press statement if we get caught, she thought, shifting her eyes from Anne’s. “When should we meet back here? Two hours?”

“If you say let’s synchronize our watches, I’ll turn up my toes!” Eileen’s face wrinkled into a grin.

As Sister Mary Helen headed back down the hill toward the convent, she suddenly realized the morning fog had burned off. Completely! Sun flooded the campus. “Shook foil.” The words from Hopkins’s poem flitted through her mind. What was the rest? “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”

The campus and the city below it sparkled under the crisp autumn sun like “shining from shook foil.” How in the world did the poem end? She hadn’t thought of it in years. “The Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

In the sun’s warmth she felt His wings brooding over her, His warm breast. Yes, this murder business would, indeed, have a bright ending. “And if You have half a chance, God,” she prayed earnestly, “please, end it quickly.”

Just before four o’clock, the three nuns reconvened in Anne’s office, their lists marked and dog-eared.

“Well, how did we do?” Mary Helen asked brightly.

Anne had sunk into an overstuffed pillow. Slowly, she was easing her legs into a lotus position. Her list
lay curled on the floor in front of her. Eileen looked peaked. Too much smiling, Mary Helen thought. Eileen was the only person she knew who smiled when she talked on the phone. As a matter of fact, Eileen’s was the only face she remembered that ever looked tired from smiling.

Eileen’s list was spread out neatly on the desk. “I had both Luis and Leonel on my list,” she said. “No sense in calling either of them. I can talk to them both up here. Furthermore, I should let poor Leonel rest. I’m sure he’s had quite enough questions from the police. I couldn’t get any of the others from the professor’s list. For the rest, I got nowhere in a terrible hurry. Some of them knew our professor. Of course, everyone knew Joanna. But no one knew where she had been recently. Quite frankly,” she said, “my phoning was a dismal failure.”

“How about you?” Mary Helen looked toward Anne, who, eyes closed, was rolling her head counterclockwise. “Are you all right?” the old nun asked.

“Fine. Just relaxing my neck muscles.” Mary Helen thought she heard Anne’s neck crack.

“I also drew blanks,” Anne said, “except for one. A Mrs. Rubiero. Professor Villanueva helped her two nephews to emigrate. They lived with her after they arrived. Well, she hasn’t heard from them for a while, and she’s a bit concerned. I couldn’t tell why, however.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t tell why?”

“I couldn’t tell if she thinks something happened
to them, or if she thinks they’re ‘flaky,’ and that’s what’s upsetting her. I made an appointment for you to see her on Saturday.”

“Why me?”

“Because youth appeals to youth, and I figured the opposite might also hold.” Anne opened one eye to check Mary Helen’s reaction.

The older nun chose to ignore the remark. She simply said, “Fine.”

“And you, old dear? Did you get anywhere at all?” Eileen asked.

“Not too far,” Mary Helen said, “but I did pick up a tone in several voices.”

“A tone?”

“Yes, I think something is going on. When I mentioned Professor Villanueva, several of the older folks acted as if they suspected something they were not willing to tell. One woman said she was worried about the young people the man had helped. Do you know what she did when I asked her why?”