A Novena for Murder (20 page)

Whatever the cause, she had tossed and fidgeted all night long. When she did sleep, she had awakened abruptly from outlandish dreams. The only one
she could remember now was being chased by a group of Portuguese men with slanted eyes. They all brandished statues.

The dim flicker of daylight filled her small bedroom. Quietly, she rose and dressed. The desolate moan of the foghorn from the Gate warned her to put on her trench coat, the one with the fake fur lining.

Noiselessly, she pulled the heavy convent door closed behind her. The horns hadn’t lied. A low, dense fog creeping up from the Bay had swallowed the hill, even dulling the gray-green of the floodlights surrounding the main building. Mary Helen shivered and put her hand up. She could see her hand in front of her face, but little else. Yet the wet mist against her face invigorated her.

This is probably a very foolish thing to do with all that’s gone on around here, she speculated, but it feels so good. She breathed deeply. The cold air made her eyes water. Her nose felt wet.

Walking briskly away from the Sisters’ Residence toward the side path leading to her favorite spot, she could almost hear Sister Therese hiss, “Not only foolish, Sister dear, but downright dangerous.” This morning she didn’t give a tinker’s dam about danger. She needed to clear her head. “Fear of danger is ten times more terrifying than danger itself!” As the shifting fog billowed around her, she hoped whoever said that was correct.

Low clumps of fog had completely swallowed the underbrush which bordered the side of the dirt path. Only an occasional spear of pampas grass pierced
the denseness. It hung on the evergreen. The antiseptic smell of the tall, thin eucalyptus permeated the hillside.

Deliberately, Mary Helen trudged up the pathway, enjoying the steady, rhythmic crunch of her sturdy walking shoes digging into the dirt and gravel. Her mind picked up the beat. The kinks in her brain began to untwist. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Facts, motives, who? Facts, motives, who? Last evening she had told Kate, and that sweet Jack she lived with, about Tony’s accosting her on the path. What had Kate said? “Just a belligerent drunk.” Maybe so. Perhaps she had been wrong about him. An unlikely possibility—but one she had to admit to. Still, there was something cruel in the young man’s eyes. Something about him . . . She could feel that itch begin again in the back of her mind. Maybe it had something to do with the possibility of two murderers.

Halfway up the hill, she stopped to catch her breath. Easy does it, old girl. You’re not as young as you used to be, she reminded herself, leaning her hand against the stout trunk of an evergreen. Head bowed, she examined its rough bark.

Mary Helen bent forward and studied the bark more closely. A slash of dark, metallic green cut across the trunk as though something had scraped against it. What could it be? A car fender, perhaps. It was about the right height. But what in heaven’s name would a car be doing on this narrow road?

With her thumbnail, Mary Helen flicked at the green. A small, incandescent chip stuck under her
fingernail. It was metallic, all right! Dark green and metallic. A dark green car—where had she seen one recently? Mary Helen closed her eyes and jogged her memory. Then with frightening certainty she remembered. The professor’s car, of course! She had heard the screeching tires on the service road and had seen it pull out behind a clump of trees and swerve onto the driveway. Professor Villanueva at the wheel, with another man beside him. Who was the other man? She wasn’t sure. She had been so startled to see the professor that his passenger had simply been a blur! Could it have been his murderer?

Mary Helen removed the chip from under her fingernail and carefully wrapped it in a Kleenex. She’d give it to Kate just as soon as she saw her. This might be an important clue, and she certainly did not want to be accused of withholding evidence.

Almost imperceptibly, Mary Helen became aware of a slow, steady, grinding sound from the footpath. She listened. Who would be out walking this early in the morning? The sound was flat and quiet, as if someone were stealing toward her. It was not the carefree crunch that walking shoes made. Yet, it was rhythmic and definitely moving up the hill. She strained her eyes, but the dense fog blotted out all but a few feet in front of her.

She wanted to call out, but fear constricted her throat. Her dry mouth just wouldn’t form the words. Yesterday’s encounter with Tony flashed through her mind. What if Kate hadn’t arrived just when she had? What might have happened? Would Tony have
hurt her? Could this be Tony coming toward her? Or, if not Tony, maybe the murderer? The unidentified somebody they were all trying to find?

Legs trembling, Mary Helen clung to the gnarled tree trunk and stepped off the path into the underbrush. The prickly juniper scratched her trench coat and snagged her stockings. She crouched down. Her heart thumped in her ears. Breath came in quick, painful gasps.

The sound stopped right above her. Eyes closed, she hugged the side of the hill. All her muscles cramped. Without warning, the shale beneath her left foot gave way. She could feel herself slipping. Desperately, she grasped for the underbrush. Its shallow roots, wet with dripping fog, pulled away from the hillside.

Mary Helen lost her balance. Over and over she rolled. Small rocks and twigs scratched against her legs and hands. She could taste the fine-grained shower of loose rock cascading with her down the hillside.

A flat clearing stopped her fall. She lay there, dazed, as the last shower of dirt clattered in a cloud of dust around her.

“Who is that? Are you hurt?” She heard Anne’s voice call down the hill from the pathway. For a moment, Mary Helen didn’t know if she felt relieved or angry. Whichever, it was better than sickening fear. “Are you all right?” Anne shouted.

“Dear Lord,” Mary Helen bargained before she opened her eyes, “if I’m not dead, or at least
maimed, I promise to start acting like a retired nun.” Even before she propped herself up on her elbows, she knew that neither the Lord nor she believed that.

Mary Helen opened her eyes and blinked. Miraculously, her glasses had not broken. Adjusting them, she watched Anne scurry down the side of the hill in her moccasins. Of course, that was the sound:—Paiute moccasins! Mary Helen lay back on the ground, closed her eyes, and moaned.

“Mary Helen! Are you all right?” A worried Anne squatted down beside her. “Spit,” she said, holding out the hankie she had taken from her car coat pocket. Adroitly, she dabbed at Mary Helen’s cuts and bruises.

“What are you doing up so early?” Mary Helen asked.

“Couldn’t sleep. And you?”

“Same.”

“Can you move everything?” Anne asked.

Slowly, painfully, Mary Helen tested her arms. They moved. Even though her stockings looked like spider webs, the legs underneath seemed to be intact.

Stiffly, she struggled to get up. “Sit still for a while and take deep breaths.” Anne pretzeled into her lotus position beside Mary Helen. “Even if you have no broken bones, you’ve had quite a shock.”

“You can say that again.” Mary Helen ran her tongue across her teeth for a final check.

“How did you happen to tumble?” Anne helped her empty the grit from her shoes.

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” Mary Helen
blinked back involuntary tears. “Thank goodness for this flat clearing, or I could have kept on rolling.” She pressed her hands against the ground. They had begun to shake. Why, she might have been killed! Her life should have flashed before her. It didn’t. In fact, she later admitted to Eileen, everything had happened so quickly that the only prayer she could think of was
Grace before Meals
.

Anne examined the clearing. “Looks like someone has been digging here.” She pointed to the break where the smooth shale had been turned over.

“Tony,” Mary Helen answered flatly, still trying to steady her hands.

“That’s some hole!” Mary Helen followed Anne’s finger as she traced the perimeter of a large rectangle.

Mary Helen picked small pieces of rock from the heels of her hands. Here I am nearly dead, and she’s talking about digging holes. Digging holes! With a sudden crash all her thoughts fell into place. She knew what it was that had been bothering her. Tony and his digging! She had seen him digging a huge hole to root ice plant. Ice plant only takes a shallow ditch! The freshly dug rectangle must be five or six feet long and a couple of feet wide. The size of a grave.

A sickening sensation rose in Mary Helen’s throat. You would need a hole that large to bury someone. She put her hand over her mouth and fought down the urge to be sick. The color must have left her face, because Anne grabbed for her
shoulders. And she had seen Tony digging several times! She retched.

“What is it?” Anne’s hazel eyes were frightened behind her purple-rimmed glasses.

Mary Helen smiled weakly. “Nothing,” she said, trying to sound calm. “Help me up, will you, and let’s get back to the college. I think I need a hot cup of coffee and a nice, long bath.”

“I have some herbal bath oil you can use,” Anne offered, gripping both her hands.

All I need now is to smell like oregano! Mary Helen let Anne pull her to her feet and silently lead her up the hillside toward the path.

“Dear Lord,” Mary Helen prayed silently, holding tight to Anne’s hand, “let it be my imagination—too many mystery novels, or something. It can’t mean more dead bodies. Don’t You know this is the eighth day of Therese’s novena?” She felt a bit presumptuous asking God if He knew what day it was, but they did say there was no such thing as time in eternity. “You are supposed to find the murderer, not more people who have been murdered!”

Panting, Mary Helen reached the path. Her whole body felt like a giant toothache. Small, dim slits of light floated through the dripping fog. Below them, the college was beginning to wake up.

Sister Mary Helen held her watch up to her ear. “Still ticking.” She smiled sheepishly at Eileen. “A watched pot never boils,” Eileen reminded her for the third time. For nearly an hour, the two had been
huddled together sipping their early-morning coffee in the small nook off the kitchen. They were waiting for nine o’clock.

Right after the seven o’clock Sunday Mass, Mary Helen had run into Eileen. Although she had fully intended to keep her suspicions about the body-sized rectangle to herself, she was glad now she’d blurted them out. Misery loves company. One look at Eileen assured her that her friend was every bit as miserable as she was.

Eileen watched Mary Helen turn back her cuff and check her watch yet another time. “For the love of all that’s good and holy, why don’t we just call?” she asked.

“Because I may be wrong. There is no sense disturbing someone so early on a Sunday morning if I’m wrong. And if I’m right, whoever it is will still be there, and none the worse for the wait.”

Eileen’s soft-wrinkled face fell into a frown. “There is a certain kind of logic that defies argument,” she said.

At the first stroke of nine, the two nuns shot from the nook. Clopping down the hallway, they left only the steady clinking of the loose hall tiles behind them.

By the time the college bell tolled the last stroke of nine, the two were in Eileen’s office. Door closed, Mary Helen dialed Kate Murphy.

Inspector Gallagher stopped at the main gate just long enough for the two nuns to climb into the back
seat. Slowly, the car labored up the steep grade.

“Here.” Mary Helen pointed to the narrow dirt path leading off from the paved driveway. Gallagher stopped the car.

“Isn’t this the same path we met you and Tony on yesterday?” Kate turned toward the back seat.

Yes, Mary Helen nodded. Did she catch a hint of disbelief in Kate’s voice? Did Kate think she was making all this up to prove a point?

“And what happened to your hands?” Kate noticed the scrapes. “And is that a scratch on your face?”

“I had a tumble.” Mary Helen was not going to tell her what had really happened. She’d certainly think it was all hysteria!

“Easy, Sisters.” Politely, Gallagher helped them from the car. Opening the trunk, he removed a shovel. “You know, Sisters”—his watery-blue eyes studied them patiently—“in these murder cases, sometimes our imaginations get the best of us. Run wild. We begin to see murders and murderers everywhere.”

So he didn’t believe her, either. Maybe your imagination is unreliable, but mine is tried and true, thank you, Mary Helen thought. Deliberately, she pointed to the rough trunk of the evergreen.

“This morning I also noticed that scrape. Metallic paint, I think. A car, probably. Although I have no idea why a car would be on this footpath.” Adjusting her bifocals, she stared at Gallagher. So much for overworked imagination!

Simultaneously, Kate and Gallagher bent forward
to examine the green slash. “I removed a chip”—she handed the Kleenex to Kate—“and the rectangle I spoke to you about is right down there.”

“You two go sit on the bench,” Kate ordered as she and Gallagher clambered down the embankment. “We’ll let you know the minute we find anything.”

Obediently, the two nuns sat freezing on the cold stone bench. A gray blanket of fog still wrapped the city.

“This is a beautiful view, when you can see it.” Mary Helen tried to make small talk. Funny how people always tried to make small talk when faced with overwhelming situations. She was no exception.

“I think I see the top of City Hall.” Eileen pointed to her left.

“I hope none of the nuns walk out this way.”

“No one in her right mind would walk out here in this cold. If they are doing anything, they are probably having a second cup of good, hot coffee.” Eileen shivered.

“Where’s Anne?”

“She had an appointment with Marina. Apparently it was something quite important. She left right after Mass.”

“Marina! Is Anne alone?”

“Of course she’s alone. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t want to be an alarmist, but we really don’t have any idea who the murderer is.” Or even if there is more than one. She kept that thought to herself. “It could be Marina as well as anyone else,” she said.

Eileen frowned. “I don’t care what you say about Cain and Abel. I just cannot believe Marina would kill her own sister!”