A Novena for Murder (7 page)

Everything had been so secure. That is, until her senior year. Pa had sent her to this small Catholic liberal arts college, so she would be prepared to take “a woman’s proper place in the home.”

“So as you’ll make some man a good wife and a good mother to his children,” he had said. Poor Pa. Kate had to laugh. He had deliberately chosen a small, safe, liberal arts college for her. Pa had counted heavily on the “arts.” Little did he realize that his choice would turn his only daughter, the apple of his eye, into a flaming liberal.

She remembered clearly the night when all the resentment she had built up toward her “proper place” burst into rebellion.

Pa and she had had a terrible row in the kitchen. “A regular Donnybrook,” Ma called it later, shaking her head.

“No daughter of mine is going to join the police force,” Pa shouted, his face red with anger. “I’d be the laughing-stock of the entire Department.”

“Oh, yes I am,” she shouted back. “As soon as I graduate.”

“I said, you are not! I forbid it!”

Stubbornly, Kate folded her arms.

Furious, her father had stormed from the kitchen, but not before he turned and shouted, “I wish you were ten years younger. I’d march you right upstairs and wallop a large dose of that stubbornness out of you!”

“Don’t be too hard on the girl, Mick,” Ma called from the sink. “Remember, the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.”

“How can you stand him?” Kate asked her mother.

“Stand him? I love him.” Ma wiped her hands on her crisp apron. “And when you love someone, you can give a little.”

“I’ll never give an inch to any man,” Kate said.

“We’ll see,” Ma said. “In the meantime, Kate, do what you need to do. Pa will come round.”

“I love you, Ma.” Kate kissed her soft cheek.

“But remember, Kathleen, whatever you choose, it’s almost impossible to have your cake and eat it, too.”

So much had happened since that night. Kate had joined the police force. Poor Pa had died suddenly. Heart. Not long after, Ma followed him. Now, Kate was living in the old, peaked wooden house on 34th Avenue with Jack Bassetti. Ma had been wrong. So far, Kate was having her cake and enjoying every bite of it.

“Hi, hon,” she called, turning the key in the front
door. From the entryway, she could see the light in the kitchen.

Eyes closed, lips puckered, Jack stuck his face around the corner of the small entryway. “Kiss me, Kate,” he said in his Charles Boyer accent.

Laughing, Kate pushed the front door shut with her foot. Eyes closed, she kissed Jack loudly on his puckered lips.

Before she could open her eyes, he wrapped her in a bear hug and carried her, feet dangling, into the warm kitchen.

Rocking her back and forth, Jack kissed her neck and ears. “I made spaghetti, salad, and pot roast, my love,” he whispered. “There is Dago red chilling in the fridge. Let us eat dinner, then I will eat you.”

“Put me down, you beast!” Kate pushed against his chest, which was covered with flour. “Why don’t you ever wear an apron?” she complained, dusting the white film off her blue plaid jacket. “And don’t you know red wine should be room temperature?”

“Sixteen hours over a hot stove, and all I get is bitch, bitch, bitch.” Teasing, Jack dabbed his eyes with a pot holder. Turning to the stove, he stirred the rich, red meat sauce bubbling in an iron pot.

“What a day I had, pal.” Kate slipped a butcher apron over her head and stood next to Jack at the stove. She stole a quick peek into the oven. The spicy aroma of Italian pot roast filled the cozy kitchen. She slipped her arm through Jack’s, and rested her head against his shoulder.

“I was on Holy Hill all day. Made me feel a little
sentimental. It was such a nice, sheltered place to go to school.”

“ ‘Was’ is right. That homicide is big news.” Jack took the lid off the pot of boiling pasta and tested one strand.

“Yeah, the history professor. Talked to the old nun that reported the body. Quite a character. You’d enjoy her. And you know what Gallagher asked me as we were leaving the main hall?”

“What?” Jack held up a wooden spoonful of sauce for her to sample. His dark eyes waited for her reaction.

“Delicious. He asked me if I would do him a favor and handle the nun.”

“Why?” Jack put the spoon back into the pot.

“He says we deserve each other. She is quite a formidable lady. Sharp old gal. I like her. Has one of those faces that may not have launched a thousand ships, but she certainly is captain of whatever ship she’s on.

“But you know what I think his reason really is?” Kate kicked off her shoes.

“What?”

“I think he wants to sic the nun on us and our living arrangement. He doesn’t approve, you know.”

“He doesn’t! Hell, neither do I. Neither does my mother, speaking of formidable ladies!”

“Did your mother call again tonight?” Kate stiffened. She dreaded the phone calls from Mama Bassetti. Jack was always more insistent about marriage after one. “Marry the girl, Jackie! Irish is better than
nobody. Start a family before you’re too old!” Jack never said so, but Kate was pretty sure that’s what Mama Bassetti said. And she knew, even if his mother had never called, that he wanted a family, too. She wasn’t sure just how much longer she’d be able to put him off.

Jack turned toward her. He always looked more than his six foot three when he was making a point, she thought. “Kate, why don’t you just marry me?”

Lovingly, Kate reached up and ran one hand through his curly, dark hair. She knew that would distract him. No sense having the argument again and spoiling a perfectly good dinner.

“I love you, Jack,” she whispered, running her long, slim fingers down the back of his neck. “And some day we will get married. But I’m not ready yet.”

Softly, she planted a kiss on his cleft chin, then one on each corner of his wide mouth. “Smile,” she coaxed.

Slowly, Jack’s face softened, and he grinned. Reaching behind, he turned off the gas burners on the old Wedgwood. “The hell with dinner, my love.” He poured them each a tall glass of red wine. “Dinner, we will eat later. Now, I will eat you!”

Playfully, Jack carried Kate into the old-fashioned sun porch off the kitchen. Laughing, they sank into the soft, chintz-covered couch. The Dago red on the kitchen table got warm.

R
ight after breakfast, Sister Mary Helen nabbed Eileen in the Sisters’ Residence. “What are you doing this morning?” she asked, trying to be offhand.

“The same thing I do every morning.” Eileen eyed her suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just hoping you might be able to get away for a couple of hours.”

“And what is it you have in mind?”

“I want someone to go with me to visit Leonel.”

“Oh, poor Leonel.” Eileen’s wrinkled face puckered with compassion. “He’s such a lovely young fellow. I know in my heart there must be some mistake.”

“You’ll come, then?” Mary Helen asked, as if she didn’t already know.

“Of course I’ll come. Just give me a moment to notify my office. Someone can fill in for me. The worst thing that can happen, God knows, is that a few books won’t get straightened.”

She’s almost too easy, Mary Helen thought
affectionately, watching Eileen, round and blue, bustle toward the nearest intercom phone.

“Meet you by the garage,” she called after her friend.

Lifting the keys off the hook by the garage door, Mary Helen automatically began to sign out on the car calendar that hung beside the hook. “S.E. and S.M.H.” She wrote their initials in the tiny square. “Eight a.m. until noon, Hall of Jus . . .” She stopped abruptly. Sister Therese was an avid car-calendar reader. No sense spending an entire lunch answering questions about Leonel. Erasing “Hall of Jus . . .” she boldly printed “OUT.”

Smart move, she congratulated herself, hearing Therese’s nervous footsteps clipping along the parquet corridor toward her.

“I’m on my way to the chapel,” Therese whispered. “Third day of my novena.” She raised three arthritic fingers.

Mary Helen winked. With two of her own fingers, she shot the fleeting Therese a V for victory.

“Here I come,” she heard Eileen call cheerfully down the hallway.

“I’ll warm up the brown car,” Mary Helen called back.

With Eileen firmly planted in the passenger’s seat, Mary Helen pulled out of the garage. The headlights cut a comet of light through the low, dripping fog as she nosed the car down the curved driveway. The fog made small, bright halos around the headlights coming up the hill toward them.

“I can’t see the cars coming in until they’re nearly on top of me,” Mary Helen said, shifting into low.

“You keep an eye on the cars. I’ll keep an eye on the hill.” Eileen moved forward in her seat and crossed her fingers. “Don’t worry, old dear, I’ll let you know if the road disappears.”

“Eileen, if the road disappears, we’ll both know it!” Mary Helen hit the bright beams.

Eileen gasped. “Glory be to God, look!” She pointed over the side of the hill. “I swear by all that is good and holy, someone is crouching in the bushes.”

Stopping the car, Mary Helen checked in the rear view mirror. “Eileen, how could you possibly see someone in the bushes over the side of the hill? We can hardly even see the road.”

Carefully, she backed up and pulled over to the side.

“When you put on that high beam, I know I saw a head in that clump of pampas grass.”

Both nuns climbed out of the brown car. “I know I saw a head,” Eileen repeated, scrutinizing the mound of bluish-green grass. Its long, silvery-white plumes fluttered as cars passed on the opposite side of the road.

“I don’t see a blasted thing,” Mary Helen said. And it’s just as well, she thought, because I don’t know what I’d do if I did.

Eileen shrugged. “Well, I surely don’t see anyone now.” She stomped her feet to keep warm. “Maybe I’m just imagining things because of all that’s gone
on. Besides, what in the world would we do if we actually saw someone?”

“I guess we’d be accused of more pluck than prudence.”

“How does the old saying go—‘Pluck makes luck’?”

Mary Helen pointed to one silky plume growing just above the grade. “It was probably the headlights hitting that.”

“You could be right. Come on in, old dear, before you freeze,” Eileen said, rubbing her hands together and climbing into the passenger seat.

After a final look, Sister Mary Helen slipped behind the steering wheel. She carefully rechecked the rear view mirror, then inched along down the driveway.

The two nuns were silent as they approached the downtown area. From the James Lick Freeway, they could see the dense morning fog beginning to lift. Ahead of them, the large antenna dominating the roof of the Hall of Justice had begun to penetrate the fog.

“Now, look at that.” Eileen pointed to the lone beam of sunlight reflecting off the antenna’s metal disc. “That has to be a good omen.”

“I surely hope you’re right.” Mary Helen was thinking about Leonel. Jailed in a strange country, with a strange language—how frightened and despondent the young man must feel.

After parking their car behind the large, gray
building, the pair hurried along the walkway. Passing the Coroner’s Office, Mary Helen felt queasy. The coroner! The words “felony” and “penitentiary” jumped into her mind. She wondered when or if the man would notice the slit in his seal on the professor’s door. Through the glass she noticed a hurriedly dressed family huddled on the wooden bench. One older woman, her hair still in curlers, cried softly into a wad of Kleenex. Beside her, Mary Helen could feel Eileen begin to pucker.

“Those poor, dear people,” she muttered. “I wonder if there is something we can do to help?”

“Probably not,” Mary Helen said. “Let’s get upstairs and see if we can help poor, dear Leonel.”

A lanky patrolman in a dark-blue serge uniform held the lobby door open for them.

“Coming in, Sisters?” he asked.

“How ever does he know we’re nuns?” Eileen whispered.

“Maybe it has something to do with no makeup, no jewelry, conservative blue suits, and the cross we each have in our lapels.”

Inside, the lobby of the Hall of Justice was a thick stew of people: detectives, patrolmen, visitors, vendors criss-crossed the marble floor. A baby’s shrill cry pierced the din.

Along the far wall, a lonely line of men and women queued behind a cagelike window. “Over there,” Eileen said. Above the small window a sign read JAIL VISITING HOURS, 11 to 2.

“What in heaven’s name do you think we do?”

“Beats me.” Mary Helen checked her wristwatch. “We have plenty of time and absolutely no ‘know-how.’ “She shrugged. “Maybe we should drop in on Inspectors Gallagher and Murphy. They’ll help us out. All we have to do is play a little dumb.”

“And we won’t be fooling, old dear,” Eileen mumbled, following her friend to the large, black wall directory by the elevators.

“Going up?” A clean-cut young man held the elevator door open for them. Once inside, Mary Helen felt dwarfed. She had never realized how tall policemen were. Poor Eileen! Her nose must be a foot below everyone else’s. Eileen, wedged in the corner behind several erect backs, was rolling her eyes toward a peculiar bulge on the side of the conservative gray tweed suit in front of her.

“Gun,” she mouthed.

Mary Helen nodded.

The elevator came to a smooth stop. The two nuns zig-zagged their way out. Turning right, they followed the fourth-floor corridor to room 450.

From the doorway, Mary Helen scanned the cluttered room. It looked nothing like what she had imagined. Brightly colored phones, gray filing cabinets, and computer screens were scattered throughout. Fourteen wooden desks were pushed front to front into seven crowded groups. At each, two neatly groomed detectives faced one another. In dress shirts and ties, with jackets slung over the backs of chairs, they looked, Mary Helen thought,
like insurance agents or realtors. That is, except for the shoulder holster and gun each man wore.

At the far end she spotted one desk with the flag of Ireland stuck in an empty Guinness bottle. On the facing desk was a lovely ceramic dish-garden full of healthy plants: piggy-back, philodendron, a touch of creeping charlie. Mary Helen knew, before she looked at the chairs, that the desk combination must belong to Inspectors Gallagher and Murphy.