Murder Makes a Pilgrimage (11 page)

His eyes were quite articulate. Mary Helen wondered if his speech would be as clear. Fortunately for all concerned, Comisario Serrano spoke perfect English with a hint of a British accent that he might very well have acquired at Oxford.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, taking time to smile and nod his head toward each member of the tourist party.

Putting the names with the faces, of course! Mary Helen nodded back and noticed the man register momentary shock when he saw María José.

“My deputy, Señor Zaldo, tells me that he managed to round you all up despite the early hour, and if Señor Nunez will kindly confirm the fact . . .” He glanced toward the extremely pale Pepe standing between the DeAngelos. When
Pepe returned a weak nod, the
comisario
continued. “Good! Good! Now we can get on with it.”

“Get on with what?” Bud Bowman exploded.

“If you will allow me, señor.” Angel Serrano’s voice was most congenial. “Señor Nunez, I am told, informed you that one of your group, Miss Lisa Springer, met with a most unfortunate accident.” He paused.

For effect, Mary Helen thought.

“On further investigation, we fear that it was not an accident after all but that Miss Springer was murdered.”

“You don’t think that one of us did it, do you?” This time it was Cora.

A loud groan from Heidi cut off anything else Cora was going to say. “How could this happen?” Heidi wailed miserably. “My mother’ll kill me!” As soon as the words left her mouth, Heidi broke into fresh sobbing.

Dr. Fong, looking more helpless than a doctor should, even if he was a dentist, put his hand on her shoulder.

“Cora—Mrs. Bowman, that is—has a point, Comisario.” Roger DeAngelo stepped to the center of the carpet, rather like the group spokesperson. “Wouldn’t you be better off going after the scoundrel who did this?”

Ever supportive, Bootsie DeAngelo moved beside her husband. “Maybe it was one of those awful muggers, Inspector.” Bootsie’s voice was uncharacteristically shrill. “Did you think of that? Did that poor woman have her purse with her when you found her?” Her face was still as white and taut as it had been at breakfast.

“Thank you, madame, for your suggestion.” Comisario Ángel Serrano bowed courteously. “We will, of course, give this possibility some thought, but at present I will have to ask each of you where you were last night and whether or not you noticed anything unusual.”

An uncomfortable silence followed his announcement.
Mary Helen noticed Roger DeAngelo stiffen. An electric glance shot between the Fongs. María José’s flashing eyes turned on Pepe. Cora seemed to gloat as if somehow she’d finally discovered what last night’s commotion was all about.

Mary Helen herself squirmed, wondering how much of what she had seen and heard during the night was relevant to the case.

Comisario Serrano wasn’t missing any of it. “So, if you will kindly make yourselves comfortable, I have arranged for the hotel to provide some breakfast. Señor Zaldo will escort you, one at a time, to a temporary office I have set up.

“María José Gómez, you may come with me now, please,” he said in a voice that gave nothing away.

Within minutes a small army of waiters in stiff white jackets marched into the room, carrying silver coffeepots, cockleshell bowls filled with fruit and eggs, heaping baskets of rolls, butter, and jam. The feast, which they set on the enormous desk, was very like the one Mary Helen had seen in the
hostal
dining room barely an hour before.

Without warning she felt dizzy. So much had happened in such a short span. Life is so fragile, she mused, sinking into the nearest chair. A cloud of dust rose around her. A waiter handed her a cup of coffee.

Before long the pungent aroma of strong coffee, mingled with the smell of dust, became cloying. She wondered why María José hadn’t returned. She wished someone would open a window and was very glad to hear Officer Zaldo call her name. The sooner she got out of this room, regardless of the reason, the better.

With almost medieval courtesy, Ángel Serrano ushered her into what looked like a manager’s office and made sure that she was seated comfortably.

“The manager has been so kind as to lend me his accommodations,” he said, as if to answer her question. His bright
eyes sparkled. “Now, Sister.” He pulled an overstuffed chair from behind the desk and settled himself.

Mary Helen noticed that only his toes touched the floor. Not that that had anything to do with anything, she thought. Quickly, and as unemotionally as possible, she related the story where the story began, with Señor Fraga and his Patio Español.

In spite of her best efforts, her voice quivered when she described her discovery of Lisa’s body, the smeared casket, the curls clotted with blood, the swollen, discolored face, and the thick welt across her throat.

All at once her hands felt cold. Despite the warmth of the room, her teeth began to chatter. “I’m sorry, Comisario.” Mary Helen clenched her teeth in an effort to control them.

Comisario Serrano pushed up from his chair and walked to the door. Almost miraculously he produced a snifter of brandy. “Sip this, Sister,” he said. “You are in shock, of course, and with good reason. You are undoubtedly not used to this kind of thing.”

With a nod of thanks, Mary Helen took a swallow. It burned all the way down. If you only knew, she thought, feeling unexpected tears sting her eyes. Not that one ever gets used to “this kind of thing,” as he put it. She rummaged in her sweater pocket for a tissue.

“Shock,” Comisario Serrano repeated. “You have had quite a shock!”

When Mary Helen pulled her hand from her sweater pocket holding a bloodstained tissue, the
comisario
looked a little shocked, too.

“We can expect to find your fingerprints in the crypt?” he asked matter-of-factly.

Nodding sheepishly, Mary Helen handed the tissue to him and dug in her pocket for another. Wiping her eyes, she watched him turn the soiled tissue over in his hand.

“And last night, Sister,” he said, studying her face, “what did you do last night?”

Mary Helen recounted her evening, including being unable to sleep, hearing people arguing in the hallway, watching Pepe and María José quarrel in the plaza, and finally hearing the early-morning revelers in the hallway.

She was glad that was all she’d heard since she was afraid that she was beginning to sound like an inveterate eavesdropper. Comisario Serrano didn’t seem to care about her manners. “Anything else?” he pressed.

Feeling foolish, she told him about looking out onto the deserted Plaza del Obradoiro and thinking that she saw a figure standing on the cathedral steps.

The
comisario
fell silent.

“Surely, it was just a shadow,” Mary Helen ventured. “You know how night shadows can be, and it was pouring rain,” she added, hoping that he wouldn’t think that she was an old lady given to flights of fancy. “Nobody stands that still in the pouring rain.”

“Unless the person does not want to be noticed, dear Sister.”

“Who in the world would care about being seen on the cathedral steps?”

Even before his dark eyes pinned her like sharp needles, she knew the answer. “Our killer, Sister, that is who.”

Although the office now seemed stifling, a shiver ran down Mary Helen’s spine. Had she actually seen Lisa’s murderer?

“Whom have you told about this?” The sharpness in the
comisario
’s voice startled her.

She ransacked her memory. “No one really.”

“Not Pepe Nunez?”

Mary Helen shook her head.

“Not even your traveling companion?”

Again Mary Helen shook her head. She really had not had the time or the opportunity to talk to Eileen, not that Eileen would repeat it.

“Do not tell anyone, Sister, not even Sister Eileen.”

Mary Helen was aware that the
comisario
had not consulted a list but knew Eileen’s name right off. This fellow is going to be interesting to watch, she thought, wondering absently how long it would take him to discover her call to Kate Murphy and whether or not she ought to tell him first.

Before she could decide, he rose from his seat, bowed, and ushered her toward the door. “Tell no one, Sister. Do you understand?” He peered at her.

Of course, she understood! Mary Helen tried to hide her annoyance. His words were abundantly clear. Perhaps he did think that age made her a bit senile in the memory department.

“I won’t tell anyone, Comisario,” she said, “not even Sister Eileen.” Her cheeks flushed as the reason for his concern erupted in her mind and sent a wave of panic through her body. If I saw the killer, perhaps the killer saw me. If he knows that I saw him and that I told someone else about him, then we are both . . . She dreaded drawing the logical conclusion.

“Good show!” the
comisario
said, saving her from it. With a deep and final bow, he escorted her from the room.

Back in the small, musty catchall room, the morning dragged on. Breakfast lay virtually untouched. As each tour member left, then returned, the mood in the room seemed to darken. Not even opening the thick drapes to let in the crisp October sunshine helped.

Mary Helen drank an ocean of coffee. She looked around in vain for a magazine, even a Spanish one, to take
her mind off the experience of finding Lisa. She wished crazily that she had brought along her paperback. In it, the murders were all make-believe and the villain caught in 270 pages. She attempted to write something, anything, in her travel diary, but the only word that came to her mind was
horrible
.

The catchall room was unnaturally quiet. With each passing hour suspicion and distrust grew and spread. When the group realized that María José had failed to return, tendrils of fear coiled around them.

In the prevailing tension Bootsie DeAngelo paced nervously while her husband made quite a show of reading and rereading the Spanish titles on the row upon row of bookshelves. The Fongs made every effort to avoid each other, not easy in a room this small. When their eyes did meet, Neil Fong looked away quickly. And no wonder, Mary Helen thought, watching Rita. The anger in her cold, dark, almond-shaped eyes would freeze a pillar.

Finally the
comisario
called for Sister Eileen. Heidi curled up in one of the heavy velvet chairs. Before long she was asleep. Now that Fong’s vigil over the girl seemed unnecessary, he joined his wife. Despite the obvious coolness between them, they sat close together like a small, safe unit in a hostile camp.

Mary Helen wished that she could get Heidi alone, but there didn’t seem to be much of a chance. Not now anyway. She wanted to ask her about her unfinished remark during last night’s dinner. “You’ll never guess who Lisa was with . . .” Heidi had said, and she was probably right. Mary Helen would never guess, although from the strain in the room, she put her money on Dr. Neil Fong.

Mary Helen checked her wristwatch. Eileen had been with Comisario Serrano for nearly twenty minutes. She wondered what was taking so long. After all, Eileen had been fast asleep the entire night. Mary Helen could vouch for that. She
hoped that her friend wasn’t filling him full of her “old sayings from back home,” as she was wont to do when she was in a pinch.

With a swish the door swung open, and Eileen, her face flushed, entered. Before she was settled in her seat, the
comisario
called for Pepe. He was the last. Their ordeal was nearly over.

“How did it go?” Mary Helen asked in a low whisper.

“Fine, old dear, just fine.” Eileen’s brogue was unusually thick. Something had excited her. “That Ángel is quite the character.” She rolled her eyes heavenward.

“Ángel, is it?” Mary Helen asked. “And what took you so long?”

“Nothing really. We were just talking about Ireland. He spent several summers there when he was a lad going to Oxford. He knew many of the haunts I knew, and lo and behold, he even knew my third cousin on my mother’s side, Mary Agnes Glynn, from Ballygloonen. They went to a dance or two together.” Eileen blushed. “He said he remembers that Mary Agnes—Aggie, we called her—was quite a looker.”

“I am waiting out here, sweating through your interrogation, and you are in there talking about your mother’s third cousin?” Mary Helen felt her blood pressure rising.

“Who, by the way, married quite well, did our Aggie. I told the
comisario
that we have an old saying back home: ‘Many an Irish property was increased by the lace of a daughter’s petticoat.’ ”

Mary Helen groaned, but Eileen went on as though she hadn’t noticed. “It is, no doubt, his technique. Making you feel at ease like that. There’s another old saying back home—”

Mary Helen glared. Unabashed, Eileen smiled. “Yes, indeed. ‘You must crack the nuts before you can eat the kernels.’ ”

“You are no nut at all.” Mary Helen lowered her voice and resisted the temptation to rephrase her last remark. “You were asleep.”

“How did the
comisario
know?”

“He could have asked you or me.”

“Entirely too simple,” Eileen said, and smiled over at Bud Bowman.

“Anyone want to play cards?” Bud asked in an attempt, no doubt, to get something going, even a conversation. “Pinochle, maybe?” His eyes roamed the room like a friendly Great Dane looking for a playmate.

Mary Helen was considering taking up his offer, more as an act of charity than anything else, when Bootsie DeAngelo exploded.

“How could you, you cretin? How could you suggest cards at a time like this?” she shouted. Then, her nerves obviously reaching their limit, she burst into high hiccuping sobs. Almost a keening, Mary Helen thought.

Bud’s face fell.

“Who are you calling a cretin?” It was Cora. Any veneer of the friendship they had enjoyed at breakfast vanished. She rose like a mother bear to protect her own. Florid-faced, she stumbled for an epithet to return to Bootsie. “You—you—you fish-eyed old bag!” she spit out in frustration.

Bootsie stopped in mid-hiccup. An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Cora was right. Bootsie’s blue eyes did have a fishy coldness to them, and although she was not strictly elderly, she was much older than she tried to appear.