Murder Makes a Pilgrimage (23 page)

“So now she has it on film.” Cora smirked. There was a hard glint in her watery blue eyes. “Did you notice that at our dinner on Friday they were barely speaking?”

Mary Helen did remember. She also remembered that Neil had whispered his apology for disturbing her in her room. Was he trying to keep his wife from overhearing? Had he actually been on his way to meet Lisa Springer when he stumbled into their room instead?

She hesitated to encourage Cora. “Surely they’d only had a misunderstanding,” she said. “That happens in the best of families.”

“That little Rita has a very hot temper, which we’ve all seen. Right?”

Mary Helen didn’t deny it. The whole group, after all, had seen Rita’s temper. Cora gloated. A quick breeze ruffled
her waxy yellow hair. She smoothed it down with her fingers, then picked up the heavy shopping bag.

“Heidi, Bootsie, Rita. Why is it that you’ve only named women as the murderer?” Mary Helen asked.

“Because Lisa was a woman that only another woman would kill.” Cora gave a complacent smile.

And like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, Mary Helen thought, in my “owene grece,” she leaves me to “frye.”

As they neared the
jabón
store, Mary Helen spotted Eileen. She was coming out of the building alone, carrying a large black and gold bag. “I guess I won’t need to go in,” Mary Helen said to Cora, pointing to the bag. “Sister Eileen looks as if she shopped for the two of us.”

With a uninterested grunt, Cora headed like iron to a magnet toward the cosmetics store.

Mary Helen, her mind reeling backward and forward through Cora’s conversation, waited on the lawn for her friend.

“Wait until you see this.” Eileen opened her bag. It was filled with three-bar boxes of soap, done up in black and white. “They were on sale. I’ve a bar for each of the nuns, I think. The only catch is we need to give this bar to someone who doesn’t know Spanish.” Eileen pointed to the middle bar in each package. It was clearly marked “Gratis!” on a pale yellow band. “If I’m not mistaken, that means ‘free,’ ” she said.

“How did it go with the DeAngelos?” Mary Helen asked. She was hoping that one of them had accomplished something besides shopping.

“Elusive as all outdoors.” Eileen rolled her eyes. “And they could not get rid of me fast enough. Bootsie bought some cosmetics. I watched her do that. I turned away to look at something, and when I turned back, she and Roger were gone with not so much as a by-your-leave.”

Across the road Mary Helen noticed an empty bench shaded by a lush chestnut tree. Eileen looked tired. She surely was ready to sit down. “Let’s go over there. . . .”

The revving of a motorscooter engine drowned out the rest of her sentence. Several hundred meters down the road two Gypsy women, dressed in somber black dresses, straddled the machine. Brightly colored scarves were wound around their heads like babushkas. At this distance it was impossible to tell their age, although there was a middle-aged thickness about them.

The engine whined, and with a kick of the stand, the driver opened up the throttle. Small whirlwinds of dust and gravel trailed the scooter, which accelerated, sweeping down the road toward them. The women struggled against the velocity for balance.

Eileen gripped Mary Helen’s forearm. The bike was gaining speed. Mary Helen spun in fear. It was roaring directly toward her. This couldn’t be happening. Eileen shrieked as the scooter cut away from the road and onto the grass. Stunned, Mary Helen felt strong, thick fingers ripping at her arm, at her purse, locking her wrists with their hold. The screeching motorscooter shivered with the force.

As she fought against the pull, Mary Helen’s reflexes took over. Slamming, tugging, twisting, she wrenched back her purse, pulling the woman’s torso with it.

The woman lunged. Mary Helen felt fingers dig into her hair and yank. With a quick twist she was thrown to the ground.

Shouting a shrill curse, the driver floored the motor. The scooter rattled, then bolted off the grass, bounced onto the road, and in a burst of speed skimmed away toward the sea.

“Mary Helen.” Eileen, near tears, crouched down beside her.

María José ran across the lawn. “What happened?” She was panting. “Are you two all right?”

Eileen folded down onto the grass. She began to shake. “Two women on a motorscooter tried to run down Mary Helen.” Her brogue was so thick that María José was straining to comprehend.

“What they wanted was my pocketbook.”

“What in the name of God do you have in this thing?” Eileen grabbed the offending purse.

“Are you all right?” María José asked, her voice crackling with tension.

Mary Helen’s neck felt stiff. Her scalp burned. A dull headache was on its way. “I’m really fine,” she said, trying to prove it by smiling. “Where is Officer Zaldo?” she asked. “Maybe we should notify him.”

María José sat down on the grass next to the two nuns. “Our fine Officer Zaldo is in the hotel having his lunch,” she said with disgust.

Sister Mary Helen started to laugh. “Typical,” she said. “Even in Spain you can’t find a policeman when you need one.”

For some reason, which she was never fully able to explain, she crumpled forward, put her hands over her face, and began to cry.

Kate Murphy sat alone at her kitchen table, feeling lonely. There was really no reason for it; at least, that was what she had been telling herself since Jack’s mother had picked up little John about half an hour ago.

Today was to be her day. She had scheduled an eleven o’clock appointment with René to get her hair cut. She fingered the straggly red pieces curling around her neck and over
her ears, trying to remember when she’d last had a haircut. Regardless, she certainly needed one.

At her mother-in-law’s insistence, Kate had also made an appointment to have her fingernails done. She never, or almost never, had her fingernails done. She didn’t really like to have a perfect stranger fiddling with her nails. Why had she allowed herself to be persuaded?

Kate stared morosely into her coffee mug. Jack had made the coffee this morning, and it was so weak that she could make out the bottom of the cup.

“She who must be obeyed,” the mug said. Jack knew that she enjoyed “Rumpole of the Bailey” and Rumpole’s wife, Hilda, to whom the cup referred. Nonetheless, Kate was piqued when she found it with her Christmas presents. The mug, more appropriately, should have gone to Jack’s mother. Loretta Bassetti meant well. Kate knew that. But some days, like this morning, she was hard to take.

The doorbell had rung impatiently, and Loretta bustled into her house before Kate was even dressed.

“Today is Monday,” Loretta announced as though Kate might have forgotten. “You do remember that this is to be your day, and I’m taking my favorite grandchild . . . my only grandchild,” Loretta added, making it sound like a condemnation, “off your hands.”

I like him on my hands, Kate wanted to say, but she knew Loretta would be hurt.

A thin ray of morning sun cut across the tablecloth and landed on John’s empty high chair. A petrified lump of oatmeal still lodged in the corner of its tray. Like the lump in my stomach, Kate thought, going to the sink for a sponge to clean it up.

She was not surprised that Loretta had missed the corner in her hasty cleanup. It was as if she were impatient to whisk the child away.

John’s little mouth turned down when Loretta, not she, began to feed him his mush, and Kate was afraid he was going to cry. But Loretta made choo-choo noises and zigzagged the spoon like a runaway train until both John and Kate stared at her in amazement.

When the spoon finally connected with his mouth, John giggled and Loretta puffed with pride. “He just has to get used to his old Nonie,” she said in a falsetto voice that made the baby giggle again.

Why? Kate wanted to ask, but she knew the reason. Mama Bassetti had set it forth on several occasions, which didn’t stop her from saying it again this morning.

“If you should choose to go back to work”—Jack’s mother used the same tone of voice that she’d use to say, “If you should choose to rob a bank” or “to take drugs”—“you cannot leave this precious baby with just anyone.”

Kate felt her temper rising. She had no intention of leaving John with “just anyone.”

Mama Bassetti’s tirade held no surprises. This morning it ended where it always ended: “A child belongs with family. I’m family. It’s only natural that the precious baby stays with me.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. . . .” Kate protested, as she always did.

“Fair, shmair!” Loretta waved a plump hand as if to dismiss all arguments. “This is not some labor dispute we are talking about. This is my baby!”

“This is
my
baby,” Kate said aloud to the half-empty coffee mug. She fully intended to ask Sister Mary Helen and Sister Eileen for baby-sitter suggestions. Surely they’d know some student or alumna to recommend.

She realized she was running out of time. In just one week she was expected back at work. Why hadn’t she asked them before they went to Spain? She avoided the answer,
which was obvious to any pop psychologist. Some part of her did not want to go back to work, while another part of her did. By not making a decision, she was making one, of sorts.

I really do intend to ask the nuns, she protested to herself. They have a beat on nearly everyone who ever passed through the college’s hallowed halls. Some woman must be into child care. Kate refilled her mug with coffee and sat back down to brood.

What if they were detained in Spain? She didn’t have a good feeling about Spain. Actually she wasn’t feeling good about anything today, period. She couldn’t put a finger on why the nuns in Spain worried her. It was just one of those intuition things. Wouldn’t Gallagher throw a fit if she said that to him!

Kate glanced up at the kitchen clock. Her old partner should be at his desk by now. She’d call to prod him on.

“Homicide,” Gallagher roared into the telephone.

“Not having a good day already, huh?” Kate asked.

“Damn right! Not even noon, and my stomach is killing me! And do you want to know why?”

“No,” Kate said.

Gallagher ignored her. “Your friends in Spain, that’s why.”

“What happened?”

“First thing this morning, Mrs.”—Kate heard him fumbling through the papers on his desk—“Mrs. Mabel—there’s no mister—Springer, mother of the victim, Lisa Springer, was in my office tearing my ear off. She wants the SFPD to get her daughter’s body back for a decent burial.”

Kate’s stomach sank at the thought of having to claim your child’s body. “You can’t blame the poor woman, Denny,” she said.

“I didn’t blame her, Katie-girl, at first. Hell, I felt sorry for her. It’s got to be tough. She’s a skinny little thing, and
she’s raised three kids, single-handed. Worked her butt off. I was only trying to explain that Spain is out of our jurisdiction, that the American Embassy would handle it.

“Then she starts mumbling about being a taxpayer and demanding that we arrest the killer. I’m still patient. Like a saint, if you ask me. I explain again that the crime falls into the jurisdiction of the U.S. government and the Santiago police.

“Now, Mrs. Mabel Springer is as tiny and timid-looking as milk toast, but it turns out, Katie-girl, that she is anything but. She starts hollering in a high, skinny little voice, cussing out everyone, beginning with our esteemed mayor, his board of supervisors, the chief of police, the Department of Public Works, and me.

“Goddamn, if she wasn’t the bereaved mother, I’d have hauled her in. Finally she refuses to budge until I’ve called somebody. Did you ever try to get through to somebody in an embassy?”

Kate admitted that she hadn’t.

“If you did, you’d know it’s easier to get ahold of the Ayatollah Khomeini.”

“He’s dead, Denny.”

“You get my point, Katie-girl. By that time I’m raving as bad as Mabel is.” He let out an exaggerated sigh. “Anyway, why did you call? Are you coming back to help me unravel this mess?”

Kate felt her stomach lunge again. “You know I’m not due back yet. I have a week left to decide. I was just checking in with you to see how things are going with that list of tour members I gave you on—”

“Lousy,” Gallagher burst in. “If I’d quit getting interrupted—”

“Right,” Kate said. “I’ll let you go. It’s just that I don’t have a good feeling about the case.”

“Who does?” she heard Gallagher shout before he slammed down the receiver.

Kate rinsed her cup and set it on the drainboard to dry. Trying to put aside her inexplicable feeling of dread, she went upstairs to run her bath.

A wave of nausea washed over her when she started to dress. She felt hot and sticky. Maybe she was coming down with something. Impossible! she thought, examining her flushed face in the dressing table mirror. She was just warm from the tub. Once she was out in the fresh air, she’d be fine. It was as good an excuse as any, however, to cancel her nail appointment, and she did before she left for René’s.

Impatiently Comisario Ángel Serrano waited all day for a decent time to place a phone call to San Francisco. The tour bus would return from La Toja soon, and he wanted as much information as possible about its occupants before it arrived.

All around him he heard the sounds of his small police force changing shifts. Members of the day shift were clearing off their desks as an even smaller skeleton crew was settling in for the night.

When he thought he could wait no longer, Ángel called Kate Murphy’s number. He let the phone ring twenty times. When no one answered, he cursed himself for delaying so long and slammed down the receiver.

Next, he tried Carlos Fraga.

“Hello,” a man’s voice answered on the second ring. Ángel noted the heavy Spanish accent.

“Señor Carlos Fraga,
por favor
,” he said.

“This is he,” Fraga answered in flawless Spanish. Ángel’s spirits rose. Not only had he reached Pepe’s uncle in America, but they could speak without Ángel’s searching his memory for the unfamiliar English words.

After Ángel explained who he was and why he was calling, he noted that a certain reluctance crept into Fraga’s voice.