Murder Makes a Pilgrimage (25 page)

“Very good!” Eileen said appreciatively, then took up the litany. “The Bowmans, Cora and Bud.”

María José wrote.

“Successful small business. One grown son in the business now. Did not know Lisa. No apparent motive.”

“Cora, however, thinks a woman did it,” Mary Helen said.

Eileen’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“She told me at La Toja today that she suspects Heidi, Bootsie, and Rita, in that order, of committing the murder.”

“What did she give as a motive?” María José glanced up from her paper.

The
comisario
frowned at his niece. “Ho-Ho! I ask the question, you write.” He turned to Mary Helen. “What did she give as a motive, Sister?”

“Jealousy in all three cases.”

“Hmm.” Ángel hummed to himself thoughtfully.

Mary Helen cleared her throat. She hoped they’d soon call it a night. Everything, including her throat, ached. Especially her head. “The DeAngelos, Bootsie and Roger. He is a
history professor. Did you find out which college?” she asked Eileen.

“Redwood, a small Marin County community college.”

“And Bootsie. We both found her very tight-lipped.”

Ángel frowned at the term.

“Noncommunicative, almost elusive.”

He nodded his understanding.

“Nervous, too, I’d say,” Eileen added, “but a wealth of information on
jabón!
”

Mary Helen closed her eyes, trying to remember whom they’d left out, then popped them open again. Too dangerous, she thought. I’ll drop right off to sleep.

“Let’s not forget Heidi,” Eileen said.

Mary Helen nearly had.

“The girl is quite distressed about her mother’s reaction to the murder,” Eileen began. “She makes no pretense about liking Lisa. That is, liking her recently. Yet she didn’t seem to hate her enough to kill her.”

“And let’s not forget Pepe.” Mary Helen was glad to reach the end of the list. Actually they had tried to pump María José, but under the circumstances it seemed foolish to say so.

“In popular parlance, Pepe is what you call a flake.”

The
comisario
looked puzzled again, and María José translated. “His uncle concurs,” Ángel said, beaming like an aging cherub.

María José glanced at her notes. “I know that Cora named the three women on the tour as having a motive. But doesn’t strangulation seem more like a man’s crime than a woman’s?” She put down her pencil and flexed her fingers to relax them.

Her uncle shrugged. “What makes you say that?”

“Because a woman would have to be very strong to hold down her victim, especially a young, strong one.”

“Are you telling me that women are the weaker sex?” he baited her.

The young woman’s eyes blazed. “Of course not,” she snapped. “It just seems physically more suitable for a man.”

Quiet settled over the manager’s office like the night-cloth over Sister Ángela’s canary cage, leaving each one to brood on his or her own thoughts.

“Where does all that information leave us?” Ángel broke into the silence.

“With the same basic questions and no answers,” Mary Helen said. Oh, to be upstairs in bed!

“Perhaps things will be clearer after a good night’s sleep.” Eileen sounded hopeful.

A sharp rap on the door startled them all. Zaldo was back with a sheaf of papers for the
comisario
.

“
Gracias
, Esteban.” Ángel took the papers and, once again, dismissed the officer.

“Now that we have all decided to collaborate”—his eyes twinkled as though he had made a great joke—“let me share some information from Dr. Morales’s report on the cause of death.” He scanned the papers.

With her last spurt of energy, Mary Helen perked up.

“According to the doctor,” Ángel began, “the victim’s head hit the corner of the crypt. Hmm . . . she was rendered unconscious. Then strangled. So, Ho-Ho, we could have here an equal opportunity murderer.”

María José refused to bite.

“The weapon, garrote, tool, whatever you choose to call it, is as yet unidentified. The bruise it made is about two inches wide in the center, narrower at each end, and it is perhaps padded. Does anything come to mind?” he asked after a silence.

At the moment the only padded thing that came to Mary Helen’s mind was her pillow.

“It is a strange bruise for a strangulation,” he said.

“Sister Mary Helen has a strange bruise on her lower back,” Eileen blurted out. Mary Helen could not believe her ears.

Ángel reddened. “What sort of bruise do you have, Sister?” He avoided her eyes.

“Three bruises about the size of American dimes.” Eileen riffled quickly and apparently unsuccessfully through her traveler’s dictionary trying to find the Spanish equivalent.

“Put that thing away,” Mary Helen snarled, then smiled sweetly at the
comisario
. “I’m sure they are from that tower business,” she mumbled, not sure what she’d do if he asked to see them. “From someone’s knuckle or thumb perhaps.”

“Or a ring! A large, round ring stone!” María José’s eyes danced. “Maybe our killer is a woman after all.”

Unexpectedly a gentle rain began to patter against the window.

“Enough for tonight,” Ángel said, levering himself up from his chair.

Mary Helen heard his stomach growl.

María José smirked. “Is Tía Julietta saving your supper?” she asked.

Ignoring her, Ángel bundled himself into his raincoat and checked his watch. “I will meet with you all here tomorrow morning at ten.” He glanced around to see if all agreed. Anyone who didn’t was too tired to object. “Sleep well,” he called. “Tomorrow with fresh minds things will be clearer.”

From their bedroom window Mary Helen watched Ángel and María José cross the nearly vacant Plaza del Obradoiro together. Halfway across, she brushed his cheek with a kiss, and without many words, they headed in opposite directions.

The steady rain glistened in the floodlights and washed
down the ancient stone buildings, the cars, and the pedestrians alike. It cleanses the whole world, Mary Helen thought as she watched a single drop slither down the glass pane.

“What are you looking at?” Eileen asked from her bed.

“Nothing. Just watching the rain. ‘The silver hosannas of rain.’ Do you remember where that’s from?”

Eileen grunted a no. “You must be asleep on your feet,” she said. “Get into bed, old dear, before you catch your death.”

The rainwater made a low, steady trickle against the stones. Mary Helen leaned out to pull shut the window. A cough floated up from the floor below. Someone else was watching the rain.

Déjà vu! Mary Helen thought. Like last Friday night when all this started, when she’d thought she saw someone on the cathedral steps. She squinted into the watery darkness. Tonight, strain as she might, she was positive that those cathedral steps were completely deserted.

The ragged ring of the telephone woke Sister Mary Helen. She sat up quickly. Too quickly. The blunt edge of an ax split her head, or at least that was how it felt.

The second ring woke Eileen. “Who in the world?” she said, fumbling toward the phone.

Mary Helen fell back against her pillow and listened to the one-sided conversation. “Good morning to you, Comisario . . . Yes . . . Oh? . . . Yes . . . Fine.”

“What was that all about?” With one eye open, she watched Eileen crawl back under her covers.

“That was the
comisario
. He forgot to tell us that today is a national holiday in Spain.”

Mary Helen tried to remember the date, but the effort only made her head ache more.

“It’s the Feast of
Nuestra Señora del Pilar
,” Eileen said. Her accent was improving. A few more weeks and she’ll be able to pass for a native, Mary Helen thought, then wished she hadn’t. The idea of being detained in Spain sent her stomach into a spasm.

“Our Lady of the Pillar,” Eileen translated in a sleepy voice. “If I remember correctly, there’s a shrine in her honor in Saragossa with a miraculous statue of the Virgin. Tradition says that St. James himself built the original shrine at the
request of the Blessed Virgin.” Eileen’s brow puckered. “So you see it’s all of a piece.”

“What’s the ‘pillar’ part about?”

The questions slowed Eileen down, but not for long. “The statue sits on a pillar, hence the name,” she said with so much confidence that Mary Helen believed her.

“And the whole country takes the day off?” she asked.

Eileen yawned. “Yes, and isn’t that grand? The
comisario
called to tell us that there is a special Mass in the cathedral at ten. They will use
el botafumeiro
to incense the church, and he thinks it is something we ought to see. What I think is that he’ll be there and wants to keep an eye on us. Anyway, he’ll meet us here after Mass, which should be about eleven-thirty.”

“What time is it now?” Mary Helen asked, but Eileen had fallen back to sleep. With superhuman effort, Mary Helen raised her head and studied the clock. Thank God, she thought, sinking into her pillows. We have another hour.

The nuns were the last of their group to arrive at the cathedral. When María José saw them, she waved to them to join the others at the foot of a gloriously carved pillar. Like a mother bird, she gathered them in a tight little nest around her.

Mary Helen shivered. Cold and dampness emanated from the stone. When María José began to speak, her breath came out in little clouds.

“Today,
peregrinos
, you will witness one of Santiago’s unique sights,” she said. Her dark eyes danced like a child’s as she began her narrative.

By contrast the
peregrinos
themselves looked as pale and stony as the statues surrounding them. Actually the faces on the statues showed more animation.

The cathedral filled quickly. An odd mixture of the faithful and the curious spilled through the Pórtico de la Gloria into the main body. Sister Mary Helen strained to hear María José’s voice, which was nearly drowned out by a Japanese tour guide, red flag aloft, giving her spiel.

“Speak up, please.” Roger DeÁngelo’s eyes flicked around the group, then returned to the speck he was studying on the granite column.

Although María José frowned with annoyance at the request, she did raise her voice. “
El botafumeiro
is a huge censer that dates back to the Middle Ages,” she shouted over the Japanese guide, who turned up her volume, too. “It began because hundreds of pilgrims slept in the cathedral, and they smelled. It perfumed the great naves and purified the air. Incense was thought to be a germ killer.

“
El botafumeiro
weighs fifty-four kilos—one hundred and nineteen pounds,” she translated quickly. “And it stands this high.”

Mary Helen peered around Cora’s shoulder to see where María José’s hand was. She held it about three feet from the ground.

“That’s what you call a king-size incense burner,” Eileen whispered. “Just think what our Sister Anne could do with it.”

Mary Helen grimaced at the thought.

“Eight men called
tiraboleiros
swing the censer.” María José toned down her voice as if she were about to confide a secret that she didn’t want the Japanese to hear. “When Alfonso the Third was king, the bishop of Santiago was accused by three men of our village of nefarious crimes too ugly to be announced.”

“Nefarious?” Heidi wrinkled her nose.

“Vicious,” Eileen whispered, “very wicked.”

Like any good gossip, María José paused to let her listeners’
imaginations run wild. “The king,” she said as confidentially as if it had happened last week, “ordered the bishop thrown to a wild bull. Of course, the bull knew our bishop was innocent, so instead of charging the good man, the bull placed his head in the bishop’s hands. The king was furious. ‘You and all your offspring,’ he thundered at the accusers, ‘are sentenced to perpetual servitude in the cathedral which you have shamed.’ It is the descendants of these three families who still swing
el botafumeiro
.”

Head held high, María José inched her charges down a crowded side aisle toward the main altar. The organ thundered. A fugue soared into the arches, filling the gigantic nave and drowning out any attempt at conversation.

As the group approached the sanctuary, someone touched Mary Helen’s forearm. “Good morning, Sister.” It was Ángel Serrano. He was sitting just behind what looked like a pewful of dignitaries. “How are you this morning?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said, anxious not to lose the others in the packed crowd. Their leader had apparently hit a small bottleneck, so Mary Helen had time for a quick introduction to Serrano’s wife. Small, round Julietta was a woman with a friendly face. The kind of person you’d enjoy having a cup of coffee with, Mary Helen thought.

“This is my sister, Pilar.” Ángel pointed to the woman on the other side of Julietta. Thin and wiry, Pilar was the antithesis of her brother. An astonishingly large white orchid was pinned to her angular shoulder.

“It is my sister’s birthday and feast day,” Ángel said by way of explanation.

The crowd loosened, and Mary Helen, afraid that she would lose sight of the back in front of her, waved a hasty good-bye.

“Quickly, stand here.” María José ushered them into a
space just behind the altar rail and beneath the ornate pulpit. The Japanese tourists bunched in beside them. Despite their objections, the two nuns were shuffled to the front of the group. “You are shorter than most of us,” Bootsie said. “We can see over you.”

“And we can see what to do,” Bud Bowman said, which Mary Helen thought was probably closer to the truth.

With a long, loud chord, the organ signaled the procession. Amid the scuffing of wooden benches and kneelers, the throng rose to greet it.

First came the altar boys in lacy surplices, carrying tall candles in silver candlesticks. Behind them a steady stream of priests in shimmering brocade chasubles decorated with the cockleshell of St. James flowed down the center aisle. They were followed by the monsignors in white and gold and magenta and more delicately embroidered shells.