Meanwhile, Kemp, keeping out of the way of the forensic team, was making his own notes. “Looks to me like he was killed right here,” he said, his bow tie bouncing on his Adam’s apple.
Little, whose stomach was beginning to settle, wondered if Kemp, too, was having trouble keeping his breakfast down. The blood-soaked ground around the body was a mess of smudged footprints. Little knew that if any one of them proved identifiable, it would undoubtedly belong to one of the religious, who in good faith went to see what they could do for Greg Johnson. What they had managed to do, of course, was to ruin most of the physical evidence.
Little pulled on the end of his mustache. What really puzzled him was what Greg Johnson was doing in the grotto in the first place. He was a big fellow. Who or what could have forced him up here without his yelling or running? Or had he been unconscious? If so, how had someone got that much dead weight up the steep hillside? Was he dealing with Godzilla? Two murderers? A murderer with a wheelbarrow? Shaking his head, Little scouted the area for a hint of tire tracks, and silently cursed all do-gooders.
He was glad to see the coroner’s men enter the grove with the stretcher and the green body bag. They’d get complete reports from the pathologist and the forensic team. If there was anything else to find, those boys would find it. Right now, he needed to get back to the living. One of them, after all, had the real answers.
A bright yellow ribbon cut St. Colette’s off from the rest of the world. The parking lot was overrun with sheriff’s cars and men, in and out of uniform, carrying cases and brown bags for gathering evidence. The coroner’s gray van stood as a silent reminder of where all this was leading.
The nuns and priests who had wandered over from the sundeck watched, mesmerized by all the activity. Only the hot sun beating down on her head and shoulders reminded Mary Helen of the passing of time.
Finally, Monsignor McHugh broke the silence. “We’ve none of us said Mass yet this morning.” He looked toward Felicita, who had just joined the group. “Do you think that we can concelebrate?” he asked.
Felicita dragged herself back from wherever her mind had taken her. “Yes, of course.” She sounded happy to have something else to worry about. “Just let me get the chapel ready.”
“No fuss,” the monsignor called to her fleeting back.
But Mary Helen knew he called in vain. As an obvious expert in the fine art of fussing, Felicita needed some fresh and new things to gnaw on. And the more the better.
The five priests gathered around the stark marble altar in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. Behind them a wall of windows let in all the beauty of the mountainside without any of its heat or bugs.
Directly above the altar a magnificent stained-glass window depicted the Holy Spirit. Seven cinnabar rays shot down from an enormous azure dove hovering with widespread wings over a core of fire that burned and leapt like a torch. The midday sun caught the colors and sent rainbows skittering across the marble floor.
“Come up on the altar with us,” Con McHugh invited.
And although Sister Felicita and Sister Eileen joined the men, Mary Helen declined. Not for any theological reason, but let them guess. Actually, her legs ached. And her hands and knees still burned from her run down the hill. She preferred to sit in the cool wooden pew and let the words and ritual refresh her very drooping spirit. With one finger, she pushed her slipping glasses back onto the bridge of her nose and waited.
“This Mass is offered for the repose of the soul of Greg Johnson,” the monsignor began. He made a few loosely connected remarks about Greg and St. Aloysius Gonzaga, the Jesuit whose feast the Church celebrated on this day and who was the protector of students.
“Not that he did a very good job with this kid,” Ed Moreno quipped irreverently. He’d snatched the thought right out of Mary Helen’s mind.
Appropriately, the monsignor chose the first reading from the Book of Wisdom. “The just man, though he dies early, shall be at rest. For the age that is honorable comes not with the passage of time, nor can it be measured in terms of years. . . .”
Poor boy surely did die early, Mary Helen thought sadly. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight or twenty-nine. She prayed for his family and for Laura.
The monsignor’s deep voice resounded in the still chapel. “Having become perfect in a short while,” he read, “he reached the fullness of a long career; for his soul was pleasing to the Lord, therefore He sped him out of the midst of wickedness.”
Wickedness itself, not God, is what had sped Greg out of his young life, Mary Helen reflected with annoyance. Why blame God when it is human wickedness all along? But whose? she wondered, suddenly. Whose wickedness had destroyed Greg Johnson’s life?
“Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.” The final blessing was shattered by the ringing of the Berkeley ferry bell. Apparently for Beverly, tragedy or no, it was business as usual.
Like automatons, the group filed into St. Jude’s dining room and stood amid the tables in a tense tableau waiting for Beverly to appear.
Much to their obvious relief, it was Detective Sergeant Little who pushed open the swinging door. “I thought my ringing that bell would get you,” he began. His friendly voice bounced off the silent walls.
A thin chuckle ran through the group.
“There’s no law that I know of against eating during a murder investigation.”
Again, they all laughed appreciatively.
“Actually, we might all think better if we’re not hungry. And since Ms. Benton prepared a hot lunch, I suggest we eat it.”
Before Little had finished speaking, Beverly wheeled in a cart laden with platters of steaming spaghetti oozing with meat sauce, baskets of French bread, and bowls of crisp green salad.
The condemned ate a hearty meal, Mary Helen thought, spotting the lemon cups left over from last night’s supper. Now cold, they were arranged on a heavy silver tray.
With no more finesse than she had displayed on the previous evening, Beverly flung things down on the Formica tabletop.
Although Deputy Kemp jumped at one thud, Little continued to smile pleasantly. Nerves of steel, Mary Helen thought, watching him choose a place next to the monsignor.
With the cart unloaded, Beverly frowned at them, then started for the kitchen.
“Ms. Benton,” Little’s voice stopped her. “Please join us. There’s plenty of room. There,” he pointed, “next to Sister Felicita.”
Both women looked as if they’d just been given a death sentence. Felicita was the first to recover her composure. “Surely,” she said, moving over to make additional room.
To Mary Helen’s surprise, Beverly’s face flushed as she lowered herself into the plastic chair. Do I detect shyness? Mary Helen wondered.
The table, clearly designed to seat eight adults comfortably, was quite a squeeze for eleven. Somehow, by pulling chairs up to the corners and straddling the table legs, they managed.
Oddly, no one suggested moving to an adjoining table. Mary Helen wasn’t really sure why. Perhaps it was Little’s unspoken expectation that they all sit together. Or perhaps, like her, no one wanted to miss a moment of the interplay between Little and the group. Not that she’d admit it.
Fascinating chap, that Little! Good night nurse! She was beginning to sound like one of the English thrillers she’d been reading recently.
Regardless, he was a personable young man, yet very commanding. What was the old saying? “An iron hand in a velvet glove”? Or was he more of an “iron fist”? Time would tell.
By way of blessing, the monsignor made a wide, airy sign of the cross over the food, which looked to the untrained eye as if he were shooing flies. “Benedic nos, domine . . .” Apparently distraught, he reverted to Latin.
After a ragged “Amen,” they began to pass plates in almost retreat silence. Lack of elbow room didn’t seem a problem since no one was doing much eating. More food was being shoved around the plates than was being shoved into mouths. Only Little seemed to h
ave an appetite.
He broke his French bread. “Where are you folks from?” he began, as if they were all participants at a convention, meeting casually at the luncheon table.
One by one, he drew the priests into conversation. Soon they were all so relaxed that the monsignor—ostensibly a suspect—not the detective, brought up the subject of murder.
“You know, Bob,” he began. (To Mary Helen’s amazement, they were now all calling him “Bob.”) The monsignor’s handsome face was stony and he played with his unused spoon. “I was wondering about the boy’s mother.”
“Do you know his mother?” Little seemed surprised.
“Yes, indeed. Marva Johnson. She’s one of my parishioners, so to speak. Actually, she lives way out on Geary, not far from the beach. St. Thomas’s parish. I was there, years ago, as an assistant pastor. When I was moved downtown to St. Patrick’s, she switched to that parish.”
“A groupie,” Ed Moreno quipped.
The monsignor’s blue eyes sparked and his cheeks flamed in an unexpected show of temper. Unexpected, that is, by Mary Helen.
“Sorry, Con,” Ed said quickly, “lousy timing.” Obviously, this side of the regal monsignor was well known to Father Moreno.
Clearing his throat, Monsignor McHugh continued. “Marva’s been a widow for years. She lives alone and her only other child, a daughter, moved with her family to Wenatchee.”
Little frowned.
“Washington,” the monsignor added, “where those red Delicious apples grow. The point I am making”— his sonorous voice rose—“is that in my opinion Marva should not receive this news over the phone. If someone could go personally to the house . . .”
Little looked sympathetic. “Gee, I don’t know, Monsignor,” he said in a deceptively bungling way. “I was going to notify the next of kin right after we’d finished here.”
“You haven’t called his mother yet?” Young Mike Denski looked stricken. Obviously, if he were dead, he’d want his mother to be the first to know.
“I didn’t even know he had a mother yet. A living mother, that is,” Little answered patiently.
“Where on Geary does she live?” Eileen, who was being uncustomarily quiet during the meal, perked up. No doubt she had a plan.
As soon as the monsignor gave the address, Mary Helen knew what it was. Marva Johnson lived very close to Kate Murphy. Kate, a San Francisco homicide inspector, was an alumna of Mount St. Francis College and a close friend of the two nuns. Over the years, Mary Helen’s unfortunate stumbles into murder had really cemented that friendship.
Eileen was right. Kate was a good one to break the news to the poor woman, if there was such a thing as a good one to deliver bad news.
“We have a friend in homicide with the San Francisco Police Department,” Eileen began. Mary Helen wondered what the detective’s reaction would be. Little listened with interest. If he was surprised, it didn’t show.
“She lives on Geary too,” Eileen continued. “Quite close to Mrs. Johnson, actually. Maybe if you called Kate Murphy, Detective Sergeant, she could go to the woman’s home. They may even know one another.”
“If you ask me, that’s the perfect solution.” Andy Carr spoke up. Of course, no one had asked him, but as chaplain to the Police Department, he must have felt that the decision was his business.
Little seemed to be considering Eileen’s suggestion. “Let me think about it,” he said, and everyone, including the monsignor, seemed satisfied to wait.
The food was passed around the table a second time and appetites and conversation both began to pick up. Even Beverly let down some of her guard. One of Eileen’s “old sayings from back home” came to Mary Helen. “Men are like bagpipes. No sound comes from them till they’re full.” At this table it was certainly proving true.
Helping himself to more spaghetti, although Mary Helen wondered how he could eat another bite, Ed Moreno told his latest Hillary Rodham Clinton joke. The men laughed uproariously and Mary Helen managed an indulgent smile. If the truth were known, she thought that Hillary jokes were wearing very thin.
Adroitly, Little won their confidence, put them at ease, and knocked down any barriers they might have to being interviewed. Mary Helen would lay odds that this detective with his deceivingly boyish grin was one of the Sheriff’s Department’s leading homicide investigators. He wore the air of a natural confidant, a talent that defied logical explanation, even hers.
On the other hand, his partner, Kemp, did not have such luck. He sat stiffly. Mary Helen watched his cobalt eyes sweep over the priests like searchlights. It was absurd, almost blasphemous, to think that he suspected one of these men. They were upright men, dedicated men, good and holy men.
The monsignor had spent a lifetime of service in the Church. Ed Moreno, quick-witted and always ready for a joke, used his humor to brighten the lives of those of God’s children who had ended up in jail. Tom Harrington, with his trademark crooked smile and that soothing voice, adroitly spread the Gospel message of love and forgiveness. His radio and television shows went out to literally thousands of listeners and viewers all over the country. Most of them received peace and consolation from his words.
Then there was Andy Carr, whose zeal impelled him always to be available for a chaplaincy. Mary Helen wondered if sometimes, late at night, he lay awake, fed up with the entire bunch of organizations he served, and imagined himself free of them all. Mike Denski, with his whole life before him, had solemnly and generously offered it to God’s service.
It was outrageous to imagine one of them as a murderer, yet she was unable to shake Beverly’s earlier taunt. “I wonder which one of you did it? You were the only ones here.”
After all, they were all human. Under pressure, the monsignor had shown his hair-trigger temper. Tom was a bit too showy and glib to be completely genuine; Andy, too eager to please. Mike had all the earmarks of a mama’s boy, and funnyman Ed would be a psychologist’s delight. Did he use humor to cover his real emotions?
None of them was perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but—murderers? “Corruptio optima pessima,” St. Thomas Aquinas had declared centuries ago. “The best things corrupted become the worst.” And no one had yet proved him wrong, Mary Helen thought gloomily.
Looking toward Eileen, she wondered what her friend was thinking. At the moment, Eileen was preoccupied with wiping spaghetti sauce off her chin.
Without warning, the door to St. Jude’s banged as if pulled by a fierce wind. All heads turned toward the entrance where Laura Purcell stood frozen.
Her auburn hair billowed wildly around her face, which was as white as the shorts and halter top she was wearing. Her eyes were wide.
“Sorry, Sergeant.” A red-faced Deputy Foster appeared behind her. “I told her no one was allowed in the crime scene, but while I was explaining that to the occupants of the next vehicle, she jumped out of her car and ran by me.”
Little raised one large hand to the deputy, dismissing the slip up as unavoidable. Foster relaxed. “This is one popular place,” the deputy said, truly amazed. “I had to turn back at least twenty cars already this morning. Seems they came for a retreat, whatever the heck that is.”
Before Detective Sergeant Little could comment, Laura was across the room.
“What happened?” she asked with a breathlessness that sounded as if, indeed, she had been running.
“First, ma’am, may I ask your name?”
Laura told him. “I used to be the dishwasher here,” she said, and threw her arms around the unsuspecting Felicita. “Sister”—her voice was almost a sob—“I was so afraid something had happened to you.”
Felicita, cheeks flaming, straightened her rimless glasses. “Thank you, dear.” She patted the young woman’s hand. “I am just fine.”
“Who is it, then?” Laura’s glance shot around the table. Although it didn’t seem possible, her face lost more of its color. “Is it one of the retreatants?” she asked.
In the empty silence t
hat followed, Mary Helen wondered who should, who would, answer her question.
Beverly narrowed her eyes and Mary Helen could almost hear the wheels of cruelty turning behind her stare. Detective Sergeant Little must have recognized it too.
Unfolding himself from his chair, he took a deep breath and put his arm around the girl’s shoulder. Reassuringly, he walked her out of St. Jude’s.
Laura’s screams reverberated down the mountainside. Mary Helen shivered. Like the keening of a banshee outside the door, she thought, letting us know that death has visited the house and that Detective Sergeant Little has just broken the news.
Inspector Kate Murphy slammed the car door, covered her ears with her coat collar, and waited for her partner, Dennis Gallagher, to come around from the driver’s side. She was freezing. A thick, drizzly fog covered Geary Boulevard all the way from 25th Avenue to the beach. Everything was wet and dark.
It was only two-thirty in the afternoon and already lights shone in windows on both sides of the wide street. The houses with no lights probably had nobody home. A perfect giveaway for after-school burglars, Kate thought, stamping her feet to keep warm.
The two homicide inspectors had left the Hall of Justice in downtown San Francisco, where a weak summer sun had managed finally to burn off the fog. They had driven out into this pea soup and on the way Kate had tried to explain their mission to her partner.
“Detective Sergeant Bob Little from the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department called,” she said.
“Called you? Why would he call you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain,” Kate snapped. This task was going to be difficult enough without getting the needle from Denny.
“Just asking, Katie-girl. No need to bite my head off.”
“Sorry,” she said, and she was. It was not his fault that she found herself in this predicament. “A young man by the name of Gregory Johnson was found murdered in Little’s jurisdiction. It so happens that his mother lives on Geary, very near my house. Little asked if I’d do him a favor and go over and break the news to her in person. It’s not the sort of thing a mother wants to hear over the phone.”
Death Goes on Retreat Page 6