Down the block, Kate had grown up with her parents. They, too, were practicing Catholics. Good, loving people whom she always considered strict. Now, beside Mrs. Johnson, they looked like a pair of libertines, and she thanked God for it!
A thud from the heater snapped Kate out of her reverie. “I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, Mrs. Johnson,” she said, sounding all business.
Marva Johnson blinked as though trying to remember who these people sitting in her living room were.
“I do want to ask you a couple of questions,” Kate said, smiling, “if I could.”
“Ask your questions, then.” Mrs. Johnson crushed the already dead cigarette, lit a fresh one, and put it in the ashtray. Rather than smoking them, she seemed to burn her cigarettes like incense.
“According to Laura, your son received a phone call saying that you were ill and in the emergency room.”
Mrs. Johnson looked astonished. “Ill? Me?”
“Yes. And that is apparently why Greg left the house. To go to the hospital.”
Quick tears flooded Marva Johnson’s eyes. She swallowed, but said nothing.
“I take it you were not ill.” Kate studied the woman’s face.
Still unable to speak, Marva shook her head.
“And so, you did not ask anyone to call Greg for you?”
Mrs. Johnson pressed her lips together. Tears ran down her pale cheeks and splashed onto her cardigan.
“Do you have any idea who would have called your son?”
“No,” she whispered hoarsely. “I don’t even know Greg’s phone number.”
That made sense, Kate thought. Why would he take the chance that she’d call and get Laura on the line?
Mrs. Johnson dug into her sweater pocket for a tissue. “I wasn’t sick,” she said, “and even if I was and had Greg’s number, I wouldn’t call him, and I wouldn’t call Janice either.”
Kate was taken aback. “Why is that, Mrs. Johnson?” she asked.
The woman took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was as if she were summoning up the courage to put her reason into words.
“Because,” she said, all the life gone out of her flat eyes, “I would be afraid that neither one of my children cares enough about me to come.”
“Trip two to the mother from hell,” Gallagher said when they were outside. After the sweltering living room the crisp, wet fog felt wonderful. “I can hardly wait until one of my kids gripes about how tough I was.” Gallagher turned the key in the ignition and, without waiting, flipped on the car heater. The sudden cold blast turned Kate’s legs to gooseflesh.
“Can’t you wait until the motor warms up?” she asked, already knowing the answer. This heater business was an ongoing argument between them.
“By the time we get to the corner, it’ll be hot,” Gallagher said.
Kate gave an exaggerated shiver. That was what he always said. “This is the kind of thing that leads to murder,” she snapped.
Much to her surprise, Gallagher turned the fan down a notch.
“You sick?” she asked.
He shrugged. “That goofball of a lady got to me, I guess.”
“In what way?” Kate wondered if he’d picked up something in the conversation that she’d missed.
“I just can’t help feeling real sorry for those two kids of hers. They are damn lucky they turned out as good as they did. Must have been a hell of a father figure somewhere,” Gallagher needled and waited for Kate to react.
She smiled halfheartedly.
“Imagine living your whole life with a mother whose elevator doesn’t go all the way up.” Gallagher gave a friendly honk to a white-haired lady who looked as if she had fallen asleep at the stop sign. She gave him the finger.
Or parents whose elevator gets stuck halfway up, Kate thought, feeling the hint of heated air on her frozen ankles. Like Jack and me, stuck on this moving business.
Before long their car was warm and cozy. The tires from passing vehicles shot up tiny fountains while their heater fan gave off a steady hum. The two partners fell into a comfortable silence.
All kids are affected by their home life, Kate thought, staring absently at a window washer who seemed totally oblivious of the fog. Little John must be affected by their arguing, although Jack and she tried never to discuss the move while he was present. Kate knew by the way his big, serious baby eyes studied them that he sensed something. Well, tonight, one way or the other, it would stop. She would see to that. After all, home was where the three of them were, together and loving one another. What did a house or a neighborhood or a city matter?
“Do you see what I see?” Gallagher, stopped at a traffic light, pointed.
A gaggle of tiny youngsters bundled up to their eyes in sweaters and knitted caps were being shepherded across Geary Boulevard by a slender woman pushing a stroller. One slightly larger child carried a brown paper sack.
Immediately Kate recognized the group. It was Sheila Atkinson, John’s baby-sitter, and her charges. The precious woolen bundle in the stroller was her John. All she could see was his button nose, red with cold. Happily he banged his rattle on the tray.
Gallagher tooted. Sheila, rounding up her little brood safely on the curb, paused from wiping runny noses to wave.
Little John, recognizing his mother, stood up in the seat, waved his baby rattle at her. “Ma, Ma, Ma,” she heard him call before he went back to his banging. “Qwa, qwa, qwa.” He was on his way to feed the ducks.
For a moment, Kate didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad. Mama versus ducks. Ducks, one; mother, zip. Could a toddler be too well adjusted? Feeling her stomach drop, she forced herself to be realistic. Gallagher and she were on their way to do a door-to-door interrogation of Mrs. Rosen’s neighbors. What would she do if John wailed and begged to be taken along?
“Want to stop?” Gallagher asked.
Of course she did, but she knew better. Sheila was on her morning walk and had her hands full without a stray parent disturbing her schedule. She shook her head.
“Where are they going?” Gallagher asked as the tiny band disappeared down the hill.
“Spreckels Lake. To feed the ducks,” Kate said.
“Looks more like they’re going to the Klondike to feed the penguins.” Gallagher turned the heater up a notch. “Are you warm enough?” he asked after the fact.
“Fine,” Kate mumbled, only half aware of the heat. Gallagher had struck a chord. It was the middle of June, summer for God’s sake, and her baby was bundled up like an Eskimo’s child. A few miles away, he’d be out on a soft green lawn, brown as a berry, running and picking dandelions and chasing butterflies, instead of dripping wet. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe they should move to Cordero where there was sunshine and safety. Tonight she’d tell him that she’d changed her mind. Tonight at dinner, she’d tell him that she was willing, no, happy! to make the move.
His mother would feel betrayed, but that was Jack’s problem. Let him deal with her. Her concern was with her husband and with her son. After what she’d just witnessed at the Johnsons’, she’d do everything she could to surround them both with love.
For the first time, the idea seemed palatable. Even as her head was congratulating her on the common sense, the wisdom, of her decision, she felt the pain in her stomach grow and expand like yeast in warm dough until it threatened to completely smother her heart.
After breakfast, Bob Little was surprised to find Sergeant Eric Loody no longer guarding the entrance to the retreat center. He was even more surprised when he passed the kitchen. The door was flung open, and through the screen he spotted the sergeant settled at a table with Beverly Benton.
Beverly’s broad back was to him and her hips hung over the chair seat like a couple of polyester saddlebags. Across from her, Loody’s large frame bent forward, a cup of coffee cradled in his thick hands.
Their combined bulk somehow made Little think of Gulliver’s Travels. It must be the rarefied air on this hill. He hadn’t
thought about Gulliver for years, if ever, after he escaped Sister Immaculata’s English Lit class. It took him a minute to remember the name of the giants’ land. Brobdingnag! He smiled to himself. Brobdingnag! Those two were a Brobdingnagian sight. Sister Immaculata and her Word Smart Vocabulary drills would be proud!
From the posture, Little knew that Sergeant Loody was absorbed in what the cook was saying. He strained to hear, but the large ceiling fan whirring above the pair served as an automatic scrambler.
Loody must have sensed his presence. All at once, he raised his head. Their eyes met and Loody’s smile twisted into the beginnings of a smirk. Or so it seemed to Little. Unless that annoyingly complacent expression was because the guy’s schnozzola was set high on his face, making him perpetually look down his nose at you.
He can’t help that, Little thought, feeling a surge of sympathy. He smiled and waved.
Loody lumbered to his feet. All the leather on his uniform creaked to attention. He pushed back the screen door. “You need me for something, Bob?” he asked, all spit-and-polish politeness. Yet Little sensed something taunting in those narrow agate eyes.
“No . . . no, thanks, Eric,” Little heard himself stumble. What was it about this man that made him so uncomfortable? “Finish your coffee break,” he said. “Today’s going to be another scorcher. You’ll need all the breaks you can get.” For some reason, his words sounded sarcastic, even to him.
Loody’s face darkened, but he bit back any reply.
Turning slowly in her chair, Beverly viewed Little with a bright metallic stare like a volcano ready to erupt.
That lady is the one who ought to make me squirm, Little thought, giving her his friendliest smile.
Beverly continued to stare. Where had he seen her before? She looked so familiar. Maybe if he interviewed her again, she’d say something to spark his memory.
Loody cleared his throat. “Sergeant, I’ve been doing some nosing around, asking some questions.” His voice was deep and swollen with importance. “I need to talk to you later. Alone. I feel that what I’ve uncovered will prove helpful.”
The pomposity of his stance and the macho arrogance of his tone needled Little. He felt the prickle of sweat on his forehead. It was already too hot to put up with this know-it-all, although he guessed he’d have to sooner or later. With any luck at all, tomorrow Loody would receive another assignment!
Little mopped his face and tried to regain his good humor. “Great, Eric,” he forced himself to say, “but right now I want to talk to the guys from Crime Scene before they get called away. To see if they’ve come up with any admissible evidence.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Little regretted them. He really hadn’t meant them to sound like such a put-down. After all, they were all on the same side.
Loody studied him. His eyes blazed, but he said nothing. The perfect police officer, always in control. “Right!” With an expressionless face, Loody checked his wristwatch. “After lunch, then?”
With a feeling of reprieve, Little agreed to a one-thirty meeting in St. Colette’s gift shop.
“And Miss Benton.” He met her stare.
“Ms.,” she corrected, ice dripping from the capital M.
“Excuse me. Ms. Benton, I need to talk to you, too, before you leave today.”
“I’m not staying past three o’clock.” She swiped at her face with a soiled paper napkin. “It’s too damn hot to fix a big dinner. As far as I’m concerned they’re too pampered anyway. Tonight they can all fend for themselves.”
Little wasn’t sure if she meant the priests, the nuns, the Sheriff’s Department, or all three, nor did he want to know. “Two-thirty, then,” he said pleasantly, “in the gift shop.”
“I told you I was leaving at three,” she said, her fleshy face glowing.
Little gave her his “kill ’em with kindness” smile. “I only have a few questions,” he said, although at the moment he’d be damned if he had any idea what they were.
What the hell is the attraction? Little wondered, watching Sergeant Loody stride across the kitchen and once again take his place opposite an eager Beverly. Whatever she was telling him, Loody was impatient to hear. Would he be privy to it at one-thirty? Would he have to listen to that oversized blowhard recount everything Beverly should be telling him? He caught himself. After all, they were on the same team. Weren’t they?
Little was glad to see Dave Kemp waiting for him outside St. Philomena’s Hall. He was curious to know how Dave felt about Loody. Was this strong aversion strictly his problem? He wanted to ask, but it sounded too much like gossip. He hoped that one of these days, while they were having a beer after work, Kemp would bring it up on his own.
At the far end of the parking lot, the three-member crime scene team stood in a tight group, waiting for them.
“Where the hell have you been?” one of them called out, “we’re melting here.”
“Who’d have thought you guys would work fast?” Kemp quipped. “Find anything?”
Much to Little’s disappointment, the trunks of the priests’ cars revealed very little that the team thought criminal. They had, however, collected bits of hair and fiber, dirt and and leaf samples, small fragments of whatever they hoped might turn up anything. Now they were ready to go.
“No sign of blood from the guy’s head, huh?” Little asked, although he really hadn’t expected there to be. Any perp with an ounce of sense would wrap the victim in a tarp or plastic—anything that could safely be destroyed or disposed of.
Just once, he’d like a nice easy case with a dumb murderer; one where he opened the trunk of a suspect’s vehicle and found the victim’s bloodstains and the murder weapon thrown in for good measure. That only happened on television, and even there, much less often than it once had.
“Find anything else? Something that might be cause for suspicion?” At this point, he’d take any lead.
One of the team laughed. “The only thing I found that could remotely be called suspicious was in”—he consulted his notebook for the name—“in Father Tom Harrington’s trunk.”
Little’s blood quickened. That guy Harrington was awful slick. “Yeah?” He tried not to sound too eager.
“The padre is carrying nearly a case of booze in his trunk. Funny thing, it’s in a box marked ‘Will and Baumer Sanctuary Lamps.’ Hell, he’d be lit up all right!”
Bob Little tried to laugh at the joke, but he was disappointed. The priest could have liquor in his trunk for any number of reasons. And even if he was planning to drink it all himself during retreat, that made him an alcoholic maybe, but not a murderer.
Something had to break soon. He and Terry were planning a few days in the mountains. Terry had promised not to bring work and he wanted this case solved and off his mind so that they could concentrate on each other.
He took off his jacket. Rings of sweat had already formed at his armpits. The blacktop burned right through the soles of his shoes and he felt its heat on the balls of his feet.
One of the deputies shaded his eyes from the full, hot sun. “If you let us go so we can get this stuff analyzed, then we will all have some answers!” He sounded irritable. Little chalked it up to the persistent heat.
“They sure got out of here in a hurry.” Kemp watched the crime scene car round the corner, slow down, then merge onto the road back to their air-conditioned headquarters in Santa Cruz.
For some reason, the fiery red taillights reminded Little of Beverly’s angry stare. Beverly! He shut his eyes in exasperation. He should have asked the team to search her car while they were here. That was stupid! When he’d put in the request, he hadn’t expected her to be at St. Colette’s.
He ran across the parking lot shouting, but their car was already well out of earshot. He’d wait until they got back to headquarters to call. They’d have to come back and, three o’clock or no, Beverly wasn’t going anywhere until he said so.
I’ll deal with Loody first, he thought, wondering if he was still with Beverly.
What was it she was telling him? The thought of that pompous stuffed shirt looking down his nose and filling him in on his murder case. This is my case! Loody should stay the hell out of it. The more Little thought of it, the madder it made him; mad enough to question and requestion everyone connected with this case until he found a motive.
He’d save that for the afternoon. Before it got any hotter, he’d take the whole hillside apart, board by tree if necessary, in search of something, anything that might give him a lead.
“Take off your jacket, Dave,” Little said more roughly than he intended. “And for God’s sake, get rid of that damn bow tie!”
After breakfast Sister Mary Helen settled herself on the wide sundeck that wrapped around the buildings. By scooting her chair back under the eaves, she was able to enjoy the panorama of the valley beyond—and stay out of the direct sun.
The view was full of surprises. She supposed that no matter how many times you took in a view this vast, you’d always discover something new. Like that English holly stretching up between two orange trees. And the bench hidden around the corner, built entirely of black enameled horseshoes. Or those three yellow rosebushes. She hadn’t noticed them before.
She shaded her eyes. In the distance row after row of fir trees shimmered with heat against a cloudless blue sky. At her feet, the cherry-red dahlias planted in redwood tubs along the porch rail had burned and faded since yesterday. Even the sweet William was wilted. No wonder. No one watered them. Undoubtedly, no one even thought about them. Everyone, especially Felicita, who was the most logical waterer, was too involved with death to think of such small bits of life.
“How about a morning trot around the property?” Eileen’s question startled her.
“Trot?” she stared in disbelief. “Have you any notion how long it’s been since I trotted around anything?” Good night nurse! Today she felt as if she could barely stroll. Let alone trot!
Death Goes on Retreat Page 15