As Jim turned onto the ramp that led to the Tobin Bridge, he pointed out Old Ironsides, a tall ship permanently anchored in Boston harbor. “Pretty, isn't she, all lighted up like that?”
Olympia turned to look. “Margaret told me that one day he was probably going to fall down the stairs and kill himself, and he wouldn't be missed. That's not a murder threat.”
Jim signaled for a right and slipped onto an off-ramp and followed the signs toward downtown Charlestown. “Not a murder threat, but most definitely a motive. Margaret is the soul of goodness, but she did go back to the house to get some clothes and personal things the morning of the fire. Add to that, I have absolutely no idea what Bridget did or where she went after we talked on the morning of Good Friday, and for that matter, where Eileen was keeping herself. Nobody's saying much about her right now, but she had no use for her father either.”
“But did she hate him enough to kill him?”
“She was pretty angry with him, Olympia. She moved out as soon as she could. The fact that they were all in the vicinity and unobserved when the fire started could be considered suspicious. And then there's the issue of the lighter fluid cans under his chair.”
“I see what you mean, said Olympia. “Does Margaret know I'm coming with you?”
“No, but I know she'll be glad to see you. Poor woman, she needs all the help and support she can get right now.”
Jim downshifted, pulled over, and shut off the engine. “They're in that big old Victorian across the street.”
As they walked up the path, Olympia could see Sister Myra, Margaret and Eileen standing in the open doorway
“Where's Bridget Mary?” Margaret was standing on tiptoe trying to look past the two of them. “What's Professor Brown doing here? Oh, no, something's happened to my baby. Father?” Her voice had risen to a piercing wail.
Sister Myra instinctively put her arm around her shoulders.
“Bridget's in the hospital, Margaret. Olympia and I have been to see her. Let's go in and sit down, and I'll tell you what's happened.”
Sister Myra shepherded them all into the kitchen. Olympia could smell apples and cinnamon and looked around.
“I know it's late, but I made a coffee cake. Comfort food.”
Margaret, her face puffy from weeping, shook her head and waved away the solicitous nun. “No, thank you, Sister. Just tell me about my Bridget.”
Jim took hold of both her hands. “There's no easy way to say this, Margaret. Bridget tried to kill herself.”
Margaret gasped in horror. “Father, I have to go to her, now! I'll go get my coat.”
“It's not a good idea, Margaret. She's alive, and she's in the ICU at Cambridge City Hospital. She hasn't regained consciousness yet, but she is holding her own. I told you, Olympia and I just came from there. There's nothing you can do right now.”
Margaret covered her face with her hands and began rocking back and forth. “She's not going to … I have to see my baby.”
Olympia looked at the woman, wondering how much one human being could endure and wishing she could be more help. “She's in grave condition, Margaret, but she's alive. One of us will get you there first thing tomorrow, I promise, but I want to keep the police away from all of you for as long as I can. ”
“Police? What do you mean? Father?”
“Olympia is saying that not only is your husband dead, but the police are saying the fire that killed him looks as if it might not have been an accident, and …” Jim looked over at Olympia
“What Father is trying to tell you is that the police are going to want to talk to you and Eileen, and Bridget, as soon as she regains consciousness.”
Sister Myra, holding the hot pan in two potholders, turned to Margaret. “Which means that tomorrow, Father may have to take you to the station house. Remember, you can't tell anyone where you're living.”
Olympia hoped she sounded convincing when she added, “We don't want to have to do that until tomorrow. It's for Bridget's sake as much as anything.”
“Surely they don't think …?”
Father Jim reached over and laid his hand on Margaret's arm. “I don't think for a minute you or Bridget had anything to do with what's happened.” He was looking directly at her. “But criminal history shows that battered wives and distraught children have, on occasion, been known to react violently.”
Eileen, who until then had been sitting next to her mother, turned to the priest, her tear-stained eyes blazing. “Are you telling me the police are going to come after my mother or my sister?”
“Not come after them, Eileen,” said Jim. “They are bound by law to investigate the cause of the fire. That's why we need you both to tell us everything you know or you can think of that happened leading up to when the fire started.”
Sister Myra set a plate piled with squares of hot apple cake on the table. Then she went back to the cupboard and reached up behind the cereal and pulled out a bottle of Irish whiskey. “I think we could all use a little something right about now, for medicinal purposes, of course.”
Margaret looked wide-eyed at the nun while Olympia was the first to raise her hand. “Make mine a double. No ice.”
When Olympia finished the last musky drop, she licked her lips and yawned mightily. Her ears were buzzing with fatigue, and her bones felt like they were made of rubber. It was after one in the morning, and the five of them had gone over everything they could remember. All were showing the strain.
“I'm not going to get home until after three.” Olympia tried to stifle another yawn but failed.
Sister Myra stood and held out both her hands to Olympia. “Why don't you spend the night here? We're not full at the moment. Eileen and her mother will be in adjoining rooms, and the one next to them is all made up.”
“Oh, Sister, I'd love to, but I don't even have a toothbrush with me.”
“We have everything you need, don't we, Margaret?”
“I arrived with the clothes on my back and a change of underwear. They really do have everything here. It's all been donated.”
“You don't have to twist my arm,” said Olympia. Then she turned to Jim and said, “I'll come get my car tomorrow. Thank God it's spring break, and I don't have a class to teach tomorrow, I'd never get through it—and thank you, Sister.”
“What about the police?” There was a cautious tone in Sister Myra's voice.
Jim got up and stretched. “Let me deal with that. I went to school with one of the detectives at the station. I'll talk to him first thing tomorrow morning and see what I can arrange. Then I'll come over here and pick up Margaret and Olympia and go over to the hospital to see Bridget.
“I'm coming, too,” said Eileen.”
“You can get your car after that, Olympia. Maybe I can arrange a meeting with the detective at the rectory, on my territory. That would work.”
Margaret shook her head. “Not the rectory, Father. Someone from the parish might see us. I'm just not ready for that.”
“I'm sorry, Margaret, I should have thought of that. Let me work on it. The only other logical place is police headquarters. Can you handle that?”
“This is really bad, isn't it, Father?”
“I'm afraid it is, Margaret, but if everything you told me is the truth …”
Margaret's eyebrows arched skyward.
“… and I have absolutely no reason to think that it isn't, then among you and Olympia and myself, I think we can show them that you had nothing to do with how the fire got started.”
“There's no question how it got started, Father. Terry either dropped a lighted cigarette into the pile of newspapers beside his chair, or he fell asleep. Who am I kidding? He passed out, Father, dead drunk with a cigarette in his hand, and he dropped it.”
“Don't tell the police anything other than what they ask for, Margaret.”
Sister Myra stood up and reached for a piece of coffee cake. “I think we've all said enough for tonight, Father. Let the womenfolk go to bed, and don't c
ome back until after breakfast tomorrow.”
“I've got to see my daughter. He can come as early as he wants.” Margaret stood up and folded her arms over her breasts, holding onto herself and shielding her heart.
“We can at least call the hospital and talk to the charge nurse. Would that help you, Margaret?”
“Oh, yes, Sister, why didn't I think of that?”
“Come on, then, we'll go into my office and do it right now.”
When the two women returned, Margaret reported that Bridget was still on the ventilator but her vital signs were improving.
Everyone was yawning now. “I'll see you to the door, Father. Margaret, would you show Olympia to her room? There's a nightie and some other necessaries in the top right drawer of the dresser.”
Margaret nodded. “I'm exhausted, Sister, but I doubt if I'm going to sleep.”
“You might surprise yourself, dear. The bathroom's right next to your room, Olympia.” Sister Myra stood in the doorway and looked at the three exhausted women in front of her. “Go to bed, ladies, and try to get some rest; but if you can't, just come knock on my door. I'm a light sleeper.”
Twenty-Four
“Joe?”
“Yuh?”
Overnight duty officer Louise Stafford and her partner, Joe McCarthy, had the graveyard shift in the Dorchester Police Station. Louise scribbled something down on the pad beside the phone. “I just got a call from Cambridge Police headquarters. They've got an ID on a Jane Doe attempted suicide they brought in to the hospital last night. Name's Bridget Mary O’Mara. She's a freshman at Meriwether College in Cambridge. The home address is 46 Barrett Street.”
“Isn't that the place that burned yesterday? They still thinking arson on that one? You want some coffee?” Joe started to get up from behind his desk.
Louise shook her head. “No, thanks, I'll make myself a pot of tea later. Dorchester Fire's doing the on-site investigation. What do you think?”
“If it is arson, the kid in the ICU couldn't possibly have done it. She was too busy trying to do herself in. What did you say to them?”
“They're still going to want to question her. It's routine in this kind of case. I said to give us a call if she comes around. She's not going anywhere. She's pretty bad, Joe, she might not make it.” The duty officer rubbed her eyes. “Poor kid. At first they thought she was just another drunk teenager. I've got a sixteen-year-old daughter, and I worry all the time. You never know what they're thinking.”
“Some kids are just unreachable, Lou, nothing works. She might have been one of those. We won't know anything until we can question her.”
Louise turned back to her desk and picked up a crossword puzzle. “Like you just said, we've got time. I'll call the hospital tomorrow and ask when I can talk to her. You're right, she's not going anywhere.” Behind her puzzle book, the seasoned police officer said a quiet prayer for a girl she didn't know but whose life was hanging in the balance. Louise Stafford thought of her own daughter … and there but for the grace of God. “Joe?”
“M-m-m-?”
“I'm going to ask the chief if I can do the initial interview when she wakes up.”
“If she wakes up, Lou.”
Alone in a single bed, wearing the borrowed flannel nightie, Olympia had never felt so tired and keyed up in her life. Her mind was spinning, but Sister Myra might have been right. The mental revolutions were slowing down, and she felt ready to turn off the light. As she turned over to reach for the switch, she heard a soft tap at the door.
“Professor?”
Olympia wasn't sure she could hold up much longer.
“Come on in, Margaret. I'm awake.”
Margaret tiptoed across the room. “Mind if I sit on the bed?”
“Of course not.” Olympia patted the side of the bed and wiggled up into a sitting position, determined not to look as exhausted as she truly was.
“I don't think I actually killed him, Professor, but I might have—not meaning to, I mean.”
“What are you saying, Margaret?”
“I wanted him out of my life. You know that. When I went back to the house to get my things,” Margaret paused and seemed to be searching for words. “When I went back, I could have picked up the mess around the chair; you know, cleaned up the pile of newspapers and emptied the ashtray. But I didn't, I left it. I knew one day he'd set the place on fire. Maybe I wanted it to happen so much that it actually did.”
Olympia was wide awake. ““Margaret, did you move anything or leave anything behind in the living room? Anything else that might have caught fire?”
“No. Like I said, I could have cleaned up the papers. I even started to, but I walked away from it. That's what happened, isn't it? He dropped a cigarette into the papers.”
Olympia knew that now was not the time to say anything about lighter fluid or smoke inhalation or what Jim witnessed when he identified the body. All she said was, “Margaret, they haven't released any information yet. We don't know exactly how he died. Either way, not cleaning up after a man who beat the daylights out of you is not murder.”
“I'm not sorry he's dead.”
“I'm not surprised.”
“You know what I am sorry about?”
Olympia shook her head.
“I'm sorry I let it go on for so long. This is my fault, you know. If Bridget dies …”
Olympia reached up and touched Margaret's cheek.
“Don't even begin to think that, Margaret. No one is going to accuse you of killing Terry, and we're not going to know why Bridget did what she did for a while yet. We're all praying for her, and right now it's all any of us can do.”
Margaret took one of Olympia's hands in her own and kissed it. “Thank you, Professor. I should go back and check on Eileen. She's different from Bridget. She's the fighter, a real Irish temper on that one. She doesn't sit around waiting for things to happen. If she wants something she goes right after it. She'll be okay. It's Bridget I worry about.”
Margaret stood and tightened the sash of her robe and then walked out of the room. Olympia put her hand on the warm space on the bed where the distraught woman had been sitting and hoped to God she'd said the right thing. This time she turned off the light without interruption, and she slipped down under the blankets into her preferred sleeping position curled on her left side with both hands tucked under her chin. Her thoughts began to drift in the way they always did when sleep was coming on, to the next project she might tackle in the everlasting restoration of her antique house and how Frederick Watkins might fit in with all of this and that maybe it was time to tell her sons about their sister.
By Monday morning Bridget was conscious and breathing on her own. Sometime in the pre-dawn hours, she opened her eyes for a brief moment and knew by the lights and the busy machines around her bed that she was in an intensive care unit somewhere and she'd failed. Now, with her eyes closed, she could sense the quickening pace of the hospital readying itself for another day. She felt as though she were floating, not outside her body, but in a body that was suspended somewhere between here and somewhere else, bathed in a red haze of pain. Wherever that might be, she didn't know, and she didn't care. Life no longer held any meaning other than to get well enough to get out of there and finish the job. She heard someone come in to the room, then felt the person check her temperature and blood pressure and whatever was pinching the end of her finger.
“Wake up, Bridget,” said a woman's voice floating in the mist above her. “It's Monday morning, and there's someone come here to see you. Come on, honey, try and open your eyes.”
Bridget didn't want to see anyone or anything, she wanted to be dead, and she had messed up. She lay there breathing slowly and evenly, pretending she was still asleep.
“She can hear you,” said the voice. “Say something to her.”
Bridget felt someone take her hand. If she pulled away, they'd know she was awake.
“Brigie?”
It's my mother.
“Mam?” Her dry, cracked lips shaped the word, but no sound came. Bridget opened her eyes.
“Oh, Brigie, oh my darling, precious baby girl, I'm so sorry.”
“Can I … water?” It was a hoarse croak. It hurt too much to say more. Her body hurt everywhere, and she could hear her mother crying, and that hurt even more.
The nurse who was in the room with them nodded and then went for the water. Margaret waited by the bed, stroking her daughter's forehead and crooning the Irish words of comfort she had sung when Bridget was a baby.
When the nurse returned, she was carrying a cup of water and a sponge on a stick. She moistened Bridget's lips and swabbed some of the water around the inside of her mouth. Bridget swallowed and opened her mouth like a baby bird for more.
“Take your time, Sweetie,” crooned the nurse, smiling and nodding at Margaret. “One more nice, big swallow like that and I'll be able to bring you some apple juice. I think you'll be able to keep it down now.”
Jim and Olympia were off by themselves in one of the family conference rooms so that Margaret and Eileen could be alone with Bridget.
“How soon before the police come?” asked Olympia.
“I'm not sure. If you remember, I asked the night nurse to hold off calling them for as long as they could. I spoke to the nurse while you were in the ladies room. She said Bridget was stable, that she'd made it through the night, and if she didn't pick up some awful infection or contract pneumonia or something, her prognosis was looking more hopeful.”
An Unspeakable Mission (Olympia Brown Mysteries) Page 15