Murder Makes a Pilgrimage

by Carol Anne O'Marie

  “Buenos días, Sisters!” He tried to give the nuns an enthusiastic smile, but somehow the enthusiasm fell just short of his eyes.

  By contrast María José, his “special assistant,” was bubbling. Her magenta-rinsed hair was drawn back and fastened at the nape of her neck with a bright red scarf that matched the red in her woolen herringbone sweater. The heavy sweater and the slim black woolen slacks the girl wore reminded Mary Helen that the day would most likely be cold and wet.

  She turned to Eileen. “Should we bring our umbrellas?” she whispered.

  “I brought them and our Aran sweaters.” Eileen handed one of each to Mary Helen. “I don’t mean to be acting like your caretaker, old dear, but you are walking around in an awful fog this morning.”

  Eileen was right. She was.

  “Come aboard, Sisters,” María José called from just beside the driver’s seat. “We are about to begin our trip to La Coruña, one of Galicia’s showplaces, where you will enjoy the view from its famed Tower of Hercules.”

  She sounds like a circus barker, Mary Helen thought, pulling herself up the steep steps into the tour bus. At least the girl’s trying to make things pleasant, and I should shake off this awful pall. It’s perfectly silly.

  She smiled at María José. It is not—repeat not—my fault that Lisa Springer was murdered, she chided herself. I simply found the body. I did not commit the crime. And it is ridiculous to imagine that anyone is blaming me.

  With about as much confidence as the Christians must have felt when they met the lions, she threw back her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Good morning,” she called cheerfully. Six pairs of hostile, accusing eyes met hers, and her greeting fell like a disturbed soufflé. Only butterscotch Heidi had the good grace to smile.

  “Hi,” Heidi said, her one-note greeting fading into a symphony of uncomfortable silence.

  Mary Helen dived into the first empty seat and stared out the wide-view window onto the puddle-drenched Plaza del Obradoiro. Eileen followed quickly.

  “I was right,” Mary Helen whispered. “They are blaming me.” She shivered. “Much more of this, and I’ll know how the lepers felt.”

  Eileen let out an exaggerated sigh. “Now don’t go getting paranoid on me. What in heaven’s name makes you think they’re blaming you?”

  “For one thing, no one is speaking.”

  “You should be grateful! You do remember how they spoke to one another yesterday?” Eileen’s gray eyebrows shot up like two question marks. “And what a strained, silent affair dinner was?”

  Mary Helen did remember. It gave the expression cold war a new meaning.

  Eileen patted Mary Helen’s icy hand. “Let’s just ignore them and enjoy ourselves. If any one of them is blaming you for anything, it’s because that one is guilty and afraid you’ll discover it,” she announced with near-papal infallibility. “So buck up!”

  Mary Helen stared at her friend in disbelief. “Why doesn’t that make me feel better?” she asked in an as “bucked-up” a tone as she could manage.

  The ride could not have been quieter if it had been taken by a busload of Trappists on retreat. Mary Helen stared out the window at the passing countryside full of fog-shrouded pines. Fresh yellow-green fern hugged the ground amid bright spots of red and pink carnations. As they sped along, Eileen’s few attempts at chitchat fell as swiftly and surely as a SCUD missile.

  “Will you look at that?” Twenty or so minutes into the trip Bud Bowman loosened up and pointed out the window at road workers in orange. “Just like the Cal-Trans workers back home,” he said, and waited for a friendly comment.

  When only Eileen’s “Right you are, Bud,” rose from the group, he shrugged and contined to stare out the broad window in silence.

  All at once Mary Helen was angry. It was 67 kilometers to La Coruña, no sense making it feel like 567. Eileen was right. She’d enjoy this trip no matter what. Deliberately ignoring the hostility, she decided to concentrate on María José’s commentary.

  With superhuman effort, María José rose above the prevailing gloom and kept up a running monologue. She talked about the wide autovia with its special new tar surface that made rain disappear. She pointed to palm trees brought home as status symbols by sons gone to South America. She talked about La Coruña’s “widows of the sea.” Some husbands had drowned; some had sailed away to the Americas.

  The two nuns oohed and aahed in all the right places. María José obviously took courage from their attention. When the bus stopped at the toll plaza, she joked about old highway bandits being replaced by new ones. This got a rise out of Bud.

  Virtually unannounced, a gentle rain began to fall. Long wipers swished slowly, rhythmically across the front windows of the tour bus. Passing cars shot sprays of water against its sides. When the large windows were so fogged up that it was impossible to see out, María José gave up her spiel.

  “My friends, it is time to play some Galician folk music,” she announced, feeding a cassette tape into the recorder on the bus’s loudspeaking system. She slipped into the seat next to Pepe Nunez.

  The lively melody filled the bus with its energy. Bagpipes and tambourines combined to give it a Celtic flavor.

  “You’d have to be dead not to tap your feet to this one,” Eileen said. With a valiant try she managed to get some sporadic clapping going, but this, too, was doomed.

  For lack of anything better to do, Mary Helen slipped her travel diary out of her pocketbook. On a blank page she wrote down the date and “Quiet trip to La Coruña.” After a moment she added, “67 kilometers. Among the longest in my life.”

  After what seemed days, the tour bus pulled into the parking lot circling the Tower of Hercules. It took its place in the row of other tour buses.

  María José rose. A morose-looking Pepe stood behind her. “This, my friends,” she said, “is the famed Tower of Hercules.” María José hopped down from the bus and waited until the whole group straggled out behind her.

  The persistent rain continued, and they huddled under umbrellas. Pepe pulled the bus door closed with a final determined swoosh, as if to say, “Like it or not, we’re seeing this tower.”

  The large, square granite lighthouse loomed above them, high and lonely. The wind off the Atlantic caught in the umbrellas.

  “We’ll catch our death of cold out here,” Bootsie complained, stamping her feet for warmth and, Mary Helen suspected, for effect. Her husband put his thin arm around her shoulder and drew her under his umbrella.

  “This is a warm rain.” María José put out her small hand to feel it. “You will not catch cold from Galician rain, and you will surely not melt.” Her eyes, black as flint, dared anyone to disagree.

  Damp and chilled though she was, Mary Helen had to admire the young woman’s spunk. María José was determined to go through with this tour no matter what. Mary Helen couldn’t help wondering why. After all, this was Pepe’s group. He was the one who should be taking charge.

  “Can’t we at least move into the tower and get out of this rain? My wife is freezing.” Professor DeAngelo turned his back on María José and spoke directly to Pepe. Obviously the professor thought that Pepe should take charge, too.

  “Of course,” Pepe said meekly, and whispered something in his assistant’s ear.

  With an angry toss of her head, María José led the way to a narrow wooden door painted glossy shamrock green. It was the entrance to the Tower of Hercules. A graying woman in a raincoat huddled on the granite threshold, offering souvenirs. She kept them dry in a white plastic bag.

  When Mary Helen made the mistake of looking interested, the woman dug in her bag and pulled out a tawny replica of the tower made into a key chain. She dangled it within Mary Helen’s reach.

  “Who don’t we like enough to give them this?” Mary Helen whispered to Eileen, who rolled her gray eyes.

  Unfortunately the woman interpreted the whisper and the look to mean that they wanted to bargain.

  “Fifty pesetas
.” The woman bounced the charm up and down. “Fifty!” She held up the five thick, calloused fingers of her free hand.

  “She knows a soft touch when she sees one,” Eileen said, and slithered through the open door while Mary Helen counted out the coins.

  The stone interior was even colder than the parking lot. As María José pulled her woolen sweater around her, her eyes dared anyone to complain.

  “The Tower of Hercules is the last Roman lighthouse still standing in the world,” she said. Her breath hung on the freezing air. “Legend tells us it was built by Brehogan, the Irish chieftain, before he sailed for home. Later it was restored by the Roman emperor Trajan, who was born in Spain. It is one hundred four meters above sea level, and it still works. The four large lights can be seen for forty miles.”

  “And I don’t want to hear that you are related to the Brehogans.” Mary Helen slipped the key chain into Eileen’s pocket.

  “The steps to the top of the tower are narrow, and they can be slippery,” María José said, “but the view is well worth the climb. If, however, you have difficulty climbing because of an infirmity or because of old—” She must have noticed Mary Helen’s glare because she stopped right there.

  “We’ll lead the way.” Rita Fong spoke up. “Coming, Neil?”

  With her husband in tow, Rita pushed her way through to the staircase. Mary Helen and Eileen brought up the rear.

  “This is going to be a long day,” Mary Helen whispered to Eileen.

  “As they say back home, old dear, it only seems that way!”

  Not only was the staircase narrow and slippery, as María José had cautioned, but Mary Helen found that it was also steep, winding, and very dark. She’d counted thirty-eight steps when her thighs began to ache. By forty-eight both her legs were trembling. By fifty-eight steps her breath was coming out in “short pants,” as old Sister Vincentia was wont to joke.

  “Enough,” she puffed, leaning against the stone wall.

  “Thanks be to God,” Eileen puffed back.

  “I figure the view’s the same at the bottom as at the top, only not quite so high.”

  “Absolutely! Furthermore, we’ll still be alive to see it.” Turning, Eileen began the descent.

  Slowly, carefully, with one hand on the tower wall, Mary Helen followed. Between the dimness, her bifocals, and the irregular stone steps it was difficult to make her way down. Cautiously she felt each step with her toe before placing her foot on the worn stone.

  “Are you coming?” Eileen called. She had turned a corner, and Mary Helen was unable to see her.

  “Don’t worry,” she called back. “I’m right behind you. I’m just taking my time.”

  Sister Mary Helen put her foot forward, hunting in the shadows for the edge of the next step. She had just found a foothold when she felt a sudden grab at her pocketbook. Startled, she swung away, trying to hold on to both it and the slippery wall, to keep her feet steady, to regain her balance.

  Before she could, the blow came—quick, sharp, deliberate, throwing her off center. Mary Helen’s stomach lurched. She bumped against the wall, rolled a little. Her foot missed the next step. She let out a squeal and instinctively threw up an arm to protect her glasses. Her knees went weak and watery. Her hand reached out to nothingness, and she felt herself tumbling forward. She was falling forever.

  She smelled the faint odor of musk as two strong hands caught her. A heavy ring cut into her arm as they pulled her close. Trembling, she buried her head into a shoulder, breathing slowly, deeply, until she was able to speak.

  “Thank you,” she said looking up into the concerned eyes of Pepe Nunez.

  “What happened, Sister?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Mary Helen said, still unsteady. “I must have slipped.”

  “Careful now.” Pepe’s grip was firm. He stood sideways on the step ahead of her and offered his arm. Arm in arm, one step at a time, the two of them reached the narrow green door.

  “What happened?” Eileen’s usually ruddy face was ashen. “I thought I heard you shout. Are you all right?”

  Mary Helen nodded. She still felt too shaky to speak.

  Much to her relief, Pepe insisted that the two nuns sit in the bus until the others returned.

  Eileen’s eyes pinned Pepe. “What happened?” she asked, with a hint of the brogue.

  “She missed her footing,” Pepe said simply. Mary Helen knew better than to think that would satisfy Eileen.

  Once they were seated, Eileen examined Mary Helen’s scraped knuckles and the stone burns on the palms of her hands. She pulled up Mary Helen’s skirt hem to check her knees for scratches. Amazingly, not even the nylons were snagged. “Are you sure you are all right?” she asked.

  “I’ll probably have a few bruises tomorrow, and observations to the contrary, my knees have melted and I don’t know if my heart will ever beat slowly again. Other than that . . .”

  “Which is only half of what could have happened if Pepe—” Eileen checked Mary Helen’s hands again. “What did happen to you anyway? Did you miss the step?”

  “You won’t believe it. I hardly can believe it myself. But I think someone tried to steal my pocketbook, then pushed me.”

  Eileen’s eyes shot open. “Did you see who it was?”

  Mary Helen shrugged. “I didn’t see or even hear anyone behind me.”

  “Why, in the name of all that’s good and holy, would someone want to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Unless it’s what you mentioned before.”

  “Glory be to God”—Eileen’s brogue was thickening—“what is it that I mentioned?”

  “That one of our fellow ‘pilgrims’ is guilty of murder and is afraid that I’ll discover which one.”

  “Be honest with me, old dear. Do you have the faintest idea who it is?”

  “Not a clue,” Mary Helen said, suddenly exhausted, “not a single clue.”

  Both nuns were startled to hear a throat cleared in the back of the bus. When they boarded, the bus seemed empty, but the seat backs were high, and it was possible that a short person was seated.

  “Who’s there?” Eileen called in a high, nervous voice.

  “Only María José,” a voice called back, and the small, energetic woman popped up. The seat back came to her collarbone. “I have seen the tower dozens of times, so I thought I would sneak a catnap.” She smiled.

  Mary Helen studied the girl. There wasn’t a hint of sleep in her bright eyes. If she wasn’t sleeping, what in heaven’s name was she doing in the bus? And exactly how much of their conversation had she overhead?

  Before she could ask either question, Cora’s head appeared at the door. “I thought for sure I’d be the first one back on the bus. These old legs gave out about halfway up,” she said, smiling at the two nuns. “You, too?”

  Mary Helen nodded for the both of them.

  In ones and twos the others began to dash back to the coach. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, but the wind off the ocean whistled and wailed among the parked buses.

  “That’s everyone,” Pepe announced with an air of relief. He shut the wide door with a swoosh. The windshield wipers made a dry, rubbing sound against the glass.

  “Now, to our delicious lunch,” he announced, “at the Hotel Sol Coruña.”

  Before anyone could comment, María José pushed a cassette of flamenco music into the tape deck. With castanets clicking, the bus drove along the sea green Ensenada del Orzan past a park filled with roses, magnolias, palm trees, and magenta and glowing yellow dahlias. On a space of lawn, the hands of a gigantic clock made entirely of flowers pointed to one-thirty.

  The hotel dining room was expecting them, and there was no delay. The thick, hot chick-pea soup seemed to soothe Mary Helen, and from where she sat, it was having a somewhat similar effect on several others in the group.

  “Please pass that bread,” Bootsie asked politely.

  Cora actually smiled a cautious smile and did.

&nb
sp; Although the professor remained distant, he was not altogether rude when Neil asked how he’d liked the view from the tower.

  The unsquelchable Bud asked Eileen, “How the heck did the Irish get into Spain?” and they were off and running while the others picked small, treacherous bones from their white fish.

  The ride home was predictably quiet. Worn out from the climb and heavy with food, the bus passengers took on a siesta air.

  Sister Mary Helen stared dreamily at the swiftly passing countryside and tried to get her mind off the incident in the tower. To distract herself, she forced her thoughts to Francis Borgia, the nobleman saint whom the Church honored this day.

  She strained to recall all she knew about the man who was born in this rugged land just after Columbus discovered America. Years later, when his wife died, Borgia joined the newly founded band of Jesuits and sent their first missionaries to the New World.

  Studying the squat, granite dwellings along the roadside, Mary Helen wondered if the saint might have galloped past these very houses on his way from Santiago to La Coruña. Interesting question, she thought, and pulled her travel diary from her pocketbook.

  “Find out if F. B. ever preached in Galicia,” she scribbled.

  Having exhausted her knowledge, not to mention her interest in Francis Borgia, Mary Helen tried to concentrate on the changing scenery, thick groves of pine giving way to waving pampas grass. It was futile. No matter what she tried, her mind crept back to the dark, narrow stairs at the Tower of Hercules.

  She had neither seen nor heard anyone behind her, had only felt the sudden grab, the push. Was it her imagination? Could she have imagined two such things?

  The tumble was real enough. Thanks be to God that Pepe had appeared. Where had he come from so suddenly? The young man was a riddle. He was charming most of the time and even an able tour guide. Yet his uncle clearly had no use for him. “A bum” he called him. Was shiftlessness alone the reason?