John, still pink and warm from sleep, sat in his high chair, picking up Cheerios. “Na, na, na,” he called to Kate, who was at the kitchen sink, pouring them both glasses of orange juice.
“Bye, bye, bye.” He waved his small hand to get her attention.
“As soon as you finish this, we’ll go bye-bye.” Kate stared out the kitchen window at the brilliant October sunshine. Across the yards a neighbor’s sheets and pillowcases moved like a fully rigged ship in the sparkling blue sky. On the horizon a bank of fog was in a tight roll somewhere near the Farallon Islands waiting for sunset.
It was a perfect day to take the baby for a ride in his stroller. She still had a tight pain over her eyes. Fresh air and exercise would do them both good. Maybe while we’re walking, Kate thought, I’ll be able to figure out exactly what to tell Comisario Serrano.
In the end the decision was easy. She told him everything, and a groggy Ángel was very grateful for the information.
WEDNESDAY,
OCTOBER 13
Feast of St. Edward the
Confessor, King of
England
“Are you awake yet, old dear?” Mary Helen heard Eileen whisper.
She was awake, but not awake enough to say so or even to open her eyes. She lay still, listening to the rain beat against the granite facade of the hotel and run in noisy streams off the gargoyles.
Today’s rain was not the gentle, caressing rain of which Santiago boasted. It was a driving, drenching rain that threatened to soak everything in its path. A sudden, frigid gust of wind filled the room. Eyes still shut, Mary Helen heard the dull flap of velvet drapes billowing out into the bedroom. Crazily she longed for her own cozy room at Mount St. Francis, her own bed, her own pillow.
“I know you’re awake.” Eileen’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Your breathing’s changed. Do you hear anything?”
Without answering Mary Helen listened. A soft yet steady tap-tap came on the door. “I hear it,” she croaked, “but I don’t know if I can move yet.”
Pulling her bathrobe around her, Eileen opened the door a crack. “Come in, dear,” she heard Eileen say. Curiosity getting the best of her, Mary Helen opened one eye to see who “dear” was. It was María José.
“I am sorry to disturb you, Sisters, but my uncle has sent me to see how you are this morning.”
“Is it morning?” Mary Helen pulled the covers up around her ears like a mummy.
“It is nine o’clock, Sister. Tío was afraid, when neither of you came to breakfast, that you were not feeling good this morning.” Her dark eyes searched Mary Helen’s face, which was all that was visible, for any outward signs of disease or disaster. “You are all right, aren’t you?” she asked anxiously.
“I don’t know. I haven’t moved anything yet.” And I don’t intend to while you’re standing there staring at me, Mary Helen thought.
Eileen must have perceived the stalemate. “Why don’t you go downstairs to the dining room, María José, and bring us up a tray?”
“I could call room service.”
Eileen, pretending she didn’t hear, hustled the girl out the bedroom door.
Slowly, painfully Mary Helen sat on the edge of her bed.
“What are you feeling like this morning?” Eileen asked, helping Mary Helen hobble into the bathroom.
“Like I played halfback for the Forty-niners again yesterday!”
“And we won?”
Mary Helen flinched. “I’m in too much pain to care!”
“Should you see a doctor?” Eileen paged through her pocket dictionary, obviously in search of the appropriate phrase.
“Put that thing away,” Mary Helen pleaded, “before we are in worse trouble than we are already. For all we know, doctor and undertaker may be only a mispronunciation apart.”
Despite her soreness, both Mary Helen and Eileen were up and waiting when María José returned with a busboy carrying the large linen-draped tray.
Mary Helen savored each mouthful of the strong, hot coffee and felt it roll all the way down. When she bit into the crisp, crusty roll, she realized how hungry she was.
Having refused coffee, María José sank down into a chair and watched glumly while the nuns ate.
“What’s the matter?” Mary Helen asked when she finally swallowed the last corner of roll.
“Tío has canceled today’s trip,” she said. “He thinks it would be too dangerous.”
“Where were we off to?” Eileen refilled both cups.
“Mount Santa Tecla to see the Celtic ruins. The place is steeped in history. There is a replica of an ancient hut and from the rugged mountaintop a magnificent view of the coastline of Portugal.”
A rugged mountaintop! Inwardly Mary Helen shuddered. That’s all she needed—a little shove into Portugal! No wonder Ángel Serrano was concerned.
“I am not disappointed about the trip. I am disappointed because I wanted to help Tío catch this murderer before he kills a second time.”
“You have my support,” Mary Helen said, trying not to remember that she was the aforementioned second victim.
“How do you intend to catch this person?” Eileen moved forward on her chair.
“I think I know who it is,” María José said.
“Who?” Both nuns sat bolt upright.
María José narrowed her dark eyes. “Pepe!” she said.
Sister Mary Helen was surprised. He was the last one she would suspect. “Do you have some reason for saying that?”
“I have been thinking about it,” the young woman said.
In the bleached morning light María José’s face was pale and strained with a hint of blue under her eyes. Mary Helen suspected that she was doing most of her thinking at night.
“Pepe Nunez is quite the Don Juan, you know.” María José yawned as if to prove Mary Helen’s suspicions.
“That makes him unscrupulous,” Mary Helen said sensibly, “not a murderer. To be a serious suspect, he needs a motive, means, and an opportunity.”
“He had the opportunity.” María José stared at the old nun. “Last Friday night we were to go to the opening dinner together, and do you remember what happened?”
Friday seemed so far away Mary Helen had to think. Pepe had escorted Lisa and Heidi into the Salón Real. María José, blazing with anger, arrived alone. “Yes, I do remember, now that you mention it.”
“I assumed from what he said earlier that he was to escort me, but instead he left me waiting and picked up the two young girls. We had a fierce argument afterward.”
I can attest to that, Mary Helen thought, remembering their battling figures in the deserted plaza.
“Then we went our separate ways.”
Mary Helen remembered that, too.
“Maybe as our tour guide Pepe felt obliged to be sure his charges were enjoying themselves.” Eileen leaned forward and patted María José’s hand.
“That’s just what he told me.” María José pulled thoughtfully on her lower lip. “Still, we cannot let men get away with this kind of behavior and suffer in silence.”
As Mary Helen remembered the late-night scene, suffering in silence was not an issue.
“Women must insist on being treated with dignity. I was especially angry with Pepe because I had high hopes for developing a relationship.”
“You just met the man!” Without thinking, the words slipped out of Mary Helen’s mouth.
María José looked puzzled. “From the first we were simpatico or I never would have consented to be his assistant.”
“I thought you told me that you viewed Pepe as a business opportunity.”
María José grinned sheepishly. “Of course, Sister,” she said, “but I am not one who refuses to mix business with pleasure.”
No wonder her mother’s thin, Mary Helen thought, grateful that she needn’t raise a dichotomous daughter like María José.
“Getting back to your point.” Eileen cut in with a tone of urgency that surprised Mary Helen.
“Pepe had the opportunity to kill Lisa.”
“But so did Heidi. So did I, for that matter.” Suddenly all business, María José had switched suspects. “And I am afraid everyone else did, too.”
Mary Helen agreed. “Each married person on the tour claimed to be with his or her spouse all night. Of course, all uncheckable alibis, making everyone’s whereabouts uncertain.”
“We are also uncertain about what was used to strangle Lisa,” María José said.
The three sat in perplexed silence and listened to the steady rain. “It’s the motive,” Eileen said at last. “We must discover the motive. Why did someone kill Lisa, and why is someone trying to kill Mary Helen?”
A sudden wind rattled the windowpane, and Mary Helen’s breath went shallow. “Why, indeed?” she said with a stoutheartedness that fooled no one.
María José stayed for only a few more minutes. Mentioning something about wanting to catch her uncle, she left.
Eileen seemed glad. “She’s a nice girl,” she said, “and she means well, but you need some rest and quiet. Maybe I’ll order a pot of tea and you can spend the rest of the day in bed reading and napping. We need to wash out some things.”
“It seems almost sacrilegious to stay in our room in Santiago. Shouldn’t we be out viewing the famous statues and works of art?”
“Give it a rest,” Eileen said, and dropped their nylon stockings into the marble sink. “Don’t you have a mystery squirreled away in that pocketbook of yours?” she called over the sound of running water.
Obediently Mary Helen dug into her bag for the paperback and began to read.
With the stockings hung dripping from the shower rod, Eileen perched on the end of Mary Helen’s bed. “While I was rinsing, I was thinking. What do you have in that purse?”
“What do you mean?” Mary Helen was genuinely puzzled.
“Obviously it is what the Gypsy ladies were after. And your purse may have been what someone wanted at the Tower of Hercules.”
“But it doesn’t explain yesterday and . . .” Mary Helen faltered. She could not yet think calmly about her near collision with el botafumeiro.
“Maybe, maybe not. Getting back to the Gypsies.” Eileen smoothly changed the subject. “If I were a Gypsy, your pocketbook would be the last one I’d snatch.”
“What’s wrong with my pocketbook?” With inexplicable loyalty, Mary Helen felt that she must defend the battered old thing.
“Nothing. But there’s nothing right with it either. It’s not a designer bag or even good leather. Nor do you, no offense, old dear, dress as if you have money. If I were a thief, I’d go for Cora’s purse first, then Bootsie’s or Rita’s. Do you see my point?”
“Absolutely!” Eileen watched expectantly as Mary Helen shook the contents of her bag onto the bed. Passport, comb, wallet, pen, keys, used tissues, pocket calendar, loose pesetas, glasses’ case, Anne’s travel diary, and, with a thud, a second paperback mystery.
The two nuns scrutinized the lot. “That’s it!” Eileen pointed to the diary. “It has to be. What have you written in it?”
“Next to nothing.” Mary Helen flipped through the book showing Eileen the nearly empty pages. The two nuns stood in baffled silence.
Suddenly it struck Mary Helen like a dash of cold water. “Of course!” she nearly shouted. “It’s not what I wrote in the diary. It’s what someone thinks I wrote in it.”
Eileen’s gray eyes clicked to attention. “You’re right! Who saw you writing in it?”
Mary Helen’s mind sped back over the last five days. Saturday morning she’d written in it in front of Cora and Bootsie.
She’d jotted something down in the catchall room when all were present except Bootsie and María José. María José had stumbled upon her writing in the lounge. “Everyone,” she said. “Everyone saw me write in the darn thing!”
“So we’re back to square one.” Eileen sounded disappointed. “I bet you’re right anyway.” She watched Mary Helen shove her things back into her pocketbook, then walked to the window and peered out at the black and bruised sky. Rain blew sideways in sheets against the magnificent buildings that framed the enormous plaza.
Mary Helen limped over and stood beside her. “I’m getting submarine fever,” she said.
“How can you be?” Eileen asked. “We’ve been in our room for not quite one whole day, and part of the time we were asleep.”
“You were asleep. I could not seem to doze off.”
“You were snoring, old dear.”
Mary Helen chose not to dignify the remark with an answer. Instead she stared out into the Plaza del Obradoiro, rain-soaked and deserted, much as it had been on their first night in the hostal.
Below them someone coughed and banged the window shut.
“Do you hear that, Eileen?” Mary Helen strained, hoping the cougher would cough again. “Whoever that is . . .”
“Whoever who is?”
“The person who coughed.”
“That’s Bootsie DeAngelo.” Eileen didn’t miss a beat. “She’s been coughing like that all week. Haven’t you noticed? It’s more of a clearing her throat than a real cough. I think it’s a nervous habit.”
Chagrined, Mary Helen stared at Eileen. She’d noticed that little idiosyncrasy herself. Why had she failed to put it together? Was she losing her touch?
“Well, then, Bootsie was at the window the night I thought I saw someone on the cathedral steps. The night before I found Lisa.”
Eileen’s face fell, and her eyes narrowed. “I do not remember your telling me about seeing someone on the steps,” she said crisply.
Quickly Mary Helen explained the comisario’s concern. “So, if I did see the killer and the killer saw me, I wouldn’t want to put you in danger.”
“That makes no sense at all,” Eileen snapped. “We are sleeping in the same bedroom. I am your constant companion on the trip. For the love of all that’s good and holy, I already am in danger. It seems only reasonable that I should be told!”
“You’re right,” Mary Helen said. “I should have told you.” She was too sore and too lame to argue.
“And since when are you so obedient to police officers?” Obviously Eileen was not yet mollified. “Kate Murphy and Dennis Gallagher will be duly impressed.”
“I wonder if those two were able to find out anything helpful about the other tour members.” Mary Helen tried valiantly to change the subject.
Eileen stared.
“All right. If you must know, I didn’t tell you primarily because I forgot.”
“That makes me feel a great deal better,” Eileen said with her usual smile. “How do you think we can ask Bootsie if she saw anyone when you can’t tell anyone you saw someone?”
“I don’t intend to.” Mary Helen cut through the meandering sentence.
“You don’t?” Eileen blinked in surprise.
“No! I think we tell the comisario about the cough in the window and let him deal with it.” Mary Helen hurriedly threw on her clothes. “Get your raincoat, Eileen,” she said, “and let’s go.”
For the tenth time Comisario Ángel Serrano wondered if he should have insisted that the Americans be brought to the police station for interrogation. He had hoped that questioning them here in the hotel manager’s office would create a false sense of chumminess and that one of them might slip up on a detail, anything that might give him a crack in this case.
Now he asked himself if the stark walls of the police station interview room might have put a little fear into them, let them know this was not just a cozy chat. Would the American Embassy take exception if he brought them all in? He didn’t need any more officials on his tail.
Ángel loosened his tie and ran his finger around his tight shirt collar. He had been at this for more than two hours. His throat was dry, and his patience wearing thin. One of these Americans was the murderer. He was sure of that, but which one?
He had begun the morning with Jose Nunez, aka Pepe. After a few minutes o
f questioning, Ángel agreed with the man’s uncle. Pepe had neither the brains nor the guts for murder.
He had partied until three o’clock on Saturday morning, fallen into a dead sleep, and not awakened until Sister Mary Helen telephoned him in his room to tell him she had found Lisa Springer’s body.
At the word body Pepe lost all his color. For a few tense seconds Ángel feared the young man might faint. He sent Officer Zaldo for water and a brandy. Ángel figured that if Pepe had killed Lisa, Sister Mary Helen would have found his unconscious body right beside hers.
Next Ángel had met with the Bowmans, Bud first, then Cora. He questioned them about their whereabouts at the time of Lisa’s murder in a dozen different ways and each time received the same answer. The Bowmans had had a nightcap in the hostal lounge, a brandy for each. Then they had gone directly to their room.
“Bud’s not much of a dancer,” Cora said, “and I was tired anyway.”
Once in bed Bud fell right to sleep and didn’t move until morning. Cora reported hearing a heated argument in the hallway shortly after she’d turned off the light.
Either the Bowmans had rehearsed their deception perfectly, or they were telling the truth. Angel tended to believe that they were. He put the pair at the bottom of his suspect list.
He had a bit more luck with the Fongs. Rita stuck to her original story. “As I told you, Comisario, Neil and I were arguing about his drinking.” Giveaway lines of tension pulled her mouth into a tight little grin. “Wine makes him sick. He is allergic to it. When I reminded him, he lost his temper, shouted, and stalked off. Before I could say ‘I told you so,’ he was in our bathroom throwing up and moaning about his head.” Her black eyes shone like hard, polished jet. “I was disgusted, but he was in bed with me until morning.”
Ángel found Neil Fong an interesting character and, in contrast with his wife, a very poor liar. Even as Neil repeated his original explanation, which concurred with his wife’s, his face paled and he began to blink.
“Are you allergic to wine?” Ángel asked.
“Yes.” Neil blinked repeatedly. “No.”
Murder Makes a Pilgrimage Page 22