Murder Makes a Pilgrimage

by Carol Anne O'Marie

  “Is it yes or no? Your wife says you are.”

  “I know she does, but I’m not.” Neil’s glasses slipped down his nose.

  It was difficult for Ángel to imagine this mild man losing his temper and shouting, but according to his wife and Cora Bowman, he had.

  “Was that what you two were arguing about in the hallway the night before Señorita Springer was murdered?” he asked.

  Neil’s face froze. Ángel could almost see the man struggling with his conscience.

  “No, it’s not,” Neil said at last, his voice a whisper.

  Ángel’s hopes soared. Was this the breakthrough at last? He tried not to pounce. “What was it then that made you shout at her?”

  “Rita kept kicking me under the table all night.”

  “I remember you said that.” Ángel’s hopes plummeted like a roller coaster. He hid his disappointment.

  “I said that, but I told you that it was because she wanted me to go to bed. That was not the real reason.”

  “What was the real reason?” Ángel held his breath.

  “We were fighting about Lisa Springer.”

  “What about Lisa?” His surge of elation returned.

  Neil Fong’s eyes blinked at an incredible rate of speed. “Rita thought that I was flirting with Lisa. Rita always thinks I am flirting with other women. I love my wife, but she is a very jealous and a very suspicious woman. I have had to let several capable hygienists go because Rita thought that I had something going with them.”

  “And was she correct?”

  “No. They were just nice women, easy to talk to and attractive.”

  “Do you have affairs with women?”

  Neil Fong looked more astounded than offended. “Look at me, Inspector,” he said. “Do I look like the kind of man dozens of women flock after?”

  Silently Ángel studied Dr. Fong. He was a slight, short man with a flat nose, glasses, and a tendency toward baldness. Since he could think of no tactful way to say, “I see your point,” Ángel said nothing.

  “This time Rita got it into her noggin that I was going after Lisa Springer.”

  “Did she have a basis for her suspicions?” Ángel asked, then watched the doctor squirm. Once again he was calculating his reply.

  “Did you go after Lisa Springer?” Ángel persisted.

  All the color left Neil Fong’s face. “I did spend some time with her while we were on the plane.”

  “Anything else?” Ángel was sure there must be.

  “Friday afternoon, after we arrived, Rita wanted to bathe and nap. I needed some exercise. I decided to walk around town sightseeing. It’s more fun to go with someone, so I invited Lisa to come along, and she did. She was company, and that’s all.”

  Ángel said nothing.

  Neil stared at him over his half glasses. Like a Chinese Benjamin Franklin, Ángel thought. The silence lengthened. Neil made a tent with his long, thin fingers, then turned his stare to his fingernails and examined them minutely. Still, Ángel said nothing.

  “I know you’re waiting for me to say something about Rita,” Neil said finally.

  Actually Ángel wasn’t. He thought that Neil might confess that he and Lisa had taken a small hotel room for the afternoon.

  “Rita was very angry when I came back. Furious, actually. Accused me of God knows what. ‘I’m a doctor, for God’s sake,’ I told her. ‘Would I have sex with a girl I hardly knew?’

  “ ‘Doctors, even dentists, know about condoms,’ she shouts. ‘And malpractice,’ I shouted.

  “My wife, you see, Comisario, thinks I was infatuated with that young girl.”

  “Were you?”

  “Of course not! Attracted, yes. Infatuated, absolutely not. To be honest, Lisa didn’t turn out to be much fun at all. She seemed preoccupied. And she had all the self-absorption of the young,” Neil added.

  “Did you tell this to your wife?”

  “I tried. I could not convince her that we hadn’t had sex. When she gets like that, there’s no use.”

  “Like what?”

  Neil Fong looked wary. “Rita did not kill that girl, if that’s what you’re getting at, Comisario. She’s jealous and verbally abusive, unreasonable even, but she would never physically hurt anyone. She gets you with her tongue, but she would never harm anyone’s body. She’s practically a physical fitness freak, for God’s sake.” He shook his head furiously. “I know she didn’t do it.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Ángel wondered: Did Dr. Fong protest too much?

  “I was in bed with her all night.”

  “Could you have dozed off?”

  “Not likely. After I was sick, and I was sick for quite some time”—Neil reddened—“I got into bed, and we spent quite a while making up, if you know what I mean.”

  “Then what your wife says is true? You were violently sick?”

  “I was, but after I got rid of everything, I felt lots better.”

  Ángel nodded. “I see. Then you are allergic to wine.”

  Neil blinked. “The wine is not what makes me sick. It’s the fighting. The tension wreaks havoc on my stomach. Much as I try to control it, up it comes.” He smiled and peered over his half glasses at Ángel. “I guess if I’m allergic to anything, I’m allergic to Rita.”

  When Fong left, Ángel immediately crossed him off the suspect list. Too poor a liar. Rita Fong, however, was a different matter. Ángel guessed that she was high on her husband’s list, too.

  A sharp rap on the door startled him.

  “Perdón, Comisario.” Officer Zaldo stood at stiff attention.

  “Come in, Esteban.” Ángel hoped he sounded genial. For some reason Zaldo’s military precision put Ángel’s nerves on edge.

  “Our next suspect has not yet arrived, Comisario,” Zaldo announced. “Shall I bring you coffee?”

  “Gracias,” Ángel nodded. A cup of coffee would be perfect. “Who is our next suspect, Esteban?” he asked.

  “Señorita Williams,” Zaldo said with an air of importance that rankled Angel.

  The comisario had just taken a mouthful of coffee when the door flew open, and María José burst into the room.

  “I am sorry, sir.” Zaldo followed her, his face crimson with anger.

  “It is not your fault.” Ángel waved aside Esteban’s explanation and turned his eyes on his niece. “María José, what is the meaning of this?”

  “Tío,” she said, ignoring both men, “tell me again. What shape was the murder weapon? That may be what we can use to break this case. Something of an unusual size and shape that only one person owns.”

  Ángel could feel his temper fizzing up. “María José,” he said, his voice dangerously low, “I am in the middle of interrogating suspects. You are impeding police business.”

  María José’s face froze. “Impeding!” Her eyes were large. “How can I be impeding? I am trying to help.” She shot Zaldo a contemptuous look. “I would think with help like—”

  Realizing where she was headed, Ángel cut her off. “I have half a mind to ask Officer Zaldo to arrest you,” he said. “Perhaps a night in the cells would teach you to think. It might even improve your manners.”

  “I am sorry about not knocking before I came in, Tío.” she said, although Ángel suspected that she wasn’t sorry at all. “I thought that someone should look into the weapon.”

  “You may go, Esteban, and thank you.” Ángel dismissed his subordinate before his niece insulted him further.

  “María José,” he growled, “Esteban Zaldo is my deputy. He is the one who should be investigating murder weapons. How do you suppose—”

  “Esteban Zaldo is a dolt!” She snapped off his sentence. “He is tall and strong and dumb. Since we were youngsters in school, he has bullied people.”

  “Esteban is not the criminal.” Ángel’s shirt collar chafed, and his coffee was getting cold. He struggled to keep himself in check. “You cannot burst in on a criminal investigation and insult my police—”r />
  “Esteban probably did not notice.” She cut in again.

  “María José”—Ángel, fighting to keep his temper, gave it one more try—“I want to get on with what I am doing. This afternoon, after dinner, we will meet—”

  “After dinner?” She interrupted him for the third time, and Ángel Serrano lost his battle.

  “Enough,” he shouted at the top of his voice, shocking María José into silence. “You listen to me, young lady.” He watched her back go up at his choice of address and waited, daring her to comment. Wisely she said nothing.

  “I told you I will talk to you after dinner about the weapon. If you intend to be of help to me, the first thing you must do is obey orders. Is that clear?”

  Her mouth clamped tight, María José nodded. Her eyes could have burned him.

  “Dismissed!” he shouted. Amazingly she swung on her heel and left.

  Ángel leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and tried to calm himself before Heidi Williams was ushered in. He must clear his mind, recapture his patience. He hated to lose his temper. It made him feel hot and sticky all over. María José had no business driving him to it. She had no business at all insulting a police officer. Above all, she had no business being smarter than one!

  Heidi Williams made a striking contrast with Ángel’s niece. Where María José was dark and definite, Heidi was like a neutral smudge: hazel eyes, caramel-colored hair, and a plain, chubby face. Her expression was open, almost innocent, and she was much too plump, Ángel thought, to be wearing red slacks. He wondered why her mother hadn’t told her that.

  “Sit down, señorita.” Ángel smiled.

  Heidi immediately backed, like a child, into the chair. She popped her chewing gum.

  Ángel’s nerves tensed. “You may be the key to this whole case.” He spoke gently.

  Rather than act frightened, Heidi perked up. “Me?” she asked in a pleased voice. “How can I be the key?”

  “You knew Lisa better than anyone else. You were with her in the bedroom. Maybe something that was said or done—”

  “I’ve already told you everything I remember.”

  Another interrupter, Ángel thought wearily. “I am going to ask you some of the same questions all over again, Heidi. Maybe they will jog your memory.”

  With very little prodding, Heidi told him about Lisa’s leaving the room on Friday afternoon to go sightseeing with Dr. Fong. “Lisa said that he was a drag.” Ángel assumed that “drag” meant a bore. He wondered what Rita Fong would think of Lisa’s appraisal. He nodded for Heidi to continue.

  She told him again of fighting with Lisa on Friday evening, of making up, of Pepe escorting them both to the banquet, of dancing, and of their midnight walk. She ended her story as she had before: Lisa found a note from an admirer shoved under the door.

  “Lisa tore it up and flushed it,” she said.

  Studying the girl, Ángel wished he could delve into her mind. Was she as naïve and simple as she appeared or was she as devious as a winding road? The room was quiet save for the cracking of her gum and the steady drumming of rain against the window.

  “Did you like Lisa?” Ángel asked at last.

  Heidi shrugged. “She was okay. We were best friends when we were little and when we were growing up. In our senior year she won a scholarship, and after high school she went away to college.”

  “What college?” Ángel couldn’t remember having asked that question before. It didn’t seem relevant, but it would keep her talking.

  “A college in the South. Belmont College it’s called.”

  “Did she like it?”

  “I guess. We didn’t talk much after she started college.”

  “Did you go to college, Heidi?”

  She snapped her gum. “My mom wanted me to go away to college. My dad thought I should stay closer to home for a year or so. I didn’t have the grades to go away anyway, so my dad won, and I went to the junior college. Usually my mom wins.”

  Odd, no mention of what she wanted to do, Ángel thought.

  “My mom nearly always wins,” Heidi said dreamily. “She wanted me to take Lisa with me on this trip. My dad didn’t want me to go at all. I wanted to take my cousin Doreen. But my mom won again. If she hadn’t won, Lisa would still be alive, wouldn’t she? So did she win?

  “When I get home, my mom will blame it on me. I know that. She’ll be real mad at me.” Tears flooded the hazel eyes. “But I couldn’t help it. I really couldn’t.”

  Ángel fumbled through the manager’s desk drawer for a box of tissues. “Why do you think your mother will blame you?” He felt sympathy for the woman-child weeping before him.

  “Because she blames me for everything.” Heidi sniffed. “She says I screw up everything. But I didn’t screw this up,” she said, then let out a wail that brought Officer Zaldo running.

  Even after she was escorted from the room, Ángel couldn’t get Heidi Williams out of his mind. She was surely sick, but how sick? he wondered. Sick enough to kill a childhood friend? Maybe. Maybe not. Mentally he put her above Rita Fong on his suspect list.

  “Comisario.” Zaldo reentered the room and stood stiffly at attention. Wet half-moons had formed under his arms. “The two nuns are asking to see you, and I have brought in Señora Bootsie.” Straight-backed, he waited for instruction.

  “Send in the nuns first, Esteban. Let’s see what they want.”

  After a few perfunctory courtesies, Mary Helen got right to the point. The two top buttons of the comisario’s shirt were open, his gray tonsure was mussed, and he was beginning to look wilted at the edges. No sense prolonging his agony with another long conversation, she thought.

  “I forgot to mention that on Friday night, the night I thought I saw someone on the cathedral steps, another person was also looking out a hotel window.”

  Ángel straightened up and leaned forward in his chair. “How do you know, Sister?”

  “I heard someone cough. From the sound I knew it came from a window. I remember thinking that someone else was having trouble sleeping and was gazing out into the plaza.

  “This afternoon I heard the same cough. And Sister Eileen”—she turned to her friend, who nodded at Ángel—“identified it as Bootsie DeAngelo’s cough. Since she is waiting outside for you, we will be on our way.”

  “Way to where?” Ángel asked warily, but he was too late. Wherever it was, the nuns were already gone.

  The comisario was shocked by Bootsie DeAngelo’s appearance. Blue-black rings circled her eyes like bruises. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a large silk scarf; the tails hung over her bony shoulders. Bootsie looked thinner, if possible, than she had when Ángel first saw her, and it was not becoming.

  Chicken bones, picked clean, he thought, watching her perch on the corner of the chair. “Have you thought of anything you didn’t mention the first time we spoke?” Ángel gave her the opening.

  Bootsie’s false eyelashes fluttered like two black spiders against her pale face. Then she fixed him with an icy glare. “No, Comisario, I have not. And if I had, I surely would have sought you out and told you. This entire incident is most upsetting.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, señora,” Ángel said with a practiced courtesy calculated to annoy her. “But I have reason to believe that you were standing by the window of your hotel room late Friday night. Is that correct?”

  Bootsie let out an exaggerated sigh. “No wonder you are getting nowhere with this investigation if that is the kind of fact you’re going after.”

  “Perhaps you are correct, señora. Do you remember if you were at your window that night?”

  “I may have been. I’ve been up late on several occasions this week. I have not been sleeping well, Comisario. I’m sure that is not so hard even for you to understand.”

  Behind the desk Ángel clenched and unclenched his fists. It is a wonder someone hasn’t gone for her little chicken neck, he thought, watching her drum her red fingernails on the arm of the chair
.

  “Do you remember Friday night specifically? The night you arrived here from San Francisco. Do you remember if you were by your window that night?”

  Bootsie gave his question some thought. “After dinner Roger and I joined the others in the lounge. We left shortly after the other couples did. At first I had difficulty falling asleep because of the strange bed and the rain, but once I did, I slept well.”

  “Then you don’t remember standing by the open window?”

  “When I think about it, I’m sure I did not, Comisario. I have more sense than to stand in front of an open window on a rainy night.”

  “Are you sure?” Ángel gave her the final bait.

  “I’m sure,” she said, her smile rigid. “As I said, I’m far too sensible for that.”

  But not sensible enough to tell the truth, he thought. Why? he wondered, watching her thin back leave the manager’s office. Why would the woman choose to lie about something like that?

  Officer Zaldo reappeared in the doorway. “Comisario, do you want another American?” he asked briskly. “Or will you wait until after dinner?”

  The peal of the bells in the cathedral’s lordly tower filled the manager’s office. Church bells in the steeples all over Santiago rang out the Angelus.

  “It’s noon!” Ángel pushed himself up from the padded chair. “We will both think clearer, Esteban, after dinner and a little break!”

  “Sí, Comisario,” Zaldo snapped, and with a click of his heels he was gone.

  Whether it was the hour or Bootsie DeAngelo’s emaciated look, Ángel did not know, but suddenly he was ravenous. He gathered up his raincoat and umbrella. Julietta would be busy in the kitchen by now, fussing over bubbling pots, peeking into steaming pans with delicious smells, just waiting for him to taste. He wondered what she was preparing. For once he hoped it wasn’t chicken.

  Kate Murphy lay in bed with her eyes closed. Her head pounded, and she was burning up. Her stomach itched. In fact, she itched all over, but her head hurt too much to open her eyes to investigate the reason.

  Her husband grunted, and the alarm clock went off. Kate waited for a few seconds while Jack made his usual waking-up noises. When he finally sat up on the edge of their bed, she opened her eyes. Her eyeballs felt as if they had been rolled in sand. Jack put his fingers into his thick, curly hair and scratched, and she knew he was awake enough to hear what she said.