by Lynn Bohart
The officer ran his fingers across Grosvner’s back in an expert fashion. Most of the scabs had come off during the bath, leaving small pink marks in their place and a shiny, healthy multi-colored coat.
“These will heal all right. He’ll be just fine.” Swan patted Grosvner on the head and dropped his ears back in place. Grosvner pushed up against his leg hoping for more attention. “They’re very clever dogs, you know. You ought to train him if he isn’t already. They make great hunting dogs. In fact they were bred with those short legs so that hunters could follow them easily in the field.”
“I just hope Angie lets me keep him.”
“Sounds to me like you may be the one in the dog house,” Swan chuckled.
Giorgio ignored the comment while he flipped through things on his desk. He picked up a copy of the coroner’s report when Grosvner came to lie at his feet.
“How’s your head?” Swan inquired. “I heard about last night.”
Giorgio looked up, reaching for his scalp. “I won’t be playing soccer any day soon.”
“Any clue who hit you?”
“I followed a monk into the garden where he rendezvoused with someone from the kitchen. When I followed the monk back inside, he caught me from behind.”
“Were they both monks?”
“I don’t think so. It was some sort of planned meeting though. I just don’t know what for. I think the person from the kitchen may have been one of the caterers.”
“Could have been Colin Jewett.”
“Why do you say that?”
“We ran backgrounds on the entire staff. Something Ms. Fields may want to do in the future,” he added smugly. “Colin Jewett has a record for drug trafficking.”
“Really?” For Giorgio, two and two had just added up to make four.
“According to McCready’s notes, Fields said last night that she hired him because he’s the relative of a friend. That’s probably why she didn’t run a check.”
“We need to have a talk with Mr. Jewett, but we also need to talk with her other caterer, a guy named Peter. He was outside last night, too.”
“I’ll get somebody on it.”
Giorgio scanned the coroner’s report until the phone rang.
“Detective Salvatori?” a female voice said at the other end.
“Right. Who’s this?”
“I’m Rebecca Browning from KBTV. I’d like to get a statement.”
Giorgio winced. “Sorry. I don’t have anything to say. You’ll have to talk with our Public Affairs guy.”
“I’ve already spoken to him, Detective. I need to speak with you.”
“Look, I really don’t have time. I have a murder to solve. Give Max a call.” And with that, he hung up.
Swan rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s the way to make friends with the media.”
“I really don’t have anything to say. I mean what am I gunna say? We don’t know who the killer is, or if he’ll kill again.”
“Point made,” Swan acquiesced with a shrug.
“Okay, tell me more about what the coroner said.”
Swan leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. “Olsen hadn’t eaten since lunch, and there was a fair amount of alcohol in her system, along with the chloral hydrate.”
Giorgio continued to read the report as he talked. “But it seems there was more alcohol in her system than what was missing from the wine bottle in her room.” His eyes narrowed as if he were trying to make a calculation.
“Maybe she had a drink at the bar before she went upstairs,” Swan offered.
“Perhaps. But maybe her visitor brought a bottle of something with him. She could have had a drink before he arrived. That was the glass we found in her room. Then the friend brought his own bubbly with the drug.”
“But where’s that bottle, or the glass?” Swan challenged him with a raised eyebrow.
Giorgio shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe he took it with him.”
“How? If your theory is correct, he killed her in the room and then carried her down the stairs to the kitchen closet. He couldn’t have carried a bottle of wine, too.
“Maybe not,” Giorgio said to himself. “Do we have the lab results back from the bottle in her room?”
“Not yet.”
“Hmmm,” he contemplated. “If he drugged her first, that would account for the lack of a struggle. The question is how did he administer the drug?”
“Hey, Joe, glad you’re here,” Maxwell said, coming into the room with a fax in hand. “The coroner vacuumed Olsen’s body and clothing this morning and found coarse, gray fibers on her dress and in her hair. Hey,” he interrupted himself, “where’d the dog come from?”
“Joe has a new partner.” Swan smiled broadly, enjoying the joke.
“My aunt used to have a Basset.” Maxwell handed the fax to Giorgio and walked over to stoop down to pet Grosvner, his protruding stomach stretching the limits of his shirt. “You don’t have a pool do you, Joe?”
Giorgio was busy reading the report. “Hunh? No. Why?”
“They don’t swim too good. Too heavy in the front end or something. I mean, look at that schnaz. It’s a dog built around a nose,” he chortled. “My aunt used to put a life jacket on her dog whenever they went boating. Looked pretty stupid, but I guess he fell in once and almost drowned.”
Giorgio looked at him with a blank expression wondering why everyone suddenly seemed to have a story about Basset Hounds. He returned to the report.
“Looks like the killer wrapped Olsen in something. Maybe a blanket or a rug,” he said.
“You mean the fibers?”
Swan was sitting at his desk kneading the palm of his hand and wincing as he spoke. As Swan dug the knuckle of one hand into the other, his expression seemed to vacillate between pain and pleasure.
Giorgio dropped the report to watch his partner. “Why do you do that?”
He had watched Swan manipulate his hands like that almost daily for four years, never knowing why. For some reason, now he wanted to know.
“Ever heard of reflexology?” Swan asked, shaking his hand out. “The muscles in your hands and feet are related to the muscles in your back.” He got up and went around to Giorgio’s desk. “Here, give me your hand.”
Giorgio backed away, but Swan grabbed his right hand and pressed the knuckle of his index finger deep into the thick muscles that made up the heel of Giorgio’s palm. Giorgio almost came out of his chair.
“Ow!” He cried, yanking his hand away. Swan and Maxwell just laughed.
“See? It works,” Swan smiled.
“What works? That hurt like hell!” he snapped, rubbing his hand.
“Yeah, but if you kept it up your back would feel great.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my back! It’s my head that hurts.”
“Well, I don’t think it will help that.”
“Well, keep your hands to yourself.”
Giorgio gave Swan a wary look as if he thought Swan might grab his hand and try it again, but Swan merely wandered nonchalantly back to his desk, chuckling.
“We have a murder investigation to conduct.” Giorgio eyed Maxwell who quickly suppressed a smile. Giorgio glanced back at the report hoping to change the subject. “A blanket was probably used to carry our victim down to the supply closet. Get forensics on it.” He said this to Maxwell, slapping the paper onto the desk a little more loudly than necessary. “And what about fingerprints?”
The young officer was rubbing Grosvner’s neck. “We found ten or twelve different prints in the closet.”
“Have you identified any of them yet?”
“McCready put them through AFIS this morning.” The cop stood and opened a folder he was carrying. “From our current cast of characters, we have Father Damian, Father Daniels, Father Rosario, Father Julio, Mary Fields and the janitor. The other prints were either unidentified or came from people who no longer live on the premises.”
“Check them out anyway. I wond
er why Mary Fields’ prints were in there.”
“I think the bigger question is,” interrupted Swan, “why wouldn’t they be in there? Remember, she caters there. She could have gone back at any time looking for extra napkins or something.”
Giorgio sat back. “That’s probably true for almost anyone at the monastery. It would only get interesting if we found a print from one of the conference guests. We need to fingerprint everyone and then get to work on those fibers.”
“I’m on it.”
Maxwell gave a mock salute and patted Grosvner once more before leaving. Giorgio looked at Swan.
“Now all we have to do is find something up there made from coarse, gray fibers.”
Swan clasped the fingers of his two hands together and turned them inside out, cracking his knuckles. The sound gave Giorgio the shivers, but this time he said nothing.
Chapter Twenty
It was almost ten o’clock that morning when Giorgio passed through the monastery gates, guarded now by a police cruiser. They’d already turned away the construction crew that had returned to work on the bell tower, and the news vans were all lined up outside the gate attempting to interview anyone who ventured within striking distance.
Giorgio parked up near the building letting Grosvner out before slamming the door. The sky was a blank, gray canvas and visibility extended to only the first quarter mile of homes in the valley. The iron monk, so eerily real the night of the murder, stood calmly in the drab morning light. In fact, the entire building appeared docile now the storm had passed. Even Giorgio’s attack from the night before seemed in the distant past, though he was conscious of the dull ache in his head.
Two monks trimmed nearby bushes, while a third raked leaves just outside the cemetery. Giorgio had decided to walk a full circuit of the property this time, convinced either the grounds or the building itself held the key he was looking for. When a light breeze billowed through the trees carrying the promise of another rainstorm, he zipped up his jacket and stuffed his hands into his pockets thinking he’d better hurry.
He skirted the corner of the building and glanced over to where a flagstone path curved down a grassy slope to a small pond encircled by a short, brick wall. A rose garden was set off to the side, the blooms having already been discarded in preparation for the oncoming winter months. The lawn was edged carefully around the perimeter of the pond and walkways were swept clean, leaving no sign of the previous storm. Giorgio knew the Benedictine monks lived on a timetable divided into three distinct time periods: liturgical prayer, spiritual reading, and manual labor. It was obvious from the pristine nature of the grounds that a good portion of their time was spent doing yard work.
A western-style pole fence separated the formal monastery grounds from the untilled fields below and ran from Sunnyside Drive to a bank of Aspen trees that marked the east property line a football field away. There were a couple of dilapidated barns just in front of the Aspens. He would have one of the other officers do a thorough search of those, just in case. Instead, he decided to explore the backside of the property, hoping to discover how the murderer had invisibly deposited Mallery Olsen in the kitchen supply closet.
He crossed to the east side of the monastery. In between the refectory and the bakery was a storm cellar with heavy plywood doors. He pulled one door open and descended halfway down a set of steps. The cellar was similar to the one he’d grown up with back in New York, just a square box with a hard packed dirt floor. This one held large canisters of lard, grain, and spices while steel bins on the floor were marked for flour and sugar. Giorgio remembered the storm cellar he’d grown up with had been dark and dank, filled with spiders and other creepy crawly things. In one particularly wicked moment, Giorgio had locked a scrawny neighbor boy inside while he and Rocky sat outside and laughed. The boy grew up to be a judge, and Giorgio always silently wondered if becoming a judge was his way of turning the tables on the bullies in his life. Fortunately, Giorgio had never had to go to trial in his court to find out.
Since there was no door linking the cellar to the main building, Giorgio backed out and turned toward the cemetery where a young monk raked leaves from around a large oak tree. Several plastic bags filled with debris sat next to him. The monk introduced himself as Father Frances, and Giorgio remembered he was one of the new recruits. Dressed in a long brown robe and black rubber boots, the young monk appeared to be in his mid twenties. He had blonde hair, dark eyes, and an easy manner. Giorgio paused to talk with him while Grosvner took the opportunity to lift his leg on one of the leaf bags. Giorgio grimaced.
“It was a terrible thing, Detective,” the monk said, stopping to lean on the rake. “I hope you’ll have more luck today with your investigation. Father Joseph said we’ve already lost some bookings, so I hope you’ll be able to finish up soon.”
“We can’t be finished until we’ve found the murderer.”
“Of course,” the young monk said with an apologetic nod. “Is that why you’re back here today, Detective? Are you hoping the murderer will return to the scene of the crime, just like in the novels?”
“My guess is the murderer never left.”
The dark eyes flashed in mild surprise. “You think it’s one of us, then?”
“Not necessarily. But it was someone here that night and most likely they were here the next day as well.”
“I see.”
Father Francis had a swarthy complexion and strong hands with thick fingers and calluses. The fingernails showed dirt in the crevices, a result of working outside for long periods of time. Giorgio thought about the difficult life the monks led as he watched the young man lean over to pull a twig from the pile of leaves.
“I was never very good at puzzles,” he continued amiably. “I admire your ability to sort all this out. Even in Jesuit school I had trouble with, what did they call it, cognitive thinking.” He used the rake to shape the loose pile into a neat dome as he spoke. “I’m better at supplication I suppose.”
“You enjoy being a monk, then?”
He turned to look at Giorgio, his whole face aglow. “I do. It’s given me a purpose, a reason to get up each day, to serve God.”
“Where did you grow up?” Giorgio asked, feeling the need to change the subject.
“San Francisco. I love it there. There’s nothing quite as beautiful as the San Francisco Bay on a clear day. Then, there’s the culture and of course, the diversity. You can be whoever you want to be there, no questions asked.”
Giorgio wasn’t sure what he meant and remained silent. Father Francis must have
misinterpreted his silence because he was quick to clarify his comment.
“I know what you’re probably thinking,” he said, his face flushing slightly. “People think all priests must be gay, or that we hate women. That’s not me. That’s not even true.”
The misunderstanding had opened a floodgate and Father Francis was now a bundle of
nervous energy.
“I like women a lot and I’ve dated more than my share,” he said, trying to strike a masculine pose.
Inside, Giorgio chuckled, thinking he’d either just exposed a latent homosexual or a kid with an ego problem.
“Did your parents encourage you to go into the church?” he asked, thinking of his mother and trying to change the subject again.
The young man’s face grew dark and he leaned on the rake again, all bravado gone. “Both my parents are gone.”
Grosvner sauntered up, sniffing the ground as he came and stepping on his ears every few feet. Father Frances finally acknowledged the dog.
“I see you have a friend today.”
He leaned over and invited Grosvner to approach. Grosvner responded with his head lowered almost to the ground. Frances knelt down and drew his hand across the dog’s broad head in a friendly gesture, alleviating Grosvner’s shyness.
“A friend of mine in college had a Basset. She had to leave him on her small patio when she went to classes. That dog howled fr
om the moment she left until the moment she got home. She was kicked out of two different apartments and finally had to get rid of him.” He chuckled. “She swore that dog was smarter than most people though.”
Giorgio was beginning to wonder if just about everybody had owned a Basset at one time or another.
“He’s a new addition to the family,” he replied. “We’re just getting to know each other.”
The monk patted Grosvner on the back and lifted the rake again. “Well, I must get back to work.”
“Before you do, maybe you could answer a few questions. Does Father Damian always lead the nine o’clock prayer?”
“Yes, unless he’s sick or otherwise detained.”
“Does he usually arrive on time?”
“He’s very punctual. Is there a problem with Father Damian, Detective?”
“I’m just trying to establish some timelines. Do you know what time he arrived the night of the murder?”
“Actually, as I told the officer who interviewed me, I was a little late that night myself. I got caught up writing some letters. I arrived just before Father Damian.”
“When was that?”
“A few minutes after nine, I guess. He came in and told us about the body being found. He called for Brother Joseph and asked all of us to stay there. I believe the police had already been called. Brother Joseph led a short service to offer a prayer for the young woman.”
It was the first time he’d heard any of the monks express concern for Mallery Olsen. Giorgio stroked his chin. “Was anyone else late or absent?”
“Only Father O’Leary. He was taken ill right after the evening meal. I’m afraid he’s still not feeling well.”
A damp breeze brushed against Giorgio’s cheek. He’d have to hurry if he was going to finish his inspection before it rained.
“Well, thank you, Father Frances. I’ll let you get back to your leaves.”
“We’re all here to help in any way we can.”