Death Goes on Retreat (6 page)

Mary Helen felt a sympathy for the young priest. Accepting death, especially sudden and violent death, takes a great deal of hope and trust in God’s promises. Hope, like all other virtues, demands years of practice.

“Then, all of you, that is all except Father Moreno, knew the young man?” Eileen asked in that Irish statement-question way of hers.

“Oh, I knew Greg Johnson, all right.” Ed pushed his coffee mug forward for a refill. “When Happy Harrington here couldn’t handle him, he came to do some time with me in Juvenile Hall. I’m the one he finally told that he was leaving the seminary. And it was the right decision. The kid did not have a vocation to be a priest.”

“More than likely, it was his mother who did,” the monsignor said softly. “Poor Marva. Wait until she hears this.”

“I think that the archbishop always thought it was my fault,” Ed said. “Like I gave Greg a shove or something.”

“Did you?” Mike asked the question that was on Mary Helen’s mind.

“Actually,” Ed Moreno said, sounding a little defensive, “I did the kid a big favor. It just wasn’t for him.”

“It’s really quite a coincidence,” Mary Helen said.

“What is, Sister?”

“That all you priests knew the young man. And that we Sisters met him here last night. Then his body appears . . .” She let her words trail off.

Ed Moreno ran his fingers nervously through his thinning hair. “Do you mean it’s a coincidence, or do you mean it seems suspicious?”

Sister Mary Helen frowned and cocked her head as if she had not quite heard. That’s one of the advantages of growing old, she thought, stalling for time.

His question was a legitimate one. She really should answer it. Yet, for some reason, she did not know how.

In the distance, a car door slammed. Tom Harrington looked relieved.

“Odd the dogs aren’t barking.” Felicita rose slowly from the table.

And that there are no police car noises, Mary Helen wanted to say, but caught herself. It was too soon after her “slightly hard of hearing” act.

Andy Carr checked his watch. “I guess we were a priority after all, Mike. It only took them a half hour to get here.”

“Who’s ‘them’?” Beverly threw open the kitchen door.

Poor Felicita paled. “Beverly, it’s you,” she said, trying to recover her poise. “You’re early.”

“You’re the ones who are early,” Beverly snapped, her plain, red face screwing up into a scowl. “Besides, who were you expecting, Sister? Chef Boyardee?”

“Good one, Bev.” Ed Moreno laughed.

Beverly fixed the group with her small coffee-brown eyes. “I’m here early because I have things to do,” she said, her voice suddenly flat and angry, “and I want to
do them in peace and quiet. So don’t start bugging me to hurry up and fix your breakfast. I’m not in the mood.” She pulled the door closed behind her.

“I had better go in and tell her what happened,” Felicita muttered.

“I’d leave that to the sheriff.” Tom Harrington gave a crooked smile. “After all, he’s the one trained for combat duty.”

Beverly slammed drawers and cupboards while Felicita absentmindedly refilled the coffee cups until, finally, Eileen put her hand over hers. “I think my back teeth are beginning to float,” she said softly.

“Of course. Sorry.” Felicita created a mountain of toast using the dining room’s toaster. She even managed to slide in and out of the kitchen without incident, for butter and jam.

When the sheriff arrived at last, there was no mistaking it was he. The squeal of tires was followed by the heavy thud of the car door. The high-pitched voice of the police dispatcher squawked out into the morning stillness.

“Sister Felicita?” The man’s immense frame filled the doorway of St. Jude’s. His tan shirt and forest-green pants gave him a woodsy look. When she didn’t answer immediately, he studied his notebook with narrow agate eyes that seemed too small for his head. Almost as if he had been given the wrong pair, Mary Helen thought.

All at once, he was staring at her. Unwittingly, she stared back. She had never in her life seen such a big police officer. He didn’t even look “regulation,” if there was such a thing.

Not only was he extremely tall, probably about six feet
four or five, but he was also broad, with thick hands and feet that seemed even wider than they were because of his highly polished paratrooper boots.

His nose, set a little high on his sunburned face, gave him a sniffing look. And his light hair was clipped so short that it was difficult to tell its exact color.

He ambled toward the group. With each step his holster rubbing against his basket-weave belt made a creaking sound. “Which one of you ladies is Sister Felicita?” he asked impatiently.

“I am she,” Felicita answered, as if she wished she weren’t.

“You say you found a body?” He sounded as skeptical as if she’d reported finding a Martian.

“Yes, Sheriff.” Felicita seemed to recoil.

“Actually, I found the body.” Mary Helen adjusted her bifocals so she could read the name badge pinned to his shirt pocket. He wasn’t the sheriff at all. He was a sergeant. Probably one of the few, if Felicita was to be believed. Sergeant Eric Something.

He must have noticed her checking his badge. “I’m Sergeant Eric Loody, ma’am,” he said with what struck Mary Helen as a supercilious smile. “Loody rhymes with duty.”

A mnemonic device for the old lady, Mary Helen thought, feeling her hackles rise. She took a deep breath. All that coffee must be affecting her nerves. Surely, the deputy meant nothing invidious by it.

“How-do, Sergeant Loody,” she said, wondering what Father Ed Moreno would make out of that name.

“And who are you?”

Quickly, she told him, then began to relate the circumstances
stances of her grueling—and gruesome—discovery. “I woke early this morning,” she said, “and decided to enjoy the mountains and perhaps to make the stations.”

Loody frowned.

“The Way of the Cross?” she offered. When he still looked puzzled, she hurried on. If she took the time to explain every devotion of the Catholic Church, it would be a very long day indeed.

“Anyway, Sergeant, I changed my mind early on. Too steep. And went instead to Madonna Grove, where I found . . .” She stopped. She had to. Her mouth was dry and she felt nauseated.

With a hostile-sounding sniff the officer shifted his gaze toward the priests around the table. “Who are you guys?” he asked.

The monsignor rose, his handsome face almost as white as his hair. “Con McHugh,” he said, offering a hand, which Loody failed to take. Apparently sergeants do not shake hands with potential suspects, Mary Helen told herself.

Deftly waving the same hand, McHugh included the other four men. “We are all priests from the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” he said, “here at St. Colette’s to make the annual priests’ retreat.”

Loody’s eyes swept the group. “Padres, huh?” he said flippantly, then flicked his eyes toward Eileen. “And you’re a nun, too, without the penguin suit?”

Eileen’s soft wrinkled face colored. From the parentheses forming on either side of her thin, tight lips, Mary Helen knew her friend was hopping mad.

“What’s your name, ma’am?” he asked with cold courtesy.

“Sister Eileen,” she said in a brogue so thick, one could slice and serve it.

Mary Helen stared at Loody in disbelief. It had been so long since she had run into one that, for a moment, the term escaped her. She had thought that by now the breed was extinct. Could it be that in this day and age, they had stumbled upon an—an—anti-Catholic bigot?

In the distance, a second car screeched to a halt and Mary Helen heard heavy, hurrying footsteps approach the dining room. The door swung back and a second officer stepped inside.

With a strange sense of relief, Mary Helen shifted her attention to the new man. Although dwarfed by Loody, he was tall, young, and clean-shaven with a friendly, open face and candid blue eyes.

“This is Deputy Foster,” Loody mumbled almost grudgingly.

Foster’s face colored, as if he were unused to the title. He touched the brim of his brown Stratton in a stiff cowboy salute that looked as if he’d copied it from a western sitcom. In Mary Helen’s opinion, however, the hat wasn’t a cowboy’s hat at all. If anything, it made Foster look, for all this world, like a doughboy right out of World War I. Of course, his fresh-scrubbed face didn’t help much either.

“Just picked up the one-four on the radio,” he announced to Loody and everyone else within earshot. “What’ve we got?”

Loody sniffed. “Don’t know yet, Foster,” he said. “I was just about to find out.

“Anyone else on the grounds except you people?” Loody asked, making “people” sound as if he had trouble
finding a noun to define their lot adequately. His small eyes jumped from person to person.

Counting to eight to see how many we are, Mary Helen thought, uncharitably.

As if on cue, the kitchen door swung open. “I’m Beverly Benton.” Was Beverly eavesdropping?

“Are you a nun too?” Loody asked with a sneer.

Beverly caught him with a glare that could sear metal. “No,” she said, “I am not. I just work here.”

Loody gave a noncommittal grunt. “Don’t any of you get any ideas about leaving the place,” he said severely.

Then, turning toward a red-faced Foster, he spoke loud enough for all to hear. “Get down their names and addresses, Deputy. All of them. These guys in their pious getups don’t fool me for one minute. I know about their kind. If you ask me, the murderer is right here in this room.”

Felicita groaned aloud.

“By the time I’m finished with them,” Loody growled, “they’ll wish they’d never tangled with the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department.”

If Mary Helen didn’t know better, she’d think they were caught in one of those frozen, deep South dramas with the sheriff and Bubba and the Klan.

Before Deputy Foster had quite finished his task, Loody announced in a pugnacious tone that he was cordoning off the retreat house. No one was to leave. No one was to enter until further notice.

“But the other nuns.” By now Felicita looked as if she might faint. “They are on their way home from Bakers-field. And priests will be arriving . . .”

“No one is to leave and no one is to enter the premises
until I say so.” Loody gave a satisfied sniff. His holster and belt creaking, he left the dining room, following a grim-faced Felicita.

Deputy Foster, avoiding direct eye contact with anyone, smiled sheepishly. Then, without a word, he left too. No doubt they were going to view the victim.

“I wonder which one of you did it?” Beverly said, nibbling on a piece of cold toast. Her face was more flushed than usual and wisps of straw-colored hair escaped from her topknot.

“One of us?” Monsignor McHugh sounded genuinely shocked. “Surely, you don’t think . . .”

“You were the only ones who were here, weren’t you?” Her dark eyes riddled them all. “I wouldn’t put it past any one of you.” Giving the door a hard jab, she disappeared into the kitchen.

For a long moment the group sat in stunned silence watching the door swing. The monsignor was the first to recover. “How in the world could she think that one of us killed that unfortunate young man?”

“Greg Johnson may turn out to be the lucky one after all,” Ed Moreno said.

“Lucky?” Mike looked as if he might lose the little bit he’d eaten. “Why lucky?”

“He is dead, my boy. We are alive and held captive with Heavy Bevy and . . .” It took him a minute, but he came up with a handle. “Eric the Rude.”

Even Ed’s epithet was unable to lighten the mood. The seven religious sat in what Mary Helen considered an unholy gloom. Still, who could blame them?

Like it or not, they were all suspects. As Beverly had so flat-footedly pointed out, they were the only ones on
the premises when Greg Johnson was murdered. Which proved nothing, of course. The hills around the retreat house were open to anyone with the courage to climb them. Or were they? Was the property fenced? Odd that the victim was someone they all knew, however briefly.

“It’s a long road that has no turning,” Eileen said, breaking into her reverie.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that every cloud has a silver lining.” Her brogue was thick enough to let Mary Helen know she was still upset.

“Which is what?”

Despite their attempt to whisper, the priests were listening with interest.

“Sister Cecilia thinks we are safely on retreat. With any luck at all, she may never know this happened.”

Cecilia! With all this morning’s goings-on Mary Helen hadn’t given a single thought to anything else. As president of Mount St. Francis College, Sister Cecilia had weathered the publicity that accompanied Mary Helen’s previous brushes with murder and murderers. After the pilgrimage to Spain, Cecilia had mentioned—a bit testily, in Mary Helen’s opinion—that her forbearance was wearing thin.

And, although Eileen said it was nonsense, Mary Helen sensed that Sister Therese, who liked her name pronounced “trays,” and several of the other nuns were beginning to avoid the two of them as one would a pair of Grim Reapers. Actually, only young Sister Anne found their adventures exciting. Eileen was right. It was best that this whole affair be kept as quiet as possible.

“Surely it’s too remote a murder to make the
Chronicle,
”
Eileen assured her. Several of the older Sisters at the college read the San Francisco paper with almost religious fervor, missing no item, however insignificant.

Tom Harrington smiled. “They won’t need the
Chronicle
,” he said. “The clerical grapevine will have the news up Holy Hill faster than the speed of light.”

Mary Helen groaned. Twenty priests were expected at the retreat house. How soon? She had lost all sense of time. Checking her watch, she was surprised to see that it was only a few minutes after eight o’clock in the morning. The significance hadn’t dawned on her.

In less than two hours, twenty diocesan priests would be turned away from St. Colette’s by the police. Figuring in travel time down the mountain and telephone time, Mount St. Francis would undoubtedly have the news by lunch. Unless, heaven forbid, some priest had a car phone. Then the bad news might arrive as early as the morning coffee break.