The Missing Madonna (16 page)

Gallagher looked at his watch. Honore got the hint.

“I appreciate you guys coming over.” He studied the ring his beer glass had made on the tabletop.

Being beholden was not going to be easy for Honore, Kate figured. She was tempted to let him squirm, but her curiosity was getting the better of her.

“You said the nuns came by today? What happened?”

“That was my first mistake,” he said. “I should never have told you to have them come by at all. I should have sent them right to the local station where they belonged.” Honore wagged his head solemnly. “Actually Northern Station was closed today. I was just there for a few hours catching up on some paperwork. God, there’s a lot of paperwork in Missing Persons!”

“What happened?” Kate insisted.

“Nothing really happened while they were there,” he said. “Nothing I could put my finger on. A lady friend of theirs is a hostess in a restaurant. Nobody’s heard from her for a few days. All in all, it was a pretty routine report. One where I’d put out the usual feelers. You know, question people who saw her last, et cetera. Actually, my common sense tells me there’s nothing to get excited about. No signs of foul play. The woman probably went away for a couple of days, forgot to tell people or maybe didn’t tell them on purpose. Who knows?” Honore shrugged.

“But they were so damn convincing. Especially that older nun, that Sister Mary Helen. I began to doubt my own horse sense.”

“That one’ll get you every time!” Gallagher mumbled. “And watch out for the sidekick too. Looks innocent
as the day is long. But those two gals could sell you your own shoes and make you glad you bought them.”

Honore stuck another piece of gum into the wad in his mouth. “The daughter—and if she isn’t a lulu!—was with them this time. She brought this gold medal in, see. Dangled it in front of me. Then she claims the missing woman wouldn’t go anywhere without it That’s how they all figured out something bad had happened to her. Now that is crazy, I told myself. I’m a policeman, and yet I can get out of my car and forget to take my keys.”

Kate stared. Honore must have been affected. He was even suggesting he could have a weakness.

“Not often.” He recovered quickly. “But it has happened. Now, that was around noon. The whole thing is a routine matter. Ordinarily, I’d get to it on Monday morning in a routine way.”

“I hear a
but
coming.” Jack took the last swallow of his beer. Honore held up his hand for a second round.

“But the damn thing’s been on my mind ever since they first came in. Like I say, I figured the lady just wanted to get away for a couple of days and they were overreacting. It happens more than you think in my department It’s not like she was senile or anything and wandered away. And it is a free country, you know.”

He looked from officer to officer, waiting for someone to disagree. When no one did, he went on. “So, like I say, I played it down. But the more I think about it the more something just isn’t setting right. Nothing I can put my finger on. Just a funny feeling in my gut. Makes me wonder if something really did happen to her.”

“Whoa!” Gallagher pushed his shot glass to the middle of the table, ready for Snooky to set down the second. “No you don’t fella! I’ve had my bellyful of those two nuns.”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you guys. I know you’ve had dealings with them. And I don’t know why it
is . . .” Honore’s broad finger traced the water ring on the table. Kate sensed he was working up courage.

The man shrugged, a silly smile on his ebony face. “But nuns have always spooked me.”

Kate couldn’t believe it. The arrogant, smooth-talking Honore had a chink in his armor! Even the glimpse of something vulnerable squirming inside made him instantly a little easier to tolerate. “Why?” she asked. “Aren’t you a Catholic?”

“Yeah, I’m a Catholic, all right. Every Creole from New Orleans is Catholic. At least, I was baptized one. But they spooked me even as a kid. Something about the long habits, only their faces and hands showing . . . In New Orleans we had the ones with the white wings on their heads. Coming down the street, the wings flapping like doves . . . I thought it was the goddamn Holy Ghost coming toward me. Scared the hell out of me.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ron, you’re a grown man! And these Sisters don’t wear habits.” Kate rubbed it in.

“But they still have those eyes. Like they can look right through you and see if you go to church on Sunday. And the damn thing’s been bothering me all day.”

“Going to church on Sunday?” Kate couldn’t help herself.

“You know damn well what I mean. Do you think they really have an inside track on stuff?”

“Hey, Denny”—Jack slapped Gallagher on the back—“you give him the word. You’re our resident expert on nuns.”

Gallagher threw back the rest of his shot, wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand, and banged the glass on the table. “Not me, fella. As far as I’m concerned, you’re on your own. Yes, sir. They’re all yours. I wouldn’t touch them again with a ten-foot pole.

“As far as I can see, the whole thing’s going to pot. It’s beyond me why the Pope can’t keep nuns in the convent where they belong.” He stood and hitched up his
pants. If you ask me, the whole goddamn Church has gone amuck. Nuns without habits, priests talking English at Mass, altars turned any which way, Sunday Mass on Saturday!

“But you know the worst of it?” Gallagher paused to stick the stub of his cigar into the corner of his mouth. “The worst thing of all was giving up fish on Friday. God, how I loved poached salmon!”

“Looks like Pinelli’s Florist made a killing,” Jack Bassetti whispered, following Kate up the aisle of St. Thomas’s Church. He was right. Nearly every woman at the ten-thirty Mass had a Mother’s Day corsage pinned to her lapel.

Most were the traditional five-flower variety: some, carnations with pink ribbon; some, white roses with silver. Here and there Kate spotted an orchid. Even the little old ladies she always saw in church had an added splash of color pinned to their black wool coats.

Waiting for Mass to begin, she noticed some of the young mothers, the ones who usually rushed in late, dragging sniffling, hastily dressed youngsters. This morning they were beaming, looking calm and peaceful. Even the children seemed tidier. Several middle-aged women, whom she could have sworn were widows, today walked down the aisle on the arms of middle-aged husbands.

The entire congregation had a warm, mellow feeling. The same kind of glow that happens on Christmas Eve and Easter morning. Kate forced herself to smile back at the slim woman who stopped at the edge of her pew. She nudged Jack. The two of them slid over, making room for the woman and three fellows looking like halfbacks in lettermen sweaters stumbling in behind her.

“Happy Mother’s Day!” the woman whispered to Kate. Kate wondered for a moment what the Mother’s-Day equivalent of “bah, humbug!” might be.

By the time they were ready to go to Mama Bassetti’s for dinner, Kate thought her mood would have improved, but it hadn’t. Not that Jack didn’t try. After Mass he had taken her to a fancy brunch in a quaint new place on Union Street. Several times during the meal he had assured her that Mother’s Day was nothing more than a commercial venture started by Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Two billion Chinese, he had reminded her in desperation, didn’t even know today was Mother’s Day. “Furthermore,” he had added, running his fingers through his curly hair, “they don’t give a damn!”

But nothing had worked. Much as she hated to admit it, Kate was in a Mother’s-Day funk. In the shower she had even shed a few tears, thinking of her own mother, missing her, wishing she were still alive. Kate hadn’t done that in years. On the way out the door, she tried hard to conceal the sudden surge of fury she felt when Jack forgot to pick up his mother’s gift from the hall table. In the end she had bought it, and he couldn’t even remember to take it along.

The ride from their house in the Richmond through Golden Gate Park to Mrs. Bassetti’s in the Sunset was short. Too short, Kate thought, staring out the car window, trying to calm down.

She studied all the shades of green along John F. Kennedy Drive. They passed clumps of spring-green bordered by evergreen-green. The pale yellowy-green of the large fern blended with the grasshopper-green of new leaves. Here and there, spinach-green dandelion stems shot up in a marble-green lawn. Green, someone had told her, had a tranquilizing effect on people. Kate hoped that whoever had said it was right.

She was happy to see several family cars already
parked in front of her mother-in-law’s house. Both of Jack’s sisters were there and his cousin Enid with the baby, his uncle Pasquale. Good! By now Kate figured there would be so much talking that no one would even notice her mood.

“Jackie! Kate! Here you are at last, thank God.” Mrs. Bassetti flung open the front door before they had a chance to ring the bell. “I was afraid something happened to you.”

Even though Kate was beginning to realize Mama Bassetti greeted all her guests that way, she was annoyed. She glanced at her watch. Her mother-in-law had said four. It was only ten past She looked at Jack, waiting for him to answer.

Jack acted as though he hadn’t heard a thing. “Hi, Mal Happy Mother’s Day!” He put his arms around the small woman, picked her up, planted a loud kiss on both her flushed cheeks, then put her down.

“Something smells delicious.” Jack handed his mother her gift and took Kate’s jacket.

“Italian pot roast. Your favorite,” Mama Bassetti said. With her free hand she straightened her shirtmaker dress. The pale blue silk of the dress made her eyes sparkle. Or was it the sight of her only son, Kate wondered.

“Richard at Petrini’s saved me a good piece. But come in now.” She closed the front door. “Say hello to your sisters, your cousins, your uncle.” Mama pointed out each relative as if Jack might have forgotten who they were. “And make me an old-fashioned. My tongue is hanging out.”

“Mama won’t let anybody else mix her one,” Jack’s older sister, Angela, began as Kate followed her husband around the room, shaking hands. “Nobody does it like Jackie!” Angela mimicked her mother.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Angie!” His younger sister, Gina, blew out a stream of smoke from the thin brown cigarette
she was holding. “It’s Mother’s Day! You’re not going to start that Mother-always-loved-you-best routine, are you?”

Fortunately Enid’s baby squealed and most of the attention focused on him. Kate glanced toward her mother-in-law. She wondered how the woman was coping with her grown children’s squabbling.

Mama seemed engrossed in unwrapping her present, oblivious of the whole scene. Carefully she smoothed out the gift paper, then opened the narrow blue and silver box.

“My God, it’s from Tiffany,” Angie remarked to no one in particular. “Jackie wouldn’t even know how to get there. Kate must have bought it.”

Mama Bassetti lifted the delicate chain from the box. An old-fashioned silver locket dangled at the end. She opened the small, hinged case, then looked hopefully at Kate. “Is this telling me I’m going to be a
nonnie?”

Kate’s stomach gave a sudden lurch. A familiar lump, the one she had felt on and off all day, filled her throat. She swallowed. How stupid of her! Of course the woman would think that. How much Kate wished she could announce that she was pregnant. Shaking her head, she blinked her eyes to force back the tears.

“It’s Zio,” Gina shouted, mercifully changing the subject as the doorbell rang.

Mama put her locket, box, and wrappings on the end table and bustled toward the front door. The old man, whose real name no one had ever told Kate, stood in the doorway smiling, a big black cigar in the corner of his mouth.

“Zio, here you are at last, thank God!” Mrs. Bassetti helped him out of his worn overcoat “I was afraid something had happened to you. Jackie, make Zio a drink.”

Kate chose the moment to escape to the quiet of the back bedroom. “Pull yourself together,” she said aloud,
glaring at her image in the ornate mirror over the old-fashioned bureau. “You can’t go to pieces every time someone mentions motherhood. They’ll be putting you away.” Taking a deep breath, she dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.

It was that damn pamphlet that was upsetting her. She never should have picked it up in the gynecologist’s office. Besides stress, smoking, and poor nutrition, a cursory reading had disclosed at least eight other causes of infertility. Plus, she had discovered the disturbing fact that fifteen percent of all couples cannot conceive. Stalling for a little more time, Kate pulled a comb through her short red hair. Then, although she knew it didn’t need it, she freshened her lipstick. Actually, the only ray of hope she had discovered in the whole blasted pamphlet was that couples are not considered infertile until after six months of trying. Jack and she, however, were getting dangerously close.

After thoroughly brushing specks of imaginary dandruff from the shoulder of her cowl-neck sweater, she turned toward the full-length mirror on the closet door to check if her slip was showing below her flared skirt. Instead, she was startled to see her mother-in-law leaning against the doorjamb, studying her.