The Missing Madonna (19 page)

Opening the door, Finn checked up and down the street. “I don’t want that Ree seeing me talking to you. Mum’s the word, Sister.” He nodded to indicate that the coast was clear. Quickly he closed the bistro door behind her, leaving Mary Helen with a sudden suspicion that maybe Erma had indeed called and Finn was just not telling.

“Where in the name of God have you been? All of a sudden—
poof!
—you just disappeared.” Eileen was standing beside the convent car, which Mary Helen had parked at the foot of the steep Sanchez Street hill.

Ree, whose polyester slacks looked as though they might have shrunk a little in the dryer, leaned against the fender. “I’ve got to talk to you, Sister.” Her voice was agitated.

“Do you want to talk here in the car, or shall we drive you home?”

Ree shook her head. Her ponytail bounced from shoulder to shoulder. She sniffled. “I have to hurry. I don’t want him to see me.”

“Him?”

She pointed toward the bistro. “He’s the one, you know. If anything has happened to Mommy, he’s the one who’ll know about it”

“First of all, we don’t know that anything has happened to your mother, Ree. And Mr. Finn seems like a nice fellow who is genuinely fond of her.” Although Mary Helen was well aware of the animosity between Ree and Al Finn, she hoped to interject some logic into the conversation.

“Fond of her? You bet! He follows her around, always stopping in. And h-he”—the woman stuttered, looking for the right word—“leers at her. I’ve seen him leer. Yes, I swear, Sister, if Mommy left it’s because of him.”

Mary Helen opened her mouth to speak, but Ree cut her off. “I’ve got to go before he sees me talking to you. He knows I know.” The woman shivered.

Dumbfounded, Mary Helen watched Ree turn the corner and hurry down 18th Street toward Mission.

“What do you make of that?” Eileen’s face wrinkled into a frown. “And, by the way, where were you?”

“Mr. Finn stopped me,” Mary Helen said absently, once again not really knowing what to make of it herself. “He suggested Erma left to get away from her children.”

Eileen shook her head. “And obviously Ree thinks he’s to blame. Neither idea makes much sense to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“This whole disappearance business is so unlike Erma.” Eileen’s gray eyes were troubled. “God knows she is not the kind of person to run away from difficulties.”

“Or complain about them,” Mary Helen added.

“And she’s also not the kind anyone would want to harm. Right?”

“Right. But the fact of the matter is, Eileen, that she has disappeared and someone must find out why,” Mary Helen said, feeling more frustrated than she had felt in a long time.

*  *  *

As soon as the pair arrived back at the convent, Mary Helen went straight to the phone. She dialed Inspector Honore at the Northern Station.

“What can I do for you, Sister?” It may have been her imagination, but she thought he sounded a little short.

Quickly she told him about her conversations with Mr. Finn and Ree. She deliberately omitted mentioning that the OWLs were doing a little probing on their own. She shuddered to think what he would say if he knew he was being helped.

When she finished there was a long pause. Mary Helen heard the inspector’s gum pop several times, so she knew he was still on the line. She waited impatiently for the man to say something.

“We’ll look into it, Sister,” he said finally but, in Mary Helen’s opinion, without much heart. “I’ll get back to you just as soon as I have something.”

Mary Helen sat in the convent phone booth, a receiver in her hand. The impersonal hum infuriated her. After her brief conversation with Inspector Honore she felt even more frustrated than she had before, if such a thing were possible.

The wail of an ambulance speeding down Turk Street filled Mary Helen’s small bedroom. Its insistent screech as it rounded the corner pierced through her sleep. She awoke with a feeling of urgency. Even in those fuzzy first moments of consciousness, she knew why. Erma! Erma was still missing and someone had to find her. Last night after talking to Inspector Honore, she realized that, as sure as the sun would rise, she had to be that someone.

It only stood to reason, as anyone with an ounce of sense would agree. Why, she and Erma McSweeney Duran went back a long way and although they had kept in touch only on and off over the years, Mary Helen had really enjoyed getting reacquainted. Furthermore, Erma had spent the better part of her life looking after others, maybe even to a fault, trying to make them happy. Now it was high time someone looked after her.

The sooner I get started the better, Mary Helen thought, swinging her feet out of her bed and onto the cold floor. She shivered. The carpetless convent floor was always cold, but this morning it was even colder. In fact her whole room felt chillier than usual. She listened for the low rumble of the central heating, but the room was strangely silent The furnace must be on the fritz.

“The furnace is broken, Sisters. The furnace is broken.” Sister Therese’s quick footsteps echoing down the long corridor assured her that she was correct.

Hand on her doorknob, Mary Helen braced herself. To encounter Therese on a Paul-Revere ride any time of day was difficult enough, but before morning coffee it was impossible. Mary Helen climbed back into bed, turned her electric blanket to six, pulled the covers up under her nose, and planned the day’s strategy.

She knew Mr. Finn, didn’t have any love for the two Duran boys. She would go to see them first. She could get their addresses from Lucy Lyons. Ree Duran was suspicious of Finn, who she felt, as the old saying goes, “knew more than his prayers.” Next, she would drop by the bistro and have another talk with him. Finn was leery of Ree. She could go by and see Ree, but enough was enough for one day. Maybe tomorrow.

At breakfast after the morning Mass, Mary Helen spotted Eileen. She moved across the Sisters’ dining room toward her friend, who was all bundled up and sitting near one of the windows. Both of Eileen’s hands were cupped around a coffee mug that said
BREWED AWAKENING.
It had been a gift from Lucy Lyons.

“Aren’t you freezing, old dear?” Eileen moved her feet to where a beam of sun had settled on the parquet floor. “I’ll wager it’s warmer outside than in.” She nodded toward a glistening patch of grass already bright with morning sun.

“Then let’s go out.” Mary Helen settled down in the chair across from her.

“Out?” Eileen acted surprised. “Now, where would you suggest we go?”

“You know very well what I’m getting at.” Mary Helen blew on her coffee.

“Then you haven’t given up your determination to find out what has happened to Erma? I thought a good night’s sleep might have cleared your thinking.”

“I have only become more determined!” Mary Helen banged her cup on the wooden tabletop as if to say Amen!

Eileen rolled her eyes. “If such a thing is possible,” Mary Helen was almost sure she heard her say.

Fortunately the convent’s Nova was free. Edging down the college driveway, Mary Helen passed Allan Boscacci coming up. His red Ferrari skidded on the turns. His jaw was set and he barely waved when they passed.

“Therese must have awakened the poor fellow.” Eileen grimaced. “We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t drive him right out of his mind.”

Mary Helen watched a service truck from Boscacci Electric follow the boss up the hill. “Or at least out of the Church,” she said.

Stopping at the college gate, she waited for a break in the Turk Street traffic so she could turn left. On either side, stone eagles atop the pillars kept a sharp eye out against intruders.

“Where are we going?”

Mary Helen was surprised Eileen had waited so long to ask. On the other hand, hurried the way she had been, Eileen hadn’t had the chance. She handed over a scrap of paper with the addresses Lucy had given her.

“Let’s start with Junior,” she said. “He works in a body shop on Divisadero.”

*  *  *

“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” A burly mechanic rolled out from under a car the minute Mary Helen pulled into the garage. “Lady, get that mother . . .” he shouted, then stopped abruptly.

Even under several black smudges, his face reddened. Maybe he spotted the statue on our dashboard, or maybe our crosses gave us away, she thought, rolling down the window and smiling.

“Excuse me, young man. We would like to speak with
Thomas Duran, if we may. We won’t take long, I promise. It’s about his mother.”

“Thomas? You mean Junior?” He wiped his greasy hands on an equally greasy rag. “I didn’t know that ba . . .”—he hesitated—“that boy had a mother.

“Hey, Junior,” he shouted toward the back of the shop. “Someone to see you.” Then, lowering himself onto a wooden square with wheels, the mechanic scooted back under a car.

Junior Duran stuck his bearded face around the back doorjamb and peered cautiously into the garage. Mary Helen had the feeling that if the visitor turned out to be someone he didn’t want to see, he was already mounted on his motorcycle.

Three other young men, looking for all the world like carbon copies of Junior, crowded behind him in the doorway. Puffing out his bare chest under a leather vest, Junior swaggered into the garage. The heels of his boots echoed on the oil-stained cement.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, thumbs looped over his thick belt. “You’re them nuns that were in my old lady’s apartment.” He smirked toward the other men, making sure, Mary Helen noticed, that his eyes never met hers. “This is kinda a long way from church, ain’t it?”

Mary Helen recognized showing off when she heard it. There was no sense giving him more of an opportunity. She bent forward “It’s about your mother,” she said softly. “As you already know, we are very worried about her—as you must be too. I’m trying to piece together some of her actions the day she left. I understand you went to see her?”

Junior’s dark eyes shifted toward the men in the doorway, then toward the mechanic who had disappeared under the car. “Let’s go outside,” he said, “where we can talk private.”

Once outside, Mary Helen noticed a change come
over the man. With some of the bravado gone, his whole face seemed to soften.

“Yeah, I saw her that day.” Folding his tattooed arms, he leaned against the stucco front of the body shop.

“I’m wondering what time that was. And did you notice if she was upset about anything?”

Junior gave a crooked smile. “What are you, some kind of cop?”

“Of course not.” All the smart-aleck answers were making Mary Helen a bit impatient. Besides, there was a sharp wind whistling along on Divisadero Street. Before long she and Eileen would freeze to death. “We are simply trying to help locate your mother.”

“Hey, don’t get mad.” His hand touched her jacket sleeve, the tips of his fingers bloody where he had torn at his nails. “It’s just that another cop, a black dude, was here already asking questions.”

Mary Helen was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps she had rashly judged Inspector Honore.

“Like I told him, I want to help. I love my mother.” For the first time Junior’s dark eyes met hers. If she wasn’t mistaken, they were misty.

Another paper tiger, Mary Helen thought, listening to Junior confess about fighting with his mother when she had refused to lend him any more money.

“What time was that?”

“About ten, maybe ten-thirty, Saturday morning.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, pretty sure. I remember looking at her clock when I got there and asking her what time she had to be at work. She said she didn’t have to go to work on Saturday till they opened for dinner.”

“You were very angry with your mother,” Mary Helen stated, then studied his eyes for a reaction. She was trying to pick up any clue she could.

“Yeah, I was damn mad. See, I needed the money
bad,” he repeated. “I owed some guys. You know how that is.”

Mary Helen nodded, although she had no idea how that was or why a grown man would expect his mother to pay his debts.

“I cussed at her. Not bad, just a little. She smacked me on the back of the head, just like she always does when I cuss. I let her. I never would lift a finger to hurt her. I love my mother,” he said again.

After a few moments Junior’s eyes narrowed, making him look, Mary Helen thought, positively dangerous. “If anyone knows what happened to her,” he said, “it’s that bastard Finn.” He clenched his fist “If he hurt her, I’ll kill him.”

*  *  *

As they pulled away Mary Helen checked the rear-view mirror. Junior and his friends were in front of the garage. Unless she was mistaken, they were each holding a can of beer.

“Oh, my, my!” Eileen fastened her seat belt and turned back to look as they merged into Divisadero. “A body wouldn’t want to run into those chaps in a dark alley.”

“Your body and half the bodies in San Francisco,” Mary Helen said, “if you are judging by appearances.” She caught herself. You, above all others, old girl, should know better than to judge a book by its cover! She frowned, wondering if Junior’s toughness was merely a veneer covering nothing more than soft putty or if it was indeed genuine.