Death Goes on Retreat (21 page)

Kate was startled at the woman’s appearance. Overnight
her face had turned a ghostly white, and deep, tired lines seemed spread over it. Patches almost the color of her sweater brooded under her eyes. Her gray bubble of hair was stiff and flat where she had slept on it.

Looking at her now, Kate thought she might very well have just been released from a hospital. She followed Mrs. Johnson into the living room. By contrast with the chill outside, the heat of the house was stifling. The pungent soil-smell of the potted plants choked Kate, and perspiration trickled down from her underarms.

She glanced toward Gallagher, who already was running his finger around his shirt collar. She’d better make this quick!

Oblivious of the temperature, Mrs. Johnson sat in her padded rocker. On the end table beside it, a cigarette burned in an ashtray, unnoticed. Methodically she pushed back and forth, back and forth. A soft squeak timed each rock. At her insistence, Kate and Gallagher perched on the edge of the slip-covered sofa.

Marva Johnson’s face tightened. “Have you found my son’s killer yet?” Her glinting eyes turned on Gallagher. “Is that what you’ve come to tell me?” The thin lips stretched into a tight smile. “That you’ve discovered what I’ve known all along? That it was that girl, that Laura, who led my boy to his death?”

Gallagher cleared his throat. “No, ma’am,” he said. “My partner’s come upon some new information and she’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

How smoothly Gallagher made that handoff, Kate thought, watching Marva Johnson’s eyes shift toward her. Everything about him said that he didn’t want to
touch this lady with a ten-foot pole, to use one of his own favorite clichés.

“Mrs. Johnson.” Kate’s voice was soft. “Laura Purcell informed us that your son received a phone call at about three-thirty on the morning that he was killed.”

The woman’s lips curled into a sardonic grin. “And what were they doing together at three-thirty in the morning? I ask you that, Kate!”

“The point here is—” Kate began gently.

“The point is,” Mrs. Johnson interrupted, all the lines on her forehead collapsed into one fierce frown, “that they were together at three-thirty in the morning. At that hour, decent, God-fearing people are at home asleep.” She sighed. “Nothing good can come from a young girl and a young boy being together so late at night. I told Greg that, and Janice, too, time and time again. When they lived here, I insisted that they be home by eleven. And they were, too, if they knew what was good for them.” She gave a short, cruel chuckle. “The hours after midnight are the Devil’s hours. Those are the hours that are full of the temptations of the flesh. At that time of night we are weak. We are mortal. We fall.” She seemed to savor every word.

“We must be sober. We must be watchful. We must resist him, for Satan and his helpers, like Laura, have the fires of hell waiting to catch souls and toss them like leaves into a bonfire. At every moment, the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.”

Despite the heat, Kate shivered. Mrs. Johnson’s words were so graphic, her feeling so strong, that Kate almost
visualized a red-horned devil stalking the Johnsons’ living room. All this hell and damnation when the woman thought the pair was just talking! Imagine what she’d say if she knew that Laura and her son were actually living together.

Kate shot Gallagher a warning look. If he mentioned it, they’d never get out of here. Her signal wasn’t necessary. The expression on his face showed he wasn’t about to offer any such information.

The
squeak, squeak
of the rocking chair was the only noise in the room. Mrs. Johnson, her brown eyes glazed over, had fled to some other reality. Watching her, Kate felt an overwhelming pity for the Johnson kids. Imagine growing up in this upright, judgmental, unforgiving home! No wonder they were so eager to leave it.

Down the block, Kate had grown up with her parents. They, too, were practicing Catholics. Good, loving people whom she always considered strict. Now, beside Mrs. Johnson, they looked like a pair of libertines, and she thanked God for it!

A thud from the heater snapped Kate out of her reverie. “I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, Mrs. Johnson,” she said, sounding all business.

Marva Johnson blinked as though trying to remember who these people sitting in her living room were.

“I do want to ask you a couple of questions,” Kate said, smiling, “if I could.”

“Ask your questions, then.” Mrs. Johnson crushed the already dead cigarette, lit a fresh one, and put it in the ashtray. Rather than smoking them, she seemed to burn her cigarettes like incense.

“According to Laura, your son received a phone call saying that you were ill and in the emergency room.”

Mrs. Johnson looked astonished. “Ill? Me?”

“Yes. And that is apparently why Greg left the house. To go to the hospital.”

Quick tears flooded Marva Johnson’s eyes. She swallowed, but said nothing.

“I take it you were not ill.” Kate studied the woman’s face.

Still unable to speak, Marva shook her head.

“And so, you did not ask anyone to call Greg for you?”

Mrs. Johnson pressed her lips together. Tears ran down her pale cheeks and splashed onto her cardigan.

“Do you have any idea who would have called your son?”

“No,” she whispered hoarsely. “I don’t even know Greg’s phone number.”

That made sense, Kate thought. Why would he take the chance that she’d call and get Laura on the line?

Mrs. Johnson dug into her sweater pocket for a tissue. “I wasn’t sick,” she said, “and even if I was and had Greg’s number, I wouldn’t call him, and I wouldn’t call Janice either.”

Kate was taken aback. “Why is that, Mrs. Johnson?” she asked.

The woman took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was as if she were summoning up the courage to put her reason into words.

“Because,” she said, all the life gone out of her flat eyes, “I would be afraid that neither one of my children cares enough about me to come.”

“Trip two to the mother from hell,” Gallagher said when they were outside. After the sweltering living room the crisp, wet fog felt wonderful. “I can hardly wait until one of my kids gripes about how tough I was.” Gallagher turned the key in the ignition and, without waiting, flipped on the car heater. The sudden cold blast turned Kate’s legs to gooseflesh.

“Can’t you wait until the motor warms up?” she asked, already knowing the answer. This heater business was an ongoing argument between them.

“By the time we get to the corner, it’ll be hot,” Gallagher said.

Kate gave an exaggerated shiver. That was what he always said. “This is the kind of thing that leads to murder,” she snapped.

Much to her surprise, Gallagher turned the fan down a notch.

“You sick?” she asked.

He shrugged. “That goofball of a lady got to me, I guess.”

“In what way?” Kate wondered if he’d picked up something in the conversation that she’d missed.

“I just can’t help feeling real sorry for those two kids of hers. They are damn lucky they turned out as good as they did. Must have been a hell of a father figure somewhere,” Gallagher needled and waited for Kate to react.

She smiled halfheartedly.

“Imagine living your whole life with a mother whose elevator doesn’t go all the way up.” Gallagher gave a friendly honk to a white-haired lady who looked as if she
had fallen asleep at the stop sign. She gave him the finger.

Or parents whose elevator gets stuck halfway up, Kate thought, feeling the hint of heated air on her frozen ankles. Like Jack and me, stuck on this moving business.

Before long their car was warm and cozy. The tires from passing vehicles shot up tiny fountains while their heater fan gave off a steady hum. The two partners fell into a comfortable silence.

All kids are affected by their home life, Kate thought, staring absently at a window washer who seemed totally oblivious of the fog. Little John must be affected by their arguing, although Jack and she tried never to discuss the move while he was present. Kate knew by the way his big, serious baby eyes studied them that he sensed something. Well, tonight, one way or the other, it would stop. She would see to that. After all, home was where the three of them were, together and loving one another. What did a house or a neighborhood or a city matter?

“Do you see what I see?” Gallagher, stopped at a traffic light, pointed.

A gaggle of tiny youngsters bundled up to their eyes in sweaters and knitted caps were being shepherded across Geary Boulevard by a slender woman pushing a stroller. One slightly larger child carried a brown paper sack.

Immediately Kate recognized the group. It was Sheila Atkinson, John’s baby-sitter, and her charges. The precious woolen bundle in the stroller was her John. All she could see was his button nose, red with cold. Happily he banged his rattle on the tray.

Gallagher tooted. Sheila, rounding up her little brood
safely on the curb, paused from wiping runny noses to wave.

Little John, recognizing his mother, stood up in the seat, waved his baby rattle at her. “Ma, Ma, Ma,” she heard him call before he went back to his banging. “Qwa, qwa, qwa.” He was on his way to feed the ducks.

For a moment, Kate didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad. Mama versus ducks. Ducks, one; mother, zip. Could a toddler be too well adjusted? Feeling her stomach drop, she forced herself to be realistic. Gallagher and she were on their way to do a door-to-door interrogation of Mrs. Rosen’s neighbors. What would she do if John wailed and begged to be taken along?

“Want to stop?” Gallagher asked.

Of course she did, but she knew better. Sheila was on her morning walk and had her hands full without a stray parent disturbing her schedule. She shook her head.

“Where are they going?” Gallagher asked as the tiny band disappeared down the hill.

“Spreckels Lake. To feed the ducks,” Kate said.

“Looks more like they’re going to the Klondike to feed the penguins.” Gallagher turned the heater up a notch. “Are you warm enough?” he asked after the fact.

“Fine,” Kate mumbled, only half aware of the heat. Gallagher had struck a chord. It was the middle of June, summer for God’s sake, and her baby was bundled up like an Eskimo’s child. A few miles away, he’d be out on a soft green lawn, brown as a berry, running and picking dandelions and chasing butterflies, instead of dripping wet. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe they should move to Cordero where there was sunshine and safety. Tonight she’d tell him that she’d changed her mind. Tonight at
dinner, she’d tell him that she was willing, no, happy! to make the move.

His mother would feel betrayed, but that was Jack’s problem. Let him deal with her. Her concern was with her husband and with her son. After what she’d just witnessed at the Johnsons’, she’d do everything she could to surround them both with love.

For the first time, the idea seemed palatable. Even as her head was congratulating her on the common sense, the wisdom, of her decision, she felt the pain in her stomach grow and expand like yeast in warm dough until it threatened to completely smother her heart.

After breakfast, Bob Little was surprised to find Sergeant Eric Loody no longer guarding the entrance to the retreat center. He was even more surprised when he passed the kitchen. The door was flung open, and through the screen he spotted the sergeant settled at a table with Beverly Benton.

Beverly’s broad back was to him and her hips hung over the chair seat like a couple of polyester saddlebags. Across from her, Loody’s large frame bent forward, a cup of coffee cradled in his thick hands.

Their combined bulk somehow made Little think of
Gulliver’s Travels.
It must be the rarefied air on this hill. He hadn’t thought about Gulliver for years, if ever, after he escaped Sister Immaculata’s English Lit class. It took him a minute to remember the name of the giants’ land. Brobdingnag! He smiled to himself. Brobdingnag! Those two were a Brobdingnagian sight. Sister Immaculata
and her
Word Smart Vocabulary
drills would be proud!

From the posture, Little knew that Sergeant Loody was absorbed in what the cook was saying. He strained to hear, but the large ceiling fan whirring above the pair served as an automatic scrambler.