Irish Chain (8 page)

I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.

The stench hit me first. Gamy, raw, suffocating. A body’s last attempt to clean itself out. The creature lay on the floor at the foot of the two beds, face swollen and suffused almost past recognition—a disgusting purplish color Crayola would never vote to include in their palette. Bulging eyes. As if someone was angry enough to squeeze them right out of his head. I recognized the tweed jacket and the gray wool slacks. Mr. O’Hara wouldn’t be wearing a crown tonight.

I froze, staring at his strangled body. Covering my nose and mouth with my hand, I swallowed convulsively and started backing out of the room. My shoulders hit something solid. I squealed in terror and swung around.

“Oh man, oh man,” Ramon said, his dark skin mottled reddish-brown with emotion. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“Go get Gabe,” I said, giving him a shove. “Hurry.”

“I can’t leave you . . .”

“Someone has to get help. I’ll be fine. Now go! Quick!”

“Wait,” he said. “Benni, look.” My eyes followed his finger to where it was pointing. There was something on one of the beds. The one with the red and brown postage stamp quilt that had at first glance appeared lumpy, unmade. Something else.

Someone else.

“Stay back,” I commanded, then lifted the hem of my skirt and stepped over Mr. O’Hara’s legs to reach the side of the bed, kicking a pillow that had fallen on the floor. Miss Violet stared up at me, her eyes as flat as the glass beads she always wore. The sour, greasy taste of the french fries I’d eaten that afternoon crawled up the back of my throat.

“Miss Violet,” I said, trying to stave off the hysteria I felt bubbling up along with the french fries. I shook her gently. No response. I shook harder. “Please, Miss Violet.” Her arm fell out from under the bedspread. Knowing I should check for a pulse, that she might still be alive, I reached down and took her cool delicate wrist in my fingers, praying for a fluttering, a movement. Feeling nothing, I jerked back and stumbled over Mr. O’Hara’s legs in my haste to get out into the hall. Ramon stood dumbly waiting for me to speak.

“I told you to go get Gabe. Now go!”

He gave me a hesitant look, then sprinted down the hallway toward the exit.

I leaned against the doorjamb and sucked in deep breaths, wondering if it was smart to stay there. But common sense told me that most likely whoever did this had long gone, and I didn’t want any of Oak Terrace’s residents to wander by and accidentally look in. I eased out into the hallway and braced myself against the wall. Gold stars sparkled in front of my eyes, and fear caused my mouth to dry up as surely as if I’d eaten a mouthful of sand. It seemed an eternity since I’d sent Ramon for Gabe. Unbidden, Mr. O’Hara’s purple face loomed up in my mind, and I felt myself start to quiver and give in to the urge to slide down. Firm hands caught my shoulders and stopped my descent.

“Are you all right?” Mac asked. His grim face gradually came into focus.

“How did you . . . I didn’t even hear you come up.”

“I passed Ramon in the garden. He said someone had died.”

“In there. I told him to get Gabe. He’ll know what to do.” When he started through the door, I suddenly remembered whose room it was. “Oh, Mac, don’t worry. It’s not Oralee.”

“What are you talking about? She’s in the kitchen. I was coming to get her a sweater.” He stepped past me into the room. After a few seconds, I heard a sharp intake of breath and a soft prayer, “Oh, Lord, no.”

I leaned back against the wall, my heart still pounding, feeling relieved that Mac, with his substantial physical presence and experienced spiritual calm, was handling the situation. I took deep breaths in an attempt to keep my lunch down while questions chased around my mind like a blue heeler after sheep.

Who would kill Mr. O’Hara? And Miss Violet? They were two of San Celina’s blandest residents. I’d known both of them all my life. Law-abiding, proper, boring. Who could want them dead?

Then something occurred to me. Was Miss Violet actually murdered? It was obvious, even to an amateur like me, that Mr. O’Hara was strangled. But Miss Violet, as far as I could see, didn’t have a mark on her. Did she see something, the murderer perhaps, and die of fright? Of course, I hadn’t pulled back the bedspread. I shuddered at the images conjured up in my mind and stuck my head through the door to ask Mac what he thought about it.

He was kneeling next to Miss Violet’s bed, seemingly praying. I started to turn my head, embarrassed for intruding on such a private moment, when I saw him open her nightstand drawer, quickly search it and stick something in his pocket, his large body blocking my view of what it was. With only the slightest movement, he closed the drawer with his elbow.

“Mac, what are you . . .”

Steps echoing down the hallway distracted me. I turned to see Gabe approaching with a determined stride, Ramon double-stepping to keep up. Gabe already wore his Sergeant Friday look. Dead calm. No emotion. Just the facts, ma’am. Every last one of them.
Right now
.

When he reached me, his mask slipped for a moment. He gently lifted my chin and searched my face with worried eyes.

“I’m okay,” I said, blinking rapidly to keep the tears from flowing. “Really. Go ahead.”

Satisfied, his cop look came back. “Where?”

I pointed to the open door. “Mac’s in there.”

“Who?” he snapped.

“I know it’s a crime scene, but he’s a minister and . . .”

A muscle jumped like a small fish in his clenched jaw. Crime scenes bordered on the sacred to Gabe. I knew that. But I would have no more kept Mac from going in there than I would have stopped a charging bull. There was a remote chance that Miss Violet might have still been alive and there are still some things more important than evidence. I tried not to think about seeing Mac remove something from the scene. Maybe it was my imagination. That was certainly what I wanted to believe.

Gabe started through the doorway, wearing a look that said whoever was in the room, religious affiliation or not, was in big trouble. I followed him in, watching his face apprehensively.

In an instant, his expression changed. Surprise, then incredulity covered his face. I moved closer to him, confused at his reaction. He had been a cop almost twenty years. I couldn’t imagine anything shocking him. Besides, he wasn’t even looking down at the body. I looked over at Mac. A similar look of amazement froze his broad features.

“Pancho?” Mac asked.

“Lefty?” Gabe replied.

“A cop?”

“A minister?”

“You two know each other?” I said.

4

GABE’S FACE SWITCHED from surprise back to his blank, impenetrable cop look. “Nice to see you again. Please step out of the room.” His voice was pleasant but inflexible. “I hope you didn’t touch anything.”

“Good seeing you too,” Mac said evenly, looking Gabe straight in the eye.

“How do you two know each other?” I asked. They both ignored me.

“Wait in the hall,” Gabe said. “I’ll need to speak with you both in a minute.” He slipped on his round, wire-rimmed glasses, clasped his hands behind his back and stepped closer to Mr. O’Hara.

After Gabe’s phone call to the station, it didn’t take long before the hallway was full of police officers, uniformed and plainclothes, each jostling for room to perform their various crime-scene tasks.

Once Edwin had been informed of the incident, he pushed himself into the thick of things, strutting around importantly, telling the crime-scene personnel how to do their jobs and trying to get in and see the room and the bodies. When a detective threatened to slip one of the extra-large plastic evidence bags over Edwin’s head and secure it with a rubber band, Gabe pulled Edwin aside. I watched with amusement as he sternly told him to take care of his own responsibilities and arrange for the elderly residents to return to their rooms with as little fuss as possible. Everyone at the dance who didn’t live at Oak Terrace was briefly interviewed by one of San Celina’s five detectives, had their photos taken and were asked to leave their names and addresses before departing.

Over the next few hours, Mac and I helped the staff accompany the frightened residents back to their rooms, saw to it that all the kids made it to their cars and helped Oralee get settled in her new room in another building. Knowing his grandmother wouldn’t stand for anything less, Mac didn’t mince words when he told her what happened to Mr. O’Hara and Miss Violet.

“Mac?” She gave him a sharp, inquiring look.

“Everything’s fine, Grandma.” He took her rawboned hand in his. “Don’t worry.”

“You’re a good boy,” she said, lying back on her bed and closing her eyes. The skin on her face looked as fragile as an egg shell and she lay so motionless, her thin-veined eyelids so still, it seemed for a moment that she’d died too. A lump lodged deep in my throat. We’d been so busy in the last few hours, I’d almost managed to push the reality of the two deaths to a dark, back corner of my mind. Miss Violet’s round, animated face as she read
Charlotte’s Web
aloud to my fourth-grade class flooded back to me in a painful Technicolor memory.

“I’m going to see Gabe,” I said, suddenly wanting to look into his calm face, feel the security I associated with being in his presence.

“I’ll come with you,” Mac said. He turned to Oralee. “I’ll be back before I go home. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.” She nodded mutely and turned her head. A tear trickled down into a seam of her tanned cheek. She swiped it away impatiently. I squeezed her hand before leaving, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from bursting into tears. It frightened me to see Oralee so vulnerable, and it frightened me even more that Mac had essentially lied to Gabe.

We found Gabe in a small room off the nurses’ station where they were interrogating the comic-reading attendant. He had finally returned from an unauthorized break at a neighborhood bar and looked scared to death. Lieutenant Cleary, San Celina’s chief of detectives, towered over the nervous man, questioning him in a rapid flow of Spanish. The dark-eyed attendant gave staccato replies, appearing somewhat confused that a black man wearing a corduroy jacket and looking like a college professor was speaking to him in fluent street Spanish. Jim Cleary’s mild-looking exterior hid a cop who was a ten-year veteran of some of East L.A.’s toughest Latino neighborhoods. Jim took my statement next, then Mac’s, then Ramon’s. Mac and I lingered around the crowded nurses’ desk, listening to the retirement home employees carp about who was going to get stuck cleaning up the murder scene, when Gabe walked over to us.

“You can both go home now,” he said. “Come down to the station sometime tomorrow and sign your statements.”

“Did he see anything?” I asked, pointing at the scared attendant.

He ignored my question and laid a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it gently. “Be careful driving home. Lock your doors.”

“I have to stay and clean up,” I said. “The recreation room is also the dining room. They’re going to need it for breakfast tomorrow.”

He narrowed his eyes and frowned, trying to decide if my reason for staying around was legitimate or just an excuse to hang around the crime scene. Though how we met was due to an unfortunate set of murders at the crafts museum, he’d attempted to keep the more gruesome aspects of his job separate from our relationship. I fought it, partly because of curiosity about his work and partly because if we were going to have any sort of a relationship at all, I didn’t want it to contain any secrets. Besides, I found his attitude somewhat condescending.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “You sent all my helpers home.”

“Let the staff do it. That’s what they’re paid for.”

“It’s my responsibility to see that everything is put back in place. You can’t make me leave.” Actually, I wasn’t sure about the legal accuracy of that point, but I was betting he wouldn’t fight me.

“I want you to go home.”

I gave him a frustrated look which he returned with a stubborn one.

“I’ll help her,” Mac broke in. “It won’t take long with both of us working.”

Gabe glanced at him, an unreadable expression in his slate-blue eyes. “All right,” he finally said. He turned back to me, his voice quiet and tense. “
Then
I want you to go straight home.”

“I’m too restless,” I said. “Besides, I never ate dinner. How about meeting me at Liddie’s for something to eat?” The last thing I felt like doing at that moment was walking into a cold, lonely house and thinking about what happened to Mr. O’Hara and Miss Violet.

“I don’t know when I can get there,” Gabe said.

“I’ll wait.”

“You know I hate you being out alone this late at night.”

I opened my mouth, ready to argue that I’d managed to stumble through a good part of my life without his sometimes overpowering protection, when Mac spoke up again.

“I haven’t been to Liddie’s in years,” he said. “Mind if I join you two?”

“Sure,” I said. “And Chief Ortiz, I’ll make sure and walk with him through that dangerous parking lot so he doesn’t get mugged.”

Gabe’s lips compressed into a thin line under his black mustache. I knew he wouldn’t flat-out fight with me in front of Mac, but this issue would be something we’d tangle over later. “As I said, I don’t know how long I’ll be.” He whipped around and strode back toward the crime scene and a group of reporters who were waiting behind the yellow crime-scene tape. At his side, one hand curled in a fist.

“Good old Pancho,” Mac said, walking with me through the garden to the recreation hall. “Still likes to be in control. Never was much of a team player. One heck of a quarterback, though.”

“Okay, that’s it,” I said. “Tell me how you two know each other and what’s with the nicknames?”

He smiled good-naturedly. “Nothing special about the story. Gosh, it must have been back about ten years ago, when I lived in L.A. Just a bunch of guys in Griffith Park playing pickup football every Saturday afternoon. All of us getting rid of one sort of tension or another. I quit after about a year, when it got too hard on my knees. Believe me, I almost didn’t recognize him. Last time I saw him he had hair past his shoulders and a scraggly goatee.”