Murder Makes a Pilgrimage (31 page)

Yet hard as she tried, she could not rid herself of the ominous feeling. Several times she attempted to read, but she was too distracted. When a tour bus backfired, she jumped.

Her prayers were scattered, and even in ordinary circumstances, she felt little devotion to St. Callistus, an early Pope who was condemned for leniency. That’s a twist, she thought, abandoning her office book.

She rearranged the things in her suitcase, tensing when the chambermaid’s cart rattled by in the hall. Tomorrow they would fly home, or would they? What would Ángel Serrano do if he had not discovered the murderer? Would he let them return to San Francisco? He couldn’t do that. The murder had taken place in Spain in his jurisdiction. They were suspects. Would he detain them all? Wait until Sister Cecilia received that collect call!

“What is it, old dear?” Eileen asked finally. “Have you a case of the fidgets?”

“Sorry,” Mary Helen said. And she was. It is very annoying to be cooped up in a small room with someone like Eileen. She stared out of the bedroom window. Soft rain drenched everything. Full dark clouds fought with patches of blue sky, and at the moment the clouds were winning.

“I have cabin fever,” she said.

Eileen winked. “That’s an improvement. Yesterday it was submarine fever. Your spirits are moving up. By tomorrow you’ll be flying high, all the way home.”

Mary Helen groaned at the pun. I hope we are on our way home, she thought.

Eileen must have sensed her hesitation. “That nice Comisario Serrano with the name and face of an angel won’t detain us, will he?”

“I don’t know,” Mary Helen said honestly. “But if we can discover the killer, that’s no longer a question.”

Eileen blinked back any surprise she felt. Only her brogue thickened a bit. “What is it you suggest we do?” she asked.

“Launch out on a new tack. The old ones are getting us nowhere fast.”

“What tack is that?”

“Discovering the murder weapon!”

“The
comisario
said it was about two inches wide in the middle, narrow on the ends, perhaps padded. Have you any idea what we are looking for?”

“That’s my point,” Mary Helen said. “Let’s see if we can find something, anything, that fits the description.”

“That sound a little like finding a pimple on an alligator’s tail,” Eileen muttered.

Mary Helen pretended not to hear. This aging has some advantages, she thought. “In the mystery I’m reading, the
victim is strangled with a circular knitting needle that the detective discovers at a yarn store.”

Eileen grimaced. “That will teach you to get on Sister Ursula’s bad side when she’s knitting.”

“Let’s walk along the Rua del Villar, the street with all those shops. Maybe we can find something that fits the description.”

“It is pouring down rain.” Eileen’s protest was halfhearted at best.

“We’ll stay under the arcade. María José always says that it clears up quickly.” As a show of her faith in María José’s expertise, Mary Helen grabbed up her Aran sweater instead of her raincoat.

Two hours later the two nuns, drenched to the skin, staggered into El Franco Restaurante for a cup of hot coffee.

“One more souvenir shop, and I may begin to wish that
el botafumeiro
had hit me,” Mary Helen quipped.

Eileen shivered. “Don’t say that even in fun. I don’t want to think of the possibility.”

Eileen was right. Mary Helen changed the subject before her earlier feelings of dread returned.

“Those shops were so jam-packed with people and things that it was hard to tell what they had,” she said, “let alone if it was the right shape or, more important, if someone in our group has one. I’m afraid that our shopping expedition was nothing but a wet waste of time.”

Always optimistic, Eileen shook her head. “Not necessarily,” she said. “You may have pneumonia tomorrow, but your fidgets are gone!” She dug into her purse and pulled out a dog-eared piece of paper. “And we did pick up a few more souvenirs to take home.”

She spread the paper on the table. “Here’s our list,” she
said. “Let’s make sure we have something for everyone. I would hate to leave anyone out.”

Sister Eileen ran her finger down their list and, with Mary Helen’s prompting, wrote, “key chain, letter opener, medal” by the names that didn’t already have “black soap” next to them.

“Are we about done?” Mary Helen asked. She detested this part of traveling.

“All except for Shirley. What are you going to bring Shirley?”

“Can you think of something special?” Mary Helen felt a touch of guilt about leaving her hardworking secretary to wrestle with the last-minute details of the alumnae fashion show.

“There is a nice shop toward the end of the arcade,” Eileen suggested, “with brightly colored scarves. One of those might be nice.”

It did not take Mary Helen long to decide on a gift. The entire back wall of the shop was filled with colorful scarves emblazoned with flowers and shells and edged with a graceful flowing fringe. Since Shirley was attractive in every color, Mary Helen simply closed her eyes and pointed. Opening them, she discovered that she had picked a large shell-covered one in a beautiful shade of Nile green.

“Perfect,” Eileen said, and the salesclerk wrapped it in tissue paper.

“Nine hundred and fifty pesetas.”

The old nun rummaged through her purse and found the nine hundred in paper bills. She checked the pockets of her sweater for change. In her left pocket she felt two coins and something else. It was stiff and slick like a piece of shiny cardboard. She pulled out fifty pesetas and with them the Polaroid picture that Rita Fong had taken at the Madrid airport.

While the clerk rang up the sale, Mary Helen stared absently at the picture. It was of Eileen and herself looking weary and disheveled. Rita had caught her with her eyes shut. She’d also snapped three other pilgrims in the background. As she stared at them, Mary Helen’s heart quickened. Could that be what they were looking for?

“Eileen!” She pointed to one of the figures in the photo. “Look at this,” Mary Helen said, hardly daring to hope. “Can this possibly be the murder weapon?”

The salesclerk, who obviously understood English, gingerly handed Mary Helen her purchase.

Eileen squinted at the photo. “It could be,” she said slowly, controlling the excitement in her voice. “It very well could be.”

Oblivious of the steady drizzle covering the city, the two nuns flew, like honeybees to the hive, toward the office of Comisario Ángel Serrano.

For one frantic moment Mary Helen thought that someone was following them, but all fear dissolved as they mounted the steps of the police station.

Ángel Serrano’s eyes were sore. He yawned so widely that they watered, and that only made them ache more. Inspector Kate Murphy had called from San Francisco at four-thirty
A.M.
his time with some interesting facts about Professor DeAngelo. Ángel had been awake and mulling them over ever since.

“Sorry to disturb you, Comisario,” she began apologetically when he finally answered the phone in a sleepy haze. “I know you are waiting for my friend’s report on Professor DeAngelo,” Kate explained. In an instant he was wide-awake.

Quickly she told him what Inspector Gallagher had uncovered. Roger DeAngelo had come only recently to Redwood
College in West Marin. Before that he was a full professor at a small college in Greensboro called Belmont College. He had a recommendation but not rave notices, and his reason for changing colleges was never very clear. “Health reasons,” his application had stated.

Gallagher had remembered that Belmont College in Greensboro was the same college that Lisa Springer’s mother had said Lisa attended.

Kate told Ángel the years that each had been at Belmont. “For whatever this is worth,” she said, sounding as if she thought it was worth plenty, “Lisa’s freshman year coincides with Professor DeAngelo’s last year at that college.”

“Were you aware of this? That’s Gallagher’s question, not mine,” Kate had said.

Ángel admitted he was not. “By their own admission,” he said, “none of the winners of this pilgrimage claims to have known any of the others before the trip.”

“Why lie about it?” Kate asked bluntly.

“That is what I need to discover,” Ángel said. Kate gave him Inspector Gallagher’s phone number at Homicide.

“Just in case you need him,” she said.

As soon as he reached his office, Ángel phoned Roger DeAngelo. “Did you ever teach at Belmont College in Greensboro?”

His question seemed to stun the professor. “Yes,” he said as cautiously as a soldier crossing a minefield. “Why do you ask?”

“Were you aware that Lisa Springer was a student there?”

“Of course I was not.” The professor’s tone was indignant. “When did she attend the school? Perhaps I had already gone.”

“No, Professor, you were there. In fact, her freshman year and your last year at that college are the same year.”

The professor gave a supercilious laugh. “Have you any idea how many freshman students there were at Belmont?”

“It seems to me that a redhead as beautiful as Lisa Springer would stand out even in a crowd.”

“Probably,” DeAngelo admitted, “which further proves my point. If the girl was at Belmont, our paths must never have crossed.”

Ángel had chewed on that conversation ever since. The coincidence was too “coincidental” for him to swallow. It stuck like a popcorn kernel in his throat. It was the only link he was able to find between any of the suspects and the murdered girl.

What was he missing? Mentally he reviewed his interviews with the suspects one by one. Nothing clicked. Frustrated, Angel went through them again. Whoever the murderer was, he was an arrogant bastard, that was for certain. He had undoubtedly shoved the note under Lisa’s bedroom door.

If only he could discover who had written the note. “Zaldo!” he shouted.

The office door swung open immediately. “
Sí
, Comisario?” Officer Zaldo stood as stiff as a navy blue board. Even the hairs on his narrow mustache lined up at attention.

Exasperated, Ángel shook his head. “At ease, Esteban,” he said, “for the love of God, at ease, before you snap in two.”

Hurt clouded Zaldo’s eyes, and Ángel felt guilty. “I want you to bring Heidi Williams to me at once,” he ordered, like a centurion before his hundred men, and tried not to flinch when Zaldo clicked his heels. Too much American
Mission Impossible
on the television, he thought, watching Zaldo’s stiff back exit.

Closing his burning eyes, Ángel pushed back in his chair to think. The sound of quick footsteps echoed down the hallway and seemed to be heading toward his office. A prickle rose on the back of his neck. When his office door burst open
with only the briefest knock, he fully expected María José and his sister. He was ready to explode with righteous indignation at their intrusion.

The sight of the two breathless nuns brought him bolt upright. “What is it, Sister?” He tried to keep the anxiety out of his voice. “What has happened?” He swallowed the “now.”

“It’s this.” Mary Helen waved the shiny Polaroid.

Sister Eileen, looking as satisfied as a cat in the cream, stood beside her.

“Look, Comisario.” Mary Helen shoved the print across his desk. Ángel skimmed the picture. It was a poorly taken snapshot of the two nuns. Both could be mistaken for fugitives except that fugitives usually didn’t look so disheveled. And the photographer had caught Mary Helen with both eyes closed.

“It is certainly not very flattering,” Ángel admitted.

“That is not the point, Comisario.”

He had never seen Sister Mary Helen like this. Her whole body trembled with energy. She eyed him expectantly as he brought the picture closer to study it. He examined the figures in the background. Whatever is exciting her, he thought, must be in the background because these two are not “it.”

Four figures were caught behind the nuns. Two he quickly recognized as the DeAngelos. The third was a piece of Heidi Williams. The fourth person must be Lisa Springer. The amber hair and the crooked-toothed smile gave it away. The beautiful animated face in the photo bore little resemblance to the discolored, swollen lifeless mask that he had seen beside the tomb of St. James.

“Well,” Sister Mary Helen asked impatiently, “do you see it?”

Reluctant to admit he hadn’t, Ángel continued to study every detail of the snapshot.

Mary Helen groaned aloud when she heard the knock on the
comisario
’s office door.

“Pase!”
he shouted without looking up from the Polaroid.

The door opened, and stiff-backed Officer Zaldo escorted in a bewildered-looking Heidi Williams. Her red-rimmed eyes shifted between Ángel and the nuns. Obviously she had been crying, and from the nervous way she kept swallowing Mary Helen could tell that her mouth was dry with fear.

“What do you want me for?”

“A few questions, señorita.” Ángel was gentle.

“I’ve told you everything I know.” Heidi’s eyes began to fill.

“Only one or two more.”

“You’d better be careful about your questions,” Heidi said. If she meant to sound menacing, she failed. Her words came out in a near whine. “I’ve just talked to my mom, and she’s really mad now.”

“Why is that, señorita?”

“My mom says she doesn’t want any more questions. She says I don’t need to answer questions. She says a cop came to our house and really upset my father. My mom is mad at me, but it is not my fault.” Heidi’s voice shook.

“Of course not,” Ángel said soothingly. “This will be one of the last questions, I am sure.” He motioned Heidi to a chair facing him and nodded toward Zaldo.

Mary Helen felt the wind of the officer’s quick exit on her back.

“Señorita, have you remembered anything else Lisa said on Friday night when she saw the note that was left under your door?”

Heidi stared at him.

“When she read the note?” he prodded. Mary Helen
figured that Ángel was searching for something, anything, that would produce a lead.

The office air was electric while Heidi thought. “She just said, ‘What’s this?’ when she first saw the paper.”