Sister O'Marie - A Novena for Murder

“Well, for starters, it is police business. And, for finishers, if she does happen to run into a serious lead, we could have another murder on our hands.”

“Then tell her.” Gallagher made it sound so simple.

“What do I do? Go up to the college, flash my badge, and tell the old lady, ‘Bug off, Sister’?”

“Back at St. Anne’s, one old gal, Sister Felicia, used to drive the pastor, Father Hennessey, bananas. He could control the police and the politicians in the City, but he couldn’t begin to be a match for Felicia. Well, one day they must have had an awful Donny-brook. Old Hennessey said to me, ‘Denny, nuns are like bees. Leave ’em alone and they make honey. Interfere, and you’ll always get stung.’ I was just a kid, but I never forgot it.”

“The point, Denny-what is the point?”

Gallagher leaned back in his swivel chair. He studied her with what Kate was sure could be classified as a supercilious grin. “Well,” he said, “as the old saying goes, Katie girl, if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.”

It took no longer than twenty minutes for Kate Murphy to arrive at the Sisters’ Residence. And it didn’t take her more than another ten minutes to outline, politely but very definitely, that criminal investigation was her domain; hers, and the SFPD’s. She also enumerated the many dangers inherent in amateurs meddling in murder cases, not the least of which was being murdered themselves.

She’s not a redhead for nothing, Mary Helen thought, watching Kate sitting on the edge of the parlor chair. She waited, silently, until she felt sure Kate had finished her well-prepared speech. The old nun tried to look concerned and contrite.

“Aren’t you curious about where we got the list?” she asked meekly.

“At the moment, I’m more curious about why you feel you should get involved in a police investigation,” Kate said.

Sister Mary Helen outlined as succinctly as she could the deep anger and resentment she felt about a murderer being allowed to terrorize the college. She thought about using “damn mad” for emphasis, but then decided she’d save that until she knew Kate a little better. The young woman remained silent. Mary Helen hurried on to her positive intuition about Leonel’s being not only innocent, but victimized. Kate opened her mouth, but, thankfully, closed it again. Mary Helen was sure that line from Shakespeare, “I have no other but a woman’s reason: I think him so, because I think him so,” would not fit into Kate’s idea of a well-orchestrated homicide investigation. She felt she knew the young woman that well.

“Now, are you curious about the list?” Mary Helen asked when she finally finished what she later described to Eileen as her Apologia pro culpa Helenae .

Exhausted, Kate lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and sank back into the chair. “Frankly, yes,” she said.

“I discovered Joanna had written a thesis on the Portuguese immigrants,” she said, “which disappeared from Sister Eileen’s library at just about the same time that Joanna did. Now, I call that too much of a coincidence. Don’t you?”

“I guess I might have, if I had known it!” Mary Helen thought Kate still sounded a little annoyed. She hurried on.

“I just thought to myself-Portuguese-thesis-professor-Joanna. There has to be some connection. But the thesis was missing, and the professor’s office was sealed.” She hurried over that. “So we couldn’t get in for a duplicate copy. Anyway, we…”

“Who’s we?” Kate asked, too quietly.

“Sister Eileen, Sister Anne, and I,” the old nun answered.

Kate groaned. “That’s how you got to all those people so quickly. “ ‘Seester called.’ There were three ‘seesters’ calling.”

Mary Helen ignored the interruption. “Anyway, we got the list from Marina of the people Joanna had interviewed for her thesis. It was a very long one, but Eileen found dots by some of the names.”

“Dots?” Kate took a final drag of her cigarette and stubbed it out.

“Right. We figured those dots must have some significance, so we divided it into three. Plus, Joanna had a boyfriend, Kevin Doherty, whom I talked to this morning.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, among other things, that she got funny after she talked to Mrs. Rubiero.”

“Who?”

“Rubiero. She has relatives Professor Villanueva helped. She’s on the list. In fact, I’ve an appointment with her tomorrow, if you’d like to go along.”

“If I’m not intruding.” Kate sounded a bit sarcastic to Sister Mary Helen, who wasn’t sure if being sarcastic was better or worse than being annoyed.

“What did the boyfriend mean by ‘funny’?” Kate lit another cigarette, took a long drag, and exhaled.

The old nun opened the long, narrow, parlor window, hoping the smell of smoke wouldn’t cling to her clothes.

“He said she became obsessed with her research. Something she needed to solve. Lost interest in him.”

“Maybe it was another boy. That Tony you mentioned?”

“I suggested that, but Kevin said she hated him. He got very upset about Tony. You don’t suppose Tony might have something to do with the murders?”

“Not a chance. I checked his alibi for the night Villanueva was murdered. He was in a bar in Santa Clara. Dozens of witnesses. Even the bartender remembers him.”

Mary Helen felt slightly disappointed. If Tony had had no alibi, then he might be guilty, and this whole awful mess would be solved. Suddenly, she felt her face flush. Poor Tony. Why, that wasn’t even cricket. The poor devil was probably every bit as innocent as Leonel-or almost.

And the people you called, what did you ask them?” Kate continued. Apparently, she hadn’t noticed Mary Helen’s flush.

“We asked about Joanna. How well they knew her. When they saw her last. Anything they could remember about the questions she’d asked them. Did they know the professor, too? All the usual questions.”

“What do you mean ‘usual questions’?” Kate asked, a faint smile playing on the corners of her wide mouth.

Mary Helen could feel her face redden again. She squirmed. For a moment she felt a little like Mrs. Pollifax. It was not a pleasant feeling, since she had always considered Mrs. Pollifax a bit of an eccentric. “You know, the ones all detectives ask,” she said, as nonchalantly as she could.

“And the answers?”

“Although they were all very polite, for the most part we drew blanks,” she said. “But I have some suspicions.”

“Oh?”

Kate glanced at her watch. “Sister, it’s nearly six o’clock. How about gathering up your suspicions and joining me for dinner?”

Mary Helen studied the young woman. Should she, or shouldn’t she? She hesitated, but only for a minute.

“Hurry up, hon,” Jack called from the bedroom. Kate could hear the wire springs on the old bed creak.

“I’m still doing my face,” she called back, vacantly staring at herself in the bathroom mirror. Kate was never quite sure what she was doing to her face. But every night, faithfully, she smeared it with a creamy cleanser, dabbed it with astringent, and rubbed it with moisturizer.

“Your face looks fine to me,” he called back, “and besides, that’s not what I’m interested in. Come on!”

“What is it you are interested in?” Kate asked, massaging her neck in sweeping strokes, as the directions on her beauty preparations dictated.

“Right now, I can’t decide whether I’m interested in wringing your neck for bringing that nun home for dinner or in just forgetting the whole thing and making mad, passionate love.”

Kate giggled. Gingerly, she crawled into her side of the big double bed. The old, brass monstrosity had been her parents’.