When Kate Murphy arrived at the Hall of Justice on Wednesday morning, Inspector Dennis Gallagher was already there. A large paper napkin covered the center of his desk. Several bumps underneath made her suspect that her partner hadn’t bothered to move his reports or even his ashtray before spreading it. Two giant-sized Danish pastries oozed raspberry jam onto the white surface. A third one, half eaten, was in his hand.
“Hi, Katie-girl,” he mumbled, his mouth nearly full.
The breakfast of champions, I see.” Kate took off her raincoat and hung it on the wooden coat tree. The Avenues had been socked in when she left for work, but south of Market the fog had already started to burn off. She looked out the window. Slits of blue cut through the gray. It was going to be a beautiful day. Eventually.
“Want a piece?” Gallagher pointed to the gooey rolls.
Kate tried not to make a face. “No, thanks,” she said. “And for God’s sake, Denny, why don’t you try eating something nutritious? I can almost hear that stuff clogging up your arteries.”
“Don’t talk nutritious to me!” He bit into the second Danish. A seedy blob of jam landed dangerously close to the edge of the napkin. “Ever since I gave Mrs. G. that damn Cuisinart for Mother’s Day, we’ve been eating like goddamn rabbits. You never saw anything like it She’s cutting up everything, and none of it any good. Carrots, celery, apples, radishes, cucumbers. I’m afraid of what shell do if she accidentally gets her hands on one of the kids.
“Last night, she even cut up my potatoes. I like my spuds mashed, so as you can put a hole in the middle and fill it with gravy. Right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Wrong! Last night she cuts them in that goddamn machine. We have potatoes au gratin-whatever the hell that is.
“This morning was the living limit Instead of frying bacon and eggs, she’s cutting up a fruit salad.” He stuffed the sugary end of the Danish into his mouth. “ ‘Better for you,’ she says. By the time I got downtown, I was starved.”
“If you’re going to insist on eating that crap, why don’t you at least get a variety?” Kate picked up her own coffee mug.
“I like raspberry.” He looked a little hurt.
Kate was coming back from the coffee urn, when Inspector Ron Honore walked into the detail.
“Hey! It’s B. B. Kojak!” O’Connor rose from his desk just inside the door. “This missing-person stuff is really getting to you, huh? You can’t even find your own station?”
Honore stopped to shake hands with O’Connor. “Remember who loves you, baby,” he said, playing along with the joke.
The two had been at the academy together. B. B. Kojak was O’Connor’s own nickname for Honore. For whatever reason-probably pure obstinacy, Kate guessed-he had never switched to calling the fellow Don Ron. The B. B., he had told her, stood for “Big Black.” Much as Kate hated to admit O’Connor was right about anything, the nickname fit.
“I’ve come to see Murphy.” Honore made his way across the room.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Kate offered Honore her cup of coffee. But the man was in no mood to joke.
“This missing OWL business is really getting to me.” He pulled up a chair. Leaning forward, he rested his forearm on the two desks. His jacket sleeves stretched as though they might burst.
“Any ideas?” Kate moved her ceramic dish-garden out of his way.
“None, although I spent half of Monday and all day yesterday on it.”
“Who’d you talk to?”
“First of all, the Duran woman’s two sons, Thomas and Richard, commonly called Junior and Buddy. Junior has a couple of juveniles and a couple of adult arrests for assault and battery, but no convictions. He admits he was there the day his mother was last seen, but the guy claims he has no idea why she left.”
Gallagher licked the last of the raspberry jam off his fingers. “What are you telling us for, fella? This isn’t our business till you find the body.” Crumpling up the napkin, he took a half-smoked cigar from the ashtray Kate had suspected was under it.
“Disgusting habit,” Honore said, watching him light it. “Buddy has no record, but when I dropped by his studio-the guy claims he’s an artist-it smelled of more than turpentine.
“Also, I stopped by to see the daughter, Marie. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with her. Gave me a long song and dance about Finn-that’s the mother’s employer and landlord. She claims that if anything happened to the mother, we should look to Finn. If you ask me, this Marie lady seems to be dealing without a full deck.”
Reaching in his pocket for a stick of gum, he unwrapped it and pleated it into his mouth. “My last,” he said by way of apology for not offering them one.
Gallagher scowled. “What’s all this got to do with us?”
“I’m getting to that. I looked into Finn. Nothing. Honest, upright citizen. Even contributes regularly to the Police Athletic League. I went to see the guy. The only odd thing about him is how he pulls this piece of hair back and forth.” Honore demonstrated on his own bald head. “Anyway, he gives me an earful about the woman’s kids. The whole thing goes around in circles.”
“Did you find out anything about the woman herself?” Kate asked before she thought.
“Katie-girl, this here’s not our department. Stay out of it.” Pretending not to listen, Gallagher stared out the fourth-floor window, apparently totally absorbed in something on the James Lick Freeway.
“Sure did.” Honore acted as though he hadn’t heard Gallagher. “She, too, is an honest, upright citizen. Pays her bills, goes to church, belongs to a few organizations, including OWL. And that’s what’s really getting me into trouble-those OWLs.”
“I knew it!” Gallagher slammed down his fist. “I knew exactly where this was leading. It’s those damn nuns, isn’t it? They’re on your case, right?”
Looking sheepish, Honore snapped his gum. “Under ordinary circumstances, I’d let the case rest. As you guys know, we got dozens of missing-person reports coming in every week and we’re shorthanded. Besides, at the end of this week Kelly’s going on maternity leave, and we’re going to be even more strapped.”
Kate could feel a but coming.
“But to tell you the truth, Gallagher’s right. That nun’s gotten to me. She’s so sure something’s amiss that I can’t help but agree with her. And there are a couple of loose ends.”
“Like?”
“Like how did the lady get from Sanchez Street to the airport? No cabs picked up at that address on that afternoon. How come her name is not on the passenger list? Why didn’t she go to see the only person she knows in St. Louis?”
Kate grinned. “Those are loose ends, all right. What I don’t understand is what you want us to do about it”
“I know it’s pushing it a little, but if anything has happened to the woman, it will be your case. So maybe if you guys have a couple of spare hours, you could nose around. See what you can come up with. I could use all the help I can get; and if it does fall in your laps, you’ll be ahead.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Gallagher shouted so loudly that all the noise in the Homicide Detail stopped instantly. There was an embarrassing silence.
“Hey, Gallagher, we’re supposed to solve murders, not perpetrate them,” O’Connor called across the room.
“Sorry,” Gallagher said and waved. The room went back to normal.
“In case you change your mind, I’ll leave this stuff for you.” Honore put copies of his reports on Kate’s desk. “Nothing formal. No big effort or anything. Just in case you have a couple of hours or stumble onto something.”
Gallagher turned to Kate. “Can you believe this guy?” He ran the palm of his hand across his bald crown. “He boggles the mind of the average human being.” He stepped close to Honore, scowling. “Get out of here, you bum, before you’re a missing person yourself!”
“Don’t forget who loves you, baby,” Honore called to Gallagher, then quickly left the Homicide Detail.
“The nerve of that guy!” Gallagher took a deep pull on his cigar. “As if we didn’t have enough of a load.”
Kate picked up the paper he had left. “I wonder…” She frowned.
“Don’t wonder. Don’t even think. As a matter of fact, don’t even touch those papers. We are not getting involved.”
“Denny, do you think you may be overreacting a little?”
“I don’t care what you call it, Kate. Overreacting, underreacting, whatever. I know one thing for sure-we are not getting involved. No, sir. Not. Period. The end. Do you hear me?”
Kate heard him, but she didn’t believe him, not even for one minute.
The haunting eyes of the Byzantine Madonna were what finally made Mary Helen go to see Marie Duran; the eyes, and the fact that tomorrow was the regularly scheduled meeting of the OWLs.
During Compline on Tuesday night, she had decided to leave the case to Inspector Honore. From what the Duran brothers had indicated, he was on the job, so to speak. Furthermore, Sister Cecilia, the college president, had hinted broadly.
“Well, if it isn’t our two absentee ballots,” Cecilia had said when she met Mary Helen and Eileen on the way to dinner Tuesday night. The pair had just returned home, still shaken from the scene between Junior and Finn. Mary Helen recognized the statement as one of Cecilia’s attempts to be funny, although she couldn’t help noticing the president’s humor often contained a needle of truth.
The moment they sat down at the dinner table, Eileen flipped through her pocket calendar. “What do you suppose we missed?” She gasped. “No wonder Cecilia was unhappy. Today was the faculty meeting.”
“At our age, we are entitled to a few lapses of memory.” Mary Helen felt a bit defensive.
“Lapses of memory are one thing, old dear”-Eileen frowned-“but to give the devil her due, we have positively been neglecting our jobs.”
“Missing one faculty meeting can hardly be construed as neglecting our jobs. Besides, age should have some privilege. And the furnace wasn’t working,” she threw in. She wasn’t sure why. “Be reasonable.”
But Eileen did not intend to be reasonable. She was having a case of Irish “guilties,” and Mary Helen knew there was no stopping her.
“The furnace is working now and, actually, at our age we should be giving a better example. What does it say to the others, if we don’t do what we are supposed to do?”
“I’ll bet no one missed us, no one except Cecilia.”
From the look on her friend’s face, Mary Helen could tell that Eileen was about to argue the point. She was relieved when Sister Anne joined them.
“Where have you two been?” the young nun asked, her hazel eyes wide behind her purple-rimmed glasses. “I haven’t seen you in days.” Anne began to eat her salad. “We sure could have used your input about graduation at this afternoon’s meeting.”
Talk about saying the wrong thing at the right time! Although she would never admit it, Mary Helen knew Eileen was right And whatever “input” was, they probably should have been there to give it To tell the truth, Mary Helen had been so preoccupied with Erma, that finals week and graduation, with all the ceremonies surrounding it, had almost slipped her mind. And summer school? She hadn’t given the opening of summer school even a passing thought Yes, Eileen was right! Her first responsibility was to Mount St. Francis College.
Much as she hated to, she decided to put Erma in the hands of God and the SFPD. After the final blessing at Compline, she told Eileen so.
Yet those sad Madonna eyes had haunted her all night. She had even dreamed about them.
Right after the six-thirty Mass on Wednesday morning, Sister Mary Helen waited for Sister Eileen. “Let’s step outside for a minute,” she said, watching the nuns file out of the chapel, then start down the hall toward the dining room. She didn’t want to be overheard.
Obediently, Eileen followed her. Outside, dawn was just beginning to show over the Oakland hills. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.” Mary Helen drew in a deep breath. “Look at that sky.” She pointed toward downtown, where an aura of peach was beginning to cut through the fog and frame the buildings.
“You didn’t pull me out here to discuss the weather,” Eileen said. “Furthermore, if you look the other way, old dear, you will see the fog has all but obliterated the Golden Gate as well as the entire Richmond District.” Clearly, Eileen’s tone of voice was wary. In fact, everything about her was wary.
“Tomorrow is the regular monthly meeting of the OWLs,” Mary Helen reminded her.
“And you didn’t pull me out here to discuss our appointment schedule either.” She narrowed her eyes.
As usual, the direct approach was going to work best with Eileen. “I can’t get Erma or the picture of the Madonna and those haunting eyes out of my mind. Just what did Erma mean when she told her daughter, ‘If anything happens to me, look there? The whole thing is such a mystery.”
“What kind of shenanigans are you contemplating, Mary Helen? I had the feeling you were being entirely too agreeable and too pious last night.”
Mary Helen tried to look a little hurt. She must have succeeded. Eileen’s face puckered and she patted Mary Helen’s hand.
“Erma and the picture have been on my mind, too, old friend,” she said, “and it’s high time we did something to take the mystery out of them.”
Without much further discussion, the two nuns agreed to meet at ten o’clock in the convent garage. The most logical person for them to see, they decided, was Ree Duran, the most mysterious of Erma’s children.
After several attempts, Mary Helen parallel parked in the narrow alley off 17th Street where Ree lived.
“That’s the one.” Eileen pointed to a pink house, midblock, with the same Italianate front as its neighbors. “And, remember, that one is her apartment.” She indicated the door cut in the basement, with vivid blue hydrangeas on either side of it.
Mary Helen pressed the doorbell of the basement apartment. No one answered. No one seemed to move inside. She stepped back to study the main house. That, too, appeared empty. “Maybe nobody’s home.” She couldn’t help feeling disappointed. “I guess we should have called first”
“I’m sure I hear the television.”
Thank God for Eileen’s hearing. Mary Helen put her ear to the front door, then rapped. “Maybe the bell is broken.”
After several knocks, the door opened a crack. The eyes peering out had trouble focusing at first. A thick brass security chain stretched where a nose should be. Ree grunted and shut the door. Mary Helen could hear her fumbling with the night chain.
Finally, she opened the door just wide enough to let them in. All the blinds in the one-room apartment were drawn. A table lamp and the television set provided the only light. Ree motioned them to sit down on a lumpy couch against one wall. A game-show contestant laughed shrilly.
Turning down the volume on the set, Ree went back to a worn recliner and wrapped herself in an equally worn granny-square afghan. The floor around the chair looked as if Ree had been sitting there for some time.
“I’m not feeling well,” she said, sniffling.
It’s no wonder, Mary Helen thought She counted two open boxes of Cheez-Its, a plastic bowl with the melted remnants of chocolate ice cream in the bottom, five wadded candy-bar wrappers, and a plastic liter bottle of diet cola. A cracked bowl with several kernels of unpopped corn was perched next to her on a hassock.
“What is it?” Eileen’s eyes were full of concern. “Not that new flu, I hope.”
“A cold, I think. Or maybe I’m just depressed.” She sniffled again.
“What are you doing for it?” Eileen asked at the same moment that Mary Helen said, “Do you get depressed often?” Their questions intermingled and Ree ignored them both.
Instead, she continued to talk. It was as if she were repeating a familiar story yet another time. Mary Helen had the uncanny feeling that Ree hardly knew they were there.
“I didn’t used to get depressed, you know, before it happened. But afterward, I did. It used to worry Mommy. Lots. She didn’t say so, but I could tell.” Suddenly, Ree reverted to a little girl’s voice. “Mommy got me medicine from the doctor. See my medicine?” She thrust the brown plastic pill container toward Mary Helen. “It keeps me happy,” she said, pulling the container back before Mary Helen could read exactly what kind of tranquilizers the doctor had prescribed. Ree tucked the brown cylinder beside her in the chair.
“Have you taken some today?” Mary Helen asked, knowing full well what a foolish, question it was. One look at the woman’s eyes told her she had taken more than one, and probably quite a few.
Ree nodded almost in slow motion. She focused her eyes first on one nun, then on the other, frowning as if she wondered who they were.
“What you really need is something nourishing to eat!” Eileen headed toward the small refrigerator in the portion of the room that served as a kitchen. While she located a pan and set about scrambling eggs and making hot buttered toast, Mary Helen removed the popcorn bowl from the hassock and sat down close to Ree.
“Before what happened?” she asked the young woman.
Closing her eyes, Ree rubbed her forehead. Obviously, it was taking a great effort to think. Her dilated eyes opened and she stared. Suddenly, as though frightened, she clutched the afghan around her body and rocked back and forth.
“Mommy told me not to tell our business to strangers.”
“I am hardly a stranger,” Mary Helen said soothingly. “And if what you were going to say will help us contact your mother, I’m sure she would want you to tell me.”
Ree studied Mary Helen’s face, seemingly weighing the words. She continued in her little-girl voice. “Daddy took me and the boys with him to see the horses run. Mr. Finn went too.” She shuddered. “They had some beer, Daddy and Mr. Finn. We had soda pop. Daddy went somewhere. He left us with Mr. Finn.”
Mary Helen felt as though she were listening to a sleeper recounting a recurring dream. Maybe it was a dream.
“When did all this happen?” she asked.
Tears hung for a moment on the corners of Ree’s eyes, then ran down her chubby cheeks. Frowning, she focused on Mary Helen’s face. “I don’t remember, really. I was just a kid.” Although she sniffled, she sounded more like her adult self. “I get mixed up, you know. I remember Mr. Finn was there and my brothers too. I was scared. I remember that. And that it hurt me.”
“Who hurt you? Mr. Finn?”
“I can’t really remember. But he was there. I remember he was there and he saw. I’m sure he saw. Sometimes when I see his eyes, I think I remember him looking. Sometimes it still scares me…”
“Did you ever talk to your mother about it?”
Fishing under the afghan for a Kleenex, Ree stopped to wipe her eyes. “Yes. Mommy said I was just upset That maybe it was just a bad dream or my imagination playing tricks.” The child’s voice began to slip in once more. “Mommy said Mr. Finn was a nice man and a friend of Daddy’s. She said she was sure he wouldn’t hurt me. And she said my brothers loved me and they wouldn’t hurt me either.”
Ree blew her nose. “It seemed so real. Mommy said it was just that I was lost and scared. Mr. Finn was the one who found me. Daddy came and he was mad. He brought me and my brothers home.”
“Did you ever talk to your father about what happened?”
Again, tears filled Ree’s doelike eyes. “Right after it happened I tried a couple of times, but Daddy would get real mad. Once when I tried to tell him it was Mr. Finn’s fault, not mine, he grabbed me and started to spank me, but Mommy made him stop. She told him maybe I just had a big imagination or watched too much TV or maybe I’d had a bad dream. When Daddy got mad at her for making up excuses, she hollered back at him and said I was high-strung, just like him.
“Later, when Daddy wasn’t there, she told me that he was mad because Mr. Finn was his good friend and he didn’t like me to say bad things about him. Or about the boys either.”
“You said your brothers were there, in this dream?”
Ree shook her head like an animal trying to rid itself of a buzzing fly. “I think so, but I’m not sure.”
“Did anyone hurt them?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Finn got ahold of Junior, I think. I get all mixed up,” she repeated. “I was just a kid. You know?”
Mary Helen was quiet, waiting.
“Mommy said the best thing to do was to forget about it, not talk about it.” Ree went on, her little-girl voice returning. “Then it would go away. Daddy wouldn’t get mad at me. Mommy said everything would work out. But it didn’t. I still get scared sometimes and I feel sad. Sometimes Mommy felt scared and sad too. Like just before she went away. I could tell. She told me to look at the picture if anything ever happened to her.”
Eileen came across the room with a plate of steaming eggs, buttered toast, and a mug of tea on a makeshift tray. “Eat up, dear.” She set the tray on Ree’s lap. “You’ll feel much better with something in your stomach.”
Ree ate hungrily, without even looking up. Eileen started to tidy up around the chair, then worked her way over to the kitchen area. At least Eileen’s uneasiness was useful. She cleaned.
Mary Helen just sat there staring into space, not knowing what to make of it all. Had Ree been dreaming or had something actually happened long ago at the racetrack? The track part, at least, could be true. It had the ring of authenticity. Maybe the child had been lost She remembered, right after Erma’s disappearance, Ree’s angry flare-up about her father and Finn’s propensity for the races. On the other hand, all one had to do was talk to Ree for a little while to tell the woman was not completely stable.
Poor Erma. Knowing her, Mary Helen could well imagine how badly she must have wanted everything to work out. How important it must have been to her to keep both her husband and her daughter happy. And how hard she must have tried to do it. Mary Helen fished through her pocketbook, searching for another tissue to hand the sniffling Ree, but the package was empty. Perhaps she had stuck an extra one into the zipped side pocket.
The crumpled pages of Erma’s journal caught in the zipper. Struggling to loosen the zipper, Mary Helen was annoyed. Drat! Erma was an intelligent woman. What had she been thinking about? Why hadn’t she taken intelligent steps to solve her family’s problems? Why hadn’t Erma used her head?
“The heart runs away with the head.” She remembered that some eighteenth-century Romantic had said that about love. And Erma had loved Tommy Duran. With all his shortcomings, she’d loved him. And her children. Difficult as they appeared to be, she loved them too. She wanted them all to be happy. She wanted everyone to be happy. Erma McSweeney Duran just couldn’t help herself.
That night Kate soaked longer than usual in the bathtub, thinking about, of all things, Ron Honore and the missing OWL. You’d mink I didn’t have enough cases of my own, she fussed, adding still more hot water to the tub.
“Are you ever coming to bed?” Jack called from their bedroom. “It’s dark and lonely in here by myself.”
Kate checked the clock on the old-fashioned vanity table. She couldn’t believe she’d been in the tub for almost thirty minutes. No wonder the water was cold.
Pulling the plug, she stepped out of the old-fashioned tub and began to dry herself with a soft towel. Her body tingled and soon she felt warm and relaxed all over. With a large feathery puff, she put generous pats of Giorgio dusting powder everywhere. The puff left round, soft white patches on her pink skin.
Self-consciously, Kate opened one of the vanity drawers and took out the small bottle of honey-colored liquid Mama Bassetti had given her. St. Gerard oil, her mother-in-law had called it For all Kate knew, it could be olive oil from Lucca, straight off the shelf of Petrini’s Market She’d have to ask Sister Mary Helen about St. Gerard and his miraculous powers.
Feeling a little embarrassed even though she was alone, Kate rubbed the oil across the middle of her stomach. What she ought to have been doing, she thought, was taking her temperature as the doctor’s brochure suggested.
She studied the friar on the small bottle. His hands were folded and he was looking piously heavenward. St Gerard, do your stuff, she prayed, hoping she wasn’t indulging in pure superstition.
“Hurry up, hon.” Jack’s voice startled her. Quickly she shoved the bottle back into the drawer.
The moment she crawled into bed, Jack reached for her. “You smell delicious,” he said, pulling her close. His hands moved smoothly over her thighs, caressing her hips, his touch exciting her.
“Mmm, silky.” His hands glided up, seeking her breasts.
“New bath oil,” Kate mumbled. As he pressed his body close to hers and eagerly found her lips, she knew bath oil was the last thing on his mind.