Murder Makes a Pilgrimage (12 page)

Seemingly satisfied that she’d hit pay dirt, Cora put her hands on her hips and waited for round two.

“Now see here, Cora.” Roger DeAngelo pulled himself up to his full height and stepped in front of his wife. His dark eyes blazed. “You are definitely out of order.”

“Who are you calling ‘out of order’?” Bud Bowman found
his voice. “If I remember right, it was your missus that started the name-calling.”

Dr. Fong peered over the top of his glasses and put his arm protectively around his wife’s shoulders. Stiffening, she shook it off.

Heidi stirred in the chair but did not wake. She must have been up all night, Mary Helen thought absently, to be so tired.

“This will get us nowhere,” Dr. Fong said, his face draining of color. “Let’s at least act civilized.”

“Why don’t you stay out of it, fella?” Bud doubled up his fist and glowered first at Fong, then at DeAngelo.

“Someone better stop this or it’s sure to turn into a donnybrook,” Eileen whispered to Mary Helen.

Before either of the nuns could act, tiny Rita Fong stepped to the middle of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said in a no-nonsense voice, “we are all obviously tired and upset. Fighting among ourselves will do us no good. We have had a long trip, a short night, and a very stressful morning. What we all need to do is relax. We need some deep breathing. Everyone stand.”

Like obedient robots, they stood.

“Tall, stand tall! Ready, ready, ready.” Her voice boomed off the bookshelves. “Up tall, tall, tall. Taller. Shoulders back. Feet apart. Arms over your heads. Stretch those lazy spines. Stretch. Stretch taller.”

Mary Helen watched in amazement as tiny Rita stretched her arms and her back until she loomed almost tall. She held the pose as still as a statue. Mary Helen felt suddenly light-headed.

“Breathe,” Rita commanded. “Breathe deep. Deep. Deep. Deeper!”

Standing tall and breathing deep was how an astonished Pepe found his group of
peregrinos
.

As soon as Pepe left the office, Comisario Ángel Serrano pushed himself back in the swivel chair, propped his feet on top of the manager’s desk, and closed his eyes. Peace, at last! He needed it to think.

After a morning filled with chatter the small office was richly quiet. “Quiet as a nun,” the English poet had written. The chap must never have run into the two I just met, Ángel thought, rubbing his burning eyes.

In the stillness he heard the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of a rain gutter in the patio below. From somewhere tires swished on the still-wet street. Silverware rattled in one of the hotel’s dining rooms.

What a mess this tour of Nunez’s had become! There was something about the young man that Ángel didn’t like, didn’t trust really. He was too suave, too well dressed. What did the Americans call it? Too “yuppie”—strange word. Ángel pulled at his tie to loosen it. His shirt collar chafed at his neck. Was he really gaining kilos as his wife, Julietta, claimed or was she using too much starch in the laundry?

Julietta would probably like him to be more like Pepe Nunez. At the thought of her, his stomach rumbled. It was almost time for his dinner.

The whole of Santiago would soon stop for dinner. María José must be home by now. Thank goodness that he was able to send his only niece home. His sister, Pilar, would have had his head if he had detained her. Although it would serve her right. Maybe scare her a little. Quickly he dismissed the notion. María José, he knew from years of experience, did not scare easily. He wondered crossly how she had managed to get involved with this Pepe and what the duties of an assistant to a fellow who did nothing but show people the sights actually were.

When he asked her, she had shrugged impatiently. “Tío, I have told you and Papa both that I intend to be a businesswoman, support myself, see the world, break out of Galicia. I want to be a liberated woman. I will take whatever opportunities arise to do this.” Her jaw was set. “This is not just an adventure. I view Pepe Nunez and his tour as a business opportunity.”

For the life of him, Ángel Serrano could not see why, but it was fruitless to say so. All this liberation business happened when María José went to the university: liberation and her magenta-colored hair. He and his brother-in-law had figured both would pass, but neither had, and Pilar seemed to be encouraging her.

“And now, what of your opportunity, Ho-Ho?” He used her childhood pet name, hoping to soften her up for reason. “It seems to have propelled you right into the middle of a murder.”

Undaunted and clearly unsoftened, María José’s dark eyes met his. “Tío,” she said in that irritatingly positive tone of hers, “it has produced another opportunity. Don’t you see? I can continue on this tour with Pepe and work as a sort of assistant to you.”

Ángel sent her home. Maybe having only sons is a blessing, he thought, determined to talk to his brother-in-law. Ho-Ho had always been a handful. Someone had better tighten the rein on that girl before it was too late.

Wasn’t this just his luck? Bad enough to have his own niece involved in a murder, let alone in the murder of an American tourist. It would mean notifying the embassy in Madrid—clearly the mayor’s responsibility—but notifying the mayor fell to his lot. Better to leave it until after the noonday meal. The mayor always reacted better when he was full. Surely Canon Fernández had already reached the mayor.
Thank goodness he had made it clear that he was not to be disturbed for any reason.

And, of all places to find the victim, in the cathedral!
Murder in the Cathedral
. His mind jumped back to Oxford, where he had first read that play, then back again to Santiago and to the canon, whom he had been avoiding all morning.

What would the canon say when they finally met? Plenty, Ángel knew, visualizing the bantamlike priest, ranting and strutting, lamenting the sacrilege, somehow blaming the police in general, and Ángel in particular, for what had happened. Idly Angel wondered what kinds of rites would be required to exorcise a cathedral. But that was the canon’s problem. His was to discover the murderer. And what a muddle it was.

“Maybe it was a mugger,” the professor’s wife had suggested in her slow drawl. When he had seen her alone, Barbara DeAngelo, for some reason called Bootsie, with the blue-black hair and those cold blue eyes, stated very clearly and concisely that on the previous night she was in the lounge with her husband, the Fongs, and the Bowmans. Lisa Springer, Heidi Williams, María José, and Pepe Nunez joined them a little later. The Bowmans left early. Dr. and Mrs. Fong were the next to go. Not too much later she and her husband left. About ten-thirty, she thought.

“We were just exhausted,” she said, “and we both went to bed. My husband fell asleep immediately. I read for a while and then turned off the lights. Although I didn’t sleep very well, I don’t remember hearing anything unusual until Pepe roused us this morning.

“Surely it was a mugger who did this,” Bootsie repeated, and Ángel did not argue. He knew, however, what she did not. Santiago had its share of thieves, drunks, and even wife beaters. But it had very few murderers, and none so heinous as to commit murder in the crypt of its beloved St. James.

A staccato rap on the door propelled Ángel upright in his chair.
“Pase!”
he barked, clearing his throat and bending over a sheet of paper on the desk.

“Comisario!” Officer Esteban Zaldo, eager and efficient, clicked his heels and stood at attention. Ángel motioned for him to sit down. Zaldo even sat at attention, back straight, heels together. His mustache was straight and rigid. Only the half-moons of perspiration forming under his arms indicated that he was human.

For some reason his formality irritated Ángel, although he knew it shouldn’t. Esteban was a dedicated and effective police officer. Being successfully able to contain that bunch of American
peregrinos
in one room ought to be proof enough.

Ángel pulled in his chair and doodled down one side of the paper on his desk. “I’m glad to see you, Esteban,” he said.

Zaldo allowed a small, pleased grin to play at the corners of his mouth.

“We have a problem.” Ángel turned the paper around and started down the other side. “There is absolutely no question in my mind that one of these Americans is the murderer.” Ángel glanced up. “But which one?”

Esteban frowned, undoubtedly indicating that he, too, understood the seriousness of their predicament.

Ángel read aloud from his notes. “Barbara, called Bootsie, DeAngelo claims to have been in bed all night with her husband. Her husband, Professor Roger DeAngelo, verifies it. Henry Bowman, called Bud, slept all night. Snoring, according to his wife, Cora. She was just dropping off to sleep when someone, she claims, was quarreling in the hallway outside her room.” He consulted his paper. “ ‘Fighting tooth and nail,’ to quote her exactly.”

“Do we know who that was, Comisario?” Esteban’s dark eyes were sharp.

“The Fongs, I suspect.”

“Did they admit it?”

“Not at all!” The
comisario
grinned at Zaldo, who was still a bachelor. “Married people don’t admit that they fight, Esteban. We discuss things. And they did admit that they had a discussion, which, according to Dr. Neil Fong, may have become a bit noisy. ‘Loud enough to wake the dead,’ to quote Cora Bowman.”

“Do we know what they were fighting about, Comisario?”

“Only what they tell us.” Ángel chuckled. “The dentist claims that his wife was upset that they had stayed downstairs so long. She was tired and had kicked him several times under the table.”

“Kicked him?” Esteban’s mustache twitched. “That little thing kicked him?”

Although Rita Fong was tiny, to Ángel’s way of thinking her small person emitted a giant’s strength. Was it the command in her voice? The brightness of her dress? Or was it those eyes, which peered at him like two hard lumps of polished jet?

“That is his version,” Ángel said. “She claims that she was concerned because he was drinking too much wine and wine is not good for him. She says that was what they were discussing in the hallway and that he became angry, shouted, and stalked away.”

“That was the commotion Señora Bowman heard.” Zaldo’s eyes brightened. “Perhaps the doctor went outside for a breath of air, met Señorita Springer, tried to make drunken advances. When she refused, he struck her.”

“That is an interesting theory, Esteban, except that both the Fongs agree—and it is one of the few things that they do agree upon—that Dr. Fong returned a few minutes later, sick and penitent, and that they spent the rest of the night in bed together.”

As far as possible from each other, Angel supposed, feeling a twinge of pity for the doctor. He himself hated going to bed angry. After a row with Julietta, rather than sleep in a tense bed, he always apologized and Julietta was quick to forgive. For some reason Ángel could not imagine Rita Fong forgiving at all.

“What about the murdered girl’s friend, Heidi?” Esteban interrupted the
comisario
’s reverie.

“Aha! Heidi.” Angel turned over his paper. Gum-chewing Heidi had provided him with a wealth of information. “She told me that she and Lisa went to bed about three this morning. Pepe had left the hotel briefly with María José, who, at least in Heidi’s view, was furious with him.”

At the mention of Ho-Ho’s name, Esteban squirmed uncomfortably. “I am sorry, Comisario, that your sister’s only daughter is involved.”

“It is not your fault, Esteban.” Nor mine either, he thought, regardless of what his sister, Pilar, would say. Maybe he should have put Ho-Ho in jail for a few hours. Teach them both a lesson!

“María José told me,” he continued, “that she was angry because Pepe had not bothered to escort her to the banquet. Then afterward he had danced with the other single women while he left her sitting.”

Ángel’s stomach growled so loudly that he cut short his niece’s rendition of the evening. “She went home early,” he said, dreading the thought of checking out her alibi with his sister. “Pepe returned to the hotel, where they danced until closing time, and he escorted the girls on a moonlit walk around the university.”

Zaldo’s eyes narrowed.

“All very aboveboard,” Ángel added quickly. “When they finally went to their room, they found a note had been shoved under the door. For Lisa.”

“A note! From the murderer?”

“From an admirer, according to Heidi, although they might be one and the same.”

“Where is this note?”

“Heidi tells me that the murdered girl tore it into little pieces and flushed it.” Bad on the evidence and bad on the plumbing, Angel thought, pushing himself up from his chair. Zaldo shot to attention. “At ease, Esteban. At ease. We’ll talk more after dinner.” He put his hand on the officer’s rigid shoulder. “Why don’t you go home and have your dinner, too?”

“But what about the nuns, Comisario?”

“The nuns?” Reluctantly Angel sat back down and motioned for Officer Zaldo to do the same. “You don’t think that one of them is the murderer, do you?” He ran his fingers around his tonsure. “One was asleep all night. And the other one? She did have something interesting to add. She happened to look out the window sometime during the early-morning hours and spotted what she thought might be a person on the cathedral steps.