Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (4 page)

Hickey nodded. “How about her mother? She alive?”

“I believe so. Perhaps Father Berry can tell you her whereabouts. He’ll surely want to speak to you. He’s quite fond of Mr. Tucker, and Cynthia?”

The way this nun asked statements and stated questions, Hickey thought she must’ve learned punctuation on April Fool’s Day. “Anybody else visit Mr. Tucker?”

“Last summer there was a lady.…Emma…Vidal? Quite attractive. Splendid black hair. One day, at my request, she let it down. Sir, it reached below her knees? In my opinion, she loved Mr. Tucker deeply. But, in September, it was, her visits stopped. I asked Cynthia if Miss Vidal would return. She wouldn’t talk about Miss Vidal. In fact, she grew angry and hissed at me, sir?”

Two nuns passed, driving a herd of old people across the lobby to the French doors that led to the patio. A woman in a head wrap and blue dress that looked new and expensive used two canes and still had to concentrate fiercely to hobble in front of the nun who steadied her shoulders. The woman’s false teeth had gotten loose from her gums and slipped sideways, molars out front.

“Cynthia have any brothers or sisters?” Hickey asked.

“Yes. A sister, Laurel. I’ve tried to call her since the relapse but the phone was disconnected. I sent her a letter. Shall I give you the address?”

“Before I leave. How about you show me to Mr. Tucker now?”

Sister Johanna frowned, rose, and started toward the glass doors. “He may not speak. He rarely does anymore, except to the angels when he asks them to carry him away.”

The patio was sunny and bright with marigolds, a tall jacaranda, a rose garden in the middle, and more roses climbing a stucco wall. Hickey thought the place smelled too sweet, like gumdrops. He was gazing around when the old woman in blue lunged off the bench and landed on her knees in front of him. The head wrap had unraveled. Her wiry hair was gathered into three bows. Her long, sharp chin trembled, and loose teeth clacked as she shrilled, “Are you the devil?”

A chill shot up his neck and spread across his skull. It felt like his hair catching fire. Before he could answer, a nun was lifting the old woman and Sister Johanna was leading Hickey around her. “Don’t be startled, sir? Donia commonly asks men if they are Satan. She was a Russian countess who personally knew the wicked Rasputin. He made quite an impression.”

The sister led him up the path beside tall birds of paradise and into the rear wing. The heavy doors opened to another hall like those off the lobby, only the smells of decay were fouler here, mixed with incense and dramatized by ghostly sounds. As soon as one groan or cry faded, another would rise. In the first room, the skeleton of a woman no bigger than a doll lay curled, knees up, on top of her sheets. A cadaverous man with purplish skin sat in the next room. Bare legs dangling off his bed, he was naked except for one maroon sock and a sailor’s cap so large it almost covered his eyes. He shook his fist at Hickey and the nun. The third doorway on the right led to Henry Tucker.

Cynthia’s daddy might’ve already been in his coffin, the way he lay prone with arms rammed against his sides. He wore red pajamas. His black hair was thick and tawny, his flesh chalk white under and around the brown stubble. Hickey recognized him from the portrait above the bed in Cynthia’s room. The way he looked now, all the worries that Mr. Bair had captured in his expression must’ve come true. His eyes were closed, the lashes long and thick. At his side was a mask hooked by a tube to a large tank beside the bed. Sister Johanna closed the valve on the tank.

“He pulls it off the minute we leave him alone.”

Taller than the bed was long, Tucker’s bony feet stuck through the rails. His arms and hands were long and gangly, the shoulders wide but skeletal. Like a powerful man in his final defeat. His broad chest had caved in. He breathed in shallow gasps and puffed out like spitting. When the nun touched his arm, he quivered and jerked. His eyes opened halfway, enough to show their color. Like sky blue, only with its light snuffed out.

“Go away,” he rasped.

Sister Johanna picked up his hand, cradled it. “Please talk to the man, Henry? He’s trying to find Cynthia.”

“Why?”

“I’m a friend. Your daughter works for me.” Hickey avoided mentioning the nightclub, suspecting her daddy wouldn’t approve. “She took a week off, said there were family problems, didn’t show up when she was due.”

All that changed in Tucker’s expression was that it kept tightening, as if some force or gadget slowly stretched his skin. He gasped and spit air like a worn and rusted machine. There was a rare gentleness about his eyes.

Aching for the man, Hickey asked softly, “Any idea where she went?”

“No.”

“You figure her mother knows?”

Tucker wrenched his hand free from Sister Johanna and pushed on the middle of his chest as though trying to hold his heart in. Sister Johanna gripped Hickey’s arm tightly, tugged and led him out to the hallway, where she released her hold on him and stood wagging her head. “We’ve troubled him enough, sir.”

“Let me talk to him alone for one minute. I’ve got something might change his attitude, shock him into action.”

“Or kill him,” she whispered.

Hickey led her farther down the hall. “You said he was dying anyway.” The nun’s face puckered and flushed as if she’d never heard a line so cruel. “I’m guessing the girl’s in trouble, see. Don’t you think Tucker’d want to risk his life for her?”

“It’s not for us to say.”

Hickey pulled from his coat pocket the tubed manila envelope, slipped out the drawing of two naked people with the plea for help beneath and handed it to her. She squinted at it until her eyes wetted and closed. She plucked a handkerchief out of a crease in her robe.

“I found it in her room,” Hickey said. “Next to a tin of bullets. A couple dozen of them were missing. You get the idea.”

Head down as though in a procession, the nun led him back to the room where Tucker lay facing away from them. The nun pulled a cord and flicked on the overhead light. Using only one hand, she propped two pillows against the head rails, then lifted and coaxed the man to a sitting posture as easily as if he’d been sewn of canvas and filled with straw. His only reaction was to lift a hand to shade his eyes. Under the light, Hickey saw how handsome his face must’ve been with the graceful high cheekbones, delicate lips, and deep blue eyes. He looked like the ruin of a prince. When Sister Johanna held the picture in front of his face, he stared diffidently, his eyes scanning from top to bottom, side to side.

“Can you read it?” Hickey asked.

“I read.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me who sent it, or who they sent it to? Tell me anything.”

Tucker rolled onto his side and suffered through a rattling cough. When it finished he lay still, breathing mechanically as before. The man was dead already, Hickey saw. There might still be a heart inside him, and part of a brain, but the spirit was gone. The coughing subsided and Tucker lay still with his back to Hickey.

Hickey took the drawing from Sister Johanna, stuck it into the envelope, rolled the envelope into his pocket. “Say, who’s the Bitch?”

Henry Tucker shuddered for a couple seconds, no more. Sister Johanna pulled up the blankets, smoothed them, and led Hickey out, looking grim as though she’d begged forgiveness and was waiting for the answer, terrified that it would be no. She led him across the patio. Beneath the jacaranda was a path leading to an arched door. She opened the door and showed him into a parlor furnished in cherry wood: cushioned straight-backed chairs, a coffee table, a bureau, and a china cabinet. There was a bell on a platform beside an interior door. The sister rang it.

The footsteps were hypnotically slow and measured. The door opened on a barrel-shaped man in black with a priest’s collar. “McCullough,” he declared, grabbed Hickey’s hand, and pumped it like a well handle. His face was ruddy, eyes blue and zesty, his hair strawberry blond, shaggy down the back of his compacted neck that barely allowed room for his collar.

Sister Johanna introduced Hickey, said he was here about the Tuckers, and rushed off as if the priest spooked her. He motioned Hickey into his office. The cherry wood desk was so big and slick they could’ve tipped it to forty-five degrees and skied down. The two small windows looked out upon lemon trees. The cherry wood shelves held photographs, diplomas, a dozen or so football trophies. Hickey motioned that way. “You play ball?”

The priest beamed. “Notre Dame. Guard. I’d take you for a…fullback.”

“Hollywood High, and one year at SC.”

“An injury?”

“Yeah. I ran out of dough.”

Hickey sat on a love seat, the priest behind his desk. He lay his elbows on the desk, folded his hands, rested his chin on them. “I hope you’ve brought news about Cynthia Tucker.”

“Questions. She’s missing.”

The priest sighed dourly. He reached into a drawer and produced a fifth of Irish whiskey, reached twice more for tumblers. “I welcome company.” His eyes enlarged, his face flushed and he grinned. “You see, I won’t drink alone, barring my nightcap and the sip to whet my appetite for supper, and it’s certain you won’t catch me drinking with a nun. Imagine living with nuns, Tom. Twenty-two celibate wives.” He gave a wink and loaded the tumblers, delivered one to Hickey and returned to his seat. “The glass has been washed.”

Hickey downed a healthy swallow, glad for the jolt. Consorting with a nun, a priest, and the living dead hadn’t rose-tinted his day. He asked the priest if he could smoke then, before he filled his pipe and torched it, he got up and lay the manila envelope on the desk. “Look at what’s in there. Tell me what you make of it.”

The priest looked first at the photo of Cynthia. He smiled, caught his breath, and gulped what was left in his tumbler. Lying the photo facedown, he picked up the drawing, held it first at arm’s length but kept inching it closer until it masked his face. When he dropped it onto the desk, he rubbed his eyes and turned his chair to face the window and lemon tree.

“What’s it mean?” Hickey asked.

The priest wagged his head silently. After a minute he turned, gazing distractedly around the room, reached to fill his tumbler halfway, and neatly placed the photo and drawing into the manila envelope.

“What’s the matter?” Hickey asked. “You recognize somebody?”

“The symbol. The tattoo on the girl’s behind.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a kabbalistic version of the Tree of Life. You may remember the Tree of Life from Genesis? The circles are called
Sefirot
. Each represents a spiritual or occult power. The lines are paths a seeker, or magician, will use to climb the tree.”

“Yeah. Go on.”

“You noticed the one circle in green?”

“You bet.”

“It’s the color of Venus—not Venus Tucker, Cynthia’s mother. Venus, the goddess of all things feminine—and that
Sefirah
is the abode of Venus. It’s called
Nezah
, which I remember because it happens to be the name of the faith Venus Tucker preaches. A brand of Theosophy. You know of the Theosophists?”

“A little.”

“That Venus and Henry were longtime Theosophists?”

“Okay.” Hickey rolled his hand.

“It’s a society of maverick Hindus, who also glean what serves them from other doctrines.”

“Swell,” Hickey said. “Now tell me why that tree thing spooked you.”

“Last month a parcel arrived for Henry Tucker. I delivered it myself and opened it for him. It was a ring that looked handmade by an amateur, a band with a small golden circle attached, that may have been a coin before the markings were rubbed away and the symbol etched on it. A tiny green gem had been set into the Venus
Sefirah
. Henry begged me to save it until he died, then place it on his hand, on the wedding finger.”

Hickey relit his pipe, held out his glass for another jolt. “The parcel have a note or anything, a return address?”

“It was postmarked Redding, California. Venus lives up there, near Mount Shasta.”

“Cynthia get along with her mother?”

“Not well. Laurel is her mother’s child, Cynthia the father’s. Now, with Henry dying, what’s she to do?”

“Maybe shoot somebody,” Hickey muttered.

The priest wheeled his chair to face Hickey straight on, grabbed the rim of his desk. “What?”

“I found bullets in her room.”

Father McCullough wiped his brow with a sleeve and kneaded his forehead. “If I were a beauty of seventeen who’s allowed to sing in a nightclub, leered at by servicemen, rakes, and mobsters, I too might carry a gun in my purse.”

Hickey raised his tumbler, downed the last of his whiskey. “Here’s hoping.”

The priest drank up. Hickey sat, smoked, waited for the father to quit feeding him the Tuckers’ story by the teaspoon and come clean. But the priest wasn’t offering.

“Okay. Two more things. How about you give me the sister’s, Laurel’s, address and tell me how you know about the nightclub?”

“Cynthia takes me into her confidence.”

“Ah. Then you’d know about her friends. Uncles, cousins. What church she goes to. Who she hates.”

The priest shifted his eyes away, fished into a drawer for an address book, a notepad and pen. He scribbled an address and held it out. “You might find Laurel here. It was their home before Henry got stricken with tuberculosis.”

Hickey stood, accepted the address. “Yeah, about Henry getting stricken, Cynthia tell you about somebody she calls the Bitch, who clobbered her daddy with a typewriter?”

The priest’s jaw clenched and shoulders thickened as though he were preparing to rampage across the scrimmage line. “Sorry,” he murmured.

“It could mean I find her.”

“I don’t tell tales, Mister Hickey. That’s why people trust me.”

Hickey crammed the sister’s address into the manila envelope, told the priest thanks and good-bye. Father McCullough walked him across the patio where old folks crowded every bench and chair, wearing sun hats or holding newspapers over their heads as if the midday sun would rain on them. Those who could hear listened to the bells start clanging “Silent Night.” On the roof of the front building, behind the facade and beneath the bells, a Mexican fellow stood pulling ropes. Each note chimed clear and rich, and hung a long while in the air. Hickey listened eagerly, trying to figure how the man got two full octaves, including sharps and flats, with only eight bells.