The Missing Madonna (31 page)

“Yet I couldn’t help loving her. But she wouldn’t marry me after Tom died. Her kids, especially the daughter, didn’t like seeing me with their mother. And so Erma said she hated my temper and my drinking, but I know the kids had a lot to do with it.” Finn shifted the pillow.

Watching him, Mary Helen’s stomach roiled. She wasn’t even a foot closer to the door. “Do you have a hard time controlling your temper?” It was the only question that came to her, although she had witnessed the answer.

Finn looked and sounded puzzled, almost as if he were talking about someone else. “It happens when I’m drinking, mostly. I can’t seem to help it. Something just happens in my head. I only hit her once or twice, I guess, in all the years I’ve known her. And that was in these last few years. I been drinking more.” Finn’s eyes were blinking almost uncontrollably. “I told her I was sorry. I tried to make it up to her. I let her live here, work in my place. I tell you, I loved the woman.”

“I’m sure you did.” Mary Helen tried to soothe the man and not look shocked. No wonder the subtle mention of the picture to Ree. Erma didn’t want to upset her daughter. Good old Erma didn’t want to upset anyone. After all, Finn was her security; yet she must have feared that someday Finn’s drinking, coupled with his unbridled rage, would cause her harm.

“What made you come back here?” It was Finn’s turn to ask questions.

“The picture, really.” Suddenly her mouth was so dry, she was having trouble getting it around the words.
“Erma said that if anything happened to her, we should look to the picture.” She stopped to swallow. “At first, I couldn’t make anything of it. This week I was doing some research and I remembered you telling us your name is Alphonsus after Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Redemptorists. Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a special devotion of the Redemptorists. The picture was enshrined at their convent. It was the only connection that made any sense. But there was something else,” she added as he made a movement.

“The fact that I remembered your ice machine was leaning. Allan Boscacci, a fellow who fixes our electrical problems, says machines should be flat.” Mary Helen knew she was babbling. From the look hardening in Finn’s eyes, she realized her time was limited.

She shifted a few inches closer to the staircase and tried to stall. “Always, always, they should be flat, Allan said. And I was just checking and, sure enough . . .” Edging over, she pointed toward the new concrete square beneath the ice maker. “It seems unlikely that you would put a new piece of floor in crooked unless you were in a very big hurry.

“Won’t the cook be coming soon?” she asked, anxious to change the subject.

“I locked the front door and turned the
CLOSED
sign out.” The voice was cold, detached.

Mary Helen looked over at Finn. His eyes slid from the concrete floor up to her face.

The movement was so swift that Mary Helen was shocked to feel the pillow over her face. She gasped, sucking in air, fighting against the pressure backing her up, forcing her against the rough basement wall. Grunting, she moved her head from side to side, struggling to escape the softness covering her mouth, pushing her glasses into the bridge of her nose.

“Do not go gentle . . . Old age should burn and rave . . . Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Crazily,
the words popped into her mind as she clawed at Finn’s strong hands. She could feel his flesh under her nails. Desperately she tried to push against the blackness that was smothering her.

Slowly consciousness began to slip away. Her limbs felt limp and tingly, unable to support her. Her ears were ringing. So this is what dying is like, she thought, hardly feeling the wall behind her.

A moment of passing and she would awaken to lightness and peace, where all mysteries would be solved.
O Christ, Christ, come quickly! . . . Jesu, hearts light
. . . She couldn’t help smiling as she slipped into the whirling blackness.

High-pitched shouts, the scuffling of feet, the thud of blows, and Caroline swearing like a stevedore convinced Mary Helen she had not yet entered paradise. Her head throbbed. Beneath her the floor was cold and hard.

Painfully she opened her eyes. Through cracked glasses she could see Noelle, Lucy, Caroline, all pulling and kicking a cowering Mr. Finn. Sister Anne held tight to his shirttails, and dear Eileen had a firm grip on his one long, thin piece of hair.

“Freeze!” Kate, crouched in shooting position, barked from the top of the stairs. Gallagher and Honore flanked her.

“I said
Freeze!
Before you kill the guy!” Mary Helen heard her shout. Closing her eyes, she surrendered once again to the swirling dark.

Even before she opened her eyes, Sister Mary Helen knew where she was. The Lysol smell, the slippery feel of a plastic sheet on a hard mattress, the sound of crepe soles on waxed floors. Although she hadn’t been in the hospital since she’d had her gall-bladder attack thirty years before, the earmarks were unmistakable and unforgettable.

What was she doing here? Then she remembered—Erma, the basement, Mr. Finn, the pillow. God help me! she thought, aware that indeed He had. She lay quietly for several moments, telling Him just how grateful she was. And although she was sorely tempted, she made no rash promises to reform. God and she had been friends too long for either of them to be fooled.

As her mind cleared she realized that her head throbbed and her neck was stiff and sore. Her eyelids felt stuck together. Slowly she forced them open. Morning sun flooded the room. Eileen, the rosary beads still in her hands, dozed in a hardback chair. Anne, her back to the bed, stared out between the Venetian blinds, apparently studying the commuter traffic in the street below.

“Where am I?” Mary Helen said, only because it seemed like the right thing to say.

Both nuns rushed to her bedside, smiling, squeezing
her hands. Poor Eileen’s face was pale and she looked exhausted. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” she said, tears in her eyes. “Don’t ever give us a scare like that again!”

“She’s awake,” Anne called down the hallway. Suddenly the antiseptic room was alive with people, all talking at once.

“Thank goodness the Sisters called us.” Noelle, dressed in sailor-boy blue, sounded more like the admiral of the fleet.

“We were so worried about you.” Several strands of gray had escaped from Lucy’s braid. “But we shouldn’t have been.” She grinned. “When the going gets tough, the tough . . .” She stopped searching for an ending that fit.

“Pray like hell,” Caroline added, her wide-brimmed hat dipping toward Mary Helen.

At least Mary Helen thought it dipped. Everything looked a little fuzzy.

“Your spectacles, Sister dear,” Therese piped up then and fitted them over her ears. Good old efficient Therese had discovered the spare pair of glasses in her nightstand. Mary Helen cringed, momentarily picturing the drawer full of paperback mysteries Therese must also have discovered.

“They were on top of your desk, with this.” Sister Cecilia winked reassuringly. The college president handed her what looked like—for those who didn’t know better—a prayerbook in a plastic prayerbook cover.

“Thank you,” Mary Helen said indistinctly. Her mouth was suddenly dry and her eyelids heavy.

“It must be the medication,” she heard Eileen say as she drifted back into sleep.

*  *  *

When Mary Helen awoke again, her room was empty. The afternoon sun cast warm slits of light through the Venetian blinds and across her white top
sheet. Quietly her door opened a few inches. She recognized the top of Eileen’s head and her gray eyes peeking in.

“Sleeping Beauty has awakened,” Eileen announced, pushing the door back.

By the time Mary Helen had put on her bifocals, Kate Murphy was at her side. Inspector Gallagher and Inspector Honore fidgeted uncomfortably at the foot of the bed. Gallagher, she noticed, kept his eyes anyplace but on her. Poor devil had probably never seen a nun in bed before, she mused. But then again, few people had.

“We’re so glad you’re safe.” Kate’s blue eyes were concerned. “When you’re feeling better well have to talk seriously about—”

“And thanks to you three, Mr. Finn is safe too,” Mary Helen interrupted, hoping Kate would attribute her rudeness to ill health. She did not want to hear the end of Kate’s sentence.

Kate laughed. “I have the feeling he was the happiest person in the whole basement to see us. I knew you’d be curious about the outcome.”

Mary Helen nodded, then wished she hadn’t Her head pounded.

“Finn confessed,” Kate said. “He admits killing Mrs. Duran. By accident, or so he claims. Apparently the man has a hair-trigger temper. He wanted to marry her, but she kept refusing him again and again.

“What he said about her coming down to the bistro was true. She did come down to tell him she was leaving, leaving the apartment for good. Finn went upstairs. They argued bitterly about the kids. He must have followed her around the apartment, begging her to change her mind. She only became more determined to go.

“When she ignored his pleading and went out to the back porch to finish Buddy’s laundry, something in Finn must have snapped.

“Mrs. Duran apparently ran into her bedroom to escape his rage. Unable to control himself, Finn ran after her and knocked her down. She rolled under the bed, trying to get away from him.”

“That’s how the medal got stuck”—Mary Helen thought aloud—“and why the laundry was half done.”

Kate nodded. “He pulled her out, slapped her several times—once with such force that she tumbled backward and hit the end of the bedstead just the wrong way. According to Finn, that’s what killed her.”

Mary Helen winced.

“That’s his story, anyway.” Honore snapped his gum. “We’ll have to wait for an autopsy.”

“Then you found her? She was buried in the basement?”

“Yes, Sister.” Kate patted her hand. “As soon as he realized she was dead, Finn panicked. He had to bury her somewhere. As far as we can figure, this all happened Saturday afternoon. He must have buried her in the early hours of Sunday morning. After they finally closed up Saturday, he shoved the ice machine aside. Dug like the devil himself was after him. Buried the body, refilled the hole, and moved the machine back. He had time, since the bistro doesn’t open until dinner on Sundays.”

“That’s who she meant by the
he
who was worrying her.” The moment the sentence left her mouth, Mary Helen wished it hadn’t.

Kate’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t by any chance doing a little private investigating, were you? You know, Sister, I found a black binder alongside the bed. It looked surprisingly like someone had torn some pages out.”

Mary Helen groaned and put her hand up to the lump on her head.

“Maybe this isn’t the right time, Sister,” Kate began. “Or maybe while your head still aches, it is. You gave us
quite a scare, you know. You really shouldn’t be dabbling in police work. It’s much too dangerous! Why didn’t you call us instead of going over there by yourself?”

“I fully intended to,” Mary Helen said. “In fact, I was in the library looking up St. Gerard oil when the whole thing tumbled together.”

Kate’s blue eyes studied her. She bent forward. Obviously she didn’t want the other two inspectors to hear. “What did you find out about it?” she whispered.

She looked so eager, so hopeful, Mary Helen didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Not right now, anyway. Instead she closed her eyes.

“She must have drifted off, poor dear.” She heard Kate whisper.

“She had a close one.” Mary Helen recognized Honore’s low voice. “She’d better watch herself after this, before something really happens to her.”

“Watch herself, hell!” Gallagher growled. “Nothing’s going to happen to her. That nun leads a charmed life. What’s going to happen, goddamn it, is that the old gal’s going to end up being the death of me!”

Over a month later, on the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Sister Mary Helen organized a Memorial Mass for Erma Duran. The day seemed appropriate, not only because of Erma’s devotion to Mary under this title but because the picture had been a tremendous help in solving the case.