“Linnea,” I said, brushing at my jacket, “Gus told me Molly was here with you around five o’clock the day she was killed. How did she seem?”
Linnea frowned and began fiddling with one of her braids. “What do you mean?”
“Was she happy? Unhappy? Upset about the fortune teller?”
“Oh.” She considered. “I’d say she wasn’t in the best of moods.”
“How so?”
“Well, she... she was kind of short-tempered.”
“About what?”
She shrugged sullenly. “I don’t really remember.”
I tried another tack. “Was that when she mentioned her bad session with Madame Anya?”
“Yes. Did you go see her last night?”
“Uh-huh. She’s a strange lady.”
“Old bat!”
“She’s not that bad. She’s lonely.”
Again a sullen shrug.
“Anyway,” I said, “Madame Anya wouldn’t tell me about the session with Molly — she claims it has to remain confidential. What exactly did Molly tell you?”
Linnea pressed a hand to her forehead. “Wow, everything kind of blends together lately.”
“Since you’ve been drinking so much.”
Instantly, I regretted it. Linnea lowered her eyes to her lap and picked at a thread on her caftan. In a moment, she said, “Why do you have to harp on that today? Why is it that every time we talk you have to bring that up?”
I wasn’t aware I had been. “I’m sorry. You meant, things are mixed up since your divorce and all.”
“Yes, since my divorce and all.” Her tone cruelly mimicked mine.
I turned to the full-length mirror on the closet door, tucking in my red blouse. “Anyway, do you remember what she said?”
Linnea sighed and set down her coffee cup with a clunk. “Some damned thing about how Anya’s advice would only get her deeper in trouble,” she said irritably. “There was something about how she wished she’d never seen the cards. Christ, Sharon, it was just some stupid, superstitious thing. Why am I supposed to remember?”
Because Molly took the trouble to remember your problems, I thought. I slipped on my jacket and arranged the collar of my blouse, gearing up to ask the question I really dreaded.
“Lin, while you were cleaning last night, did you come across that piece of drapery cord I cut off while I was putting up the new curtains?”
“What cord?”
“It was rolled up on the coffee table. A white cord.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“You didn’t see it on the coffee table, or anyplace else?”
“No. For Christ’s sake, Sharon, what’s so important about some leftover cord?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll turn into one of those old ladies who collects string.”
She giggled. “A string-collecting detective who ties up her suspects and makes them confess all.”
I smiled, glad her good humor had returned. “It could be a professional asset.” I twisted my hair into a loose knot at the nape of my neck and gathered up my bag just as the phone rang.
Linnea answered it. “Hank. He wants you to come over to All Souls.”
“Thanks.” As I crossed the room, I said, “Look, Lin, try to take it easy today. Don’t think you have to do everything at once.”
“Okay.” Again, the guilty, little-girl look. It gave me the odd sensation that Linnea had substituted me for the vanished husband as an authority figure, a role I didn’t relish at all. The uneasy sensation persisted all through the drive to All Souls and the pretrial conference.
Now I sat at my desk, staring at her message. I knew very little about parenting, and the idea of becoming saddled with a twenty-nine-year-old child was appalling. And what of Linnea’s own children, who needed to depend on her? For them, she should become strong and resourceful as she had once been. They couldn’t forever be farmed off to Granny.
No, I resolved, Linnea would have to get through the day without me. I would do her more good by putting to rest my suspicions of her involvement in Molly’s murder than by coddling her all afternoon. I crumpled her message and tossed it in the basket as I headed for the door.
11
Mr. Moe and Jeffrey Neverman stood on the sidewalk in front of the Albatross Superette, under the sign supplied by our local Seven-Up distributor. A blue van bearing the Sunrise Blind Center’s name was parked at the curb. Neverman must be making a delivery too clumsy for Sebastian and Gus.
I pulled the MG into the bus stop across the street and idled there, smiling at the contrast between the two men. Mr. Moe was as dapper as it was possible to be in a long white apron, his hair carefully slicked back, his brown slacks in a knifelike crease. Neverman, on the other hand, wore scruffy faded Levi’s and a workshirt whose tattered tails hung out. In daylight, his gray-flecked hair was even shaggier than it had looked last night in the dark of the old church.
A wine distributor’s truck pulled up. The driver hopped out and began unloading crates onto the sidewalk. Mr. Moe spoke briefly with him, and then he and Neverman went inside the store.
Early afternoon seemed a bad time to hold a private conversation with my corner grocer. I considered for a moment and, prompted by the horn of a bus that roared up behind me, decided to try to track Sebastian down again. If he wasn’t at the Center, I could always take Clemente up on his offer of a tour.
When I got there, though, I realized Clemente might not appreciate my barging in on his residents without permission.
It seemed prudent to check with him first. The door of the rectory — a long, low building of the same style as the church — stood open. I went into a lobby that shone with ceramic tiles, chose one of the three dark-wood doors that opened off there, and knocked. Clemente’s voice issued an invitation to enter.
The room had gleaming parquet floors, and the bright Mexican rugs Linnea had mentioned hung on the adobe walls. The director sat at a desk in the center, one long leg thrown across its corner. He was eating a cup of yogurt, and he gestured with his spoon when he looked up.
“Sharon! You’ve come for that tour.”
“I had the afternoon off, so I thought I’d let you show me around,” I said, assuming Sebastian would show up on the tour.
“Great! Have a seat while I finish my lunch.” He motioned at a wicker chair on the other side of the desk.
“You like that stuff?” I asked, pointing at the yogurt.
“It keeps the weight down.” He patted the beginnings of a paunch. “Hey, I really like your friend Linnea.”
“I’m sure it’s mutual. She was telling me what a fabulous place you have here.”
He grinned. “I don’t mind it, although it still seems strange, living in a house intended for a priest. I’m sure I have a better time in it than the priests ever did.”
“I’ll bet,” I said, thinking of the waterbed.
Clemente set his spoon in an ashtray and tossed the half-full cup of yogurt in the wastebasket. “God, that makes an awful lunch! I’d have been better off taking Linnea out for Mexican food, which I plan to do as soon as I can get free. She claims the Mexican food in San Diego is unbeatable, but there’s this little place I found...” His eyes grew serious. “You and she have been friends a long time, haven’t you?”
“Since grade school.”
“What’s her story, anyway? She said something last night about going to the fortune teller because she was willing to try anything. But later she didn’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s nothing so unusual. She was divorced a few months ago and it’s a difficult adjustment.”
He nodded slowly. “She mentioned her little girls were staying with their grandmother. She came to visit you to get away from it all?”
“And to do some thinking.”