The overheard dialogue clarified the instant that she entered the somber study. She felt as if she had walked onto the set of a play and the actors were now enunciating with Masterpiece Theatre perfection for her benefit. Certainly the scene was striking.
Father Hernandez was facing Matt, as dark and brooding as a tragic hero in his coloring, his old-fashioned black cassock, his tortured priestly passion.
"Some priests walk away," he was saying. Bitterness and regret seasoned his accusing voice. "I cannot."
Ssssome priessstsss, the snake hissed in Eden, in Las Vegas.
Matt, as innocently blond as any first-communion angel of seven years in a winsome white suit, answered the challenge with a lift of his head and his voice. "Some priests stay when they do more damage than if they left."
That reply caused Father Hernandez to recoil, to sink into one of the upholstered armchairs designed for the comfort of his flock and put his face in his hands.
In the ensuing silence, Sister Seraphina wrung her wrinkled old hands and glanced from one man to the other.
"We must give each other the benefit of the doubt," she urged. "We must support each other in our separate ways."
Father Hernandez withdrew his hands and turned to the peacemaker, his red-rimmed eyes empty and wounded.
"Separate is different for all of us. Don't worry, Sister. I will pull myself together for the police lieutenant." He smiled as he shook his head to clear it. "She is only a parishioner, after all. I have heard her confession." That assertion made Temple blink. She would love to hear--even overhear--C.R. Molina's confession. "I have always been able to appease my parishioners," he added with a touch of the old arrogance, "Except for Miss Tyler."
"A priest's role is not to appease," Matt put in.
"Walk in my shoes, Fisherman!" Father Hernandez's black-coral eyes blazed. "What is most unappeasable is Satan, and he is out there, be certain of it."
Shoesss of the Fisssherman. Mossst unappeasssable. Ssssatan. Isss. Csssertain.
Temple heard hisses, and there was no one there----only a conscience-wracked parish priest. Conssscience-wracked parisssh priessst. And Ssssissster Sssseraphina. And Matt Devine, who could not possssibly be party to this cssselebration of disssassster and doubt.
"You look tired, my dear," Ssssissster Sssseraphina whissspered to Temple.
She was; no point in denying it. She was even beginning to look forward to the nexssst ssstage of Csss. R. Molina'sss inquisssition. My asss, Temple thought, fed up with suspicions that hissed through everybody's most unconscious word choice. Pardon, she thought again contritely, in deference to the religious environment. Balaam'sss asss.
Lieutenant Molina found them, of course, even in the refuge of the rectory, about ten minutes later. She skeptically eyed the assembled foursome, then addressed only Father Hernandez.
"I'll need to ask you some questions. Alone."
The other three left without any parting pleasantries. No good days or goodbyes. It was obviously not a good day, and they would obviously see each other again.
"I should talk to Peggy," Sister Seraphina muttered as much to herself as to Temple and Matt on the way back to the convent.
"So should I," Temple said. "We," she added in deference to Matt.
He was more intimately involved in this death than she, after all. Temple had only fed Blandina Tyler's cats-once. Matt had administered her last sacrament.
"Why?" Matt asked, his eyes distant and troubled.
"She's the only one who's going to tell us what really happened to Miss Tyler. Molina won't."
"What would Peggy know?" Sister Seraphina asked with a wrinkled brow.
"She should know as much as Molina saw fit to tell the victim's only relative. I'm hoping that will be time of death, the method, maybe even a speculation on the motive."
At this pronouncement, Sister Seraphina and Matt exchanged a lightning glance. They were doing a lot of that lately, Temple had noticed. She wondered if the same suspicions that danced the polka in her active imagination were making a slow, reluctant saraband through their minds: Father Hemandez had a lot to lose if Blandina Tyler had lived to leave Our Lady of Guadalupe out of her will. That worry could have turned him to the bottle. Could it also have goaded him into the unreasonable acts bedeviling the convent and its neighbor: the crude calls, the midnight ramblings and rustles, the brutal attack on Peter? Could it have caused him to kill the old parishioner before she acted on her threat?
Sister Rose admitted them to the convent, and they returned to its one public room, where Peggy Wilhelm nursed a cup of tea that smelled of apple and almonds. Not even hot, pungent herbal tea could steam the pleats of worry from Peggy's pleasant round face.
She stirred at their entrance. "I'll have to contact the neighborhood funeral parlor--Lopez and Kelly, isn't it?"
Sister Seraphina nodded.
Peggy went on. "I don't know when the police will . . .release the body, but no doubt the funeral people can see to all that. I'll have to go back into the house and . . . pick some Clothes for the funeral, feed the cats."
"I'll go with you," Sister Seraphina said promptly.
"I'll feed the cats," Temple volunteered. "I know the routine."
Matt said nothing. The practicalities of death were always women's work, Temple supposed. He was designated to come along later, in cassock and vestment, to intone and bless and bury; only he didn't do that kind of work anymore. Father Hernandez would have to do it, whatever his condition--or involvement.
"What," Temple asked, unable to restrain herself any longer, "did Lieutenant Molina tell you about the . . .crime?"
Peggy's eyes were as dull as tepid tea, scummed over with sorrow and shock, their expression deadened. "The medical examiner at the morgue will determine the cause of death. I found her at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck, with numerous bruises and contusions. She could have tripped on a cat, or several cats, but the lieutenant admitted that she didn't like the severity of the marks around her head and throat. Her cane was broken into several pieces. I guess it didn't take much to kill Aunt, either way: accident or murder. It must have happened after midnight, the lieutenant said. I was sleeping in the downstairs back bedroom, and no one next door at the convent heard anything."
"Whose rooms are nearest the Tyler house?" Temple asked.
"Only Sister Mary Monica's," Seraphina said in wry tones.
Matt nodded wearily. "She's virtually deaf."
"Convenient," Temple noted grimly. "If it was murder, it looks as if the killer knew the neighborhood. But was he--or she--the one who made the nuisance calls and harmed the cat?"
"Paul's the roamer," Seraphina said suddenly, nodding at the statue-still ocher figure of a sitting cat on the windowsill.
"Peter rarely goes out. He's the homebody."
"Then someone came inside the convent to get him," Matt realized with growing alarm, "Someone who had easy, unchallenged access to the place."
They mulled that without comment. Temple's mental list included Father Hernandez, the loyal but narrow-minded Pilar, even Peggy Wilhelm, who was often at her aunt's house and often visited the neighboring nuns who were her backup cat feeders. And she had been at the scene of the crime the whole time, ostensibly asleep. So if Father Hernandez was suspect, why not a nun, or assorted nuns? Even virtually deaf Sister Mary Monica?
"The entire matter rests on the will," Temple said half aloud. "Did Molina say anything about that?"
"She asked about it," Peggy admitted. "Not too nicely.
She pointed out that it didn't much matter whether Aunt Blandina left her estate to the cats or the church; I was out of the picture either way."
"Did that bother you?" Matt asked.