A Great Day for the Deadly(17)

“Postulants,” Linda frowned. “Well, religious types aren’t too stable, if you know what I mean.”

Pete thought she was a brave woman to say that in Maryville, where the Cardinal had spies. “Mark Yasborough always seemed stable enough to me,” he said. “Good farmer. Nice farm. He said he saw one at the side of Eight eighty-six, frozen stiff in the snow.”

“Cabin fever,” Linda dismissed it. “He’s under a lot of strain anyway. That wife of his has just about had it with Maryville, New York. I heard her talking down to the Camelot the other night. She wants to go back to New York City and I don’t blame her a bit.”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “I see what you mean. Marrying a woman from New York City and bringing her back here isn’t too stable.”

“It’s nuts,” Linda said, “and if you ask me, marrying a woman from here and expecting her to stay here is just as nuts. Did I tell you about that? Frank and I had a fight.”

“You’re always having fights.”

“This was our final fight. I promise you. Our absolute last. I don’t know what he thinks I’m going to college for. The last thing I want to do is to stick around here after I graduate.”

“What’re you going to do instead?”

“Go to the city. They’ve got lots of jobs for social workers in the city.”

“Mmm,” Pete said. He couldn’t imagine Linda Erthe as a social worker. Her life was a bigger mess than the lives of most bag ladies, and the bag ladies had excuses Linda didn’t have. Pete Donovan had always thought he’d feel better about Linda if she just took drugs.

He swiveled his chair around to look at the papers on his desk, decided there was nothing there he really had to be concerned about, and swiveled back to Linda again. He wished Davie or Hal or Willie or one of the other boys was in, but there it was. That was why his mother kept telling him he ought to get married. Your buddies were never around when you needed them. Pete cleared his throat and said, “Still. There’s a difference. I’ve been thinking about it all day. A difference in tone, sort of.”

“I haven’t the least idea what you’re getting at.”

“The two kinds of reports,” Pete insisted. “These today have been just crazy. And, of course, last week I was thinking the same thing about the people who were saying they’d seen Brigit wandering around on her own in town. But those other reports didn’t feel the same.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Linda asked. “You’ve changed your mind? You think those reports were real?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t leave them out of my report to the Cardinal.”

“You left them in?” Linda was shocked. “You’re going to get crucified. You’re going to be the laughingstock of the St. Lawrence Seaway.”

“No, I’m not,” Pete said. “We’re not that far north. And besides—”

“Besides what?”

Pete didn’t want to tell her besides. Linda Erthe was nobody to go confiding in. She was certainly no one to tell about his nervousness on the subject of the Great Demarkian, Master Detective. Ever since the Cardinal had called to say that Demarkian was coming down, Pete had been in a sweat.

Now he swiveled in his chair again and pushed his papers around again and listened to the phone ring. He watched Linda pick up, speak into the receiver for a while and grimace.

“You can take this call if you want,” she said, punching in the hold button on her set. “It’s Mrs. MacBrae out near the flats. She said she found a body in the hay and now it’s gone, but you can—”

“Never mind,” Pete said. “Just tell her I’m out on a call.”





Four


[1]


FOR GREGOR DEMARKIAN, ARRIVING at the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Divine Grace was something of a revelation. He didn’t know what he’d expected a Motherhouse to look like—college Gothic, maybe, with spires and turrets—but it wasn’t this redbrick, sensible structure that reminded him so strongly of a public elementary school. Nor, in his imaginings, had it been so profusely decorated. The Motherhouse occupied the highest piece of ground in town and its gate used Delaney Street like an extended private drive. That gate was covered with shamrocks made of silk and as big as wedding cakes. What’s more, the shamrocks must have been dusted. There was no snow on them at all, in spite of the fact that the rest of the landscape was crusted and hard and sparkling white in the sun. Then there was the drive that led from the gate to the Motherhouse door. Gregor was fairly sure it had to be deep Lent. It was that time in the Orthodox calendar, and the two calendars did overlap. John Cardinal O’Bannion hated secular decorations during Easter and Lent. He had a passionate repugnance to fluffy pink bunnies, fuzzy yellow chicks, and representations of smiling buttercups in chocolate and icing. Maybe he felt differently about secular decorations that happened to be Irish. The drive was lined with them. There were tiny leprechauns nestled around the glass balls of the lamps, large gilt harps on lawn stakes pounded into the frozen ground, pots of gold made out of cardboard, and Styrofoam balls attached to decorative bricks along the drive’s edge.