“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. I don’t know what I look like. One of those cork sounding boards or something. Everybody who wants somebody to tell something to tells it to me. And that was what I was thinking about, Sam. People telling me things, I mean. Don Bollander telling me things.”
Sam Harrigan considered this information. One of the things he and Glinda had done the night before was to use up a large quantity of cocktail napkins trying to solve their little local murder. They had taken as their starting point the various “sightings” of Brigit Ann Reilly as they had been reported to Glinda over the week since the death. In Sam’s mind, this had been his best conversational gambit. It had released Glinda from a tension that had nothing to do with him, but wasn’t doing his cause any good. It had also been interesting.
“Don Bollander,” he said. “Is that the one who saw her in the bank?”
“That’s right. He was Miriam Bailey’s assistant at the bank. And he came in on Friday and told me he’d seen her. At eleven thirty.”
“Isn’t he one of the ones we decided was impossible? I seem to remember our working out a timetable—”
“I know,” Glinda said. Then she sighed a little. “Scholastica’s half-hysterical, you can just imagine. And she said Pete Donovan’s even worse. He was with Gregor Demarkian when Neila showed up talking about a body, and he just didn’t believe her. Apparently, he’s had his office full of hysterical postulants for days now, and laypeople too, all seeing ghosts and goblins and God only knows what else. He hadn’t told Demarkian about it so Demarkian was furious. Scholastica said it was very tense. I keep thinking of what he looked like on television and wondering what he’s like when he’s furious.”
“Gregor Demarkian, you mean.”
“Mmm. Sam? We’re not really detectives, you know. We could have had it wrong. About Don’s information being bogus.”
“I suppose we could have, yes. Do you think he was killed for that, because he’s seen her in the bank?”
“I don’t know. I just know I haven’t been feeling very well since that call. And the library is packed.”
“Do you have any help?”
“Oh, I have a lot of help. I even have The Library Lady. That’s how I’ve been able to lock myself in here and talk to you.”
Sam had more than nettles to pot. He had thistles, too, and wild heather. There were plants and pots of dirt everywhere, and Miracle-Gro and seeds everywhere else. He was sitting in a rocking chair he couldn’t rock, because any movement he made tipped something over. He took the pot of nettles he had left in his lap when the phone rang and put it on the floor. He tried to think clearly through the growing excitement of his realization that she had decided to call him first. There were a hundred possible reasons for that that had nothing to do with his sincere hope that she was in the midst of falling in love with him back, but he had no bloody damn intention of considering any of them. Illusions could be a lot of fun.
“Listen,” he said to her, “you haven’t met this Demarkian yet, have you? He hasn’t come to talk to you?”
“Of course not. He just got here—I forget when. Scholastica said, but it slipped my mind. Not very soon before they discovered the body, though.”
“When did they discover the body?”
“Around eleven o’clock, I think.”
“All right,” Sam said. “Right now, for the next couple of hours at least, he’s going to be busy over at the convent and Pete Donovan’s going to be busy with him. You always take care of the immediate crisis first. So, they’ll be there, then—then it depends. He’ll probably check in to wherever he’s staying—”
“I know where he’s staying,” Glinda said. “It’s the St. Mary’s Inn. Edith Jasper told me about it herself. The arrangements were made by the Chancery at absolutely the last minute, but Edith is Edith. She wasn’t going to say no to the Cardinal and she wasn’t going to give up a chance to make herself sound important, either. This is the biggest thing that’s happened to this town since—since I don’t know what.”
“The beatification of Margaret Finney?”
“Maybe the ’53 flood.”
“I was just feeling sorry for the Sisters of Divine Grace and for Margaret Finney,” Sam said. “Here it is, one of the biggest events in the history of their order, and it’s being buried under a lot of melodrama and blood and guts.”
“Just a minute,” Glinda said.