Murder Superior(88)

    ON MOTHER’S DAY REMEMBER THE MOTHER OF GOD,



which Gregor was getting sick of. Gregor was getting sick of mothers and nuns and everything else he could think of connected to this case that was not a case. What it really was was a mess he had stumbled into that he was going to have a very difficult time cleaning up. He would have felt better if it had been Cardinal O’Bannion he had to deal with, and not this genteel Archbishop. Gregor knew what to expect from Cardinal O’Bannion. He looked back down at the walk and saw Nancy and Henry fighting, standing only a foot or two apart and screaming at each other. Gregor was safely enclosed behind his window. He couldn’t hear so much as an intonation from the people down below. He knew more or less what they were saying from the way they stood and the way they moved. Nancy was probably calling Henry a lot of very rude names. Henry was probably appealing to his honor. Gregor was sure Henry was the kind of man who appealed often to his honor. As for Reverend Mother General and the Archbishop…Gregor gave them one more look and shook his head. They thought they were going to make things better, but they were wrong.

Gregor searched around in his pockets until he found a crumpled piece of paper and a small pencil. Donna Moradanyan put the pencils in his pockets—just in case—and he crammed himself full of paper, because he hated to throw the stuff out. He flattened out a wadded up American Express receipt on the window-sill and wrote

    a small knife



in badly formed script. His handwriting was atrocious. Then he realized that the receipt was small and that if he wanted to get it all in, he’d have to cramp. He made his letters very much smaller and wrote

    plant food

    fugu

    chicken liver pate

    flowers

    thorns (too sharp)

    timing



Then he rubbed his face. It was the timing that made him sure—given the timing what other solution could there be?—but that was neither here nor there. It wasn’t as simple in this case as telling the police what he knew and sitting back to let them handle it. The mere thought of Jack Androcetti made him wince. Gregor looked back at the front walk, saw that Norman Kevic had joined the war and a half dozen nuns in habits had signed on as spectators, and decided his suspects could wait. There was one more thing he wanted to find out for sure. To do that he had to make a phone call.

The second floor of St. Teresa’s House didn’t consist of much. It certainly didn’t contain a phone that he could see. The lobby downstairs did contain a phone, but he didn’t want to use it. It was in a place anyone might walk in. On him at any time. There was a public pay phone in the lobby of St. Cecilia’s Hall, and he was going to have to use that. It was incredibly annoying. If there was one thing Gregor Demarkian had never been interested in doing, it was playing the kind of hide-and-seek, private-spy games so beloved of the fictional detectives Bennis Hannaford was so crazy about. Bennis was always giving him volumes in the adventures of Mike Hammer and the Continental Op. Gregor preferred Nero Wolfe, who sat in a chair and only got out of it to go to the dinner table.

Gregor went down the narrow flight of steps to the corridor off the foyer and stopped to listen. If anyone was in the foyer, they were keeping so still they weren’t even breathing. He opened the door and looked out. The foyer was empty. He rushed across it to the door on the other side and slipped into the corridor beyond. Now it was just a question of making it across the two thin strips of lawn and through the hedge that divided the two buildings, and he would be safe. He paused at the side door of St. Teresa’s House when he got to it and listened to the sounds out in the street. There was no mistaking what was going on now. Henry Hare was furious. Nancy Hare was furious. Norman Kevic was furious. The Archbishop seemed to be struck dumb. Gregor stopped at the hedge and peered around as best he could to see what he could see. Mother Mary Bellarmine was standing off to one side, watching Henry and Nancy with a tight, malicious look on her face. Norman Kevic had sidled up to the grey-haired hippie Gregor remembered as Sarabess Coltrane and was holding her by the arm. Gregor rushed the rest of the way to St. Cecilia’s Hall, grasped the knob of the side door and was relieved when it opened without a hitch. All he would have needed was to be locked out of his refuge.

Norman Kevic had put his arms around Sarabess Coltrane’s waist. Mother Mary Bellarmine had turned her attention to them, and now she was furious. It had to be something in the air. Gregor slipped through the door into St. Cecilia’s Hall and headed for the bank of pay phones on the other side of the building. He hated delaying action like this, but he didn’t think there was anything he could do. He didn’t want to be like Jack Androcetti, jumping to conclusions and ruining his own case with haste and mindlessness. Assuming he had a case. He stepped into the first of the phone booths and felt around in his pockets for a quarter.