“That was because of the goat?” Gregor Demarkian said.
“I got the goat first,” Judy said, “but I would have gone to the church anyway before breakfast. To check things out. That’s part of what I do. It’s supposed to be done by the parish secretary, but she’s got six children and she’s not very reliable. But I went there, with the goat as it turned out, and the wine wasn’t there. So I called Distribution, and I got the runaround. They might be able to get it there by one. They might be able to get it there by five. It was impossible. So I went and got it myself. I put it in the trunk of my car.”
“And?”
It was Demarkian again. Judy was puzzled. “You must remember. You saw me. I brought four bottles in for the Mass. The Mass when—when Andy was killed.”
“Why only four bottles?” Gregor said. “Didn’t you have all of it in your car?”
“Oh, yes. I had two cases. But two cases is a lot to carry, and we were in a hurry. And then Andy was killed, and it just—”
“Slipped your mind?” John Smith smiled.
“Yes, it did,” Judy said. “I remembered it later, but the church was sealed anyway. Then yesterday morning, I realized I was going to have to use my trunk tomorrow.”
“Why?” Smith said.
This time, Judy smiled herself. “I’m a caterer, Lieutenant. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. I’ve got two dozen eggs, three Easter Bunny costumes, and one hundred and forty-four chocolate rabbits to cart over to a party in Oak Hill Ridge. Big money, big society family, big fuss. I could have put most of that in my backseat, but the backseat is already earmarked for fifty-six live baby chicks.”
“Some party,” Smith said.
“Never mind the party,” Gregor Demarkian said. “You brought the wine to St. Agnes’s Church. Then what?”
“I couldn’t put it in the church office, where it belongs. There were still policemen there and the altar was being guarded and the anteroom and the back hall were cordoned off. So I brought it over to the convent.”
“This was at twelve thirty?” Demarkian asked.
“A little after. I thought I would just leave the boxes in the foyer and go, you see, because it was Good Friday and I didn’t think anybody would be there. But they all were. It was lunchtime.”
“By all, you mean the nuns,” Smith said.
“That’s right. Kath—Scholastica—was looking, I don’t know. Terrible. She invited me back to talk to her and I went. I had an extra bottle of wine. The man at Distribution had given it to me as a kind of bribe. I think he was hoping if he was nice to me, I wouldn’t say anything about his messing up to the Cardinal. So I had this extra bottle of wine and I gave it to K—to Scholastica for the sisters. For medicinal purposes, if you know what I mean.”
“I have, on occasion, used wine for medicinal purposes myself,” Demarkian said. “What happened after that?”
“Scholastica and I talked for a little while. Then I got up to leave, and when I got into the courtyard I ran into Father Boyd.”
“You didn’t see anyone else?” Demarkian again.
“I didn’t see Peg,” Judy said. “Scholastica said Barry Field had been there, but I didn’t see him, either. Just Declan Boyd. He—wanted to talk to me.”
“About what?” Smith asked.
Judy grimaced. “You ought to ask him. He was being very cloak and dagger about it all. W hat he said was he’d seen someone in the anteroom after Andy died, someone he wouldn’t name. I thought about it later and realized it must have been Peg, but then—”
Gregor leaned across the table. “Why do you assume he was talking about Peg? Why couldn’t he have been talking about any parishioner, any woman?”
“It was the way he was talking about it. He kept saying I could convince her to go to the police. I could make her talk about what she was doing there. That could only mean Peg or Scholastica. And it couldn’t have been Scholastica, because there was no mystery about her being in the anteroom after Andy died. The Cardinal sent her there.”
“All right,” Demarkian said, “we’ll assume it was Peg Morrissey Monaghan. What did Father Boyd say she was doing there?”
“Looking at books,” Judy said promptly. “That was part of what made the discussion so weird. If she’d been fiddling with the wine bottles or hiding something behind the picture of John Paul II, I could understand why he’d have been so upset. But she wasn’t doing any of that, according to Dec. She was just standing in the anteroom, looking at the books on the shelf. He said he’d called the Chancery about it, and I couldn’t believe it. During the Tridium.”