Holy Terrors Read online

  Suddenly a message came crackling over the radio from the driveway where Joe and Woody’s squad car was parked. Woody hurried over to listen in. On the far side of the yard, Judith could hear the Rankers assembling outside for what appeared to be a photo session. She stared in the direction of the neighbors’ noisy gathering, deliberately avoiding Joe’s eyes.

  “I think it’s going to be okay,” he said suddenly in a low voice. “The canon lawyer told me I’d know by the first of May.”

  Slowly, Judith turned to look at Joe. Despite the long months of waiting, despite her feverish excitement, despite the newly discovered sense of anticipation, she had never really believed Joe Flynn would get an annulment from his wife after more than twenty years. Or that if he did, his freedom would affect her. But now here he was, two weeks short of the waiting period he had asked her to give him, announcing that he expected to be free. Judith realized that the prospect terrified her.

  “Well.” The word came out in a gulp. She was groping for something more eloquent when Arlene Rankers slipped between the houses and approached Judith and Joe.

  “I thought the police were here!” she exclaimed, grabbing Joe by the hand and tugging his arm up and down as if it were a tire pump. “I just happened to be standing on top of our headboard upstairs when I saw the car! Is it about Sandy Frizzell? Who did it?”

  Joe clutched at his sports coat and waited for Arlene to relinquish her grip. “The investigation has just begun,” he said in a noncommittal voice. “We don’t even have the medical examiner’s report yet.”

  But Joe was mistaken. Woody Price, looking as shaken as Judith had ever seen him, virtually staggered from the squad car. “Lieutenant…You’d better come here. The M.E. has some startling conclusions.”

  Joe frowned, then excused himself and joined his subordinate. Arlene started after the two men, but Judith held her back. “They’ll tell us if we need to know,” Judith said with a hand on the other woman’s sleeve.

  But Arlene wasn’t one to be dissuaded by discretion. “I can’t wait forever! Carl’s in the middle of taking pictures!” She smoothed the front of her yellow-and-white-polka-dot dinner dress. “The police are public servants, aren’t they? As citizens, we pay their salaries. Don’t we have a right to know?”

  Judith had the feeling that the Rankers’s tax dollars were pretty far down on the policemen’s agenda, especially now, judging from the grim expressions on Joe and Woody’s faces. Joe, in fact, was already getting into the squad car. Arlene wilted next to Judith, then bridled at the sound of her husband’s summons from next door for his wife to get her fanny front and center. “Carl can’t wait to capture the whole family on film. He’s really thrilled over the reunion,” she said in her most poignant manner. “Come over as soon as you find out what’s happened. I just can’t believe anyone would murder that poor sweet Sandy! She was such a doll!” Swiveling on her patent leather pumps, Arlene raised her fist—and her voice—toward the Rankers’s house: “Shut your trap, you moron! You probably don’t have any film in your camera anyway! As usual.”

  Still railing at her husband, Arlene disappeared behind the rhododendrons. Carl’s photography session reminded Judith of Mark Duffy and his camcorder. Was it possible he’d captured something important on film? She started for the police car, but Woody was now behind the wheel and already in reverse.

  “Hey!” cried Judith, flailing with her arms. “Wait!”

  But the siren was on and the lights were flashing as Joe and Woody screeched off down the street. Judith turned glum. The sight and sound of emergency vehicles were not new to Hillside Manor, but she still considered them incompatible with an image of gracious hospitality. As for Mark’s movies, they’d been made some two hours before the murder. Overly excited school-age children tugging on Wilbur Paine’s fluffy tail weren’t apt to add much to a homicide investigation. Besides, Judith had sworn not to get involved. Joe and Woody could ferret out the facts for themselves. As Arlene pointed out, that’s what they were getting paid for. Wearily, Judith headed for the house and hoped she’d remembered to put the ice bag back in the freezer.

  FIVE

  GERTRUDE WAS STILL fuming. “I’m warning you, Joe Flynn doesn’t set foot in this house until the archbishop says he’s a free man! Even then, I wouldn’t trust that turkey an inch!” Leaning on the walker, Gertrude was making her stand by the open kitchen cupboard near the stove. Her color had returned, wrath apparently over-coming shock. Judith, weary from her long day, resisted further argument.

  “It was strictly business,” Judith said in as calm a voice as she could muster. “Joe had some questions about Sandy Frizzell’s murder. Routine, that’s all.” Her mother didn’t need to remind Judith that she’d spent the past year and more waiting for Joe to show up with an annulment in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. At least that was how Judith had pictured it. Now, seeing Joe again, and facing the reality, she was having unexpected qualms.

  “Let’s eat,” Judith said, changing the subject. “How about lamb steaks and greenie noodles?”

  “How about my blue bowl?” growled Gertrude. “Where’s my potato salad bowl? Don’t tell me you got so addled under that striped hair of yours that you left it up at church?”

  Judith’s hands flew to her mouth. She had indeed forgotten the potato salad bowl. Running into John Frizzell must have distracted her. “I’ll go get it after dinner,” she promised. “The church is probably locked up right now.” More likely, it was off limits for the police investigation, but Judith knew there would be access later on because there was a vigil mass scheduled for eight p.m.

  Gertrude looked only partially appeased. Her little eyes were accusing. “You know I can’t make potato salad unless I have my blue bowl.”

  As Judith knew, potato salad without the blue bowl was as impossible as pancakes without the cast-iron griddle. She sighed with resignation and took two lamb steaks out from the fridge along with half a head of cabbage. For the time being, Sandy Frizzell’s murder and Joe Flynn’s reappearance were put aside while Judith broiled meat, boiled noodles, and shredded cabbage. To her dismay, the appetite which had run so rampant the previous day now had diminished considerably. Watching her mother wolf down the noodles and cabbage fried together in butter, Judith toyed with her lamb steak. Soon the talk turned to the subject of Eve Kramer.

  “She’s very talented with embroidery, I’ll give her that,” said Judith, ignoring Sweetums, who had sidled up to the dinette table and was howling for his supper. “You know, Mother, you used to do some nice things yourself. The dining room chair covers, and that bench you finished for Aunt Deb.”

  Gertrude flexed her bony fingers. “I wasn’t so crippled with arthritis then. I could see better, too. As for my sister-in-law, the only thing that moves fast with Deb is her mouth. It took her five years to do six inches of needle-point on that bench cover, and I polished it off in a month. She should have stitched her lips together.”

  A smile hovered at Judith’s own lips. Gertrude and Deborah Grover had married brothers, produced one daughter apiece, been widowed, and engaged in perpetual, if loving, rivalry for over half a century. The fruit of their wombs, Judith Anne and Serena Elizabeth, had grown up as close as sisters, but—as both were fond of saying—without the sibling rancor because each could always send the other home.

  It was Serena Elizabeth Grover Jones who interrupted dessert, Judith’s favorite homemade apple strudel. “Okay,” said Renie into the phone, “I finally remembered your other number, but I knew you’d still be eating. Did you watch the news?”

  “No,” admitted Judith. “Since when did you and Bill stop relying on the print media?”

  “Since Sandy Frizzell got skewered in our very own parish nursery, smart ass,” retorted Renie. “Bill’s put together a psychological profile of the killer. You want to hear it?”

  “I sure don’t,” said Judith, trying vainly to reach the last of her strudel. Renie’s husband was a respected
clinical psychologist at the university, and while Judith was fond of her kinsman, there were times when his expertise drove her as crazy as most of his clients. And, Judith thought wistfully, gazing at the strudel, dessert was one of those times.

  “Obsessive. Self-righteous. A keen sense of justice—or injustice, depending upon your point of view.” Renie paused, obviously being cued by Bill in the background. “Passionate. But repressed. Basically opposed to violence. Spiritual. And…uh, hey, Bill, turn down that ball game! I can hear Larry Bird drooling on the Garden parquet floor all the way over here! What was that last thing you mentioned?”

  Judith kicked Sweetums out of the way and lunged for the strudel dish. Gertrude made a swipe at the whipped cream on her upper lip, missed, and lighted a cigarette. Sweetums coiled into an orange ball of fur and snarled.

  “Oh,” continued Renie, “and at least subconsciously aware of symbolism. So who done it?”

  “Bill,” responded Judith, devouring the last bite of strudel. “Sounds just like him. Was Sandy a patient?”

  “Come on, coz,” Renie urged as Bill vented his own repressions on the Boston Celtics, “don’t you know anything? I hear,” she went on, dropping her voice to an insinuating whisper, “that Joe Flynn is in charge of the investigation. Now aren’t you more interested?”

  “I saw Joe this afternoon,” Judith said casually. “He and your old chum, Woody Price, were here. Mother wore her party hat.”

  “You’re kidding!” exclaimed Renie, though it was unclear to which of Judith’s statements she alluded. “How was he?”

  “‘He’?” Judith feigned misunderstanding. “You mean Woody, your culinary partner? He’s terrific, moustache intact. Are you going to seduce him or adopt him?”

  “Don’t be a mutt,” chided Renie as Bill’s groan shook the receiver. “Hey, I’ve got to call 911. Bill’s having a stroke and the Celtics just went up by twenty-four. I also have to drive Anne over to church—she’s lectoring at the vigil Mass. Our daughter’s turned traitor. Father Hoyle asked Bill first, but he said participating in a Saturday night service was one of the seven deadly sins, the other six being Principal McCaffrey’s Sunday sermons on sensitivity and sharing in Catholic education.”

  Across the kitchen, Sweetums had sprung up onto the counter and found the rest of the whipped cream. Judith yanked off her shoe, threw it at the cat, missed, and swore. Renie mistook this as a reaction to the mention of the school principal’s name.

  “Whoa,” she remonstrated, “take it easy! I didn’t know you felt as strongly as Bill does about Quinn McCaffrey!”

  “Never mind Bill,” snapped Judith as a simpering Sweetums displayed cream-covered whiskers. “That was for the damned cat. And anyway, I don’t think Quinn’s such a bad guy. But a lot of people probably wish he’d been there today so he could be a suspect. Better yet, the victim. When are you going up to church?”

  Renie hesitated, waiting out her husband’s next unprintable onslaught on the Celtics. For a man who was erudite, articulate, sensitive, and urbane, Bill’s filthy mouth still amazed Judith even after twenty-three years. “Huh? Oh, Anne has to be up there about seven-thirty, I guess. Tony needs our car to pick up Rich Beth. His isn’t good enough for the gold-encrusted little snot.”

  Judith took umbrage with her cousin’s venom. “Hey, you sound like Monster Mom. Since when did you get so overly protective?”

  The sudden silence, punctuated by Bill’s obscenities directed at the rampaging Celtics, indicated that Renie was no doubt dismayed. “You’re right, I sound…jealous. But Beth and her family are a bunch of would-bes,” explained Renie, resorting to Grandma Grover’s description of people who would be better than they actually were. “You know how that sort gripes the hell out of me.”

  “And me,” Judith acknowledged. Satisfied that Renie wasn’t going off the deep end of motherhood, she switched back to their original topic: “I’m going up to church after a while to collect Mother’s blue bowl. I forgot it.” She made a face at Gertrude, who was grinding out her cigarette in Sweetums’s cat dish. “Meet you there and go to Moonbeam’s for coffee?”

  “Sure. It’ll make Tony late. Ha, ha.” Renie rung off, chortling with wicked triumph.

  Just before seven-thirty, Judith pulled into the SOTS parking lot. There were already at least two dozen cars, including the Duffys’ red Volvo and two of the Rankers’s assorted rolling stock. Judith parked next to Carl’s van with the four-wheel drive he’d bought after the last big snowstorm in order to negotiate Heraldsgate’s steep streets.

  Outside the sunlight lingered, a pink and gold sky above the busy bay. Inside the church, Gothic arches soared into the vaulted ceiling, while sad-eyed saints stood in niches along the side aisles. Silken banners hung throughout the nave, proclaiming the Resurrection. In the north and south transepts, the stained-glass windows glowed with red and amber fire, luminous portraits of the life of Christ. Stately Easter lilies and clusters of lilac filled the sanctuary. The old wooden pews took on a soft glow in the evening light, and the communion rail was festooned with garlands of freesia and baby’s breath. The shabbiness that Judith had noted earlier was not so apparent on the eve of Christianity’s greatest feast day. Or perhaps, she reflected, as she paused to pray at the side altar with its statue of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, it was not so important.

  Yet for all the venerable stone and polished wood, the gleaming marble and granite pillars, the external formality and the inherent tradition, the living, breathing present pulsated down the aisles, in the choir loft, and even on the altar. Next to the pulpit, Mark Duffy and Father Mills were making some last-minute adjustments with the microphones. At the far end of the church, the choir was assembling up in the loft amid much chatter and rustling of music sheets. Kate Duffy was leading three young girls and a boy about the same age into the vestry, apparently to suit them up as altar servers. Eddie La Plante was setting up the Easter candle, a composite melted down from the parishioners’ left-over Advent wreath candles. Judith went out through the side door of the north transept and along the little cloister that led into the rectory.

  Father Hoyle was on the phone in the office, his chiseled profile frowning into the receiver. He was still in his civilian clothes, a golf cardigan over a polo shirt and casual slacks. “This is entirely inappropriate. I’m getting ready for the vigil Mass. Call me back a week from Monday.” With uncharacteristic vehemence, he slammed down the phone and gave Judith an apologetic look. “God should give some people good sense instead of good intentions. That’s the fifth person to call today and ask what Star of the Sea will do with Emily Tresvant’s money. And two of them don’t even belong to the parish!” Father Hoyle flung his hands up into the air.

  “Snoops,” murmured Judith. “By the way, who notified John and Sandy’s children about her death?”

  Father Hoyle, who had picked up his breviary, set it back down on the desk. He gave Judith a blank stare. “I don’t know. John, I suppose.” His even silver brows came together. “The funeral will be in New York. John’s flying Sandy’s body back as soon as the authorities release it.”

  “Well, that makes sense. I suppose she has family there.” Judith shivered a bit and hugged her jacket closer. “Whatever happened to John’s father?”

  “I’m not sure.” Father Hoyle retrieved the breviary, checked to make sure he had his glasses, and started for the door. “Someone—maybe Emily—once said he’d remarried. I didn’t know John’s mother. That was before my time.” He paused with his hand on the knob, giving Judith that winning smile. “Emily Tresvant didn’t talk about her brother-in-law much. I gathered she thought he was a scoundrel. She had very strict moral standards, you know.”

  After leaving Father Hoyle, Judith went through the rectory into the corridor that led past the nursery. Sure enough, the yellow and black tape designating a police investigation area was in place. Judith paused; the door was open, but the lights were off. In the dusk, she could just make out the room and its c
ontents, unchanged to the naked eye, except that the toys seemed to have been picked up. Apparently Sandy had finished her chores before she died. Pooh Bear still reclined in his little chair, as if he were waiting for a visit from Christopher Robin. The colored blocks reposed neatly in a carton. The only sign of child-induced chaos was the dusting of broken chalk on the serviceable carpet. But the grim outline of a body sprawled near the cloakroom door gave mute evidence of the tragedy that had taken place since Judith had left Sandy to regain her equilibrium—and lose her life.

  With a little shiver, Judith hurried into the church hall. She flipped on the lights and was relieved by the sight of ordinary things: the limp velvet curtains on the stage, the stacks of folding tables and chairs, the bingo caller’s booth, the high ceiling with its old-fashioned opaque light fixtures. Surprisingly little had changed since her own tenure at SOTS parochial school. Judith remembered cavorting in a chorus line for a talent show that had been short on the former and long on the latter. The eighth-grade graduation potluck dinner had been memorable for a set of dentures Sister Bridget had found in the tomato aspic salad. Then there was the Christmas pageant the year Renie played the Angel Gabriel and her wings got caught on a cardboard palm tree, causing her to let out a very unholy four-letter word. One of the few regrets Judith allowed herself was that Mike had not gone to Star of the Sea but to a series of public schools in whichever neighborhoods offered the most lenient landlords. The nostalgic laughter that had bubbled up inside faded as Judith recalled that Mike wouldn’t be with the family for Easter. And Sandy Frizzell was going home in a casket.

  There was no sign of Renie. Judith went into the kitchen, where she found Gertrude’s blue bowl on the stainless steel counter. It had been washed and set out along with a cookie tray, a lazy susan, and a baking dish left behind by other absentminded SOTS. The sound of a door opening in the school hall caught Judith’s attention. Hurriedly, she made one last check of the kitchen, just in case she’d forgotten something other than Gertrude’s precious blue bowl. If Judith hadn’t been afraid of getting appointed to chair a committee, she would have suggested to Father Hoyle that he use some of Emily’s money for renovating the parish kitchen. But having so recently finished her own remodeling, Judith was inclined to keep her mouth shut.