The Missing Madonna (2 page)

“OWL? What in the name of God does that mean?”
Eileen had asked, her brogue thickening a little, as it always did when she began to get nervous.

“Relax, Eileen.” Mary Helen had tried to calm her friend. “OWL is an acronym for Older Women’s League.”

Eileen’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “We most certainly qualify”—she straightened her blue suit skirt—“although I am surprised, no,
shocked
is a better word, to hear you of all people admit that we are old!”

“I said
older women
, Eileen!” Mary Helen cleared her throat, hoping to make a point “Older women,” she repeated. “Not old women!”

Her friend had just chuckled. “And what do these older women do?”

“According to Erma, they meet, discuss current issues, take political action when needed.”

“What kind of action?” Eileen’s gray eyes had narrowed suspiciously.

“Letter-writing, a phone call or two. Whatever.” Mary Helen had dismissed the rest with a wave of her hand, hoping it would pacify her friend. It must have.

Eileen had shrugged. “It sounds safer, I suppose, than some of the actions one of us has been taking recently.” She leveled her eyes at Mary Helen, who chose to ignore the remark.

After all, how could she have known, when she’d come to Mount St. Francis College three years ago to retire, that she would find the dead body of the chairman of the history department or that, a year later, she would become involved in the stabbing death of her secretary, Suzanne? Poor Suzanne. Mary Helen still missed the young woman. So much so, in fact, that she had readily agreed to turn the alumnae office over to a recent graduate and simply act as a resource person.

As a resource person, her main occupation, Mary Helen and the convent bathroom scale were beginning
to realize, consisted chiefly of meeting people and going out to lunch.

That was why she had been especially thrilled when Erma Duran had suggested she join the OWLs. In addition to doing some good, she’d be keeping her mind active and maybe even her waistline thinner.

“With your history background, you’ll be a wonderful asset,” Erma had insisted.

Mary Helen had been impressed. After all these years, how had Erma remembered her major? She couldn’t recall if she had even declared one yet, in that long-ago summer session.

“And, of course, we want Sister Eileen too. With her vast knowledge of reference materials.” So, it wasn’t memory at all! She had pumped Eileen.

*  *  *

“If that’s all right with you, Sister?” Erma’s voice brought Mary Helen back to the present.

Mrs. Taylor-Smith, pewter eyes unflinching, looked at her expectantly.

“Oh, yes,” Mary Helen answered. If good old Erma said something was all right, she’d bet even money that it was.

Everyone smiled pleasantly—everyone, that is, except Eileen, who looked puzzled. Mary Helen would ask her what she had agreed to as soon as they were alone in the hotel room.

Meanwhile, she watched while Erma introduced the other OWLs to Mrs. Taylor-Smith.

Beside her, Caroline Coughlin removed a glove and extended her hand. The feather on the wide-brimmed hat covering her champagne-colored hair quivered ever so slightly as she inclined her head. Caroline’s deep blue eyes smiled, but she curved her lips just barely, so that not a wrinkle creased her subtly made-up face. In Mary Helen’s opinion, this woman was the closest the
OWLs would ever come to meeting a royal princess or, at Caroline’s age, a queen dowager.

Rumor had it, though, that when provoked, the genteel Mrs. Coughlin, who had outlived two husbands, could sing a song of swearwords guaranteed to make a stevedore blanch. Whenever she had accidentally let one slip in front of the nuns, Mary Helen noted, she had the uncanny knack of making it sound like the height of refinement. Yes, indeed, she thought, observing her charm Mrs. Taylor-Smith, Caroline Coughlin was, as they say, “to the manner born.”

Lucy Lyons, whom Erma introduced next, was blessed with another attribute.
Born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad
. That inscription over the door of Yale’s Hall of Graduate Studies fit Lucy perfectly. These two qualities had been her only patrimony, yet they had served her well. Short, plump Lucy Lyons probably had more money than all her other companions put together.

Mary Helen watched their escort’s pewter eyes examine Lucy. They began at the top, where a hastily plaited braid coiled around her head like a thick gray snake. With disdain they wandered from her horn-rimmed glasses down her jersey off-the-rack suit to her sensible black pumps. They flickered only for a moment when they focused on the diamond in its Tiffany setting on Lucy’s left ring finger. The stone was the size of a small marble. Her husband, Jimmy, had given it to her a year or so before his death.

“A token of his
affliction
,” Lucy always said when asked about the ring. Jimmy was the type, Mary Helen had been told, who could sell snow to the Eskimos. As a matter of fact, he had started out selling purses. “There’s a lot of money in purses,” Lucy often quipped.

With his ability and her sense of fun, the couple had amassed a fortune, bought a palatial home in San Francisco’s St. Francis Wood, and sent four children
through college. Yet Lucy never lost her simplicity. Her one flaw was her terrible addiction to corny jokes and puns. She just couldn’t seem to resist them. Mary Helen sincerely hoped she would not be able to think of one until Mrs. Taylor-Smith had safely deposited them at their hotel.

“Hello. I’m Noelle Thompson.” Looking over her half glasses, Noelle extended her hand before Erma had the chance to introduce her. Noelle, a spinster, was probably the most intelligent or at least the best-educated member of the group. Surely she was the most assertive. The woman had held several important positions with the federal government and often acted as its spokesperson. Noelle Thompson had been the OWLs’ unanimous choice for president of their chapter.

“It’s nice to meet you, Alice,” Noelle said. Mary Helen had forgotten that Mrs. Taylor-Smith’s name was Alice. From the way the woman was blinking, she wondered if Mrs. Taylor-Smith might have forgotten too.

Adjusting her blue leather shoulder-strap purse, Noelle picked up her matching blue carry-on case. She straightened the jacket of her blue-plaid wool suit. Everything about Noelle Thompson was blue or had a touch of blue, even the light rinse in her white hair.

“The color picks up and intensifies her blue eyes,” Eileen had commented when Mary Helen first noticed it. “I read about it in
Vogue
,” she said with authority. “Many women choose a color to highlight their eyes. It commands attention.”

Dumbfounded, Mary Helen had stared at her friend. “What in the world were you doing reading
Vogue
? Don’t tell me, at our age, you’re going glamorous on me!” She smoothed her own navy-blue skirt, wondering just how out of style it was.

“Glory be to God, Mary Helen.” Eileen’s eyebrows had shot up. “It will take more than one article in
Vogue
to make a pacesetter out of the likes of me. If you must
know, the truth of the matter is that
Vogue
—and an old issue, to boot—was the only magazine in the dentist’s office.” She paused to let that sink in. “I did, however, find it an interesting idea. Don’t you?”

Mary Helen had mulled over the idea briefly and decided against ever trying it. Her own hazel eyes showed such a myriad of color that choosing a hue to highlight them would be more trouble than it was worth.

Sister Mary Helen didn’t realize how tired she was until the six women had finally snuggled into Mrs. Taylor-Smith’s stretch Cadillac, hired, Mary Helen suspected, for the occasion.

Her eyes burned. She closed them. She’d be glad to get to New York City and into bed. Let the other girls carry on the chitchat on the way there. She would just rest her eyes. She took a deep breath. No wonder she was tired. It was just a little more than two weeks ago, right before Easter, that she had unexpectedly run into Erma Duran at the college.

“What in the world are you doing here?” Mary Helen had blurted out the moment she saw Erma. “I’m surprised to see you,” she had added quickly, realizing just how rude her question sounded.

Apparently good old Erma hadn’t noticed. “Not as surprised as I am to be here,” she had answered. “A couple of weeks ago Lucy talked me into signing up with her for one of your Senior Enrichment classes. She thinks it will be good for both us. Luckily it’s on Monday, my day off.”

Grimacing, Erma had unfurled the college brochure in front of Mary Helen and pointed to a blurb about an intensive journal-writing workshop.

Mary Helen was just about to say that she never thought of Erma as the journal-writing type, intensive or otherwise, when Lucy rounded the corner.

“Hi, Sister,” she had called. “I’m so glad we ran into
you. It saves me a phone call. Jimmy used to say that when I died they would have to get the damn thing surgically removed from my ear.”

Mary Helen had laughed. Although she had heard Lucy say that at least two dozen times, she still enjoyed it. “What’s up with you two eternal coeds?” she had asked.

Lucy had demurred in favor of her friend.

“Well, we’ve been talking among ourselves . . .” Erma’s brown eyes had sparkled with the excitement of finally being able to tell a secret. “And the four of us—Noelle, Caroline, Lucy, and me”—she had counted the names off on her chubby fingers—“are going to New York for the OWL convention. We would all be delighted if you and Sister Eileen would come along with us. Actually,” she had said with a quick smile, “it wouldn’t be the same without you.”

Surprised by the invitation, Mary Helen had hesitated.

“Now, Sister, if it’s the expense, don’t you worry for a moment.” She cocked her curly head toward Lucy. “We talked about that, too, and the trip will be our treat.”

Mary Helen had gulped. She had a hunch that Erma had done most of the talking, and her good friend Lucy would do most of the treating. Not that Lucy would mind. And not that Erma wouldn’t do what she could—perhaps even more than she could.

In Mary Helen’s opinion, Erma Duran was sometimes generous to a fault. For example, since they had become reacquainted she had discovered that after graduation Erma McSweeney had forgone her own plans in order to take care of her aging parents. She was more than thirty by the time she felt free to marry Tommy Duran.

According to Eileen, who had been at Mount St. Francis for so many years that she was considered the walking
Who’s Who
, Tommy had been a handsome devil. According to some others, he had been one of
those dashing fellows who meant well but never seemed able to do as well as he meant. It was believed by all that, to his dying day, Erma had supported him as well as their three children. In fact, she was still working.

At first Mary Helen had felt a little sad for her old friend. Yet as far as she could tell, despite or maybe because of what life had dealt her, Erma had aged into one of those salt-of-the-earth women.

“To look at her, you’d think she had the world by the proverbial tail,” Mary Helen had remarked to Eileen after one OWL meeting.

“Erma’s made of sturdy stock.” Eileen had nodded her head knowingly. “She’s full of faith, a real survivor.

“Besides’—she winked at Mary Helen—“she has a touch of the lace-curtain Irish in her, so she would never let on otherwise.”

*  *  *

Eileen nudged her. Mary Helen opened her eyes with a start. She must have been dozing.

“We are about to enter the Lincoln Tunnel.” Mrs. Taylor-Smith sounded like a high-class tour guide. “But before we do, ladies, over there.” She tilted her head.

“Look, Mary Helen.” Eileen pointed across the darkness to the magnificent skyline. Mary Helen drew in her breath.

On the horizon New York looked like a clear, well-taken photograph. Thousands of lights blinked. A phrase from a Hopkins sonnet popped into her mind—“O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air.” She wanted to pinch herself. It didn’t seem possible that she and Eileen were actually here. It had been so unexpected.

After meeting Erma at the college—yes, that was exactly what she had been thinking about when she dozed off—after Erma’s invitation, they’d barely had time, what with Holy Week services and Easter Sunday, to make the necessary arrangements at the college,
pack a small bag each, and purchase a few traveler’s checks.

“Disneyland for adults.” That’s what Sister Cecilia, the college president, had called New York when the two Sisters told her they’d be there for a few days.

Cecilia had looked pleased. Too pleased, if you asked Mary Helen.

“I’m so glad you two have the opportunity,” Cecilia had said. “It’s a perfect time for you to go before graduation and the start of summer school.”

“We’ll be gone only three days,” Eileen reminded her.

“Oh, don’t hurry back,” Cecilia added quickly. “Stay as long as you like. We’ll manage without you.”

“That was nice of Cecilia, don’t you think?” Eileen had remarked when they left the president’s office. “She seemed genuinely thrilled we could go.”

Not only thrilled, downright eager, Mary Helen thought. If I didn’t know better, I might even think she was happy to be rid of us.

Mrs. Taylor-Smith pulled to an abrupt stop at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street. A doorman dressed like a deserter from the French Foreign Legion held the car door open. In a matter of seconds, he had summoned the porter for their luggage, opened the front door of the Sheraton Centre, and escorted them into the plush forest-green and red lobby of the hotel.

While Eileen spoke to the desk clerk, Mary Helen gazed sleepily around. On one wall, by the curved stairway leading to a small cocktail lounge, she spotted a waterfall, the basin of which was full of coins.
CONTRIBUTIONS FORST. MALACHY’S
stated a printed sign nearby. Mary Helen was wondering how she could persuade the Fairmont or the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco to install a waterfall to benefit the scholarship fund of Mount St. Francis, when Eileen pulled her sleeve.

Still drowsy, she followed her friend into the elevator, then out and down the narrow fourth-floor hall to their double room.