Free Death Goes on Retreat by Carol Anne O'Marie Page A

least twenty cars already this morning. Seems they came for a retreat, whatever the heck that is.”
    Before Detective Sergeant Little could comment, Laura was across the room.
    “What happened?” she asked with a breathlessness that sounded as if, indeed, she had been running.
    “First, ma’am, may I ask your name?”
    Laura told him. “I used to be the dishwasher here,” she said, and threw her arms around the unsuspecting Felicita. “Sister”—her voice was almost a sob—“I was so afraid something had happened to you.”
    Felicita, cheeks flaming, straightened her rimless glasses. “Thank you, dear.” She patted the young woman’s hand. “I am just fine.”
    “Who is it, then?” Laura’s glance shot around thetable. Although it didn’t seem possible, her face lost more of its color. “Is it one of the retreatants?” she asked.
    In the empty silence that followed, Mary Helen wondered who should, who would, answer her question.
    Beverly narrowed her eyes and Mary Helen could almost hear the wheels of cruelty turning behind her stare. Detective Sergeant Little must have recognized it too.
    Unfolding himself from his chair, he took a deep breath and put his arm around the girl’s shoulder. Reassuringly, he walked her out of St. Jude’s.
    Laura’s screams reverberated down the mountainside. Mary Helen shivered. Like the keening of a banshee outside the door, she thought, letting us know that death has visited the house and that Detective Sergeant Little has just broken the news.

    Inspector Kate Murphy slammed the car door, covered her ears with her coat collar, and waited for her partner, Dennis Gallagher, to come around from the driver’s side. She was freezing. A thick, drizzly fog covered Geary Boulevard all the way from 25th Avenue to the beach. Everything was wet and dark.
    It was only two-thirty in the afternoon and already lights shone in windows on both sides of the wide street. The houses with no lights probably had nobody home. A perfect giveaway for after-school burglars, Kate thought, stamping her feet to keep warm.
    The two homicide inspectors had left the Hall of Justice in downtown San Francisco, where a weak summersun had managed finally to burn off the fog. They had driven out into this pea soup and on the way Kate had tried to explain their mission to her partner.
    “Detective Sergeant Bob Little from the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department called,” she said.
    “Called you? Why would he call you?”
    “That’s what I’m trying to explain,” Kate snapped. This task was going to be difficult enough without getting the needle from Denny.
    “Just asking, Katie-girl. No need to bite my head off.”
    “Sorry,” she said, and she was. It was not his fault that she found herself in this predicament. “A young man by the name of Gregory Johnson was found murdered in Little’s jurisdiction. It so happens that his mother lives on Geary, very near my house. Little asked if I’d do him a favor and go over and break the news to her in person. It’s not the sort of thing a mother wants to hear over the phone.”
    Or at all, Kate thought, wondering just how she could bear it if someone came to tell her that her son, John, was dead. The very idea catapulted her stomach into a spasm.
    She had been teary for three full days after she took him to the baby-sitter for the first time. Her decision to go back to work was an agonizing one, but one she felt was right for all of them. Once it was made, she wrestled for weeks with child care. Her mother-in-law was still a little cool about her choice of Sheila Atkinson. But Kate felt that Sheila was best for John. She was an old friend. John liked her and enjoyed playing with her children. Plus, they lived only a few blocks away. Kate knew thather tears were ridiculous, but she had shed them nonetheless.
    Even now, eight months later, she still felt a pang when she dropped him off. Perhaps the cruelest blow of all was that John enjoyed being there.