Cordelia smiled wanly. “Only Alvirah’s instinct,” she said.
Sister Bernadette, who would be ninety on her next birthday, had been nodding in an easy chair. “Alvirah’s instinct, and something the Lord told us, Cordelia,” she said. “You all know what I mean.”
Smiling at their puzzled expressions, she murmured, “‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ I don’t think Bessie would have forgotten that, however house proud she was.”
8
Stellina kept the key to the apartment in a zippered pocket of her coat. Nonna had given it to her hut had made her promise that she would never tell anyone it was there.
Now she always used it when she got home so Nonna wouldn’t have to get up if she was resting.
It used to be that when she came home from school she would find Nonna sewing in the small room where Daddy always slept when he was home. Then they’d have milk and cookies, and if Nonna had clothes to deliver, or someone to fit for a hem or a new dress, Stellina would accompany her great-aunt and help carry the bags and boxes to the ladies’ homes.
But Nonna had been going to the clinic a lot lately, and that was why Mrs. Nunez had suggested Stellina should be at Home Base each day after school.
Some nights, if Nonna was feeling well, Stellina would arrive home to find her in the kitchen, dinner cooking on the stove and the apartment filled with the good, warm smell of pasta sauce. But tonight she found Nonna lying in bed, with her eyes closed. Stellina could see though that she wasn’t asleep, because her lips were moving. She’s probably praying, Stellina thought. Nonna prayed a lot.
Stellina bent down to kiss her. “Nonna, I’m home.”
Nonna opened her eyes and sighed. “I was so worried. Your papa came home. He said he was going to Home Base. He said he wanted to take you out. I don’t want you to go out with him. If ever he shows up there, asking for you, say that Nonna wants you to go home with Mrs. Nunez.”
“Daddy’s home?” Stellina asked, trying to hide her distress at the news. She wouldn’t tell even Nonna that she was sorry he had reappeared, but she was. Whenever Daddy was home, he and Nonna argued a lot. And Stellina didn’t like to go out with him, either, because sometimes they visited people and he would argue with them too. Sometimes the people gave him money and he’d argue about that, usually saying that something he gave them was worth a lot more than the money he’d received.
Nonna leaned on her elbow, sat up, then got out of bed very slowly. “You must be hungry, cara. Come. I’ll fix dinner for you.”
Stellina reached out her arm to help steady Nonna as she got up.
“Such a good girl,” Nonna murmured as she headed into the kitchen.
Stellina was hungry, and Nonna’s pasta was always so good, but tonight it was hard for her to eat because of her concern for her great-aunt. Nonna looked so worried, and her breathing was fast, as though she had been running.
The click of the lock in the front door told them that Daddy was home. Immediately Nonna began to frown, and Stellina’s mouth went dry. She knew that there would be an argument soon.
Lenny came into the kitchen and ran over to Stellina and picked her up. He swung her around and kissed her. “Star, baby,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
Stellina tried to pull away. He was hurting her.
“Put her down, you roughneck!” Nonna shouted. “Get out of here! Stay out of here! You’re not welcome! Go away! Leave us alone!”
Lenny didn’t display his usual anger. He just smiled. “Aunt Lilly, maybe I will go for good, but if I do, I’ll take Star with me. Neither you nor anyone else can stop me. Don’t forget, I’m her daddy.”
Then he turned around and went out, slamming the door behind him. Stellina could see that Nonna was trembling, and there was perspiration on her forehead. “Nonna, Nonna, it’s all right,” she said. “He won’t take me away.”
Nonna began to cry. “Stellina,” she said, “if I ever get sick and can’t be here with you, you must never, go away with your daddy. I will ask Mrs. Nunez to take care of you. But promise me, never go away with him. He is not a good man. He gets in trouble.”
As Stellina tried to comfort her, she heard her great-aunt whisper, “He is the father. He is the guardian. Dear God, dear God, what am I to do?”
She wondered why her Nonna was crying.
9
As usual when she was trying to solve a possible crime, Alvirah did not sleep the sleep of the just. From the time she and Willy turned out the light following the eleven o’clock news, which they had watched in bed, Alvirah was restless. She spent the next six hours dozing, her light sleep filled with vague, unsettling dreams; then she woke with a start.
Finally at five-thirty, deciding to take pity on Willy, who had frequently mumbled in his sleep, “Are you all right, honey?” she got up, put on her favorite old chenille robe, fastened on her sunburst pin with its tiny concealed recording microphone, got her pen and the tabbed notebook in which she kept the record of her ongoing investigations, made herself a cup of tea, settled down at the small dining table overlooking Central Park, turned on the microphone in her pin and began to think out loud.
“It’s not beyond Bessie, who was always a true stickler and pain in the neck about her house, to leave it to people who she thought would keep it up a certain way. I mean, it’s not as though she was throwing her sister out. After all, she did make sure that Kate would have the upstairs apartment, which is where she had planned to live anyway when she donated the ownership of the house to Home Base.”
Alvirah’s jaw jutted out unconsciously as she went on. “Bessie was never one to fall all over children, as I recall. In fact, I remember when someone asked her if she was sorry she hadn’t had a family, she said, ‘People with children and people without them feel sorry for each other.’
For a moment Alvirah paused, thinking how much she and Willy would have loved to have had a family. By now her grandchildren would probably be the age of the kids she’d seen yesterday at Home Base. She shook her head. Well, never mind. It wasn’t to be, she reminded herself briskly.
“So let’s assume,” she went on, “that Bessie really did get upset at the prospect of kids running around her precious house and getting finger marks on the walls and scratches on the woodwork, and, of course, by knowing that the furniture she’d been polishing since she went to work for the judge and his wife fifty years ago would be replaced by kids’ paraphernalia.”
Remembering to check the microphone, Alvirah pushed the STOP, REWIND and PLAY buttons, and listened for a moment to the tape.
It’s working, she told herself gratefully, and I sound as if I’m working up a head of steam. Well, Jam! she decided.
Clearing her throat, she resumed her indignant recital. “So the only real clue we have so far to show that this new will might be false is that Bessie was never known to use the word ‘pristine.’
She picked up her pen and turned to the next unused section of her loose-leaf notebook, the one that followed “The case of the death of Trinky Callahan.” At the top of the page, she wrote “The case of Bessie’s will,” then entered the first item in her investigation: “Use of the word ‘pristine.’
Now Alvirah began to write quickly. Witnesses to the will: Who were they? What were their backgrounds? Time: The will was signed November 30th. Did Kate meet the witnesses? What did she think was going on if she was there and they asked to see Bessie?
Now I’m using the old gray matter, Alvirah thought. She had recently been rereading Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot books. While working on the crimes she had helped to solve, she had tried to follow his method of deductive
