“But the newspaper article said that police thought the knife was most likely taken from Mimi’s own kitchen.”
“Then the article and the police were both wrong,” Mary Katherine declared. “Or if it was Mimi’s knife, it was taken from her kitchen at some time other than on that day. I saw Elvira take it from her purse after she got out of the car. And if they brought the knife along with them when they came to Mimi’s house, wouldn’t that mean premeditation?”
“Yes, it would,” I agreed. “You mentioned Elvira getting out of the car. Let’s talk about that vehicle for a moment.” I returned to the file folder and pulled out a stock photo of a 1949 Caribbean coral Frazer Deluxe, one I had downloaded from the Internet. “Does this look familiar?”
Sister Mary Katherine studied the photo for only a matter of seconds before she nodded. “This is the one,” she said. “Or one just like it.”
“The officer in charge of the investigation was a Seattle Police Department detective named William Winkler. Do you ever remember talking to him about what you had seen?”
“No.”
“And you never spoke to any other police officer about what happened that day?”
“As far as I know, no one ever asked me about any of it,” Mary Katherine said. “They may have talked to my parents, but not to me. They should have, shouldn’t they?”
“If they’d been doing their jobs,” I responded.
Bonnie Jean may have been scared by what she had witnessed and by being threatened by one of the killers, but I couldn’t believe she would have kept quiet if any of the detectives on the case had actually bothered asking her about it.
“What about Mimi’s funeral?” I continued. “Did you go?”
Sister Mary Katherine shook her head. “Not that I remember. My parents probably thought I was too young to understand what was going on.”
“Did your parents attend?”
“I don’t believe so, but I don’t know for sure.”
“But the woman was your friend,” I objected. “It seems to me they would have gone if for no other reason than to pay their respects.”
“It’s strange,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “It’s as though seeing the pictures has reopened that whole chapter in my life. Now I remember it all-not only Mimi’s death, but the rest of it, too. I thought we were friends, but Mother didn’t agree. She said Mimi felt sorry for us because she was rich and we were poor. Mother said that whatever Mimi did for me she was doing out of pity or charity, not out of friendship. But regardless, Mimi was nice to me. She seemed magical, almost like a fairy godmother. She taught me to play hopscotch and jacks. Sometimes she’d read to me from books she brought home from the library. A few times, we even walked up the street to the drugstore and she bought me strawberry sodas.”
Mary Katherine reached across the table and picked up the picture of the Marchbank Foundation headquarters. This time she nodded in recognition. “Now I remember. That’s her house-the one where Mimi used to live. The house we lived in, Mrs. Ridder’s house, was right over here-to the right of this driveway.”
On the tapes, Bonnie Jean couldn’t remember the landlady’s name. Now the name emerged effortlessly.
“How long did you live there?”
“Not very long-a few months maybe. We must have moved out within weeks of when Mimi was killed, but I could be mistaken about that.”
“Any idea where you went?”
Sister Mary Katherine shook her head. “We moved so many times over the years, I’m really not sure.”
The waitress stopped by to refill our cups. “Is Elvira Marchbank still alive?” Sister Mary Katherine asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “She could be. Nothing I found this morning indicated otherwise. Albert died in the early seventies, but as far as I know, Elvira’s still around.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “How is it possible that Mimi died so young and yet Elvira is still walking around free as a bird after all these years? If she’s still alive, she must be in her eighties. I can’t imagine living with that kind of guilt for so many years. I wonder if she ever feels any remorse about what she did.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Most of the killers I’ve met come up short in the remorse department.”
“After such a long time, could she still be convicted and go to jail?”
“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” I said. “And I’m sure they have some sort of geriatric wing in the women’s prison down at Purdy, but I wouldn’t count on a conviction if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“Time, for one thing. As you said, the crime happened years ago. I’m going to do my best to send her there, but you’ll have to be patient. It won’t be easy.”
“Why not? There’s a witness,” Sister Mary Katherine objected, “an eyewitness who saw the whole thing.”
“Yes, but we’re talking about an eyewitness who took half a century to speak up. A good defense attorney will tear your testimony to shreds. And a jury is going to wonder what caused you to suddenly recall those events now. There are a lot of people out there who don’t go along with the idea of repressed memories, so I can’t base my entire case on your word alone. I’m going to have to dig up enough corroborating evidence that a prosecutor and a jury will be willing to go with it.”
“Can you find that kind of evidence?” she asked.
“I’ll do my best,” I told her. “Finding evidence is what I do. It’s what I’ve done all my life.”
“While all I’ve been doing is praying and sewing,” she said. I heard the self-reproach in her voice and knew Sister Mary Katherine was still holding Bonnie Jean Dunleavy’s silence against her.
“Sometimes,” I told her, “praying is the only thing that works.”
“It seems to me I should be the one telling you about the wonders of prayer,” Sister Mary Katherine said with a tight smile.
“That’s all right,” I told her. “No extra charge.”
She raised her hand, flagged down the waitress, and asked for her bill. She turned down my offer to pick up the check. “I like to pay my own way,” she said. “And I need to be heading out. I have some shopping to do before I leave town, but Sister Therese expects to have the road cleared by early this afternoon, and I want to be home well before dark.”
“I hadn’t realized the highway on Whidbey was closed.”
“Not the highway,” she said. “That’s open. The problem is our road-the private one that goes from the highway to the convent. There’s snow and several downed trees as well. But I’ve been away for days now, and I’m ready to be home, even if I have to get out and walk.”
Sister Mary Katherine struck me as the kind of woman who wouldn’t be above hiking through snow and ice to get where she wanted to go, but I wondered if she was strong-willed enough to deal with all the emotional fallout from that long-ago Saturday afternoon.
I helped her retrieve her bags from the bellman, then we stood together under the covered portico waiting for our vehicles to be brought around. A steady downpour was falling on the street outside. Compared with the previous days of bitter cold, the forty-degree weather felt downright balmy.
“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” I asked again.
Sister Mary Katherine nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s not easy. I just never thought I’d be involved in something like this. These kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen to people in my line of work.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
The parking valet drove up in a white Odyssey minivan. Once Sister Mary Katherine’s bags had been loaded, she turned back to me and held out her hand. “Thank you, Beau,” she said. “I’m sure working with you and Freddy-with people I know and trust-has made this far less traumatic than it would have been otherwise.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. I handed her one of my cards. “Call me if you remember anything more.”
She studied the card for a moment before slipping it into the pocket of her coat. “All right,” she said. “And you’ll let me know what’s going on?”
“Yes, but remember, this is going to take time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.
