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

answer. “He sells drugs.”
    “He’s a drug dealer, ma’am?” Gallagher asked.
    “Not the kind you mean, Officer. Although he’s just as bad. Worse, if you ask me. He sells drugs to pharmacies and doctors and he doesn’t care a fig what kind they are. He sells birth control pills, those condos, or whatever you call them.”
    Kate knew exactly what she meant, and from the sound of Gallagher’s muffled cough, so did he.
    “I told Janice that husband of hers was doing the Devil’s work for him.” She began to rock. “And now Greg’s gone, too. I knew it. I knew something awful was going to happen.” Her hands were shaking. “I warned him about it.”
    “About what?” Kate asked, realizing that Mrs. Johnson was in shock. But maybe they would uncover some small truth that she could pass on to Detective Sergeant Little.
    “I warned him,” she repeated, almost to herself. “I told him about that girl. ‘You cannot tempt the Lord, thy God,’ I said.”
    “What do you mean?” Kate prodded gently.
    “Exactly what I said. With those immodest, low-cut blouses and her tight jeans and that wild hair. Looking like a streetwalker.” She fiddled with the top button of her cardigan. “That girl was nothing more than an occasion of sin for my boy, and I told him so, too,” she said with a triumphant gleam in her eye.
    “And what did your son say to that?” Gallagher spoke at last. As the blustering father of five grown children, he had plunged head-on into hair length, curfew, dropping out of school, premarital sex, and drugs. But Kate was sure that even he knew better than to insult his sons’ girlfriends, let alone meddle in his daughters’ marital intimacies.
    Mrs. Johnson’s face tightened. “I would be ashamed to tell you the filth that came out of my son’s mouth, Inspector.” She was crying now. “But I knew it was the Devil talking and I told him so. ‘Fornicators, idolaters and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone,’ I said.”
    The furnace thudded again and Kate bloused out her sweat-soaked shirt.
    “And he left here saying that he was over twenty-one and that he’d do as he pleased, even if it was to marry that girl!”
    “What is her name?” Kate asked, feeling a certain sympathy for “that girl.”
    “Laura Purcell.” Mrs. Johnson spat it out as if it were a curse.
    “What was it you warned Greg about, Mrs. Johnson?” Kate tried to steer her back to her original statement.
    The woman snapped, “Sin, Kate, temptation, damnation. I just told you.”
    “Yes, but prior to that, you said, ‘I knew it was going to happen. I warned him.’ What did you mean?”
    “That he would end up dead, of course.”
    “And why is that?”
    The narrow face twisted into an acid grin. Her eyes shone. “Because the wages of sin is death, dearie. Because the Lord God said in his wrath, they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever.” She shook her head sadly.
    “But she wouldn’t let him go, even if he came back to his senses. No, they were too steeped in their sin. And with him in the seminary once . . .”
    Kate hadn’t realized that Greg had studied to be a priest.
    “I begged him to come back to God; to come back to the Church. But, no. He was running around at all hours, sleeping anywhere. My Greg would have been a good priest and he would have made it, too, if it hadn’t been for that Father Harrington.”
    “Father Tom Harrington?” Kate recognized the name of the archdiocese’s official spokesman. She often saw him on television and his picture was frequently in the
San Francisco Catholic.
    “They call him ‘Happy Harrington,’ you know.” Mrs. Johnson’s voice held a twist of bitterness. “But I have other names for him.”
    “Why is that?” Kate asked.
    Mrs. Johnson took another sip of bourbon and went on as if she hadn’t heard Kate’s question. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that if it isn’t that girl, he’s the one