Sacred Trust

“What can it accomplish?”

“I can say goodbye.”

“I thought you did that out on the hill.”

“It’s not the same.”

He takes my hand, which lies on the pillow between us. “You want to talk about it?”

I start to shake my head, then pause. If there were ever anyone I could tell about Marti, it would be Ben. And I need to get it out, all those old memories, the pictures of those days that have been surging through my mind since I saw her hanging there.

“It started out as one of those silly schoolgirl crushes,” I say, licking my bone-dry lips. “Marti and I went to the same high school, Mary Star of the Sea in Santa Rosa. It was an all-girl school, and neither one of us was self-confident enough to flirt with boys. So when they came over from St. John’s, say, for sports events or dances, we both sort of stayed in the background while the other girls fell all over them.

“Marti was into journalism, and so was I. We worked on the school newspaper together and became friends. Marti was the brighter star, however. She was the one who championed all the causes, from ending global war to preserving the planet. She wrote articles for the paper, gave speeches and marched for peace. I pretty much tagged along behind.”

I pause. How to tell the rest of it? Even to me it isn’t clear how everything happened, right to this day. “In our senior year,” I continue, “we talked about what we wanted to do with our lives. The nuns were pushing us to become nuns, of course—they always did in the Catholic schools. But it wasn’t till our senior year that either of us considered it seriously. We knew we wanted to give our lives to a larger cause, so to speak. We just didn’t know what.”

Licking my lips again, I swallow against the bile rising in my throat, the morning’s breakfast of scrambled eggs tasting like copper now. “The thing is, neither of us felt inspired by what was going on in the world. The eighties were almost upon us, and we could see the writing on the wall. The self-indulgence, the materialism. And there was…oh, I don’t know, a coldness about the world. It was getting too big, and it seemed that people had stopped caring about people. We felt—foolishly, of course—that everything that was ever going to happen had already come and gone. The two big wars, Vietnam, the hippie era. More than anything, we figured the world was going to pot, no pun intended, and we didn’t want to be part of it.”

I brush my hair back from my forehead, which is still damp from the exertion of making love. “So we were running away, I guess, more than anything else. And there was one nun—Sister Helen—who kept urging us to enter the order she was in. She had us cleaning out votive candles in the school chapel and pressing altar cloths. You name it, we got caught up in it. ‘Serving the Lord’ came to look so much better than making our way in a world we didn’t feel much a part of, anyway.”

“In other words, you found an acceptable way to drop out?” Ben says gently. With one big, rough finger, he strokes my arm.

“Something like that. Marti, of course, was always more outgoing than I. But she was also idealistic. Giving her life to God was the ultimate sacrifice, the noblest of all goals. She felt she could make more of a difference from within the walls of a convent than from without. Through prayer, and so on.”

I look at Ben, wondering if he thinks the two of us ridiculous. But he isn’t smiling that odd little smile, the way he will sometimes when he’s thinking something critical and doesn’t want to say it.

“Go on,” he urges.

“Well, come September, we both entered the novitiate at Joseph and Mary Motherhouse, up in Santa Rosa. It was great fun at first, an adventure like none we’d ever had—wearing the black postulant’s uniform and veil, getting up at dawn and praying in the chapel, even scrubbing floors. We loved every minute of it. But then one of the nuns caught us alone together, just talking, you know, and she reported us to the novice mistress. Joseph and Mary was behind the times, and the rules hadn’t been loosened up after ’62 and Vatican II, the way they were in some motherhouses. Special friendships, the novice mistress informed us, led to trouble—in other words, lesbian relationships. They were therefore verboten. We were ordered not to see each other anymore, and in fact were allowed only to spend time with other postulants in groups of three or more. There was never a moment when we could simply be alone and talk.”

“That must have been tough,” Ben says, “after being so close through high school.”

“It was awful. Maybe it was the forbidden aspect of it. Or just plain loneliness, like being away at camp for the first time. All I know is, the more they told us we couldn’t see each other, the more we suddenly had to. We even broke one of the strictest rules, that of all-night silence, to meet in the choir loft when everyone else was asleep. Then one night, our friendship, just as the novice mistress had warned, became something else. We didn’t do much, just held each other’s hands and kissed now and then. Neither one of us had sex in high school, we were both virgins, but the more time we spent alone together, the more this…this feeling grew between us. The funny thing was, it all seemed so perfectly natural. And it didn’t take much more than a kiss to make us happy. I remember Marti’s lips…”

I pause, blushing.

“What?” Ben urges me, smiling. “What about Marti’s lips?”

My blush deepens. “Oh…they were harder than I thought they’d be. More like a man’s lips, you know?”

He takes my chin in his hands and kisses me, long and hard. “More like this, you mean?”

When he doesn’t stop, and in fact lays his body completely over mine, I pull back for a breath, laughing. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

He raises his eyebrows in an exaggerated expression. “Jealous? Me?”

“You.” I poke him lightly on the nose with my finger. “You’re the one who wanted me to tell you.”

He sobers and falls back, lying on his side again. “I meant that. Tell all.”

I sit and reach for the glass of ice water I brought earlier to the bedside table. The ice is melted, and the water tastes like chlorine. But it wets my lips, which helps. Seeing Marti drained of blood, my own seemed to drain away as well. That was hours ago, but inside I still feel like old parchment that has begun to crumble. Even making love with Ben has not changed that, only added a touch of moisture, a small ray of hope that one day I might be myself again.

“Marti,” I remember with a small smile, “was usually the instigator when it came to breaking the rules. She was the brave one. When some of the other girls wanted to sneak out during recreation at night and go to the woods to smoke, Marti was right there with them. In the lead, in fact. Sometimes I tailed along just so I wouldn’t seem too square. Not that I smoked, never liked it even then. The thrill of breaking the rules was enough for me.”

I reach up, adjusting the pillows behind me so I can sit. “Finally, when we’d been caught far too often, and the usual penance of prostrating ourselves on the chapel floor for twenty minutes while reciting umpteen Hail Mary’s didn’t work, they got Sister Helen to come from the high school to talk to us. Besides being our teacher in high school, she was our sponsor into the convent, and she was livid when she found out what we’d been doing. Sister Helen was a nun from the old school, and she still wore her long black habit in 1980, even though most nuns in active orders were in civilian dress by then. She said she had worked too long and hard to receive her habit and wasn’t about to give it up.”

“And did she give you a whuppin’?” Ben asks, stretching out on his back with his hands laced behind his head. “Or a whack on the knuckles with a ruler? That’s what my teachers at St. Thomas’s used to do.”

“Neither,” I say, turning to rest my head on his shoulder, my fingers by habit stroking the wiry brown hairs on his chest. His arm comes around my shoulders and pulls me close. “She just told us in no uncertain terms how disappointed she was in us. She said if we’d had any respect for our vocations, we never would have behaved so abominably, and in fact she was convinced now that we didn’t even have vocations and shouldn’t become nuns at all.”

“Ouch. What did you and Marti say?”

“Not much. But Sister Helen was right, and we knew it. We didn’t even have to talk about it. The next day we met in the hallway outside the novice mistress’s office and went in there together to tell her we were leaving.”

“How did the good Sister Helen take that?”

“I don’t know. I never saw her again. I went home for a few weeks, then moved down to Berkeley, to college. Marti went East to school. We kept in touch, but I think both of us felt bad, like we’d wrecked our one chance to do anything really great, or at least selfless, in the world.”

I pause, thinking. “On hindsight, we may not have wanted to see each other for a while for fear we’d be reminded of our failure. I know that personally it took me a long time after that to get back into the world, so to speak.”

“But you and Marti have been in touch over the years.”

“Yes. That year in the convent faded, and we got back together.”

I see his look. “As friends,” I emphasize. “In fact…”

“What?”

I shake my head. “Just an old memory, that’s all.” Maybe when Marti has been gone longer, I can tell him about her baby.

Sighing again, I reach for the glass of water and drink deeply.

“So, are you shocked?” I ask Ben.

“That you had a schoolgirl crush on Marti Bright? No, those things happen. It’s more like I’m intrigued.”

I throw my pillow at him. “You men! You love the idea of women being together, don’t you?”

I have meant only to tease him. But a shadow falls over his face, and I remember too late that I’ve hit a sore spot.

Darcy, Ben’s ex, had a wild affair with the owner of the Seahurst Art Gallery in Carmel, Daisy Trent. When Daisy ran off with several artists’ money and Darcy ran after her, all the way to Paris, Ben was left to pick up the pieces. The scandal was in the papers for months, and Ben—for some reason he’s never felt it necessary to explain—made reparation to the artists for the money Daisy, his ex-wife’s lover, stole. This all occurred before I met him, and he doesn’t like talking about it.

“Sorry,” I say.

“That’s okay.” But the playful mood is gone.

After a moment I wonder aloud where Marti’s funeral will be and who will arrange it.

“She didn’t have family?” Ben asks.

“A brother, as I remember. They weren’t close.”

The phone rings next to the bed. Ben lets it ring, but then the machine comes on and a male voice says tersely, “Ben, it’s Arnie. It’s important. Pick up.”

Ben groans and reaches for the receiver. Grunting a hello, he listens. At one point he frowns and looks over at me.

“What is it?” I ask when he hangs up. Arnie, I know, is a fellow cop on the Carmel P.D., and a friend.

He hesitates.

“Ben?”

“Uh, Arnie talked to Sheriff MacElroy. He says it looks like Marti was dragged from a car to that place where they found her. There are signs of a struggle in the brush off to the side. Marti—or someone—scrawled a name in the dirt there.”

I sit up, and for some reason I can’t explain except that I feel suddenly exposed, I hold the sheet against me, covering my nakedness. “Really? What name?”

Instead of answering, he gives me a funny look. “Abby, when was the last time you saw Marti?”

“I don’t know, months ago.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Sure. Around three months ago. August, I think.”

“She lived in New York City, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why she was here?”

I shake my head, perplexed. “She was doing a magazine piece about the homeless, and I think she was talking to people at the rape crisis center in Seaside. Why?”

“You saw her frequently when she was here?”

“A few times.”

“Did you and she have an argument?”

I stare at him, turning cold. “Ben, what the hell is going on?”

He slides out of bed and begins to dress. A wall seems to build itself between us. “I tried to reach you several times early this morning before I finally got hold of you, Abby. Where were you?”

“Out walking Murphy along Scenic,” I say, becoming angry now at his tone. “Why?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Ben, why are you suddenly sounding like a cop?”

Dragging a dark green blazer out of the closet, he puts it on over khaki pants, then a tie. When he stands before me again he is all-business. The wall is complete. “Abby, I’ve been working Homicide fifteen years. There are certain patterns you come to look for. And when someone who’s being murdered scrawls a name in the dirt…Look, I’m not saying it’s always the case. But one thing we’re taught as cops is that it’s most likely to be the name of her killer.”

There is a small silence, during which I wait for the other shoe to drop. Still, I’m no dummy. I already know what the shoe is. “So Marti wrote my name…Abby. Right?”

“Better get dressed,” my lover says. The one who would not betray me. Ever.

He doesn’t take me to the station on Junipero in handcuffs, but he does take me there. He has to, he explains as I dress. Somebody there wants to talk to me, he explains further in the car.

He won’t tell me who that somebody is. But Ben, in the blink of an eye, has changed. I feel somehow I’ve lost two people this day.

Which is ridiculous, I tell myself. Ben is still with me. He helps me out of the car, as my knees are weak. He sits me in a quiet back office of the small station and asks me if I’d like coffee. I nod, and he goes to get it for me, setting the cup before me with one sugar and plenty of cream, the way he knows I like it.

If a man cares enough to remember the way you take your coffee, it’s not all bad, I think.

Meanwhile, my mind races. Why would Marti have written my name in the dirt? Who wants to question me about it? The sheriff? I know the Carmel P.D. facilities are often used by the sheriff’s department, as well as other investigative agencies. And, though Ben will be part of the task force that investigates Marti’s death, the sheriff’s department has jurisdiction over the area where she was found.

Ben has placed me on one side of a long table, halfway down it in the middle. He takes a seat at a far end, along with Arnie Lehman. Both men sit silently, their arms folded, faces wooden masks. This frightens me more than if they’d put me under a bright light and tortured me with thumbscrews.

I wonder aloud if I should call a lawyer. Ben gives me a quizzical look but doesn’t say a word. Arnie assures me quietly that I haven’t been charged with anything. He looks at the closed door, then raises a skinny arm to check his watch. He sighs, stretches. Ben rubs his face with his palms.

Just when I think I can’t stand another moment of this, two men in dark business suits walk in. One is taller than the other, with sandy hair. The second man is older, his face lined, hair gray. Rimless glasses hide his eyes, and both men’s expressions are bland, giving up nothing.

“Ms. Northrup?” the taller man asks as my eyes turn his way. I nod.

“Special Agent Mauro,” he says quietly, extending a hand that holds a thin leather wallet with a badge affixed to it. As he flips it open I see the words Secret Service on a card, with Special Agent Stephen Mauro’s name and likeness beneath them, along with a seal.

“This is Special Agent Hillars,” he says.

The older man nods. They take seats directly across from me, and I’m almost relieved. Thank God it’s only the Secret Service, I think, for surely this has nothing to do with me, after all. So far as I know, I haven’t been passing counterfeit money, nor have I plotted against the president of the United States.

At the same time, part of me is certain I’m about to be arrested for some horrible crime I cannot remember committing. It is a schizophrenic moment: What did the other Abby do that this one has blocked?

“First, we would like to thank you for coming here today to talk with us,” Agent Mauro says politely. “We understand this is a difficult time for you.”

I’m tempted to point out that I didn’t have a choice, but a warning glance from Ben makes me opt for keeping my mouth shut.

“I…your welcome,” is about all I can manage.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions about Marti Bright,” Agent Mauro continues, taking a small pad and black pen from an inner pocket. “Ms. Northrup, I understand you and Ms. Bright were close friends?”

The agent seems to choose his words carefully, and beneath his steady gaze I feel like a deer pinned down by a gunsight.

“Yes, we were friends.”

He nods. “We need you to tell us everything you know about Marti Bright. How you came to know her and for how long you knew her, how often she came to the Monterey Peninsula, the last time you saw her, who her other friends were, who she might have been involved with over the years—intimately, that is—and—”

“Wait a minute.” I can’t help interrupting, as my mind is reeling. I wet my lips. “Some of your questions I can answer. Others, I don’t know.”

“I’m certain you’ll do your best,” Agent Mauro says blandly. Agent Hillars leans forward slightly. His voice surprises me. He is thin, ascetic-looking, and I’d expected the tone to be clipped. Instead, it is soft and full, a Southern marshmallow.

“We are very sorry to trouble you at this time, Ms. Northrup. We understand you have suffered a loss. We felt, therefore, that the kindest way to do this would be to question you here. If you would prefer, however, we can talk in a more official setting.”

The subtle threat in his words shakes me a bit. “I…no, it’s not that I don’t want to cooperate, it’s just…”

I’m beginning to feel again that I need a lawyer. Not only that, but my gut says I need to protect Marti. I decide to tell them only the things they probably already know, or can find out through public records.

“Let’s see…” I say thoughtfully. “Where did I meet Marti?”

I tell them how we met in high school at Mary Star of the Sea in Santa Rosa, and how we then entered the convent together at Joseph and Mary Motherhouse. Basically the same things I told Ben earlier, though leaving out the kind of relationship Marti and I had all those years ago. This I keep to myself, glossing over it under Ben’s watchful, knowing eye. He doesn’t contradict me, and that, at least, is a relief.

Agent Hillars moves restlessly, and Agent Mauro frowns as I’m telling them how Marti and I left the convent together and then went our separate ways to college. “She was always the more earnest student,” I babble, “winning the best scholarships, getting the better grades, while I just sort of muddled through—”

“Might we move ahead, please?” Agent Mauro interrupts. “Ms. Northrup, I would like you to tell us about the time when Ms. Bright first began to come to the Monterey Peninsula.” Beginning to write on his notepad, he adds, “That would be fifteen years ago, correct?”

“More like fourteen,” I lie.

He stops writing and looks at me.

“Up till then,” I add quickly, “we had only telephone contact and an occasional meeting in New York City, when she would fly in for a few days on business. If I could take the time, I would meet her in New York for a day or so of shopping and shows.”

“And you never saw her here until fourteen years ago?”

“Never,” I say firmly.

Agent Mauro studies me a long moment. I stare back, unflinching. He looks down at his notes, and when he lifts his eyes I get that deer-in-a-gunsight feeling again.

“Ms. Northrup, you and Ms. Bright had a relationship at one time that was closer than simple friendship, I understand.”

My face turns hot, and my glance flicks to Ben. “Where—”

“Did I learn that? Let me put my cards on the table, Ms. Northrup. We know quite a lot about you. Where you went to school, what your grades were from kindergarten on, and the fact that you have a genius IQ you’ve seldom bothered to use.”

“I—” Stunned, I shove my hands into my pockets, trying to hide their slight shaking as Mauro continues. Out of the corner of my eye I see Ben watching me, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“We have names of your friends through high school,” Mauro continues, “the fact that you were class president not once but three times despite being somewhat of a rebel, the unfortunate state of your marriage at the current time…” He pauses. “And, of course, your relationship with Marti Bright.”

I am speechless. Appalled. I have heard about the long arm of the law, of course, and how thorough it can be. But that they have this kind of information on me is unthinkable. Who have they talked to?

My anger grows, and I no longer think to be careful. “If you know all this, why the hell are you here asking me questions? Why don’t you go back to your informants and ask them?”

“Ms. Northrup,” Agent Mauro says calmly. “There are certain…shall we say, ‘holes’ in the information we have been given.”

“Imagine that.” My voice is icy. “Something the Secret Service can’t find out about someone.”

“For instance,” the unflappable Mauro continues, “who did Ms. Bright see when she was here on the Monterey Peninsula?”

“See?”

“Friends, associates. She must have had a reason for coming here.”

The older man, Hillars, leans forward slightly again. I am alerted to the fact that my answer to this is important. They are setting a trap. But for who?

“Mr. Mauro, pardon me, but you’ve obviously done your homework. You must know Marti wrote and photographed several stories here and in Santa Cruz about the homeless. She won awards for those stories—they weren’t exactly hidden in a drawer somewhere. Again, why are you asking me things you already know?”

He smiles, though there is no warmth in those gray eyes. In fact, they are so flat and cold they remind me of a pit bull sizing up its next meal. “I suppose you might say I’m more interested in why Ms. Bright came here so often over the years, not that she did. Why here, when there are so many other cities with these problems? In fact, bigger cities with bigger problems?”

“Maybe she liked the weather,” I snap.

“Or maybe she was having an ongoing liaison here with someone,” Mauro says smoothly, not skipping a beat.

“A what?” I am momentarily startled. Then I can’t help laughing. “A liaison? You mean an affair? Good God. You don’t know as much about Marti as I thought.”

Mauro narrows his eyes. “Why do you say that, Ms. Northrup?”

“Because Marti was all-business. She didn’t have time for liaisons, she didn’t care about anything but her work.”

“Are you speaking of just lately, Ms. Northrup?

Or was she that way when she was here fifteen years ago, as well?”

I have purposely told him Marti did not come here until fourteen years ago. Did he forget—or is this part of the trap?

The only thing I’m sure of now is that it’s time I took a stand. Rising, I say firmly, “Agent Mauro, I need to go home and feed my dog. If you don’t have some sort of subpoena in your back pocket, I’m not answering any more questions—until, that is, you tell me what this is about.”

Mauro looks at Hillars, and a question seems to pass between the two men. Hillars gives a microscopic shrug. Mauro closes his notebook and slips it back into his inside coat pocket. Both men stand, and Hillars gives me a look that seems to border on either anger or contempt. I can’t be sure, as it’s quickly gone.

Mauro, courteous as ever—on the surface, at least—extends a hand. “Thank you very much for your cooperation, Ms. Northrup. We may need to talk with you further. If so, we’ll be in touch.”

I accept the hand and am rewarded when he drops mine after a brief clasp. He is clearly irritated with me.

Good. Whatever he brought me here for, he didn’t get.