Nun After the Other

by Alice Loweecey

  Over her shoulder, Bart watched her supplies for the homeless reloaded into the RV. “I, um, sorry. I went through all the rooms on the first floor and when they were empty I opened the cellar door. I smelled smoke right away, so I dropped the bat and went for the fire extinguisher.”

  “Did you hear the voice again?”

  “No…oh, could you ask them to be careful with my easel? It’s rickety and I’m a lot better with car parts than wood.”

  Nash raised his voice. “Guys, the easel’s fragile.”

  “Got it.”

  He continued after the easel survived its return trip into the RV. “So you only heard the voice from your room on the third floor?”

  “Yes.” Bart frowned up at him. “I didn’t think of that until now. The cellar’s walls are the only sturdy ones in the place. A voice from the cellar shouldn’t carry up to my room.”

  “Not even a scream?”

  Bart shivered. “I don’t know.”

  Giulia shivered too, but she chose to blame it on heavy gray clouds which had rolled in. Nash looked up and got one of the first raindrops smack in one eye. He spluttered.

  The front door opened and Sister Olive said, “Come inside before the Heavens open up.”

  “Busybody,” Bart muttered.

  Nash stopped them in the hall. “Just one more thing. When you brought the fire extinguisher down to the cellar, did you hear anything? Any voices, specifically?”

  Bart closed her eyes. “I heard…flames crackling. Little crackles, like when a fire in a fireplace is just beginning to catch. I may have heard…” She opened her eyes. “For some reason I keep wanting to say I heard a really quiet voice laughing. I can’t be sure anymore. I think my memory might be adding things because of what everyone else has been saying.” She looked apologetic. “It’s silly to think I heard someone laughing anyway.”

  Nash tried another smile. This time it called up an answering one in Bart. “Thanks for your help, Sister.”

  Bart leaned against the door after he left. “For the first time since I worked in Dad’s gas station, I want a cigarette.”

  Giulia got in her face. “Bart, I want an honest answer: Have you been sneaking cigarettes while you’re in this house?”

  “Huh? I haven’t smoked in years. I quit cold turkey in college when my best friend’s mother got diagnosed with lung cancer and died six weeks after.”

  “All right.” Giulia let it drop because Bart’s honesty was obvious. “Would you call the teaching Sisters and ask them to come back here for an emergency lunch meeting?”

  One item not on the lunch discussion: Her suspicions about the cigarette smoke. And the laughter.

  Forty

  Giulia sneaked into the backyard to call Frank, since there was zero privacy in the house. “Since Nash brought a crew to the convent, I gather you have autopsy results for Eagle?”

  Frank shouted into the receiver, “Shut up or I’ll tell the doc to skip you on her methadone rounds.” He lowered his voice. “That wasn’t for you.”

  “I gathered.”

  “Autopsy. Right.” Several keyboard clicks. “As we all thought, Eagle died from massive burn trauma to the brain.”

  Giulia swallowed. “Can you give me details without causing me to lose my breakfast?”

  Silence. “Maybe. Not this. Definitely not this. Okay. You know about the chemicals he used?”

  “Yes.”

  “In essence, the chemicals burned at an extremely high temperature for an extended period of time. I’m abridging here…basically, the eyes lead to the brain, the brain is fragile, end of story.”

  Giulia revised the case she’d been building. “Eagle didn’t strike me as the type to miscalculate an essential element of one of his plans.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “He didn’t strike me as an arsonist either.” She caught Olive peering through the kitchen window and turned away. “If Eagle is behind the weeks of harassment here, there’s a slim if stupid chance he tried the break-in from impatience.”

  “Hold on.” Frank covered his mouthpiece and treated Giulia to a muffled three-way conversation. “Sorry. Go ahead. Assuming he’s a serial harasser?”

  “Yes. If that’s the case, then he wouldn’t have botched his chemistry experiment. He’s too clever.” She thought a moment. “This needs Zane. Thanks, honey.”

  After she hung up, she turned toward the convent. While still here, she also needed to unearth some history.

  Forty-One

  “Sister Dorothy, I need your help.” Giulia was massaging Helena’s left leg as the nurse massaged her right.

  “Dorothy, please, and certainly. How may I help you?”

  “What do you know of Sister Agatha’s history?”

  The nun smiled at her patient. “Helena, I forgot to tell you about how Agatha surprised us all.” She described the moment of recognition and the epic Ken Kanning diss. The invalid nun laughed soundlessly.

  Dorothy scooped two fingers of lanolin and passed the jar to Giulia. “Agatha entered later than most for her time. She attended college for two years first and was an amateur boxer.”

  “If only she could tell her story.” Giulia concentrated on the patches of dry skin on Helena’s ankles.

  “I never knew her before the Alzheimer’s reached its current stage. She taught middle school for fifty-six years. The doctors say she’s become deaf to a certain range of sounds. The exact range of a few hundred preteens all talking at the top of their lungs in a cafeteria.”

  Giulia worked cream into Helena’s heel. “I dodged a bullet.”

  Dorothy lowered her voice. “Kathryn’s going deaf to the same register. She doesn’t think we know.”

  Another soundless laugh from Helena.

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” Giulia said to her.

  Either Giulia was getting better at understanding, or the reply was too obvious to misinterpret: “We’re bad.”

  Dorothy joined in the laughter. “We don’t laugh enough in this house anymore. Agatha also taught self-defense before it was generally accepted. When she was moved in here a few weeks before her eightieth birthday, one of her classes sent her an old yearbook. They’d written some of their memories in it, which is how we learned anything about her other than the bare bones of her teaching career.”

  Eugenie wheeled herself in. “Our sleuth offers massages too? Where’s the sign-up sheet?”

  Helena said, “I have privileges.”

  At least it sounded like “privileges” to Giulia. She caught Helena’s eye and the nun executed a slow-motion wink.

  “Yeah, yeah, we know. I’ll forgo a massage for inside information. Tell us about working with The Scoop.”

  Dorothy’s hands stopped. Helena made an inquiring sound.

  “Oh, yes, please,” Dorothy said. “Mr. Kanning was such a gentleman when he interviewed me Saturday even though it was the middle of the night.”

  “Are you together on our case?” Eugenie crowded between Dorothy and Giulia.

  Giulia bit the inside of her cheek hard. If she wanted continued cooperation from these fangirls she had to suck it up. “We only worked together on purpose once.”

  “The Doomsday Preppers,” Dorothy said. “What an exciting episode. We carried the TV in here for the second part and had a watch party.”

  Eugenie fluttered. “We’ve never seen his cameraman before. If only Agatha could stay compos mentis for more than a minute we could learn all about how adorable he was as a child.”

  Before her real opinions slipped out despite her good intentions, Giulia changed the subject. “There’s something I meant to ask you all. Have you ever smelled cigarette smoke in the house?”

  Eugenie pounced. “Where did you smell it? When?”

  “No,” Dorothy said. “But I’m almost
always on this floor, so if you smelled it anywhere else, you’ll have to ask the others.”

  “Have you smelled it?” Giulia said to Eugenie.

  “Twice in my room, but the window was open both times.”

  “It could have come in from outside.”

  Eugenie looked disappointed. “I suppose. At first I thought Olive or Kathryn were sneaking cigarettes when they thought no one was around.”

  Olive popped into the doorway exactly like a jack-in-the-box. “Who’s talking about cigarettes? Did those policemen smoke in here? The whole house is a fire hazard.”

  Dorothy appeared to fall apart all at once. Her eyes sunk into dark circles and her spine shrank. New veins showed through her skin. “What if Eagle or one of his henchmen has been sneaking into our house the past two months? I mean before Saturday morning?”

  Olive slammed a fist on the doorframe. “The convent used to be sacrosanct. We were never disturbed by unwanted intruders. People would ring our doorbell with prayer requests. They’d ask us to visit their sick relatives and were obsequious with their thanks. They brought their troubles to us and pleaded for advice. And now? Now we get harassed and invaded and robbed.” Another fist slam.

  Steve trotted in and Eugenie scooped him up. “At least you see people. We’re stuck on the second floor all the time. Steve here is the only one who takes pity on us, don’t you Steve?” The dog licked her face. “We couldn’t afford a house with an elevator but at least the chapel is on this floor.”

  “You offer it up so well, Eugenie.” Olive bared her teeth in a less than friendly smile.

  “I never said I was Saint Francis. Do you really want to tally each other’s sins in preparation for weekly confession, Sister?”

  Giulia stood. “Is Bart still in her RV?”

  “Last I saw, she was.” Olive began a rant about officious police and Giulia escaped.

  Forty-Two

  “They’re not always so catty. They’ve been on edge ever since Eagle bought out the neighborhood.” Bart opened the attic door.

  “Bart, that level of digging under the skin like a tick takes years to perfect.” Giulia climbed the stairs in her new maternity pants and for the first time in a month didn’t have to keep readjusting the material around her pregnant body. Their unexpected benefit: Freeing up her subconscious.

  The attic still sported its thin layer of dust. Only Giulia and Olive’s footprints from the other day disturbed the floor.

  “What are you looking for up here?” Bart straightened one of the dust covers.

  “Peace and quiet, for one thing. When you said you were surprised you heard a voice carry from the cellar to the third floor, are you sure the voice was all the way down in the cellar?”

  “No, not really. You know what it’s like when you first wake up. You wonder why you’re awake and what time it is and maybe you should just roll over and go back to sleep.” She unlatched the small octagonal window at the front of the house.

  “What about the laughter?”

  Her shoulders hunched. “I wish I hadn’t said that to the detective. He’ll think I’m bonkers.”

  “I won’t think you’re bonkers. Did you hear it?”

  She turned a pitiable face to Giulia. “I was all about getting the fire extinguisher because this whole place should have a sign on it like they do for forests: Fire Danger Today is High.”

  “But?” when Bart didn’t continue.

  “But I wish my sister-in-law was here. The one who taught me how to smudge a room to cleanse it. She says she can sense things. I sure can’t. I’m like a lump of wood.”

  Giulia tapped her foot. “Bart, you’re dithering.”

  “Okay. Okay. I did think I heard someone laughing. But there was nobody in the cellar except the body and no way anyone could’ve gotten past me and out of the house. There.” she yanked the window inward and showered herself with dust.

  Giulia took out her phone and opened the EMF app. “WEEoooWEEoooWEEooo.” She banged the home button to close it and turned off the phone. “Why did they make that sound so irritating?”

  Bart came over to her. “Isn’t that your ghost hunting noise?” She looked around the room, her braids flying.

  “Yes.” Giulia counted to ten and turned the phone on again. “It seems to be easily interfered with.”

  The stink of cigarette smoke reached her nostrils. She looked up, then around the room, then at Bart. Bart was staring at Giulia’s phone. Giulia sniffed twice, wrinkling her nose. Bart remained oblivious.

  “Is anyone outside?”

  Bart ran to the window and back again. “Not a soul.”

  Giulia inhaled—no smoke this time—and opened the app. “WeeOooWeeOooWeeOoo.”

  One day soon one of Frank’s Irish curses would slip out of her mouth.

  She shut down the app. Her finger hovered over Jasper Fortin’s phone number. The clairvoyant who ran the Tarot Shoppe across the street from DI with his aunt Rowan had told her she could call him anytime.

  But Jasper and Rowan weren’t running DI. She was.

  Giulia pocketed her phone. “If you want to talk, I’m here to listen.”

  “Huh?” Bart said.

  “If you need cigarettes, I don’t carry them on me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Dorothy’s voice came from the bottom of the attic stairs. “Ms. Driscoll, please come down. The phone’s for you.”

  Forty-Three

  As soon as Bart and Giulia reached the first floor, Olive said into the phone, “Our representative is the person you want to speak to. One moment, please.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “It’s Eagle Developers. I don’t know what to say to them and Kathryn’s not here yet. Please?”

  Giulia took the phone. “Driscoll Investigations speaking.”

  A beat. The voice on the other end said, “One moment, please.” A click.

  Giulia moved the mouthpiece away from her face and said to Bart, “‘Purple Rain’ as hold music.” Bart made a gagging gesture.

  Another click. “Ms. Beech would like to meet with the Sisters’ representative regarding the sale of the house. What time would be convenient?”

  If the developers thought this was a curve ball, they needed to up their research game. She checked the clock. Eleven thirty. “I’m available any time after four.”

  Without a pause, “Ms. Beech will expect you at four fifteen.”

  “Thank you.” Giulia hung up.

  If Olive were any closer to Giulia, she’d be breathing down her neck. “What’s happening? What are you going to do? You’ll have to clear it with Kathryn.”

  “Who has to check what with me?” Kathryn held the front door open for Diane as she finished locking their beater Subaru station wagon.

  Before Giulia could explain, Olive launched into a wildly speculative narration of Giulia’s phone call.

  Kathryn held up a hand. “Stop, please. We’ve been fighting lunch traffic to make it here in time. Ms. Driscoll, what’s happening?”

  Giulia gathered everyone in the second-floor hall. Sister Agatha was either having a quiet day or napping. Giulia felt guilty for appreciating the silence.

  “I’m meeting with the new head of Eagle Developers at quarter after four. I need to go in armed and ready. What options has the Order offered you for new housing?”

  All the nuns looked at Kathryn.

  “They will accommodate our second-floor residents into the Massachusetts Motherhouse. The rest of us are expected to find reasonably priced apartments on public transportation routes to our places of employment. Dorothy is to find a position at a hospice or as a home aide.”

  Silence followed her clipped words.

  Giulia broke it. “What about the retired sisters and Bart?”

  Kathryn’s furious despair bled
into her reply. “The retired Sisters are each expected to share an apartment with one working Sister.”

  Eugenie cackled. “Remember when steamy lesbian nun sex, AKA having a ‘Particular Friend’, was the worst sin any of us could commit, including murder? Now all that matters is living on the cheap.”

  Olive got in the last word. “Grab your ice skates because Hell has frozen over.”

  Kathryn finished, “Sister Bartholomew will also be accommodated at the Motherhouse.”

  Bart wailed. “They’ll make me a glorified Novice. I’ll end up with the laundry and the heavy cleaning. Aren’t there about fifteen old nuns up there who still wear the traditional habit? I’ll have to starch all their veils.”

  “It’s That bad?” Giulia said.

  She paced the hall. “There hasn’t been a new Postulant in three years. They don’t know how to handle nonconformity in that mausoleum.”

  Giulia dredged up an underground saying from her own Novice years. “They mold you and mold you and then they say, ‘How moldy you are.’”

  Olive snorted. “Sister Walburga said that to us when she taught us to starch veils.”

  Bart paced faster. “They want mold. They don’t have to worry about mold. Mold doesn’t make trouble.”

  To diffuse the growing atmosphere of hopelessness, Giulia brought out her research notes. “I have numbers. You’ll need three apartments, assuming one of you is allowed to live solo. Average rent is eight hundred per month, plus utilities.”

  “I’ve checked Craigslist,” Kathryn said. “Rent is as low as five and a quarter near Barberry Heights.”

  Olive’s lungs expanded.

  Giulia cut off what was sure to be an epic rant. “The worst, cheapest, 1950s throwback basement apartment I lived in after I jumped the wall would be better than living within twenty miles of that toxic landfill.”

  Olive used her exhale to cackle in Eugenie’s style.

  Dorothy temporized. “It has beautiful landscaping and there’s no concrete proof it’s toxic.”

  Olive gave her a pitying look. “Because local government is stonewalling the ecology lawsuit.”