Rueful Death

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Maggie was going on, her tone reflective. "The groups have different spiritual practices, too. When I lived at St.

  T's, Mother Hilaria encouraged us to design our own Rule, write our own liturgy, choose our own dress. St. Agatha's was the most conservative house in the order. The sisters still wear a modified habit and a veil, and they held Chapter of Faults until they moved to St. T's." She shook her head. "This was not a marriage made in heaven."

  Ruby glanced curiously at Maggie in the rearview mirror. "What's a Chapter of Faults?"

  "A meeting where the nuns accuse themselves and one another of their sins. Envy, covetousness, anger-stuff like that." Maggie looked uncomfortable. "Then they make a penance-a certain number of strokes with a leather whip."

  "A whip?" Ruby's red eyebrows shot up under her curls.

  "Self-flagellation was common practice for centuries," Maggie said. "But Mother Hilaria wouldn't have it at St. T's. She said it was barbaric."

  "My kind of woman," I remarked.

  "She was pretty special," Maggie said, lifting her chin. "She was fascinated by Buddhism, so she encouraged us to learn meditation and yoga and read the Eastern mystics."

  "Yoga!" Ruby exclaimed. "In a Catholic monastery?"

  "Sure," Maggie said. "A lot of Catholics are interested in Eastern spirituality. Not the St. Agatha nuns, unfortunately. They think it's pagan nonsense, or worse." She hesitated. "The two groups are exactly the same size, you see. Mother Winifred can't get a consensus on anything."

  "She said something on the phone about a 'minor mystery,' " I said reflectively. "I thought she was talking about the garlic, but maybe not. Do you know?"

  The rain had begun in earnest, and Ruby turned on both the wipers and the defroster. "A mystery?" She wriggled in her seat. "I love mysteries! When I was a little girl, I wanted to grow up and be Nancy Drew." After that, it was Kinsey Millhone, then V. I. Warshawski, and finally Kay Scarpetta. More recently, though, she's given up on hard-boiled women detectives. ' Raymond Chandler in drag,' she says sadly. "Lotta guts, no soul."

  Maggie looked out the window, not answering, and I sensed an apprehension in her that both surprised and disturbed me. Of all my friends, Maggie is the most serene, the most balanced. She can always be counted on to keep her head during the crises that happen regularly in the restaurant business. But now, her outer calm was less opaque, and through it I glimpsed an inner worry, a fear, even. Something was wrong at St. T's, and Maggie knew what it was.

  When she finally answered my question, though, her voice was controlled. "Yes, I think I know what Mother Winifred has in mind. But she should tell you first. Then I'll be glad to share what I know."

  That was fair enough. "You said Mother Winifred is acting abbess," I said. "Who will take over when she steps down?"

  "The nuns will elect an abbess," Maggie said. She paused. "If they can."

  "What do you mean?"

  "There are two candidates. Sister Gabriella is from St. T's. She's managed the garlic farm for five or six years. Sister Olivia was named abbess of St. Agatha's the week before it closed. She ran the conference center."

  "Uh-oh," Ruby said. "Sounds like trouble."

  Ruby was right. You didn't have to be a Vatican diplomat to understand the implications of the choice. The new abbess would have control over fourteen million dollars, give or take a million or two. Sister Gabriella would no doubt want to use the money to raise more rocambole. Sister Olivia would presumably transform St. T's into a conference center.

  "When will the election be held?" I asked.

  "They've already had one vote," Maggie said. "But the two groups are evenly matched, twenty on each side."

  "So, they're deadlocked, huh," Ruby said.

  Maggie nodded. "The order's charter says the abbess has to be elected by a majority-in this case, twenty-one votes. Of course, Reverend Mother General would like the new abbess to have more support than that. She won't schedule another election until it looks like one of the candidates can get a majority."

  "Meanwhile," I said, "Mother Winifred is still acting."

  "I'm sure she'd rather be working in the herb garden," Maggie said, "but she's stock with the job for a while. Until one of the sisters changes her mind, or leaves, or…"

  "Or dies," Ruby said, with a laugh to show that she was only joking.

  Maggie didn't laugh.

  Chapter Three

  The heat of garlick is very vehement, and all vehement hot things send up but ill-favoured vapours to the brain. In choleric men it will add fuel to the fire.

  Nicholas Culpeper The Complete Herbal & English Physician

  Carr, Texas, is not a bustling metropolis. You might drive through it before you could say, "Where are the Golden Arches?" But it's a very pretty town, with pecans and live oaks arching over narrow, brick-paved streets, lined by frame cottages trimmed with turn-of-the-century gingerbread and set in neat gardens. It looked like Pecan Springs a couple of decades ago, before tourism brought the developers into town. I wondered fleetingly what it would be like to live here, maybe even move my shop here. Life would certainly be more peaceful. But it was too far for McQuaid to commute, except on weekends. Which might not be a bad idea, I thought. It would give us a little breathing space.

  "We'll get to St T's too late for lunch," Maggie said. "Make a left turn at that light, Ruby. We'll stop at Bern-ice's and get something to eat."

  We were on the square. The hardware store was on one corner, its window full of saws, coiled rope, water heaters, and a gleaming white commode. The Carr State Bank was on another, fronted by a concrete planter containing a leafless tree still draped with Christmas lights and a sign that said, Be Good, for Goodness' Sake. A Carnegie library was on the third comer, next to a five-and-dime. Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, with a letterboard announcing that Father Steven Shaw celebrated Mass at eleven on Sundays, stood on the fourth. A stone courthouse commanded the center. It might not have qualified as Most Picturesque Town Square in Texas, but the church was painted, the bank looked prosperous, and the hardware store had three or four pickups parked out front. Next to the bank was Bernice's Cafe.

  "St. T's is mostly vegetarian and low-fat, so this is your last chance for chicken-fried steak," Maggie said as Ruby swung diagonally into the curb. "And you haven't had fried onion rings until you've eaten Bernice's."

  I blinked. "Chicken-fried and onion rings? I thought you were into gourmet cooking."

  Maggie grinned and slipped into a West Texas drawl. "Yes, ma'am, honey. Out here, Bernice's chicken-fried is gourmet cookin'. But don't believe everything she says," Maggie added in her usual voice. "She's the switchboard operator on the local grapevine. If you encourage her, you'll get an earful of gossip."

  Inside the cafe, we were greeted by a weathered, gritty-voiced woman in jeans and a plaid Western shirt, standing behind a green Formica-covered counter. "Well, Margaret Mary," she said, grinning at Maggie. "I'll be durned. Been a couple years, ain't it? How are you?" The woman, whose apricot-colored hair turned up in an Andrews Sisters puff, wiped her hands on a white apron and lowered the volume on a pink plastic radio that was playing an old Johnny Cash ballad called "Ring of Fire." Over the radio hung a fly-specked cheesecake poster girl with a Budweiser in her hand. We had just stepped into a time warp.

  "Hello, Bernice," Maggie said. "It's nice to see you." She pulled out a scarred wooden chair and sat down at a table covered with a red-and-white-checked oilcloth. Ruby and I joined her.

  Bernice took in Ruby's hooded caftan and came to the obvious conclusion. "Don't tell me, let me guess. Y'all are headin' out to St T's." She didn't wait for confirmation. '* 'F that's the case, you'll need somethin' fillin'." She went behind the counter and pushed mugs under the old-fashioned coffee urn. "From what I hear, the cookin' out there has went straight to hell since you left, Margaret Mary. And that's not the only tiling that's went to hell, either," she added, carrying the mugs to our table. She glanced at Ruby. "Pardon my French, Sist
er."

  Ruby looked taken aback, then inclined her head gently as she took the coffee.

  Maggie ignored Bernice's invitation to gossip. "I'll have the chicken-fried," she said, "French fries and an order of onion rings."

  "I will too," Ruby said. She looked up with a beneficent, nunlike smile. Bernice's mistake was giving her a new view of herself.

  "Make that three," I said, but unlike Maggie, I'm not above tweaking the town grapevine. "Is something going on at St T's?"

  Bernice wiped her hands on her apron. I could have sworn she was wearing Midnight in Paris. Maybe she was. The five-and-dime across the street might still have a few of those little blue forty-nine-cent bottles stashed under the counter.

  "Some folks say it's just coinkidinks. Other folks think it's bad luck." She raised both plucked eyebrows. "Ya ask me, somebody's tryin' to fix their wagon."

  Ruby was looking divinely unconcerned. Maggie was trying not to listen. "Whose wagon?" I asked.

  "Why, them nuns, of course." Bernice bent over my shoulder and lowered her grainy voice. ' 'You go out there, you watch yourself, y'hear? Keep a bucket o' water by your bed."

  There was a moment of silence. Then Maggie sighed the sigh of someone who's been trapped into a knock-knock joke. "Okay, Bernice, we give up. Why should we keep a bucket of water by the bed?"

  Bernice feigned surprise. "What? Oh, sorry, Margaret Mary. I thought you wadn't interested."

  "Has there been a fire?" I asked.

  "Christmas Eve, in the chapel." Bernice's voice signified disaster. "Wadn't the first, neither. Thanksgivin', it was a grease fire in the kitchen. Couple weeks 'fore that, the barn."

  "Grease?" Maggie was incredulous. "Why would there be grease in the kitchen? They don't cook fried foods."

  "Did any of the fires do much damage?" I asked.

  "Not a whole lot." Bernice waved her hand. "You remember Dwight Baldwin, Margaret Mary? The maintenance man? Well, Dwight was out in the yard when the kitchen got afire, an' he run in an' grabbed a pot lid. He got to the barn fire, too, 'fore it could spread, and he and Father Steven put out the chapel fire. None of 'em had much of a chance to git goin'. But it all adds up, don'cha see?"

  "Adds up to what?" 1 asked.

  She gave me a withering look. "To one coinkidink too many, that's what. You mark my words-somebody's got it in for them nuns." She turned to Ruby and modulated her tone. "You oughta try a piece of Betty Ann's peach pie, Sister. She brung it in this morning. Fredericksburg peaches, fresh outta her freezer."

  Ruby couldn't resist. "Bless you, my daughter," she murmured. Beatrice smiled and walked briskly toward the kitchen.

  "Bernice must be exaggerating," Maggie said. "If the fires were serious, Dominica would have written to me." She frowned. "But I haven't heard from her since before Christmas. I wonder…"

  We stirred our coffee. A mechanical cuckoo popped out of a red-plastic cuckoo clock and whisded the first bars of "The Eyes of Texas." Johnny Cash had finished "Ring of

  Fire" and Buddy Holly was starting on "Peggy Sue." After a moment, Ruby poured cream into her coffee and leaned toward Maggie.

  "I've known you for over two years and I've never heard how you got to be a nun, Maggie.''

  Maggie's mouth was wry. "Why did I do such a crazy thing, you mean?"

  Still captured by the image of herself as a monastic, Ruby frowned. "Maybe it wasn't crazy," she said.

  "My mother thought I'd lost my mind," Maggie said reflectively. "I'd just finished my degree in social work, and I was volunteering with the Sisters of the Holy Heart in Chicago. One morning I woke up, put on my clothes, walked into the Vocations Office at the convent, and said, 'I want to be a nun.' "

  Ruby blinked. "That was it?"

  "That was it," Maggie said matter-of-factly. "No finger of God, no choir of angels, no heavenly light. It was just something I had to do. It didn't even feel like I had a choice."

  "How did you get from Chicago to Texas?" I asked.

  "I ran into Mother Hilaria at a conference. She was looking for sisters to help get St. T's up and running. I told her I wasn't interested, but she wrote to me and sent me some pictures and…" She was tracing a wet design on the table with the tip of her spoon. "God wanted me here, I guess. So I came. If it hasn't happened to you, it's kind of hard to explain. We say we've been called. We've been given a vocation."

  Ruby cleared her throat. ' 'If God wanted you here, why did you leave?'' The question might have been tactless, but it was on my mind, too.

  Maggie picked up her coffee mug. I could sense a softening in her, a sadness. "I thought I'd be at St. T's for the rest of my life. I loved the quiet. I loved my work in the kitchen. I even loved the garlic field.'' She paused and took a sip of coffee. When she spoke again, her voice was low.

  "It wasn't easy, believe me. Leaving was like tearing out a piece of my soul."

  I was startled. I'd expected to hear that she felt stifled by the discipline or fell in love with a priest. This was something quite different.

  Ruby stared at her. "Then why did you do it?"

  For a minute, I thought she wasn't going to answer. " Vocations are fragile," she said finally, without inflection. "Sometimes they last a lifetime, sometimes they don't I was angry. I was fed up with the Church's attitude toward women. We're okay for cheap labor, but they'll never allow us to be full participants. They can't afford to. They know we'd change things."

  Bernice came with our food, and the next few minutes were filled with moving plates around and making sure we had what we needed. While we got started eating, I was thinking. Anger against the hierarchy must drive a lot of women out of the Church these days. But something made me wonder if there hadn't been another reason for Maggie's leaving. When she'd spoken about living at St. T's, her voice had been soft and shaken, deeply truthful. When she'd told us why she left, she might have been reading from a newspaper. I could feel her longing for the life she had abandoned. But I couldn't feel her outrage.

  Ruby was blunt. ' 'But if you really liked your life at St. T's, why didn't you fight for it?" She pushed her sleeves back and picked up her fork. "The Vatican is seven time zones away, for cryin' out loud. They wouldn't know if you got together with a few nuns and celebrated Communion. Or you could have joined a group and tried to change things."

  "I'm sure you're right." Maggie looked down at her plate. ' 'But about that time my father died and left me some money. It was as if God had handed me an invitation to do something else with my life." A smile ghosted across her mouth.

  I was about to observe that the money might have been a test of her desire to stay just as easily as it could have been an invitation to leave, but Ruby spoke first. "You've been happy doing your restaurant thing, haven't you? You always seem happy."

  Well, maybe. I wasn't sure that it was happiness I'd sensed in Maggie as much as acceptance. She takes life as it comes, without trying to do much about it. It's a state of mind-of soul, maybe-that I have to admire. It's totally different from the aggressive I'm-going-to-get-what-I-want-come-hell-or-high-water attitude of the people I knew when I was practicing law. But acceptance can be a problem too. If I had chosen to live at St. T's, you can darn well bet I wouldn't have let myself be driven out by the backward ideas of a few old men.

  Maggie nibbled on an onion ring, musing over Ruby's question. "Am I happy? Mostly, I guess. The restaurant has given me self-confidence-I needed that. And I've loved having friends, especially you two. But I still miss the community. Mother Hilaria, the other nuns. It's…" She swallowed. "It's as if I've been in exile for the last two years."

  "Well, if you miss it so much," Ruby said practically, "why don't you-?"

  The rest of her question was lost in a sudden whoosh of chill air from the open door. A fair-haired man in a dark Stetson, jeans, and boots strode in, shrugged out of his sheepskin jacket, and hung it on a peg by the door. He turned in our direction and stopped.

  There was a long moment, freeze-frame, while our
eyes met and held. My heart lunged to the top of my windpipe and stayed there while I struggled to breathe past it.

  "China?" the man asked. "China Bayles?" He was lean and narrow-hipped, almost thin. His face was more tanned and weather-beaten than I remembered, but then it had been eight years since I'd seen him. He covered the distance in three strides, not taking his eyes off me.

  "China? What the hell are you doing here?"

  "I'm eating lunch," I said incoherently. Ruby gave a delicate cough. "With friends," I added, and waved my hand to cover my confusion. "Ruby, this is an old friend of mine, Tom Rowan. Tom, Ruby Wilcox."

  ' 'Hi, Tom,'' Ruby said, lifting a graceful hand. She caught my eye. "An old friend, huh?" she asked meaningfully, with a Why-haven't-you-mentioned-him-before? look.

  I ignored her. "And this is Maggie Garrett."

  Tom glanced at Maggie, and his brown eyes lightened. "Maggie Garrett," he exclaimed, taking her hand. "Haven't seen you since you left St. T's. What are you up to these days?"

  "I run a restaurant in Pecan Springs." Maggie squeezed his hand and let it go. "So you and China know one another?"

  "You bet." Tom took the fourth chair at the table, next to me. "Last time I saw China, she was defending some big-time crook." His eyes went to my left hand for a fraction of an instant, then came back to my face. "You got the bastard acquitted-Douglas, wasn't that his name?" He glanced at Ruby. "Excuse me, Sister."

  Ruby colored. "Oh, I'm not… I mean-" She looked down at her robe, couldn't think of any logical explanation for her monkish garb, and blurted out the next thing that came into her mind. "Has anyone ever mentioned that you look exactly like Robert Redford?"

  I didn't have to listen to his flip response-I'd heard it a dozen times before. I was thinking of the Douglas trial, the most demanding of my fifteen-year career. Interminable days in the courtroom, long nights and weekends at the office. Somewhere during that period, my relationship with Tom Rowan had come to an abrupt and catastrophic end.