Thief in Retreat

by Aimée; David Thurlo

  Barela gave her one of his professionally polite looks. “Okay, let’s move on. When was the last time you saw Bill alive?”

  “Last night, before ten. I met him in the main building while ghost-hunting with Tim Delancy. Bill was working in one of the rooms in the unrenovated section,” she said. “Then someone turned off the only working hall light and left us in the dark for a few seconds. Tim thought that maybe it was the ghost playing games, but Bill thought it might be a fault in the wiring, so he stayed behind to check the wall switches. That was the last time I saw him.” She omitted her suspicions that he’d purposely dropped his flashlight and allowed the ghost to escape. She had no proof of that, and in the light of day the whole thing seemed a bit silly. It was certainly nothing Barela would credit or respect.

  “All right, Sister Agatha, you can leave. But don’t discuss what happened here with anyone at The Retreat until I’ve spoken with every potential witness. Clear?“

  “Absolutely.” .

  Sister Agatha felt sorry for Ernie, Barela’s next witness. Since there was bad blood between them, the sheriff was unlikely to do the innkeeper any favors.

  Seeing Tom taking a close-up photo, she waited and, as soon as he finished, caught his attention. “Tell me if you find the lock picks I told you Bill kept in the secret drawer. I didn’t say anything about it to Sheriff Barela since I wasn’t really sure that’s what they were. But I noticed someone had pulled the drawer out, and it looked empty.”

  “We’ll be going through the gatehouse very carefully. I’ll let you know later on. But I will be passing that information on to JB if this is a murder scene.”

  “All right.” She started to turn around and go, but stopped in midstride and looked back at him. “There’s been another development—something I’d like to talk to you about. Come find me when you’re free.”

  “You’ve got it,” Tom said, then took a step away and began lining up the next shot.

  Sister Agatha walked back to the main house with Pax and went directly to the library. Sitting at the desk, she opened the monk’s journal that she’d been reading and tried to concentrate on that, hoping that reading about their trials and how they’d overcome them would bring her comfort. Not long afterward, she found a reference to the ghost but, oddly enough, the monk’s complaint was about the delicate rose scent that occasionally left the hallways smelling like women’s perfume. The monks had found it disturbing but, almost by general consensus, had finally decided to ignore it.

  She stopped reading. The scent of lilacs around the ghostly visits had been strong enough to give a normal person asthma. But with so many rosebushes surrounding the monastery, it didn’t seem likely that the monks had mistaken lilacs for roses. It made even less sense to think that a real ghost had changed her trademark perfume. And, more importantly, there had been no mention of thefts or pranks ascribed to their ghostly visitor in the old journal.

  As she considered what she’d learned, she set the monk’s journal down and began unpacking another crate. At the top were old cassocks and Mass vestments, but near the bottom she found a monstrance, the sacred vessel that carried the host in the procession, along with a hand-carved wooden cross, a wooden effigy of the Archangel Raphael, and a small but beautiful ceramic holy water font. The loved pieces had remained protected partly through careful packing and, she liked to think, partly through the intercession of the saints who watched over the monastery.

  Sister Agatha was sure that these were things the archbishop would want preserved, so after making notes, she took great care in repacking them, then attached a list of the contents to the outside. Last she used the two-wheel dolly to move the crate into a corner where it would be protected from random bumps.

  Intending to e-mail Sister Bernarda so she could make arrangements to have the valuables transported, she started to go to Ginny’s office, but before she’d even reached the door, Tom walked in.

  He looked tired and frustrated. “Sorry it took me so long to get away. JB’s out searching the banks of the river, so while he’s tied up, I thought you and I could talk.”

  She reached for the note and the small arrow and filled him in.

  “Too bad it doesn’t have enough surface for a fingerprint, but we’ll try anyway, and see if we can lift anything from the note,” Tom said. Lacking an evidence pouch, he wrapped them in a piece of muslin cloth Sister Agatha had discarded along with some other damaged packing material.

  “Heckuva way to deliver a message, wouldn’t you say? I think the little carved arrow has some additional meaning, too. I don’t think it was picked just because the writer didn’t have a thumbtack handy.”

  “You might be right, but I’m the wrong person to ask. If Barela’s done with him, Ernie Luna will be our best source.”

  They found Ernie chatting with guests in the great room, try-ing to reassure everyone that they were in no danger. When he saw Sister Agatha and Tom, he excused himself and led them to an enclosed alcove just off the lobby.

  Tom brought the innkeeper up to speed and showed him the small arrow. “Any idea where it came from?“

  Ernie started at it in surprise. “Wow. I wonder how the thief ever managed to find this.”

  “You know where it came from?“ Tom asked, wrapping the arrow and the note back up again before Ernie could touch either.

  “Yes, the arrow belongs to a small sculpture of Dona Sebas-tiana. Dona Sebastiana represents death. The sculpture itself isn’t particularly valuable because it was damaged and repaired. But that arrow comes from the bow and arrow Dona Sebastiana holds.”

  “So where is the sculpture now?“ Tom asked.

  “Last time I saw it, Ginny had stuck it in her office closet. It’s a skeleton figure wearing a dark robe and Ginny was creeped out by it. Ginny told me last night that she’d noticed it was missing, but she couldn’t say for how long. In all the hullabaloo this morning I forgot to mention it.” He paused then looked at Tom, then at Sister Agatha. “Are you going to tell Sheriff Barela?“ Ernie asked.

  Sister Agatha looked at Tom and saw him considering it. “I’m not going to mention it just yet,” he finally replied. “But I will tell him once we get past the preliminaries on the case involving Bill’s disappearance. He needs to know.”

  As Ernie returned to his guests, Tom glanced over at her. “I’d better be getting back to the gatehouse. There’s still work to be done. But the lock picks are definitely not there. Barela thinks that Bill might have had a weapon stashed in that drawer, and that he probably reached for it at some point during the confrontation.”

  “I didn’t see a weapon in there. Of course, that doesn’t mean Bill didn’t put one in later.” She paused briefly. “Tom, something about the scene at the gatehouse bothers me. The room didn’t look like the site of any real struggle. There was only one tipped-over chair, and nothing at all was broken. And there wasn’t much blood, either. Wouldn’t a knife or bullet wound leave more of a mess? There was no indication I could see that someone had tried to clean the place up afterward.”

  “The same thought occurred to me. But there’s still a lot of evidence to be checked. Maybe the victim got conked on the head unexpectedly. That wouldn’t necessarily leave a pool of blood, depending on the instrument used.”

  “True, but the whole thing doesn’t feel right—unless Bill staged the whole thing,” Sister Agatha said.

  “It’s too soon to conclude that. Let’s see what Barela turns up. Right now he’s out with a deputy he managed to round up and a state policeman searching along the banks of the river for a body. They figure that it should end up downstream from here, stuck on debris in the river. The current is swift but the river is shallow, so even if a corpse sank, it should still surface eventually.”

  She thought about Professor Lockhart’s body and shuddered.

  “Bodies in water are never a pretty sight,” he said as if reading her mind. He stared at some point across the room, lost in thought.

  “What’s
bothering you, Tom?“

  “I was just thinking that I promised Gloria I’d spend more time with her. I was supposed to take her out to a friend’s house for dinner tonight, but now I’m not going to be able to do that because I’m meeting with Barela. I’ve encouraged her to go without me, and I hope she does. She’s been getting too wrapped up in Ginny’s problems lately, and I don’t think that’s healthy for her.”

  “They’re good friends, so it’s inevitable,” Sister Agatha said.

  “That’s true, but Gloria has a habit of getting in over her head, and not knowing when to mind her own business. I wish you two were friends. Then you could talk to her for me.”

  “I’d be the last person she’d trust, Tom. She’s never forgotten that a lifetime ago you and I were close.”

  “A lifetime ago,” he said in a thoughtful voice. “Well put.”

  After Tom left, Sister Agatha sat at the desk and considered what to do next. Finally, putting thoughts of the threatening note out of her mind for the moment, she turned her attention to the mystery of Bill’s disappearance. Although Tom didn’t agree with her theory— at least not yet—she still wanted to investigate the possibility that Bill had faked his death. The first thing she’d need to do was find out how he might have pulled it off. She knew he could have purposely cut himself to provide the blood at the crime scene, but the question was, how to account for the drag marks?

  “I wish I could put myself in Bill’s shoes for a moment and think like him,” she muttered to Pax.

  Shoes ... Bill could have simply taken his own boots, filled them with rocks or sand, then dragged them behind himself to the river. But if that had been the case, the marks on the ground wouldn’t have been as deep as the ones left by a real 170-pound corpse.

  She wanted to test her theory, but she knew she’d need a helper—someone about the same size as Bill Miller. She’d barely completed the thought when Paul Whitman, the forest service employee she’d met earlier, knocked on the open library door.

  “Well, hello. Come in,” she said, then realized that her greeting was a bit too enthusiastic, considering that he was practically a stranger. But Paul’s arrival seemed almost providential.

  Paul’s expression was somber as he entered the library. “Have you heard that Bill Miller has disappeared and that the sheriff is questioning everyone? I wonder if this is linked to the death of that college art professor. This makes the mystery of the ghost pale by comparison—if you’ll pardon the choice of words.”

  He began to pace restlessly, but when he noticed Pax, he suddenly froze. “He’s not going to mind me being here, is he?“

  “Pax?“ She smiled and shook her head. “He’s as gentle as a lamb.”

  Once Paul was at ease, Sister Agatha invited the forest service employee to share some tea. “I’ve been working such long hours here that some kind soul started bringing me a pot every morning and evening,” she said, pointing to the corner table where her re-freshments were kept. “It’s there, along with my pitcher of water.”

  “That kind of service is really one of the best things about The Retreat,” Paul answered.

  As they sat sipping tea, Sister Agatha took advantage of the situation to ask a favor. “Paul, I was the one who discovered the crime scene at the gatehouse this morning while I was out walking Pax, and what I saw there has made me curious. I wonder if you would be willing to help me test a theory,” she said, and looked at him hopefully.

  He gave her a wary look in return. “What kind of theory? For-give my caution, Sister, but you remind me of my youngest daughter. She gets that same look on her face when she’s about to do something really off-the-wall.”

  “There shouldn’t be any risk involved in what I want to do,” she said reassuringly. Of course, if Tom or Sheriff Barela caught them, the fur would fly for sure.

  Sister Agatha convinced him to go to the gatehouse with her, and Pax accompanied them eagerly, clearly accepting the leash as a necessary evil. Verifying that Tom, Sheriff Barela, and his deputies were elsewhere, probably still searching for the body downstream or questioning guests at The Retreat, she led the way to the edge of the yellow tape perimeter and pointed to the drag marks on the earth.

  “See how shallow they are?“ she said. “The ground here is pretty soft, with a lot of decomposing pine needles and leaves and extra moisture still around from the late-summer rains. Don’t you think Bill’s body should have left deeper marks on the ground as it was dragged?“

  “Honestly? I haven’t got a clue, though your theory seems reasonable. There’s just no way to be sure.”

  “Of course there is,” she answered. “We can test it.”

  “How?“ Once again he eyed her with suspicion.

  “Let me drag you a short distance across a similar surface. You’re about Bill’s size,” she said.

  Paul gave her a surprised look, then burst out laughing. “I can see why you get along so well with those mystery writers, Sister. But this is reality, not fiction. You couldn’t drag me if you tried. I weigh close to one-eighty “

  “I’m stronger than 1 look. Will you let me try? Please?“ She emphasized the last word, knowing that most people she met found it hard to say no to a nun.

  “All right,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll lay down on the ground over there, beyond the trees. Let’s see how far you can drag me.”

  After approving the test site, Sister Agatha rolled up her sleeves, then grabbed Paul’s arms and lifted and pulled. Pax just sat there, cocking his head, as if he were trying to figure out what was going on. It was almost more than she could handle, but she managed to drag Paul several feet before she was forced to stop.

  “So ends the demonstration,” she said, out of breath. Together they looked at the heel marks on the ground, which were four or five inches deep, then they walked over to take another look at the marks leading from the gatehouse.

  “So now you know two things. Whoever dragged Bill must have been quite strong.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Either he lifted Bill’s body way up and pretty much carried him in a really awkward way so there wasn’t much weight on his dragging feet, or those marks were made by a much lighter person—or something else altogether. The ground looks like it’s basically the same hardness in both places, yet the marks your feet made created grooves several times as deep as the ones here.”

  “So you think maybe Bill wasn’t the victim here after all?“

  “I’m not sure yet, so I’d appreciate it if you would keep our little experiment to yourself, at least until I can decide what it means. Meanwhile, thanks for being such a good sport and helping me get these things straight in my mind.”

  Paul smiled. “You’ve certainly got a good imagination, Sister. And curiosity, too.” Paul looked at her with grudging admiration, then excused himself and walked back toward the inn.

  Sister Agatha took her own route back to the library courtyard, allowing Pax to wander to the end of the leash and explore as they went. Once she arrived at the library, she began her work cataloging, but Tom came to the door.

  “What are you doing back here? I thought you were going to be gone until late tonight,” she asked.

  “I came back early to see if I could mend things with Gloria. But she and Ginny went shopping in Santa Fe, then they’ll be having dinner with friends there.” He expelled his breath in a hiss. “Women!“

  “You didn’t expect her to just sit around twiddling her thumbs in the hope that you might return, did you? Be reasonable.”

  “It’s just... annoying,” he said. “I should have stayed with Sheriff Barela. He needed my help. This new case, on top of the investigation of the professor’s death, really strains his manpower. A murder investigation, maybe two ...”

  “Speaking of his most recent investigation ... there’s something I need to ask you. Were Bill’s boots still at the gatehouse when you searched the place?“

  “His boots?“ Seeing her nod, he shrugged. “As in the ones fo
und in that dresser? I don’t remember seeing them. Why do you ask?“

  She told him about her experiment with Paul Whitman. “The heel marks dug much deeper into the ground.”

  “Maybe the killer worked faster than you, and took more of the weight off the heels by lifting the body higher.”

  “If that’s the case, then you’d better search for someone who’s really tall and strong,” she said, “or someone Bill Miller might have dragged away who’s lighter and smaller than he is. Any sign of a body yet?“

  “No. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t test any more of your theories without me being there. There’s a murderer at work in this community, and he may be responsible for two deaths already. I don’t want you to become the third. You have some thefts to investigate. Leave the homicides to the police.”

  “I think I’m on target about this, Tom,” she insisted. “Bill’s alive. Take me to the gatehouse, will you? I want to see if Bill’s backpack is still there. When I was there the other night, it was in the closet packed with clothes, as if he’d been getting ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”

  “I don’t remember seeing a backpack in the closet or any-where else on the premises, but I guess it can’t hurt to take a look for the boots. The door’s still broken, so we don’t need a key, and the scene has already been processed, so we wouldn’t be jeopardizing the investigation. But I still don’t want you to touch anything while we’re in there, understood?“

  “Sure. That’s no problem.” She signaled to Pax, who came at once with his leash in his mouth. “By the way, what about the stolen folk art? Were any of the switched or missing pieces found at the gatehouse?“

  “No, and that I can tell you with absolute certainty. The thought occurred to me, too, and I searched for those myself when I went through the house with Barela. That’s why I’m almost certain the backpack wasn’t there—I would have checked inside anything big enough to contain the originals or any replicas.”