by Susan Hunter
“I understand.”
“Then you’ll drop this?”
“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t hurt Max for the world, but my family is just as important to me as yours is to you. And I need to find out what Sister Mattea wanted to tell me.”
The look on her face made it pretty clear it was just as well I hadn’t brought any of my Leah Nash Fan Club membership forms with me.
Five
My mother took off early Sunday morning to go antiquing with Paul Karr, so I was alone with the file that Coop had given me. Paul had been our family dentist forever. Then, after he and his wife Marilyn divorced a few years ago, he and my mother started seeing each other. He’s a nice guy; they seem to enjoy each other’s company, and that’s as far as I want to go in thinking about my mother’s romantic life.
With the house to myself, I sat at the bar and spread out the material. I looked over the crime scene photos, then put them in a pile turned upside down. They weren’t something I wanted to keep seeing. I settled in to go over the written summaries, most of which had enough misplaced modifiers and missing punctuation to make reading very slow going. Like most cops I’ve encountered, the sheriff’s department personnel were men of action, not words.
There were references to Lacey’s drug and alcohol use, her history of running away, the long string of minor and major infractions that ultimately led up to her placement at DeMoss. Charlie Ross, the lead investigator, had interviewed the school staff, my mother, me, Lacey’s old boyfriend, her roommate; but it was as clear now as it was to me then, that he was convinced Lacey had simply run away. And, I had to admit, I thought the same thing at the time.
As I read the reports filed after her body was found six months later, I grudgingly gave Ross a little credit. He had stepped up his game a bit. He re-interviewed witnesses and expanded the field to include a lot of the people who had been at the annual fund raiser held at the school that night. I knew many of the names: Miller Caldwell, his wife Georgia, Paul Karr and his then-wife Marilyn, Father Lindstrom, the priest at St. Stephen’s, Ellie’s bogeyman Reid Palmer, plus dozens of others, including most of the staff and many of the nuns.
And, of course, he had talked to the woman who found the body, Vesta Brenneman. Vesta is a local eccentric who lives in a tumbledown shack at the edge of town and spends most of her time pedaling around the county on an ancient Schwinn bicycle. Her little dog Barnacle sits in the bent metal basket attached to its handlebars. She found Lacey’s body on one of her rambles in early spring. A groundskeeper heard her screaming in the woods.
When he got there, she was at the bottom of the ravine, her dog going nuts, and Lacey’s body just feet away. But Vesta couldn’t tell them much, just kept repeating Bible quotes. The investigators at the scene surmised that Barnacle had gotten loose, and she’d gone after him, finding Lacey’s body in the process.
The follow-up reports were peppered with references to Lacey’s drug use, her past misdeeds, even the general character of the kids at DeMoss Academy. The contents of her purse were listed: the unmarked bottle of pills that turned out to be hydrocodone, a cell phone with no contacts or texts or anything useful on it, her wallet with only her ID and a few bucks, her MP3 player, a little sketchpad with some random drawings. Lacey liked to sketch and was almost as good at drawing as she was at singing.
Then I found what I was looking for. The revised statement from the last-minute mystery witness, Lacey’s roommate Delite Wilson. She reversed her earlier insistence that she had not seen Lacey that night and knew nothing about her disappearance. The second time around, she admitted that she and Lacey had snuck out to a party at the old Lancaster farm next to the Catherines’ property.
She said that Lacey was really upset and kept repeating she was going to get away from DumbAss Academy as soon as she could. At the party she got pretty wasted, pretty fast. When she wanted to leave, Delite wasn’t ready to go. Lacey got mad and took off on her own back toward the school.
“That’s the last I seen her. I figured she just did what she kept saying she was gonna do—took off. I couldn’t afford any more trouble. This is my last stop before juvie. But now I know she’s dead, well, like I had to come forward. Her family should know what happened. For closure, like.”
Delite named a college student who was working off community service hours tutoring at DeMoss as the source of her invitation to the party. When questioned, he denied inviting her, then confessed that he didn’t remember for sure; he’d told a lot of people about the party. He didn’t remember seeing Lacey there, but the party was pretty big and he didn’t know a lot of the kids who turned up. He offered up a few names, but police drew a blank there, too.
Most said they didn’t know Lacey; they didn’t recognize her picture either. A couple said maybe they talked to a girl who looked like her, but they couldn’t be certain. Not surprising. You put a bunch of drunk teenagers together and you’re not going to get much in the way of recall, especially six months later. Ross’s conclusion was that Lacey went to the party with Delite, got drunk, tried to walk home, slipped, fell, and died of head wounds and exposure.
But there was something in the file that didn’t quite fit. I skimmed the medical examiner’s report. Then I re-read the crime scene description, and then riffled back through the original report on Lacey’s disappearance. I stopped mid-paper shuffle as the doorbell chimed “I Will Survive.”
“Tu mamá is so cool.” Miguel stepped inside, but not before hitting the buzzer once more to fill the front hall with the ’70s anthem. Some days it was Gloria Gaynor, some days it was Motown or Carole King. After my mother installed a digital doorbell that used tunes from her MP3 player, there’d been no stopping her. Mom has always marched to a different drummer.
“At least she’s not here to bust out her disco moves.”
“C’mon. You know you love it. Hey, what are you doing, chica? I thought we were going to see Mama Mia at Himmel Tech. Abba? It doesn’t get better. What is all this stuff?” He pulled up a stool and picked up one of the crime scene photos, then quickly put it back.
“It’s the police report on Lacey. Coop got it from the sheriff’s department for me. I’m just trying to see if there’s anything…I don’t know…odd I guess.”
“Is there anything about your nun in there, Sister Mattea?”
“Not really.”
“So, maybe Max is right. There’s nothing to investigate?”
“Probably. Except there is one thing that’s bothering me a little. It’s not what’s there, it’s what isn’t there. The night Lacey disappeared, so did $1,500 from the administrative offices at DeMoss Academy—money from a raffle that should have been deposited but got left in an unlocked drawer instead. Everyone assumed Lacey stole the money to fund her runaway adventure.”
“So?”
“So, if Lacey took the money, where did it go? There’s no mention of it in the crime scene report, nothing about it in any of the follow up interviews after her body was found.”
“Maybe whoever found her body took the money.”
I shook my head. “Vesta found her. I’m not sure she even knows what money is. Besides, Lacey’s purse was under her body. There’s no way Vesta would have poked around to find it.”
“Maybe the deputy took it. Or maybe some pendejo found your sister and took the money and never reported the body?”
“That’s pretty cold.”
“It’s a cold world, chica. That’s why I got my friends to keep me warm.”
“There’s another possibility. Maybe Lacey didn’t take the money. Maybe that’s what Sister Mattea wanted to tell me. That there was one crappy thing my sister didn’t do. Like steal from nuns. One thing that wasn’t her fault, that she shouldn’t be blamed for.”
He nodded. “You could be right, chica. The money was gone, Lacey was gone, but there were a bunch of other mixed-up kids living there. Maybe one of them took the money, and when Lacey disappeared, they let her take the blame.”
/> “I think it’s worth checking out. It might be that whoever took it saw the light or found the Lord and confessed to Sister Mattea. Maybe they told her something else, something good about Lacey. And too bad if Max and Ellie think I’m obsessed for asking.”
“Hey, I’m with you, chica. Lacey, she’s your sister. She matters.”
On Monday, I talked to Sister Julianna to get some information for a fuller story on Sister Mattea’s death, but I didn’t mention anything about the note she’d left. I felt virtuous. Separation of the job and the personal—isn’t that what I told Ellie? Who said I wasn’t professional? And sensitive? Then we got so busy that I didn’t have time until the paper came out on Friday to follow up on my personal quest. Publication day always gives you a little breathing space at a weekly. No matter what happens, you still have six more days to get things together for the next edition. That afternoon I headed to the Catherines’ place about 10 miles from town.
The Daughters of St. Catherine of Alexandria order is actually headquartered in upstate New York where it runs a small Catholic college. A branch of the group wound up in Himmel in the late 1920s, after a benefactor gave the order 300 acres and a spare mansion. Her instructions were to set up a school for the faith formation of young women. The Catherines chose not to dwell on the source of the donor’s wealth, which was mostly amassed through illegal whisky runs from Canada during Prohibition.
The colonizing group that went west to Wisconsin did a pretty good business with a boarding school serving the daughters of the rich and Catholic for a number of years. But after Vatican II, the Catholic Church’s major rebooting of 2,000 years of tradition, their fortunes declined. Most religious orders lost numbers, and recruits were hard to come by. Boarding schools for young ladies also began to fall out of fashion, and the one-two punch forced the closure of the school.
The order replaced its long habits with more modern garb and sent its nuns to work in social agencies, schools and hospitals in the area, but membership continued to decline. After flailing about trying to find their niche in the world, the Catherines decided to return to a more traditional approach. The order abandoned pantsuits and social justice for traditional habits and semi-cloistered living. That move proved very appealing to some. Finances improved, the college in Brampton, New York, achieved greater stability, and the number of new entrants to the order itself began to rise.
Fortunes changed so dramatically that the Wisconsin site was not only maintained, but the school was reopened with a new mission thanks to an infusion of money from the alumna for whom the new institution was named. DeMoss Academy was established as a residential facility for troubled youth of both sexes and various income levels. Over the years it gained a reputation for achieving results with some hardcore kids. Just not Lacey.
The school grounds were beginning to show signs of spring as I turned through the entrance gates and onto the winding drive leading to the main part of the campus. Trees and bushes were sprouting buds and yellow daffodils poked up in flowerbeds. The paved road led me by the original mansion, which served as the convent, and past the main classroom facility for the 200 or so students in residence. Then a jog to the left took me past a chapel, a couple of dorms, and a counseling center, according to the signs. It looked like a prosperous New England prep school. Or, at least what I thought one looked like based on repeated viewings of Dead Poets Society.
The main artery, St. Catherine’s Way, ended at the central administration building, which housed the director and various staff. I walked through the door of the one-story T-shaped building and flashed a confident smile at the elderly nun sitting behind an enormous wooden desk in the center of the reception area.
Six
“I don’t have an appointment, but I wondered if Sister Julianna might be able to spare just a few minutes for me? It really won’t take long, Sister Margaret,” I said, glancing quickly at the nameplate in the corner of her desk.
“She’s in a meeting right now, but if you can wait a few minutes, she might be able to see you. She does have a little free time. That doesn’t happen very often. Are you a family member of one of our students?”
“Not a current student. My sister was Lacey Nash. I’m Leah Nash.”
“Oh, Lacey. Oh, yes.” Was that good or bad? Given Lacey’s track record, odds were on the “not good” side. I offered a neutral response.
“You remember her?”
“Of course. She was a lovely child and such a beautiful voice. She could sing like an angel. Are you a singer too, Miss Nash?” She settled back a little in her chair and perched her hands lightly on the desk, tilting her head slightly, her dark eyes as bright and blinking behind wire-rimmed glasses as a robin’s.
“Call me Leah, please. No, I’m afraid Lacey got all the musical talent in our family.”
“What was it you wanted to see Sister Julianna about, dear?”
“It sounds a little weird, I know, after all this time, but I’d like to talk to her about Lacey.”
“Not weird at all. When someone so young dies, it’s very hard to let go. Death is something we’re built to resist, even though it opens the door to all that we’ve been living for. I’m sure you know we just lost one of our own far too young. Sister Mattea,” she said, her eyes dimming a little with tears.
“I’m so sorry for your loss. I knew Sister Mattea a little. I’ve been wondering if she knew Lacey—though she never mentioned it to me.”
“Oh, I doubt she did, dear. Sister Mattea was working on her MBA when your sister arrived. She wasn’t working with our students at all.”
“I didn’t know she had a business degree.”
“Whip smart she was. I was so happy when she was named Sister Julianna’s assistant director. Sister Julianna works far too hard, does everything here, academics, student discipline, finances. Sister Mattea was so enthusiastic, so eager to lift some of that burden. She did so much in the two short months before she died. She would have been Sister Julianna’s successor someday, no doubt about it.”
“I didn’t realize she had such an important job at DeMoss.”
“Oh, yes. And so many plans she had. Right away she got working on a surprise for Sister Julianna. She got her brother to donate some big wheelie dealie software to revolutionize—that’s what she said ‘revolutionize’—our accounting system. To hear her tell it, that new program would do reports, fraud audits, inventory control, time sheets, payroll, and then shine your shoes for Sunday Mass. She was so excited to do that for Sister Julianna. She was such a dear girl, a wonderful person. And a real firecracker too.”
She laughed and repeated, “Oh, a real firecracker. It seems so unfair. Ours is not to question God’s ways, but I confess I have raised an objection over this one.” She was quiet for a minute and so was I. Then I brought the conversation back to Lacey.
“Sister, I feel the same way about Lacey. She was so young. It seems unfair that she didn’t really get a chance to turn her life around. I’m just trying to understand. What do you remember about the day she disappeared?”
“I recall that Friday very well. Very well. It was the same day Mary disappeared.”
“Another student took off when Lacey did?” I asked in surprise.
Inexplicably, Sister Margaret chuckled. “No, no. I meant Mary, the Virgin Mary. The statue I kept on my desk.”
“I’m not sure I – ?”
“I’m being a little silly, I know. But I loved that statue. It belonged to my dear father. Large and clumsily made, but in its own way, rather beautiful. For all it was a bit battered with the years. Had a long white scratch at the base. I was going to have it fixed, then I thought no, it’s just like Papa. Because aging gave him character and it gave my Mary statue character too.
“Anyway, she was there when I left for the day, I’m sure, because it was a very difficult day and I gave her a little pat on the hand like I did sometimes, just for a bit of comfort when things had been especially trying. The next afternoon whe
n I came in, I noticed right away she was gone.”
I wanted to get her off the Virgin Mary track and back to Lacey, but then I thought maybe the best way to get her to tell me what I wanted was to listen to what she wanted to talk about first. So I nodded.
“There was a lot of hubbub that day. Sister Julianna thought one of the cleaning staff or a visitor must have broken it and thrown it away. But I don’t see how it could have broken, really. It was heavy enough to stop a door. It was marble, you see. I had one of the younger nuns look through the trash bins, but it wasn’t there. No, I suspect one of the students took it for a prank, and with all the commotion, forgot about it. Strange that young people feel things so deeply, but they’re so often careless about the feelings of others, isn’t it?”
I nodded again, then made an effort to get the conversation back where I wanted it to go. “So, you were saying things were very intense the day Lacey disappeared?”
“Oh yes, that was a wild and wooly day. We had intake for three new students and one of them was very unhappy to be here, and there was a little ruckus. Actually, he turned out to be one of our best students. He just graduated last year and—”
“And so there were lots of things going on. Did you see Lacey that day?”
“Yes, I did. She came in to see Sister Julianna, and she sat right over there waiting. She had her little sketchpad with her. I remember that because she drew a little picture of me and gave it to me. Not the most flattering I must say, but the young are fearless truth-tellers, aren’t they?” She gave a rueful grin, and I had to smile back even though I was anxious for her to get on with the story.
“Anyway, it was such a busy day Sister was running behind. We had the annual fundraiser that night and that is always a command performance. All hands on deck. Everyone was running around like crazy getting ready, and all staff had to be there. And then as I said, there was all the ruckus with the student and such a to-do, and Sister Julianna needed copies made for the Board packets. And I can tell you that old copier was just one step above a mimeograph machine. And she was getting quite impatient and—”
