Dangerous Habits

by Susan Hunter

  I felt a flutter of sympathy for Sister Julianna.

  “Yes, well, it sounds like a lot of commotion that day. But you said Lacey was here. Do you know why?”

  Sister Margaret seemed a little flustered as she tried to bring herself back from the meandering story I’d interrupted.

  “Ah, well, I think Sister Julianna wanted Lacey to sing at St. Catherine of Alexandria’s feast day. Our order is named after her, you know, and we always have a big celebration on her saint’s day. But then what with all the commotion and things, Sister Julianna didn’t get to see her at all. I think your sister was a little upset, and she slipped away. If I had known it was the last time I’d see her, well I—’’ she paused as though trying to think of exactly what she would have done.

  “Well, I don’t know, but you like to think you could have done something, said something that would have made a difference, don’t you? I tell you, I usually count every day a blessing—at my age you have to. But that day—well, that was one of the worst days I’ve had since I started work here as receptionist and that’s been almost 15 years.”

  The door to the director’s office opened then with a sharp click. A slender middle-aged man with close-cropped dark hair emerged and walked toward the desk. He wore an expensive looking gray suit, a shirt so white it seemed to glow, and a navy tie patterned with tiny gold fleur-de-lis.

  “Sister Margaret,” he said, with a nod and a quizzical look at me. He smelled of some expensive and very subtle men’s cologne that made me want to lean in for another whiff.

  “Mr. Palmer!” she said with obvious pleasure. “I didn’t know that was you with Sister Julianna. How are you today?”

  “Well, Sister Margaret. Extremely well.” His voice was tinged with a slight Southern drawl. He wasn’t much taller than me, and as he turned my way I saw that his eyes were an unusual silvery blue. The contrast with his dark brows and dark lashes was disconcerting. “And you are?”

  “Oh, my manners. Mr. Palmer, this is Leah Nash. Leah, this is our Board Chairman, Mr. Reid Palmer. Leah is the sister of one of our former students, Lacey Nash. She was also a friend of Sister Mattea’s.”

  “Ah. Pleasure, Miss Nash,” he said, taking my hand in a light but firm grasp, then quickly letting go.

  “Leah is here to get some closure. You remember the story of poor Lacey, I’m sure. Sister Mattea’s death brought back the memories for Leah,” Sister Margaret happily volunteered for me before I could speak.

  “Yes, well—” I said, trying to stem the information flow, but Palmer jumped in himself.

  “Closure. Ah. A worthy goal, but one that I have found most difficult to achieve. I wish you success in your quest, Miss Nash.” His speech was oddly formal, but appealing. I quashed the sentiment as I remembered that this was the man who stood between Max and his dreams. But he did smell really, really good.

  “Thank you.” We looked at each in silence and then he said—perhaps to stave off another tidal wave of chatter from Sister Margaret— “I must be going. Wonderful to see you, Sister Margaret. Delighted to meet you, Miss Nash.” With a nod of his head, he was gone.

  “Such a kind man. He’s a very good friend to DeMoss Academy. Very good. Of course, his grandmother gave the money that reopened the school. I don’t know what Sister Julianna would do without his advice. Well, I do know. We were that close to closing the one time, just before he came on the Board.” She held up thumb and forefinger with an infinitesimal gap to demonstrate just how near to the financial edge the school had been.

  “Really? I thought your order had loads of money.”

  “Not us. That’s the motherhouse in Brampton,” she said with an unexpected note of tartness in her voice. “We’re responsible for our own funding to keep the school open. It was touch and go there for a while. Then Mr. Palmer stepped in and set things right. And they’ve been right ever since.”

  Riding to the rescue didn’t sound much like the action of a rampant capitalist ready to grind Max’s business under his heel. “Mr. Palmer is a pretty good guy then?”

  “The best. As I say, everything has been right as rain since Mr. Palmer took over on the Board. Now, that’s not a criticism of Sister Julianna, she just has so much on her plate. She travels so much you know, always presenting papers and making speeches all over the country at conferences and such. She’s very high up in her profession. Just last month she—”

  “I’m sorry, Sister Margaret, but do you think Sister Julianna might have time to see me now?” I interrupted as gently as I could, afraid that I’d miss the narrow window of opportunity to talk to the director.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Let me just pop in and ask her.” She sprang lightly from her chair and hopped with quick little steps to the office, tapped on the door and went in. Within seconds she came out smiling.

  “Go right in. Sister can give you a few minutes.”

  Seven

  I had met Sister Julianna at Lacey’s funeral and saw her again briefly when I attended the rosary for Sister Mattea. She was about my height, 5’ 7” or so, and her perfect posture made her seem even taller. Her jaw was square, her nose short and straight. Her eyes, the color of cognac, were warm as she smiled and stood up to greet me. But when the smile left, the warmth was replaced by something in her gaze that made it clear she’d have no problem keeping a school of tough kids in line.

  She took my hand in both of hers and gave it a light squeeze with long cool fingers before releasing it and gesturing toward a chair opposite her desk.

  “Please, sit down. I want to thank you again for the lovely obituary you wrote for Sister Mattea.”

  “You’re welcome. Thank you for seeing me without an appointment.”

  “What can I do for you, Leah?”

  “This might sound odd,” I began, feeling less certain of my mission under her intent gaze. “But I’ve been thinking a lot about my sister lately, and it’s because of Sister Mattea. I have to ask, was there a connection between them?”

  She looked surprised. “Not that I know of. I’m not even sure they knew each other. Sister Mattea was finishing her studies, traveling back and forth to school. She wasn’t assigned to any direct student contact at the time Lacey was here. Why?”

  “She left a message for me before she died. I think she was trying to tell me something about Lacey’s death.”

  “A message? What kind of message?”

  I explained about the note and the clipping in the book. She listened attentively, then drew a breath and sighed.

  “Leah, I’m so sorry that Sister Mattea’s death has stirred up painful memories for you, but whatever she may have wanted to ask or tell you, I’m sure it wasn’t about your sister. How could it be?”

  “I know it seems unlikely. But there is the thing with the money.”

  “Money?”

  “The $1,500. You told the investigator, Detective Ross, that the day Lacey disappeared, $1,500 went missing from the school. But if Lacey took the money, where was it when her body was found? Couldn’t Sister Mattea have found out something about that—that Lacey didn’t take it, maybe she was just a scapegoat for one of the other kids? Or, maybe there was something else that she had learned, maybe she found something of Lacey’s, or one of the students confided something to her—”

  She raised a hand. “Leah, I’m afraid there isn’t any mystery, but I’m not sure it will help to tell you what I know.”

  “But it will, Sister. I really need to hear it.”

  “All right, Leah, if that’s what you want.” She sounded reluctant but resigned.

  “Early the morning of the day Lacey disappeared, Father Hegl reported to me that he had found her lurking around the dispensary. It looked to him like she was trying to get into the locked prescription drug cabinet. She denied it. She told him she was just looking for the nurse, but he felt she wasn’t telling the truth. I called her into the office immediately.”

  She stopped for a minute as though gathering her thoughts,
then looked directly at me again.

  “I was very stressed that day. It was the annual fund raiser as well as the Board meeting. There was a great deal to be done. I’ve gone over the events in my mind several times. I do believe I handled it as well as possible given everything that was going on.”

  “What? What did you do?”

  “I was very direct. I told Lacey about Father’s suspicions and that she would be required to undergo regular drug screening and increased counseling sessions. She became very angry and stormed out of the office. On a normal day, I would have gone after her immediately, but there were so many issues that morning.”

  “Wait. So, you did actually see her, speak to her?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But Sister Margaret said Lacey was waiting for you and that she left without seeing you. She said you wanted to talk to Lacey about singing for St. Catherine’s feast day.”

  She hesitated as though searching for the right words. “Sister Margaret is very important to us here, but as she’s gotten older, she’s become less—discreet. I may have implied to her that the meeting was about Lacey singing for us. Your sister did have a remarkable voice. But that wasn’t the topic we discussed. Sister’s recall isn’t always reliable, and in the five years since Lacey’s disappearance, she’s obviously confused her memories. It was a very chaotic day.”

  “I see. So, you told Lacey you were on to her, and she got belligerent and left.”

  “Yes. I think it’s only logical to believe that Lacey took the money. It was in an unlocked cupboard behind Sister Margaret’s desk. Another example, I’m afraid, of Sister’s memory problems. It should have been deposited in the bank, not left to tempt the students.

  “As for why it wasn’t found with her body—she was at a drinking party and in a highly intoxicated state. She could have given the money to someone, or bragged about having it and someone at the party took it from her. Does it matter now? Frankly, the money was the least of our concerns, and I would think of yours as well.”

  “I’m not ‘concerned’ about the money. I just think it’s odd that Lacey would have lost $1,500 without leaving the grounds.”

  “Perhaps she connected with her supplier.”

  “You say that like you know she had one.”

  “We know that there were no drugs missing from the clinic, yet there was hydrocodone found in her purse. And we don’t know how long she’d been pursuing her prescription drug habit.”

  “If that’s true, she must have been getting them from someone here.”

  “Our staff are screened and the students are monitored. But we can’t prevent every breach. We’re not a maximum security prison, Leah. You’ll see no armed guards or barbed wire fences here.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Do you know who her supplier was?”

  She leaned forward and brought her fingertips together, pressing them against her mouth and the tip of her nose, her elbows resting on her desk. She looked at me as though weighing carefully what she was going to say.

  “After Lacey’s body was discovered, our head maintenance man, Leon Greer, came to me and admitted that he had hired a temporary grounds employee without vetting him to help with fall clean up.”

  “And?”

  “He was fired a few days after Lacey left when Leon found him smoking marijuana on the grounds. Sometime later he heard that the man had been arrested on a drug charge. When Lacey’s death became known, and the paper reported her drug use, Mr. Greer became concerned that this Cole person may have been her supplier.”

  “Cole? Not Cole Granger? Lacey’s boyfriend?”

  “Yes. I believe that was his name.”

  “He’s the one who got her using in the first place. What were you thinking?”

  “I didn’t even know he had worked here until Leon informed me. And I certainly didn’t know anything about his history with drugs.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Of course I did. I called Detective Ross. He investigated and later assured me that Mr. Granger had denied being her supplier, and that his time the night Lacey disappeared was accounted for.”

  “Sister Julianna, Charlie Ross couldn’t investigate his way out of a roundabout.”

  “Leah,” she said in a patient voice, “You’re playing a guessing game in which there are no answers. I’ve worked with troubled children and their families for many years, and I’ve seen this sort of thing before. The desperate need to find a reason, the refusal to accept that not everyone can be saved. I understand why you came, but believe me when I tell you that refusing to face facts won’t change them.”

  “Why didn’t you call at the time and tell my mother and me that Lacey was suspected of trying to steal drugs? That seems like a pretty big thing to ignore.”

  “I didn’t ignore it, Leah. I would have informed your mother, of course, but Lacey disappeared the day Father Hegl came to me. I would never have called without gathering all the facts. Then, when she ran away, or we thought she had, there seemed no point in further upsetting you or your mother. Without drug testing, I had no proof. It was a suspicion, but there were no drugs missing. In hindsight, I can see that may have been an ill-advised kindness.”

  “Sometimes kindness is just a cover for what’s convenient. Maybe it wouldn’t be so good for word to get out that prescription drugs were getting passed around, and donated money was getting stolen by kids that are supposedly rehabilitated.” OK, so that wasn’t exactly fair, but her refusal to even consider that Lacey wasn’t the culprit was making me mad.

  She stood up then, saying, “I really am sorry for your pain, Leah, and I understand it. We’ve just lost a sister, too. But I can’t agree with your theory that Lacey was wrongly accused. I don’t see what more I can say. I’ll continue to keep you and your mother in my prayers.” She walked over and opened the door. Clearly, this interview was over.

  I stood up. “Sister, Cole Granger is a known drug dealer. If Lacey was back on drugs, he was the logical supplier. And if you’re wrong and Lacey wasn’t using again and didn’t take the money, I’d really like to know that. I’d think you would, too. Thanks for your time.” With that, I walked through the door, nodded to Sister Margaret, and left the building.

  I yanked open my car door and dropped down onto the seat. I hate being condescended to and, in my book, Sister Julianna was the patron saint of patronization. I pulled out my cell and punched Coop’s speed dial number.

  “Is Cole Granger still in town?”

  “Yeah. He got a job at Jorgenson’s Tire. Been there awhile, ever since he got out of jail. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Gotta go. Thanks.”

  All right, that would be my next stop. Right after I had a chat with Father Hegl. I rolled down the window and asked a passing staff member where I could find him. Per instructions I took the first turn to the left, and a short way down the graveled side road, I spotted a small bungalow. As I pulled in the driveway, a man in sweatshirt and jeans rounded the corner of the house carrying a rake.

  “Father Hegl?” I asked, leaning out the car window.

  “That’s right,” he said, walking toward me and smiling. “How can I help you?”

  “I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes,” I said, getting out. “I’m Leah Nash. Lacey Nash was my sister.”

  He looked puzzled and something else—uncomfortable, maybe?

  “Really, it won’t take long.”

  He hesitated still.

  “Please? It’s important to me.”

  “All right. Come on in.” He leaned his rake against the side of the house, and led me through the front door and into a large living room. The first thing I noticed—it would be hard not to—was a floor-to-ceiling shelf on the west wall, filled not with books but with the largest collection of kitschy religious statues I’d ever seen.

  “Wow.”

  “A little overwhelming, isn’t it?” He flashed a disarming grin. “It started as a joke
gift from my sister when I entered the seminary. She gave me that little dashboard Jesus up there in the corner. Then, over the years, people kept adding to it. Now, it’s a kind of competition among friends and family to see who can gift me with the most garish saint.”

  There must have been dozens of plaster, plastic, wooden, marble, painted, carved, cast statues. Most that I could see were hideous.

  “Who’s winning? The contest, I mean. There’s some seriously wrong stuff up there.”

  “It’s ongoing. And I guess it could be worse. She could have started me a Beanie Baby collection.”

  I liked the way the corners of his mouth turned up when he smiled and his blue-green eyes crinkled at the corners. He had light brown hair that fell casually onto his forehead and gave him that boyish appearance a lot of women like. He looked a few years older than me, maybe late 30s. He pointed me toward a worn leather chair, sat down himself in its counterpart, and waited for me to begin.

  “Father, I was speaking to Sister Julianna , about my sister Lacey’s death—”

  “Sister Julianna sent you here?”

  “Not directly.” I explained to him about my failure to connect with Sister Mattea before she died, and the cryptic message I was trying to decipher, and my puzzlement over the missing $1,500. I may have implied that Sister Julianna was as intrigued by the mystery as I was.

  “Sister Julianna seems convinced that Lacey was using drugs again, based in part on your story about finding Lacey trying to break into the dispensary drug cabinet.”

  “It’s not a story, Leah. It’s what I saw. And I was very sorry to see it. Your sister had a lot of promise. A beautiful voice, one of the best I’ve ever coached. I tried to get her to join our choir. We perform nationally, you know. But I’m afraid she wasn’t ready to give up the things that brought her here.”