Then There Were Nun

by Dakota Cassidy

  If Higgs was the killer, I was going to have a hard time convincing anyone this saint was guilty even if I found hardcore evidence to the contrary.

  Yet, I found myself warmed by Knuckles’s own confession of community service. In fact, it made me smile. “How long have you lived here, Knuckles?”

  “In Oregon? About half my life. I was raised in Bend, moved to LA to do celebrity tats when I was in my mid-twenties, moved back a year or so ago because I couldn’t spend another second under that infernal sun. All that bright light gets old after a while. Discovered I missed the heck outta the rain. So after my wife Candice died, I packed up Biscuits and Noodles in their carriers, kissed my granddaughter and my little girl goodbye—who’s your age, by the way—put my house up for sale, got in my car and drove home to my folks—who are still spry and active as ever in their eighties. Figured it out from there.”

  “You have a daughter and a granddaughter?”

  He grinned as broadly as I’d ever seen him, the wrinkles by his sharp eyes deepening. “Yep. My Gwyneth and my little petunia, Starla. I fly back and forth to see ’em twice a month on the weekends. Miss ’em like crazy, though. Gwen’s the one who suggested I should move back here. She knew how much I missed Candice and tattooing. So she told me to go find my smile again.”

  Then he pointed to yet more pictures of himself with a tall, thin beauty with hair as dark as coal and a tiny girl of maybe three or so with dark curly hair and a killer smile on her chubby cheeks.

  As I stared at the pictures once more, I asked, “And Biscuits and Noodles are?”

  “I like biscuits and noodles,” Coop proclaimed, patting her non-existent belly and making me chuckle softly.

  He grinned at Coop, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. “I do, too. That’s where I found them. At a place in LA that sells the some of the best biscuits and noodles. Anyway, they’re my cats,” he said proudly, pointing to a picture on the whitewashed buffet positioned behind the dining room table.

  Eyeing the picture in the silver frame, I smiled at the two cats, sitting side by side on a rather elaborate cat condo. One the color of midnight, and the other a calico. “They’re beautiful. Where are they?”

  He hitched his jaw over his shoulder. “In the other room. Takes ’em a while to get used to new people. They’ll come out when they’re ready. Until then, got any more ideas about who killed Fergus?”

  “Trixie Lavender!” Coop popped up from her chair, her eyes closer to flashing excitement than I’d seen thus far. “The man outside the store yesterday. Remember him? You were going to give him your leftovers from lunch but he was gone when we came back.”

  My eyes opened wide. “Omygosh, that’s right!”

  There’d been a homeless man parked right outside the shop as we were all leaving, with Fergus just ahead of us. He’d asked for money, but I’m more inclined to offer a hot meal due to the fact that money can be used for things that won’t nourish your body, if you know what I mean, but I would have given him my leftovers had he been there when we’d returned.

  As I remembered his hand when he’d stuck it out toward me, not nearly as weathered as I would have expected from someone who lived on the streets—especially after this past winter—I remembered the coat he was wearing. Far too warm for the weather we were having, despite the rain yesterday and early this morning.

  It was a navy pea coat, tattered, spots of grease along the lapel with a tear right above the first button. Beneath, he wore a dirty white thermal shirt covered in dark stains, and shorts—he’d been wearing red basketball shorts. He’d had a green backpack slung over his arm and a hat like Gilligan wore on the show. His attire added up to an odd combination of outerwear, but he might not be too difficult to find if we were going to pursue this to the question phase of things.

  Maybe he’d been there when Higgs and Fergus argued and he’d heard something we didn’t—or something Higgs didn’t want to confess?

  Coop voiced my thoughts. “Bet he won’t be too hard to find with that hat he had on. Should we go look for him—maybe under the bridge? Do you want me to hunt him? Maybe he heard something when Fergus McDuff argued with the man who runs the homeless shelter?”

  I gave her the warning look; the one that said there’d be no hunting today because when Coop said hunt, she literally meant track, locate, accost her prey.

  “No. Instead, I’m going to text Detective Primrose this information. I’d forgotten all about him, Coop. Good detecting. Soon you’re going to be as good at this as Stevie.”

  “Who exactly is Stevie?” Knuckles asked then cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind me asking. If it’s private, no sweat.”

  Coop came very close to what one could call animated when she answered him. “Stevie is my friend. She said we’d always be friends. Always-always.”

  Knuckles cocked his head momentarily before he smiled warmly at Coop. A gesture I felt sure meant he didn’t quite understand her almost emotionless words or her odd way of addressing people, but he did understand her fierce loyalty, and that made not only my heart swell, but my beginning affection for him grow.

  If we were to work with other people, rent out spaces at Inkerbelle’s or whatever, they needed to understand Coop’s brisk nature and her idiosyncrasies.

  “That’s really cool, Coop. There’s nothin’ like a good friend. Nothin’.”

  Grinning at him, I pulled the laptop closer. “Stevie is someone who was very good to us back in a place called Ebenezer Falls. She’s an amazing human being,” I expounded without revealing too much just yet.

  “So are we going to talk to the homeless guy?” he asked, folding his hands together.

  A shiver ran up my spine. The last time we’d become embroiled in a murder investigation, we’d almost ended up dead after a tussle with the killers. This time, we weren’t suspects, but the urgency of settling this weighed heavy on me due to the store’s opening.

  As in, we needed to open it ASAP.

  “We’ll see. But for now, look at this.” I pointed to Fergus’s neck and the scratch marks. “That looks intentional, don’t you guys think? Like someone carved it into his skin on purpose.”

  Knuckles, big guy that he was, shivered. “Pretty intense, but I think you’re right.” Then he ran his hand over the bushy hair on his chin. “You know what it looks like, don’t you?”

  “A hashtag or a tic-tac-toe board,” I muttered.

  I’d been so caught up in taking pictures of Fergus that, while I’d noted the marks and remembered wondering if this was some sort of serial killer calling card, what the scratches resembled only just now registered.

  Knuckles dropped his palm down on the table, making the plastic container of pho bounce. “Yep. That’s it, for sure.”

  Coop leaned over and looked at the picture, squinting as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “It looks like it was done in a rush, too.”

  I cocked my head. Certainly whoever had killed Fergus wouldn’t want to hang around, but I wondered what led Coop to make that observation. “Why do you say that?”

  She tapped the picture and pursed her lips. “Look at the lines. They’re all symmetrical but the last one.” She dragged a finger over the final line intersecting the two vertical ones. “It’s shorter and wobblier.”

  “Okay. An interesting point,” I muttered as I stared at the picture. A point I don’t think I’d have caught if not for her. I grabbed my laptop to scroll through the pictures to see if we had a better one of Fergus’s neck. “So what do you think it means? Is it some kind of sign? Have there been other murders with this symbol carved into the victims? Because it definitely looks intentional. We’re new to Cobbler Cove, Knuckles. Hear about any serial killers on the loose around here?”

  He grimaced and scratched his ear. “Not that I know of.”

  Helpful tattoo artist is helpful. I sighed as I googled the word hashtag, but not much came up except for the definition and something having to do with the show Psych called the Hashta
g Killer.

  “Stevie was really good at this,” Coop commented, pushing around some noodles on her plate with her chopsticks.

  “But Stevie isn’t here, Coop.”

  “So this Stevie… What’s she good at besides being your friend?” Knuckles inquired, his eyebrow raised in question.

  Coop gave him one of her deadpan looks. “Finding murderers.”

  Oh, holy ham and cheese. Now we were going to have to explain this wasn’t our first rodeo with a dead landlord.

  “So you’ve done this before? Solved a murder?” His tone said he was intrigued, his eyes said “maybe I’ve made a mistake.”

  A chill raced up my spine and spread over my arms. We needed Knuckles on our side, not terrified to be in the same room with us. I gave Coop my “stop talking” look and decided to answer his question head on.

  Were he so inclined, he could easily look us up on the Internet and find out what we’d been involved in back in Eb Falls. This question had come up a little sooner than I’d anticipated. Of course, I’d eventually have shared it with him, but now it was go big or go home.

  “Well, we didn’t really solve a murder. I guess Stevie didn’t either, truthfully. She sort of fell into the answer to the puzzle. But she’s solved other crimes.” I held up a hand. “I’m getting off track. Forgive me. Yes. We’ve been part of a murder investigation, and in order to save ourselves from prison, we had to find out whodunit.”

  His look was as blank as the pages of my sketchbook lately.

  “Wanna know who the murder victim was?”

  “Is it going to be like your story about why you left the convent?”

  I fought a snort and sat up straight. “Sort of. But outlandish in a different, maybe more ironic way.”

  His head bobbed up and down. “Then yep. I want to know.”

  “Okay, but remember, you wanted to know…”

  His lips tilted upward a little as he folded the tops on the cartons of food. “I do. Was it somebody famous? Or a politician, maybe?”

  “Nope. It was our landlord.”

  Chapter 6

  “Well, at least he didn’t boot us out on our butt-ox.”

  I burst out laughing as we drove back to the motel, the sun only just now beginning to set at almost nine in the evening. One of the million things I loved about summer.

  I crossed my eyes at her and giggled. “It’s buttocks, Coop. All one word. And really, buttocks?”

  She shifted in her seat to face me, the fading sun kissing her model-like cheekbones, her brow creased. “Isn’t that the right word?”

  “It’s definitely the right word. It’s a little formal. You could just say butt. Or backside, even.”

  “Or arse!” Livingston said on a rumbly chuckle, clearly pleased with himself for his contribution to our conversation.

  I made a face and wrinkled my nose in distaste. “Are you still learning new words, Coop?”

  “I am. I study Webster’s Dictionary online every day. I’m up to the letter P. Today I learned palpebrate.”

  “Wow. Sounds like something you catch in a public pool,” I joked, pulling onto the highway.

  “How do you catch a public pool?” Coop pondered, her interest clearly genuine.

  My favorite owl rasped an annoyed sigh. “Ya can’t, goose. And it means eyelids, or rather that ya have eyelids, lass,” Livingston provided.

  I eyed him from my rearview mirror. “Are you learning the dictionary with Coop, too, buddy?”

  “Hah. Not on purpose, mind ya. I’m forced to hear her drone on and on while she studies, stuffed in this cage the way I am. Sometimes I pick up a ting or two in the learnin’. None of it worth a hornswaggle, mind ya. I’m not allowed to talk to anyone, as per your orders. Remember?”

  Coop turned around and stuck her finger in Livingston’s cage, something she did quite often. “You’re not allowed because humans will be afraid of you. There are no talking owls in the history of owls ever, Quigley Livingston. We’d stick out like a sore finger—”

  “Thumb. Stick out like a sore thumb,” I corrected.

  “Yes. That. And you should pay closer attention to the words I’m learning, my feathered friend. It’s important we learn all things human.”

  He hooted in response (and if you listened closely enough, you’d hear the sarcasm in it, the way I did). “Have ya heard a single soul use the word palpebrate in a sentence since we’ve been here with the infernal humans, Coopie?”

  “No, but it can’t hurt to expand your mind, Livingston. Knowledge is a good thing. It’s useful. I want to be useful.”

  “But must ya learn it all in one day, lass?”

  Coop turned back around, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she stared straight ahead and folded her arms over her chest.

  “Are you afraid you’re going to miss something, Coop?” I knew my demon pretty well by now. Coop was mostly an open book, and one of her biggest fears was being shipped back to Hell—in a handbasket—a phrase she’d begun to use the moment she’d heard it on some show she’d been watching.

  “Maybe,” was all she offered from tightly compressed lips.

  Coop didn’t like to show any kind of fear, big or little. It left her feeling vulnerable, not to mention weak in front of her superiors in Hell. Her words.

  “Coop… Talk to me. Remember what I said about keeping everything bottled up?” I nudged, shooting her a glance of sympathy, my heart aching for the uncertainties she kept deep within.

  “Then yes. I want to learn everything so if I have to go back to Hell someday, I’ll have knowledge on my side.”

  “For all the good knowin’ what the fiddle-dee-fee palpebrate means. Ya won’t have to worry ’bout your eyelids because Satan will surely burn ’em off after ya betrayed him by escapin’—and he’ll take me wit ya.”

  “Livingston!” I admonished, glaring at him in the rearview mirror. “No one’s going back to Hell. Not as long as I’m around, okay? Now knock off all the doom and gloom, both of you, and let’s focus on this murder.”

  Livingston shifted in his cage, his gray speckled wings flexing and rustling against the bars. “What’s there to focus on, lass? Did ya suddenly become Sherlock Holmes? Nice bloke, by the way.”

  “You knew Sherlock Holmes?” I paused with a frown. “Wait, is he in Hell?”

  “’Course I did. Fine chap he was.”

  “Livingston is pulling the wool over your head, Trixie. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the fictional character Sherlock Holmes. Livingston knew the pretend Sherlock Holmes. That one came from Queens, New York, and he was quite cruel. And he picked his nose. He was not a fine chap at all.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Livingston and squeezed the steering wheel. “He’s pulling the wool over my eyes, Coop. And no, Livingston. I’m not Sherlock Holmes. I’m just trying to hurry things along so we can get into the store. The sooner we get into the store, the sooner we open shop. We need to open soon.”

  “Do you think Knuckles is still going to want to work for us, now that he knows this is the second landlord we’ve killed?”

  I rolled my eyes. “We didn’t kill either one of them, Coop. Don’t say that out loud.”

  “But what if he thinks we did. What if, deep down, he thinks we’re murderers?” The worry in her voice was something new.

  I wasn’t sure if humanizing her, so to speak, teaching her how to have empathy and morals and all the things a kind human should have, was actually a good thing, because along with those emotions came doubt and fear.

  So I set out to soothe her with a gentler word. “I think he was just a little rattled…”

  Poor Knuckles. Just when I’d thought he was at peace with who we were, we lambasted him with another surprise. I think that ended up being the icing on his acceptance cake. After we told him our previous landlord was dead, too, he grew very quiet. That made me sad. We never even had the chance to meet his cats…

  And that’s not to say he wasn’t a complete gentleman, but his silen
ce left me feeling uncomfortable. In light of the fact that I couldn’t do anything but tell him the truth or he’d find out anyway, I had to allow him the time to digest—or not. It was his choice.

  So we took our leave, and now we were going to pop by the store to see if the police tape was still surrounding the door.

  Foolish? Probably. It had only been a few hours and likely we’d find it as we’d left it, but maybe luck was on our side today.

  Coop’s face went a bit sour when she wrinkled her nose. “Rattled? Does that mean afraid, Trixie? I would never want Knuckles to be afraid of us. I like him so-so much. He’s an outstanding tattooist—a true artist. Did you see those pictures on his wall?”

  “You mean the ones with the celebrities and their tattoos?”

  “Yes!” she said with about as much passion as I’d ever heard in her voice. “He’s amazing. I don’t want him to be afraid we’ll kill him. I’d never kill him. I want to learn from him. I want to be his friend. Just like Stevie’s.”

  I gnawed on my lower lip before I said, “I don’t think afraid defines what was happening with Knuckles, Coop. It was just a lot of revelation for one day. That’s all. Sometimes, folks need to let things digest. They need to process the words—absorb them. Let’s not worry about it for now. He said he’d call us, and he seems like a man of his word.”

  Or he could blow us off forever—and who could blame the poor guy?

  “I hope what you say is true, Trixie Lavender.”

  I grinned at her, fighting to keep my optimism. “I hope what I say is true, too, Cooper O’Shea.”

  “Hey!” Livingston squawked. “You two hens are cluckin’ over Pinky while I’m starvin’. I haven’t had anythin’ since breakfast when ya threw that stale biscuit at me.”

  “His name is Knuckles, Livingston,” Coop corrected. “Don’t be rude. It’s unkind and unnecessary.”

  “Quack, quack, quack,” Livingston replied in a dry tone. “That’s all I hear is ya quackin’ at me while I’m starvin’ to death.”