Then There Were Nun

by Dakota Cassidy

  As Higgs spoke, his voice filled with liquid warmth when he talked about the men at his shelter, and his eyes burned bright into the dark of the evening. I knew passion for a cause, and this was a man with passion. Deeply rooted passion. That much, I couldn’t deny.

  I also couldn’t deny I had the same passion for the homeless, the downtrodden, animals, the elderly.

  I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to feel any sort of connection to Higgs if he turned out to be the guy who did it, but I did. Just a thread of connection, mind you, but a connection nonetheless.

  So I softened, but only a smidge. “Well, thanks for the information about who owns this shipwreck. It’ll be good to have in the coming days while we try to figure this out. I’ll make it my mission to find Crowley McDuff.”

  Higgs smiled, hitching his razor-stubbled jaw at the boxes. “So, they are yours then. Need help loading them up somewhere? Happy to oblige. You know, neighbor to neighbor. Or should I say, murder suspect to snitch?” he teased.

  “So you’re admitting you’re a suspect?”

  “I admit nothing, fair maiden. And I’m really not a suspect. She questioned me just like she did you. I could call Tansy so you can confirm, if you’d like? While I do that, would you like help with the boxes?

  Did he have to be so neighborly? So accommodating? He was making it difficult to keep him at the top of my suspect list—and my list was small. I couldn’t afford to lose a suspect.

  “Actually, I was planning on building a box fort and sleeping here tonight.”

  He looked up at the sky, littered with stars and a milky-white moon. “Well, if you had to pick a night, tonight’s one of the better ones. At least it’s not raining.”

  I nodded. “All I need is a pillow and a blanket.”

  Turning to begin counting how many boxes there were, I frowned. My sheet of inventory was in the store, of course. So there was no way to compare what we’d received and what we hadn’t.

  Higgs tapped me on the shoulder. “Seriously, I’m happy to help—”

  “Higgs?” a male voice emerged from the darkness, smoky and friendly. As the outline of a man appeared, I instantly recognized him. This was Higgs’s friend, Jay. At least I think that’s what Detective Primrose called him. He slapped his buddy on the shoulder from behind. “What’s goin’ on, pal?”

  Higgs turned to his tall, lean, sandy-blond-haired friend and motioned to me. “Jay Craig, meet Sister Trixie Lavender. Our new neighbor.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was continually mocking me by calling me sister, or if he kept forgetting, but I chose to ignore him anyway.

  I put a bright smile on as I looked up at Jay’s handsome, lean face. “It’s just Trixie these days, and nice to meet you, Jay.” I stuck my hand out and let him envelop it in his cool palm. “Sorry it’s under such weird circumstances.”

  He ran a hand over his Kelly-green polo shirt and bounced his head up and down in sympathy. “You mean murder?” he asked, then cringed. “Saw you out here talking to the police earlier today. Good to meet you. Sure sorry about your store. This has to be tough on you and your friend.”

  “It’s definitely been tough, but we’re nothing if not survivors. We’ll figure it out,” I said, totally faking how I really felt, and trying to hide my panic over several thousand dollars in inventory sitting on a sidewalk, just waiting to be pilfered. We didn’t have much money left, and we surely couldn’t afford to replace any of this if someone stole it.

  Jay motioned his thumb at the boxes then fisted his hands together. “These yours?”

  I drove my hands into the pockets of my jeans and sighed. “Yep. They weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow, and I requested a signature upon delivery, but I guess you know what they say about good help these days.”

  “Need help getting them somewhere?” he offered, his voice cheerful and pleasant as it rumbled in my ear. I liked it. It filled me with a nice steady vibe I don’t think I’ve ever felt from a man before. But it reminded me a lot of the way Sister Alice Ambrosia’s voice had affected me.

  I used to love our group discussions on scripture, not so much because I believed every word of it (as I’ve said, I was quite contrary and often found myself in hot water for asking too many questions), but because I loved the sound of her voice humming through my ears. It was soft and gentle with syrupy-sweet undertones, like Winnie The Pooh’s, but soothing and kind like Mr. Rogers’.

  “Trixie? Can I help you get these inside?” Jay asked again, interrupting my thoughts.

  “That’s very kind of you, but I have nowhere to put them. We can’t go into the store until the Portland PD clears it. They won’t fit in my car, and carrying them over to the motel at this time of night doesn’t seem prudent. It’s late, and ten trips up and down that rickety elevator might break it—or wake half the clientele.”

  “Then why don’t you bring them to the shelter?” Jay suggested, his boyish grin made handsomer by the lock of sandy-blond hair falling over his forehead. “You can lock ’em up, right Higgs? Maybe in the storage closet by your office? They should be fine there.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t impose like that.”

  Because if Higgs turned out to be a murderer, I could end up in his storage closet in plastic bags right alongside my inventory.

  “I was going to offer, but we’re still working on getting past my murdering ways,” Higgs interjected in his amused voice.

  Jay’s brows smooshed together when he cocked his head. “Say again?”

  Planting my hands on my hips, I decided to take control of this ongoing joke. “What your friend is trying to say is, I accused him of murder—sort of. I told his friend, Detective Primrose, that I saw him arguing with Mr. McDuff yesterday just before someone, who I can now identify as you, came and pulled him away. I didn’t accuse him of murder in those exact words, but when asked if I knew anyone who’d had any issues with Fergus, your buddy and their disagreement—a heated one, by the way—came to mind.”

  Jay began to laugh as he latched on to a box and hoisted it up to his chest, the sound pleasant and rich. “Higgs? Murder Fergus? That’s pretty funny.”

  Ah. Another fan of Cross Higglesworth. But I reminded myself, it stood to reason. He was Higgs’s BFF, after all. I’d stick up for Coop. I did stick up for Coop.

  “Did he tell you what he used to do before he ran the shelter?” Jay asked.

  My ears perked up as I reached for a box. “He didn’t.” I’d surmised, of course, but there’d been no official word.

  “Jay, I’m pretty sure Trixie doesn’t want to hear about what I used to—”

  “He was an undercover cop in Minneapolis. Deep cover. Gangs. Hardcore gangs. Tough gig, no doubt.”

  Did you hear that womp-womp-womp? That’s the sound of my trombone of disappointment. This new information put a pin in my bubble. It surely didn’t mean Higgs couldn’t have killed Fergus. There were plenty of murderous police officers on the books.

  But it probably made it less likely.

  My stomach sank and my fists clenched.

  Higgs watched me intently, his eyes clouding over for a moment. I suspect he was looking for a reaction, as though I might gush at his feet and beg his forgiveness for ever considering he’d kill someone. But he was mistaken. I was a little less skeptical than before, but not enough to make me totally rule him out.

  Brushing my hands together, I reached for a box and stared down Higgs. “So I guess this means you won’t steal my stuff then? Seeing as you’re a former officer of the law?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Depends on what the stuff is inside those boxes. If it’s anything covered in chocolate, a kitchen utensil, something we sorely need at the shelter, or a bunch of ribeye steaks, all bets are off.”

  Then he grinned that infuriating grin again.

  And my stomach did that weird spiky jumping thing.

  Which I promptly ignored while I silently gathered a box and headed down the sidewalk to Mr. Charisma’s she
lter.

  Chapter 8

  “Coop? What in all saints are you doing?” I asked from the edge of my bed in our motel room as her dusky red hair swished about her waist in effortless abandon, shining like a glorious sheet of silk.

  If I were a lesser mortal, I’d hate her guts that I’d been stuck with this mousy brown hair and average face. Let me tell you, it was no picnic sharing a mirror with such a babe.

  Coop pulled one side of her mouth upward with two fingers and stared hard into the mirror. “Practicing.”

  “Practicing what, my friend?”

  “Smilin’,” Livingston croaked from his perch on the back of the torn chair by the round table. “She tinks it’s important so she can blend in like ya told her she should. So she’s been in there while ya been off gettin’ our breakfast, yankin’ at her pretty face like it’s Silly Putty. The numpty.”

  Ahhh. Coop tried so hard. Yet another reason to love her more madly than I already did. I didn’t want to discourage her, but I didn’t want her to feel as though she’d failed if she couldn’t pull it off.

  “You know, Coop, it’s super cool to sort of have what they call resting bitch face.”

  She whipped around so quickly, I jumped, her fingers still holding one side of her mouth up. Her eyes flashed her usual reprimand when I broke one of our rules. “That’s potty language, Trixie Lavender. You said we must always take care not to use foul language. You’re not following the rules.”

  The rules. We had plenty—they went hand in hand with my calendar for marking off days since my last possession. I’d lain many out for Coop, to help her acclimate to living with humans. I’d forgotten the majority of them because there were so many to institute when you started from scratch, but not Coop. She had a memory like an elephant.

  I hopped off the bed and went to the table, opening the Styrofoam carton filled with a luscious Western omelet. One of Coop’s favorites since we’d come to Cobbler Cove and found this little hole in the wall just down a block or so from the motel.

  “That I did. The goal being not to offend. But sometimes the expression is what it is. ‘Resting mean face’ doesn’t really have the same effect, don’t you agree?” I asked, holding out a plastic fork.

  Her arms dropped to her sides in defeat, the graceful limbs encased in a red, loosely fitting T-shirt flopping against her hips. “Whyyy can’t I smile, Trixie? I’ve done it only two or three times before, and I liked how it felt on my face. That means I must be capable of smiling. I so want to be like everyone else, and everyone else smiles. You smile all the time and it makes me feel happy. I want to make people feel happy, too.”

  I sighed in sympathy and patted the chair at the table, indicating she should sit and eat before I took my own chair, pulling my container of fluffy scrambled eggs in front of me. “I think when you do smile, it’s a truly genuine gesture, my friend. Maybe that means you only pull out all the stops when you really mean it. You’re the real deal, Coop DeVille.”

  She pushed a forkful of omelet into her mouth and shook her head. “That is untrue. I’ve had many happy moments since I left Hell and met you. People will think I’m angry all the time if I have resting mean face. I’m not mean. Look,” she said, pointing to her face. “I’m happy right now. See?”

  I gazed at her near perfection and sighed. Her expression was as blank as a fresh canvas, awaiting the stroke of a paintbrush—frozen in aloofness. But in truth? If I looked like her, I don’t suppose I’d care if I couldn’t smile.

  I’d resting mean face all day long.

  Besides, “mean” didn’t define my girl Coop in the least. Determined, fiercely protective? Yes. But never intentionally cruel. She loved all creatures great and small until you crossed her. That’s when she became extreme.

  “Aw, c’mon, Coop. No one thinks you’re mean. Maybe it’ll just take some time to learn how to show emotions you’re not used to. Maybe it just has to happen naturally. So why don’t we think of something else to keep us occupied until it does happen?”

  “Okay, then tell me what happened to your fingernails and your knees—and your jeans? They’re caked in mud. You said we should always present ourselves to the outside world with a tidy appearance. Your jeans were not tidy when you came back last night. You looked like you’d been in the pit wrestling tenth-level demon alligators.”

  Wait. What? “There are demon alligators?”

  “And piranhas, too. It’s very messy. My jeans used to look like that, too. Were you wrestling tenth-level demon alligators last night, Trixie?”

  Her words left me at a loss, something I didn’t have the energy to address right now.

  “No alligators, demon or otherwise. Just a little accident while I was hoisting boxes. I’m fine.”

  Looking down at the tips of my fingers, still red and sore after clipping my nails short, and my knees, bruised to high Heaven, I winced. But I didn’t want to divulge what had happened just yet. It would only put her and her sword on guard.

  And there was still Higgs and his undercover work in gangs to process. That was also marinating in my head.

  “I told you, Trixie Lavender. I would have helped you if you’d just texted me. I’m stronger than those two men plus ten more.”

  “Which is probably why it’s not a good idea to share that with everyone just yet. That’s going to take some explaining. So next subject. What else is on our agenda?”

  Swigging from a carton of orange juice, Coop pointed to her phone. “The list of inventory’s in my to-do notes. I saved it. We should go to Cross Higglesworth’s place of employment and compare them. I’ll send it to you in a text.”

  Sipping at my richly brewed coffee, silky and luscious, I toyed with a piece of bacon, letting the jolt of caffeine surge through my veins. Last night, Jay and Higgs had helped me load box after box onto a dolly and drag them down to the shelter, all the while making easygoing conversation.

  I’d relaxed with Jay there, and we’d made simple enough work getting everything off the street and into the storage closet. I tried to keep my curiosity at bay until we had our killer, but I definitely wanted to do some volunteer work at the shelter—or a shelter somewhere nearby, if we eventually found out Higgs was involved in this mess.

  So it was with great interest upon entering Peach Street Shelter that I’d taken quick glimpses around the rec room with its worn pool table and a pinball machine, where some younger men sat on plastic lawn chairs, talking with one another.

  We made several passes through the tatty but sparkling-clean kitchen with older mix-and-match appliances. The concrete floor was swept clean as a whistle; the countertops were a serviceable stainless steel, holding a variety of pots and pans and an enormous willow basket of fresh fruits and vegetables.

  The entire atmosphere was warm and homey. There were pictures on the wall of the long hallway leading to the storage closet at the back of Higgs’s office, a variety of faces, all smiling, and in one way or another showing off their uniforms for work. Jobs I’d bet Higgs had been instrumental in helping these men find.

  My heart had tightened in my chest when I’d seen them. Add to that the fact he’d been an undercover police officer and his stats made for a pretty decent guy.

  But those words Stevie had once whispered, that everyone was a suspect until proven otherwise, stood out.

  “Do you like Cross Higglesworth better today, Trixie? Now that you know he was a police officer of the law?”

  Or an undercover agent in a gang…

  “Oh, she likes him all roight, she does,” Livingston chirped. “Shoulda seen her face last night when she came back from her adventure. All glowin’ and moony-eyed, she was.”

  I leaned over and stroked Livingston’s head rather than put my hands around his little neck and squeeze his snarky retorts right out of him. “I was no such thing. I was, however, happy to have a place to put our things for the moment.”

  “I don’t believe you would put our things at his place of employment if you
didn’t at least think he was an innocent man.” Coop shoveled more omelet into her mouth then burped.

  I wrinkled my nose in distaste. “Manners, please, Coop.”

  She gave me her infamous direct stare and wiped her mouth with the paper napkin. “Excuse me.”

  “And I put our things at his place because we don’t really have anywhere else to put them. Plus, Jay was there, and I felt mostly comfortable with him.” Mostly.

  “You don’t really believe Cross Higgl…er, Higgs killed anyone. I can tell, Trixie. You can’t hide the truth from me,” Coop accused in her playful tone, which, of course, wasn’t playful at all. But I’d learned to read her body language, and she was teasing me.

  “I don’t know what I believe. But I do know this—today, we need to find Solomon, my new friend, and then talk to Crowley McDuff about the store, and maybe we can get him to spill his guts.”

  Coop reached for her sword in the corner next to the table, a glint in her eye. “I can make his guts spill, Trixie. Just ask.”

  I let my head fall back on my shoulders and prayed for patience. Heaven above… Sometimes, there was so much to teach my Coop, I didn’t know where to begin—it overwhelmed me.

  Livingston flapped his wings. “She doesn’t mean literally, lass. Put that ting down before ya slice off me toes,” he ordered, but his voice held love. Some days, when Livingston realized I was reaching my limit, he lent a hand with Coop…er, make that a wing. “She means metaphorically speakin’, and I know that confounds ya, my babe in the woods, but ya can’t go ’round lookin’ to kill everythin’ that moves. We’ll end up in the hoosegow eatin’ two-week-old bread with slimy beans and usin’ the facilities in front of every pryin-eyed Tom, Dick, and Harry.”