And Then There Were Nuns

by Kylie Logan

  “Well, they didn’t. Not really. Not until they arrived here. Except for that dinner in New York a few months ago where they were awarded their grants, most of them had never met each other.”

  “But not all of them.”

  “Sisters Helene and Sheila. Yeah. Like I told you, Hank, there was a dispute over royalties and Sister Sheila and Sister Helene had a contract and—”

  “Sister Sheila gets all the money. Only now she doesn’t because she’s dead.”

  “It just doesn’t feel like a motive to me.” I twitched away the cold chill that settled on my shoulders because, of course, to too many people, that would be plenty of motive. “Nuns don’t fight about things like money.”

  “Maybe not.” Hank put down his spoon long enough to grab a piece of paper and slide it across his desk to me.

  I leaned forward for a better look. “Is that a copy of an—”

  “Order of protection.” He chomped his muffin and talked while he chewed. “Yup. A good old-fashioned restraining order. Issued two years ago against one Helene McMurty. Sister Helene McMurty.”

  “Let me guess . . .” I didn’t want to be right. Maybe that’s why my stomach went cold. “The restraining order was requested by Sister Sheila Buckwald.”

  “None other.”

  I looked over the paperwork. “Sister Sheila and Sister Helene used to live in the same convent in Chicago? No one bothered to mention that.”

  “Well, my guess is that Sister Helene doesn’t want us to know.”

  “But she must have known you were going to find out.”

  Hank shrugged. “Who knows how a murderer thinks.”

  “Murderer?” The word choked me. “You can’t possibly think that Sister Helene—”

  “Like I said, who knows.” This time, Hank’s shrug was more extravagant.

  “You talked to the judge who issued the order?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “First thing this morning. She remembers the case, all right. Says it’s hard not to remember when two nuns are going at each other like lady wrestlers in a Jell-O pit. See, it all happened after they wrote that song of theirs, the one Sister Helene claims was all done by email. Emailing from the same convent? I’m not sure I believe that. Anyway, Sister Sheila, she asked for the order of protection because she said Sister Helene was harassing her. Said Helene was stealing things from her room at the convent, that she stole music Sister Sheila had written, and that she followed Sister Sheila around and harassed her and wouldn’t leave her alone.”

  “Which explains why when Sister Sheila saw her room at Water’s Edge and cried out, ‘No! Oh, no!’ Sister Helene said it was more of the same.”

  Hank didn’t follow and I guess I couldn’t blame him. When it came to theories, I was taking a leap of faith (no pun intended).

  “We can’t know the truth of it all,” I told him. “At least not until you talk to the other parties involved and get the whole story. But to me, it sounds like maybe Sister Sheila was overreacting. Could she have been a little . . . paranoid? A little unhinged? I mean, really, why would Sister Helene need to steal music? She’s a trained musician herself and everyone acknowledges the fact that she wrote the music for ‘Living Bread’ and that it’s a beautiful song. She obviously has talent. So maybe what happened at that convent in Chicago, maybe it was a figment of Sister Sheila’s imagination. So when Sister Sheila started acting crazy on the ferry and then again when she went to her room facing the water and caused a scene, it was only natural for Sister Helene to say it was—”

  “More of the same.”

  It was my turn to nod. “Or maybe the whole thing is legit,” I admitted with a sigh. “Maybe Helene really did have it in for Sheila. Which one of them . . .” I looked over the restraining order again but couldn’t easily locate the information I wanted. “And Helene left the convent in Chicago.”

  “Yup. Moved to some convent in Phoenix and has been there ever since.”

  “Have any of the nuns there had problems with her?”

  “Now you’re thinking like a cop!” Hank wagged a finger at me. “Going to call and ask them, but it’s a little early in Phoenix.”

  “You’ll let me know?”

  “Of course. And you’ll—”

  “There doesn’t seem to be any use in talking to Sister Helene again,” I said. “Not until we have all our ducks in a row. Until we have facts to back us up and can challenge her with them, all she has to do is keep lying. If she’s lying. And if we find out there’s no credence to Sister Sheila’s claims, there’s no use embarrassing Sister Helene.”

  “So you’ve got nobody to talk to today.”

  I told Hank he was right.

  But in my heart, I knew he was wrong and believe me, with every step I took out of the basement police station and into my car, I could feel the inevitability of the situation settling inside me like a lead weight.

  See, in all the details of the investigation, and all the sadness that rose in me when I pictured poor Sister Sheila floating facedown in the water, and all the anger I felt when I thought about how someone had knocked her over the head and left her in the lake to die . . .

  In all the aggravation that bubbled up when I thought of Chandra lounging on an air mattress in her new pool, sipping a drink while my guests tiptoed around her parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme . . .

  Even with all that, I hadn’t forgotten that there was one conversation I couldn’t avoid.

  It was time.

  I headed to Levi’s Bar.

  * * *

  “Hey.” I swung my purse onto one barstool and hoisted myself up on another, the better to get a good look at Levi when he zipped out of the back room and slid behind the bar, a crate of newly washed glasses in his hands. “We need to talk.”

  “We do.” He set down the crate and with barely a look at me, started back the way he’d come. “But this isn’t a good time.”

  Relief washed through. This wasn’t a good time! I could put off our conversation. I could stall and dodge and delay and—

  If not now, when?

  How much longer could I live with the block of ice in my stomach when I thought about what I had to do?

  “It’s got to be now,” I said and realized that in the moment I’d thought about it, Levi had hurried back into the kitchen. I slid off the barstool and followed. It was still early, and the bar was empty.

  “It’s got to be now,” I said, meeting him coming back out of the kitchen just as I was about to go in.

  “Broken pipe.” He had another plastic crate of glasses in his hands and he looked up and over his shoulder back into the kitchen. It was the first I noticed that the tile floor was covered with water and the last drip, drip, drips of it dribbled from a spot in the ceiling that was dark and wet. “Luckily I turned off the water in time, but something’s broken in my kitchen upstairs and I’ve got a major mess on my hands.”

  It was a mess. Water covered the stainless steel counters where Levi’s small but efficient staff prepared salads. It soaked the grill where his cook, a young and eager guy by the name of Dan, took care of the burgers and the chicken sandwiches and the other items on Levi’s excellent, but simple, menu.

  Three loaves of bread in their plastic wrappers floated by on the couple inches of water on the floor and I snatched them up and tossed them into a trash can.

  “You don’t have to help,” Levi said. “Dan’s on his way in and I called a couple of the waitresses. They’re going to get here as soon as they can.”

  “Which might not be soon enough to save much of anything.” I waded into the water and told myself that I might as well get to work because there was no use griping after it had already lapped up to my ankles and flowed into my sneakers. There was a squeegee nearby and I grabbed it and raked it over the floor, then grabbed a mop so I could soak up what I’d collected.
I wrung the mop out over a bucket Levi had near the grill and made another pass.

  In the meantime, Levi took another crate of glasses to the bar. When he returned, he saw that there were a couple bags of hamburger buns out on the counter, and realizing that they were soggy, he sighed and tossed them into the trash. “Really, I can’t make you work like this. You’re getting all wet and—”

  “And you were right. You know, a few months ago when you said that story I told Chandra and Luella and Kate about how I’d been married back in New York to an older guy named Marty and how he died and left me enough money to open up the B and B . . .” I leaned on the long handle of the mop and stopped long enough to take a breath, but let’s face it, now that the words had started tumbling out of my mouth—and started easing my conscience—nothing was going to stop me. “What you said then was that you knew the story wasn’t true. You were right. That whole story, it was all a lie.”

  Levi was about to grab a rag and start sopping up the water on the countertops and he froze and turned to me.

  “I know it sounds silly,” I blurted out. “I mean, the part about how I invented this whole past for myself, but you see, I had to. Or at least at the time, I felt I had to. I was overwhelmed by my life and by everything that was happening to me. There was this stalker back in New York, see—”

  “That must have been terrifying.” His face was stone, but a muscle tensed at the base of Levi’s jaw.

  “It was, but I handled it, and the guy’s in prison and so it’s all taken care of. But that was sort of a wake-up call, see. It made me realize how valuable privacy is and how I was never going to get any. Not with who I am and with what I was doing.”

  I expected questions and didn’t get any, and that was fine by me. I was on a roll, and I kept on going like a Soap Box Derby car on a steep incline.

  “That’s why I was avoiding you. Or at least why I’ve been trying to avoid you since I met you last year.” I’m not the shy, retiring type, but heat flooded my cheeks. “That didn’t really work, did it? I did all the avoiding I could. And I told myself about a million times it wasn’t fair to start any sort of relationship with you because I wasn’t being honest with you and that . . . well, I don’t know about you, but I think that if you can’t be honest with somebody, a relationship is pretty much doomed from the start. And I didn’t want that with you. I wanted something more. I wanted something good. And I knew if I had to lie to you—”

  “Did you lie? To me?”

  Finally, a question, and it didn’t take me more than a moment to consider it.

  “Look, the other night . . .” Even the cold water that covered my feet and tickled my ankles couldn’t stop another wave of heat from flashing through me. “Friday night was really great, and I’m not just talking about the sex. I had fun making dinner for you and it felt . . . I dunno . . . I guess it felt right sitting in front of the fire with you, sharing a meal. I really, really like you, Levi, and that’s why I knew I had to talk to you. So you know what’s really going on. And it’s not like I’m ashamed of my past or anything, it’s just that when I moved here, I wasn’t sure how people would react if they knew the truth, and I’d just come off the whole stalker thing, and I just wanted to be me. Just Bea. And I didn’t want anybody to have any preconceived notions or any expectations or anything, and I didn’t like the thought that anybody would be checking into the B and B just to get a gander at me and maybe pick my brain because that’s what usually happened back in New York. Agents and publishers and producers and directors and reporters . . .” Just thinking about it made my heart flutter. And not in a good way.

  “Once I told Luella and Kate and Chandra the story about Marty the antique dealer back in New York, well, it just kind of took on a life of its own. And I figured it wouldn’t matter because nobody else ever had to know the truth. But of course, I was wrong. Because they need to know the truth.”

  “You haven’t told the League of Literary Ladies?”

  I shook my head. “I wanted to tell you first. And when I leave here I’m going to stop and see each one of them and tell them the truth. And I’m sorry I lied, but heck, I didn’t know who I was going to meet here on South Bass. I didn’t know I was going to make such good friends. And I certainly didn’t think I was going to fall in love.”

  Had I really said that?

  I sucked in a breath and stared at Levi, but if he realized the enormity of the words that had just fallen from my lips or the fact that I didn’t even know what I was going to say until after I said it, he didn’t show it. His face was a mask.

  “I’d like to think the truth isn’t going to make any difference,” I managed to stammer out to cover for my confession. “I’m still me and you’re still you, and who we are and what we do now or used to do isn’t going to change that. But I’m sorry about not telling you the whole story from the start. I really am. I just couldn’t have known how I’d feel about you or if I could trust you.”

  Now that the big moment was here, I found myself at a sudden loss for words. I swallowed down the sand in my mouth. “I really am Bea Cartwright,” I said. “That part is the truth. But I’m also—”

  “FX O’Grady, the famous horror writer.”

  Levi’s words were punctuated by the ping of water dripping from the counter and splashing onto the floor. Or maybe the sound I heard was my clattering heart.

  “You knew,” I gasped.

  “I told you I thought we needed to talk, too.” He shifted from one foot to the other with a splash. “See, I kind of had the same sort of scenario going on. I wanted to tell you something, wanted to since the day we met. But I wasn’t allowed.”

  “By your conscience?”

  “By my contract.”

  I had no idea I’d gripped the mop so tight until I looked down and saw that my knuckles were white. “What are you—”

  “Jason Arbuckle.”

  What he said made no sense, and I shook my head to clear it. “Jason Arbuckle is the name of my attorney. Are you telling me—”

  “I’m telling you that when you announced to Jason that you were giving up your writing career and moving to the back of beyond, he was pretty surprised. You’ve been on the bestseller lists for years and you’ve had movies made from your books. And a couple TV series. There’s a musical playing on Broadway based on one of your short stories. And he couldn’t believe you were walking away from it all. He’s a good attorney, Bea, and a good friend to you. He was worried about you. That’s why he contacted me. See . . .” Levi scrubbed his hands over his face.

  “After that stalker incident, Jason was more worried than ever about you, and truth be told, he thought you’d gone off the deep end, what with wanting to give up the good life and move to Ohio. We—Jason and I—have a business agreement. I’m just playing at being a bar owner, Bea. I’m really a private detective. Jason hired me to move to the island to keep an eye on you.”

  8

  Let me make one thing perfectly clear—I am not and never have been a violent person. Sure, the books I wrote under the pen name of FX O’Grady were all about blood and gore and things that go bump—and do worse—in the night.

  But those are just fiction. Just figments of an imagination that has been called both brilliant and warped by various and sundry reviewers and critics.

  Those stories are not me.

  I say all this by way of explaining that what happened there in the flooded kitchen of Levi’s Bar once he’d announced that he was a private investigator was not premeditated. Before I ever realized what was happening, and long before I could have stopped myself even if I had, I raised that mop and whacked Levi over the head with the wet, sopping business end of it.

  Then I marched out of the bar.

  It was a grand exit, sure enough, and would have carried a lot more oomph had I not splish-splashed my way to the door.

  A minute later I
was in the car and already feeling bad about resorting to physical violence.

  But not bad enough to apologize.

  Ever.

  I started the car and held the steering wheel in a death grip.

  While I had spent a year with my conscience eating away at my composure and making it impossible for me to acknowledge my feelings for Levi, he’d spent a year knowing the truth and toying with me anyway.

  I thought back to the way he’d kissed me one hot summer night.

  And the way that right after, he said it was a mistake.

  Now I knew why. I was a job to him, nothing more. I was a gone-off-the-reservation prima donna (at least that’s what I imagined Jason Arbuckle had told him) who needed a babysitter.

  That little kiss was a mistake?

  I could only imagine what Levi thought about what we did on Friday night.

  * * *

  True to my word, I talked to each of the Ladies of the League individually that Monday. They were astounded to find out I was the mysterious author whose picture was never in the back of any of her books, who refused TV interviews, and who avoided movie premieres like the plague.

  They were impressed, too, by my literary résumé, and Chandra came right out and said I must be the richest person she’d ever met. I had no doubt she was right. They were amazed that I could give up the condo in New York overlooking Central Park and the glare of fame and the adoration of millions of fans.

  And guess what?

  Every single one of them—Luella and Kate and even Chandra—said she understood.

  “But here’s what I don’t get.”

  Just when I was thinking about what had happened earlier in the day and getting all sentimental about the benefits of friendship (especially in light of Levi’s betrayal), Chandra pulled me out of my thoughts. All four of us were in my kitchen getting dinner ready for the nuns. Tonight’s menu featured ribs that Meg had come in earlier in the day to start roasting as well as fresh broccoli, new potatoes, and a bowl heaped with salad greens and dressed with the most marvelous vinegar, oil, and herb concoction this side of Gramercy Tavern.