by Kylie Logan
I waved her into the dining room, pulled out a chair for her, and went into the kitchen for an extra plate and cup.
“You don’t need to feed me,” she twittered at the same time she took one piece of bacon-and-cheese quiche and another of spinach and mushroom. “I really just stopped by because . . .” She glanced at her librarian friends and Marianne’s plump cheeks turned pink. “Well, we were talking last night at dinner—”
“And we know we’re not professionals or anything. I mean, not like you,” Angela put in.
“But all anybody here on the island can talk about is that nun who died,” Carole said.
“And like I told Joe the other day . . .” Joe Roscoe was so busy chomping down his third piece of quiche, he didn’t spare me a look, but I glanced his way anyway, just to include him in the conversation. “I’m hardly a professional.”
“Hah!” This from Marianne, and I wouldn’t have minded so much if she was just gossiping in front of her friends, but I’d already denied my detective tendencies to Joe and I hated to look like I’d lied. “She looks innocent enough,” Marianne said in a stage whisper, pointing her fork in my direction so her friends couldn’t fail to miss who she was talking about. “But there’s more to Bea Cartwright than meets the eye.”
I tensed, my fingers clutching the edge of the table, and prayed Chandra hadn’t blabbered the secret I’d shared with my friends the day before and activated South Bass’s version of the bush telegraph.
“She’d give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money,” Marianne said, and I let go of a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Looking like a liar in Joe’s eyes was preferable to looking like what I really was, a bestselling author whose privacy would be ruined if word got out that she was living on the island. “She solves murders.”
I glanced at Joe, who was chewing on a slice of apple.
“I only helped out the police a little,” I said, my hands out, palms flat, to distance myself from the assertion. “It was nothing.”
“There’s no use denying it.” Marianne waved away my explanation. “I told them all about it last night. Told them all about everything. That poor man who owned the Chinese restaurant who was killed there, and Richie, the handyman who used to help everyone out around here, and—”
“Like I said, it was nothing.”
“Well, your nothing got us talking.” The comment came from Bette, who of all four of the librarians struck me as the quietest and the most studious. She adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose. “Marianne said you read Agatha Christie—”
“And that’s when there was a murder at the Orient Express restaurant,” Carole finished for her.
“And then you read Dickens and there was that whole crazy thing at the Bastille Day celebration.” Remembering it made Marianne shiver.
“And then we hear you read Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Marianne told us”—Carole sucked in a breath of excitement—“you know, all about the ghost.”
“Ghosts? Here on South Bass?” For the first time, Joe Roscoe looked up from his breakfast plate. “Any I’m related to?”
I doubted it, but I was grateful for the interruption and the change of subject, so I took his comment and ran with it. “I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to meet Marianne Littlejohn yet,” I told Joe and formally introduced them. “She’s our island librarian and I’m sure she can help when it comes to genealogy. She’s lived on the island all her life, haven’t you, Marianne? If anyone knows anything about Joe’s family—”
“Roscoe.” Marianne tapped a finger against her cheek. “The name doesn’t ring a bell. Where did they live?”
Since Joe had just stuffed his mouth with a huge chunk of quiche, he held up one finger to tell her to wait. He swallowed and took a drink of coffee. “Hard to say for sure. They’ve been gone for close to one hundred years now. I’ve got some ideas and some leads, but nothing definite yet.”
“Well, I’m sure we can find them. Plenty of people come here to do genealogy research. I’ll check my files when I get to the library later. Maybe there’s some family I’ve helped with research that’s related to your family. That wouldn’t be a surprise, would it? On an island this small, we’re bound to find connections.”
“Well, that would be just terrific.” Joe pushed back from the table. “I’ll stop into the library later and we can compare notes. For now . . .” He glanced toward the front windows and the sunshine that streamed over my lawn. “This weather is too good to be true. I’ve got to take advantage of it. If you ladies will excuse me, I’m going out to do a little exploring.”
He was upstairs in a minute and back downstairs in another, that tube of maps of his under his arm, and he waved to us when he passed the dining room door and went outside.
“Nice man,” Angela said.
“But we’re not supposed to be talking genealogy, are we?” Joyce, the fourth librarian (well, I guess she was actually the fifth if I counted Marianne), leaned forward and lowered her voice. “We decided last night, ladies. About what we wanted to talk to Bea about today. Books. Books and m-u-r-d-e-r.”
“Except no one’s been murdered.” I sounded as if this were actually true and congratulated myself. “And the League of Literary Ladies is steering away from any and all crime fiction. Like I told you, we’re reading The Mill on the Floss. In fact, we were supposed to have our discussion meeting last night and we pushed it back to tomorrow afternoon because we were busy with the nuns. The Mill on the Floss. George Eliot. No murders.”
“Of course there are no murders. That’s because you’re reading the wrong book.”
When she announced this, Marianne was apparently ready for my look of astonishment. Her eyes glowing with excitement, she reached into her purse, brought out a paperback book, and slapped it on the table.
I had to lean to my right to see the title clearly.
And Then There Were None—I knew it was one of the most famous mystery novels of all time and like everyone else with half an ounce of interest in fine storytelling and an appreciation for a deucedly clever plot, I was familiar with the book and the movies based on it. Many readers considered it Agatha Christie’s greatest masterpiece.
“We’re not reading that,” I said, and backed away as if somehow, that would protect me from remembering that in the book, ten strangers are called to an island where they are then murdered, one by one. “And no one’s been murdered.”
“Maybe not,” Carole conceded. “But when Marianne told us about all the other murder investigations you’ve been involved in—”
“And then we heard that there were ten nuns,” Bette said.
“It’s only natural we thought of the book,” Angela added.
“Especially since one of the nuns is already dead.” Joyce clutched her hands to her heart.
“Well, nobody else is going to die. Not like in the book.” There was no way I could be sure. There was no way anyone could be. But I wasn’t taking any chances so I put as much distance as possible between myself and And Then There Were None. My voice rang with certainty and I scraped my chair back from the table. I couldn’t stand the thought that a pall hung over Water’s Edge and the wonderful ladies who were spending the week there. I guess that’s why I was so intent on convincing the librarians—and myself—that the very idea was ridiculous.
My imagination barely in check, I cleaned up Joe’s breakfast dishes and took them out to the kitchen, leaving the librarians to discuss their preposterous theory among themselves. Just as I pushed through the kitchen door, I reminded them, “There were nine nuns there when I left Water’s Edge last night and I guarantee you, there are nine nuns there now. Nobody’s going anywhere.”
* * *
“There’s no sign of her.”
“And we’ve looked all over.”
“It’s like she’s vanished
.”
“Disappeared.” A click of the fingers. “Just like that.”
Inside the front door of Water’s Edge, I paused—tote bags in hand containing the burgers and hot dogs we would be grilling for dinner out on the patio now that the weather had cleared—and looked around in bewilderment at the nuns who surrounded me the moment I set foot in the house.
Their voices, tight with unspoken hysteria, overlapped. Their expressions were mixed with so much hope and despair and confusion that instantly, my heart started a rumba rhythm in my chest.
I took a deep breath and did what I imagined a thousand other people had done over the years when searching for a safe port in a storm.
I turned to Sister Liliosa.
She, it should be noted, had not been among those who surrounded me like flies at a picnic. Oh no, not Sister Liliosa! She had remained on the edges of the crowd of sisterly worrywarts and at my look, she raised her chin, clutched her hands at her waist, and stepped forward.
The crowd parted in front of her like the Red Sea when Moses showed up, and Sister Liliosa took full advantage. One glance from her and the nuns held their collective breaths.
“It’s Sister Helene,” she said quite simply. “We can’t seem to locate her.”
It took a moment for this news to settle inside my brain and no time at all for it to jump to conclusions.
Sister Helene.
The one Sister Sheila had a beef with.
The one Sister Sheila had taken out a restraining order against.
The one Sister who of all these Sisters had something to gain from Sister Sheila’s death.
The only one who had a motive for murder.
Gone.
I resisted the urge to grab my phone and call Hank, but only because I didn’t want the nuns to panic, or for Hank to realize I was really a rank amateur hiding behind a few clever deductions and a couple lucky guesses. I needed to keep my head and gather more facts before I got the police involved.
I kept my gaze on Sister Liliosa. “Tell me.”
She was a woman who appreciated conciseness. She nodded. “Helene didn’t join us for lunch this afternoon.”
“And I doubt she misses many meals,” Sister Francelle mumbled and an instant later when she realized she’d spoken aloud, she went pale.
“Before we get carried away . . .” It was probably too late for that, but I knew I had to try to calm down the Sisters. I broke loose from the group and marched into the kitchen, the nuns behind me in a line like so many ducklings. I unpacked the tote bags and set burgers and hot dogs and buns and potato salad out on the counter before I ever said another word, and when I was done, I looked from nun to nun—Sisters Francelle, Liliosa, Paul, Grace, and Mary Jean.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. When I left here last night, Sister Helene was in the library playing the piano. And this morning, you say she was at breakfast?”
A couple of the nuns nodded.
“Did she say anything either last night or this morning?” I asked. “About going out today?”
“I talked to her before I went up to my room to read last night,” Sister Mary Jean reported. “We both said we hoped the weather would be better today and she said if it was, it would be a blessing to go outside and get a breath of air.”
“Well, see, there you have it.” I wished all mysteries could be solved so easily and every nun I had the audacity to even think might be a killer could be so easily cleared of suspicion. “Sister Helene left after breakfast and she went for a walk.”
Sister Grace sniffed. “She missed midmorning prayer.”
“And Sister Francelle’s presentation on ethical corporate practices,” Sister Mary Jean added. “Yesterday she told me she was looking forward to it.”
“And there’s a golf cart missing.”
Sister Grace’s comment caught us all off guard. As one, we turned to her and she shrugged. “Hey, when you work in prisons like I do, you sometimes think the worst of people before you can stop yourself. It’s a failing I’m trying to overcome, but not always one I can resist. When someone said Helene had gone AWOL, I naturally checked out front. I’m not saying it’s good news or bad news or that it means anything. I’m just reporting the facts. One of the golf carts is gone.”
But it wasn’t as simple as that, was it?
I edged into the conversation gently, careful not to ask any leading questions. “What do you mean, Sister? About thinking the worst of someone? Just because Sister Helene took out one of the golf carts—”
“Oh, come on!” Sister Grace included all of us in her grimace. “We need to stop pussyfooting around and say what’s been on all of our minds. When you do what I do and you’re around murderers all day, you sort of get a feel for these things. The evil, it’s in the air like a vibe. You can’t see it. You can’t hear it. But you can feel it. It crawls along your skin and ruffles the back of your hair.”
I don’t think I was imagining it, we all twitched at the thought.
“The way that cop who was here was asking questions,” Sister Grace said, “I pretty much figured it out from the start. Sister Sheila’s death was no accident, was it? She was murdered.”
I couldn’t lie. Not even when a couple of the nuns gasped in horror and a couple more went pale. Not when all of them turned their collective gaze my way. “You’re right, Sister. The police have determined that Sister Sheila was murdered,” I told them. “She was stunned by a blow to the back of the head and shoved into the water. I’m sorry, I couldn’t say anything sooner. The police asked me not to.”
One by one, they bowed their heads in prayer and I joined them in the moment of silence.
It was broken by Sister Grace. “Maybe if the police had told us the truth from the start, we would have kept a closer eye on Sister Helene,” she said.
Sister Liliosa’s lips thinned. “You can’t possibly think—”
“They knew each other,” Sister Grace pointed out. “They didn’t like each other. I’m not saying that means Helene is guilty, only that it’s a possibility.”
“A possibility we can’t eliminate,” I told them, “but not one we can be sure of, either. I’ll call Hank and let him know that Helene is missing. Until then—”
I was about to suggest we search Water’s Edge just in case Helene was still around the house, but I didn’t have a chance. The kitchen door popped open and Sister Gabriel practically skipped into the room.
“Where is it?” she asked, and when her question was met with blank stares, she rolled her eyes. “My package. Catherine said my package was delivered a little while ago.”
“Yes, it was,” Sister Liliosa told her. She led the way out of the kitchen and we all followed along. “The delivery man left it right—” Sister Liliosa pointed to a table just inside the front door, a table that was empty.
“Well, it was here,” Sister Liliosa said. “I saw him leave it.”
“What d’you mean, ‘was’?” Sister Gabriel’s face looked especially red against her white wimple. “Are you telling me you lost my package? That someone took my package?”
“I’m telling you it was here and now it isn’t.” Sister Liliosa’s voice was stone cold. “I’m sure if you ask around, you’ll find out that someone was nice enough to leave it at your seat in the dining room or take it up to your room for you.”
“Yeah, my room.” Sister Gabriel lifted her skirt and raced for the stairs. “That’s got to be it.”
We heard her throw open her door and the clatter of her footsteps against the floor. We heard the word she barked out when she didn’t find the package, too, and it was one that made a couple of the nuns’ mouths drop open.
“A missing nun and a missing package.” I wondered at the connection, if there was one, and thought about my original plan. “We’ve got a while before dinner. Why don’t we each take part o
f the house and look around. Maybe Sister Helene came back and maybe she . . .” I had no idea what she might have done, but I played with the possibilities. “Maybe she fell out in the garden and got hurt. Or maybe she’s asleep in the library. Before I call Hank, let’s at least try to find her.”
I didn’t have to say it twice. The nuns scattered in all directions, some going outside and others heading to the far reaches of the house. Me, I went up to the second floor, but since Sister Liliosa was already up there making an efficient sweep, room to room, I knew she didn’t need my help. Instead, I followed the corridor past the bedroom suites to the far end of the house where I found what must have been the servants’ stairway in times gone by.
The door squeaked on rusty hinges, but I could see that someone had been this way, and recently. The dust on the stairway was smudged.
Careful not to step on them and disturb them any further, I followed the footsteps to the third floor and briefly looked into the empty rooms that once must have housed an army of household staff. There was another squeaky door here, and I tried the light switch at the bottom of the stairs.
Nothing.
I got my phone out of my pocket, turned on my flashlight app, and headed upstairs, again following the footprints in the dust.
The attic of Water’s Edge was as big as a ballroom, an unending cavern of exposed timbers, screechy wood flooring, and bits and pieces of discarded household life. A wind-up Victrola, a dressmaker’s dummy that startled me, a dresser, a chair, a few steamer trunks. My light didn’t penetrate more than a few feet in front of me, making the objects look like crouching shadows, and I made my way toward them through a shimmer of floating dust motes. After I determined that I was alone, I trained the light on the floor and followed the smudges to a corner near the front windows where an old rocking chair sat next to a steamer trunk coated with so much dust, I knew it hadn’t been disturbed in years.
There was a blanket tossed over the chair, and I yanked it away and coughed when a Vesuvius of dust clutched at my throat and stung my eyes, then bent closer to see the curious items that had been tucked beneath the blanket.
