And Then There Were Nuns

by Kylie Logan

  Mine kept reminding me that elderly Sister Margaret had gone off to some out-of-the-way greenhouse on the property.

  “I’m going to go see what she’s up to,” I mumbled, as if Sister Liliosa knew what I was thinking.

  Apparently, she did. She pointed to the right, across the patio and past a stand of trees and a tangle of lilac bushes that would be glorious in just another month. “The greenhouse is over that way.”

  I followed her directions and found what I was looking for with no trouble at all. I found who I was looking for, too, and okay, I admit it, when I saw Sister Margaret quietly sorting through a pile of terra-cotta pots, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Need any help, Sister?” I asked her.

  My footsteps had been silent against the soft spring ground, but still, Sister Margaret wasn’t startled by my arrival. “I can’t find the fertilizer,” she said.

  It was warm outside, and even warmer once I was under the canopy of glass. It looked to me as if the greenhouse was of the same vintage as the mansion. It had a slate floor and iron ribbing that curled over our heads in a sort of Arabian Nights arabesque that made the building as beautiful as it was utilitarian.

  I moved closer to where she stacked the pots, one on top of the other, first setting the stack to her right, then moving it to her left.

  “What are you fertilizing?” I asked her.

  “Fertilizing? At this time of the year?” She had clearly seen her share of novice gardeners in her time and Sister Margaret turned a kind eye on me. “Too soon for that. Just trying to get these pots in order. They need to be cleaned, you know. No use re-potting into dirty pots. Spreads disease. Yes.” She watched her own hands move over the pots before she glanced over at me. “Have you seen the fertilizer I ordered?”

  I assured her I hadn’t, and talked her into going back to the house with me to look for it. Before we were halfway there, she was so engrossed in studying the roses on the patio, she’d forgotten all about the fertilizer, and me.

  “They’re going to be beautiful when they bloom.” Her back against the wall of the house, Sister Catherine opened her eyes and smiled at Sister Margaret.

  “Bishop’s Gate,” Sister Margaret said, brushing a hand lovingly against the nearest rose bush. “Such a pretty pink. And that one . . .” She made a beeline across the patio. “William Morris, if I’m not mistaken,” she mumbled. “Apricot. It’s going to look lovely.”

  “She’s a dear.” Sister Catherine patted the bench and I sat down. “I hope when I’m her age, I’m just as interested in life and just as involved.”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of any of you not being. I’m impressed.”

  She smiled. “You’re not supposed to be impressed with nuns.”

  “Well, I’m impressed, anyway.”

  Sister Catherine grinned. “Well, stop. It’s our job to be humble. And something tells me it’s your job . . .” She turned so that she could face me on the bench. “You’re helping the police, aren’t you?”

  “I’d like to if I can. If there’s anything you can tell me . . .”

  She glanced briefly at the house. “You were talking to Sister Liliosa earlier,” she said, then held up a hand. “It’s not like I was eavesdropping. Honest! But the window’s open and voices carry.”

  “So you know what we were talking about.”

  She settled herself more comfortably on the bench and smoothed a hand over her gray habit. “I don’t think Sister Helene is going to creep back here and try to off me because I forgot to bring her a calendar, if that’s what you mean. Except . . .” The smile faded from her face.

  I sat up. “You remember something?”

  “Something that’s probably nothing,” she said.

  “Or it’s something and you should tell me about it.”

  “It’s just that last night . . . well, it was late. A little after two in the morning. I woke up and I thought I heard something.”

  “Something? Or someone?”

  “Someone, I suppose, because it sounded like footsteps.”

  I remembered the figure I’d seen in the garden and automatically glanced around. “Out here?”

  She shook her head. “No. Upstairs. In the house. I’m sure of it. I thought it was someone just up and going to the bathroom, but you know we all have bathrooms in our suites and these footsteps, they came from out in the hallway. I suppose someone could have been getting up for a midnight snack.”

  “I suppose.” I glanced her way. “Did you look to see who it was?”

  “I got out of bed. And I listened for a few more minutes. And then I went to the door and—”

  Whatever else had happened, I would have to wait to hear it because just as Sister Catherine was about to tell me what she’d seen, a piece of the stone facade of the house crashed down and landed with a thundering crash on the bench between us.

  13

  It wasn’t planning, that’s for sure, since it was impossible to plan for something that literally dropped out of the sky and nearly on top of me.

  It certainly wasn’t heroism, either, because I’m convinced that’s all about courage and nerve and steely mettle and I am not made of any of those things.

  It was instinct. Nothing more. Instinct and quick reflexes.

  Oh, and a whole boatload of good luck.

  That was the only reason I realized what was happening the second before it happened and the only thing that explained how I was able to throw myself off the bench just in the nick of time and grab Sister Catherine so I could take her along with me.

  By the time the echoes of the crash finished reverberating against the walls of the house and the dust settled and the reality of what had just happened registered in my brain, I was flat on the flagstone patio, Sister Catherine next to me, Sister Paul closing in on us, and Sister Margaret looking completely bemused when she bent over us and asked if we were all right.

  Were we?

  Carefully, I propped myself up on my elbows. My jeans were torn, and both my knees were bleeding. The lightweight jacket I wore over my T-shirt was bunched up and tangled around my waist. My face was pocked with tiny bits of shattered sandstone and my butt . . . if I had the energy, I would have winced, because my butt felt as if it had just had a too-close encounter with a too-hard patio.

  Which it pretty much had.

  I could tell by the way Sister Catherine sat up slowly and cautiously, testing out her arms and her legs with each tiny movement just like I did, that she felt the same way.

  “Don’t move. And don’t try to sit up. Good heavens, don’t sit up! You don’t know if you have spinal injuries.”

  Sister Liliosa’s command rang out from the living room window over on my left, and at the sound of it, both Sister Catherine and I flattened ourselves like pancakes on the patio. I actually would have laughed if I wasn’t worried it would hurt too much.

  A second later, we found ourselves looking up into the faces of the nuns who’d come running at the sound of the commotion and stood in a tight circle around us. Someone had thought to grab blankets and they draped them over us. Someone else wet washcloths and gently wiped away the debris on our faces, then draped the clothes over our foreheads.

  “Chief Florentine is on the way,” Sister Grace announced, and flashed her phone as if to prove it. “He’s bringing the paramedics.”

  Bringing paramedics, Hank arrived in a wave of pulsing sirens and screeching tires, and after a few minutes of being poked, prodded, asked if we knew what day it was and what our names were and how much was two plus two, we were finally allowed to sit up.

  “Come on.” Before I could even think to get to my feet on my own power, Hank hooked an arm around my waist, lifted me, and carried me over to the nearest bench.

  The nearest bench that hadn’t been smashed to smithereens by a piece of fallin
g stone.

  I realized I was staring—at what was left of the bench where we’d been sitting and at the two police officers who walked around it taking pictures and making notes—and I tore my gaze away only to find myself face-to–oh-this-isn’t-good-and-what-the-hell-is-going-on–face with Hank.

  “This isn’t good,” he grumbled, his voice matching his thunderous expression. “What the hell is going on?”

  I was lucky my brain hadn’t been scrambled, but that didn’t mean it was working at full capacity, either. Adrenaline has a funny way of flooding into all the places where logic and reasoning usually reside.

  I glanced up at the top of the house and saw the place outside a third-floor window where a piece of the facade of the house about a foot wide and twice as long had fallen away. The gash was pale against the weather-worn stone, like a scar.

  “It’s an old house.” My throat was raw and dry and my words sounded like they’d been smothered under the ton of stone dust that coated my clothing and tasted gritty in my mouth. “That’s what happened, right? It’s an old house. It needs repairs.”

  “You think?” Hank, too, studied the house.

  “Did you—”

  “Send somebody up there to look around? What do I look like, a rookie?”

  My brain might have been scrambled, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.

  It was just as well, because Hank propped his fists on his hips and turned back to me. “By the time we got here, there was nobody up there.”

  Under normal circumstances, I’d like to think that my intellect was quick enough to go wherever it was he was trying to lead. These were not normal circumstances. Adrenaline, remember. Not to mention shock. I guess one of the paramedics realized what was happening to me because just like the night I found Sister Sheila in the water, someone had come over and draped a blanket around my shoulders. It didn’t do one single, solitary thing to calm the shaking that started deep in my solar plexus and radiated out like a supersized jiggle from the San Andreas fault, but it gave me something to hang on to. I clutched the blanket with trembling fingers.

  “By the time you got here? This is not the time to speak in code, Hank. You’d better lay it on the line. Are you telling me you think there might have been somebody up there earlier?”

  As if on cue, one of the cops who’d been sent up to the third floor hollered out to Hank and when Hank realized everyone suddenly had their eyes on the house and the cop who had that third-floor window raised, he shushed him with the wave of one hand and cocked his head, instructing the officer to get downstairs before he said another word.

  With a nod, the cop agreed, and when Hank stalked off to meet him, I was darned if I was going to be left behind.

  I threw off the blanket from around my shoulders and stood.

  The world didn’t gyrate.

  At least not too much.

  I gave it a moment to settle, refused the help of the paramedic who came running to offer me a hand, and one careful step after another, followed Hank to the door outside the kitchen.

  “You shouldn’t be here but as long as you are . . .” He shot me a look. “You need to sit down?”

  “I’m okay,” I assured him and surprisingly, it was nearly true. Oh, I’d have bruises by morning, that was sure enough. But nothing was broken, nothing was smashed (except the bench), and now that they were bandaged, my knees weren’t bleeding nearly as bad as they had been. Already I was dreaming about the Jacuzzi jets in my bathtub. Aches and pains I could deal with. Compared to what might have happened . . .

  From where we stood, I could see the entire patio and get a better feel for the scene of the accident. Sister Catherine, too, was up and moving now; she was on a bench on the far side of the patio surrounded by ministering nuns. The cops were done with their pictures and their measurements. They stood near the splintered wood of what used to be the bench near the house, waiting for further instructions.

  “There’s no use staring at it,” Hank said. “Nothing’s going to change.”

  “I’m just trying to get some sense of . . .” Of what? Even I wasn’t sure, and I made as if to throw my hands in the air, realized both my shoulders felt like I’d gone a couple rounds in the ring with Ali, and gave up with a humph just as the cop who had been upstairs joined us outside.

  He was a young guy with rosy cheeks and a gleam in his eye that told me he couldn’t wait to impress the chief with news of what he’d found. He bit back his words when he saw me waiting with Hank.

  “You might as well say it,” Hank told the kid. “She’s going to find out anyway.”

  “Sure, Chief.” The young cop took out his phone and showed Hank a picture of what he’d found upstairs.

  Hank chewed on his lower lip and stared at the phone, then handed it over to me.

  “Footprints in the dust,” I said. “Just like we found in the attic. This wasn’t an accident. Someone was up there and pried away a piece of the stone.”

  Hank plucked the phone from my hand and gave it back to the young officer. “Get up there and make sure nobody touches anything,” he told the cop. “I’ll call the state crime lab and get them over here to process the scene.” He waited for the kid to follow his orders before he turned back to me.

  “So who was the target, you or that nun?”

  Of all the scenarios that had raced through my head in the minutes since the accident, what he suggested wasn’t one of them. I stammered what I wanted to sound like a protest, and when that didn’t work, I gave up with a grunt. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”

  The way Hank’s eyebrows did a slow slide up his forehead was something I would have taken as an insult had I been feeling more like myself.

  “I’m serious, Hank,” I said.

  “So am I.” He checked to be sure we were out of earshot of anyone on the patio. “You’re looking into a murder, aren’t you? Maybe you’ve gotten a little too close to the truth.”

  “That Sister Helene killed Sister Sheila? Even if it’s true, I can’t see a nun trying to shut me up especially since I don’t really know anything except that Helene’s the only one who had a motive.”

  Hank slid a gaze toward the patio. “Well, if it wasn’t you this person was after, then maybe it was her.”

  “Sister Catherine?” My gaze automatically went over to the bench where Catherine sat with the nuns all around her. “She’s young, she’s smart, she’s energetic. She runs a shelter for homeless women. You can’t think someone would want to kill her because of that, can you?”

  “Plenty of abusers look to get even with the women who walk out on them.”

  “So you think some scumbag came all the way here from Philadelphia to kill the nun who runs the shelter? Even I think that’s a little far-fetched, Hank. Besides, that might explain why someone would want Sister Catherine dead, but it doesn’t explain Sister Sheila’s murder.”

  “Which brings us back to Helene McMurty.”

  I made the mistake of rubbing my hands over my face and got a mini-exfoliation in the process thanks to all the grit on my cheeks that had mixed with the water from the washcloth the nuns had so kindly provided. “So Helene kills Sheila because of a contract dispute and tries to kill Catherine because Catherine forgot to bring enough calendars to the retreat?”

  “I’ve heard weirder motives.”

  “Well, I haven’t. Not weirder and not lamer. Unless . . .” I had held off as long as I could from telling Hank about the librarians’ theory, the one that had what was going on at Water’s Edge compared to what happened in And Then There Were None. If the librarians were right, more lives might be in danger, and we couldn’t take the chance.

  I told Hank about the book and pointed out the parallels including Richard Ward Parker and how he never could have been planning to come to the retreat in the first place.

  To give him credit
, he did not blow me off.

  “Killed off one at a time, eh?” Hank crossed his arms over his barrel chest and looked over at the nuns. “You think—”

  “I don’t know what to think, I only know it’s mighty peculiar. Maybe Helene really does have something against every single one of them. Maybe she arranged this whole thing, and hired somebody to leave that message that was supposed to be from Richard Ward Parker. Or maybe she’s just some kind of crazy serial killer and this is how she gets her kicks. I don’t know, but somebody loosened that stone and right now . . .” I dragged in a breath that made my ribs ache. “I admit it, she’s looking like the best candidate.”

  “Wish I could get my hands on that nun,” Hank grunted. His cheeks turned bright red. “You know what I mean! Nobody’s seen her. Not anybody over at the ferry. Not anybody at the marina. I’ve talked to the cops on the mainland and I’ve talked to the nuns at her convent in Phoenix. There’s been no sign of her.”

  “Well there wouldn’t be, would there, not if she killed Sheila. She’d be lying low.”

  “And being careful not to be seen.” Biting his lower lip, Hank took another look at the house. “Took us a while to get here, and there are a million places to hide in a place like this. My guys are checking out the house and the grounds now. Still . . . You were all so busy back here, she could have walked right out of the house by the front door and no one would have seen a thing.”

  I hated it when he was right.

  Almost as much as I hated nearly being killed by a piece of falling house.

  “Do you think they’re in danger?” I asked Hank.

  He didn’t need to look at the nuns, he knew who I was talking about.

  “I’ll keep a couple guys here, just in case.”

  “And I’ll be back later,” I told him. “I’m going home to take a shower.”

  I dragged around to the front yard, wondering where I was going to find the energy to climb into my SUV, but before I could get there, something over on the other side of the house caught my attention. Just a blur moving through the trees that surrounded the far end of the house.