And Then There Were Nuns

by Kylie Logan

  That, too, was a mystery, one I hadn’t bothered to think about because it never seemed to matter to anyone but Sister Gabriel.

  “Sister Liliosa says she saw the package being delivered,” I told Levi. “It’s got to be there at Water’s Edge somewhere.”

  “Which means someone might have taken it and that means someone has a reason for not wanting Sister Gabriel to have it.”

  Instead of clearing things up, he’d added another layer to the mystery with that comment. It made my head hurt.

  I rubbed my eyes. “I’m going to bed,” I said, then just so we were as perfectly crystal clear as we could possibly be, I looked over my shoulder at the back door. “You’re leaving.”

  I did my best to ignore the way Levi’s grin lit up the room. “Like I told you, I can’t. I’m a man with a mission.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Don’t worry, it has nothing to do with you. Or at least, not a lot to do with you.” He got up and strolled toward the door. “I’ve got my sleeping bag in the parlor.”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” I waved my hands in the air to get his attention and when that didn’t work and he didn’t even bother to turn around, I scrambled out of the kitchen and followed him down the hallway. “This does have something to do with me. It has everything to do with me! You’re leaving. No sleeping bag. No parlor. My house, remember, and I’m the one who gets to say who stays and who doesn’t.”

  “Except when you get overruled by Hank.”

  The announcement left me speechless for enough time for Levi to disappear into the parlor. When I found him again, he was just unrolling a black sleeping bag on the rug in front of the fireplace.

  “What does Hank have to do with this?” I demanded.

  “He wants me to keep an eye on you.”

  “I don’t need you to keep an eye on me.”

  “Yeah, I told him that. But then he told me how the house just about fell on you this morning.”

  “It was just a piece of the house. And I told Hank, I don’t think that had anything to do with me.”

  “Well, he’s not convinced.” Levi kicked off his sneakers. “Hanks says he’s got enough to worry about over at Water’s Edge and he can’t spare an officer to come over here to make sure nothing happens to you. You’ll be happy to hear I’m not doing this as any sort of favor to you or anyone else. I’m officially on the town payroll, at least for as long as this assignment lasts. How could I say no? I’ve got to do something now that you fired Jason and he can’t pay me anymore.”

  “If that’s supposed to make me feel guilty, it didn’t work,” I told him.

  Levi stripped off the navy sweater he was wearing and tossed it on the couch. “Not trying to make you feel guilty. Not trying to make you feel anything. Just telling you the truth. Hank hired me to watch out for you until this craziness over at Water’s Edge gets sorted out.”

  I raised my chin. “Then it looks like I’ll have to get a move on and sort it out.”

  He unbuttoned his green and navy plaid shirt. “Exactly what I told Hank you’d say.”

  “You think you know me pretty well.” I sounded convincing enough. Heck, I even sounded self-assured. When he slipped out of his shirt, though, and I thought about how I’d watched him undress (heck, I’d even helped) just a few days before, I wasn’t so sure how long I could keep it up.

  “There’s a bunch you don’t know about me,” I told him at the same time I whirled toward the door and hoped it looked more like a strategic move than a surrender. “Hank’s going to hear about this in the morning. This may be the shortest case you’ve ever worked.”

  “Told him you’d say that, too,” he called after me when I was already out in the hallway.

  I refused to give him the satisfaction of a reply.

  Instead, I hurried into my private suite and yes, I locked the door behind me. I was already washed up and in my jammies when I realized that though Levi claimed to know me pretty well, I apparently knew him better than he thought, too.

  But then, I heard the small, shuffling sounds from out in the hallway and saw the way the light stopped filtering through the space between the bottom of the door and the floor, and I knew exactly what it meant.

  He’d never intended to sleep on the floor in front of the parlor fireplace. He’d dragged his sleeping bag out to the hallway.

  Levi’s way of assuring my safety was to sleep on the floor in front of my door.

  16

  I slept through my alarm and bolted out of bed just minutes before my guests would be down for breakfast, throwing on my clothes and racing to the kitchen so fast, if Levi had still been camped out in front of my doorway, I would have tripped right over him.

  But the hallway was empty; I realized that the moment my door opened without a hitch. Levi was gone, and I was glad. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with any personal angst on a morning when I was sore and groggy and breakfast was bound to be late.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  And realized that the air in the house was wonderfully aromatic with the mingled scents of coffee and cinnamon.

  I found the answer to the olfactory mystery the moment I stepped into the kitchen. There was a pot of coffee already made, a pan of French toast sizzling away on the stove, and Levi was spooning yogurt and fruit into parfait glasses.

  I might have been grateful.

  If I wasn’t so annoyed.

  “So now you’re taking over my business as well as my house?”

  He glanced up from his work. “Good morning. You look like you could use a cup of coffee.”

  He had it poured before I could tell him to forget it, and I had half of it polished off before I could tell myself that accepting it was tantamount to agreeing to a peace treaty I had no intention of honoring.

  None of which kept me from finishing the coffee. While I did, Levi kept working. I don’t know where he got a container of what looked like homemade granola, but he popped it open and layered crispy oats and dried cranberries between the yogurt and fruit.

  “So how does a PI learn to be a chef?” Yeah, I know, it was too personal a question, too early in the morning, too soon after I realized that what we had of a relationship was based on lies. But I am, by nature, altogether too curious, and I simply couldn’t help myself.

  “One of my uncles owns a restaurant in Cleveland,” he said without bothering to look my way. “I worked there when I was in college.”

  “So the bar was your perfect cover.”

  “Not completely a cover.” He glanced my way, but only for a moment. “I really do own the bar. Figured as long as I had to live here, it was a good investment, and turns out, I was right. And I’m enjoying it, too. But then, there’s not much call for private investigation work on an island this size.”

  “Unless you know a New York attorney. Or a police chief who doesn’t have the manpower or the budget to do his own babysitting.”

  “It pays to have connections.”

  I banged my coffee mug on the counter. “Good thing I moved here. Connections, that’s something I’ve always been good at. Agents, editors, attorneys, producers, directors, actors. Lucky for me, most of them were legit and interested in bettering my career and theirs. But there were others, the ones who only wanted the connections I was able to provide.” I’d been away from New York and from my high-powered, high-intensity life for a year, but even I never realized how the bitterness still lingered. “You’d be surprised how many people try to make a living by being hangers-on.”

  He finished filling the last parfait glass and when he laid down the spoon, the metallic clink set my teeth on edge. “That’s not what I was talking about, and you know it.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s true. Good ol’ FX O’Grady! Nice to know I can still provide a public service.”

  He turn
ed away long enough to give the French toast a flip and when he asked, “Serving platter?” his voice was as tight as the set of his shoulders.

  It was in the cupboard just to his left, but it was too hard to explain, I mean, what with the tight ball of anger in my throat. I went over and got the platter and I held it while he scooped up piece after perfectly made piece of French toast and piled the dish high.

  Domestic bliss it was not, but the mundane chore allowed enough time for both our tempers to simmer down.

  “I figured breakfast was the least I could do.” Finished loading up the platter, Levi took it out of my hands and set it on the countertop next to the parfaits and for the space of a heartbeat, I wondered how two people who had been so close just a short time before could suddenly find themselves acting like strangers. “To thank you for the nice, comfy place to sleep in front of your fireplace.”

  “Except you didn’t sleep in front of the fireplace,” I reminded him.

  He didn’t insult me by arguing the point and for that, I was grateful. If he could try to be civil, I told myself, so could I.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  “And you don’t owe me any thanks,” I said. So far, so good. But try as I might, I couldn’t keep from adding, “You’re getting paid to be here. Just like you’ve been paid to watch me ever since you came to the island.”

  He braced his hands against the breakfast counter. “I told you, coming here and keeping an eye on you, it started out as a job and ended up—”

  “I’ll take this to the dining room.”

  I grabbed the French toast and delivered it just as the librarians were piling down the steps.

  “Good morning,” they called out, one by one, and twittered (in the polite sort of way I expected from librarians and obviously because they didn’t realize that he’d actually slept on the floor rather than in my bed) when Levi came out of the kitchen with the pot of coffee, then with the parfaits.

  “We heard there was more excitement yesterday,” Joyce said and reached for a piece of French toast. “Another dead nun! We never expected that sort of thing. Not here on the island.”

  “At least not until we thought of Agatha Christie,” Angela reminded me.

  “Christie . . .” I dropped into the nearest empty chair. “What do you suppose the Christie story can tell us about what’s going on over at Water’s Edge?”

  “That somebody really doesn’t like nuns,” Carole said.

  “That somebody isn’t what they seem,” Bette added. “Because you know in the book, one of the guests is really the person who invited all the victims there in the first place. He’s looking to bring the other guests to justice.”

  This particular bit of wisdom jibed with what Levi and I had discussed the night before. I thought about Sister Gabriel and the clothes in the attic. “But in the book,” I said, “the one who isn’t what he seems is also the one orchestrating the murders.” This, of course, did not fit in with any theory I had because it was obvious Sister Gabriel hadn’t taken a shot at herself.

  What wasn’t so obvious was if she might—or might not—have had something to do with both Sister Sheila’s and Sister Helene’s deaths.

  I must have considered the possibility for longer than I thought, because when I pulled myself out of my thoughts and back to reality, I realized Levi had filled the china coffee cup in front of me. Far be it from me to waste perfectly good coffee. I took a sip and looked around the table.

  “Where’s Mr. Roscoe?” I wondered out loud. “And Tyler?”

  Bette was working on one of the parfaits and she licked her spoon before she waved it in some vague direction. “The one man . . . the one with all the camera equipment . . . he was out early this morning. I heard him shuffling around and looked out the window just in time to see him get into his car. To tell the truth . . .” She blushed. “I was kind of grateful to see him go. He cornered me yesterday afternoon and talked birds. Birds, birds, birds. Librarians are used to that sort of thing, of course, we get all sorts of patrons who want to talk about every subject under the sun, but at least in the library, there’s usually a phone ringing or another patron waiting with questions. Here, I couldn’t escape.”

  “Out last night, too,” Carole commented. She reached for the serving platter. “We were cleaning up the kitchen when he came in and that was . . .” She looked to her friends.

  “Ten, I bet,” Bette said.

  “Maybe even later,” Joyce said and added for my benefit, “We weren’t cleaning up from dinner. It was like a late-night snack.”

  “And wine.” Bette giggled.

  “And that man, the one with the camera equipment . . .” Angela thought about it for a moment. “When he came in, we asked if he’d like a glass of wine, but he said he was tired, that he’d been out taking photographs of birds. What sort of pictures do you suppose a man takes of birds in the middle of the night?”

  What sort, indeed.

  I reminded myself to bring up the subject with Tyler when next I saw him. Until then . . .

  “And Mr. Roscoe?” I asked. “Where’s he this morning?”

  “He was out even later last night,” Bette assured me. “Him and those maps of his. Always his maps!” She rolled her eyes. “It’s like those things are sacred, he never puts that tube of them down.”

  “Genealogists.” Angela, too, must have had experience with the same types, because her voice carried just as much strained patience. “And him, I tried to have a conversation with yesterday,” she added. “Asked him what his favorite sources are. You know, for research. He blew me off.”

  “Not like one of those roots types at all,” Joyce said. “They’re usually more like that birdman. Always yapping about family and research sources.”

  “I get the feeling he’s not finding everything he thought he’d find when he came to the island,” Carole said. “When I asked him yesterday how his search was going, he said he was having no luck at all. He’s probably just embarrassed. You know how genealogists love to show off their research skills.”

  I was sure she was right, and I didn’t worry about it. There were other things on my mind.

  I left the ladies to their breakfast and went into the kitchen to start cleaning up.

  “You’re going out?”

  Something about the speediness of my work must have alerted Levi.

  “I thought I’d go over to Water’s Edge.”

  “I’d like to go with you.”

  I snapped the lid on the container of granola and set it aside. “You don’t have to.”

  “I do if I want to get paid.”

  “Of course.”

  “Look . . .” I had the carton of yogurt in my hands and he took it away from me before he continued. “As long as we have to do this—”

  “But we don’t, do we?”

  “We do because Hank says we have to, and as long as we have to, let’s try to make it as painless as possible.”

  It was the grown-up thing to do.

  Tell that to the teenaged voice of unreason inside my head.

  Luckily, before it had a chance to talk, my phone rang.

  I checked the caller ID and told Levi, “It’s Hank,” before I answered.

  Hank started talking the moment I said hello, and he didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgewise. By the time I hung up, Levi was eager to know what was going on.

  “Hank’s over at Water’s Edge,” I told him. “Those clothes that were up in the attic are missing. And so is Sister Gabriel.”

  * * *

  I can’t say Water’s Edge was in an uproar by the time Levi and I got there because let’s face it, uproar and nuns are not two words that are generally used in the same sentence.

  There was a buzz in the air, though, and it was one more of anxiety than excitement.

 
“We’ve looked everywhere,” Sister Catherine told me the minute I walked in the door. “She’s nowhere to be found.”

  I threw Hank a look. If he was smart—and I had no doubt that he was—I knew he hadn’t said a word to the nuns about the clothes missing from the attic. The nuns were worried about Sister Gabriel’s safety. Hank, though, had other things in mind.

  I waited until Sister Liliosa gathered all the nuns into the living room before I closed in on Hank.

  “Took a powder, huh?”

  Levi stood to Hank’s left. “Remember, that’s what you thought about Sister Helene, too. And she wasn’t as missing as she was dead.”

  It made sense in a terrible way. Except for the missing disguise.

  “You’ve checked with Jayce?” I asked Hank.

  His curt nod told me all I needed to know. “Already been four ferries over to the mainland this morning. She could have been on any one of them. Out of her habit and with her hair colored, there’s no telling what she looks like.”

  It was an innocent enough comment and I knew Hank was right. Yet something about what he said awoke the memory of another throwaway comment someone had made about that big dinner party back in New York.

  “There’s no telling what she looks like,” I mumbled, and when both Levi and Hank looked at me as if I’d started speaking Chinese, I explained, “The dinner in New York, Sister Gabriel had the flu. She wasn’t there.”

  To his credit, Levi caught on right away. Believe me, I did not attribute this to the fact that our psyches were working as one and our heart beating in sync. I’d never felt more disconnected from anyone in my life. But remember, Levi was a PI and the way I figured it, a PI has to think a whole lot like an author does. Take a situation, turn it on its head. Take what looks like a simple fact and look at it in a new light.

  We’d been using the light of reason when maybe we should have shone the big, bright spotlight of suspicion on the situation.

  “What Bea’s saying,” Levi said for Hank’s benefit, “is that none of these nuns have ever seen Sister Gabriel before.”

  Hank wrinkled his nose and scrunched his eyes. At least for a moment. Then the truth dawned on him and his eyes got wide. “You’re telling me that the Sister Gabriel who was here—”