by Morgana Best
“What do you mean?” Adam asked with furrowed brows.
“There are always incidents and injuries during the games; people are just scared to play against them. The Pig Dog Team’s full of these huge, strong, muscular women who could probably even rival most men’s teams. Sister Bertrand used to organize the match, so I suppose the new nuns are organizing it now. It’s not a very nice event, as the Pig Dog Team women are all horrible bullies.”
Adam shook his head. “I’m just not sure what to make of this,” he admitted.
“Hang on a moment,” I said. “Isn’t it odd that a nun is gambling? Are they allowed to gamble?”
Adam shrugged. “Well, it’s actually not all that uncommon, to be honest. It’s not something that would make me suspicious, since Irish Catholic nuns and priests, for example, are very fond of gambling.”
“Are you serious?” the bookmaker said loudly, causing the elderly ladies to stare at him.
Adam and I leaned in the direction of the nun. I held my breath in an attempt to overhear.
“Listen, I’ll take the bet, but I feel really bad about taking money from nuns. The Pig Dog Team never loses. Are you sure you want to take such a big risk?” the bookmaker asked the nun. “Nobody ever bets against them.”
I saw the nun nod. I listened for a while longer, but the bookmaker had lowered his voice. Adam leaned over to me. “Do you know who the Pig Dogs are playing against this year?” he whispered.
“Not a clue,” I said, “but they must be pretty good, or the nun knows something that nobody else does.”
The waitress walked up and cleared our plates. “Would you like to look at our dessert menu?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, hoping to extend our spy operation. The waitress handed us the menus. “I’ll give you some time to decide,” she said, and left.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I said to Adam, remembering that he was paying.
Adam chuckled. “Not at all. I’m enjoying the company.”
I didn’t know where to look. Why would a little compliment make me so embarrassed? “The Bailey’s Roulade looks good,” I muttered, burying my face in the menu.
By the time our desserts arrived, we had not heard any more from the nun or the bookmaker. I had not even taken the first bite when I saw that the bookmaker was in the process of getting up. As he stood, the nun did so as well. “Oh no, they’re leaving,” I whispered. “What do we do?”
“Just look down,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ll walk right by.”
My heart beat faster and faster. What if the nun was, in fact, a bank robber hiding out in the convent? What if she realized we were following her, and even listening in to her conversation?
I kept my head down, and watched them approach out of the corner of my eye. The bookmaker and the nun continued talking as they made their way toward the door. Just as they were passing my table, I glanced up, and locked eyes with the nun. A chill ran through my bones.
Chapter Fourteen.
Saturday dawned bright and clear, a good day for an AFL match. There were several types of football in Australia, but AFL was home grown, as the name Australian Football League suggested. It was the only type of football I followed, but I did not like the local, yearly charity match, as the Pig Dog Team was made up of cheats and bullies. I pitied the poor girls who would be playing against them this year.
The Pig Dog women were all farmers from out of town, who rarely came into town, thankfully. They were loud, rude, and obnoxious. Sure, there were umpires, but as it was simply an annual charity match in a small country town, and not part of any league, players could not be reported or suspended, so the Pig Dog women could do whatever they liked. They thought nothing of illegal moves such as head high tackles, tackling below the knees, or tackling players who didn’t have the ball. While the umpire always awarded a free kick against them for such behavior, the other team always became increasingly intimidated, not to mention increasingly injured.
And so it was with some trepidation that I agreed to meet Adam for the match.
“Not much of a crowd,” Adam said, when I took my seat next to him in the stand.
“No, it’s too violent and unfair with the Pig Dog Team in it,” I said. “I was even expecting it to be canceled. Last year the opposing team was one man down.”
“Don’t you mean one woman down?” He spoke the words at the same time as the voice came over the loudspeaker.
I nodded, and then, as I listened to the announcement, grabbed Adam’s arm.
Adam and I looked at each other in shock.
“Did he say the Sisters of Temperance Team?” I asked in disbelief.
Adam nodded, but the voice over the loudspeaker continued, and announced that only six players would be playing on the Sisters of Temperance Team.
A loud gasp of horror went up from the spectators. Adam and I were shocked, but not for the same reason. I turned to Adam. “Are the man nuns playing?”
“Surely not!” he gasped, but then pointed to the field.
Six nuns in full habit ran onto the field, while the eighteen players from the Pig Dog Team ran onto the field at the opposite end.
No one cheered; I assume everyone was in shock. It was bad enough playing against the Pig Dog Team with a full team of eighteen players, but the Sisters of Temperance Team was one-third of that. However, Adam and I knew something that no one else knew: the nuns were men, and big, bulky, hardened criminal men at that.
“That explains the bookmaker,” Adam whispered to me.
I nodded. It looked as if the women on the Pig Dog Team were finally going to get their comeuppance and the nuns were going to make a tidy sum.
As they stood around the umpire for the bounce, the Pig Dog women were doubled over with laughter, pointing at the nuns. If only they knew.
The game started, and a nun from the Sisters of Temperance Team had immediate possession of the ball. Two hefty, solid Pig Dog players tackled her hard, a legal tackle for once, but the tackle had no effect whatsoever. The two Pig Dog players fell backward onto the ground, and lay still. Play continued while the two Pig Dog players were taken away on stretchers. The nun kicked the ball to another nun, who took the mark. A Pig Dog player pushed that nun in the back, an illegal move, so the umpire blew the whistle.
This meant a free kick to the Sisters of Temperance Team. The field umpire pointed to the spot where the offense had occurred, and the other five nuns ran toward the goal posts. The nun kicked the ball, which flew in the direction of a nun standing at the fifty meter mark.
Right then, a Pig Dog player ran at the nun, with her elbow raised to strike the nun across the neck. The crowd sent up a collective gasp. The nun ducked, and the Pig Dog player flew over her head and landed badly. As the Pig Dog player writhed on the ground, the nun took the mark, and everyone cheered.
Adam and I exchanged glances. While a doctor ran out to the Pig Dog player, the nun then lined up to kick the ball.
“Surely she’s not going to try to kick a goal from the fifty meter mark,” the announcer said, in a shocked tone.
The Pig Dog Team must have thought the same thing, for just as the nun kicked the ball, a Pig Dog player ran to tackle another nun. The other nun saw her coming. I’m not sure what happened, as it was all so fast. The nun scored the goal, and then there were two Pig Dog players lying on the ground. They were duly carried away on stretchers.
“About time that Pig Dog Team got what’s coming to them,” an elderly woman sitting in front of me said to her husband, who loudly agreed with her.
“They’re risking quite a lot coming out in public like this,” I whispered to Adam.
“They must need the money,” he whispered back. “That bet must’ve been sizable, and they would’ve had incredibly good odds. They’ll make an absolute fortune.”
By quarter time, the Pig Dog Team had lost eight of their players to injuries, and now they were the ones too intimidated to tackle the Sisters of Temperance Team. The score
was in favor of the Sisters of Temperance Team, 55 – Nil.
For the rest of the game, the nuns were not so overt in their behavior. They even allowed the Pig Dog Team to score a few goals. The final score was 186 - 24. The Sisters of Temperance Team, of course, won.
Adam and I had been on the lookout for Sister Maria, but had seen no sign of her so far. After the Sisters of Temperance Team won, they shook hands with the remaining players of the Pig Dog Team. I caught Adam’s arm. “There, look!” I pointed at Sister Maria who was walking over to the Sisters of Temperance Team. She slapped them all on the back, and even from this distance, I could see she was delighted.
“The nuns would’ve made a fortune,” Adam muttered. Right then, Sister Maria and one of the Sisters of Temperance Team broke away from the group, and walked in different directions. “Okay, how about we split up and follow one each,” he said, “and then we can meet back at the Gobble Up Café as soon as we’ve seen where they’re going.”
I stood up, and then bent over to rub my calves which had gone numb from sitting for so long. “Good idea. Perhaps you should follow Sister Maria, as she knows me by sight.”
Adam frowned. “Maybe we shouldn’t split up,” Adam said. “Maybe we should both follow that man nun.”
I knew he was worried about me getting hurt, and while it was kind of sweet, it annoyed me a bit, too. I was a strong woman who could take care of myself. I must have glared a little at Adam, because he held his hands up and grinned.
“Or not,” he said. And then he left to follow Sister Maria, leaving me to follow the other nun.
And so I found myself following the nun, a tall nun with a hooked nose. The nun walked in a loose manner, his long arms swinging at the side, his legs covering the ground.
So intent was I upon following the nun, that I almost ran over Evelyn Sutton, an elderly lady. She was one of my best customers, although she only bought my antique finds, turning up her nose at my chalk-painted, upcycled furniture. Her husband had been a famous AFL player back in the day, and had passed away years ago, before I’d met Evelyn.
“Sorry, Mrs. Sutton,” I gasped.
“Evelyn, please. That was a very strange game, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “Yes, you could say that.” Evelyn stood there, rubbing her chin, and frowning hard. She looked a million miles away.
“Evelyn?”
“Oh sorry; I was lost in thought. I saw that Victorian cedar meat safe in your window. Would you hold it for me until Monday?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Now, you won’t go painting it, or anything like that?”
I hurried to reassure of her. “Of course not. You know I wouldn’t paint an antique. It came in covered in several layers of paint. I’ve stripped them back, but I’ll give it one more coat of shellac before Monday.”
With that, Evelyn thanked me and hurried away. I could tell she was worried about something, but I had no idea what. Still, I had more pressing concerns.
On one side of the football field was a large stand, beneath which were two restrooms, one for men, and one for women. Most of the people who had come to watch the game had left, and the stragglers were still filing out, or chatting with friends near the turnstile exits. I looked around, and saw the nun off in the distance.
I caught up to the nun a bit, but hung back a suitable distance. The nun passed the ladies’ locker room, and then the men’s as well, and then turned into the women’s restroom.
I waited a moment, and then went in as well.
The bathroom was a bit dingy, the lighting a terrible, fake yellow emanating from two fluorescent tubes which ran along the ceiling. There were four stalls in the small bathroom and a double sink near the door. The tall nun was nowhere to be seen.
I cautiously took a few steps inside and then bent at my knees. I looked under the stall walls, until I located the nun standing in the second of the four stalls. Thankfully, no one else was in the restroom, or it would have been embarrassing for me, peering under the door as I was.
I couldn’t help but smile as I looked at the nun’s feet. They were spaced a bit apart, and they were facing the toilet. Just as a man would. If I’d had any doubt before that the nun were men, I had none now.
I turned and hurried out of the bathroom. I practically ran toward the parking lot, hurrying to my car, and climbing behind the wheel. I cranked the engine and stomped on the gas, causing my rear tires to spin with a screeching sound on the blacktop as the car shot out of the parking lot and onto the road.
Within a minute or two, I was parking up the road from the Gobble Up Café. I had intended to text Adam from the safety of the café, but he was already there. He sat alone in a booth in the corner, a cup of coffee in front of him.
“Hey,” he said, as I took my seat opposite him. “You hungry? I’ve ordered potato wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce for us both.”
I nodded. “Thanks, I’m ravenous. Where did Sister Maria go?”
“Just to the convent car, but then she went straight back to the other nuns,” he said, with disappointment. “Did you have any better luck?
“Listen to this,” I said. “I followed that nun into the bathroom. I looked under the door. He was standing up and facing the toilet.”
“So he is a man!” Adam exclaimed, loudly enough that the people at the tables and in nearby booths nearby looked to him.
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“You do realize we have to tell the police,” Adam said, as the waitress deposited a huge plate of potato wedges in between us.
I pulled a face. “They won’t believe us,” I said. “They’ll wonder why I was looking under toilet doors.”
“We have no choice,” Adam said, before he popped a whole potato wedge in his mouth.
“Truly, they won’t be any help at all,” I said, as I dipped a wedge in the hot chili sauce and then the sour cream. “Surely there’s something else we can do?”
“Well, we could go and speak to the priest at Sacred Heart,” Adam said.
“Sacred Heart? What’s that?”
Adam raised his eyebrows at me. “Our Lady of the Sacred Heart is the cathedral in Ebla Valley. It has the Catholic elementary school on the grounds.”
I nodded. “Oh yeah.” I nodded. “The locals just know it as ‘the Catholic Church’.”
Adam appeared to be unperturbed at my ignorance. “If I remember from my Catholic school days, he might have some helpful information. Priests are sort of, I don't know how to say it, well, not bosses over nuns, but they know what’s going on. I mean, he would know what’s up with any new nuns and stuff,” Adam said.
“All right,” I said. “That’s a good idea.”
“We still have to go and see the police now, though,” Adam said.
I sighed.
An hour later, we stood in front of the police station. It was a small building, and the yellowing paint should have been replaced a decade or so ago. I fervently hoped that it would not be open. As it was a small country town, the police station kept unusual hours, and sometimes one had to press the buzzer next to the door to be transferred to the police officer on duty. However, it was also a well known fact that the local police rarely responded to the buzzer.
It was not my lucky day. The front door opened, and we walked in. There were no cops in sight. Just then, we heard a voice from the front room. “Come in!”
We walked into the little room, and Sergeant Barnes swiveled around in his chair to face us. “Yes?”
“We just went to the charity football match,” I said, nervously. My palms were sweating, and I rubbed them on my jeans.
The sergeant looked at me, waiting for me to continue.
“Well, you know how we told you that the nuns were men?” He simply raised his eyebrows, so I pressed on. “I just saw one of the nuns in the toilet, and he was facing the stall, just like men do.”
The sergeant’s jaw dropped.
“And six nuns beat the eighteen Pig Dog
players,” I added.
The sergeant’s jaw dropped even further. “The nuns beat the Pig Dog Team?”
I nodded enthusiastically.
“What was the score?”
“186 - 24,” I said.
The sergeant stood up and crossed his arms. “That’s a high scoring game. Clearly they had God on their side.”
I rubbed my temples. This wasn’t going at all well. “It’s because those nuns are men; they’re the Shadow Gang, hiding out at the convent.”
The sergeant rolled his eyes. “And how did you see a nun facing the stall? It was the women’s bathroom, I take it?”
This was the part I’d been dreading. “Er, yes,” I said. I looked at Adam and he nodded in encouragement. “I knew she was a man, so I followed her into the bathroom. I looked under the stall door, and she was using the restroom standing up.”
Sergeant Barnes crossed his arms and drew himself up to his full height. “There are laws against being a peeping tom,” he said.
“But, but…” I spluttered.
Adam came to my rescue. “Sergeant, those nuns are men. They beat that other team easily, and Rose saw one of them using the bathroom like a man. You know that Dave the pawnbroker was murdered; we suspect he was their fence.”
Sergeant Barnes held up his hand for silence. “Now look here,” he said, “You’re obviously Protestants, but that’s no excuse to slander those poor nuns. I don’t have time to listen to your crackpot theories, you got me?”
“But -” Adam started to say, but the man pointed at the front door.
“No buts,” he said. “Get out of here before I get angry.”
“But they all have hairy legs!” I protested as I was ushered unceremoniously out the door.
Chapter Fifteen.
Adam had told me that the morning tea in the parish hall at eleven, right after Mass, was the best time to talk to the priest, so we sat through the Mass, which had started at ten. I had never been to Mass before, and found it all quite confusing. I followed Adam’s lead, which was just as well, as everyone seemed to know automatically when to stand, when to sit, and when to kneel.
