Sister Eve and the Blue Nun (10 page)

She nodded and smiled in return. “It does appear as if the word got out to everyone in the county and in Santa Fe.” She looked toward the window. “I just saw a news crew drive past.” She turned back, realizing the blinds were closed. “I was over there and watched,” she tried to explain, realizing as the words left her lips how ridiculous she sounded. “Before I came here and sat down.” She closed her eyes and shook her head.
Could you just shut up?
she asked herself.

There was a pause. She could feel him watching her.
Probably
trying to see what other dumb or incriminating thing I can say on my own.

“So, the victim has a brother who lives here,” he noted, watching Eve carefully.

She nodded. “Yes, yes, she does . . . did,” she added, correcting herself and, unfortunately, letting it be known that she was aware of the reference, that she had knowledge of what had happened on the monastery campus. “Wait. I'm sorry, who are you talking about?” She was hoping he hadn't caught the misstep.

“The woman in the guest quarters, the sister of the monk you came to find. Anthony, I believe is his name.”

Nope. He hadn't missed a thing.

“Yes, I thought Brother Anthony might still be here and I came to find him.”

“To tell him what happened?”

She nodded her head, hoping that gestures didn't really qualify as lying.

He glanced around again. “He's not here?”

She shook her head and reached for the cross necklace around her neck.

He studied her. “Is that a special crucifix?”

She looked down at the pendant. “My mother gave it to me,” she answered. “A gift when I joined the order . . . when I became a nun.”

He nodded and smiled slightly. “I have one too,” he said, and he pulled out the necklace he was wearing. It was on a silver chain and was not a crucifix but instead a cross that appeared to be made from stone, exactly what kind Eve didn't know. It was crude, and
she had to look closely to make out that it was a cross and not just a round piece of white stone.

“It's sacred buffalo stone—from my grandfather on the Shoshone Indian Reservation in Nevada.” He looked at the stone hanging from his neck and then placed it back beneath his shirt. “He gave it to me when I was a boy,” he added. “Said he saw a white buffalo the day I was born.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

Detective Lujan shrugged. “Not sure,” he answered. “He seemed to think it meant I would be protected.”

She thought about the explanation. “I would imagine that's a good sign for a police officer.”

He nodded. “That's why I wear it,” he noted. He took in a breath, changing the direction of the conversation. “Do you know where Brother Anthony is?” he asked.

Eve relaxed because she was able to be completely honest with this answer. “I don't.”

“But you were searching for him.”

It wasn't a question so she didn't respond.

There was a lull in the conversation, and she was hopeful that he was finished with the interview. She waited.

“And the letter?”

This was a question, she knew.

She nodded without speaking.

“Can I see it?”

Eve reached behind her and pulled out the letter. She handed it to the officer and then leaned back, sticking her hands into her pants pockets, her fingers finding the piece of material she had
taken from the victim's room. She clutched it, waiting for him to finish reading.

He refolded the piece of paper and handed it back to her. “So, he knew what happened before you got to him?”

She took the letter, holding it in her hand. “He told me earlier, then he told Father Oliver, who met me in Kelly's room. I was trying to find him when you and Detective Bootskievely arrived. This was on Father Oliver's desk. And when you told me he was here, I came to try and change his mind.”

“Change his mind about leaving?”

She nodded. “He didn't kill his sister,” she explained. “He's much too kind and he loved her very much. He didn't do this.”

“But you were worried how it would look, what we might think.”

She studied the officer. “I was,” she replied. “There's some pretty strong circumstantial evidence you're going to hear. And I'm worried about him too. He doesn't sound too stable in that letter.”

She felt the cell phone vibrating in the pocket of her jacket and knew it was the Captain.

He watched her a few seconds. “I'll need the letter eventually.”

“But not now?” she asked, surprised he wasn't taking it.

He shook his head. “I'm sure you'll keep it safe.”

She nodded, the phone still vibrating.

“You should probably answer that,” he said as he made his exit.

FOURTEEN

By the time Eve had gotten her father fully on board about what had happened, the detective had left the dining room. While she watched Detective Lujan exit, Captain Divine explained on the phone that he would come to the monastery first thing that morning and that he would call Daniel, his former partner and an acting detective, and fill him in on the murder and everything Eve had told him.

Eve planned to go to her room, the only sleeping quarter left in the sisters' old residential wing. She knew that Father Oliver had decided to leave one room unchanged in case a nun might wish to return to visit the old community. When he took her to the last room on the hall after she arrived, he explained that he thought it would be better for them, for her, to stay in familiar territory instead of having to bunk in the new guesthousing. And he was right.

As sad as she was to be back and for things to be so different from when she was a resident there, Eve was glad she was staying
in the main building of the monastery. She had not wanted to stay in the row of rooms that had been recently built for the nuns but never used by them. She was relieved to feel less like a guest than she already did. The expulsion of the nuns bothered her greatly, but she still loved the monastery, and regardless of the recent history, it was still comforting to be in the place filled with so many memories.

Once she made it past the area around the main entrance, after greeting the five or six monks standing around talking about what had happened and feigning her ignorance about everything, she headed past the chapel and down the hall to the last room on the right. She opened the door and was surprised to find Father Oliver sitting at the desk, waiting for her.

“I'm sorry, Sister, to be in your private quarters. I didn't know where else I might find you.” He stood up, bowing his head, and dropped his hands to clasp them in front of him, the rosary he had been praying with clearly visible.

She shut the door and walked over to him, taking him by the hand. “It's okay,” she said, squeezing his hand before sitting down on the bed across from the desk.

As she studied him, seeing him in brighter and clearer light than when they had last been together in Kelly's room, Eve could see how much the vice superior had aged since she'd been away. Even though she had been in Madrid and away from the monastery only a few months, his hair had gone from salt and pepper to just salt, and it was curly and longer than he usually kept it.

There were new wrinkles around his eyes, two deep lines furrowed between his brows. He was slumped and his color was ashen.
The thought that he was sick crossed her mind, but she knew his appearance had more to do with stress than it likely had to do with some disease or illness. It was easy to see that he was taking the transition at the monastery harder than anyone. And now he was dealing with this, a murder and one of the monks implicated and apparently missing.

“Anthony was gone,” she said, unsure if he knew.

He nodded. “I saw Brother Matthew. He told me that he heard him leave and heard the conversation in the hallway between you and the police officers.” He sat back down in the chair. “I hoped maybe you had found him. I hoped maybe he would come back here with you. Have you seen him at all?”

She shook her head and suddenly remembered the letter. She pulled it out of her pocket and handed it to him. She watched as he unfolded it and read.

He rested his elbows on the desk and ran his hands over his face. “What is he doing? Where has he gone?”

“I don't know,” she replied. “But Daniel, my friend, the one I said I would call, he's going to come this morning. He'll understand when we tell him that Anthony didn't do this. He'll help us find him.”

Father Oliver nodded.

“I met two detectives from the Santa Fe department. Bootskievely and Lujan,” she said. “Did you see them?”

“They came down later,” he explained. “But yes, I met them both. The deputies made the report to them, and I could see they would be handling everything from that point on.” He added, “They seem like good men.”

Eve shrugged. She waited for a few seconds before asking the question she had been dying to ask when she first saw the abbot.

“I told them what I know,” he said, understanding the inquisitive look she was giving him. “I told them that Anthony had come to me earlier in the evening and shared with me what had happened. I explained that he was very upset and confessed that he had stolen something from the Isleta church and that he had planned to return it after he showed it to his sister. I went on to say that he had told me that when Dr. Middlesworth refused to hand the papers back over to him and explained that she planned to share them at her keynote address at the conference and that she had shared the news with other people, he was angry. I told them about the argument at dinner and how I had seen him afterward in the kitchen but had not spoken to him, and then a few hours later he came to my room to tell me that he had found her dead. And that he did not know where the papers were.”

Eve did not respond, the one concern still bothering her.

He shook his head, understanding. “I did not tell them about the tea,” he said softly. “But I'm sure they will ask me later, when they want to know what I saw him doing in the kitchen after dinner. They will surely ask who could have brought her the tea.”

Eve glanced away, knowing how difficult these last few hours had been for the vice superior, realizing the difficult place he was in of trying to protect Anthony but also trying to tell the truth as he knew it.

“It gives us a little more time,” she said.

“Time for what?” he wanted to know.

“Time to find out who really did this, time to find Anthony
and make sure he's okay, time to make sure we get to him before the real murderer does, time to find out who Kelly told about the pages.”

Father Oliver's appearance changed. Eve noticed a kind of spark in his eye as he turned to her.

“What?” she asked, sensing that he was remembering something.

“A man arrived about a half hour after the two detectives showed up.” He sat up a bit in his chair.

“What man?”

“He appeared very distraught, started weeping when he was told what had happened,” Father Oliver continued. He shook his head. “But there was just something strange about his timing, about how he came into the room.”

Eve didn't want to interrupt.

“Dr. Peter Pierce,” he said, nodding. “Dr. Middlesworth's associate or maybe boss, I'm not sure.”

“Was he staying in one of the guest rooms?” Eve asked, leaning forward.

Father Oliver shook his head. “He was wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase. I think he had just arrived, drove in with all the police cars and ambulances.”

“That is odd,” Eve commented. “Has Anthony ever mentioned his name?”

“No, not to me,” he answered.

“And he started weeping?”

The abbot nodded. “He walked in before anyone could stop him, before they had covered the body, and he dropped to his knees and began to scream and cry. His behavior seemed sincere,”
he added. “One of the deputies took him to his car. I didn't see him after that.” He looked over at Eve, watching her. “What are you thinking?”

She chewed on her bottom lip, a habit she had when she was deep in thought. “Just that his timing is pretty ironic and that we don't really know when he arrived on campus.” She shook her head. “And we still don't know who called the police.”

FIFTEEN