Back in the Habit (16 page)

“If you'll excuse us—” Giulia took Sister Bart's arm and edged around him.

“Hey, little White Veil. Haven't seen you on the outside fer a while.”

Twenty-three

Giulia stared at Sister
Bart. The Novice's face was as white as her veil in the oblique glow of the bar's neon beer signs.

“Saw the fat one today. How come she's makin' all the deliveries now? Yer better lookin'.” He grinned at Giulia. “Too many babes hidin' under them veils. You ain't bad neither. I like 'em younger, tho'. Like her.” He reached out as if to chuck Sister Bart's chin.

Before Sister Bart passed out right there on the sidewalk—Giulia had never seen anyone that colorless and still vertical—she stepped between them.

“We have to go now. Please excuse us.” She gripped Sister Bart's arm, deliberately digging in her fingernails to shock her out of her fear. With firm, fast steps, she walked her past the bar and into the Double Shot coffee and bakery.

The door hissed closed. Sister Bart moved away from it, even though its coffee-cup shaped window had already fogged over.

“Sit down before you fall down.” Giulia pushed her into the nearest chair. “Do you need a glass of water?”

“No. I'm all right.” She looked past Giulia at the door.

“I doubt he's coming in here. Can you stand?”

The Novice stood. “I'm fine. See?”

“All right, then, come up to the counter with me.”

The café had few patrons at this hour on a weeknight. An older man typed into a laptop in the corner table farthest from the door. Two college-age women shared a piece of three-layer chocolate cake at one of the center tables. Square hanging lamps illuminated five other empty tables lining the walls and two on the triangular floor space. In the back room, a gray-haired woman kneaded dough. Dizzy Gillespie played from an iPod dock on a shelf behind the counter.

Giulia scanned the menu on the Dry Erase board propped next to the iPod. “Look at that flavored syrup assortment. I died and went to Heaven.”

“I, um, haven't had a good mocha in months.” Sister Bart stared at the double line of plump scones.

“I'm holding out for the chocolate in that cake tomorrow.” Giulia smiled at the multi-pierced male barista behind the counter. “A large cappuccino with pumpkin spice syrup, a large mocha, and two scones.” She glanced at Sister Bart. “Blueberry? Almond?”

“I'm allergic to nuts. Blueberry, please.”

“Two blueberry scones, please.”

He poked the interactive computer screen. “Eight seventy-five. Would you like butter or lemon curd for the scones?”

Sister Bart said, “Butter.”

Giulia said, “Butter for both, please,” and handed him her debit card.

Sister Bart carried the tray to the table kitty-corner from the door. Giulia balanced napkins and two plastic knives on the Day-Timer.

“These people know how to make scones.” Giulia split hers and buttered both halves.

Sister Bart had already started hers. “This is wonderful. Thank you.”

“No problem. We both needed to get out of there.” She savored her first bite. “Mmm. Perfect. Now let me tell you what's going on. Do you know that Sister Bridget's parents don't agree with Sister Fabian's explanation for their daughter's suicide?”

“Yeah. When they came up for her funeral they just glared at everybody. Vivian and I found lots of stuff to clean in Sister Fabian's part of the hall when she talked to them in her rooms.”

Giulia blocked her expression with her scone. “Was it loud?”

“Like a roller coaster.”

“Huh?”

“You know—they start off slow and even, then they ramp up and up until they get to the top. Then there's that pause while you think about it, and wham! You're screaming down a six-story drop.”

The barista brought their coffee, and they took their first sips at the same time.

“Oh, yes.”

“Oh, man.”

They laughed.

“So this is what I meant by a roller coaster,” Sister Bart said. “We heard calm-sounding voices at first, then they got louder and angry, and finally we heard Bridget's dad call Sister Fabian—” she lowered her voice— “A lying ‘b.' You know. Then the door slammed open and we got out of Dodge.”

“I wish I could've been there. Okay then, the next thing they did was threaten the Community with a wrongful-death lawsuit.”

Sister Bart gulped a mouthful of coffee. “They did?”

“They did. That's where I come in.” Giulia sipped her own coffee to draw out the moment like a good storyteller. “You know I left for a year and then came back. Sister Fabian found out I worked for a private investigator during that time.”

“She never forgets anything.”

“Yeah. She called me in, told me to contact him, and informed him in her most Fabian-like manner that the Community wished to hire him.”

“Were you there?” Bart finished the first half of her scone.

“Yes. She told me I would be the liaison for the Community.”

“And you obeyed.”

“It served my purposes as well as hers. I wanted to find out what really happened to Sister Bridget, too.”

The smile left Sister Bart's face. “I can tell you.”

Giulia shook her head. “I know what she did. I want to know why.”

Sister Bart jumped away from the table and came back with a spoon. Rather than answer Giulia's implied question, she scooped whipped cream from the top of the cup.

After a minute, Giulia said, “Are you willing to help me?”

Sister Bart set down the spoon. “You know what it's like there, sort of. The way things are right now make it hard for anyone to speak up.”

“There's no justice unless people speak up.” She leaned forward. “How did you know that creep in the alley?”

“I—”

The door opened and Frank Driscoll entered. Sister Bart got a “saved by the bell” look on her face. Giulia watched Frank put on “Charlie Chan” with each step—genial, fatherly, and knowledgeable.

“Sister Regina Coelis. Good to see you.” He shook Giulia's hand.

“Thank you for coming out here so late. Frank Driscoll, Sister Mary Bartholomew. Sister Bartholomew, Frank Driscoll, head of Driscoll Investigations.”

Sister Bart shook Frank's hand.

“I'll just get some coffee and join you.”

While Frank paid the barista, Giulia said to Sister Bart, “He's an honorable man. You can trust that he'll find answers for Sister Bridget's parents.”

Sister Bart spooned the last of the unmelted whipped cream from her coffee cup and said nothing.

Frank returned and sat with his back to the door, Giulia on his right, Sister Bart on his left. He took his first swallow of coffee. “I needed that. Been a long couple of days.” He looked at Giulia. “Okay, Sister. What do you have for me?”

“It isn't pretty. We have one Novice with a drinking problem. I don't know about the Postulants. They've been too busy for me to exchange three words with either of them. The merger may be a very good thing in the long run, but right now it's creating enough resentment to fuel three soap operas. Homesickness and personality clashes are a definite factor. However, it's my opinion that Sister Fabian's official conclusion is a travesty.”

“Sister Regina—” Sister Bart looked back and forth between Frank and Giulia. “I didn't realize you were going to tell a stranger Motherhouse business.”

Giulia chose her words to keep Bart on their side. “That's what I meant when I said I was helping Driscoll Investigations. Who on the inside would contradict Sister Fabian's conclusions? But you know, and her parents know, that Sister Bridget's suicide wasn't the natural outcome of a depressed, unhappy girl who shouldn't have been allowed to enter in the first place.”

“That's what Sister Fabian's report said?” Sister Bart bristled like a cat confronting a Great Dane. “Of course she wasn't. No wonder her parents hit the roof. Bridget was the sweetest, nicest person in the city of Pittsburgh. She was wicked homesick, sure, but she always had a funny story to tell us. And just ask Sister Arnulf whether Bridget wasn't meant to be a Sister.”

“I've been trying,” Giulia said.

Sister Bart
tsk
'd. “Sorry. I forgot it was Bridget who would sit with her up in our parlor and translate stories of her Nazi-fighting days. The two of them would get all animated and excited, and Sister Arnulf would add sound effects—bombs whistling, humming the Swedish national anthem, German soldiers cursing. I think it was cursing—we don't speak German.” She drank more coffee. “Sorry. I didn't mean to get sidetracked. But Sister Gretchen—that's our Novice Mistress, Mr. Driscoll—would definitely have spent more time with Bridget if her psych scores were below par.” She licked her finger and picked up stray crumbs from her finished scone.

Frank opened his mouth and Giulia kicked him. He winced and shut it again just as Bart swallowed a whole blueberry.

“Sister Arnulf said all the time that Bridget was a model Sister. We know, because the first time she said it Bridget wouldn't translate, and Sister Arnulf poked her until she did. Anyway, the whole idea that Bridget was unstable is ridiculous.”

“We need proof of that,” Frank said. “Suicide points to the opposite. I apologize, but that's the case.”

“I know.”

Giulia set down her empty cup. “Sister Bartholomew, how does that creep in the alley know who you and Sister Vivian are? Why does he know who you are?”

Sister Bart jumped. A snort escaped Giulia before she could squelch it.

“If you're going to keep bouncing like that every time I mention something you're trying to avoid, I'll start thinking you have springs for muscles.”

Sister Bart stared at Giulia, then at Frank, then at Giulia. “What are you doing?” she hissed.

Giulia rested her hands on the table, aiming for calm and steady. Sister Bart's hands, tapping the table in something like 3/16 time, gradually slowed to a standard 4/4. Giulia's foot was prepared to kick Frank's shin again if he even looked like he was about to say something.

“If we have any hope of clearing Sister Bridget's name, we need to know what only you can tell us.” Giulia turned to Frank. “Mr. Driscoll, as we were walking here tonight, a strange man accosted us and quite obviously knew Sister Bartholomew.” She spoke to Sister Bart again. “What is going on? What are you and Sister Vivian doing outside—in your cloistered year, as you yourself pointed out—and what's the nature of your contact with people like him?”

Sister Bart pinched her lips together.

“He mentioned ‘deliveries.' Does he have anything to do with the addiction help Sister Bridget asked her former boyfriend to provide?”

Sister Bart clenched her fists on the tabletop.

Giulia reached across the small, square table and squeezed Sister Bart's fists. “Who coerced you?”

Sister Bart started to pull away, but at the word
coerced
, she froze. “How did you know?”

Giulia breathed a quick prayer of thanks—and kept her foot poised over Frank's, just in case.

“You've been reminding me for half an hour how you shouldn't be outside without permission because it's your Canonical year. There's no way you'd be sneaking into a garbage-filled alley between a bar and a grocery store to meet such a charming specimen of the opposite sex.”

A strangled laugh came out of Sister Bart. “Yeah, he's not my type.” She pulled her hands away from Giulia's and wrapped them around her nearly empty cup. “It was in the coffee.”

“What was?”

“I don't know, but it made Bridget and Vivian all floaty.”

“Not you?”

“I couldn't tell over my nut-allergy reaction.” She looked up from her coffee. “You've got that ‘I'm listening to Sister Arnulf and I don't understand a word of what she's saying' look.”

“It would help if you started at the beginning. Mr. Driscoll, could you take notes?”

“You're better at—um, of course.”

He took a pen and the six-by-nine covered notepad from his inner jacket pocket. Giulia liked his prompt response to her shoe squashing his toes.

She transferred her attention to Sister Bart, who was staring at the innocuous brown notebook like it was a hungry wolf spider.

“You know we have to write it down.”

“I know. Might as well be killed for a sheep as for a lamb, right?” Bart downed the last of her coffee. “I quit cigarettes cold turkey on my seventeenth birthday. But right now I'd throw my mother under a bus for a Marlboro.”

Giulia's smile conveyed encouragement.

Sister Bart focused on Giulia's chest. It took Giulia a moment to realize she was talking to the San Damiano crucifix hanging in her cleavage.

“The others got moved up here in April. I'm from Bethel Park, so I was here all along. The merger caused a lot of upper-level shuffling. My first Novice Mistress was sort of encouraged to retire. Sister Gretchen used to be a kind of traveling visitor to retired and invalid Sisters. She'd listen to them reminisce, bring them books, and give them Communion. Sister Fabian was in Sister Gretchen's entrance group, so it was kind of a slam-dunk.”

“I thought you liked Sister Gretchen.”

“Oh, I do. She's a great teacher and she can be a lot of fun when we're not on duty. I just think she's a little overwhelmed with the new responsibilities. The whole merger thing is still settling in. This is the first time everyone's gotten together from all the Communities.”

“All right.” Giulia glanced at Frank, but his bizarre homemade shorthand was keeping up with the conversation. “You were the only Novice before the merger?”

“Not at first. There were two of us, but Nancy's mother died and she went home to take care of the family.” She moved her gaze to her coffee cup again. “Our priest situation changed soon after the merger, too. We used to have this really ancient guy. He was like everyone's great-grandfather, but he mumbled.”