Hit and Nun (16 page)

“Yeah, but get this. The name she took is Sister Genevieve.”

Flo turned to Lucille with a blank look on her face. “So? Is that supposed to mean something?”

“St. Genevieve is the patron saint of disasters. The car accident had certainly been a disaster, so I’ll bet that’s why she chose that name. And maybe she became a nun to try to put the past behind her. These cloistered nuns spend most of their time in prayer or contemplation. Could be she thought that would wipe out the bad memories. Or at least keep her from thinking about them.”

“I still can’t see a nun as a murderer, Lucille.”

“What if she just snapped? That happens to people, you know. Luigi, my father’s second cousin twice removed, never hurt a fly in his life until one day when he discovered the butcher had been cheating him—his scale was off by a quarter of a pound. Luigi walked into that shop and punched the guy right in the face. He snapped.” Lucille snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

“I suppose it does happen. But what are we going to do now?”

“I’d like to talk to this Denise or Sister Genevieve as she’s called now. See what she’s like, you know? Get a feeling for her—what they call women’s institution.”

“That’s a great idea, Lu. There’s only one problem. These cloistered nuns don’t speak to people from the outside.”

“Not even their own family?”

“No. When they enter the convent, they pretty much leave the world behind.”

“That’s ridiculous. They should at least speak to their own mother.” Lucille was quiet for a moment. She couldn’t imagine Bernadette not talking to her. Not that Bernadette ever did more than grunt, still . . . “Who would they talk to do you think?”

“I don’t know. A priest probably—especially if they go to confession. Other nuns I suppose.”

Lucille slapped the dashboard. “That’s it!”

“Yo, be careful of the car, would you?” Flo scowled at Lucille. “What’s
it
?” she asked.

“We go to the convent dressed as nuns. We can say we’re from a sister order in . . . Ohio.”

“Where are we going to get habits from? I’m pretty sure those nuns still wear them.”

“A costume shop?”

Flo frowned. “That’s an idea.”

“I don’t know of any though, do you?”

Flo shook her head. “No, but we can ask Siri.”

Lucille still thought it was odd asking a telephone for advice, but if it worked, so be it. Maybe it was time for her to loosen up a bit—get comfortable with the new technology. Like the fax machine they had over at St. Rocco’s. She still couldn’t figure out how the person on the other end could get the document she was sending when the machine spit the same pieces of paper back at her every time.

Flo had her phone out and was listening to something it was telling her. She turned to Lucille. “There’s a costume shop in Westfield not far from here. You want to go?”

“Sure, sure. If that’s the only way we’re going to get in to talk to this Sister Genevieve.”

It didn’t take long to get to Westfield, a suburb with an active downtown of big chain stores combined with one-of-a-kind shops. Lucille glanced at the windows as they drove past. It looked as if long skirts had come back in when she wasn’t looking. She wondered if they still called them maxi skirts. Maybe she ought to get one for herself now that she was going to modernize her thinking. She would modernize her wardrobe as well.

“Here it is.” Flo pointed at a small shop tucked in between two larger buildings. She pulled the Mustang into the parking lot and found a space way in the back.

“What are we parking all the way back here for?” Lucille said as she pushed open her door. “There’s a space up there right near the door.”

“I don’t want no scratches on my baby, so I’d rather stay as far away from the other cars as possible.”

“Now we got to walk all that way.”

“It’s good exercise, Lucille. You’re always saying you want to lose weight. Well, you’ve got to
move
.”

She moved plenty, Lucille thought—pushing the vacuum cleaner, running between the stove and the refrigerator, sweeping leaves off the front steps, rocking Lucy when she didn’t want to go down.

The shop was empty when they walked in. No one was behind the counter, so Flo hit the silver bell sitting next to the cash register. It made a shrill ping and seconds later someone came out of the back room. He was wearing a clown costume with a frizzy red wig and red plastic nose.

“How can I help you ladies?”

“We’re looking to rent a couple of nun’s costumes.”

“You’ve come to the right place. Going to a costume party?”

“Not exactly,” Lucille said.

“Not going to impersonate a nun, are you?” The guy laughed at his own joke. He stopped when he noticed that neither Flo nor Lucille had joined him.

“It’s your lucky day. Someone just returned a bunch of nun’s costumes. Their school was doing the
Sound of Music.
I should be able to fit you up real easy.”

He disappeared into the back room and came out holding two hangers with garments covered in dry cleaning bags. He draped them over the counter. “Will these do?”

Flo peered through the plastic bag. “They’re white.”

The guy shrugged. “That’s all we’ve got at the moment. I can order some black ones for you from our warehouse. It will only take a couple of days.”

Lucille turned to Flo. “We don’t got time for that.”

“But what if these sisters are wearing black and we show up in white habits?”

“We’ll tell them we’re from somewhere tropical. Like California.”

“Good idea.” Flo turned to the salesman. “We’ll take them. How much are they?”

The young man consulted a catalog sitting on the counter. “For the two of them that will be a hundred dollars.”

“A hundred dollars!” Flo turned to Lucille. “We can’t pay that much.”

“I’ll tell you what.” The young man leaned on the counter. “If you get them back by close of business today, I’ll give ’em to you for twenty-five bucks apiece. And to sweeten the pot, as they say, I’ll throw in a clown costume free of charge.”

“When do you close?”

“Not till nine p.m. Now, I don’t know what you gals plan to do with these costumes, but if that’ll work for you, it will save you a lot of money.”

“Fine.” Flo pulled out her wallet and handed him a credit card.

They paid for the costumes and started back toward Flo’s car.

“We should have let him keep the clown costume,” Lucille said. “We don’t got no use for that.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” Flo said. “It might be kind of fun to put it on tonight when Richie comes over to my place. Play a little dress-up, you know?”

No, she didn’t know, Lucille thought. What on earth was Flo thinking?

“Sometimes you have to change things up a bit. Keep the man on his toes.”

“By wearing a clown costume?”

“I didn’t say I was going to wear the
whole
costume,” Flo responded. “I’m thinking the wig, the plastic nose, the bow tie and my new red thong from Victoria’s Secret.” And she flounced ahead of Lucille, her heels clacking against the macadam.

Lucille felt herself blushing. She could never . . . she gave herself a mental shake. If she was going to modernize her thinking, she might as well start right now. Somehow she didn’t think a clown costume was going to turn Frankie on. She’d have to come up with something else.

She wondered how he’d feel about a nun’s habit.

Lucille stopped Flo as they got closer to her house. “Go slow and let me make sure that Frankie’s truck isn’t in the driveway. I don’t want him to find out what we’re doing. He’ll just make a fuss for nothing.”

Flo slowed the Mustang and they crawled past Lucille’s house. The driveway was empty.

“Let me go look in the garage window in case Frankie decided to pull the truck in.”

Lucille got out of the car, scuttled up to the garage door, peered through the window, then turned around and gave Flo the thumbs-up. This was kind of fun, she thought. Like they were secret agents or something.

Flo parked the car while Lucille unlocked the front door. The house was quiet.

“Shhh,” she said to Flo. “Lucy must be napping.”

They tiptoed into the kitchen, where they draped the nun’s costumes over a chair.

“You can take yours into the powder room if you want.”

“Thanks.” Flo picked up one of the costumes. “I’ve always wondered what I would look like as a nun.” She slung her purse over her arm and headed toward the bathroom.

Lucille tiptoed upstairs to her bedroom, closed the door and pulled off her top and pants. She slipped the garments out of the plastic bag and spread them out on the bed. The long dress-like part obviously went on first. Lucille pulled it over her head. She examined the rest of the costume. There was a piece that looked like one of Lucy’s baby bonnets. Lucille stood in front of the mirror and carefully eased it on. She didn’t want to crush her set too much. She thought she’d leave her bangs out—she looked better that way. She tied it under her chin and picked up another garment that was stiff and looked somewhat like an old-fashioned nurse’s cap. Good thing she was Catholic and had spent plenty of time around nuns or she wouldn’t know what to do with all this here stuff.

She pinned the cap to the bonnet and looked in the mirror. All she needed to add now was the veil. She looked at her reflection—she looked a bit like Sister Philippa, her fifth-grade catechism teacher.

All this stuff was sure hot. Lucille fanned herself with her hand. She didn’t know how the nuns could stand it in the summer. Maybe they were all cold-blooded.

Lucille made her way down the steps, careful not to trip on the hem of the habit. The last thing she needed was to fall down the stairs and have Frankie come home to find her there, sprawled on the floor, dressed as a nun. That would be awful hard to explain.

Flo was already in the kitchen waiting. Lucille stopped abruptly when she saw her. Flo’s habit was a good deal shorter, showing off part of her legs and her leopard-print ankle-strap stilettos. She had a bonnet on, too, but with her hair hanging out. The stiff white cap was tilted jauntily to one side. She’d obviously touched up her makeup. She had on a fresh coat of glossy red lipstick, her eyelids were painted a sparkly purple and her lashes were black and spikey.

“I don’t know, Flo. Somehow you don’t look like any of the nuns I’ve ever seen.”

“I thought I looked pretty good.” Flo pivoted in front of Lucille.

“It’s only that I’ve never seen a nun in high heels before.”

“That’s probably because their robes are longer and hide their feet. There’s no telling what they have on under those clothes. For all we know, they go commando. Not that I could blame them.” She fanned her face. “These habits are hot.”

Lucille sighed. There was no sense in arguing with Flo.

They both heard the footsteps on the stairs and froze.

“I thought you said Frankie wasn’t home,” Flo hissed.

“He’s not. It must be Bernadette.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing. Just act natural.”

“That’s kind of hard in this get-up.”

They turned to see Bernadette standing in the doorway. She stared at them for a moment before crossing to the refrigerator and opening the door. She grabbed a can of soda, shut the door and, with a last glance at Lucille and Flo, left the room.

“Do you think she noticed anything funny?”

“Nah,” Lucille said. “Not Bernadette.” She glanced at the kitchen clock. “We’d better get going.”

Lucille followed Flo out to her Mustang. It didn’t seem like the most appropriate car for a nun—the ones she knew used to ride around town in a station wagon. And there were never only two nuns—every seat in the car would be filled, including the one way in the back.

“It’s hard getting all this material in the car,” Flo said as she tried to slide into the driver’s seat. She pulled the habit up and tucked it in under her knees.

Lucille was having similar problems. She was all for tradition herself—she still said the same prayer every night before going to bed—but she really couldn’t see the point of wearing these cumbersome habits in this day and age.

Finally they were both situated in the car, and Flo backed out of the driveway and headed toward Summit.

Lucille turned to Flo. “What names are we going to use?”

Flo sighed. “How about Flo and Lucille seeing as how those are our real names.”

“Nuns usually take a different name when they take their vows—after a patron saint they admire. I’m thinking maybe Sister Margaret after St. Margaret of Scotland, patron saint of families. What about you?”

“I’m thinking let’s not complicate things. How about we stick with Flo and Lucille. I’ll be Sister Flo and you be Sister Lucille, okay?”

Lucille grunted.

They stopped at the light at the intersection of Springfield and New England avenues, and Flo, who was checking her reflection in her visor mirror, didn’t immediately notice when the light switched to green. A driver in a white van with
Eric’s Electrical
written on the side leaned on the horn, and then pulled out and around Flo’s Mustang.

Flo held up her middle finger as he passed, and they could both see his jaw drop in surprise.

“You’d think he’d never seen a nun flip the bird before,” Flo said as she stepped on the gas.

“He probably hasn’t,” Lucille said, grabbing for the edge of her seat.

Flo pulled into the driveway of the convent. There were a handful of cars in the parking lot.

Lucille looked up at the stone building. “This here place looks like a fortress. How are we going to get in?”

“Through the door, of course.” Flo pointed toward an unmarked metal door.

They strode across the parking lot. Lucille had to lift her skirts to keep from tripping on them. She glanced at Flo. Somehow those stiletto heels she was wearing just didn’t look right, but hopefully none of the nuns would notice.

Lucille grabbed the door handle and twisted. Locked. She turned to Flo. “What do we do now?”

“Find another door.”

They started walking around the building. It was locked up tighter than Fort Knox.