Hit and Nun (18 page)

“But why did Tiffany want Sal dead?”

“I think it was on account of she knew Sal had only married her to keep her quiet about what really happened that night. And I’ll bet she knew about the mistress. I’m sure I’d know if my Frankie was playing around.” Lucille glanced at Sister Genevieve, who looked utterly shocked.

“Pssst, Lucille,” Flo whispered in Lucille’s ear. “You’re a nun, remember? You’re not supposed to have no men in your life.”

“Anyways, I think Tiffany was afraid Sal was going to dump her and take off with his bimbo. She wanted the insurance money before that happened. That way she could pay Joey to take care of Sal for her—and keep her own hands clean, so to speak.”

Sister Genevieve was sitting stock-still, her face as white as her cap, her hands clenched in the folds of her habit.

“Remember when we went to that bar over in Berkeley Heights and Tiffany and Joey was there? I saw her hand him an envelope. Joey was expecting his payment, but maybe the envelope was empty, or she shorted him. So he followed Tiffany home, they argued and . . .” Lucille made a slashing motion across her neck. “Nicole said she saw a car leaving Tiffany’s house as she was pulling up. It was probably Joey’s.”

“So what do we do now?” Flo asked.

“You gotta call Richie and tell him what Sister Genevieve here said. Tell him it gives Joey Barba a motive for the two murders. Let the police take it from there.”

Flo pulled her cell phone from her purse. She frowned at it. “No reception.”

“Guess they only get calls from up above in this place.” Lucille pointed toward the ceiling.

“If that’s all, I should be going,” Sister Genevieve said, standing up. Lucille thought she looked awfully wobbly and wondered if maybe she ought to sit back down and put her head between her knees. “Collation will be over soon, and everything will have been put away.”

Geez, Lucille sure hoped they weren’t going to let poor Sister Genevieve starve all on account of her being late for dinner. She sent up a prayer to St. Nicholas, patron saint of the hungry. She was getting hungry herself. Hopefully they could get out of here soon.

They followed Sister Genevieve out to the hallway.

“If you go through those doors there,” Sister Genevieve said and pointed to a set of double doors at the end of the corridor, “that will take you out to the parking lot.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Lucille and Flo chorused.

Lucille and Flo headed toward the end of the hallway. Lucille still thought Flo should have changed her shoes and left her pocketbook in the car, but when Flo didn’t want to listen, Flo didn’t listen.

Suddenly there was a flurry of noise behind them, and they turned to see the nun who had fetched Sister Genevieve for them coming down the hall. Behind her was another nun—older, with a wrinkled face and a less than kindly expression.

“Mother Superior!” Sister Genevieve exclaimed, her face getting even whiter.

“Stop,” Mother Superior yelled, pointing at Flo and Lucille. “Stop right now. Intruders! Stop, I tell you.”

Other nuns were coming out from behind closed doors to gather in the hallway.

Flo grabbed Lucille under the elbow. “Let’s go,” she hissed. “That nun looks mean.”

“Stop,” Mother Superior yelled again. She pointed at one of the nuns crowded in one of the doorways. “Go call the police. Now! Hurry!”

“We’ve got to stop her,” Flo said. “Do something, Lucille.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Think of something.”

By now the nun had disappeared into another room. For all they knew, she was dialing 911 at that very moment. Lucille looked around and spotted a red box on the wall.

A fire alarm! She hesitated briefly then quickly grabbed the lever and pulled.

The hallway exploded with noise. The nuns covered their ears with their hands and began scurrying toward the exit, bumping into each other and then ricocheting off like balls in a pinball machine.

The firehouse was just down the street, and in moments they could hear sirens.

Flo and Lucille joined the flock of nuns heading toward the door.

“What are we going to do now?” Flo shouted at Lucille.

“I think it’s time we got out of here.” Lucille picked up the skirt of her habit, ready to run to the parking lot and Flo’s Mustang.

“I’ll second that.”

Before they could move, the first fire truck pulled into the driveway and volunteer firemen began spilling out.

A car was right behind them. It made a left turn into the driveway and skidded to a halt right behind the fire truck—a white car with a small tent-shaped sign on top that read
Rocky’s Pizza Parlor
. The front door opened and Joey got out. He was holding a pizza box and consulting the delivery slip in his hand.

She could sure go for some pizza, Lucille thought. She was starving. She didn’t know nuns ordered pizza. No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than a man came around the corner and approached Joey holding out a twenty-dollar bill. He had
Evans Electric
embroidered on his shirt.

“And here I thought maybe Sister Genevieve had ordered a pizza,” Lucille said, turning to Flo.

“This is no time for jokes, Lucille. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Suddenly a scream went up from one of the nuns. Lucille whirled around. Joey had grabbed Sister Genevieve and had his arm around her neck. He was holding a gun to her head.

The electrician from Evans Electric approached Joey, as did several of the firemen. Joey waved his gun at them, and they held their arms up in surrender and backed away.

Sister Genevieve had gone even whiter than before, and Lucille could see her lips moving in prayer, although there was an oddly serene look on her face. Lucille supposed she was used to accepting everything as God’s will, and this was no different. Lucille was all for that herself, but she figured God occasionally wanted you to put up a fight. Like right now. She didn’t think God would blame Sister Genevieve one bit if she elbowed Joey in the stomach and took off.

“What on earth is he doing?” Flo whispered to Lucille.

“Getting his revenge, I think. Too bad he doesn’t realize that Sister Genevieve didn’t know nothing about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll explain it later. I don’t think this is a good time. We’ve got to do something. We can’t let him get away with this.”

“Us? Why us? I say we call the police.” Flo began digging around in her purse.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Joey yelled, pointing the gun in their direction.

Flo dropped her purse on the ground and put both of her arms over her head. “I was just getting out my lipstick—”

“Yeah, well, don’t anyone else move unless I say so, okay?”

“Shit,” Flo said. “That there’s a good purse—a genuine fake Coach.”

“Shhhh,” Lucille hissed.

A quiet murmur rose from the nuns clustered together on the grass. The firemen didn’t say anything—just shuffled their feet and looked down at the ground.

Joey began edging down the driveway, pulling Sister Genevieve with him.

Sheesh, she wasn’t even struggling, Lucille thought. She could at least drag her feet a little, make it a bit harder for Joey.

Joey was almost to his car now. He reached behind him with his free arm and opened the passenger-side door. His gun was momentarily lowered, and one of the firemen decided to take advantage of it. He lunged toward Joey, but in his bulky fire protection gear, he couldn’t move fast enough. Before he was even close, Joey had raised the gun and fired a warning shot into the air.

Lucille jumped and put her hands over her ears. “He didn’t have no call to do that.”

“He’s got the gun,” Flo said. “He can do whatever he wants. That’s how it works, Lucille.”

Meanwhile, Joey had shoved Sister Genevieve into the car and shut the door. A piece of her habit had caught in the door and hung outside the car. Lucille could see she was now fingering her rosary beads.

Joey jumped into the driver’s seat, backed the car out of the driveway and took off in a spray of gravel. Everyone stood stock-still. It was like one of them Christmas tableaux, Lucille thought.

“He’s not getting away with this. Come on, Flo, let’s go after him.”

“How?”

“We’ll take your car, what do you think?” Lucille gestured toward the parking lot.

“Yeah? You want to tell me how we’re going to get out? That fire truck is completely blocking the driveway.”

“If you drive up over that curb, we can cut across the grass.”

“And put my baby out of alignment? I don’t think so, Lucille.”

“Then there’s only one other solution.”

“What’s that?” Flo asked, a suspicious look on her face.

“We hijack the fire truck. What else?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No! We’ve got to save Sister Genevieve. She didn’t do nothing wrong. There’s no reason she should have to pay for what Sal Zambino did. All on account of not knowing Joey had gone to jail for something he didn’t do.”

Lucille started toward the fire truck.

“Lucille, wait,” Flo called. “I’m coming with you.” She caught up with Lucille. “I used to date a fireman, and he gave me a tour of his rig once. I would have paid more attention if I’d known it was going to come in handy someday.”

Lucille pulled open the driver’s-side door and put her foot on the step. She tried to hoist herself into the seat but it was too high, and she kept stepping on her habit.

“Give me a boost, would you, Flo?”

Flo put a hand under Lucille’s behind and pushed. “How are you going to drive this thing if you can’t even get in it?”

“I’m a little short, that’s all. That doesn’t mean I can’t drive. Everything is going to be fine.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Flo said as she went around to the passenger side.

“Look,” Lucille said, pointing at the ignition. “They left the keys, and she’s already running.”

“For some reason, I don’t find that reassuring,” Flo said as she fastened her seat belt.

Lucille examined the array of gauges and dials in front of her. She didn’t have to know nothing about them or how they worked. She only had to figure out how to back up and then go forward. She’d been driving for thirty-five years now, how hard could it be?

Lucille put the fire truck in gear and slowly they began to back out of the driveway. Horns blared as motorists on Springfield Avenue were forced to come to an abrupt stop.

Lucille looked in the side-view mirror to see several of the firemen running after them, yelling and waving their arms. One’s face was all red, and Lucille sure hoped he wasn’t going to have no heart attack.

Suddenly, there was a loud crunch.

“What was that?” Lucille looked over at Flo.

“Nothing. You just ran over the statue of St. Dominic. All in the name of justice, right?”

Lucille suspected Flo was being sarcastic, but she decided to ignore it. It was taking all of her concentration to keep the fire engine on the road. She sure didn’t handle like the Olds.

“Everyone is looking at us,” Lucille said. “I wonder why.”

“It could be because they’ve never seen a nun drive a fire truck before.”

Lucille grunted. Joey’s car was now just a white speck in the distance. She stepped on the gas.

“Whoa, cowboy.” Flo grabbed for the dashboard.

Lucille could see the frightened faces of the drivers as she whizzed past them. She had an idea. “Put on the siren, would you?”

“Why?”

“So people will get out of our way.”

“Good idea.” Flo fiddled with some controls and managed to activate the siren.

Cars began pulling over to the side of the road to let them pass, the drivers’ mouths hanging open and their eyes wide.

“That’s better.” Lucille tromped down even harder on the gas. “This is kind of fun, you know?”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“Look, that’s Joey’s car up ahead.” Lucille hit the gas even harder. She watched as Joey made a left turn onto South Street.

Lucille prepared to do the same.

“Oh, no.” Flo put her hands over her eyes.

“Don’t go scaring me like that, Flo.”

The wheels of the fire truck went up over the curb and knocked a mailbox right off its feet. It flew open, belching letters into the air and strewing them onto the sidewalk and the grass verge.

Lucille looked in the side-view mirror to see an old man leaning on a cane and shaking his fist at her.

“I wonder where Joey is headed.” Flo flipped down the sun visor.

“I don’t think they put mirrors on the visors in fire trucks.”

Flo shrugged. “You never know.” She began digging in her purse and pulled out her compact. She frowned at her reflection and powdered her nose.

“For chrissake, Flo, who do you think we’re going to run into that you need to fix your makeup?”

Flo snapped her compact shut. “I figure someone is going to call the police on us, and when they arrive, I want to look decent in case Richie comes along.” Flo sighed. “Although I don’t look forward to trying to explain why the two of us is dressed in nun costumes.”

Lucille barreled down South Street toward the intersection with Mountain Avenue. She thought she heard sirens in the distance—police sirens—and sent up a prayer to St. Arthelais of Benvento, patron saint of kidnap victims. She figured Sister Genevieve could be considered a kidnap victim—Joey had taken her with a gun to her head, after all. And, in a way, the fire truck she was driving had been kidnapped as well. She hoped God would forgive her. She figured he would understand that it had been for a good cause.

The turn onto Mountain Avenue was a little dicey. Lucille once drove a delivery truck for Dugan Bakeries in Newark, going door-to-door with a case full of pastries and fresh bread. It had been her first job straight out of high school. She had had to take some classes on how to handle the truck. It hadn’t been nearly as big as the fire engine, more of a van than a truck, but she’d learned a couple of tricks. Just when she’d begun to get the hang of it, though, she lost the job on account of she couldn’t resist taking a tiny nibble of that walnut streusel coffee cake she was supposed to deliver to Mrs. Sinclair. Mrs. Sinclair was old and half blind, and Lucille didn’t think she’d notice the missing corner, but she did. Lucille had tried to convince her boss, Mr. Pritchard, that it had been a mouse that did it, but that didn’t fly, and he fired her. Even after all these years, she’d never found another coffee cake that moist and tasty.