Rueful Death (7 page)

I asked for a roster of room assignments and a map of the monastery's grounds. Mother also gave us an information sheet and keys to our cottages. Maggie was staying in Ezra. Ruby, who was here just for the night, was in Ezekiel. I'd been assigned to Jeremiah.

As we were leaving, I thought of one more thing. "I promised a certain young Cowboys' fan that I'd put in a prayer request for tomorrow's game," I said. "Maybe it sounds a little strange, but would you mind-"

"Not at all," Mother Winifred said with a smile. "In fact, I believe that Sister Gabriella has already been praying for them. But God moves in mysterious ways, you know," she added. "Tell your young friend that we can triumph even in defeat."

I didn't think Brian would buy that idea, but I only smiled and nodded.

Ezra, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were a mile from the main complex by road, although the hand-drawn map revealed a shorter trail through the meadow. We drove, then parked the car and grabbed our bags, agreeing to meet again just before six. "You'll hear the bell outside Sophia," Maggie

told us. "It's rung for every meal." Then we split up to go to our separate cottages, which were about fifty yards apart along the river.

Jeremiah was a wood-shingled cottage with a screened porch. Its two small rooms-a bedroom-sitting room and a bathroom-dressing room-were clean and simply furnished, with a bed, an upholstered chair, and a wooden desk and chair. There were brown plaid drapes at the windows and a crucifix on the wall. In the bathroom was a Texas-sized cast-iron bathtub with old-fashioned claw feet, almost big enough to swim in. On the bathroom shelf, I saw a hot plate, a coffeepot, and a cache of tea and coffee supplies. The cottage was surrounded on three sides by a dense growth of cedar. The porch looked out over the river only ten yards away, at the foot of a gravel path. I imagined myself sitting there in the evening, listening to the water and watching the sun set behind the high cliff.

I spent a luxurious half hour hanging up my clothes, organizing the books and other belongings I'd brought, and making up my narrow bed with the sheets I found folded on the pillow. Then I sank into the chair and gazed around the room, letting its clean spareness sink into me, its healing silence wash over me. It had been so long since I'd been alone, truly
alone
-no other people, no telephone, no television, no radio. I could picture myself sitting here in quiet meditation for days on end, writing in my journal, reading a little, sleeping a lot.

But I sat for only a few minutes. The conversation with Mother Winifred weighed heavily on my mind. The accusing letters seemed to be the most pressing problem from her point of view. But while poison-pen letters are spiteful and traumatic, arson can be fatal. The fires had to be stopped before somebody burned to death.

I got up and found the handwritten report I'd gotten from the sheriff's deputy, which turned out to be very sketchy and nearly illegible. Walters hadn't been called to the October fire, because Mother Winifred had decided it was

accidental. He'd been called after the other two fires, however.

I read the report and made a list of the people Walters had talked to, noting the names of the three people who had shown up at both scenes. Dwight was one, which wasn't surprising, since it was his job to be available for emergencies. Father Steven was another. Sister John Roberta, whose name I hadn't previously heard, was the third. I looked her up in the roster and decided she must be a St. Agatha nun, since she lived in Hannah.

I put the report aside and stood up and stretched. Three fires had been set in a community where forty nuns lived within arm's length of one another. Somebody was bound to know
something.
I was hoping that tonight's announcement would jar loose some essential piece of information. I wanted to get to the bottom of this thing and spend the rest of my time doing what I had come to do: nothing. I smiled wistfully. Two whole weeks with absolutely nothing to do. Except, of course, for going riding with Tom Rowan.

The thought made me restless. I pulled on my jacket and walked down the gravel path to the river's edge, where I stood for a few minutes, hands in pockets, breathing in the spicy fragrance of cedar, the crisp, clean smell of windswept meadow.

How well had I known Tom Rowan? At the time, of course, I'd thought we were intimate. We certainly talked enough over the restaurant meals we shared after work, and during the late-night hours when we lay in one another's arms. But now, with the clarity of hindsight, I had to admit that we hadn't been intimate at all-that we hadn't known the first thing about intimacy. Mostly, we'd talked about our careers, about work-who had won that day's battles, who had lost, how we had somehow managed to come out on top. And beneath the talk there was always a hard, brittle edge of competitiveness. Tom was poised to top my story about the day's achievements; I was ready to do him one better. We'd been lovers, yes, but our relationship probably

had more to do with sex and power than with love.

Now, thanks to McQuaid, I knew a little more about intimacy-enough to realize that what Tom and I had back then was the kind of shallow, casual relationship that career people often substitute for genuine caring. To give us credit, of course, neither of us had much choice in the matter. When you're on your way to the top, the climb occupies most of your waking hours and a big hunk of your dream time. It's practically impossible to have both a rising career and a deeply engaged relationship. It was for me, anyway.

I made a wry face. When I left my career and found McQuaid, I'd gotten what I wanted: a warm and nurturing connection that grounded me and held me close. The irony was, though, that being held close also made it hard to find space for myself, and being grounded made it tough to fly free. It was a dilemma a lot of women might welcome, but not me.

I thought back on the lunchtime meeting. Leaving the city and coming back to rural Texas must have been hard for Tom, after all those glittering successes in Houston. What had brought him here? What kept him here?

I looked around and saw part of my answer. This part of Texas has to be one of the most beautiful spots on earth. The Yucca River rippling at my feet was a broad, shallow stream, bordered with mesquite and cedar. Across the stream rose the rugged limestone cliff I had seen earlier, fringed with willows and hung with maidenhair fern. It was a Garden of Eden, a paradise of peace and profound tranquillity, punctuated only by the inquisitive whistle of a mockingbird and the soft, sweet whisper of-

Ka-boom!

I ducked for cover behind the nearest boulder as the high-pitched ricochet whined over my head. Somebody was shooting at me!

I poked my head cautiously over the rock, which was barely big enough to hide me. "Hey!" I yelled, indignant. "What the hell do you think you're-"

A second report, followed by the flat, hard slap of a bullet hitting the water ten yards to my left.

I ducked down. The shooter was on the cliff on the other side of the river. The Townsend side. Was it one of the Townsends up there, carelessly enjoying some Saturday afternoon target practice? "Hey, lay off, you idiot!" I yelled. "You're going to kill somebody!"

When the third shot came and the bullet thwacked into the trunk of the cotton wood six feet to my right, I didn't wait around. I scrambled over the rocks to a thick clump of willows, where I flopped on my stomach and caught my breath.

Paradise, huh? I thought darkly. Garden of Eden? Well, where there are gardens, there are snakes. And one of them was holed up on the cliff across the river, taking potshots at me.

By five-fifteen, twilight was falling and I had calmed down. The third shot had been the last. I'd hunkered down behind the willows for ten minutes, then made a dash for the safety of Jeremiah. I'd had a short nap and a long bath, and I had put things in perspective. Given the spread of the shots-off the rocks and over my head, into the river to my left, and into the cottonwood tree to my right-it wasn't likely that anybody was shooting
at
me. It was probably some dude with a new deer rifle, not firing at anything in particular, not even bothering to look where his bullets might end up. Chances were, he hadn't heard me yelling, or he knew that he'd come that close to wiping me out.

I was pulling a flannel shirt over my jeans when the bell began to toll. I looked at my watch. Not yet five-thirty. Dinner was at six, I thought, but maybe my watch was slow.

It wasn't. The bell had just stopped tolling when Maggie knocked at the door. I started to tell her about my adventure with Hawkeye and his Christmas rifle when I saw her face.

"What's wrong?"

"Sister Perpetua died this afternoon," Maggie said soberly. "I went back to Mother's cottage for a talk. While I was there, Sister Rowena came with the news. That was the bell just now, tolling for her."

"That's too bad," I said. I was genuinely sorry that Perpetua had died, and almost as sorry that I hadn't gotten to talk to her. "Her heart?"

Maggie's mouth tightened. "Royce Townsend has other ideas. He was there when she died. He's ordered an autopsy."

An autopsy? In the routine death of an elderly woman with a history of heart trouble? "Why?"

"Who knows? Maybe he suspects something."

I looked at Maggie, startled. "Suspects what?"

"God only knows," Maggie said. "Maybe he thinks he can embarrass St. T's by implying that there's something suspicious about the way Perpetua died, the same way he did with Mother Hilaria." She shook her head bleakly. "Perpetua would be so humiliated at the idea of an autopsy. She was tired and sick and ready to die. That's all there is to it."

"You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," she said. "Who would want to kill poor old Sister Perpetua?"

I stuck my flashlight in my coat pocket and Maggie and I walked over to Ezekiel to get Ruby, who had changed from her monk's robe into slacks, a sweater, and jacket. The three of us set off on the path through the meadow to Sophia. On the way, Maggie repeated the story of Perpe-tua's death and I told them about the shooting.

Ruby stopped in her tracks and stared at me. "Somebody tried to kill you!" she exclaimed.

Maggie frowned. "If the shots came from the cliff, it had to be one of the Townsends. That's their land."

"Wait a minute," I said. "Whoever it was, he wasn't aiming to kill me. The shots went all over the place."

"It could have been a warning," Maggie said.

"It wasn't a warning," I said. "It was an accident. Some idiot was up there with a new gun, not paying any attention to-"

"If it was a warning, the guy had to know who China is and why she's here," Ruby said.

"Stu Walters knows," Maggie said. "He could have told Carl Townsend."

"Hey, you guys," I protested. "Haven't you been listening? It was an
accident."

But now I wasn't so sure. Even if I allowed for Maggie's anti-Townsend bias, I had to admit she might be right. Given the influence of the county political machine, the sheriff and the deputy might very well be in cahoots with one of the county commissioners. Which meant that Walters could have mentioned to Townsend that the abbess intended to bring in her own arson investigator. And if Townsend had anything to do with the fires-which I had to admit was also possible, even though everybody insisted it wasn't-he might have decided to warn me off.

Ruby was frowning at me. "What are you going to do?"

"Eat supper," I said. "And think about it."

Sophia emerged out of the twilight at the end of the path, like a ghost of the old ranch headquarters. I almost expected to see tooled leather saddles hung over the wooden porch rail and the heads of trophy bucks nailed to the walls. But if they had been there once, they were gone now. Maggie opened a wooden screen door and we stepped into a high-ceilinged entryway that smelled of old stonework, overlaid with the scent of the lemon polish that had been used on the large oak cabinets along the walls and the pine oil used on the tile floor. But what struck me most was the utter silence, a calm, weighty presence that was almost as physical as the walls themselves.

"Gosh, it's quiet in here!" Ruby said in an awed whisper. She looked up at a heavy wooden cross encircled by a wreath of rusty barbed wire that was decorated with orange-red pyracanthus berries.

"Of course it's quiet," Maggie said in a low voice. "It's a cloister." She lifted her eyes to the cross.

"Do I have to whisper?" Ruby whispered to me.

Maggie turned, smiling. "No," she said. "People talk at mealtimes."

Ruby and I followed Maggie down the silent hall, past a large laundry room and kitchen on one side and a community room on the other. We turned a corner.

"That's the main office," Maggie said, pointing to a closed door. "Someone is on duty there during business hours. That's where the phone is located, if you need it."

The refectory-already crowded with sisters-was at the end of the hall, a large, square, cheerful room, brightly lit, with undraped floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto a small, shady garden. It was furnished with wooden tables and chairs arranged in orderly rows. At one end stood another large table, on which the food-soup, bread, sandwich fillings, salad, and fruit-was laid out on a bright yellow cloth, buffet style. Although the women were older than most students, the scene reminded me of a college dining hall.

But as I glanced around, I saw that there seemed to be an invisible line drawn down the middle of the room. On one side, the tables were filled with women wearing jeans, slacks, and skirts, talking in low voices, laughing and smiling, their heads close together. The women on the other side-most of them older-wore navy skirts, white blouses, and the same short blue veil and white wimple Sister Olivia had worn. They ate with their eyes cast down, observing what Maggie called ' 'modesty of the eyes,'' and only a few were talking. If I'd needed a visual demonstration of the gulf between St. T's and St. Agatha's, diis was it.