Impostor's Lure

by Carla Neggers

  “How’s he doing these days?”

  “He’s settling into his old routines now we’re back here. He did a lot of walking in London, too.” She smiled. “He and Wendell have that in common.”

  One thing, at least. Emma didn’t detect any new concern in her mother’s tone. “The body yesterday—did that upset him?”

  “Heavens, it upset both of us. Lucas, too. The police interviewed us. Ginny and your father met Verity Blackwood but not Graham—the man who died. I didn’t meet or even see either of them. We never heard of the Blackwoods or had any contact with them while we were in London, either, that I’m aware of. Do you think this is about drugs, Emma?”

  “I don’t have any answers for you. I’m sorry.”

  “People often don’t realize how dangerous narcotics are. It’s so important to be under strict medical supervision.”

  Emma set the pie on the steps and produced her phone. She showed her mother a photo of Tamara McDermott. “Have you seen her before, Mom?”

  She leaned the broom against the door and examined the photo. She shook her head. “I haven’t, no.”

  “All right, thanks. Did Dad go out to the gazebo on Sunday?”

  “He didn’t walk anywhere on Sunday. We worked in the yard. Emma, this must be awkward for you—will you get in trouble because Verity Blackwood contacted your family about forgeries?”

  Emma gave her a reassuring smile. “No, I won’t.”

  “You used to worry about such things.”

  “Well, I’m not worried now.”

  “It’s being around those Donovans,” her mother said lightly. “Nothing ruffles them.”

  “They are a hardheaded lot. Mom, I know this situation is upsetting for you and Dad. It would be for anyone.”

  She inhaled deeply, let out the breath in a rush. “One thing I want to say, Emma. In case it’s crossed your mind or another agent or detective’s mind. Your father and I don’t know anyone local who buys, sells or uses illegal opioids. He isn’t on any prescription narcotics himself and hasn’t been in some time, and he would never, ever sell or give them to anyone else.”

  “I’ve no doubt,” Emma said. “By the way, when you were in London, did you or Dad know or meet with a Romanian linguist named Stefan Petrescu?”

  Her mother frowned. “Who? No. I didn’t, that’s for sure. I doubt Timothy did, either, but we don’t live in each other’s pockets despite appearances.”

  “Do you recognize the name?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. It’s good to see you, Mom.” Emma understood her mother’s testiness and skipped a hug. “Give Dad my best, won’t you? Sorry I missed him. Next time we’re in town, we’ll have to have pie together.”

  “That would be nice.” Some of her visible stiffness eased. She grabbed her broom and smiled. “You’ve always baked to relax and think.”

  “Still do.” Emma gave her mother a hug after all, a bit awkward with the broom in her hand. “Stay in touch, okay?”

  She returned to the car. Colin was leaning against the passenger door. He waved to her mother. “Hi, Faye. Have a good day.”

  She waved back. “Wish you could stay for pie.”

  Emma climbed behind the wheel and started the engine as Colin sat next to her. “Tough conversation?” he asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “Understandable.” He clipped on his seat belt. “My mother never gets out the broom when she’s upset. Not to sweep, anyway. I think she chased Mike with a broom once.”

  “Did she catch him?”

  “No, but he had to come home for dinner. She’d put the broom away by then.”

  Emma smiled. “I can just see the two of them.”

  “They’ve always been tight in their own way. This sweeping and pie-baking thing, though. They’re telling differences between the Sharpes and the Donovans, don’t you think?”

  Emma eased the car out onto the quiet residential street. This man, she thought. She loved everything about him. His humor, his sensitivity, his ruggedness. “My mother was tense.”

  “No kidding.”

  She told him about their conversation, aware of Colin’s blue-gray eyes on her. No hint of humor now. “What?” she asked finally.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, tell me. Please.”

  “It’s a question.” He kept his gaze on her, unwavering. “Emma, are you worried your father has a secret opioid addiction?”

  “No, I’m not.” She forced any defensiveness from her tone. “I was just asking my mother questions.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Part of me wants to stay here and help my mother with the yard.” She smiled, didn’t feel her heart in it. “My inner homebody.”

  “I get it. I could have gone off with Andy to check his traps.”

  “But here we are,” she said.

  18

  For thirty years, the tower at the Sisters of the Joyful Heart convent had been Sister Joan’s domain. In some ways, it still was, Emma decided as she stood at the entrance. There was no blood there now, but the image of that September morning almost a year ago was seared in her mind.

  As it was in Sister Cecilia’s. Her breathing was shallow and rapid as she stared at the stone step, but she pulled her gaze away. “Someone was in here, Emma. I’m sure of it.”

  “Recently?”

  “Since I was here last Wednesday. I walk this way once a week to help desensitize myself to the trauma. It’s part of my healing. We’re not using it as the conservation lab and studio right now. We moved all the equipment to spare rooms in the motherhouse. We’re having the tower repainted. We might repurpose it, given what happened here.” Sister Cecilia pushed back her wind-whipped hair. “We’ve decided to sell Sister Joan’s desk and chairs—her personal items. It was just too difficult to come in here...”

  “I understand.”

  Emma kept her voice quiet, steady. Sister Cecilia had witnessed the aftermath of the violence that morning, and then had endured her own encounter with the killer. But Emma needed to keep their focus on the here and now. The tower was out at the tip of the peninsula, on its own away from the main buildings of the convent. It was original to the late nineteenth-century estate, an outlook above the sea. Emma noticed lobster boats close to shore, making their way home. A few sailboats were farther out on the water, enjoying the spectacular summer day. Sister Cecilia had met her at the gate and taken her straight here, bypassing the motherhouse. Colin had gone to the Blackwoods’ rental house to check in with his brother.

  Sister Cecilia pointed at the main entrance. “I think someone might have been inside. The door’s locked, but painters were in to do an estimate. Maybe they left it open and someone had a chance to slip in, and then one of the sisters locked up again. I know that sounds far-fetched. I don’t think whoever’s been in here broke in.”

  “Sister, why do you think someone’s been in here?” Emma asked.

  “I saw signs someone was on the outside of the fence. It ends near here.” She turned and pointed past the expanse of lawn toward the rocks and sea. “It gets steep, but you can hold on to the fence and then just...take your chances, I guess.”

  Emma had done that a few times in her late teens. “What signs did you see?”

  Cecilia didn’t hesitate. “Disturbed brush, footprints and a dropped water bottle.”

  “On which side of the fence?”

  “The other side—not the convent side. It’s all convent land, but you know what I mean. I was walking along the fence...” She stopped abruptly and squinted toward the tall black-iron fence, most of it also original to the old Victorian estate the sisters had restored. “To be honest, Emma, I was looking for signs of an intruder. It’s a post-trauma stress thing I’m dealing with. I come out here periodically and I check. Yesterday—well, finding that man gav
e me reason to have a look this morning after my work in the vegetable garden.”

  Emma could appreciate Cecilia’s anxiety. “The signs you saw weren’t there the last time you walked the perimeter?”

  “No. That was Friday evening, before vespers.”

  “All right, Cecilia. I’ll take a look inside.”

  She nodded tightly. “The key’s in the same place it’s always been.”

  By Sister Joan’s decree. Emma fetched it from a gutter and unlocked the door. She pushed it open but saw nothing of concern. She glanced back at Sister Cecilia. “Any specific reason to suspect someone’s been in here?”

  “Circumstantial evidence only.”

  Emma heard birds and the crash of waves on the rocks below the tower. It was an idyllic spot, but she knew better than to think the convent was removed from the rest of the world. She remembered realizing that as a novice—a teenager searching for meaning in her life, for her life.

  “I still think of it as Sister Joan’s studio.” Sister Cecilia smiled suddenly. “But that would only annoy her, wouldn’t it?”

  Emma smiled, too. “No doubt in my mind.”

  She went inside, thankful Cecilia had warned her the studio was in a state of transition. As a rule, Sister Joan had updated only what needed updating, not just for the sake of buying something new. If a piece of equipment worked, what was the point of replacing it with a newer model? That frugality was one of the driving principles of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart.

  Sister Joan’s scarred oak desk was still tucked against the wall on the first floor of the tower, but it was empty now, ready to be sold. Same with the old filing cabinets and shelves. Emma pushed back an image of Sister Joan with one of her composition notebooks, where she’d jot down everything—phone calls, ideas, snippets she’d pick up from magazines and books. She’d always been thinking, learning, documenting, brainstorming.

  Emma took the spiral stairs to the second-floor lab, empty now. Sister Joan had set it up to her exact specifications. Her knowledge and thoroughness had helped with the transition to other experts among the Sisters of the Joyful Heart taking a leadership role.

  Trust the process, Sister Brigid. Listen to your heart. Don’t be swayed by what you think you should do. Don’t worry about people you might disappoint if you profess your final vows or if you choose not to.

  I won’t, Sister Joan. Thank you for your insights.

  This includes me. Don’t consider me in your decision. This is your journey.

  Brilliant, exacting, dedicated to her convent and its mission, Sister Joan had considered Emma her protégée when she’d become a postulant. They’d put each other through their paces. In the end, when she’d left the convent, Emma had realized Sister Joan had never believed she would profess her final vows and stay.

  Not that Sister Joan had ever imagined her protégée in the FBI.

  Emma looked out the windows at the ocean. She couldn’t get sucked into the past. Sister Joan’s murder had nothing to do with Verity Blackwood’s overdose, Graham Blackwood’s death or Tamara McDermott’s whereabouts.

  But did the convent’s work in art conservation?

  Emma descended the stairs and rejoined Sister Cecilia outside. “It’s hard to say if anyone slipped inside. We can get the police up here to take a look. Why don’t I talk to Mother Natalie? She’s back, isn’t she?”

  “She got back last night.”

  They walked across the lawn, past the spot where she and Colin were married in June—where, almost a year ago, he’d deliberately run a borrowed lobster boat onto the rocks as an excuse to get onto the grounds and spy on her after Sister Joan’s murder. Emma smiled, picturing him bounding up to her. She’d be lying if she said she’d never imagined such a scene as a young novice. But she hadn’t been a religious sister that day she’d met Colin. She’d been an FBI agent who specialized in art crimes.

  She and Sister Cecilia continued through the expansive flower garden at the classic late-Victorian house that served as the convent’s motherhouse. It was constructed of gray stone, with porches, turrets, multiple chimneys and tall, graceful windows. Bit by bit over the past six decades, the Sisters of the Joyful Heart had created a home for themselves, a place where they could work and play and live their lives as they carried out their mission. Convent numbers had never exceeded thirty-five and often hovered in the low twenties. They didn’t fret about whether their order would last another sixty years, a full century—centuries. That was out of their hands.

  “It helps to have my routines.” Sister Cecilia spoke quietly, as if she’d been lost in thought. “I picked summer squash this morning. We have a good tomato crop this year. I love home-canned tomatoes in January.”

  Emma smiled at her. “There’s a lot to do this time of year.”

  Gardens—vegetable, herb, flower, meditative—abounded at the convent, a legacy of Mother Sarah Linden, the beloved foundress of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. More than sixty years ago, the dilapidated and overgrown property had caught Mother Linden’s eye for her new order of religious sisters. She and Wendell Sharpe, Emma’s grandfather, had been friends early in his career as an art detective. She’d designed many of the convent gardens and had crafted a variety of sculptures herself, from sundials to Saint Francis of Assisi. She’d been an educated, open-minded, loving person devoted to preserving art for future generations and sharing the love of art, confident in its transformative and enriching value for people’s lives.

  Sister Cecilia glanced back at Emma, a couple of paces behind her as they walked through the garden, passing tall phlox, coneflowers and daylilies. “How’s your painting, Emma?”

  “I haven’t picked up a brush since the wedding. I think about it.”

  “Thinking counts. When you finally do pick up a brush, I bet you’ll realize you know what to paint. Your subconscious is working on it.”

  Cecilia was a skilled painter and a wonderful teacher. To her, everyone was creative, and it didn’t matter if that creativity was expressed in a way that earned a living and kudos or simply whiled away an afternoon. She was giving Emma sporadic painting lessons. Emma loved to dip her brush into a vibrant watercolor and splash it onto a clean canvas, but she had no illusions she’d ever be any good. Sister Cecilia insisted that wasn’t the point. You’re meant to create, not to judge what you create.

  They entered a sitting room through French doors off the garden. Mother Superior Natalie Aquinas Williams awaited them. “I’d like to speak with Emma, Sister.”

  Sister Cecilia nodded. “I’ll be in the library.”

  Mother Natalie turned to Emma. “Please, sit down.”

  Emma sat on a wingback chair with a view of the garden and sea. It was here in this room where she’d announced she was leaving the convent. Mother Natalie, in her early sixties, a PhD in art history, had accepted Emma’s decision with grace. It’d been five years, but she could still feel how tight her throat had been, the sadness she’d felt as she’d faced the reality that the vision she’d had of herself and her life had evaporated like the morning fog on the sea on a crisp fall morning. Only afterward, walking in the convent gardens, had she felt the relief, the overwhelming sense she’d made the right choice. Leaving the Sisters of the Joyful Heart had been an appropriate outcome to her experience as a novice, not a disappointment, not a failure. But it seemed like a hundred years ago now—as if it’d been someone else who’d donned a simple habit and studied, worked and contemplated in this place.

  Chickadees pranced on the branches of a crabapple tree in the garden. Two seagulls swooped out toward the lawn where Emma had married the love of her life—the man of her dreams—in June.

  “I was just picturing winter.” Mother Natalie turned from the garden with a smile. “In winter, I’ll picture summer. It’s my nature, I’m afraid. It’s good to see you, Emma.”

  “You, too, Mother Na
talie.”

  She glanced out the French doors. “It’s such a beautiful day. To think we were none the wiser that a man lay dead just beyond our gate...” She shook her head and turned toward Emma. “I understand you’ve been out to the tower with Sister Cecilia. We get more clandestine visitors these days. Trespassers, I suppose. They come up the path from the water. They want to see the tower where Sister Joan was killed, and the convent. Curiosity, adventure. We’re debating what to do. It’s dangerous to go along the fence and sneak in. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. We’re thinking about offering public tours during the summer and early fall. It wouldn’t be every day. That would be too intrusive.”

  “Do these people try to slip into the tower?”

  Mother Natalie sat on a cozy love seat opposite Emma. “Not that I’ve been aware of—at least until Friday.”

  Emma leaned forward. “What happened on Friday?”

  “The police interviewed everyone here yesterday after you and Sister Cecilia discovered the man by the gazebo. I wasn’t here. I was visiting family in Camden and got back late. I understand this man’s death is suspicious. Sister Cecilia is convinced he was murdered.” Mother Natalie shuddered. Her gray hair was cut short, and she wore a gray tunic, skirt and simple walking shoes. “Murder makes sense, of course, since you’re here, Emma. I don’t mean that to sound snarky. It’s a fact, given your work. In any case, I have information for you. I’ll let you decide if it’s relevant to your investigation. On Friday morning, I caught Verity Blackwood and a college student—an American friend of hers—sneaking into the tower. They’d found the key. Sister Joan chose the gutter because it was convenient in case someone forgot a key or was authorized to go in but didn’t have one. It wasn’t meant to be a secure hiding place.”

  “I remember that was her thinking. Did you get the name of the student?”

  “Her name’s Adalyn McDermott. She’s studying preservation archiving in Boston. They apologized and explained they’d found themselves on the path up from the water and got carried away. They seemed sincere. I offered to show them around.”