Peccatum in Carne: Sins of the Flesh (The Three Sins of Mallory Moore Book 1)

by Coco Mingolelli

  Her thinly veiled dig for information made Sister Eileen spin around to watch for any gawkers, and Elisabeth filed that away for later. She most definitely needed to talk to Mallie, and soon.

  Dawn sputtered and tugged her sleeves down in her nervousness. “No! I’ve only been here since eleven this morning, studying and taking the tutorials. Are you going to help?” she asked, reaching inside her door for her book bag and stuffing papers inside.

  It was now nearing 3:00 PM – a lot could have happened in the seven hours since the girl would have needed to catch a bus from the cottage road around 8:00 AM. It made Elisabeth sick to her stomach, and she resisted the urge to vomit.

  “Dawn, if this is an emergency situation… don’t you think you ought to stay here?” Sister Eileen laid her hand on the frenetic young woman’s shoulder.

  Shrugging the nun’s touch away, Dawn turned to stare Elisabeth in the eye, as seriously as any woman her tender age could muster. “If you don’t take me with you, I’ll catch a bus. If I can’t find a bus, I’ll hitch it!”

  Rolling her eyes, Elisabeth made a grand gesture towards the exit at the end of the hallway. “Well then, Feisty McFeisty, lead the way. I trust you know your way to the employee lot,” she ribbed.

  Sister Eileen squawked at her guessing of the situation, and begged them to be quiet on their way out.

  Elisabeth shook her head as she and Miss Rose ran out the exit, several students and employees calling out in alarm along the way.

  _____________________________________

  Elisabeth Sørensen slammed her foot on the accelerator for the third time since she and Dawn Rose had reached the causeway from town into the country. Every time she’d slow down to the speed limit, the little limpet would turn slowly to glare daggers at her, and request through clenched teeth to go faster.

  For one so petite, Dawn certainly was fierce. It was no wonder she and Mallory got along so well. Clearing her throat, Elisabeth shifted her SUV’s gears and looked back at the golden blonde girl who was currently chomping at her fingernails.

  “So, you and Mallie, eh?” she stated matter of factly, less a question and more needing confirmation.

  “What?” Dawn snapped, and then softened her face in apology. “I’m sorry, Miss Sørensen. It’s just… she’s my friend.” She hastily continued. “And my stuff is there. You know, girls and their stuff.”

  If she weren’t driving 20 km over the limit in an attempt to get to a possible crime scene, Elisabeth might have laughed. Instead, she answered the petrified young woman in an even tone. “You don’t fool me, Miss Dawn Rose. You’re just Mallie’s type.”

  Her shoulders sagging in embarrassment, Dawn's mouth dropped open the tiniest bit.

  “Fine, then. Believe what you want to. Why were you listed as Mallie’s emergency contact, anyway?” she asked, her voice a touch perturbed at the Elisabeth’s casual usage of a nickname she’d probably never heard before.

  “Mmm, jealous?” Elisabeth teased. “Fear not, oh good and gracious Princess Dawn of the Spinster of North Yorkshire’s cottage! We’ve been friends for years, Mallie and I. You know, Miss Clark… the medic dispatcher? She’s been my girlfriend for seven months now. That’s how I found out so quickly,” she informed the girl proudly.

  Dawn gave her a small smile, and then tensed up as they saw three Middlesbrough police cars blocking the end of the driveway to the cottage as Elisabeth drove around a curve. An ambulance was parked to the other side, its lights still flashing.

  As soon as the SUV slowed to park, Dawn wrenched open the door and hopped out, not heeding Elisabeth and the medic’s calls for her to stop.

  “I live here!” Dawn hollered at the top of her lungs, hysteria dissolving whatever maturity she had displayed moments ago. A constable tried to restrain her from going inside.

  Elisabeth watched as a police sergeant told the Constable to lay off her, and Dawn stood up to continue her way inside. She overheard them say that the Criminal Investigation Department was en route to the location.

  Making her own way in, Elisabeth did so much more calmly. She saw Mallory seated on the couch, holding a pack of ice to her jaw. Dawn stood nearby and gulped in great swaths of air. It was quite the scene, she sighed internally.

  She took a cautious step towards the couch, and cradled her friend's bruised and tear-streaked cheeks between her palms. “Oh, Mallie… What happened?”

  Mallory ignored her to remove the ice pack from her jaw and stare in relief at Dawn, who appeared to be vibrating with the need to hug her. Unfortunately, with so many Middlesborough officials around, it really wouldn’t be the best idea. While what she and Dawn were doing wasn’t technically against the law, it would be certainly frowned upon until the school year truly ended, no matter if classes were done.

  When Mallory met Elisabeth's eye and tilted her head towards the officers, Dawn simply crossed her arms and repeated the line of questioning. “What happened?”

  “Easy, Dawn,” Elisabeth warned the student, her blue eyes widening to look back and forth between Mallory and Miss Rose.

  She had more than an idea about Mallory’s damage over the years – drawn from the grumpy, insanely private woman’s lips through their many years as friends. Even then, it required many, many beers to get those crimson lips to loosen. She doubted she knew the whole truth, but she did know this: Mallory was not one to be demanded of.

  Scowling at both Dawn and Elisabeth, Mallory tried to recall the afternoon in detail. She had already told the police officers, and was openly loath to do it again. “Your ex-fiancé broke in the front door with a very ugly buddy of his to harass me while I was making a sandwich in the kitchen,” she began.

  Almost floating from the prior evening, and the fact that she’d been able to go back to sleep until noon after Dawn left, Mallory waltzed into the kitchen wearing nothing but her underwear and a white undershirt to make a sandwich. At the front of the house, the front door creaked open, alerting her to someone’s entrance.

  “Dawn?” she called happily, surprised that she’d made it back so quickly from the campus. The public transport system here could be infernally slow.

  “Nope! Just good ol’ me, Miss Moore. Or should I call you Miss LaFey? Perhaps… Perhaps I ought to call you Lilith, since we’re on such friendly terms. Steven sends his regards.” Oliver Ulster snapped, his tone menacing. “Where is my fiancée that you’ve stolen away?”

  He walked into the kitchen, his smile savage. A beefy henchman stood behind him, his hand grasping at something inside a leather jacket.

  Mallory’s gut clenched. How did this little shit know who she was? Was Steven Rose so bent on getting Dawn to marry this twerp that he sent him with another man to harass her?

  Her hand slid underneath the counter top to grip the handle of a large fry pan. Not bothering to warn the intruders, she swung for Oliver first in an attempt to distract the larger man.

  Unfortunately, he had seen the pan coming, and swung to pop her in the jaw. The pan made its target known, anyway.

  Once her first swing of the pan made contact with Oliver’s head, he dropped like a brick. Her jaw throbbed, but she couldn’t stop now. Yanking the towel from around a nearby hook, Mallory swung it to whack at the henchman’s fat face. It stunned him long enough for her to wind up again, swinging the pan against his bald head with a satisfying clang.

  “I clocked Mr. Ulster with the frying pan from underneath the island, and his sidekick got a towel to the face and similar treatment. They’re both in the ambulance, I think,” her voice choked out as she tried to control her trembling body beneath the blankets the medics had wrapped her in. “After that, I called the police. I made sure they were knocked out with a few more whacks of the pan before I tied them up,” she concluded, her eyes calculating as she stared at Dawn.

  Dawn popped her hip out and rested her hand on it. “That can’t be the whole story. Why would Oliver do such a thing? He’s an idiot, not a vigilante.”

&nb
sp; Mallory shrugged, wincing when her shoulder made contact with the side of her face that was swelling. She was keeping the whole truth to herself, that much was obvious.

  Seeing the pained expression, Dawn rushed forward. “Oh, my God! He hit you!" she fumed. "He did! Didn't he?"

  Edging herself farther down the couch and away from Dawn’s touch, Mallory tried not to look into her eyes. “Perhaps you should go back to the school with Miss Sørensen, Dawn… If only for a few days. You still have some things there, right? It’s not safe here right now,” she reasoned.

  “What? No!” Dawn shouted stubbornly. “We’re in this together. Who cares if I have a change of clothes there? I'm not going.”

  “Elisabeth, please…” Mallory beseeched the help. It was breaking her heart to drive Dawn away like this, and if anyone understood why, it was Elisabeth.

  Nodding her agreement, Elisabeth reached an arm around Dawn, trying to lead her back towards the front door. “Come on, Miss Rose. It’s only for a few days… more time to study. You left your laptop and books there in our rush, and the end of the year hockey match is coming up soon.”

  Furious at Mallory’s attempt to shut her out, Dawn turned out of Elisabeth’s arms. “Both of you are insufferable. I’m not a damn child!” Turning to snatch her purse back up, she stomped towards the front door once more.

  She must have known that Mallory was trying to protect her, but also knew she was being lied to. Her hurt was so deep that she could barely look back, and it made Mallory wince again; another stab of pain, but to her heart.

  “I’ll be back in three days,” Dawn tossed over her shoulder. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on, Mallory!”

  _____________________________________

  Hours passed in a daze of pain, and more questioning than Mallory had experienced in years. Much later, after the last constables and medics left the cottage, she threw on a bra, a pair of black jeans, and her boots. She knew the only thing that could get rid of the ache in both her heart and jaw was alcohol, and wasn't in the mood to argue with herself about it. Not bothering with anything else but her standard red lipstick, she cabbed her way to the next county over in search of privacy and booze.

  As the cabbie dropped her in downtown Scarborough, she walked towards the sounds of heavy industrial music, her soul drawn to the sounds of her youth. Making her way into the heavy metal club, strains of German and Latin pounded from the speakers. The harsh male voice seemed to sing only to her as she slung back shot after shot. ‘Deux ex machina; this machine wants your blood. Deux ex machina; with blunt hatred and blind rage...' the track chanted.

  She swung her long hair on the dance floor, writhing with the rest of the damned souls who found comfort in the grating noise.

  Across the countryside, Dawn was back in her room at St Augusta's. She had refused Miss Sørensen’s offer of company, and slammed the door in the teacher’s face once they had reached her room after an extremely tense and silent drive back.

  Yanking open a desk drawer, she found an old cigarette she’d sneaked from Felicity McGovern’s room at the beginning of the semester. She lit it with shaky hands, breathing the heady smoke into her lungs. Now, they burned like her heart. She began typing on her laptop to reach a search engine. If Mallory wouldn’t tell her anything, she’d have to do a little bit of sleuthing on her own.

  Why in the world would Oliver have attacked Mallory, and why did Mallory act like there was something to hide?

  Dawn refused to let this go, no matter how much she had been warned against it by Miss Sørensen on the way back to school. It hurt worse than anything to be lied to directly by someone she had trusted so implicitly, and still loved more than the entire world. After typing in the search terms ‘Mallory,’ ‘Moore,’ and ‘North Yorkshire,’ the results brought up many references to the Latin teacher’s many accomplishments in the community and school. However, on page 9 of the search, the results weren’t as perfect. One blinked at her, highlighted in glowing blue and bolded.

  ‘Did you mean: Lilith Mallory LaFey and Evelyn Moore?’ the search engine asked, blinking her original search terms in bold.

  Intrigued, Dawn clicked on the prompt. Up came article upon article about the tragic tale of a young socialite of fourteen years of age named Lilith Mallory LaFey. She had suffered, that was for sure, least of which included the murder of both her parents, and her grandparents Evelyn Moore and Paul Christopoulos.

  After clicking ‘Images’ at the top of the screen, Dawn shrieked at what she found and jumped back from the computer screen like it had electrocuted her.

  “Fuck!” she swore, tears welling in her eyes. "No! No-no-no!"

  Chapter 7: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

  (If You Want Peace, Prepare for War)

  Still numb with shock, Dawn clicked away from the images and back to the articles on the laptop. One article from the year of the murders stated some higher level investigative police suspected it had been a professional hit rather than random robberies by someone in the Christopoulos's trade: gems, and more specifically, diamonds.

  The events of late lining up in her head, Dawn buried her face in both hands and forced herself to breathe. "It can't be," she repeated to herself over and over again. "It can't fucking be."

  _____________________________________

  In the library, the back cubicles were abuzz with girlish chatter.

  "What the hell was that?"

  "Did you see her face?!"

  "Who's Mallie?"

  Listening to the babble of noise around her, Felicity McGovern was deep in malicious thought. 'Sørensen has to be the one Dawn had spent the night with. She's the hottest teacher in the school, well... for a lady. Who else could it have been?' Something was missing. Then, it dawned on her.

  "Lisa…" Felicity threw an eraser at her friend's head two cubes away. Beckoning for the red head to come closer, she lowered her voice and grinned. "It's Moore."

  Lisa shrugged cynically. "What is?"

  Neither girl heard or saw Sister Eileen standing behind a row of books.

  "It's her," Felicity reiterated. "Miss Sørensen and Miss Moore got it on in that empty classroom last Christmas, right?"

  Ignoring the look of terror upon the face of her classmates who had just spotted the nun turning the corner around a stack, Felicity ramped up her gossiping further.

  "I'll bet they've been ripping the knickers off of each other ever since, and I think Dawn's having some sort of three- way with…" Her voice trailed off as a shadow fell over her cube.

  A current of sniggering rippled through the girls.

  Felicity screamed as she was hauled out of her seat by the ear, courtesy of Sister Eileen.

  Pulling her along the length of the library towards the door, the tough nun manhandled her, and she frantically tried to get the death grip off of her tender flesh. “Get off me! I'll tell my father about this!”

  "Get on with your revisions," Sister Eileen called over her shoulder, as though she were lugging a bag of trash out the door instead of Felicity. "I'll be asking questions of all of you when I get back."

  _____________________________________

  In the Middlesbrough police station, Detective Sergeant Thom Smythe entered a tiny, gray interview room with a beige coloured file under his arm. Nodding to the uniformed Police Constable guarding the prisoner, the he took a seat in one of the hard plastic gray chairs.

  He opened the file, turning the first couple of pages expressionlessly.

  Opposite him, Oliver Ulster stared at the wall, arms folded. A barrister from Steven's expensive legal team sat beside him waiting, pen poised over paper for the Detective Sergeant to speak.

  "So, Mr. Ulster…" Det. Smythe began, "Would you like to tell me why you and your accomplice broke into a woman's house and assaulted her?" He closed the file and looked across the formica and aluminum table at the scowling young man.

  Oliver cast a sideways glance at his barrister, who then leaned acros
s and discreetly issued instructions to his client. Frowning at his defender, Oliver shook his head indicating he wasn't willing to do whatever had been suggested. He was trying in vain to keep his cool.

  Sitting back in his chair, Det. Smythe folded his arms and cleared his throat. "So far," he announced loudly, "We have you on charges of Criminal Trespass and Grievous Bodily Harm. We can add Obstruction of a Criminal Investigation to that as well. It's entirely up to you."

  With that, Detective Smythe left the Middlesbrough police station interview room for a brief break.

  Patiently counting off five minutes on the wall clock, he then motioned for a colleague to follow back in behind him. He switched on the recording equipment and checked his watch. His constable, a tall woman with long red hair, took a seat as well.