Rueful Death

by Susan Wittig Albert

  "I don't know where I'm staying. We haven't checked in yet." Maggie tilted her head. "Where's Perpetua?"

  "In the infirmary." A shadow crossed Dominica's face. "It's her heart. Doctor Townsend wants to take her to San Antonio for tests."

  Ruby executed a right turn onto a two-lane paved road. "Doctor Townsend?" I asked. "Is he any relation to the Townsends who challenged Mrs. Laney's will?"

  "Doctor Townsend is Carl and Rena's son," Maggie said. "Their other son-the one Stu Walters mentioned- is a judge. We'll be driving past the Townsends' place. I'll point it out." She looked at Dominica. "When is Perpetua going to San Antonio?"

  "She's not. She's seventy-nine, you know. Mother's afraid the trip will do her in." Her mouth twisted down. "If she dies, of course, we're in trouble."

  Ruby glanced in the rearview mirror. "In trouble? Why?"

  Dominica was grim. "Because Sister Olivia is absolutely, positively determined to be St. T's next abbess. And she will, too, if Sister Perpetua dies."

  "I already explained the situation to them," Maggie said.

  "It sounds very complicated," Ruby said. "Terribly political."

  "It's political, all right," Dominica said. "But there's nothing complicated about it." She sat forward. "As long as there are twenty of us and twenty of them, there's no point in bothering with an election. The St T sisters will vote for Gabriella, and the St. Agatha sisters will vote for Olivia. If Sister Perpetua dies, though, we'll be down to nineteen. Sister Olivia will be on the phone and Reverend Mother General will have us voting before matins."

  "So the Reverend Mother What's-k has a favorite, then?" Ruby asked, shifting down into third for a long uphill climb.

  Dominica made a grim face. "You bet she's got a favorite. As far as she's concerned, God has ordained St. T's as the next vacation paradise for Church higher-ups. It's the bottom line again. There's more money in conferences than in garlic, and Sister Olivia is the world's champion conference manager." Her voice became bitter. "Everybody knows that Reverend Mother General brought the St. Agatha sisters here so Olivia could turn St. T's into a money making operation."

  "It doesn't sound like St. T's is the peaceful place I imagined," I said. "Back in town, Deputy Walters was telling us about his investigation of the fires."

  "Investigation?" Dominica snorted. "That's a joke! Stu Walters wasn't on the scene five minutes before he decided that half of us were suffering from PMS and the rest from postmenopausal nuttiness-and that one of us is a firebug." She shrugged. "What else can I say? We've got a problem. We're all praying about it." She turned back to Maggie.

  "I'm more interested in talking about you, Margaret Mary. Have you been dating anybody interesting? How's the restaurant?"

  I was a little surprised at Dominica 's dismissal of the fires. If I lived at St. T's, I'd do more than pray. At the least, I'd be looking over my shoulder, wondering where the arsonist might strike next and making plans to be somewhere else when it happened.

  While Maggie and Dominica talked, I sat back and looked at the rugged countryside, its limestone rock carved by dry streams into rocky cliffs and flat meadows, its vegetation sparse. This part of Texas is wild and almost completely undomesticated-not surprising, since it was settled only a century ago. Before the white man arrived with his cattle and plows, the Comanches were in charge of it. But they were nomads, following the migrating buffalo, and their seasonal comings and goings did little to tame the raw land. We haven't made much of an impression on it, either.

  In fact, as far as humans are concerned, this part of Texas isn't good for much. There's not enough water, no oil, and despite the rumors of gold that lured Coronado into a long wild-goose chase, limestone is the only resource with any commercial value. Goats do well because they browse the abundant cedar and mesquite, and in the thirties and forties Carr County was the Angora Capital of the World. But there's not much market for angora hair these days, and goats are notoriously footloose. Fence that will hold them costs anywhere from ten to twenty-five thousand dollars a mile-which substantially raises the sticker price on your average sweater.

  I grinned to myself. Back to the bottom line. But while this country might not be economically productive, it certainly is empty-which makes it perfect for a monastery. And for me, too, at this point in my life. Looking up at a hawk wheeling in the vast spaciousness of sky, I realized how cramped I'd been feeling lately. The shop was too small, the house was confining, my relationship with

  McQuaid and Brian seemed always to demand something from me. Out here in this wild, undomesticated land, there was room to roam, room to be free. Out here, it didn't matter what anybody thought, what anybody expected. You could do what you liked. I stretched out in the seat and clasped my hands behind my head. Maybe that was what had brought Tom back.

  Tom. Handsome, charming, wheeler-dealer Tom, who had abandoned a promising career to come back to a town the size of a shopping mall. It was an odd thing to do, now that I thought about it. If he'd planned all along to come back and take over the family bank, as he'd claimed at lunch, he'd never mentioned it to me. Maybe there was someone else involved. A woman, maybe.

  Ruby must have been reading my mind. She gave me a sidelong glance. "That guy we met at lunch, that Robert Redford look-alike-an old flame, huh?''

  "I suppose you might call him that," I said. "It was a long time ago."

  "Some flames stay lit. He couldn't stop looking at you."

  Ruby is an incurable romantic. If I didn't stop her, she'd go on like this for hours. "Don't be silly," I said. "Tom Rowan and I called it quits eight years ago. Nobody carries a torch for eight years."

  She didn't answer right away. A pickup truck passed us, a guy and a girl sitting close, country style. ' 'Did you love him?" she asked finally.

  "I suppose so," I said. "Neither of us knew much about loving. We were more worried about getting promoted." I looked out the window. "It's all in the past, Ruby. There's no point in talking about it."

  "It doesn't look like he's worried about getting promoted now," she said, as if she hadn't heard the last part. "Does that change anything?"

  "Change what?" I asked crossly. "McQuaid and I are living together, for Pete's sake. I haven't thought of Tom for years."

  Ruby looked unconvinced. "Well, maybe. But…"

  "But what?"

  "Oh, I don't know," she said vaguely. "I guess I'm just partial to men who look like Robert Redford and sound like Paul Newman. If he was my old flame, I'd be tempted to fan the fire."

  I was trying to think of a witty comeback when Maggie tapped me on the shoulder. "That's the Townsends' place," she said, pointing out the right-hand window.

  "Hey, that's some house," Ruby said admiringly, and slowed so we could have a good look.

  The stately white house-ostentatiously Old South, with a wraparound veranda and neo-plantation columns-was set on several acres of clipped lawn. An ornate iron fence across the front was interrupted by a massive iron gate between brick pillars. The sign beside the gate read ' 'Carl & Rena Townsend, Registered Brahmas." Beneath the words was a drawing of a massive, long-eared bull with a shoulder hump like a 747.

  I grinned. "It looks like they're rich enough to eat their laying hens, as McQuaid's mother says."

  "They're not only rich, they're powerful," Dominica said. ' 'Carl Townsend has been elected to the County Commissioners Court so many times that nobody bothers to run against him. His wife, Rena, manages the county political organization. Their older son, Royce, is a doctor-and a justice of the peace. The younger son is a lawyer. He was elected county judge last fall."

  I was beginning to understand. In Texas, the county commissioners have control over the sheriff's office budget. When the deputy testifies in county court on criminal cases, Judge Townsend is sitting on the bench. And a good relationship with the local JP is essential to making traffic citations and other minor charges stick. The Townsends held every important office in the county. No wonder the deputy wasn't ea
ger to question the Townsends in connection with the fires.

  "They're rich, powerful, and nasty," Maggie said. "But I have to admit to being biased. They caused Mother Hilaria so much pain."

  "You're not biased, you're right, Margaret Mary." Dominica was indignant. "Mother would probably still be alive if they hadn't made life so miserable for her. It wasn't the hot plate that killed her-it was frustration." She laughed shortly, "And if she'd known that Royce Town-send was going to pronounce her dead, she'd have told St. Peter to hold off until she got somebody to drive her to the next precinct."

  "Royce Townsend?" Ruby asked. "Which one is he?"

  "The doctor," Dominica said. "If there was another to be had, we'd have him. Or her."

  "He's also a justice of the peace," I said. In Texas, the JP, an elected official, has the job of pronouncing somebody dead. In a rural district, it's convenient to have JP and doctor rolled into one, although some folks might argue that there is an occasional conflict of interest.

  We had come to an intersection and Ruby, following Dominica 's instructions, turned onto a narrow gravel road. Ahead was a locked gate. Maggie got out, lifted a rock, and found the key. We drove through. On the other side, the gravel road twisted and turned through a rugged landscape colored in somber but beautiful grays and greens and browns. Patches of Indian grass, buffalo grass, and silver bluestem-remnants of the short-grass prairie that once covered these hills-were interspersed with clumps of shin-nery oak, mesquite, and cedar. After ten minutes of driving, we came to another gate, this one standing open. Beside it was a simple wooden cross, six feet high. On it was a sign. St. Theresa's Monastery.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Maggie. She was taking in the landscape hungrily, as if she were starved for the sight of it. She let her breath escape in a long sigh.

  "I feel like Eve being let back into the Garden," she

  said as Ruby drove through the gate. "I knew I missed it. I just didn't know how much."

  Dominica touched her hand. "Why don't you come back?"

  "Maybe I will," Maggie said.

  "No kidding?" Ruby asked, startled. I was surprised, too, but not as much as I might have been yesterday. All during the drive, I had sensed some sort of purpose in her. Perhaps this was it.

  "I've considered it," Maggie said. Her voice was low. She was looking out the window. "More than once."

  Ruby glanced up at her in the rearview mirror. "If you did, you'd swing the election."

  "That's right," Dominica said excitedly. "It would be twenty-one to twenty. Do it, Maggie! We could elect Ga-briella and raise garlic for the rest of our lives and I could stop putting all those stupid biscuits into the computer."

  Maggie frowned. "Hey, come on, now! We're talking about a vocation, not an election."

  Dominica shook her head. "Believe me, honey, if this election doesn't come out right, there'll be a lot fewer voca-Look out!"

  Ruby locked the brakes and jerked the wheel hard to the right, fighting for control. The Honda's rear end skidded on the wet gravel, slamming my head, hard, into the passenger-side window. The little car rocked onto two wheels and nose-dived down a steep embankment, coming to a stop inches away from a twenty-foot drop-off above white-water rapids.

  "Sweet Mother of God!" Dominica breathed.

  "Is everybody all right?" Ruby cried anxiously.

  "Don't move," I said, looking out the window. "We're hung up on a tree. If we come loose, we'll end up in the river." From below, we could hear the deep-throated noise of water tumbling over the boulders.

  ' 'What happened?'' Maggie asked in a half-whisper.

  White-faced, Ruby was clinging to the steering wheel.

  "There were big logs in the road," she said. "I was trying to keep from running into them." She looked at me. "What are we going to do?"

  ' 'Pray,'' Dominica replied promptly. She closed her eyes, clasped her hands under her chin, and began to mutter in a half-audible voice. I sat back, trying to get a fix on our situation. To my right, barely within reach, was a small tree. If I eased the door open, slid out, and grabbed for the tree-

  "Hey, down there!" came a rough voice. "Y'all right?"

  Dominica 's eyes flew open. "There, you see?" she cried triumphantly. "It works every time!"

  The answer to Dominica's prayer turned out to be Dwight, St. T's handyman, who had just driven up. He clambered down the hill to survey our predicament, climbed back up, then came down again with a heavy chain. He fastened one end to the Honda and the other to his truck and snaked the car up the hill, the four of us still inside. I don't know about the others, but I felt very nervous while this operation was going on. I could imagine the weight of Ruby's Honda pulling the truck over the edge and landing us on the rocks, with the truck on top of us.

  It didn't. When we reached the top and climbed out, I saw why Ruby had swerved. A dozen large logs were scattered at the entry to a narrow bridge, completely blocking the road.

  Dwight was a dark, burly man with dirty brown hair, a scar on his stubbled jaw, and a crumpled pack of Camels poking out of the pocket of his plaid shirt. His GMC pickup had a rifle slung in the back window-a modified combat weapon, from the look of it, as macho as he was.

  "Sure am sorry about them cedar posts layin' in the middle o' the road," he muttered. He dropped his cigarette and ground it out under his heel. "I was haulin' 'em out to where I'm buildin' some new fence. When I got there, the load was half-gone. Figgered I musta dropped 'em off the truck an' come back to see."

  "That's okay," Dominica said. "We're just glad that

  God brought you along when we needed you."

  "Yeah. It was real lucky." Dwight's shrewd grin showed two broken, tobacco-stained front teeth. "You goin' to tell Mother Winifred 'bout how I drug y'all up that drop-off?"

  She nodded, and Maggie said, "Of course. We're very grateful to you, Dwight."

  "We sure are," Ruby said earnestly. "I hate to think how long we might have hung there on that cliff-if we'd hung there." She glanced down at the river and shuddered.

  "Good," he said, and unhooked the tow chain. "Don't hurt none fer a man to be rekkanized fer helpin' folks out."

  I frowned. Dwight had been there to help when the fires broke out, too. While we gave Dwight a hand with the fence posts, I wondered if there was any connection.

  When the road was clear, we got back in the Honda. "How far is it?" Ruby asked nervously.

  "We're almost there," Maggie said. We drove down the road a hundred yards, through an oak grove, and saw the ranch house ahead of us.

  "That's Sophia," Dominica said. The house was a single-story, multiwinged building, large and sprawling. It was constructed of native limestone and cedar, with porches on three sides and a metal roof painted barn red. "It's the main building," she added. "The refectory and the kitchen are there, and Mother's office and the library and a couple of guest rooms."

  "Sophia?" I asked, puzzled.

  "You'll get used to it," Maggie said with a smile. "In most monasteries, everything has names-the buildings and the rooms, the paths, the gardens, even the trees. It's true here, too. That barn, for instance. It's called Jacob."

  The picturesque red bam stood to the left of the ranch house. To the right was another long, low, stone-and-cedar building, with an addition built at right angles to it-Rebecca, according to Dominica, where the St. T sisters lived. She also pointed out Hannah, a dormlike brick residence

  hall behind a clump of oaks, where the St, Agatha sisters lived.

  "You're still living separately?" Maggie asked, surprised. "I thought you were all going to move into Hannah."

  "Maybe that's part of the problem," Ruby said, following the long, curving drive around Sophia. ' 'If you and the St. Agatha sisters lived together, you might get along better."

  "That's what Mother Hilaria said," Dominica said. "Just before she died, she reassigned us. But afterward, Olivia convinced Reverend Mother General that we ought to wait until her successor took over."
>
  "That's unfortunate," Maggie said. "The longer the two groups are separated, the easier it is to stay that way, if only because there's less tension."

  "Less tension?" Dominica shook her head. "Don't count on it. Even separated, we're at one another's throats. Figuratively speaking, of course. Although sometimes I wonder." Abruptly, she leaned forward and changed the subject. "Margaret Mary tells me you're an herbalist, China. What do you know about foxglove? I understand it's poisonous."

  "You bet," I said emphatically. "It used to be called Dead Men's bells." The name was a reference to foxglove's bell-shaped blossom, as well as to the knell that was rung for the dearly departed. "Why do you ask?"

  "Because I heard someplace that it can be confused with other plants. It affects the heart, doesn't it? Like digitalis?"

  "It is digitalis," I said. Foxglove is a cardiac herb. It contains four glycosides, the most powerful of which is digitoxin, a stimulant that increases cardiac activity, causing the heart and arteries to contract and raising the blood pressure. Why was Dominica asking about it? "Foxglove is a lovely ornamental," I added, "but it shouldn't be used as a medicinal. There's too much danger of making a fatal mistake."

  Ruby pulled into a parking lot and stopped the car. "We're here," she said, and opened the door.

  I got out, intending to ask Dominica why she was so interested in foxglove. But I was distracted by two women who seemed to be having an argument a short distance away. One wore a navy coat with a gold cross in her lapel, a starched wimple, and a short veil. Her arms were full of file folders. The other wore jeans, a Cowboys sweatshirt, and knee-high rubber boots. She was pushing a wheelbarrow full of empty terra-cotta pots. Both had angry faces and set mouths. They were scowling at one another.