“Mountain honey.” Susan could drink an entire jar of honey and savor every drop. However, the calories would send her right over the edge.
“Brother Prescott has charge of the hives. Funny to think of him in beekeeper’s garb. Of course, the hives are in the same places they have been since the nineteenth century. Got ’em at the edge of every meadow.”
Harry had sidled up to the computer as Susan and Brother Mark chatted. She noted that the computer was new, sophisticated.
Brother Mark caught her observation out of the corner of his eye. “Something, isn’t it?”
“I thought you all had old stuff.” Harry admired the thin flat screen in front of her.
“We did. Brother Prescott and I talked Brother Handle into a new system. Every shop is connected. Brother Frank can sit in his office and call up sales figures when they are transacted.”
“What about Brother Handle?” Susan asked with seeming innocence.
“He’s got the best.” Brother Mark leaned forward and said conspiratorially, “About all he can do is turn it on. Great piece of equipment wasted.”
“I would guess a lot of the brothers don’t know how to use a computer.” Harry couldn’t take her eyes from the screen, its resolution crisp and clean.
“Uh, it’s an age thing. I mean mostly it’s an age thing. The brothers running the shops had to learn, didn’t much like it. The others don’t use them.”
“Did my great-uncle know how to use one?” Susan asked.
“He could do anything. If it had a motor or was wired, Brother Thomas could figure it out.”
“He was pretty amazing,” Susan agreed.
“I know you’re down there,” Mrs. Murphy called into the mouse opening.
A high voice called back, “And down here we’ll stay.”
Another voice yelled, “Hairy brute.”
Mrs. Murphy stuck her paw in the hole.
“Wouldn’t you love to grab one!” Pewter’s pupils grew large in her chartreuse eyes.
As the cats fiddled with the mouse hole, Tucker sniffed everything. All was in order.
“Do you own a computer?” Harry asked.
“No.” Brother Mark pointed out a candle in the shape of a cat.
“Girls.” Harry pointed to the candle.
The cats glanced at the object, then returned their focus to the mice between the floorboards and the joists.
“I’ll buy this for the kitties.” Susan reached into her jeans’ pocket for bills. “Brother Mark, do you think you’ll remain a monk?”
He paused a long time. “It was easier when I had Brother Thomas to turn to, to work with. Now I feel pretty much alone. I don’t know if I’m cut out for the contemplative life.”
“Darn.” Susan dropped her money, bills fluttering to the floor.
Harry bent down to retrieve them and her .38 gun handle clearly showed in her jacket pocket.
“What are you doing with a gun?” Brother Mark’s voice rose to a higher register.
“Forgot to put it away after target practice,” she fibbed.
“Stuff it down in your pocket. Everyone’s jumpy around here.”
“You think Brother Andrew killed my great-uncle?” asked Susan.
“I don’t know.” Brother Mark accepted the bills, his palm open. “He had the best opportunity for it.”
“It is strange,” she concurred. “Don’t all those people at the statue work on your nerves?”
“No, not really. They need help and comfort. And they’re generous. Even the poor ones leave something. I believe that Our Lady will intercede for them. She may not give them what they ask for, but she’ll give them what’s best.”
“Yes,” Susan simply said.
“She ought to do something about these mice,” Pewter piped up.
Slyly, Harry reached for the keyboard but didn’t touch it. “Brother Mark, did you know there’s a Web site dedicated to Our Lady of the Blue Ridge? If you send money, the person posing as a brother will pray for you or say a rosary.”
“No.”
“I’m not kidding.” Harry’s hands hovered over the keyboard. “Want to see?”
“Uh—well, yes, but if a brother walks in here you’ll have to bail. No personal use.”
Deftly, Harry typed in the Web site address, Brother Mark hanging over her shoulder. When the photo of the Blessed Virgin Mother, tears bloody on her cheeks, appeared, he gasped.
Harry scrolled up text and Brother Mark read quickly. Then the door opened and she clicked off the computer, stepping back so Brother Mark could step forward as though he was making a sale.
Brother Frank walked in, his face soured at the sight of Harry. “Here to meddle?”
“That’s a Christian greeting,” she shot back.
He considered this. “Well, what are you doing here?”
“Candles.” Susan pointed to the bag into which Brother Mark was placing the cat candle and a fat beeswax candle.
“Are the cats and dog buying, too?” Brother Frank scowled.
“Mice.” Brother Mark indicated the hole in the floor.
“Well, put rat poison in it!” Brother Frank commanded.
“I can’t do that, Brother. It will kill the mice, but I can’t get them out without tearing up the floor, and the shop will stink to high heaven.”
“Get a cat,” Mrs. Murphy suggested.
“Right,” Pewter seconded the motion.
“You’ve always got an answer.” Brother Frank fumed, then abruptly conceded, “You’re right in this case.”
Susan picked up her bag, smiled at Brother Mark. “Nice to see you.”
As Harry, Susan, and the animals left the shop, Brother Frank peered through the window. “She’s on a search-and-annoy mission. Ah, heading for the greenhouse. Stopped. Talking to Susan. Going behind the greenhouse. Now, why would she do that?”
Brother Mark shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Nothing back there but the pumphouse.” Brother Frank turned from the window. “I came in here for a reason and I forgot it. Damn that Harry. She made me forget it.” He peered out the window again. “There goes Brother Handle. He’s going behind the greenhouse, too. Oh, he won’t be happy when he finds Harry and Susan.” Brother Frank chuckled. “He won’t be happy at all. All right, then, I’m going. If I remember why I came here in the first place, I’ll tell you.”
“Good-bye, Brother.” Brother Mark’s eyes squinted as the treasurer closed the door with a thud.
Because of the runoff from the greenhouse and garden cottage, the ice crust was thicker behind those buildings. The cats and dog dug in, but Harry and Susan looked like skiers without skis.
Harry hit the side of the stone pumphouse with a thud. She noticed the shoveled-out railroad-tie steps at the rear leading up to the path. “Dammit.”
Susan noticed it at the same time and laughed. “Be easier getting out than getting in. Think a monk can use a computer in the middle of the night and get away with it?”
“Yes. What I need to find out is if that information is fed back into Brother Handle’s computer. Every time you log on, it’s recorded in the computer, right?”
“Right.”
“It seems to me, if all the computers are tied in, it wouldn’t be that hard to keep track of who is watching what. But even without that, each of these computers will have that stored inside. A whiz will know how to get the traffic pattern out of the motherboard.”
“Right.” Susan pushed open the door with Harry’s help.
The animals dashed in.
“Flip on a light,” Susan said, smelling the kerosene.
Harry hit the switch. “Wow, this baby is powerful.”
“Why isn’t she worried about someone seeing the light?” Pewter wondered.
“At this point she doesn’t care if she’s yelled at or not. If someone was looking out of the garden cottage or the greenhouse, they’d have seen us all come in here.”
Harry and Susan inspected the pump.
“Wish I had a flashlight.” Susan could see that a bright focused light would help.
“We can see well enough.” Harry squeezed behind the pump. She dropped down on her hands and knees, and Tucker came up, sticking her wet nose in her mother’s face. “Tucker, don’t.”
“You look silly on all fours,” the dog rejoined.
“Susan, here it is.” Harry found the thin painted copper pipe. “This has to be it.”
“Could run to one of the fountains.”
“Yeah, it could, but look how new the copper is. See the scratch here? If it had been in service for a while, the copper would be green.” She noticed the smallish box, painted black, underneath the copper tube, feeding into it. She fished out her trapper knife, wedging it under a flat cap. “Damn.”
“Frozen?”
“It’s above freezing in here. If it weren’t it’d be Niagara.” She pointed to the kerosene heater in the corner. “Does the job.” She returned to the small box. “I guess someone has the job of lighting that. Damn, I can’t pop this.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I think this has liquid or powder in it. Red.”
Susan said nothing, then stiffened and whirled around. Harry was still on her hands and knees.
“Intruder!” Tucker warned as Harry backed out.
Brother Handle opened the door and closed it behind him. “Just what are you doing?”
“Figuring out the miracle.” Harry’s voice was low, angry. “You knew, didn’t you?”
Before he could answer, Susan, her voice trembling slightly, said, “Did you kill Thomas?”
Harry jumped in. “Are you going to kill us?”
The door opened with great force, sending Brother Handle sprawling on the floor.
“He won’t kill you, but I will.” Brother Mark, knife in hand, leapt for Harry, pinning her so she couldn’t reach for her gun.
Tucker sank her fangs into his ankle.
“Climb up the robe,” Mrs. Murphy ordered.
The two cats easily climbed up, ripping the heavy wool as they progressed. They reached his shoulders as he kept Harry pinned but tried to shake them off.
Susan leapt onto Brother Mark, as well, grabbing his neck on the right side. The thin, razor-sharp knife was in his left hand. He couldn’t reach Susan with it without releasing his hold on Harry.
Brother Handle, on his feet now, lurched toward the melee.
Tucker let go of Brother Mark’s ankle, whirling to meet this new threat. To her surprise, the Prior quickly pulled the rope tie from his robe, flipping it over Brother Mark’s neck while putting his knee in the young man’s back. Susan dropped away.
Choking, Brother Mark released his grasp of Harry, but with his left hand he swung back, stabbing the Prior in the side.
The older man grunted in pain, slightly loosening the rope.
Brother Mark, almost free, swung the knife toward Harry, but she pulled the .38 from her pocket.
“Stay still.”
“You wouldn’t,” he sneered as Brother Handle held his side but didn’t let go of the loosening rope.
“I will.”
Brother Mark slashed out at Harry. She ducked in the close quarters, firing into his abdomen. He screamed and dropped down on one knee as the cats leapt off his shoulders. “Oh, God,” he moaned.
“He’s not listening,” Susan spat. “You killed my uncle! Kill him, Harry. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
“No.” Harry steadily held the gun, elbows straight. “Call Rick.”
Susan yanked out her tiny cell phone, flipping it open.
“How’d you figure it out?” Brother Mark moaned.
Harry ignored him. “Brother Handle, how bad is it?”
His hand, covered with blood, stayed pressed to his side. “I’ll live.”
The pain increased for Brother Mark. On first getting hit with a bullet it’s a hard thud. As minutes go by the pain intensifies, turning into agony. A wound to the stomach is never good. He curled up in the fetal position.
Susan supported Brother Handle, who was rocking on his feet as she’d gotten off the phone. “Lean on me. Try to relax. I know it’s difficult, but the calmer you can be, the deeper your breathing, the better. Honest.”
He sagged against her. “God forgive me. I was wrong. I waited one day too long.”
Harry never took her eyes or the gun off Brother Mark. “You did what you thought was best, Brother Handle.”
“I put the order first.” His body was shaking and he was sweating.
“Let’s sit down. Can you sit down without a great deal of pain?” Susan gently moved him toward the thick stone wall, slowly doing a deep knee bend against it. His eyes fluttered. She looking imploringly at Harry.
“Is he going to croak?” Pewter was ready to leave if he did. She wasn’t big on the moment of death. It was too messy for her fastidious tastes.
“No, he’s going into shock. Susan is trying to keep him warm,” Mrs. Murphy replied.
“What about him?” Pewter walked over to sniff the groaning Brother Mark.
“Don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy listened, hearing a siren in the distance. “Let’s hope he lives so we can find out what really happened and why.”
Tucker, firmly planted between Harry and Brother Mark, said, “I’d be happy to rip his throat out.”
Harry now heard the siren. “I’ve never been so happy to hear that sound in my life.”
Brother Handle, floating in and out of consciousness, raised his head for a lucid moment. “Hail Mary, Mother of God, full of grace—” He dropped his head again.
40
It was a simple scam. Straightforward,” Coop said to Harry and Susan. “We were closing in, but you two jumped the gun. You know, Harry, sometimes you’re too clever by half.”
“You said a mouthful.” The Rev. Jones smiled.
The four gathered in the St. Luke’s rectory office, the fire crackling in the large fireplace.
“How’s Brother Handle?” Harry asked Herb, who had been to the hospital that morning.
“He’s got a hell of a gash but he was lucky. Just missed his kidney.”
Harry watched the four cats play with Tucker and Owen, lots of fake puffing up while the dogs snapped their jaws. It was all very ferocious.
“So the motive was money after all.” Susan sighed.
“Yes and no.” Coop rubbed her hands on the arms of the club chair. “Mark wanted money. Nordy wanted money and fame. It was his idea in the first place. He’d cover the story; it’d be big news before Christmas, you know, a hopeful, religious story. The story would run as long as he could come up with interesting angles, string it out, which he did. And he was right, the footage was used all over the country by network affiliates. He thought this was his ticket to the big time, a huge metropolitan market.”
Harry wondered, “Who would have thought those two would be partners?”
“College. They knew each other at Michigan State, which was no secret. They’d kept in touch. They’d run a little scam in college printing false I.D.s. Neither one was especially honest, obviously. When Nordy started broadcasting from Channel Twenty-nine, Mark, or I should say Brother Mark, the smarter of the two, hooked back up with him. He was disconnected in the monastery. He felt Brother Handle and the other monks disdained him, but he had nowhere to go. He’d burned his bridges behind him. He needed money and he knew from his life outside the brotherhood that he wanted a lot of money. His five years as a brother apparently taught him nothing about the Ten Commandments.” Coop wryly smiled.
“Maybe he thought they were the Ten Suggestions.” Harry noticed the animals leaving the room.
“Why did he kill G-Uncle?” Susan folded her hands together.
“He cried about that,” Coop said flatly.
“Crocodile tears,” Susan bitterly replied.
“No, I think he feels some remorse. As you know, he was your great-uncle’s apprentice, following him every
where. Brother Prescott stuck Mark with Brother Thomas because Thomas had such patience. No one else could get along with Mark for very long. Brother Thomas taught him how to keep the plant going, taught him the guts of the place. He learned the wiring and the plumbing. Brother Thomas, pious as he was, suspected the bloody tears. He was going to discover how it was done and he knew the only person, apart from himself, who could rig that up would be Mark.”
“But how did Mark do it?” Harry could hear a door down the hall slowly opening.
“When the statue was taken off her base this summer, Brother Mark drilled into her a little each night. First, and this was the easiest part, he hollowed out her head. He painted the inside with a hard sealer to prevent the blood from eventually seeping through the soapstone. He covered the outside hole with epoxy made to look like stone. Special-effects people do this kind of stuff all the time.
“Nordy linked him up with special-effects people he’d met through covering film shoots in Virginia. Mark learned what he needed to know via e-mail.
“Then he drilled a line from the head down to the base. That wasn’t so difficult, either, just time-consuming. He ran a copper tube from the head to the base.
“Again he drilled out a big section in the base to hide all that coiled copper until he could dig a narrow ditch down to the pumphouse.
“He had to do that at night. He could work on the statue during the day while she was off her base, since Brother Thomas would come and go. Digging the ditch for the copper line was the hardest part, and he had to do it by hand.”
“Then there was blood in the black box behind the pump?” Harry asked.
“No. Water. He’d send a little water up the copper tube, warm water, to meet the blood, and gravity did the rest.” Coop admired the plan.
“Ah, that’s why he picked winter.” Susan got it. “In warm weather she’d cry all the time; he’d have to replace the blood.”
“Right. This way he could make the miracle last longer yet be a little unpredictable. He could refill the head. The plug unscrewed once he would scrape off the bonding glue. He only refilled her once, replaced the glue with his special-effects touches—makeup for statues! It was very clever. And remember, he stole one container full of blood types. He didn’t know when he could steal another. Sooner or later Brother Andrew or Brother John would have caught him.”
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