The Clock Strikes Nun

by Alice Loweecey

  Cissy’s hair re-staticked itself. “Support them? Support them where? Why haven’t you gotten married?”

  “My job isn’t a commuting one. We know I need to live here to take care of Elaine’s requests at odd hours.”

  The bed bounced as Cissy sat on it. “You are living proof men are idiots. I should send your girlfriend a sympathy card. As soon as these troubles are settled, I’ll talk to Elaine about your girlfriend moving in here. The house is big enough. What time is it?”

  “Uh…” He groped for his phone. “It’s 2:36.”

  “You will call your girlfriend as soon as you know she’ll be awake and explain the new situation to her.”

  Mike’s voice trembled on the verge of tears. “Thanks, Ms. Newton.”

  Giulia didn’t have time for heartwarming. “Cissy, may I have a few more minutes?”

  Cissy maintained her composure until Giulia closed them into the Gray Room. Giulia sat her in the dressing table chair and took the edge of the bed for herself.

  “You realize Pip is the only suspect left.”

  “But he loves her. He’s her prince.”

  “Who else is in the castle and also able to cut a deal with Elaine’s aunt and uncle and Dahlia’s Board of Directors?” A new idea stopped her. “Unless Elaine’s doing this to herself.”

  Cissy jumped out of the chair. “No. Oh, no. That can’t be possible.”

  Giulia took out her phone. Cissy cringed.

  “You said something odd when I showed you the video. Something about not wanting Elaine to see evidence. Evidence of what?” But this time she did have the answer and cursed herself for not being an actual clairvoyant. If she were, she’d have known to bring Olivier along on this sleepover.

  “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”

  Giulia took a snapshot of the screen and enlarged the woman’s face. “Explain, please.”

  “When Elaine was eight, we had a maid who read Tarot. Elaine was fascinated and spent as much time as possible with her. Belinda didn’t approve, naturally. One night she caught the maid teaching Elaine the meanings of the cards. She fired her on the spot, burned the cards in front of Elaine, and then locked her in the library hole for two hours.”

  Giulia made a silent promise to Zlatan never to be his personal Mommie Dearest.

  “And?”

  Cissy said in a hopeless voice, “The Priestess in your video is also Elaine. I didn’t think she remembered the incident.”

  Giulia tried to keep sarcasm out of her voice. “An eight-year-old’s mother throws the little girl’s friend out of the house, makes her watch as she torches her favorite new toy and finishes up by locking her in that lightless crevice, and you thought she forgot?”

  Cissy didn’t reply. Giulia said mostly to herself, “Elaine didn’t want to be powerless anymore, and she had two hours to think of nothing else. I wonder if The Priestess began as an imaginary friend.”

  Cissy covered her face with trembling hands. “It will all come out now. The lawyer and his trained psychiatrist will have a field day with my Elaine. She’ll be locked away and everything we’ve accomplished will be ruined.”

  Giulia had no sympathy to spare. “You claim to be concerned about Elaine. Why did you keep Muriel a secret all these years?”

  Cissy’s hands dropped. Her red-rimmed eyes blazed. “Because I love her. I love both of them. Elaine is fragile and Muriel is fun. Helping Muriel meant Elaine was having fun too, in a way.”

  “That’s called enabling.”

  “No, it’s called loyalty. Besides, who did it harm?”

  Giulia wrote it all down with a twinge of disappointment. Not even Springer would believe this one.

  Fifty-Eight

  Giulia called Olivier at six a.m. If the forensic anthropologist had been a kid at Christmas, Olivier was the same kid in a candy store with unlimited cash.

  “This is off the cuff, but it appears the other personalities evolved to protect Elaine, each in her own way.”

  Giulia yawned nonstop. “You’re the only person I’ve talked to all night who’s made any sense.” Another yawn. “Sorry. Without telling you a long story, can you guess how far these personalities will go to protect the host?”

  Olivier caught the yawn. “Sorry. Host?”

  “It’s a horror movie thing.”

  “Suddenly I appreciate Sidney’s obsession with the Hallmark Channel. To answer your question: very far. Don’t underestimate them.”

  A high, hysterical scream came through Giulia’s door. She hung up on Olivier and ran. More screams led her to the library. Cissy was a step ahead of her, Georgia and Melina a step behind.

  Elaine was crouched in the smuggler’s hole, screaming in the same dreadful voice. Pip was trying to coax her out saying, “Elaine, come on. Sweetheart, please.” Cissy reached in for Elaine’s arm, but he shoved Cissy out of the way with such violence that she slipped and hit her head on the corner of a marble table.

  Georgia and Melina added their screams to the escalating chaos. Giulia bent over Cissy and checked for a pulse.

  Elaine’s screams changed. Giulia looked up from Cissy’s ghastly face. Pip had a grip on both Elaine’s arms now and was trying to drag her out of the hole. His charm had sloughed away. Rage glared through his narrowed eyes and clenched teeth.

  Giulia leaped to the wall and wrenched one of Pip’s arms off Elaine. Pip cursed and backhanded her. Giulia aimed a fist at his nose, but he dodged it. She grasped Elaine’s free arm and tried to pry her away from Pip.

  The screams stopped. Elaine flung off Pip’s and Giulia’s arms and rose to her feet. Giulia recognized the Priestess’ face and bearing in Elaine’s frilled robin’s-egg blue nightgown.

  “I forbid you to touch us.”

  Melina’s wails and Georgia’s frightened curses cut off at the sound of the imperious voice. Mike skidded to a stop in the doorway.

  The Priestess opened her hands and two dozen long white pills rained to the floor at her feet. “I know the artifices you have been practicing on Elaine. You shall not be allowed to continue.”

  Pip stared open-mouthed at this Elaine. Faster than her regal air led Giulia to expect, the Priestess picked up a bronze paperweight shaped like an edition of Great Expectations and slammed it into Pip’s temple.

  Giulia leaped forward as Pip crashed to the polished oak floor. She reached for the paperweight. The Priestess swung it at her. Giulia dodged her first attempt. The Priestess crouched and aimed another blow at Pip. Giulia blocked it, and the Priestess reversed her momentum. The flat of the metal book clipped the side of Giulia’s head.

  Spangles filled her vision. She swayed, caught herself, and clamped her hand around the Priestess’ wrist. The Priestess might be a powerful personality, but she was stuck in Elaine’s comparatively weak body. Giulia wrung the Priestess’ wrist and the bronze book fell, splintering the edge of one of the boards. The Priestess gave the impression of looking down at Giulia even though they were the same height. Giulia twisted the arm in its frilly sleeve up and behind the imperious back. The Priestess gazed at her in offended astonishment as Giulia grasped her other wrist.

  The next moment the Priestess’ rigid spine relaxed. Her aristocratic contempt changed into Muriel’s mischievous grin.

  Muriel popped her wrists out of Giulia’s startled hold and danced around Pip, the nightgown billowing like a cloud. “You’re in trou-ble! You’re in trou-ble!” After two complete circuits of his prone form, she pointed to the open smuggler’s hole. “There should be a packet of rare stamps and coins in there behind one of the bricks.”

  Giulia’s quick survey of the library confirmed she was the only conscious inmate capable of rational thought. She turned on her phone’s flashlight, ignoring the building headache from the Priestess’ attack.

  “If memory serves, look on the right-hand wal
l ten or eleven bricks up from the bottom.”

  Giulia glanced over her shoulder at Muriel, who planted her hands on her hips.

  “Don’t get all suspicious on me. I’m not going to run away. I’m having way too much fun.”

  Crouched in the niche, Giulia counted bricks. The eleventh brick in the fourth row came loose at her touch. She shone the light into an empty rectangular hole. “There’s nothing in here.”

  “He stole it then.” She kicked Pip with one bare foot. “We thought he wanted Elaine locked up to spend her money as he liked, but it’s worse than that. The Priestess said the little girl’s skeleton spoke to her. He brought it here to scare Elaine, of course.” She scooped up most of the scattered pills. “He tried to make her swallow these, but we caught on in time and I palmed them.” Another delighted laugh. “You should’ve seen me pretend I was sweet, trusting, scaredy cat Elaine.”

  Cissy sat up with help from Melina and Georgia. “Muriel, please let Elaine come back now.”

  Muriel shook Elaine’s ruffled blonde head. Giulia’s eyes kept looking for the springy black curls to go with Muriel’s voice and attitude, but Cissy seemed to have no difficulty.

  “Elaine can’t handle this,” Muriel said. “The Priestess and I put her to sleep like we did when she was nine and trapped in there.” She pointed to the brick-lined hole again. “We have to protect her.”

  Giulia called 911.

  Fifty-Nine

  The chaos of an Elaine hysteria fit was a monastic retreat compared to the pandemonium of the castle overflowing with police and EMTs, plus Muriel running from room to room looking for the coins and stamps and shouting her play by play in the halls.

  The police herded everyone else to the chairs near the window seat while two EMTs cut away Pip’s pajama top and started CPR.

  Melina backed into the corner farthest from the smuggler’s hole. Her lips moved and she began counting slowly on her fingers. Giulia recalled her grandmother doing the same once when she was away from home: Melina was reciting a Rosary.

  Another set of EMTs treated Cissy’s and Giulia’s scalp injuries and tested them for concussion. Muriel had run to Elaine’s room after Giulia’s phone call—“Don’t follow me. I told you I’m not running away”—and begun her search.

  When the team working on Pip brought out the defibrillator, Muriel tried to run into the library dressed as Marie Antoinette. An enormous frizzed and powdered wig crowned with a wide hat and drooping feathers covered the blonde hair. Her silver-blue gown was cut to show extreme décolletage and adorned with a huge silk bow in the front and cascading lace on the sleeves. Her difficulty was the wide-hipped skirt of multiple layers of pouffed satin looped up with more bows: it wouldn’t fit through the library door. She tried turning sideways, but the skirt’s layers and bows wouldn’t fit that way either. At last she threw up her hands and folded the hip fencing in half. It sprang back into place when she released it.

  Once inside, she planted her delicate high-heeled shoes in the center of the room and waved a waterproofed leather roll secured with a miniature belt.

  “I told you. I told you he stole it.” She beckoned Detective Hansen from Monday’s wine cellar discovery. “That man purloined this from Elaine, and don’t you talk to me about communal property.”

  She pushed two books and a small Tiffany lamp off the nearest table. Hansen caught the lamp before it shattered. The EMTs spoke loud enough for the room to hear.

  “I’ve got a heartbeat.”

  “Pulse weak.”

  “Let’s get him stabilized. I don’t like these readings.”

  Muriel’s nimble fingers unlaced the belt and unrolled the leather. Slots for coins appeared, at least half of them empty. As the leather reached its end it revealed four square slots for envelopes. Three were filled. Muriel opened one.

  “I knew it. Look at this.” She expanded the envelope and took out a square of waxed paper divided into four smaller squares. Two were empty. Postage stamps filled in the other two. “All of these sections should be full, and all the coin slots too. We found this in the punishment hole after we put Elaine to sleep the first time. The Priestess remembers details better than I do. She’ll be able to tell you what’s missing.” She advanced on Pip. Giulia held her back.

  Muriel made a face at her. “You’re as bad as Cissy. I want that man to tell us what he did with Mama Dahlia’s rainy day fund. It belongs to Elaine, not him. He has to pay it all back.”

  “They’ll take him to the hospital. When he wakes up the police will find out.” Giulia didn’t like the now silent and rapid way the EMTs were working, but she wasn’t about to tell Muriel Pip might not survive the ambulance trip. Muriel or The Priestess might attack him again. Giulia wanted Pip alive to rat out Caroline and Thomas as they were sure to rat out him in turn.

  Melina, Mike, and Georgia were assuring two detectives of their own ignorance regarding hidden money and this stranger in front of them who looked like Elaine but claimed to be a completely different person.

  The EMTs lifted Pip onto a gurney and wheeled him out before collapsing it to carry him down the central stairs. The detectives allowed Giulia to tell them what had occurred in the house.

  Muriel ran to Mike and hugged him. “You make the best parfaits. And sandwiches too. I hardly ever get to taste your food because I’m usually out late dancing, but I wanted to tell you you’re a wizard with sponge cake and whipped cream.”

  He looked more like a rabbit cornered by a snake than a chef accepting compliments.

  Muriel’s lips were moving again. Georgia reached out to one of the extravagant feathers on Muriel’s head but pulled her hand back before she touched it.

  Hansen approached Muriel with a touch of rabbit vs. snake too. “Ma’am, we’d like you to come with us to answer some questions.”

  “Oh, no!” Cissy stood much too quickly. Georgia and Mike caught her arms and steadied her.

  Muriel sashayed over and patted Cissy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. When The Priestess and I tell them everything, I’ll be home in time for supper.”

  She turned to Hansen with her arms out, wrists together. “All right, copper, put the bracelets on me.” She appeared to think. “No, I’m wrong. I should have said put the cuffs on me. Cissy, we need more classic noir DVDs.”

  Giulia touched his shoulder. “Remember.”

  His bemused expression altered when his partner hefted the plastic bag containing the bronze paperweight smeared with Pip’s blood. He took Muriel by one elbow. “If you’ll come quietly, ma’am, we can dispense with handcuffs.”

  Muriel pouted. “I suppose.” She adjusted her wide skirts. “They wouldn’t go with this outfit anyway. Cissy, are you coming? What about our Private Eye?”

  A third detective offered his arm to Cissy. “We’re right behind you.”

  Giulia waited for the last detective to roll up the rare coin and stamp carrier. “Yes, I’m coming.”

  “Oh, good. The Priestess respects you. I think you need to lighten up, but I suppose someone in this party ought to be serious. Allons-y, gentlemen.”

  Sixty

  “No offense, Ms. Driscoll, but I don’t like private detectives.”

  Giulia smiled. “None taken.”

  Detective Hansen at his desk was a smidge less antagonistic than when he was in control of a crime scene. The detectives’ room in this Pittsburgh precinct wasn’t much different from Frank’s precinct in Cottonwood. Too many desks, too many people talking on the phone, and muffled curses from the holding cells. The computers were newer, but the coffee was worse. She only pretended to sip hers.

  His phone rang. “Yeah, Chrissy, put him through…This is Don Hansen…Thanks for calling, Captain Reilly. What can you tell me about a Giulia Driscoll?”

  Giulia checked mail on her phone while Frank’s boss added another couple of risers to the pedestal
he kept her on. When Don hung up, she met his chagrin with her own.

  “Captain Reilly can be effusive.”

  “I’ll say.” He read through the notes on his screen. “If both you and Ms. Newton hadn’t insisted Ms. Patrick in her Halloween costume was the one who bashed in Mr. Patrick’s head, I would’ve told her to go sleep it off.”

  His phone rang again. “I’m in the middle of an interview, Chrissy…Oh. Yeah, I’ll take it. Detective Hansen speaking…I see…Yes…Thank you.” He hung up. “Well, that complicates things. He’s dead.”

  “He’s lost the chance to repent.” When Don looked at her like he’d looked at Muriel, her chagrined face returned. “Cradle Catholic.”

  His face cleared. “My partner’s Catholic. We have to work our schedule around Sunday Mass.”

  “This is worse for Elaine.”

  “Yep. Now it’s manslaughter unless the state’s lawyer can prove intent.” He stared at his screen. “Wait. I had it written backwards.” He erased and typed some more. “If you’re not yanking my chain, Elaine Patrick is really this Muriel person who also claims she’s some sort of female priest, and the female priest is the one who attacked Perry Patrick.”

  His phone rang in a different pattern than the earlier calls. “Son of a—” He snatched it. “What? I’m busy…Okay. We’ll be right down.” He cradled the receiver. “Ms. Driscoll, Ms. Patrick—that is, Muriel—is making her statement, and the psychiatrist wants us there.”

  Giulia and Hansen watched through a two-way mirror. Muriel as Marie Antoinette sat opposite a middle-aged psychiatrist with shaved head and graying goatee. A miniature recorder sat on the metal table between them.

  His serious face made a comical contrast with her patent enjoyment.