Sister Eve and the Blue Nun

by Lynne Hinton

  “So, the victim has a brother who lives here,” he noted, watching Eve carefully.

  She nodded. “Yes, yes, she does … did,” she added, correcting herself and, unfortunately, letting it be known that she was aware of the reference, that she had knowledge of what had happened on the monastery campus. “Wait. I’m sorry, who are you talking about?” She was hoping he hadn’t caught the misstep.

  “The woman in the guest quarters, the sister of the monk you came to find. Anthony, I believe is his name.”

  Nope. He hadn’t missed a thing.

  “Yes, I thought Brother Anthony might still be here and I came to find him.”

  “To tell him what happened?”

  She nodded her head, hoping that gestures didn’t really qualify as lying.

  He glanced around again. “He’s not here?”

  She shook her head and reached for the cross necklace around her neck.

  He studied her. “Is that a special crucifix?”

  She looked down at the pendant. “My mother gave it to me,” she answered. “A gift when I joined the order … when I became a nun.”

  He nodded and smiled slightly. “I have one too,” he said, and he pulled out the necklace he was wearing. It was on a silver chain and was not a crucifix but instead a cross that appeared to be made from stone, exactly what kind Eve didn’t know. It was crude, and she had to look closely to make out that it was a cross and not just a round piece of white stone.

  “It’s sacred buffalo stone—from my grandfather on the Shoshone Indian Reservation in Nevada.” He looked at the stone hanging from his neck and then placed it back beneath his shirt. “He gave it to me when I was a boy,” he added. “Said he saw a white buffalo the day I was born.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  Detective Lujan shrugged. “Not sure,” he answered. “He seemed to think it meant I would be protected.”

  She thought about the explanation. “I would imagine that’s a good sign for a police officer.”

  He nodded. “That’s why I wear it,” he noted. He took in a breath, changing the direction of the conversation. “Do you know where Brother Anthony is?” he asked.

  Eve relaxed because she was able to be completely honest with this answer. “I don’t.”

  “But you were searching for him.”

  It wasn’t a question so she didn’t respond.

  There was a lull in the conversation, and she was hopeful that he was finished with the interview. She waited.

  “And the letter?”

  This was a question, she knew.

  She nodded without speaking.

  “Can I see it?”

  Eve reached behind her and pulled out the letter. She handed it to the officer and then leaned back, sticking her hands into her pants pockets, her fingers finding the piece of material she had taken from the victim’s room. She clutched it, waiting for him to finish reading.

  He refolded the piece of paper and handed it back to her. “So, he knew what happened before you got to him?”

  She took the letter, holding it in her hand. “He told me earlier, then he told Father Oliver, who met me in Kelly’s room. I was trying to find him when you and Detective Bootskievely arrived. This was on Father Oliver’s desk. And when you told me he was here, I came to try and change his mind.”

  “Change his mind about leaving?”

  She nodded. “He didn’t kill his sister,” she explained. “He’s much too kind and he loved her very much. He didn’t do this.”

  “But you were worried how it would look, what we might think.”

  She studied the officer. “I was,” she replied. “There’s some pretty strong circumstantial evidence you’re going to hear. And I’m worried about him too. He doesn’t sound too stable in that letter.”

  She felt the cell phone vibrating in the pocket of her jacket and knew it was the Captain.

  He watched her a few seconds. “I’ll need the letter eventually.”

  “But not now?” she asked, surprised he wasn’t taking it.

  He shook his head. “I’m sure you’ll keep it safe.”

  She nodded, the phone still vibrating.

  “You should probably answer that,” he said as he made his exit.

  FOURTEEN

  By the time Eve had gotten her father fully on board about what had happened, the detective had left the dining room. While she watched Detective Lujan exit, Captain Divine explained on the phone that he would come to the monastery first thing that morning and that he would call Daniel, his former partner and an acting detective, and fill him in on the murder and everything Eve had told him.

  Eve planned to go to her room, the only sleeping quarter left in the sisters’ old residential wing. She knew that Father Oliver had decided to leave one room unchanged in case a nun might wish to return to visit the old community. When he took her to the last room on the hall after she arrived, he explained that he thought it would be better for them, for her, to stay in familiar territory instead of having to bunk in the new guesthousing. And he was right.

  As sad as she was to be back and for things to be so different from when she was a resident there, Eve was glad she was staying in the main building of the monastery. She had not wanted to stay in the row of rooms that had been recently built for the nuns but never used by them. She was relieved to feel less like a guest than she already did. The expulsion of the nuns bothered her greatly, but she still loved the monastery, and regardless of the recent history, it was still comforting to be in the place filled with so many memories.

  Once she made it past the area around the main entrance, after greeting the five or six monks standing around talking about what had happened and feigning her ignorance about everything, she headed past the chapel and down the hall to the last room on the right. She opened the door and was surprised to find Father Oliver sitting at the desk, waiting for her.

  “I’m sorry, Sister, to be in your private quarters. I didn’t know where else I might find you.” He stood up, bowing his head, and dropped his hands to clasp them in front of him, the rosary he had been praying with clearly visible.

  She shut the door and walked over to him, taking him by the hand. “It’s okay,” she said, squeezing his hand before sitting down on the bed across from the desk.

  As she studied him, seeing him in brighter and clearer light than when they had last been together in Kelly’s room, Eve could see how much the vice superior had aged since she’d been away. Even though she had been in Madrid and away from the monastery only a few months, his hair had gone from salt and pepper to just salt, and it was curly and longer than he usually kept it.

  There were new wrinkles around his eyes, two deep lines furrowed between his brows. He was slumped and his color was ashen. The thought that he was sick crossed her mind, but she knew his appearance had more to do with stress than it likely had to do with some disease or illness. It was easy to see that he was taking the transition at the monastery harder than anyone. And now he was dealing with this, a murder and one of the monks implicated and apparently missing.

  “Anthony was gone,” she said, unsure if he knew.

  He nodded. “I saw Brother Matthew. He told me that he heard him leave and heard the conversation in the hallway between you and the police officers.” He sat back down in the chair. “I hoped maybe you had found him. I hoped maybe he would come back here with you. Have you seen him at all?”

  She shook her head and suddenly remembered the letter. She pulled it out of her pocket and handed it to him. She watched as he unfolded it and read.

  He rested his elbows on the desk and ran his hands over his face. “What is he doing? Where has he gone?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “But Daniel, my friend, the one I said I would call, he’s going to co
me this morning. He’ll understand when we tell him that Anthony didn’t do this. He’ll help us find him.”

  Father Oliver nodded.

  “I met two detectives from the Santa Fe department. Bootskievely and Lujan,” she said. “Did you see them?”

  “They came down later,” he explained. “But yes, I met them both. The deputies made the report to them, and I could see they would be handling everything from that point on.” He added, “They seem like good men.”

  Eve shrugged. She waited for a few seconds before asking the question she had been dying to ask when she first saw the abbot.

  “I told them what I know,” he said, understanding the inquisitive look she was giving him. “I told them that Anthony had come to me earlier in the evening and shared with me what had happened. I explained that he was very upset and confessed that he had stolen something from the Isleta church and that he had planned to return it after he showed it to his sister. I went on to say that he had told me that when Dr. Middlesworth refused to hand the papers back over to him and explained that she planned to share them at her keynote address at the conference and that she had shared the news with other people, he was angry. I told them about the argument at dinner and how I had seen him afterward in the kitchen but had not spoken to him, and then a few hours later he came to my room to tell me that he had found her dead. And that he did not know where the papers were.”

  Eve did not respond, the one concern still bothering her.

  He shook his head, understanding. “I did not tell them about the tea,” he said softly. “But I’m sure they will ask me later, when they want to know what I saw him doing in the kitchen after dinner. They will surely ask who could have brought her the tea.”

  Eve glanced away, knowing how difficult these last few hours had been for the vice superior, realizing the difficult place he was in of trying to protect Anthony but also trying to tell the truth as he knew it.

  “It gives us a little more time,” she said.

  “Time for what?” he wanted to know.

  “Time to find out who really did this, time to find Anthony and make sure he’s okay, time to make sure we get to him before the real murderer does, time to find out who Kelly told about the pages.”

  Father Oliver’s appearance changed. Eve noticed a kind of spark in his eye as he turned to her.

  “What?” she asked, sensing that he was remembering something.

  “A man arrived about a half hour after the two detectives showed up.” He sat up a bit in his chair.

  “What man?”

  “He appeared very distraught, started weeping when he was told what had happened,” Father Oliver continued. He shook his head. “But there was just something strange about his timing, about how he came into the room.”

  Eve didn’t want to interrupt.

  “Dr. Peter Pierce,” he said, nodding. “Dr. Middlesworth’s associate or maybe boss, I’m not sure.”

  “Was he staying in one of the guest rooms?” Eve asked, leaning forward.

  Father Oliver shook his head. “He was wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase. I think he had just arrived, drove in with all the police cars and ambulances.”

  “That is odd,” Eve commented. “Has Anthony ever mentioned his name?”

  “No, not to me,” he answered.

  “And he started weeping?”

  The abbot nodded. “He walked in before anyone could stop him, before they had covered the body, and he dropped to his knees and began to scream and cry. His behavior seemed sincere,” he added. “One of the deputies took him to his car. I didn’t see him after that.” He looked over at Eve, watching her. “What are you thinking?”

  She chewed on her bottom lip, a habit she had when she was deep in thought. “Just that his timing is pretty ironic and that we don’t really know when he arrived on campus.” She shook her head. “And we still don’t know who called the police.”

  FIFTEEN

  Sister Eve got about three hours of sleep, and she hadn’t intended on having those. She had borrowed one of the monastery’s laptop computers and was planning to spend whatever time she had left before morning came researching Dr. Peter Pierce and trying to find as much information about him as she could.

  She stayed in her room, choosing not to risk showing up in the same place as the two investigating detectives, waiting to be out and about until after Daniel arrived, trusting that he would keep her out of any line of fire. At first, after the vice superior left, having brought her the computer from his office, she sat at the desk, but then she decided to move to the bed just to stretch out her legs. Before she knew it, the sun was high and bright and she was waking to the sounds of someone knocking on her door.

  “Evangeline,” the familiar voice was calling. “You in there?”

  She jumped up, trying to shake off the sleep, throwing aside the bed linens in haste. “Just a minute,” she exclaimed, running her fingers through her hair. After straightening her shirt, tucking it into her pants, and then smoothing them both down, she opened the door.

  “Late night?” the Captain asked as he barreled in carrying something under his arm.

  Eve glanced down the hall to see if anyone else was with him, but it appeared that he had arrived alone.

  He took a seat at the desk, dropped what he was holding on the floor, and started rubbing his thigh as she shut the door. “I don’t think I got Peggy on right,” he commented as he pushed and pulled at his prosthetic leg.

  Eve glanced down beside him. “Daisy!” She walked over, bent down, and scooped the little cat into her arms. “What are you doing here?” she asked, giving the animal a good scratch, and turned to her father.

  He shrugged. “Your cat is driving me batty,” he replied.

  “Not sweet Daisy!” Eve sat on the bed and the cat settled in her lap.

  “There,” he said, bending his prosthesis back and placing his foot on the floor. He looked over at the bed and then back at her. “You get some sleep?”

  She nodded. “I guess I did.” She continued rubbing the cat and then slid her fingers through her hair again, trying to get rid of the bed head she knew she must have. “What time is it?”

  “Later than you think,” he replied. “And yes, I’ve already had breakfast and my shot,” he explained before he was asked.

  “Did you get in touch with Daniel?” she asked.

  “Not before Boots did,” he answered.

  She stopped petting Daisy and glanced up at him. “What are they saying?”

  “It’s officially labeled as a homicide,” he responded. “They smelled the cyanide right off. They did tell Daniel that the cup was on the floor, broken, and weren’t sure whether she had it in her hand when she fell to the floor and dropped it or if someone else had tampered with the evidence.” He raised his eyebrow at Eve.

  She turned back to the cat and then placed her on the floor. She watched as Daisy sniffed around the room, and then she began to straighten the linens on the bed.

  “They’re running it for fingerprints.” He waited.

  She shrugged. “That should help,” she responded.

  “Not if there’re several prints found,” he said.

  She sat down near him at the foot of the bed, watching as Daisy headed over to the window. “I was careful,” she finally said.

  He nodded his approval. “And you’re right about the brother, about her brother, the monk.”

  Eve inhaled sharply.

  “They got eyewitnesses that saw the dinner fight, a guest who saw him around her room before the coroner’s estimated time of death. He was seen in the kitchen after whatever late-night prayers you people pray.”

  He waited as if he expected her to interrupt him by giving him the proper name of the service, but when she didn’t, he went on. “And there’s
also apparently a letter that’s quite incriminating, seen by one of the investigating officers, which is in the possession of a certain nun.” He cleared his throat.

  She rolled her eyes, pulled out the letter that she had kept in her back pocket, and threw it on the desk in front of him. He glanced over it and turned his attention back to his daughter. “And there’s the annoying fact that he’s missing.”

  She fell back on the bed, her head on the pillow. She was tired, and even though she had just woken up from at least a few hours of sleep, it was clear to her that it was not enough.

  “Daniel’s holding off on a search,” he added. “He said he wants to talk to you as soon as you’re up for it.”

  She nodded. “They got anything else?” she wanted to know.

  He shook his head as he unfolded the letter and began to read it. “I told Daniel about these missing writings,” he said. “He’s going to talk to your boss about that.”

  “Is he here?”

  “Who, your boss?” Captain Divine asked, looking up from the letter. “I wouldn’t know that.”

  “No, Daniel,” she replied.

  “Oh, I doubt it.” He folded the letter back up, having read it. “He was going to check on the autopsy, make sure the fingerprints were at the lab, read the reports, get the tox screen results. He should be here anytime.”

  Eve nodded, realizing it was going to be a very long day.

  “There’s somebody else here who knows the victim pretty well …” He hesitated. “My guess is that it’s better than pretty well. Looks a lot like a grieving lover.”

  “Peter Pierce,” Eve said, recalling the news from Father Oliver about the man who showed up after the police.

  The Captain nodded. “Dr. Peter Pierce, some religion professor from UT. He taught with the dead girl.”

  “I’ve heard about the guy; I was trying to google him when I fell asleep.”

  “Google him? Is that something a nun is supposed to be doing to a stranger?” He grinned.