Saint's Gate

by Carla Neggers

  They wouldn’t now, she thought, reaching for the door handle. She would get Emma and tell her everything. Then they could decide what to do next.

  She heard the distinct sound of footsteps on the tile floor behind her.

  Of course it would be one of the other sisters. Who else could it be? A sister had come into the tower, seen a painting out of place, moved it to safety and now was returning to the entrance.

  Sister Joan opened the door. “Sister,” she said, “I’m here—”

  The door was kicked shut, the sharp thrust throwing her off balance. She stumbled, the key flying out of her hand as she lurched forward against the hard oak door.

  Sister Joan cried out in prayer, even as the blow struck the back of her head.

  3

  SISTER JOAN’S FEW MINUTES TO RETURN WITH the key were dragging on. Emma yanked impatiently on the gate, but the lock held firm.

  Never mind the key, and never mind the meditation garden.

  She wasn’t willing to wait any longer.

  The fastest route to the tower was up and over the fence. The gate itself looked too rickety and would land her on the stone walk. She stepped into the garden, grabbed a cold, wet vertical iron bar in each hand and climbed onto the lower rail. The old fence creaked and groaned but held firm as she hoisted herself up to a middle rail and then launched over the top rail, grateful she didn’t have to dodge ornamental spikes.

  She jumped down onto the grass, landing in a crouch, and sprang upright next to a simple, graceful copper angel that stood sentry in the fog.

  Still no Sister Joan returning with the gate key.

  Emma cut back onto the stone walk and followed it to the tower. A sharp breeze tasted of salt water as she stopped at the bottom of the steps. The door was shut tight. If Sister Joan hadn’t found the key, she could be returning through the meditation garden, and that was why she was taking so long. Emma peered into the near-impenetrable fog, noticing a movement across the lawn, past wild-growing rugosa roses at the edge of the rocks that led straight down to the ocean.

  “Sister Joan,” she called. “It’s Emma.”

  There was no answer, no further movement.

  Emma was aware of her .38 snug in its strap just above her ankle. She had no reason to draw a weapon. During her three years with the FBI, she’d never fired a gun outside a training facility, but she knew what to do.

  The wind whipped more salt water and drizzle in her face as she crossed the wet grass. A narrow path, no more than ten inches wide, led through the roses to the tumble of boulders that marked the boundary between ocean and land.

  She heard someone panting and made out a woman crouched on a boulder in the swirling fog, at least a three-foot-wide, five-foot-deep gap between her and the roses. She wore only a dove-gray tunic and skirt, without a jacket, sweater or rain gear, and a white headband held back her light brown, chin-length hair. Her face was pale, her lips blue as she shivered, undoubtedly from fear as well as the wet, windy conditions.

  Emma squeezed onto the path, thorns, dripping leaves and rose hips brushing against her jeans.

  “Don’t come closer.” The woman—a young novice of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart—sounded frightened more than confrontational. “Please. Stay where you are.”

  “My name’s Emma Sharpe. I’m a federal agent.” Emma reached into her jacket for her credentials and held them up. “I need to see your hands.”

  “I can’t…I can’t move.”

  Emma returned her credentials to her jacket. “Just put your hands out in front of you where I can see them.”

  The woman complied, gingerly holding her palms in front of her. She was shaking visibly. “I don’t even know how I got out here.”

  “What’s your name, Sister?”

  “I’m Sister Cecilia. Cecilia Catherine Rousseau. I was in the meditation garden. I saw Sister Joan. I don’t think she saw me. I hadn’t expected to be there. I’d been working on the biography I’m writing of Mother Linden, our foundress. I decided to see if Sister Joan needed any help. Then I—I saw someone else….”

  “Where?” Emma asked.

  “On the rocks, headed toward the cove. I panicked,” Sister Cecilia added, sheepish. “Next thing, I was here.”

  “This person you saw. Man, woman?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t Sister Joan, or any of the other sisters.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Sister Cecilia nodded. “I knew I didn’t want whoever it was to see me. It could have been someone from one of the boats taking shelter in the cove.” She sniffled, still shivering but steadier, her emotions more under control.

  Emma felt another strong, cool gust of wind off the water. “Do you know where Sister Joan is now?”

  “No.” Sister Cecilia’s eyes lifted to Emma. “Something terrible has happened, hasn’t it?”

  “I hope not. First things first, okay? I want you to jump over to me.”

  Sister Cecilia tightened her hands into fists and sobbed. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. You just have a touch of vertigo. You jumped over there. You can jump back.”

  “If I fall—”

  “You won’t fall. I won’t let you.”

  “The boulder I’m on is wet. It’s slippery. I almost fell.”

  “You didn’t know it was slippery. Now you do. You’ll make allowances.” Emma kept her tone level, patient. “Sister Cecilia, if there’s an intruder, the other members of your community could be in danger. I need to help them.”

  The young sister gasped. “In danger?”

  “Your instincts drove you to run. Trust them. I’m not leaving you here, but I want to make sure the other sisters are safe.”

  “They’re at the motherhouse. Only Sister Joan…” Sister Cecilia trailed off, her panic spiking again. “You have to find her. I’ll wait here.”

  “I can’t leave you alone.” Emma softened her voice. “‘Fill us at daybreak with your love, that all our days we may sing for joy.’”

  “Psalm 90:14. That’s our motto.”

  “I know. It’ll be okay, Sister. Half a second, and you’ll be off that rock.”

  Her teeth chattering now, Sister Cecilia nonetheless managed to stand straight and lift the hem of her skirt above her knees. “Ready?”

  Emma gave her an encouraging smile. “Ready.”

  With a quick breath, Sister Cecilia leaped from her boulder, grabbing hold of a rosebush, thorns scratching her hand and drawing blood as she steadied herself. She yelped in pain and let go, sucking blood from a finger.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” Emma reminded her.

  The young novice raised her chin. Her skin was ashen, her blue eyes standing out against the gray surroundings. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know yet. Right now I need to find Sister Joan. Stay with me.”

  They headed back through the rosebushes and across the lawn to the tower, Sister Cecilia keeping up and not saying a word. The wind picked up, bringing with it more cold drizzle.

  When they reached the steps, Emma turned to the novice, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. “Stay close to me.”

  Sister Cecilia nodded, and they mounted the steps. Emma pushed open the heavy door. It barely missed Sister Joan’s sturdy black shoe. She was sprawled on her side, her head twisted in such a position that there was no hope she was still alive.

  Her black headband was half off, her graying hair covering most of her face.

  Sister Cecilia screamed. “Sister Joan!”

  In a smooth motion, Emma drew her .38 and held it firmly in her right hand. She glanced at the young novice. “Do exactly as I say.”

  “I will,” she said, her voice just a breath. “Could she have fallen—”

  “No.”

  Emma didn’t point out the obvious blow Sister Joan had taken to the back of her head and instead bent down and quickly checked for a pulse. There was none, and as she
stood up again, she pushed back her emotions.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Sister Cecilia asked.

  “I’m afraid so. There’ll be time for mourning later,” Emma said, not harshly. “You’re doing fine, Sister. Just remember to stay close to me.”

  With Sister Cecilia at her side, Emma did a quick but thorough sweep of the single, open room on the main floor. Mother Linden had converted the tower into a work space early in the order’s existence. Conservation was a central source of their income. For the past thirty years, Sister Joan had dedicated herself to the art and science of restoration and conservation, establishing the Sisters of the Joyful Heart as experts in cleaning, repairing, preserving and protecting works of art—in particular, religious art—brought to them by various individuals and institutions. She would enlist other sisters to help her as needed and would train the occasional apprentice, but the tower was her domain.

  The first-floor furnishings consisted of desks, filing cabinets, bookshelves and a seating area, none of them yielding an intruder or another terrified nun. Emma motioned toward the metal spiral stairs, and Sister Cecilia nodded, very pale now, eyes wide with horror and fear. She maintained her composure as they headed up to the second-floor conservation lab.

  The temperature and humidity controls were off, and the large worktables and easels were empty, not because a thief had cleared out valuable art, Emma thought, but because there currently was no work being done in the lab. Metal shelves that held materials—backing for paintings, chemicals, brushes, microscopes, work lamps—and the photographic and UV equipment all seemed to be intact, undisturbed. Some of the equipment and materials in the lab were expensive but nothing Emma could imagine attracting a thief, especially given the tower’s isolated location.

  “Sister Joan worked here alone most of the time,” Sister Cecilia said, clutching the back of a task chair.

  “We have to go, Sister.”

  They descended the stairs, and Emma led Sister Cecilia to Sister Joan’s scarred oak desk under an oversize window. A white birch swayed in the wind. The fog could conceal—or hamper—an intruder’s escape.

  Had the bleak weather played a role in the timing of the attack on Sister Joan?

  Sister Cecilia slumped against the desk, her eyes shut, tears leaking out the corners as she prayed silently.

  The landline telephone was right where it had always been, next to a jar of boar-bristle brushes used to clean artwork. Emma lifted the old-fashioned receiver, her hand steady as she dialed the extension for the motherhouse.

  “Sister Joan?”

  Emma recognized the voice of Mother Superior Natalie Aquinas Williams. “It’s Emma Sharpe, Mother.”

  “Emma? What are you doing here?”

  “Listen carefully. I need you to gather the sisters together in the game room. Lock the doors. Then call the police. Don’t let anyone in except them and me.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Count heads. Make sure—”

  “Everyone’s here except Sister Joan and Sister Cecilia.”

  “Sister Cecilia’s with me. She’s safe.” Emma knew she had to give Mother Natalie more facts. “Sister Joan was attacked in the tower. She’s dead, Mother. I’m sorry.”

  “Dear heaven. Emma…” With the safety of twenty women at stake, the woman in charge of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart quickly pulled herself together. “All right. I’ll gather everyone in the game room, lock the doors and call the police. What will you do?”

  “I’m on my way with Sister Cecilia.”

  Emma hung up, confident that the Mother Superior would kick into immediate action. Keenly intelligent, a member of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart for more than forty years, Natalie Aquinas Williams was decisive and committed body and soul to the welfare of the women in her charge.

  Sister Cecilia had gone very still, her eyes fixed on Sister Joan’s body. She turned to Emma. “I can show you to the motherhouse—”

  “It’s all right,” Emma said. “I know the way.”

  4

  COLIN DONOVAN SAT ON A FLAT EXPANSE OF COLD granite and stretched out his legs as he debated dragging his sleeping bag out of his kayak and taking an afternoon nap before the mosquitoes found him. He figured he’d camp here overnight. He was on a tiny coastal Maine island. No houses, no cars, no people. He had food, water, dry clothes and shelter. Most of the bad guys after him believed he was dead. So did a fair number of the good guys.

  Did life get any better?

  It was his fourth island in as many days. He’d ignored the fog and intermittent rain and explored the knob of rocks, stunted evergreens and wild blueberry bushes. Now he was contemplating logistics for his nap. When he woke up, he could contemplate dinner. Then where to pitch his tent.

  Or go ahead and pitch his tent now, as well as unfurl his sleeping bag?

  He smiled at the depth and complexity of his decisions. The fog was lifting, if not soon enough to leave him time to paddle to another island. What was the point, anyway? It wouldn’t be that different from the one he was on. More rocks, more trees, more blueberry bushes.

  He heard a boat, out of sight just beyond the headland where he’d pulled up in his kayak. The underwater rocks there were tricky. Only a skilled pilot or an idiot would navigate a boat this close to the island, particularly in the tough conditions, with the tide going out.

  Or a determined enemy, Colin thought, sitting up. He had on dark-colored waterproofs, not the neon-orange or yellow his lobstermen friends and family wore. If he needed to, he could disappear into the fir trees. He also had a weapon—a nine-millimeter Sig Sauer—tucked in his backpack.

  He edged toward his kayak as a lobster boat materialized, bobbing in the chop about twenty yards offshore. No colorful buoys marked lobster traps in the immediate vicinity of the island, but Colin recognized the trio of buoys on a pole in the stern of the boat, bearing the distinctive blue, magenta and yellow stripes that identified Donovan traps.

  His eldest brother, Mike, stepped out of the pilothouse. He was an outfitter and a guide, not a lobsterman, and he was in the Julianne, their lobsterman brother Andy’s backup boat, a hulking heap that would keep running until someone blew it up or hacked it to pieces. Mike would have a fair idea of where Colin would be since he’d helped plan his route among Maine’s southern coastal islands. Not that Colin, with three years with the Maine state marine patrol under his belt, had needed help, but he and Mike got along well. Mike understood his younger brother’s desire for solitude.

  “Hey, Colin,” Mike said, barely raising his voice he was so close. Like all four Donovan brothers, he was a big man. “I tried your cell phone in case you were in a hot spot. No luck.”

  Colin hadn’t even turned on his phone. “What’s up?”

  “Father Bracken wants to see you. I said I’d find you.”

  This was unexpected. “Bracken? What’s he want?”

  “A nun was killed a few hours ago.”

  “In Ireland?”

  “Heron’s Cove.” Unmoved by the heavy swells, Mike pointed vaguely toward the mainland. “Sisters of the Joyful Heart.”

  Colin got to his feet. He’d paddled past the isolated convent on his first day on the water. He’d looked up at the stone buildings with their leaded-glass windows and thought it wasn’t a bad place to sit out life.

  “I’m not getting mixed up in a nun’s death.”

  Mike shrugged. “That’s what I told Bracken.”

  “The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction over a homicide in Heron’s Cove. The Maine State Police will handle the investigation. Tell Bracken—”

  “I did. Now you tell him. He’s your friend.”

  Colin noticed a patch of blue burning through the fog and clouds on the horizon. It’d be a chilly night out on his little island, but with the clearing weather, there’d be a starlit sky. Stars, quiet, the wash of the tide on the rocks. It was a lot to give up.

  “Let’s go,” Mike said.

  There’d
never been any point arguing with the eldest Donovan. Mike had a place way down east, out on the rugged and remote Bold Coast. He lived off the grid as much as possible. He didn’t own a cell phone or a computer, but he knew how to use them—when he had to, and only for his work as an outfitter and guide.

  Mike hadn’t needed an explanation when Colin had turned up in Rock Point and said he wanted to go off on his own for a few days. Mike wouldn’t worry whether his brother was hiding from demons or running from enemies. In Mike Donovan’s world, wanting solitude was normal. It wasn’t a reason for concern.

  Not that Mike believed Colin rode a desk at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. None of his three brothers did, but they’d never flat-out asked him if he was an undercover agent.

  “All right.” Colin reached for his backpack, set next to his kayak. The mosquitoes were starting to congregate around him, anyway. “Let me collect my gear.”

  Mike abandoned Colin at the docks in Rock Point, the small, struggling fishing village where they’d grown up, just north of high-end Heron’s Cove. With little comment, Mike climbed into his truck and headed back north. A week hiking and canoeing in the northern Maine woods was next up for Colin, on the heels of his kayaking trip.

  He just had to clear up the matter of the dead nun with Father Bracken.

  Colin threw his kayak and gear into the back of his truck and walked across the potholed parking lot to Hurley’s, a local watering hole in a weather-beaten shack built on pilings.

  Finian Bracken’s black BMW was parked out front.

  Hurley’s was a favorite with hardy tourists who ventured beyond southern Maine’s more popular beach hangouts. It served good food and drinks at a reasonable price, and it was also the only restaurant and bar in Rock Point. The only inn had opened up two years ago and was owned by Colin’s parents. His father, an ex-cop and sometimes lobsterman, had taken to cooking massive breakfasts and polishing silver. His mother couldn’t have been happier.