The Case of the Sin City Sister

by Lynne Hinton

  “We are told by the psalmist that God meets the desires of our hearts. Even Saint Paul wrote to the church in Galatia that ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’ ”

  Eve was confused. She was not following his explanation, but she didn’t interrupt. In more than twenty years as a nun she had learned some skills about listening and about silence; and as she bit her lip, holding back another question, holding back her impatience, she realized this was one of the skills that had benefited her in solving the mystery of the dead Hollywood director. She had known how to listen to what was being said as well as to discern what was being shown. She had solved the mystery because she understood what it meant to listen carefully, to pay close attention to the details.

  Oliver waited a bit and continued. “If you are a true disciple, Sister, and I believe you are, then Christ lives in you. If this is so, then the desire that is in your heart can be trusted. It is the truth for you to live by.”

  Eve relaxed. It was the news she had wanted but had not expected to hear from her superior. She knew that what he was saying was certainly true, that working at the detective agency energized her in a way she hadn’t felt for a long time. She knew being in the role of detective fed her spirit, engaged her mind and heart, and fulfilled her. It was everything she had been searching for at the monastery for years, even years she had not realized she was looking for something.

  “Who will watch the animals?” she asked, suddenly remembering the stray cats and dogs she had been housing and feeding at the monastery. She was the only resident who took care of them. She worried that to leave would mean the animals would more than likely be neglected. Not knowing who would step up and take over was one of the reasons she had been using for her decision to stay.

  “I have spoken to Sister Mary Edith and Brother Stephen. They are both dedicated to caring for all the residents here, the four-legged creatures as well as those of us with two. We will continue the good work you began.”

  Eve smiled. It warmed her heart to know that he had understood this would be important in her discernment process to leave the monastery. He knew what caring for the animals meant to her, and with his reply, it was clear that he had already managed this matter of concern.

  She nodded and thought about the man sitting behind her and understood how she had come to love and respect Father Oliver over the years. He was not one who spoke frivolously or one who used his authority as a means of power over the others at the monastery. Even in times of disagreement, and there had certainly been a few of those, Eve had always found her superior to be kind and fair in his leadership. She trusted him.

  “I just want it to be a leave of absence,” she said. “I am not ready to leave for good. I just need a couple of months to sort through things, help my dad again, and be back in Madrid and just have time to think about things.”

  She felt his hand on her shoulder. It was warm and strong.

  “It is just a leave of absence,” he agreed. And then he removed his hand. “But Sister Evangeline, you must use these six weeks as the opportunity that they are. You must still your mind and listen to your heart. If you do that, if you seek in truthfulness to know what it is you are to do with your life, you will know the truth.”

  “And the truth will set me free,” she added. She reached her right hand across her opposite shoulder and held it there, waiting. She didn’t wait long before his hand clasped hers and squeezed. She dropped her head, said a prayer of thanks, and felt the release of his hand on hers. When she stood up to leave, she turned around to thank Father Oliver, to tell him what relief he had given her, to let him know what his counsel had meant to her, how she had been praying for what he had given to her, but the chapel was empty. There was no one else there. The one who’d provided her the answer had already gone.

  TWO

  “There’s no time to take anything.” Her husband rushed into the bedroom, trying to hurry her along. “There’s no room for those,” he said, nodding at the two framed pictures she’d just pulled from the nightstand. “Just essentials.”

  She turned to him and started to argue but realized it would just take time—time they didn’t have. She put the pictures back and opened a small drawer to pull out a few things she didn’t want to leave behind: a small angel given to her by her mother when she moved to Vegas, a bracelet with silver charms, a tiny seed pot from a potter living on the Acoma Pueblo. She closed the drawer without removing the small book she hoped would not be picked up by the wrong person.

  He swore. “I hear a motorcycle,” he said and darted from the bedroom into the kitchen.

  A motorcycle, she thought. Wouldn’t that be great if it was her sister arriving and not the man terrorizing the two of them? But her family was nowhere near the town she was in. She shook her head and glanced around, wondering what she needed and if she would ever be back, if she’d ever recover these things that she had treasured.

  There were so many other items she wanted to take, including a necklace from her mother, a Navajo squash blossom design of turquoise and coral, the one she wore all the time, the one given to her just before she died. There was the painting found in the back of an old church—the sisters Mary and Martha sitting at the feet of Jesus—and a book of prayers she’d received from her parents on her sixteenth birthday, a book she had never been without. She picked it up and couldn’t help herself; she fanned through the pages, remembering when it had been given to her, the way her mother smiled, as though she thought it was the perfect gift for her teenage daughter, a gift she seemed to think might save her—from what, she would never say.

  “I need more time,” she said to no one in particular.

  “What?” he called from the other room. “What are you saying?”

  “I said I need more time,” she repeated, speaking up this time so her husband could hear her. “I like it here. It took us a long time to find this apartment, and I don’t like leaving all our stuff like this. I don’t like worrying that somebody will take it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I called next door. They have the extra key. They’ll make sure nothing gets stolen while we’re gone. I took care of it,” came the voice from the other side of the wall.

  “Right,” she said under her breath. “Just like you took care of everything else.” She stuck the book of prayers in one of the side pockets of the suitcase. She hobbled over to the closet, her ankle still swollen and sore, and grabbed a few blouses, along with a jacket since it was still chilly in the evenings.

  “We’ll buy clothes. Don’t worry about clothes.”

  “Buy clothes?” She looked at him. “How are we supposed to buy clothes when we don’t have any money?”

  “I’m going to get the money,” he said. He walked over to where she was standing and put his arms around her. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”

  She closed her eyes and dropped her face into his shoulder. She took in a whiff of his cologne and was somehow comforted by the familiar smell. He was trouble, always had been, but she loved him, and she was going to do what he said.

  Suddenly he yanked away. “I hear it again. It’s him for sure. He’s here.” His voice had dropped to a panicked whisper.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, leaving the closet and grabbing the suitcase from the bed. “Let’s go.” She hopped to the bedroom door and glanced around once more at everything she was leaving behind. “I hope it’s enough,” she said, but her husband did not hear her.

  THREE

  Carlos and Joseph Diaz had been four-wheeling on every trail in the Santa Fe National Forest since their twelfth birthday. Mary, their mother, thought her twin sons too young to have the ATVs, but she had been outvoted by her husband and her brother, a dealer in Santa Fe who’d gotten them a great deal on a matching set.

  They rode on the marked trails where motor vehicles were permitted, the ones their father had pointed out the day they got their new toys, and they rode on the ones where they were not allowed and had not
been authorized to ride by a parent or adult. Since federal lands were rarely patrolled, the chances of their being discovered and punished were slim, and so for three years they had been running up and down the mining trails as though they owned the land. Sometimes they even parked and entered some of the abandoned and closed mines they drove past, something they had promised never to do. One mine in particular had captured their attention on an earlier ride, and on this day, they’d brought flashlights and a few supplies, determined to go into the mine and stay a little longer than they had when they’d first discovered it.

  The brothers drove from the back side of Madrid all the way beyond the Cerrillos Hills, out past the marked trails and old mining roads. They rode on private land, but the fence that bordered the property had been cut and pushed aside long before they’d arrived the first time. It was Carlos who had noticed the opening the previous Saturday morning, providing them with a new territory to ride, a new area to explore, and he had hurried to stop his brother and turn back to drive across the unfenced border. He knew he wouldn’t have any trouble convincing his brother to follow him because Joseph was usually the first one of the pair to break any trespassing laws.

  When they found the old mine the first time, it was late in the afternoon, the sun was setting, and they couldn’t see past the boarded-up opening. Having heard all too often the stories of collapsing mine roofs and how the mines were often dens for mountain lions and rattlesnakes, they’d pulled aside a couple of the boards but decided to come back another day with more time and better supplies to see and discover what lay within the small hillside opening.

  “You sure it was this far out?” Joseph asked when they stopped along the trail, neither one of them completely sure of the exact spot where they’d crossed.

  “Yeah, it was way past those switchbacks and just before we usually cross the arroyo.” Carlos peered out into the desert landscape before them. “I think it’s just past that old sign.” He raised his chin to point out where he thought the fence was cut and headed out again. Joseph pulled out behind him.

  Sure enough, Carlos was right, and the two of them picked up speed as they rounded the far hill and headed toward the abandoned mine they had only recently found. When they got to the opening, they slowed and parked, turning off their engines at the same time.

  “You got the hammer?” Carlos asked, remembering that they had pulled off only two of the top boards so they could peek inside. They had tried to pull off the others but were unsuccessful. That was the other reason they had decided to come back. They knew they could cross over the old boards, but neither one of the brothers wanted to be the one pushed up and over without knowing what was on the other side. It would be easier, they decided, to go in together, and to do that, more of the boards needed to be pulled away.

  “I got it,” Joseph answered, reaching inside the small toolbox he kept attached to the back of his four-wheeler.

  “You brought Dad’s good one?” Carlos asked, sounding both impressed and a little nervous at what his brother had done.

  “We’ll get it back before he needs it,” Joseph replied. “Here,” he said and threw him the flashlight while he walked over and started pulling nails out of the boards.

  “What kind of mine is this, anyway?” Carlos asked, turning on the flashlight and beaming light in between the boards.

  “Silver, I think,” Joseph responded. “Up front they were mining for placer gold, but back here I think it was silver.”

  “It could be turquoise,” Carlos noted. “We studied that in history last year. There were a lot of people digging for turquoise in the early 1900s. Cerrillos was almost picked as the capital of New Mexico.”

  Joseph yanked out another nail and pulled at a board from the center of the opening. “I know, Professor. We’re in the same grade. I take State History too.” He turned back to his brother. “Are you going to just give history lessons or are you going to help?”

  Carlos turned off the flashlight and stuck it into his back pocket. He walked over next to his brother and yanked at a loose board until it came free. He threw it off to the side. “You want to get that last one?” he asked, pointing to the board near their feet.

  “We can just jump over that one,” Joseph said. He dropped the hammer at his side and took a step inside. “Man, it must be twenty degrees cooler in here,” he commented.

  Carlos paused and then walked in behind him, turned on the flashlight, and began to throw light inside the old mine. He shivered. His brother was right—it was very cold inside. He was glad he had worn a long-sleeved shirt.

  “Here, let me see that.” Joseph reached over for the flashlight.

  Carlos handed it to him.

  “Look, it goes way back,” Joseph noted, pointing the light in front of where they stood. “You ready?”

  Carlos shrugged. “How do we know there’s no rattlers back there?”

  Joseph grinned. “Guess we don’t until we hear them.”

  “Or get bit by one.”

  “We’ll just go a little ways,” Joseph said, trying to persuade his brother. “That’s why we came back, right?” He turned to Carlos and shined the light in his eyes.

  Carlos turned away. “Geez, Joe, you trying to blind me?”

  His brother laughed and started toward the back of the mine. “Looks like it gets a little smaller,” he commented, pointing to the opening. He knew his brother was claustrophobic. “You can wait out there if you want,” he added, prodding him.

  Carlos followed. “I’m not scared, if that’s what you think.”

  “Okay then, why don’t you go ahead?” Joseph stopped and waited.

  Carlos paused. “No, you go first. That way if the snake or cat jumps out, you’ll be lunch and I’ll have time to get out.”

  The two brothers walked in a few steps farther.

  “Just looks like the others,” Carlos said as he followed close behind his brother. “I think it would be boring being a miner. Never seeing the sunshine, breathing in all this dust and dirt.”

  “Yeah, but if you found the gold or the silver or whatever thing you were looking for, well, then you would be set for life,” Joseph noted. “You could be a millionaire.”

  “I don’t think that really happened to most of those guys. A lot of them were on the payroll for the big companies. Most of them came out here, spent all their hard-earned money, and went home broke and without a piece of gold or silver or turquoise to their name.”

  “And probably they were the lucky ones.” Joseph stopped. The flashlight was shining straight ahead of them. “Some of the other ones may have ended up like him.”

  Carlos’s gaze followed the beam of light.

  There, straight ahead of Joseph, about ten feet from where they stood and propped up against the side of the wall, was a pile of bones, along with a skull and a rib cage—a human skeleton. The two boys didn’t speak.

  There was a scratching noise from farther down in the mine and then a long, high-pitched cry.

  Joseph dropped the flashlight as Carlos pushed past him and didn’t stop running until he was astride his ATV. He glanced behind him only to make sure his brother had made it out, and then he cranked the engine and took off. Joseph was only a few yards behind, leaving the entry wide open, the boards thrown to the side, hiding their father’s favorite hammer as it lay abandoned in the thin weeds, and the flashlight still on, rolling across the dirt floor, casting shadows across the walls of the old turquoise mine and across the old bones of someone who had died inside.

  FOUR

  Evangeline waited for the prompt to leave her message. “Dorisanne, it’s your sister. Again. Why aren’t you returning my calls?” She waited as if she thought there might be a response, then continued. “Well, look, I’m calling because I was cleaning out some of our old stuff and I found that Zuni bracelet you used to wear all the time. The turquoise-and-silver one, the one with the old needlepoint stones. I polished it up and it looks real nice. Anyway, I thought you mig
ht like to have it. So let me know if you want me to send it to you.” She paused and was about to add something else, something like she was praying for her or missed her or hoped she was okay, but the beep sounded and she was disconnected. She returned the receiver back to the cradle.

  “She still not answering?” The Captain was sitting across the room at his desk, drinking coffee and reading the morning paper.

  Evangeline shook her head. “I’ve been leaving messages for three days.” She got up from where she sat behind the narrow, fold-up table that served as her desk, walked over to the coffeepot, and started to pour herself a cup. But there was no coffee left. She turned to her father, holding the empty carafe in the air as witness. “How many cups have you had this morning?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that.” He turned the page. “How many cups does that thing make?”

  “Probably more than you should drink,” she answered. She reached down and petted Daisy, the cat she’d adopted the last time she stayed in Madrid. The cat yawned and raised its head, purring as Eve scratched underneath her outstretched chin. She glanced back at the Captain, and he was watching her.

  “Look in the checkbook,” he said, seeming to know what she was thinking. “I sent her some money after I talked to her last. It should be in there. That will tell you what day it was.”

  His suggestion was a welcome surprise. She gave Daisy one final pet and walked back over to her table-desk. She reached into the box on top and retrieved the checkbook from under some files. She flipped through the transaction records. Eve knew practically all of the deposits and withdrawals because in addition to taking care of her father, she was also the temporary bookkeeper and administrative manager for the Divine Private Detective Agency, the Captain’s business.