Bad Faith

by Aimée; David Thurlo

  “Our insurance carrier requires that all the books and documents we work on be kept in a fireproof safe,” Sister Agatha answered.

  “Oh—in case of fire?” Sister Mary Lazarus nodded slowly. “I guess that makes sense.” She paused, then added, “But Mother Mistress, consider our offer of help. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t pitch in. Celia and I are part of this monastery.”

  “I’ll speak to Sister Bernarda and Reverend Mother, then let you know. In the meanwhile, it’s time for you to get to work.”

  After her two charges left for the scriptorium, Sister Agatha went to the parlor and called Lenora Martinez, the school secretary at St. Charles Academy. By the time she hung up ten minutes later, many of her suspicions concerning Frank Walters and Sister Mary Lazarus had been confirmed. Her spirit was heavy now. The truth was revealing a story not of greed but of hopes lost and desperate acts. Evil was easy to condemn—human frailty was not.

  Maybe if she worked quickly and God was with her, she could get evidence that Tom would accept and that would put him on the right path.

  Somehow, she’d have to prove that Mary Lazarus hadn’t been sleepwalking—that she’d been meeting with Frank somewhere inside the monastery. Though the kids she’d had searching for monkshood had found the plant growing in several places throughout the community, she was certain it had been grown either on monastery grounds or very close by. Maybe Frank had provided it and Mary Lazarus had stolen the missing bottle to make the extract. The way things were shaping up, for the intruder theory to have any validity she’d have to demonstrate that the intruder had inside help.

  All along, she and Tom had considered this as a strictly inside or outside perpetrator, but now it seemed likely it was both. What she still needed to do was find out how it had been done, and locate the source of the monkshood Tom had been told to find.

  Sister Agatha stared at the rosary attached to her belt Prayers crowded her mind, and she reached out in desperation to the One who was always with her and she knew she could count on. A moment later she was suffused with the knowledge that the Lord was not only in her heart but also in her head.

  Slowly an idea came to her. What she needed to do was talk to one of the seniors who had lived in the area all his or her life—someone whose roots and heart had always been here in Bernalillo. Someone who knew all the secrets that got forgotten over the years, including the gossip and history about places like the monastery.

  Then Sister Agatha remembered elderly Elena Serna. At one time, the woman had lived north of the river not too far from the farmhouse that became the monastery. Churches in town had labeled her a witch, and she’d endured persecution for many years. Though those days were over it was no secret that Elena particularly hated Catholics. But Sister Agatha knew she had no other choice now. Her best chance lay in getting Elena to talk to her.

  22

  Sister Agatha drove across the railroad tracks to the eastern outskirts of town, farther from the river and close to the interstate. The roads were almost exclusively dirt tracks out here, and the gravel from the nearby mountains was much coarser, making travel bumpy except when the road was crossed by a sandy wash.

  She went around a bend, having run out of street signs long ago, and just as she was about to conclude that she was hopelessly lost, a low adobe house appeared before her in a gravel-filled flat spot beside a small spring. Several goats inside a split-log pen fifty feet from the house browsed on small tufts of grass.

  “You leave her livestock alone, Pax,” Sister Agatha said sternly, catching him eyeing the creatures as she parked. A curtain moved in the house, indicating that the distinctive sound of the motorcycle had drawn the occupant’s attention.

  Pax whined, obviously in the mood for a goat chase.

  “You heard me, boy. This is important. I want you on your best behavior.”

  He sighed loudly as if he’d understood.

  A few moments later she stepped up to the front door with Pax on a leash and knocked. The doorbell was just that, a bell, but there was no cord or clapper, and the slightest tap would have probably sent the precariously mounted device plummeting to the earth. Looking down, she saw the clapper and remnant of string on the ground below the bell.

  An elderly lady in a shawl opened the door a few inches, looked at her and the dog, then spoke. “Go away.”

  “Please. I just need to talk to you for a few minutes. You’ve lived in this area a long time, and I’m hoping you can tell me something about the history of the house that is now our monastery,” she said, sticking her foot in the door. “I’m Sister Agatha, from Our Lady of Hope. I grew up in Bernalillo, and my name was Mary Naughton then.”

  The woman looked at Pax, then turned back to her. “Don’t remember you. And the dog? What’s his purpose? You’re not blind.”

  “No, I’m not. Pax is my companion and guardian when I’m away from home,” she answered.

  They stood face-to-face for a moment, and Sister Agatha forced herself to remain smiling, despite the woman’s suspicious scrutiny. Then finally, Elena Serna moved aside. “Come in, but if I hear one word out of your mouth that sounds like you want to sprinkle me with holy water or convert me, that’ll be the end of our talk.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Elena gestured for Sister Agatha to sit on the couch.

  Sister Agatha made herself comfortable on the old sofa then looked around casually. There were candles everywhere and cryptic symbols drawn on the concrete floor. They made her uneasy.

  “You’re free to leave if my decorative touches disturb you,” Elena said, noticing her anxiety.

  Sister Agatha took a deep breath. “Just because you and I have different beliefs doesn’t mean we can’t get along with each other. Neither of us has anything to prove to anyone. We both know who we are.”

  “Many of your faith are capable of unspeakable acts of violence against those who don’t share your beliefs.”

  “The sisters in our monastery follow a rule of charity and love. Violence and hatred have no place in our lives. Pax and I are no threat to you. I think you know that, or you wouldn’t have invited us in.”

  Pax came over to the old woman and placed his head on her lap. The elderly woman looked surprised but not fearful, and reached out to stroke him gently, her hand steady and sure.

  Looking up, Elena met Sister Agatha’s gaze with a direct one of her own. “Why, exactly, did you come here? What is it that you need from me?”

  “I know that you’ve lived in this town practically all of your life. What can you tell me about the farmhouse that is now our monastery and its former tenants?”

  “I think I know why you’re asking me that question. I’ve heard about the trouble you all had.” She pointed to a stack of recent newspapers beside a well-used woodstove, then took a deep breath. “That farmhouse has seen more than its share of trouble. I always thought it was an odd place for nuns to establish a monastery.”

  “Why do you say that?” Sister Agatha asked, leaning forward.

  Elena offered Sister a cookie from a platter on the table before her, gave one to Pax, and took one for herself. The cookies were freshly baked and tasted of rich peanut butter. “The original owner of the place was Francisco Vargas. He built the farmhouse before I came to Bernalillo. Don Francisco apparently had a good head for business and was well respected. But his son, Daniel, who was ten years my senior, was completely the opposite of his father. A few years after Don Francisco died, during World War One, Daniel managed to bankrupt both his father’s fine farm and his Mexican import business. Daniel, who’d never been poor in his life, found himself penniless.

  “Then Prohibition started. Daniel, who was in desperate straits, became a moonshiner. Every cop around these parts knew him and what he was doing, but no one could ever catch him at it The police would raid the farmhouse on a regular basis, but they’d always come out empty-handed. I know this and remember it well because, at the time, my husband, Carlos, worked for Da
niel. We lived right on the farm—in an adobe building on the north side.”

  From the description, she realized it was what they now called St. Francis’ Pantry. “But that’s barely more than a room—a narrow one at that.”

  “Oh, it seemed a grand honeymoon cottage for Carlos and me at the time. It had everything we needed, and the adobe kept us cool in the summer and warm in the winter, with some help from the little potbelly stove we had.”

  “Did your husband help with Daniel’s moonshining business?”

  “Yes, he did. I never approved, but I knew that poor people had to survive either by their wits, if they had any, or by the sweat of their brow. At that time, with the influence of the drought, even growing a few vegetables in the garden was a tricky proposition. Many went hungry in the valley, but the people who worked for Daniel were always able to put food on the table for their families.”

  “How did Daniel get away with it if he was being raided often? Did he pay off the cops?”

  “I’m sure there was some of that, but the truth is that while Daniel might not have inherited his father’s business sense, he was as crafty as a fox. He had a secret passageway built inside the property. Only a handful of specially selected men who’d worked on it knew its location. Those men comprised Daniel’s inner circle and were mostly people who were in the country illegally or had family in that situation, so they had as much to fear from the police as Daniel did. But even with that precaution, Daniel always kept a close eye on everyone who worked for him. If he suspected someone was becoming a risk, they were dealt with—violently and mercilessly. If a man threatened to talk, he’d show up dead with his tongue cut out as a warning to others not to wag theirs. But, as ruthless as Daniel was to his enemies, he could also be a strong, dependable friend. Many of his people would have been willing to die for him.”

  “I know the monastery well. It’s our home. But I don’t know of any secret rooms.”

  “Not rooms—just a passageway. And, for all I know, it was sealed off permanently a long time ago. After Prohibition was repealed, Daniel, who’d made his fortune by then, moved away to Denver and built a mansion there, I’m told. The property here passed from owner to owner after that, but no one ever stayed long. Then, World War Two came, the house needed repairs, and the land itself was more of a detriment than an asset with no farm hands available to work it. For a few years it stood empty and all but abandoned. Then a man who’d made a lot of money making airplanes during the war retired and moved out here with his family so they’d have a place for the kids to run and ride horses. They fixed up the place, and were happy there for many years. But then the husband died, and the woman moved back East to live near her grandchildren. It was empty for another few years, then the nuns were given the property.”

  “Where is the passageway? Can you give me any idea?”

  Elena Serna shook her head. “I don’t know. You have to understand that things were different for women back then. The men didn’t confide in us—they protected us. Well, at least that was the excuse they used for keeping us in the dark about nearly everything,” she added with a wry smile.

  “Thank you for taking time to talk to me. Next time Sister Clothilde bakes cookies, I’ll save some for you and bring them over.”

  “I’d like that. I’ve heard about her cookies—Cloister Clusters they’re calling them now in the newspaper.” Elena smiled as she walked with Sister Agatha to the door. “You’ll be welcome if you return, and the dog, too.”

  Due to her age, a visit would be considered a sign of charity and brotherly love. “I think you can count on it.”

  After saying good-bye to Elena, Sister Agatha and Pax drove back to the monastery. All the way there Agatha investigated every corner and path inside her home in her mind. She knew the monastery like the back of her hand. And maybe that was the problem. Once things became familiar, it was easy to overlook details.

  As she neared the monastery’s gates, she came up with a new strategy, and pulled over. Maybe she’d have better luck finding this secret passage from the outside, a place less familiar to her.

  She glanced around. They’d already searched close to the wall and found nothing, so perhaps the entrance—or exit, depending on how one looked at it—was farther away. She drove back down the road another fifty feet, then pulled over and parked. An old road, long deserted, ran parallel to the river just to the west. Overgrown with plants common to the flood plain, the ground there was largely sand beneath a thin layer of sediment, and probably not a good place to begin a tunnel. Farther to the north, she could see a dilapidated farmhouse and the outline of an old field, now overgrown with brush and small trees.

  Chances were that the field had been under cultivation fifty years ago. The soil in this area was a mixture of fine sediment and clay, and now hard packed. “Come on, Pax. Let’s take a look around.”

  Ahead, giant tumbleweeds mingled with sagebrush the size of sheep. She pulled her skirt up as the prickly bushes tugged on the serge fabric of her habit.

  Hearing something scamper into the brush, Pax shot ahead. In a flash, he disappeared into a thicket. Sister Agatha looked around, trying to spot him, but she couldn’t see him anywhere, despite his light color. “Pax, come!”

  She waited for a moment, but the dog didn’t return. Muttering under her breath, she went to find him. It was her fault for letting him run off the leash. It was too much to expect that he wouldn’t find an occasional jackrabbit irresistible.

  “Pax!”

  She forced her way through the clusters of sage and tumbleweeds, but the dog still failed to appear. As she stopped to catch her breath, she looked up and saw an electrical transformer ahead, the same one that was visible from the monastery gate. The small electricity-boosting station had a tall wire fence around it, and big electrical lines extending from the top to overhead power lines, almost like those in the Frankenstein pictures she’d seen as a kid. She looked at the well-protected utility, lost in thought.

  That fenced-in area would have been the perfect place to grow something you didn’t want others to see or examine. People tended to avoid going anyplace that was filled with cables that carried high-voltage charges and had warning signs posted all around.

  She went toward the fence, deciding to check it out. If the fence was secure, she’d turn back and go find the dog, but if not, she wanted to take a look around.

  When she got really close to the twenty-by-twenty-foot fenced enclosure, she saw no obvious signs that anyone had trespassed. Weeds nearly as tall as she was grew around the fence, and it was difficult to see beyond them. She walked completely around the enclosure, checking the fence carefully. Then, on the side opposite the narrow padlocked gate, she saw a section of fencing that had been cut loose from its post, then reattached with what looked like several pieces of aluminum wire twisted loosely in place. It wasn’t obvious until you looked very closely, but she could see that slipping under that portion of the fence by untwisting a few of the wires wouldn’t have been difficult.

  She removed the lowest three wires, pulled part of the fencing back, and ducked inside the small enclosure. Then, from out of nowhere, Pax crashed through the brush and appeared right behind her, on the other side of the fence.

  “Pax, you moron! You startled me.”

  The dog slipped under the new gap in the fence and went up to the large green transformer, which was humming at a low pitch, but was probably carrying enough current to electrocute them both easily.

  “Stay back, Pax.”

  He lowered his head, sniffing the ground, and started pawing the dirt at a spot where water erosion had dug a narrow ditch about eight inches deep and a foot wide.

  The weeds were nearly as thick in the small enclosure as they were outside the fence, so she pushed her way past them slowly. But she still didn’t see anything unusual. When she turned around to look for Pax, she realized that he was still pawing at the spot that had intrigued him before.

  “Pax, com
e here.”

  The dog kept digging, and sniffing the ground.

  “All right, you prairie dog. That’s enough.”

  As she went to grasp him by the collar, something shiny on the ground caught her eye. “What have you uncovered?”

  In the wall of the tiny ditch that meandered through the area, probably leading to the river, she saw the sun glinting on an amber bottle that had been buried, then exposed by the last rainfall. There was still a bit of pale liquid inside it.

  She went to reach for it, but then stopped. The last thing she wanted to do was tamper with evidence. The bottle would have to be left in place for the sheriff to recover. She started to back away when she heard the roll of thunder. Looking up, she saw the skies were thick with clouds. If it rained, it was possible the bottle would get washed away and never be found again. It was already exposed, and it wouldn’t take much water in the ditch to dislodge it from the soil.

  Sister Agatha felt a few drops of rain on her face. Then a slight breeze began, evidence of the storm approaching.

  “Okay—decision made. I’ll take it with us.” To protect any fingerprints that may have been on it, she picked up the bottle at the bottom using the small handkerchief she carried and put the container in her pocket. Then she found two sticks and stuck them in the ground so they formed an X marking the spot.

  Making a split-second decision, she decided to search the immediate area before leaving. Mixed in with a generous crop of weeds, she found several monkshood plants that had been pulled up, their roots harvested.

  “Let’s go, Pax. It’s time we paid Sheriff Green a visit.”

  By the time she reached the motorcycle, she realized that the rain had eased, and the momentary breeze had already diminished. She glanced around. Above her was the haze of virga, rain that was evaporating in the warm air without ever reaching the ground.

  “Let’s hope the weather will hold a little longer so Tom can process this scene properly. But if it doesn’t, he’ll at least have the bottle, and whatever evidence can be gotten from it, in police custody.”