“Sister Angela, Sister Angela. I found something among those vines,” he called out, almost breathless. When he got to the window he revealed what he held.
“What is it?” she asked. She watched as the small crumpled object began to bloom in his hand. “Wait,” she said, looking for something in the truck with which to take the object. “We shouldn’t be touching evidence.” She found a box of tissue in the glove compartment and let Le Barca place it on a tissue.
“Was it on the vine with the broken branches?”
Still trying to catch his breath, he coughed. “No,” he finally said. “It was on the ground at the bottom of the vine.”
I wish I’d seen it myself, the nun thought. “It’s almost the same material as my habit,” she said. “The old nun must have torn her habit on the vines. And you didn’t see any rag cloths around the winery here? She may have wanted to dispose of her habit on your land.”
“I’ve never seen any cloth like that around here, Sister.”
“I’ll have to get this to the police, Martino. Good job. This verifies a witness’s testimony. If you find anything else, let me know.”
Chapter Eleven
Strolling through the busy Siena police station the next morning, Sister Angela ran into the chief detective.
“I didn’t know you’d be back so soon, Sister,” he said.
“The terminal’s just down the road. I had someone drop me off here, and I plan to walk there when my train’s due. But I wanted you to have this.” She slipped the baggie from her red-striped tote. “Last night, I talked with Martino La Barca at the vineyard abutting the orphanage.”
“Yes, I interviewed him already.”
“I showed him where Grazia saw the nun on his side of the fence. The child said the old nun tried to hide among the leafy shoots.”
“We didn’t check out that story. I should’ve done that.”
“Yes, because there were broken shoots on one of the vines closest to the orphanage. After I walked away, he kept examining the bush and discovered a piece of torn material that had fallen to the ground.” She slipped the swatch of black fabric out of her pocket. “It looks like part of a habit, doesn’t it?”
“Is it the same material as your habit?”
“No, mine’s a lighter material. I belong to a community that’s comfortable with Vatican II, remember? Most of the nuns at Mission House are younger, and they wear the same type of habit I do. But some of the older nuns choose to wear the older style.”
“You’re saying that this fabric’s what the old style was made from, right?”
“Every community’s different, but this fabric’s common. I have to warn you that La Barca held the fabric tightly in his hand when he tried to catch up with me. There may be no readable DNA because of that. But at the very least, the existence of material does seem to corroborate Grazia’s story.”
“It could be bad news for the vintner, it adds him to the list of suspects.”
“I’m surprised, Chief Detective, that he wasn’t on the list already.”
Unable to secure a taxi or bus outside the terminal in Castel Valori, Sister Angela stopped at a cart along the tiny village’s town center and bought an apple.
“Pardon me,” she said to the vender. “Can you tell me where I might find the Sacro Cuore della Francesca?”
“Yes, Sister. Continue through town. Just down the road from where Castel Valori ends, you’ll find a large gray building on your right. That’s it.”
“Thank you.” The nun said, beginning down the road, slowing to window shop each time she passed a store.
At the end of town, the road narrowed. Dried grass and bushes crowded the edges. On the downside, the golden shoots ended, and rows of grapes took off into the valley below. To her right, gravel drives navigated the hillside, framed by tall cypress as they approached farmhouses. Sister Angela stopped to let a strong breeze, carrying the songs of birds perched on the vines and trees, cool her face. Then she continued her dusty trek. Rounding the bend, the building the vender described suddenly came into view. The outside walls were a dirty-gray plaster that had chipped away, revealing mortar and brick. Faded red-painted wood framed the windows. She urged her legs up a slight slope and then took ten steps to a flat piazza. A marble archway framed a thick wooden door. Sister Angela reached up and pulled on a rope until she could hear the bell ring inside.
The trip on the train had been easy. Siena had a large train terminal with plenty of windows where she could get her ticket. She carried a thermos of coffee with her, balancing a paper cup while she retrieved biscotti from her tote. The rows of grapevines and olive orchards whizzed past the windows. Ancient hill towns looked down on more modern villages.
A few minutes passed before she heard someone inside unlatching the door. “I’m sorry for taking so long,” said a nun in a long white and gray habit. “We were attending sext, our noon service. I didn’t hear the bell because of the chanting.”
“And I’m sorry for interrupting your service,” said Sister Angela.
The middle-aged woman smiled. “I’m Sister Concetta. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Sister Angela. I called…”
“Oh yes. The prioress mentioned you were coming. Please sit down here while I fetch her.”
Sister Angela glanced around.
“I’m sorry we have so few chairs. The ones we do have are only fit for a penitent. The others are being reupholstered for the first time since I arrived. Reverend Mother was worried that we might need the money for some catastrophe in the future, but fixing them could invite more to call. Visitors would be appalled by the worn furniture.”
“I don’t mind,” said Sister Angela. “I could use a glass of water, however.”
Mother Patrizia entered the room with a cold bottle for their guest. “How do you do, Sister Angela? We’ve been so worried about Pia and would like to help anyway we can. Why don’t we retire to the room behind the kitchen? The chairs are much more comfortable. I’m sure some of my sisters would love to speak with you too, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. Do you plan to return to Siena tonight or would you like a cell?”
“I brought no luggage with me so I’d like to catch the train, Reverend Mother. My schedule says it leaves at seven. That gives us plenty of time to talk about Pia’s past, doesn’t it?”
The two women sat down at the long table. The room was surprisingly cool.
“Do you have air conditioning in the cells too?”
The prioress smiled. “No. We have small fans, though. If all the cells had air conditioning, I fear I might not be able to rouse enough nuns to come to the chapel for the morning service. Does the orphanage have air conditioning?”
“The orphanage has air conditioning in only a few of the rooms, but I’m staying with a nearby family. They do have air conditioning. I sleep like a baby and am becoming quite spoiled.” Sister Angela removed a notebook from her tote. “Let me see,” she said, donning a pair of reading glasses. The reading glasses were something new. It irked her to finally admit she might need them on occasion. “The story the Mission Sisters told me about Pia is that she arrived when she was two. Is that correct?”
“Yes, but we aren’t aware of her exact age because we didn’t know who she was. The doorbell rang, and she was on our doorstep.”
“Was she in some sort of cradle? I keep imagining baby Moses in a tiny basket floating down a river…” She hesitated. “But Pia wasn’t a baby. She was a toddler. Why didn’t she just get up and run away?”
“I’m sorry. No, she wasn’t on the doorstep in a cradle. She was beside the doorstep, crouched down and crying. It was raining, and she seemed thoroughly miserable.”
“Did she tell you her name? Did you even ask her for it?”
“No. She said nothing to us at all. She didn’t speak for weeks. She wanted to drink from a bottle, and she cried like a baby. The first word out of her mouth was ‘Mamma.’ She was here for two years. It took several mo
nths to coax anything out of her that could be attributed to a two year old.”
“When she did talk, did she give you her name?”
“Again no. We called her Pia at the beginning. It was my idea. It means pious. I thought the name would help her when we prayed for her. Several months later, we stopped and asked her for her name, but by then, she called herself Pia. Whatever she knew about her past was washed away. I’m so sorry. We loved her dearly, but evidently not one of us knew much about children.”
“And that brings me to a question that may seem disrespectful, considering you’re my superior. Please don’t take offense.”
“You must want to ask me why we kept her here for two years.”
“If I don’t, someone else will.”
“The police have questioned us already. At first we kept her because we believed her mother or other relatives would change their minds and come to retrieve her. As the weeks passed, we decided to go out and ask around the town if they knew of a family situation where the child no longer lived in the home. We were thinking that a villager might need help economically or that a mother might have needed protection from her husband. A few more months passed. By then, we’d become thoroughly attached.”
“And how did the authorities find out she was here?”
“It was a lovely day. One of our sisters felt sorry for Pia because we had her inside most of the time. The nun took her for a walk, and someone saw them. She reported her to the parish priest in the village. The police came to take Pia away. It was heart wrenching, as you can imagine. Pia put up a fight too. There were tears enough to produce a waterfall down the front steps. I asked the police to return in a few days so we could prepare her better. We called around until we found the Mission Sisters. They saved the day. They came to pick up Pia. The child was confused and upset a bit because they wore black habits while we wear white ones, but she calmed down by the time they put her in the car. We took much longer to recover, though.”
“Was it Mother Faustine who came?” asked Sister Angela.
“No it was Sister Liona. She’s a lawyer, you know.”
“Let’s go back to the beginning. Someone rang the bell, and when you answered it…”
“We heard the bell. Sister Baptista actually opened the door,” said the prioress.
“I went to the door and opened it,” said Sister Baptista “There was no one there, but something told me to step outside.” Her petite figure gracefully rose and left the room. “Follow me. I’ll show you.”
Sister Angela walked with the younger nun out the front door.
Sister Baptista pointed to a spot beside of the steps. “She was there,” she said. “Just a tiny baby crouching against the steps, trying to get out of the rain. She was sopping wet, poor dear.”
“When you say tiny baby you didn’t mean she couldn’t walk on her own.”
“She could walk. She could even run, but we didn’t know that at first. I carried her into the convent and dried her off.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“No, but we already told you she didn’t give us her name. That’s when we began to call her Pia. She must have liked the name because she responded to it right away.”
“I presume she also ate solids.”
Sister Tiberia giggled from a folding chair inside the door. “None of us knew she could eat solids. We must have fed her milk for a week before we realized she was getting very hungry.”
“You fed her milk from a bottle?”
“Yes,” she said. Sister Tiberia was loftier than the others and looked as if the she was about to tip her perch. “The others sent me to the store down the road. I bought a couple of bottles. They had the nipples turned upside down, and it took me a while to figure out how they worked. I also bought a large carton of milk. When I went to pay for the items, the sales clerk looked confused. I told him we had a kitten without mother at the convent.”
Sister Oriana continued. “Pia went through several liters of milk right away. When she didn’t stop, we tried to give her cereal. She liked that so we tried other foods too. She thrived with us. It almost broke my heart when the police threatened to take her away if we didn’t find her a place to live. I know Sister Giana of the Mission Sisters. She and I were childhood friends. She told me about the orphanage.”
“And how did you hear about Pia’s disappearance less than a week ago.”
“The police told us,” said the prioress. “They wanted to make sure we kept an eye out for her, and we did. But when you think about it, she’d only be five or six now. Would a six year old be able to navigate her way to this convent? Even with assistance from the Blessed Virgin, she wouldn’t know how to make it back here. We’re devastated. Even though a few years have passed, it feels like it was just yesterday that she left us. I suppose that now she doesn’t even remember us.”
“Did she have a certain cell while she was here? Does it still have a few things that belonged to her?” asked Sister Angela.
“She came with almost nothing. She didn’t even have a coat to protect her from the rain. She took everything we gave her while she lived here with us.”
“You’ve heard nothing else about someone in the area having lost a child?”
“No,” said Sister Tiberia. “Perhaps someone who was passing by noticed us and left her on our doorstep.”
Sister Angela thought about the little-used regional carriageway in front of the old building. Not likely, she said to herself. “Perhaps I should talk to Father Montez. Someone may have revealed problems and mentioned them in his confessional.”
“I’ve asked him that,” said Mother Patrizia. “He tells me he wouldn’t reveal the details of anyone’s confession to us. But he might tell you if someone had talked about anything that had to do with the case.”
“Well, that’s all I have to ask you,” said Sister Angela. “I’ll call you if I learn anything new. My train leaves at seven, and I want to talk to the police on the way to the terminal. I’d better start back now.”
“Can we give you any nourishment before you go, Sister?” asked Sister Baptiste.
“No, I’ll be fine,” she said as she stopped once more on the steps to look at the spot where Pia had crouched in the rain. Then she closed the door and started down the steps to the dusty road.
She had walked about twenty minutes in the blazing sun when it suddenly hit her. Who rang the bell? She turned to look back at the convent, but it was well out of sight. Would a two year old be able to reach the doorbell? Of course not. Someone was with her. Someone has to know the story of how Pia got to the convent.
Chapter Twelve
The rhythm of the tracks nearly lulled the nun to sleep. Was it the fact that she was returning with little new information? Maybe her blood sugar was low. She’d failed to take the time for decent meal. She rummaged through her tote and pulled out the apple she bought from the cart in Castel Valori. Then she settled back to think about what had happened.
On her way back into town, she’d stopped at a market and purchased an orange soda and a yogurt. Why hadn’t she accepted the nuns’ offer of a meal? She sat at a table on the large piazza in the shade of an umbrella, whipping in a wind that began to blow up.
She stared at the church at the far corner of the piazza, its grand Romanesque style sported an imposing quadrangular bell tower. The prioress had explained that the church was built for an order of Augustinian hermits in the thirteenth century and had been visited by Martin Luther in the sixteenth. She suggested that Sister Angela examine the large collection of art inside.
I’d love to, she mused. But unfortunately I’m still on duty.
Feeling refreshed, Sister Angela stood and crossed the piazza, entering the church at the side door and sitting in the pew just inside. She saw the priest kneeling at the altar in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary but dared not interrupt him. After a few minutes, he crossed himself, stood, and spun around to approach the visitor.
“H
ow can I help you, Sister?” he asked. “Do I know you?”
“No. I’m looking for Father Montez.”
“I’m Father Montez. Do you have a question?”
“I’m Sister Angela from Montriano. I’m investigating the disappearance of Pia, the toddler that lived at the convent here in Castel Valori. Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“I’ve spoken with the police…”
“I plan to talk with the police before I leave.”
The priest slid into the pew beside her. “I’m afraid I know very little, Sister.”
“Tell me how you found out she was with the nuns at the convent.”
“One Saturday, a parishioner came to the confessional and said she’d seen one of the nuns with a child. I can’t tell you who it was because…”
“I understand—your vows.”
“Not only that, but I didn’t recognize the voice. She must not have come to church often because I would’ve recognized her voice.”
“Do you think she was from out of town?”
“Sister, I know you’re aware of the problems concerning young people coming to church.”
“She was young?”
“I honestly don’t know. I’m just saying that while ninety-five percent of the townspeople are baptized Catholics, a much smaller percentage actually participate in the Mass or sacraments beyond baptism or extreme unction. I can only tell you she told me she’d seen a nun with a small child. My first inclination was to ignore her observation. We have lots of nuns in and around Castel Valori, and those nuns have nieces and nephews who come to visit them. But prayer kept bringing her insignificant gossip back into my mind. I decided to pay a visit to the convent—just in case.”
“Did you tell them you were coming?”
“Of course, I gave them a few days to make sure they were ready for a visitor. I don’t think they receive many. Then, at the designated time, I rang their bell. They served me coffee, and we talked about the church news. I didn’t go inside farther than their parlor, and all was quiet. I asked to use the facilities, and one of the nuns showed me the way. It was there that I noticed it.”
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