Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy (22 page)

Sister Clarice has got the same getup on, only she looks like a little purple chick compared to Bernice. She says, “Sammy, can you help me with my habit?” So I put her penguin suit on right over all those feathers, and then help the other two do the same.

When they’re all set, I say, “I can’t wait to see your show. I’ve never seen nuns sing and dance in tights before!”

Bernice laughs. “It’s the shock factor—brings ’em in in droves. Like God didn’t give us the wares to motate, you know?” She claps her hands and says, “Oh! I’d burn for eternity if I’d forgotten. The locket!”

Clarice says, “Better go get it now. I don’t think Father would appreciate us waking him for our departure at dawn.”

Bernice says, “I’ll be right back,” and as she’s going out the door she turns to me and asks, “Is Father Mayhew still greeting people at the front door?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to go check?”

“Why don’t you come with me? If he’s not there, I don’t relish traipsing through the church to find him.”

But Father Mayhew turned out to be right around the corner, checking out the crowd in his church. Bernice comes up behind him and says, “Excuse me, Father?”

Father Mayhew jumps, then turns and says, “Oh! Oh, Sister Bernice …”

“I didn’t mean to startle you, Father. Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes of course. I was just looking for Brother Phillip. Has anyone seen him?”

Sister Bernice laughs, “Oh, he’s around!”

I say, “He’s off looking for purple thread.”

Father Mayhew says, “Ah,” then turns to Bernice and asks, “Is there something you needed?”

She smiles. “I thought now might be a good time to get my locket out of your safe. I’m sure you’ll be very busy seeing people off after the performance, and we have an early departure planned for tomorrow.”

“Certainly,” he says, and then looks back out at the crowd and shakes his head. “I wish I could pack them in like this on Sundays!”

Bernice laughs, and we both follow him down to his office. And the minute we walk through the door, Gregory comes wiggling out from under the desk and nudges me with his carrot.

I don’t want his stupid carrot, so I scratch him behind the ears and say, “No, boy,” but does that stop him? Not a chance. He nuzzles right into my leg and then nudges me until I finally break down and take it from him. He sits in front of me, panting and wagging his stubby little tail, and just as I toss it under the desk to get him away from me, I hear a choking sound come out of Father Mayhew.

He’s standing by the safe with the door swung open, and when he looks over at us, his jaw’s dropped down to his collar and he’s just
staring
at us. I ask, “What’s wrong?”

He swallows and whispers, “It’s gone.”

Bernice cries, “The locket? Someone stole the locket?”

Father Mayhew shakes his head and holds the locket out to her.

“Then what?” I ask. “What’s gone?”

He chokes out, “The money.”

Bernice freezes. “
Our
money?”

Father Mayhew looks in the safe, then back at us and nods.

Now, Bernice is heating up. Big time. And let me tell you—it’s a scary sight. She’s getting red around the habit and it looks like she’s about to whistle steam right through her teeth. “Don’t tell me that!” She snatches away the locket, plows her way over to the safe, and digs through some envelopes stashed inside.

When she’s sure there’s really no money, she whips around, points a finger at Father Mayhew, and says, “You! You’re the only one with the combination to this safe! You said so yourself! I knew from the minute I laid eyes on you that there was sin in your heart!” She steps right up to him and for a minute there I thought she was going to strangle him. Instead, she just snarls, “You won’t get away with this!”

While she’s busy punching 911 on the telephone, Father Mayhew sits down in a chair and looks at me like he’s just seen Satan. He holds his head in his hands and whispers, “How can this
be
?”

I sit next to him and I’m thinking, Yeah, how can this be? Then here comes Gregory, and
plop
, into my lap goes his stupid carrot. I put it on the floor, but he puts it right back in my lap, so I just leave it there while I listen to Bernice bark orders over the phone.

She slams the receiver down and says, “We’ve got to go on in three minutes, and I intend to do so! We’ve got a reputation to uphold.” She points a finger at Father Mayhew. “I’ll see
you
at the police station when the show is over.”

Father Mayhew doesn’t say a word. He just sits there looking out into space. And when the music starts he mumbles, “Will you excuse me, lass?” and walks out the door.

So there I am, all alone in a priest’s office with a wall safe wide open and a clammy carrot in my lap, and I’m baffled. Would Father Mayhew really steal from his own church? Did he hide the cross and goblets to set the whole thing up? It didn’t seem likely, but then the last few days I’d seen sides of him I’d never suspected were there. And he
was
the only one with the combination to the safe. Wasn’t he?

So I’m trying to think, but it’s hard because Gregory keeps nudging me. I hand the carrot over to him and that’s when I notice something strange. The carrot’s not like any of the ones Gregory’s given me before. I take it out of his mouth, hold it hard between my hands, and sure enough.

It’s still cold.

I didn’t give Gregory the carrot back. I took it with me to Father Mayhew’s filing cabinet and slid open the top drawer. Sure enough, there were still carrots in it. Room-temperature carrots.

I try breaking one of Father Mayhew’s carrots, but all it does is bend. I do the same thing with the one Gregory had, and
snap
, I’ve got a piece in each hand.

Now, it occurs to me that maybe this carrot is poisoned. I don’t know how you’d go about poisoning a carrot, and I don’t
really
think it is, but I’m not going to give it back to Gregory. I give him the limp one and say, “Who gave you that other carrot, boy?” like he can answer me.

Then I sit behind Father Mayhew’s desk and think. And I can hear Hudson telling me, “Keep your mind open, Sammy, keep your mind open.” But at first nothing seems to want to come in. Then, very slowly, this idea comes tingling across my brain and down my spine. I look at Gregory and say, “But that doesn’t make any sense …”

Well, I’m not going to sit there and argue with myself. I go back to Father Mayhew’s filing cabinet, only this time I’m not looking for carrots. I’m looking for a file folder. When I see one labeled “Fundraiser,” I yank it out and flip it open on the desk.

On top are letters of recommendation from St. Paul the Apostle Parish Hall in Lowell, New Jersey, and Holy Angels’ Catholic Church in Haley, North Dakota, and then a really long one from St. William’s Catholic Church in Santa Lucia, New Mexico.

Then I come upon copies of the forms Father Mayhew filled out for Bernice. Three or four of them were just forms with Father Mayhew’s signature at the bottom, but then there was one with lots of blanks filled in. And on it was everything you ever wanted to know about Father Mayhew: Name, age, Social Security number, date of birth, driver’s license number … everything. I took the form over to the wall safe and closed the thing. Then I spun the dial and got to work.

And in less than sixty seconds I had it open again.

Happy birthday, Father Mayhew.

My heart’s bumping around pretty good, let me tell you. I mean, Okay, Bernice had him fill out the forms, but maybe they needed this information for something else. Besides, lots of people knew Father Mayhew’s birthday. Sister Mary Margaret, for one. Josephine, for another. Even Brother Phil probably knew when his birthday was.

And Sister Mary Margaret had acted really jumpy—more like guilty—about her bingo money. What if she wanted more than just a cracker box of cash to take to Las Vegas with her?

And why had Josephine practically had a heart attack when I’d bumped into her earlier? Had she just come from this office? It was obvious she liked working with Father Mayhew about as much as she liked dealing with his
dog, but more than that, maybe she was just sick to death of being a nun and wanted a way out.

And Phil. Ol’ Brother Phil. Maybe he was mad enough at Father Mayhew that he’d actually frame him for stealing from his own church. It would do more than get back at him—it would probably get
rid
of him.

And I felt bad because it seemed like I was pointing the finger at everybody. And in the back of my mind I can hear Holly saying, Haven’t you figured it out yet? You can’t trust anyone!

But I didn’t
want
to feel that way. I didn’t want to point the finger at them any more than I wanted them to point at me. But
somebody
had taken the money, and if it wasn’t one of them, who was it?

Part of my brain kept coming back to Bernice. Not because she was acting weird—she had seemed sincerely mad that the money was gone. And the locket
wasn’t
gone. I mean, why would she steal the money and leave the locket? Why wouldn’t she just take it all and leave?

Unless she was trying to throw the blame away from the Sisters of Mercy.

And I kept seeing Clarice putting a carrot in her blender. A carrot out of the NunMobile fridge. Father Mayhew’s carrots were warm, the soup kitchen didn’t serve carrots, and Sister Josephine and Mary Margaret’s house was clear across town.

And Bernice’s ring had been cold when she’d squeezed my hand. Like she’d just come in from outside.

Still, a cold carrot, a cold ring, and a fundraising form didn’t seem like the kind of evidence Officer Borsch
would appreciate, so I decided to go back to the changing room and dig around for something more.

The Sisters are in the church singing, “Give me peace … make me faithful now.… Give me peace … show me light! Give me peace … show me beauty now.… Bless me, Lord, take me to your side,” and the audience is echoing their lines, so I figure as long as they’re singing, I won’t get caught digging.

I check behind a rack of clothes,
in
the clothes, in suitcases and duffel bags, but I don’t find a thing. Not one nickel. And I’m just deciding that if they had stolen the money, the place to search would be the NunMobile, when I realize that the audience is clapping and making a racket, but the singing’s stopped.

Bernice and the other two come flying through the door, and I’m in a panic because I just know they’re going to ask why I’m there. But Bernice flashes me a smile and says, “Oh, good! You can help us with our next change!”

I smile right back and say, “Sure!”

While I’m stripping them down to their feathers and tights, I remember that Bernice had kept a NunMobile key in her habit. I watch them put on these wild purple headdresses, and as soon as they go sweeping down the hall like overgrown feather dusters, I pick up Bernie’s habit and start searching for pockets.

I practically turn the thing inside out, but I don’t find any pockets. Well, there’s a big one on the outside, but there’s nothing in that, and the day I’d gone inside the motor home with her she hadn’t gotten it out of the big pocket up front. She’d kind of pulled it out of thin air.

I flipped it around some more and then decided that the best way to find a pocket—if there
was
a pocket—was to put the habit on.

So I got into the thing and it was like swimming through a mountain of black cloth. I groped around inside both sleeves, but no key. Then I closed my eyes and tried to reconstruct Bernie’s movements when she’d been in front of the motor home. I put my right hand up the left sleeve, and just as I discover a small Velcro pocket up by the elbow, who comes busting through the door? Brother Phil.

He just stands there like an idiot staring at me, and I just stand there like an idiot, staring back. Finally, he says, “What are you
doing
?”

I give him a nervous little smile as I wiggle the key out of the pocket. “Nothing. I guess I … I guess I just wanted to see what it felt like.”

Phil says, “Oh,” then gives me an understanding nod and whispers, “I won’t tell anyone.” He hands over a spool of purple thread and says, “Here’s that thread they wanted.”