Sister Eve and the Blue Nun (5 page)

He nodded but didn't move from his position beside the victim.

“What did Anthony tell you?” the vice superior of the abbey asked.

“Just that he had come to her room and found her this way.” Eve turned once again to the body. “She's not been dead long,” she said, still finding it difficult to believe that Anthony's little sister was dead.

Father Oliver didn't respond, but it was easy to see the question he had on his mind.
How long has she been dead?
That's what Eve knew he wanted to ask.

“She's still warm,” Eve explained. “Like the tea, actually.” And she turned her attention once again to the spill around her, knowing
she was going to be lectured by the police for what she had done. She thought again about the strange smell she had sensed before the monk entered the room but decided not to share her findings.

“Do you have any idea what might have happened?” he asked. “Did she choke on something perhaps? Was it a heart attack?” He was staring at the body.

“I don't know,” she responded, recalling Anthony's rambling about it being a murder, about having given her something that would have led to a homicide.

“What else did Anthony tell you?” he wanted to know.

And Eve suddenly remembered the monk had said that Father Oliver knew what he had found and given to Kelly, pages of some kind, he had said, and that his superior knew about what had transpired between the two siblings.

“He told me why they argued at dinner,” she replied, hoping Father Oliver would share what he knew.

Father Oliver only nodded and turned away, the distress written on his face.

She continued, hoping to hear something from him that might lend an explanation to what had happened. “He said he told you what he had found and that he planned to tell his sister what you had instructed them to do. He believes someone murdered her before he could get to her and take back whatever it was he had given her.”

“He told you that he thought she was murdered?” Father Oliver asked, without offering up any information about what he knew. He stood and faced Eve.

She nodded. “He thinks someone she told about this discovery came to her room tonight and killed her.”

Father Oliver glanced over Eve's shoulder to the desk. She watched as his eyes searched across Kelly's possessions.

“Did you find anything here?” he asked, turning his attention back to the nun.

She shrugged. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she answered. “But then I'm not sure I know what it is that I should be looking for.”

There was a pause.

“Anthony told you what he found, what Kelly had,” Eve remarked, watching him closely, hoping for a revelation.

“I have not seen these pages that he said he discovered. I only learned about them tonight after dinner. I've been to the services and then to my room. I don't know where they were kept. So I wouldn't know what to look for either, what she kept them in or where.”

Eve glanced over at the desk, feeling the urge to dig through the pile of books, open drawers, and look under the mattress. She considered asking the abbot to assist her, but she knew she would compromise the scene even more if she started moving things around. And she still didn't know what she would be searching for.

“Is this discovery important enough to cause someone to commit murder?”

Father Oliver didn't answer at first. He dropped his shoulders and lowered his gaze. “Like I said, I never saw what he claimed to have found.”

“Yes, but you have an opinion. You know what this discovery was. Is it really that significant?”

He hesitated and then looked back at Eve. “I can't say for sure, but yes, if Anthony is right, if what he says is true and what he
unearthed is really what he and Kelly thought it was, and I suppose if the wrong people were to find out about it . . .” He paused again, appeared to consider the question once more, and then rubbed his forehead.

He shook his head. “I don't really know,” he confessed. “But it might not be murder, though, right?” he asked. “Surely something else could have happened.”

Eve didn't respond.

He continued, “We don't really know anything that occurred in this room.” It was clear he was trying to convince himself of something.

Eve shrugged. “Kelly was in excellent physical shape as far as I could tell. She was young, a marathon runner from what Anthony told me, gave up meat when she turned twenty. She hadn't mentioned any symptoms of a heart problem or displayed any behaviors that could be linked to a disease or a sudden death.”

“But her death, it could be of natural causes?” he asked, sounding almost desperate, Eve thought.

“I guess so,” she replied. “The cause of death will be determined in an autopsy, which will have to be conducted because this is such an unlikely death.”

“Maybe she had a drug overdose or an allergic reaction to something.”

Eve studied the man. Something was bugging her about his questions, about how he'd been acting since arriving at the guest room.

“There's no blood, so she wasn't shot or stabbed, right?” He was sliding his hands through his thin white hair.

Eve shook her head. “No blood.”

“So maybe it's not murder, maybe it's something natural that happened. Maybe it was her time and God's angels came to bring her to her eternal rest.”

Eve didn't respond but only watched the abbot as he searched for some action other than homicide that had caused the young professor's death.

“What is it?” he asked, feeling the nun's stare.

“You didn't knock,” she said.

He stood watching as Eve tried putting things together.

“When you arrived here, you opened the door without knocking, and you didn't seem at all surprised that Kelly is dead.”

“If it was murder,” he said softly, not responding to the statements Eve had made, “then how do you think she was killed?”

Eve watched him as he waited for her reply. She looked again at the victim and then at the pot of tea that was still situated on the tray on the dead woman's desk, then back to the abbot, standing by the door.

“Poison,” she finally replied, hoping to get answers of her own. “I think Kelly was poisoned.”

Father Oliver closed his eyes once more and bowed again to pray.

SIX

“Wait,” Eve said, interrupting the abbot's prayer. “Tell me, why are you here?” she asked. “It's Grand Silence. It's after midnight and you're visiting a guest, a female guest at that. You walked in without knocking. I don't understand, Father; what made you come to this room?”

Father Oliver walked over and sat on the bed, dropping his head into his hands. He looked tired, weary, and Eve assumed that the new orders handed down and the consequential fallout covered by the local media, the departure of the nuns from the abbey, all friends of his, had all finally taken a toll on the vice superior. Now he would have to deal with this suspicious murder happening on the premises.

“Anthony came to my room to tell me,” he reported. “Just now, I assume just after speaking to you in the chapel, he came to my room, woke me, and told me what had happened.”

“Just now?” she asked, realizing that Anthony had left the
chapel where she had instructed him to stay, and hoping he hadn't disappeared again. “Where is he?”

“He's still there,” Father Oliver responded. “He promised he would stay in my room until I got back, and we would return together when the police arrived.”

“But you haven't called them yet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I just wanted to see for myself, see that she was really dead.” He paused. “Like you, I guess.”

She looked away, understanding the vice superior's meaning. She realized that she should have contacted him first before coming to the guest room.

“Did you call the police?” he asked, pointing out the fact that she had also acted hastily and perhaps inappropriately.

“No, not yet. I wanted to make sure there wasn't something I could do. I wanted to see if what he was saying was true before I called it in.”

They watched each other.

“And we came because we both know that once the police show up, we will not be allowed in this room and be able to say proper prayers for the young woman's soul.” It sounded like the abbot was seeking justification for their actions.

“And maybe, since we're here, we could search for those pages?” Eve spoke sooner than she wished she had; she wanted to take back the words, but it was too late.

The vice superior shook his head but made no verbal response. He grasped the cross hanging around his neck and asked another question: “How do you know there was poison?”

“What?” Eve responded, surprised by the change of direction in their conversation.

He waited for her answer.

Eve looked at the spilled contents from the cup that had broken. “The tea,” she answered. “It smells like cyanide.”

The abbot appeared confused.

“I read about it in a case my father was working on. Cyanide often has a certain smell; it's a little like almonds.”

“And that's what you smelled in the tea?”

She nodded. “I think it's the only thing that makes sense.”

“And they will find this out during an autopsy?” he asked without looking at the nun.

“Yes,” she replied.

There was a pause in the conversation, and Eve didn't know what the monk was thinking. She didn't know if he had come to the room for the same reason she had, to check out Anthony's story, to see if there was anything that could be done for the young woman, or if he had believed the story and was here for the reason he said, to pray for Kelly's soul before the police were called and removed the body. Eve wanted to believe the vice superior's explanation but just couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else going on, some reason he was asking questions about poisoning and why he seemed almost reluctant to contact the authorities. Then the obvious crossed her mind.

“She was the opening speaker for the conference,” he spoke calmly.

Eve stayed where she was, still standing at the desk, shards of
the teacup scattered around her feet, unsure of his direction. “Yes, and she apparently had some interesting news about Sister Maria she planned to share,” Eve responded, recalling how the professor had acted when Eve had run into her earlier in the day.

“It was more than interesting,” Father Oliver replied. “It was groundbreaking.”

Eve waited for more.

Father Oliver dropped his elbows onto his knees and his chin into his hand. “The writings . . .” He paused.

“Yes, what kind of writings?” Eve asked. She leaned closer to him.

“They were writings that were believed to be something from Sister Maria.”

“Something found here?” she asked.

“Something transcribed by the people here in New Mexico,” he added. “Something she wrote to them.”

“The Jumano people?” she asked.

He nodded and then looked over at the nun.

“During one of the periods of her bilocation?” She couldn't believe her ears. A new piece of evidence that the Blue Nun had really been in New Mexico.

“Anthony found them at the pueblo church in Isleta. He was helping with their renovations and he found them.” Father Oliver looked away. “I don't know any more about them than that.”

Eve turned to the items on the desk, wondering if the pages were anywhere in the stack of books or in the thin white binder, wondering if Brother Anthony had come to Kelly's room to retrieve the pages.

“He found them and hid them.” The vice superior shook his head. “It was wrong of him and he knows it. When he confessed the discovery . . .” He stopped. “When he confessed the theft had occurred,” he continued, emphasizing the word
theft
, “he said that he had only stolen them to show to Kelly, that he knew what they would mean to his sister, and he was going to let her take a look at them and then report the finding, first to me, and do whatever I instructed him to do with the papers.”

It was finally all making sense to Eve, the argument in the dining room, Anthony's rambling confession in the chapel. Anthony knew the trouble he was in even though his intentions had been pure, a brother simply wanting to give his sister a great thrill.
I would likely have done the same thing
, Eve realized as she thought about her sister, Dorisanne, how loyal the two were to each other, even if they were so different, how Eve had raced to Las Vegas to find her, how she'd do just about anything for her sister, how she, too, would love to find something to bring her happiness.

“And if he had come to me first, I would have given the same instruction I gave to him tonight, to take them back to the pueblo church where he stole them.”

“Not to the archbishop?” she asked, surprised by the abbot's remark.