The Mother's Day Murder (3 page)

“And what have you found out?”

“I don’t think I want to talk about it.”

“Why are you here, Tina?”

“I heard about you. I even saw you once or twice when you came to visit with your little boy. Once I knew your name, it was easy to find your address. It’s not hidden; it’s in a file. People talked about you, Sister Angela, Sister Dolores in the Villa, some of the others. I knew you had a close relationship with Sister Joseph and that you had left the convent a few years ago. And everyone seemed to like you. I didn’t know where to go so I thought I’d come here.”

“Why now?” I asked.

“Because—because I think she realized who I am. And there’s something about the way she’s been acting lately—I know she doesn’t want the truth to come out and I started to be afraid.”

“What are you afraid of? That she’ll ask you to leave St. Stephen’s?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid of much worse. I’m afraid—I can’t say it.”

“Tina, what you’re telling me is very improbable. Sister Joseph has been at St. Stephen’s more than twenty years.”

“She left for a year. I think she took a secular job. I don’t know if that’s where her family lived, but she went out to Ohio and stayed there for about a year. I don’t know whether she was pregnant when she went or whether she got pregnant while she was there. I just know she had a baby and it was me.”

I found the conversation so unsettling that I wanted to call it quits and ask her to stop talking. More than that, I wanted her to leave my house and never return and to take with her all the things she had told me so that I would never have to think about them. But I knew none of this was possible. I assumed this girl was unbalanced in some way but I had to press on, to prove to her and to myself that what she was saying was totally without truth.

“Tina, I have known Sister Joseph much longer than I know you. I love her as a friend, I admire her as a human being and as a nun. It seems to me that the only way this can be resolved is for me—or us—to talk to her about your allegations.”

“If you could help me—that would really be great. But I need a little time. I’ve done some stupid things.”

“How would you like me to help you?”

“Please don’t talk to her until I say it’s OK,” she pleaded.

“That’s fine.”

“Maybe we could—we could go together.”

I hated the idea of being part of something that I knew was wrong and false, but at the same time, I wanted to put this story of hers to rest. Before she talked to anyone else, I wanted Joseph to have the chance to have her say. “I can do that,” I said.

“Just not right now. I’m really a wreck about this. I need some time to think and decide what to do. I feel safe here. If I could stay a day or two, maybe I could decide what to do next.”

“You can stay,” I said, knowing Jack would not be happy about this, “but if you can’t come to a decision, we’ll have to get counseling for you.”

“Thank you, Chris.”

“Would you like to call your parents?”

“No. I don’t need to.”

“Won’t they be worried if someone from St. Stephen’s calls and says you’ve left?”

“No. I’ve taken care of that.”

I couldn’t imagine how she could have “taken care of” telling her parents unless she lied to them, but I didn’t want to press her, partly because I didn’t want her to multiply the lies. “We have a guest room upstairs you can stay in. I suggest you continue your morning and evening prayers. And I think you should spend as much time as possible trying to resolve your problems. I’m here if you want to talk to me.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.”

“Do you want to return to St. Stephen’s as a novice?” I asked. It would be a difficult situation at best, but I wondered if she had thought about it.

“I’m not sure. What are you going to do?”

I wasn’t quite sure what her question meant but it put me on the spot. “I’m going to try to find out the truth.”

“But you won’t talk to Sister Joseph till I’m ready.”

“I promise.”

“I’d like to go to my room now.” She got up and went to the front door where she had left her duffle bag, which was so stuffed that the seams were stretched. She picked it up and followed me up the stairs to the room I had used when I visited Aunt Meg for so many years and which Jack and I now used as a study. But Jack’s bar exams were behind him and I wasn’t doing any work at the moment for my friend Arnold Gold, the attorney, so Tina could have her privacy.

“This is very nice,” she said politely. “Is it all right with you if I just go to bed now? I’ve been up since five and I’m very tired.”

Five was the hour the nuns at St. Stephen’s normally awoke. “Whatever you’d like. There’s an alarm clock next to the lamp. You’re welcome to get up whenever you want.”

“Thank you.”

“Good night, Tina.”

“Good night. Thank you for letting me stay.”

3

I stopped in to look at Eddie, who was sleeping peacefully. Then I went downstairs to where Jack was sitting in the family room surrounded by newspapers, a magazine, and some papers that looked like they came from work. He looked up and came as close as I had ever seen him to scowling.

“There’s something in her eyes, Chris. This gal’s not all there.”

“I told her she could stay a couple of days. She’s gone to bed. I feel more upset than I’ve felt in years.”

“I’m not surprised. You want to talk about it?”

“I have to. My head is going around in circles.”

He pushed the papers off to the side. “How ’bout we have some coffee and put our heads together?”

I agreed. I went to the kitchen and started making the coffee. I didn’t want to believe Tina’s fantastic story but it nagged at me. I had known Sister Joseph since long before she became the Superior of St. Stephen’s. She had been my spiritual director when I came to the convent at the age of fifteen and with time she had become my best friend. She never spoke much about her past or about her family and I had never asked. What business was it of mine where she came from or who her parents
were? I knew all that was necessary and relevant and I had learned it by knowing her. It was possible she had come from Ohio and it was equally possible that she came from Missouri. It was possible her parents were living, but I thought it likely that they had died when I was young and new at the convent and the nuns protected me from unpleasant news. The truth is, I remembered no time that Joseph had left for any kind of family matter. Nor did I recall that she was ever mysteriously gone for any length of time.

“Smells good,” Jack called from the family room and I came back from my thoughts to the kitchen I was standing in.

I took out the cups and saucers and found some cookies I had tucked away for him and put them on a plate. He came in and filled the cups and carried them back to the family room.

“You didn’t tell me much before,” he said when we were sitting. “But I can tell you this little gal is not your normal teenager. She’s a nervous wreck. What did she tell you?”

I went over it quickly. There wasn’t much, as I thought about it, no proof for her accusation, just the promise that she had such proof, just enough to upset me.

“Chris, honey, I can see what this has done to you. You’re too sensible to listen to this girl and take anything she says seriously. I don’t know if she’s out to hurt you or to hurt Sister Joseph, but she’s not credible. Believe me. I’ve heard them all.”

Which was true. Until he had graduated from law school last year, he had worked most of his career in a precinct, handling crimes that included homicides. I couldn’t guess how many hours of his life had been spent
interviewing suspects and witnesses, but the number would be huge. Also, he had met Sister Joseph and, like me, he found her to be an admirable human being.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked, a question I didn’t ask very often.

“You want the truth? I think you should just forget everything this kid has told you, point her in the direction of the convent, and wash your hands of this. Chris, you know Sister Joseph. What this girl says happened didn’t happen.”

I knew he was right and I felt better hearing him say it out loud. “Why would she make up a story like this?”

“Because of her own troubles. She needs something, she wants something. She thinks she can get it by spreading this garbage.”

“I told her she should get counseling,” I said.

“You’re right. But she can’t get it here. She has to go back to St. Stephen’s or back to wherever her home is and work out what’s bothering her. And you’re not the one who can help her.”

He was giving me good advice, advice that I had asked him for. It remained to be seen whether I would take it, but for the moment I felt better. He went back to the kitchen and got the rest of the coffee.

“You still thinking about it?” he said as he poured.

“I’ll be thinking about it for a long time. Even if nothing Tina says is true, it bothers me that she thinks it’s true and that she can tell this terrible story to anyone at any time.”

“I see what you mean.”

“I want to put it to rest. I want to stop her. I don’t want these lies to go any further.”

“I don’t see how you can stop her. You can’t lock her
up. Even if she goes back to wherever she came from, she can still talk.”

“I know.”

“Sleep on it, Chris. There’s a great old movie on TV tonight. I haven’t seen it in years. You up for it?”

“As long as it’s diverting.”

“Then let’s watch.”

I have no idea what the name of the movie was or who was in it. I sat with my eyes turned toward the screen but I probably didn’t see any part of it. I kept thrashing Tina’s insinuations over in my mind, trying to think of a way that I could prove her wrong without talking to Joseph and embarrassing them both. The problem was, the only people I knew who knew Joseph were nuns at the convent, and I couldn’t ask any of them.

I literally went through every nun in my head while I sat there, considering whether I could pose an indiscreet question, or at least a question about an indiscreet happening. I knew I couldn’t ask Angela, one of the nuns I was friendliest with and who runs the switchboard, knows where everyone is, how to reach nuns who are away, and whom to inform if some disaster occurs. Angela is younger than I by several years so there was no chance she would have any firsthand knowledge of something that might have happened twenty years ago. I made a short list of nuns I might ask but I wasn’t sure how I would handle it.

There had to be some family name in the file for Joseph, but there was no way I was going up to the convent to slink around and peer into documents that were none of my business. If I were investigating someone else, if the source of the information was a secular company,
I might do something like that. In fact, I’ve probably done it already. But this was different. This was St. Stephen’s. This was Joseph, General Superior of the convent.

“Still does it to me,” Jack said, and I jumped. On the screen in black and white, names were rolling by. Two hours had somehow elapsed since I promised to watch the movie.

“Does what?” I asked, giving him a squeeze.

“Tugs at the old heartstrings.”

I rubbed my cheek against his, feeling the stubble at the end of a long day. “Come on up and I’ll tug at them.”

“No news?”

“I don’t care about the news. I want you.”

“That’s an invitation I can’t turn down.”

We went upstairs, both of us looking in on Eddie who was sound asleep. Then I quietly turned the knob of the door to the room where Tina was staying. It was very dark inside but she was in bed, her head turned away from me. I listened to her breathing for a moment, then backed out.

I had better things to do.

I had a rocky night. I kept waking up and thinking of how I was going to prove Tina wrong, trying to think of whom I could ask, knowing there wasn’t anyone at the convent I could approach. Each time I awoke, I listened for sounds, for someone walking around, but it was very quiet. Suddenly, something came to me in a dream. I almost spoke out loud, I was so happy to have thought of it.

I had gone to live at St. Stephen’s when I was fifteen, becoming a novice a few years later when I was old
enough. At that time there was a nun there named Sister Jane Anthony, a woman at least ten years older than I and very worldly from my point of view. She had a good secular education, she had friends around the country who used to call her in the evening. I remember thinking that I had almost no one who called me except Aunt Meg and I admitted to being somewhat envious of Sister Jane Anthony. She smoked, too, usually out of doors while sitting in an ungainly position at the foot of a tree or on a rock when the weather was warm or while walking one of the many beautiful paths through the winter snow. If you walked behind her, you might see little holes in the snow where her ashes had dropped.

Her departure from St. Stephen’s was so abrupt that it took me a couple of days to realize she was gone. No one said anything, at least not to me, which made me think there was something mysterious and perhaps not completely acceptable about her leaving. I asked one or two of the nuns and got comments that led me to believe we were all better off with Sister Jane Anthony gone.

I knew her last name because she had once told me. It was Cirillo and she had the coloring to go with an Italian name—dark eyes and a wisp of dark hair that sometimes showed outside her veil. I knew, too, that she had gone to New York, because mail that arrived for her had to be readdressed and that was one of my daily charges, along with distributing mail to the nuns’ cubbies, for a period of time after she left. Tomorrow morning I would look her up in the directories Jack kept on hand.

My mornings are usually quite busy. I have a toddler to take care of and a husband to feed. I didn’t think about Tina till Jack had left and Eddie had eaten his cereal,
drunk his juice and milk, and clamored to get out of his feeding table. Then I looked at my watch, decided it was time for everyone else in the household to get up, and went upstairs. I knocked on Tina’s door and didn’t get a response. I called, “Tina? Are you up yet?” and knocked again.