Murder Superior(67)
“You really shouldn’t talk about money, Nancy. You don’t understand the first thing about it. You’re not competent.”
“I don’t see why anybody from the police should have wanted to talk to me,” Nancy said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever met this Sister Joan Esther. And nothing happened at all to the nun I threw the vase on.”
“Except that she got wet. And green. And ripped.”
“I know she got ripped, but I didn’t rip her.”
“You must have ripped her,” Henry said. “You were the only one there. You were probably so far out of control, you didn’t know what you were doing.”
“I am never that far out of control.”
“You’re that far out of control all the time. It’s your life. It’s what you do instead of working for a living.”
I couldn’t have ripped the scapular because I couldn’t have got to the scapular to rip it, Nancy thought, and it was true. The top of the scapular was concealed under the sweep of the long collar that covered the shoulder and part of the arms and all of the chest until the breast line. She couldn’t have gotten to the top of the scapular without ripping the collar off first—it ought really to be called a cape—or doing something so outrageous everybody would have remarked on it, like grabbing at Mother Mary Bellarmine in such a way that it would have looked like she was about to commit rape.
Her cigarette was burned halfway down. That was enough. Nancy put it out and went to get another one. Across the room, Henry was standing in nothing but a pair of Christian Dior underwear, looking more like the tall, handsome boy she had married than he had in years.
I used to be happy in this place, she thought. Then she lit the cigarette she was holding in her hand and turned away.
It was all indicative, really it was.
He had asked her for an explanation of what she had done to Mother Mary Bellarmine and she had given him an answer calculated to make no sense and he had not pursued it.
He considered her such a flake that it wasn’t worth his time to unravel why she did what she did, when or to whom.
He was so wrapped up in himself, he didn’t have time to puzzle out anyone else’s behavior or to consider it even for a moment in any light but the one that reflected on himself. To Henry, what Nancy had done to Mother Mary Bellarmine was to commit an act that got Henry Hare thrown out of a reception given by the Sisters of Divine Grace.
It all went around and around and it never got any better, and Nancy was sure it wouldn’t get better if she told him she hadn’t had a reason at all for throwing those flowers on Mother Mary Bellarmine.
“What are you staring at?” Henry demanded now.
Nancy decided to let that one ride, too.
If she started getting the hots for Henry Hare again, she was only going to come to grief.
2
IT WAS ELEVEN FIFTEEN on Mother’s Day night, and Sarabess Coltrane was worried. She was worried about where she was—which was on a dark street in downtown Philadelphia, alone, standing under a street lamp that seemed to have been dimmed down in front of a door that seemed to be lit by a spotlight—and about what she was about to do. She was afraid that when she went upstairs in this building somebody—a security guard or a secretary or somebody—would make her go away again. She was worried that when she saw Norman Kevic, he wouldn’t remember who she was. Most of all, however, she was worried about the conversation she had had with Sister Catherine Grace that afternoon, and with Norman Kevic too, when they were all working on the roses.
Sister Joan Esther was lying dead, and it had all happened exactly the way Sarabess and Catherine Grace had imagined it would. Norman Kevic had to remember that. They had gone into it all in detail. So far he hadn’t told the police, but Sarabess was sure he was going to. He would have to. He was famous and he probably had a stake in being a good citizen. Once he told, Sarabess was sure she’d be in all sorts of trouble, and Catherine Grace, too, because that police lieutenant was a real loose cannon, as Sister Scholastica had been saying all afternoon. Actually, Sister Scholastica had been saying a few other—and stronger—things, but it embarrassed Sarabess to remember them. Nuns weren’t supposed to talk like that.
If I don’t go in now, I’ll never go in at all, she thought.
She forced herself away from the lamppost and into the puddle of shadow just beyond it—surely it was much too small a puddle to contain a murderer or a rapist or a mugger or anything else human—and went to the door. The door was made of glass and framed in brass with the WXVE lightning logo etched into the glass just above the brass handlebar. Sarabess pushed against the handlebar, holding her breath. The door could have been locked. She had been listening to Norman Kevic live all the way into the city from St. Elizabeth’s. She had been listening to him while she parked her car and while she walked down the street to this door. She had been listening to him through the earphone of her little Japanese radio right. Up until about ten minutes ago, when she had started to work up her courage to go inside. Norman Kevic had to be in this building, but that didn’t mean the building wasn’t locked.