True Believers(123)
“I think adolescent girls like to play dress-up,” Scholastica had said.
“We’ll find somebody to come up. Sister Joanne Fuselli is serving in a parish in Wilmington, maybe she can get away. And we’ll inform the relatives, of course. Harriet had quite a few relatives. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Sisters get murdered sometimes, on the street, in muggings, but something like this … . Do you have a place to put the body if, you know, if it takes us some time to get this organized?”
“The body is at the medical examiner’s. There has to be an autopsy. It won’t even be released for a couple of days.”
“Oh. That’s fine, then. I can manage something in a couple of days. Thank you so much for calling. We managed to get the news to her brother before it hit the newscasts. That was worth everything.”
“Yes,” Sister Scholastica had said. Then she had put the phone down and stared out her window, and fifteen minutes later she was still staring out her window. Reality had lost its edges, once again.
She got out from behind her desk and went into the hall. The office women were all at work, which meant that it was either before or after the noon rosary. She made it a point to attend the rosary every day, if only to set a good example for the other Sisters. The laywomen were always so grateful when their rosary was joined by the Sisters. Sister Scholastica went down the hall and stopped in Sister Thomasetta’s doorway.
“So,” she said. “Where are we? Or aren’t you getting much done today, either?”
“I’d be getting more done if the police didn’t call every twenty minutes to ask silly questions. Where did Sister Harriet sleep. What did Sister Harriet have for breakfast. As if I were supposed to know. You remember what Harriet was like. She wouldn’t eat with us. She wouldn’t stay with us. Sometimes I think she would have been happier if we’d disappeared from the face of the earth.”
“It was a difference in political agendas,” Scholastica said, coming inside. “Except I never think of myself as having a political agenda. Have the police really been calling every twenty minutes?”
“That Detective Mansfield, yes. I’ve been imagining him sitting in his office somewhere, obsessing about Sister Harriet and her murder. But the thing is, there are better people to ask about the things he wants to know than me. Why should he ask me, just because I’m the one who happens to be answering the phone this morning?”
“You can send him down to me, if you’d like to.”
“What I’d like is for Sister Peter Rose to get the day off so that she can talk to him. I’m sorry, Sister. I don’t mean to sound so irritated. I suppose I’ve had a bad day, with one thing and another, all day.”
“We all have.” Scholastica paced around the room. Sister Thomasetta was a woman of the old school in more ways than one. She had a framed picture of Our Lady of Fatima on her desk, and another of her niece and nephew, dressed to the death for Christmas. “So,” Scholastica said. “What else has been happening around here? Did Mary get the things she needed for the soup kitchen?”
“They sent somebody else. Mary went to take that young man from across the street around to do some things. You know the one. He’s always sort of swishing around. He got a couple of ribs broken in the riot.”
“Chickie George.”
“That’s it. Anyway, then she had to study. I have no idea how that girl does it. She’s been Dean’s List at St. Joe’s for the past three years, did you know that? Peter Rose told me. And the soup kitchen and the Sodality and praying the Office every day. And that boyfriend of hers treats her like cornflakes. Someday she’s going to wise up and walk out on him, and then he’ll be sorry.”
“I guess. Is that it? Have we really managed to go through a day where nothing happened?”
“Pretty much,” Thomasetta said. “Oh, I managed to go through those records you sent me. Only once, mind you, I’ve been doing payroll. But I looked through them. You’re right. They’re a mess.”
“I thought so. Father Healy is a nice man, but he’s hopeless when it comes to things like this. And you know if the archdiocese catches the discrepancy, we’ll all be in trouble whether it was our responsibility or not. The Cardinal Archbishop isn’t the world’s easiest person. Do you think you can fix it?”
“Give me a day or two, yes. It’s just sloppiness. It isn’t even unusual sloppiness. Maybe you ought to go over to the house and have something to eat.”
“Maybe I should,” Scholastica said. “Don’t you wonder how they did it? Whoever killed Sister Harriet. How they got her to eat the arsenic. You’d think she would have known that the person hated her.”