Lovely, Dark, and Deep (4 page)

“But the police—”

“Considered it a case of hit and run. I know better.”

"I don't mean to pry, but I would need to know facts. This case is what, ten or eleven years old? Without knowing why you think this, I have no place to start. What makes you so sure that Joanna was murdered? Why can't it be hit and run?" I know I must have looked skeptical.

“She told me,” said Sister Moira MacShane, meeting my gaze with a clear-eyed one of her own.

I inhaled sharply and some saliva went down the wrong pipe. I spent the next minute coughing, holding up a finger. A real hotshot interviewer, I am.

“She told you?” I finally gasped. “What are you telling me? That you saw a ghost? That the ghost of Sister Joanna came to you and told you she was murdered?” I pointed at her with my pen.

“No,” she said. She paused, obviously trying to sort her thoughts. “Madeline, you know that I am a practical woman.”

I thought of Sister Moira in English class, marching back and forth in front of the board with great fervor, crossing out deadwood in a wordy sentence and asking exasperatedly, “What is the point, people, what is the point?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But I am also a woman of faith. I am a woman who believes in miracles.”

“I don't know if I am,” I said apologetically.

"Hear me out. I never dream, Madeline. Oh, they say we all do, but I don't remember, if that's the case. I go to bed at night, and I wake up in the morning, and I don't recall the intervening hours." She looked into the middle distance, as if trying to remember them now.

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. For some reason, my hand was shaking, so I put down my pen and casually folded my arms.

“Last Friday I woke up with a very strong sense that I'd just been talking to someone. And then I remembered a dream I'd had—a vivid dream, in which I was talking to Sister Joanna.”

I felt the hairs standing up on my arms. I was one of those kids who would leave the room when friends told ghost stories at slumber parties. I really didn't want to hear about an encounter between a dead nun and a living one. And yet a part of me was so fascinated that I continued to listen, simply because this was an experience I would never have again. “But it was a dream,” I said.

“Yes.” She looked thoughtful, remembering. “I tried to write it down immediately afterward, what happened, what I felt, to put it into words. I'm afraid it was something that defied translation, except that I was left with that one singular certainty: she was murdered. It's strange, isn't it?”

“Oh, yes,” I agreed readily.

"And I saw Joanna—saw her so clearly—and you know how, as the years go by, you lose that ability to summon up the features of a person long dead? You try to picture the once-loved face, and you get only a hazy recollection. But I saw her face, her habit, her expression, which spoke so much, Madeline, so much that I can't explain—"

“But that's easy to call up from one's subconscious,” I said.

“Yes. Remember the story of Christ walking on water, Madeline? The apostles thought he was a ghost. And Christ comforted them, saying, “Be not afraid. It is I.” Sister Moira looked almost near tears. “That's what she said to me. Don't be afraid, it's me. Those are really the only words I remember.”

Looking at her face, it was impossible not to be moved. I reached out my hand to her, and she took it in her own. Moira was a warm person, and I suddenly felt that I must be cold. Why couldn't I make a leap of faith, put myself into her position, imagine it might be true? Why couldn't I consider the idea of a spirit coming from beyond to right an earthly injustice? Whatever Moira's experience, I knew her to be of sound mind, and of loving spirit. I owed it to her, did I not, to try to summon up the imagination, if not the faith, to follow her lead?

My own belief was a day-to-day matter. There had been days when God was a certainty, not even debatable. There were other days when I felt I was a poor excuse for a believer. Right now I was floating somewhere in between.

I felt a bit uncomfortable, squeezing Moira's hand and saying nothing. Some people are so good at this, sharing moist-eyed, meaningful expressions and comforting one another that way. I felt I should say something important, supportive, to Moira. I had to be honest, though, because there was no point in misleading her.

I tucked my notebook, which had only one sentence written in it, into my purse. “I don't believe that you spoke with a ghost,” I said frankly. “But I do believe that you may have suspected she was murdered for some reason, and perhaps repressed your suspicion. Maybe now something has caused it to surface. Has anything out of the ordinary happened recently—maybe someone mentioned Joanna, or you heard something about the choir—something like that could have triggered your unconscious mind, don't you think?”

"I don't know. I don't really think so. You must understand, Madeline. I was very upset by Joanna's death. We were friends. But I don't think I was traumatized by it, if you see my distinction. And I don't think I'm the type to repress feelings. I share them all with God." Moira smiled in a way that was almost forgiving. “Madeline, it doesn't really matter if you and I disagree about my experience; I'm not asking you to believe in ghosts, or angels. What I'm wondering is, will you look into it for me? Will you investigate Joanna's death?”

I thought about this. Now I wanted to do it, of course. It was interesting, if nothing else, and I'd been thinking about Joanna all day, and the fact that I seemed blocked in my memories of her. But I had a full-time job, other stories to write and pursue. I didn't know if my boss would want to indulge me in one of my “crazy pursuits,” as my brothers called them. Bill signed my checks, so it was ultimately up to him. Not that I couldn't do some investigating in my off hours.

“What do the other nuns think?” I asked. “Are any of them suspicious? Were any of them suspicious at the time?”

Moira shrugged. “No one has spoken of it in so long—at the time, everyone was so upset, they were saying all sorts of things. And there'd been police asking questions, and then a reporter asking them, and it was all so confused. I know Sister Francis was very upset, of course, having seen it happen. Perhaps you'll want to talk—”

“Yes. Maybe I can talk with her on my way out?” I stood up, smoothing my pantsuit. “I have to get back to work. I'll look into things for a day or two; maybe in that time I'll get a better sense of how difficult a task it's going to be.”

Moira clapped her hands. “Thank you, dear. You are a sweet child, and I think God led me to you.”

“Okay,” I said, uncomfortable. “Well, I'll call you, Sister. We'll chat about this in a couple days. Do you think Sister Francis is still in the kitchen?”

She was. She was working on dessert, stirring what seemed to be cookie dough. Moving toward her, I made a stab at humor. “Chocolate chip with walnuts are my favorite, Sister, since you're baking.”

She looked up with a half smile. She was really muscling that spoon around, and I had a sudden vision of my mother, flour-specked but ever-lovely, making German breads and cakes in the warm kitchen of my childhood.

“I could never make that; I'd drop dead,” said Sister Francis ominously. “Severe nut allergy, ever since I was a child.”

“Oh, my,” I said. I had a vague recollection, now, of her revealing this fact in study hall long ago. We never got to study in her study hall, because she had told stories almost constantly. I remember few of them, just the ones that got the biggest laughs, like the one she told about her farmer neighbor who was killed by a flying cow in a tornado. It wasn't supposed to amuse us, but of course it did.

“That's a shame, missing out on walnuts,” I said.

She chuckled. “Still get chocolate. Who needs nuts?” She began shaping her dough into cookies and setting them on a pan. The lasagna was nowhere to be seen; she'd efficiently refrigerated it, I supposed, since the lovely smell of baking pasta was not wafting through the air.

“Sister, I've been talking to Sister Moira about the late Sister Joanna. I'll be looking into some aspects of her death, I guess you might say—”

“About time someone did,” Francis said, clicking metal spoons together as she flicked blobs of dough on the baking sheet.

“Really?” I asked. “Why do you say that?” I sat down at the kitchen table.

“I felt at the time that she got short shrift. I watched the girl die, and then to see the police close it all up so quickly—well, it seemed strange to me. Of course, Father Fahey felt it was all too harmful. He wanted them all to go away, felt they were upsetting us, that nothing good could come of dragging it out, and he had that last fellow sent packing, I believe.”

“What fellow?” I asked.

“Oh, a reporter from the local paper.”

“The
Wire
?” I asked, intrigued.

“I suppose. I don't really remember. He asked us a lot of questions, asked if we didn't think it was fishy, her death, and didn't we think it strange that Father Fahey wanted to hush it all up.”

“Did you think it was strange?”

'Her death, yes. Not Father Fahey. He had our best interests in mind. The reporter, he was digging for grudges amongst the religious. Father Fahey said there was nothing to find here, and he should take his suspicions into the criminal world."

“Ah.” This story was getting more interesting by the minute, and I was already starting to frame my argument to Bill for letting me use newspaper time to pursue it.

I dug out my notebook and began to write. “Sister, can you tell me what happened that day?”

The cookies were shaped, and she opened the oven and slipped the pans inside. Then she did a curious thing: she stayed where she was, staring through the oven window, as though frozen. I wondered if she'd even heard me. I was about to repeat myself when she answered.

“It was an evening in May,” she said. Apparently, she was seeing it again, ten years in the past, but forever there in her memory. “It was warm and fragrant. Joanna loved to tend the flowers around the pond, to feed the fish, care for the lilies on the water. She saw it as her daily devotional. She was out there then, caring for them rather—feverishly, almost—and I watched her for a bit, out the door. She was like a daughter to me.”

Sister Francis cleared her throat and turned back toward me. “I called out to her—Joanna! She turned, surprised, and started walking back toward the convent. I hadn't taken much notice of the car; they'd been coming all day to drop off their donations, and she didn't take notice, either, just began walking gracefully toward me, though her expression wasn't serene, and then the car was there, much faster than we knew, and it made a horrible thump—”

Francis sat down, winded. “It could have been an accident, but that sort of violence seems like what it is, violence. It was a violent way to die. And of course I was watching her, to see where she'd fallen, not the car, I didn't care about the car; I assumed it would stop. By the time I cared it was long gone.”

I nodded, putting my hand over hers. “I'm sorry if the memory is upsetting.”

Francis shrugged. “I always tell myself, it's no more upsetting than the crucifixion of our Lord.”

When I left the kitchen, Moira was waiting. Near her was a cluster of women; one of them held a clipboard. “These are our wonderful volunteers from the Altar and Rosary Club,” Moira said, introducing them as a group. I waved in their direction.

“And this is Madeline Mann,” Moira said to them. “She's Webley's most famous investigative reporter.”

I blushed at this, and the women made twittering sounds of appreciation. The one with the clipboard glanced at her watch. I moved toward the door, and Moira caught up with me. “Did it help, talking to her?” she asked me. “There are other sisters you could talk to, though I think only Francis and I lived here ten years ago. We tend to get moved around a lot,” she said ruefully.

“This is enough to start with, Sister,” I said. I put my hand on the doorknob. The women behind us were eavesdropping without shame; I assumed they'd go get the scoop from Francis the moment I left. An important part of any church is its gossip.

Moira escorted me out of the weirdest interview of my life and walked me all the way back to my car, past the bleak willows and the frozen pond. I wanted to ask more questions, but I somehow couldn't formulate them yet, and I was late for work. I was also a bit too overwhelmed to be sure how to proceed. “Be sure to send my greetings to your family,” she said, standing straight and serious against the gray landscape like a Thomas Hardy heroine.

“Okay,” I said again. I started the engine, gave a last wave, and drove back down the long driveway, avoiding any glance at the foot of the fountain where Sister Mary Joanna had breathed her last.

I
went to the newspaper office. By the time I arrived at work, parked my car, and climbed the stairs, I was ready.

“Hey, Woodward and Bernstein,” said Bill, meeting me at the door. “What have you got for me?” He was all joviality, obviously excited by the idea that I may have stumbled onto something as wonderful as the corruption of the mayor, a story we'd broken two months before.

“Sister Moira MacShane. You know her? She thinks Sister Joanna was murdered. I can't really go into the reasons, confidentiality and all that, but I told her I'd look into it.” I walked past him, trying not to notice his gaping jaw.

Bill recovered himself enough to say, “I'll pull the stories from the morgue.”

“Okay,” I answered, surprised. Bill didn't normally do stuff like that himself; it was my first evidence of his excitement at the potential story. I walked to my little office, greeted my office mate, Sally Watson, who today sported a fuchsia sweater with a sequined poinsettia appliqué, and sat down to turn on my computer. I told Sally what I'd told Bill, but added, “Listen, this is just between us. It's something very personal to Sister Moira, and I don't want—”

Sally acted hurt. “Who do you think you're talkin' to, Babe? I'm a regular Deep Throat.” Sally chuckled bawdily at this. Unlike Bill, she didn't seem at all surprised at what I'd been asked to investigate.