Thyme to Live: A We Sisters Three Mystery (13 page)

O
fficer Yee sat
in her patrol car right at the corner of Carmine and Bleeker Street, idling and watching, waiting for me to go ahead and pull open the giant wood doors that led into the massive, block-long church. I don’t know what I expected a Greenwich Village church catering to disparate immigrant populations to look like, but it wasn’t this. This structure was more than awe-inspiring. It was imposing. Commanding. Intimidating, even.

Get on with it,
I told myself. Waffling around on the sidewalk wasn’t going to magically make the church shrink down to a more welcoming size.

Here we go.

I ran up the steps two at a time but paused in front of the door. I turned back to the street and gave Officer Yee a little wave then inhaled deeply. I took one last look skyward, leaning my head back to take in the massive double columns that flanked the door and the tall, stained-glass windows, then I pushed on the door and entered the dim narthex.

As soon as the door closed behind me, that uniquely churchy quiet filled my ears. I hesitated for a moment, wondering where everyone was. Officer Jennings came clattering down the stairs from the clerestory—you know, the loft-type place where the choir stands? I wasn’t Catholic, but I did go through an architecture kick before I settled on my major, so I at least knew what the parts of the church were called. But that was about all I knew.

“Thyme, you’re early. Good.” She strode across the vestibule and clapped me on the shoulder. “Come with me.”

She led me toward the nave, pausing to dip her fingers into the receptacle of holy water and make the sign of the cross while I stood there awkwardly. We crossed the threshold and I heard myself gasp.

The main worship space was all marble columns, intricate murals, and detailed frescoes.

“Amazing, right?”

“It’s breathtaking.”

We stood in shared silence for a moment. Then Officer Thompson appeared beside us.

“Jeez, Jerry. Don’t sneak up on me like that,” Officer Jennings snapped, her right hand on her gun holster.

“You need to switch to decaf, Jennings.” He shook his head at her then smiled at me. “How are you doin’, Thyme? Holding up okay?”

“I guess so. Ready for this to be over.”

“Gotcha. I got a call from Victor’s babysitter. They’re stuck in traffic over by the law school. Some kind of student protest.”

“Lawyers protesting? Sounds suspicious,” I joked.

“Must be feeling left out because the other 99 percent have all the fun,” Officer Jennings added.

“Yeah, it’s a laugh riot. I told Martinson to use that shiny thing on the top of his car and make some noise. It’s an embarrassment. An officer getting stuck in traffic? Shameful.”

I took a closer look at Officer Thompson, who had struck me from the get-go as even-keeled and easygoing. A faint red hue stained his dusky skin. He was really angry.

“Are
you
okay?” I asked in a low voice, pulling him away from his partner. I’d spent enough time with the two of them to know that if she participated in the conversation it would be nothing but escalating bravado and back-and-forth insults.

“I’m fine. No, great. I’m great. Ready to rock and roll.” He flashed a smile.

“If you’re serious about acting, you need to take some lessons, officer. You’re obviously distressed about something, and I doubt it’s the fact that Victor’s stuck in traffic. It’s not even ten o’clock yet.”

He twisted his mouth into a wry smile. “Busted me, huh? It’s no big deal, just some bureaucratic BS.”

“You mean the fact that Mr. Mayor has the hots for some actress?”

“Something like that.”

“But, the plan is still solid, right? Cate’s bringing Audra. We have to make sure she’s not in any danger.”

“I know.” He shook his head and grimaced. “Rich people. No common sense at all, that woman. Yeah, I have two plainclothes officers on the catering team to cover the Whittier-Clays. Only problem is, I had to pull them from outside the unit, too. We had to scramble so they went straight from their precinct to the caterer’s place. I haven’t personally briefed them. And now I can’t find them. I was just headed downstairs to Father Demo Hall to look for them.” He jerked his thumb toward a set of stairs that presumably led to the basement.

Jennings came walking over. “You two girls done gossiping? The brother just rolled up. The Whittier-Clays’ limo is right behind him.”

Thompson checked his watch. “They’re early,” he said grimly.

“Who comes fashionably late to a fake funeral, Jerry?”

The question hung on the air as the doors opened and the Whittier-Clay family swept into the gathering space with Victor on their heels. Audra’s face was pale white, and she clung to her father’s hand. Cate gave me a tight smile as she walked right past me. Officer Thompson trotted after her.

“No nanny?” I said to Victor when he stopped beside me. I pretended not to notice when he slipped his arm around my waist.

“Cate sent her to get cheese.”

“Pardon?”

“Murray’s Cheese Shop is right around the corner. I guess she’s out of Gouda or something. I don’t know.”

I bit my tongue. We had bigger problems than Cate’s cheese obsession.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked, nuzzling my neck.

I smiled but pulled away. “We’re in a church.”

“For a fake funeral vigil, don’t forget. We’re already in trouble.”

“Still. Let’s fake being appropriate.”

“Are you even Catholic?” he asked.

I snorted. “Not even a little bit.”

“You can’t be a little bit Catholic,” he told me. He pulled me by the hand. “Come on, let’s go check out the altar.”

“Why? Oh, no. There’s not an empty casket up there, is there? There is, isn’t there?” I squinted into the shadowy worship area.

“I didn’t know they were bringing Audra. The police borrowed it from some zombie movie shooting in Williamsburg,” he explained out of the side of his mouth. We skirted the central nave, where the Whittier-Clays were milling about, talking with Officer Thompson and headed up the narrow aisle on the far left side.

“Nice,” I mumbled back. “Uh-oh. Where’d you get all those flowers?”

The altar was flanked by four enormous floral arrangements in stone urns. Fragrant lilies, gladioli, and roses spilled out. The closer we drew, the more watery my eyes grew, until we were standing next to the flowers. By then, tears were streaming down my face.

“Thyme?” he asked in a concerned voice.

“Allergies,” I wheezed as my throat started to close.

He grabbed my elbow and led me back down the aisle and out onto the church’s front steps. I took big, greedy gulps of fresh air. He stood by my side looking worried and frustrated.

“You’re allergic to flowers?”

“Not all of them. Wildflowers, surprisingly, don’t bother me,” I croaked.

“What can I do?”

I shook my head and exhaled as the tightness in my chest loosened. “I’m okay.”

He rubbed my back. “Are you sure?”

I nodded and raised my head in time to see Lynn, Helena’s actress friend approaching the stairs from the sidewalk. She nodded a greeting in my general direction and pulled Victor into a hug.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a shaky voice. “What … what happened? The obituary didn’t say.”

Victor froze and stared at me. If he’d had a blinking neon “HELP ME” sign hanging around his neck, it would have been slightly less obvious than his panicky reaction.

“Lynn, thank you for coming,” I rasped. “I wonder if I could bring you inside to say hi to Audra? She’s inside, but Ms. Whittier-Clay sent her new nanny to run an errand. I’m sure she’d love to see a familiar face.”

Lynn’s face clouded for the briefest moment but she wiped away her irritation and put on a neutral expression. “Of course. Poor kiddo. But I need to tell Victor something first.” She looked at me sharply as if she were making some sort of judgment. “Actually, I guess you should both hear this—seeing as how you’re his sidekick and all.”

I wasn’t about to exert my strained throat to respond to that, so I just looked at her. She turned back to Victor.

“There’s something I should have told you on Monday night, but I promised Helena I wouldn’t.”

He blinked. “What is it?”

“Okay. What I told you was true, for the most part. We did get mani/pedis. She was acting weird. She did get a voicemail that upset her.”

We waited for a moment to see if she would go on, but she bit her lower lip and shifted her gaze to the ground.

“But?” I prompted gently.

“But I didn’t tell you everything. The call came before she decided we had to go to Target. We were walking to this Thai restaurant we both like and she pulled up her voicemail and listened to it. Then she just started freaking out. She told me she used to be married to a really bad guy. Is that true?”

Victor swallowed and nodded but didn’t speak.

“She said she moved here to get away from him but that he’d found her. The message was from him. She didn’t tell me exactly what he said, but I could tell he’d threatened her. She was all shaky and panicky. She made me promise not to tell you.”

“Why?” he croaked. “I could have helped her.”

Lynn shook her head. “No. She was adamant that she didn’t want to involve you. She said her ex would kill you if he knew you helped her. Did he … is that what happened to her?”

Victor rubbed his palm across his eyes.

“Lynn, it’s kind of important. What else did she tell you?” I tried to draw her attention back to her story.

“Um, she said she had to disappear before he got to her. She didn’t know what to do. And then I had an idea.”

I stared at her. Of course. She was an actress.

“You made the stage blood,” I said.

“Right. We went to Target and got the blender and a bedding set from the clearance section. The plan was to stage a scene at her place that made it look like she’d been attacked and then hightail it out of town.”

“Why, exactly?” I asked.

“We thought if he came to her apartment and saw that she was gone, he’d come after her. But if it looked like she’d been hurt, well, he wouldn’t want to implicate himself. I mean, right? He’d go back into whatever hole he crawled out of in the first place. It was worth a shot.”

“I suppose.” I decided not to mention that, as a law enforcement officer, Gabriel Vasquez ought to be able to tell the difference between real blood and a ketchup / chocolate concoction.

“What was the fishing line for?” Victor asked out of nowhere.

“Oh, she had this idea that she’d put the line across her doorway or something and would be able to tell if someone had come into her place while she was gone. I told her that only worked in dumb movies, but she insisted it couldn’t hurt.”

“So what happened?”

“We went back to her place. He’d already been there. He left an empty ring box by her bedside table. She was so scared that he’d come back. I asked if her if she had somewhere to stay. She shut herself into her bathroom and made a phone call. After a few minutes, she came back out and said she was all set. I told her to leave right away. I stayed behind and made the blender blood, set the scene in her bedroom, then cleaned up. I was in the bedroom just admiring my work, when I heard someone out in the hallway. I figured it was Helena, that she’d forgotten something. But then I heard loud, male voices, two of them and—”

“And you climbed out the window and went down the fire escape,” I finished for her.

She nodded, wide-eyed.

Lynn might be high-maintenance, but she was also a damn good friend.

“And you really don’t know where she planned to go?” I said.

“No, I really don’t. She said it would be safer for both of us if she didn’t tell me. I’m sorry.” She trailed off and looked down at her hands.

“Thanks for helping her,” Victor said in a dull voice.

“I guess I didn’t really help her though, did I?” Lynn sobbed.

He met my eyes over her bowed head. I nodded.

“We should talk,” he told her as he ushered her into the church.

I stood on the steps for a moment longer. And then, as the bells in the bell tower above pealed to announce the eleven o’clock hour, a lone cameraman came from across the street and set up in front of the church. I couldn’t read the logo on his jacket from where I stood but I imagined he was from a local affiliate, hoping to catch some footage of Cate coming out after the vigil.

Game time.

An inordinately cheerful-looking Asian woman with pink- and blue-streaked hair bounced up the stairs and walked into the building beside me. She paused and genuflected before entering the church proper.

I
returned
to the church but kept my distance from the flowers. While we were outside talking to Lynn, Officers Thompson and Jennings had changed into street clothes. I overheard them introduce themselves to Lynn as Mr. and Mrs. Elverson. Really, they should have called themselves the Bickersons, seeing as how they already acted like an old married couple.

After I chuckled at my own joke, I wondered how much Victor had told Lynn. I’d have simply asked him, but he was deep in conversation with the Asian woman. Their heads were bowed and they huddled behind one of the massive marble columns, partially out of view.

A pair of nuns wearing traditional long black habits and white head coverings came gliding into the room.

“Excuse us,” the taller one said. “The brothers mentioned that there’s a child here.”

“Um, right. Audra’s up there with her parents.” I pointed to the Whittier-Clays.

“We teach next door at the parish school,” she continued. “We work with the preschoolers. If the little girl would be more comfortable, you could take her downstairs to Father Demo Hall. There are some puzzles and books, as well as paper and crayons down there.”

“That’s very kind of you to let me know,” I said.
Especially since her babysitter’s at a cheese shop,
I added silently
.

“Bless her. She’s very young to sit a vigil.”

“I’ll tell her mother about the playroom.” What I wanted to do was pump them for information about what exactly was involved in sitting a vigil. But the longer they stood there, the more aware I became of my dress’ plunging neckline. So I flashed them a smile and scurried over to talk to Cate.

It’s like the saying, the devil you know is better than the nuns you don’t know.

Audra was halfway down the aisle before the words “play area” were fully out of my mouth. Cate narrowed her eyes.

“I’ll go with her and watch her until Janie gets back,” I hurried to assure her.

Her expression softened. “I’d appreciate that, Thyme.”

“My pleasure.” It would get me out of the floral danger zone. And I wouldn’t be able to stare at Victor and his friend, whoever she was. They were still whispering furiously in their corner.

I took my jealousy, my seasonal allergies, and my cleavage and headed out after Audra.

T
hose two nuns
turned out to be closer to angels.

Audra and I were coloring a picture of a space alien whose body was made up of different fruits—a coconut head, an apple torso, banana legs—you get the idea, when all hell broke loose back in the kitchen. She dropped the yellow crayon onto the table and reached for me.

Operating on some instinctive level, I scooped her up and raced behind a stack of folding tables that were propped up against the wall. I lowered myself to my butt, keeping one hand on the back of her head, then crab-walked backward as far as I could go until we were wedged between the tables and the wall. It was cramped and dark, but we were out of sight. I pulled Audra closer and listened hard, trying with no success to discern words from all the shouting and banging coming from the kitchen.

Then the door swung open, and my heart sank. Four men in white catering jackets came through the doorway. Two of them were handcuffed and being pushed forward at gunpoint. Two of them were holding the guns and doing the pushing. Two of the men looked horrifyingly familiar. They were the men from Helena’s apartment, the parking lot, and the Chinese restaurant. Gabriel’s men. And they were the ones holding the guns.

Judging by the short-cropped hair and enraged, but not terrified, expressions their captives were wearing, I guessed they were the undercover officers who’d been charged with protecting Audra and her parents. My theory was borne out when one of the handcuffed men spat, “You’re racking up charges by the minute, pal. You’re going to spend the rest of your punk life in jail. You’ve abducted two law enforcement officers. That’s a serious crime.”

“Eh, shut up.” He jabbed the speaker in the back with his own gun. “I’m not spending the rest of my life in jail. I’m spending it on a beach in Rio.”

His compatriot laughed and barked out some response in Portuguese. Then he switched to English as he opened a broom closet not six feet from where we were hiding. “Get in there.” They shoved the two undercover officers into the closet and shut the door.

I could only hope that all the noise they were making was drowning out the sound of my pounding heart. To my ears, it sounded like a jackhammer. Audra pressed her face into my shoulder.
Please don’t whimper,
I thought
.

She whimpered.

My heart ceased its hammering and skipped for a beat.

Their footsteps stopped. I gently covered her mouth with my hand and tilted her head back until her eyes met mine. I raised a finger to my lips. She nodded. After a lifetime and a half they started walking again—back to the kitchen. Talking in low Portuguese. The only word I recognized was “Gabriel.”

The door to the kitchen swung open and they went inside.

“Audra, listen. I’m going to take you outside where you’ll be safe. Please be quiet like a mouse until we get out there, okay?”

She nodded her understanding. Her eyes were wide. “What about Mommy and Daddy?”

“They’re going to be okay. The police officers upstairs will take care of them.”

We inched forward, duck walking until we reached the opening, then I moved her aside and stood. I scanned the vast, empty banquet hall and then lifted her into my arms. I hurried through the room, thankful for my silent, flat shoes.

When we reached the broom closet, I hesitated. I needed to get her out. Now. But half of the cavalry was trapped inside.

Crappity, crap, crap, crap, crap.

I yanked open the door and did the finger to my lips thing again. The two officers raised their handcuffed wrists as high as they could. I assumed they were planning to pummel their attackers, but when they saw a woman holding a child, they froze.

“I’m getting her out of here. Those guys said something about Gabriel. You have to get upstairs and warn Thompson and Jennings.”

They didn’t know me from Eve, but I think we all knew there was no time for small talk.

“Johnson here knows a little bit of Portuguese. This Gabriel guy is loitering outside with the media folks, waiting for his chance to come in. Sounds like he wants to see the, uh, casket with his own eyes,” one of the officers said as they sidled past me.

“There’s a door out to a shared courtyard at the end of this hall. Far left,” the other added.

“Shared? Like with the school?”

“Right. Take her over there. The sisters will keep her safe.”

“I’ll be right back,” I told them.

“Ma’am, do not come back. Go across the street to Demo Square. There should be one or two uniforms stationed there.”

They ran past us in a crouch and headed for the stairs to the narthex.

I jogged awkwardly to the end of the hall, Audra’s feet bouncing off my thighs with each step. I pushed open the door with my hip and stepped out into a stairwell. I shifted Audra to my left hip and raced up the stairs. At the top, I scanned the playground. It wasn’t yet noon, so most of the students were still inside, eating lunch or finishing up their morning work, I imagined. But a group of preschoolers was squatting near a small vegetable garden, inspecting the shoots. The two nuns from earlier were with them.

I ran as fast as I’d ever run. The one who’d done most of the talking in the church saw me coming and took several swift steps to meet me before I reached the rest of the class.

“Is something wrong?” she asked in a low, calm voice.

“Yes.” I lowered Audra to the grass and matched the nun’s cadence. “There are two armed men next door. The police are there. But you should take the children inside. And, please, can you take Audra with you?”

She held my eyes for a moment then crossed herself. Then she crouched and offered a hand to Audra. “Hello, Audra. I’m Sister Anastasia. Would you like to join our class for snack and song time?”

Audra appraised her. “Do you have graham crackers?” she asked gravely.

Sister Anastasia smiled at her. “I do, indeed.”

Audra looked up at me. “I’m going to go have snack. Will you help my mommy and daddy, Thyme?”

“I will,” I promised.

They set off toward the garden and I sprinted out to the street and raced across Bleeker, hoping that I didn’t get squashed by a New York City driver before I could find someone in a uniform.