“I don’t suppose there’s any rhyme or reason to any of this.” Coffee steamed in two mugs nearby and Nick lifted the first box and put it on the dining room table. “Does Tillner seem like the type who would have taken his time? Arranged things?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” Jazz popped the lid off the first box, looked inside, and made a face. “File folders.” She ruffled her fingers through the alphabetically arranged manila folders. “Cable bills, electric bills, gas bills. Charge statements, church collection envelopes waiting to be filled.”
“There might be something interesting there.” Nick must have been expecting her to give him exactly the look she did—mouth screwed up, eyes squinted—because he laughed. “Hey, being a detective isn’t all about car chases and excitement. Sometimes clues are in the most boring places.”
“Let’s save these boring clues for when we’re more awake.” Jazz put the lid back on the box and set it on the floor and Nick lifted the second box to the table.
Jazz opened it and looked at the mess of papers and old photographs heaped inside. “Looks like Tillner scooped up whatever he could find and shoved it in here to get it out of the way.”
“And my guess…” Nick’s eyes glowed at the prospect of what might be hidden in the mound of junk. “There might be some treasures here.”
They sat down and got to work. The idea was to sort the items in the box—pictures in one pile, any correspondence in another, magazines and newspaper clippings over on the other side—but they’d just started when Jazz took out a small scrap of paper printed in color on one side, in black and white on the other. She found a second scrap, then another, then a fourth.
“What’s all that?” Nick wanted to know.
He hadn’t been raised Catholic like Jazz. Nick didn’t know about prayer cards.
While Jazz explained, she dug through the rest of the box and came up with dozens of more pieces. To give herself room, she pushed the box to one side and got to work, setting out the pieces, color-side up, and sorting them as best she could.
“Brown monk’s robe.” She set that piece to her left and looked over the other scraps. “Aha! Another piece of brown monk’s robe.” That piece went with the first. She made a pile of light blue pieces, another of golden ones, and when she was all done she started fitting the pieces together like little jigsaw puzzles.
“Pictures of angels and saints,” she told Nick, and showed him a scrap of paper with a halo on it to prove it. “People give out prayer cards at funerals as mementos of the person who died and with information about them printed on the back. That’s how I knew where Bernadette’s ashes were interred, from the prayer cards at her memorial service. Or sometimes, teachers give them to the kids at school. You use them to mark your place in a prayer book, or if you’re my grandmother you hang them on the refrigerator and think about all your dead friends.”
“Okay.” He didn’t look or sound convinced of the advantages of any of this. “So why would Bernadette have ripped ones?”
“Good question.” Jazz fit the Virgin Mary’s face under a particularly showy golden halo. “Bernadette was so…” She found the face of a male saint, tried it on one, two, three bodies before she realized it fit perfectly above a green clerical robe. “Knowing Bernadette, she would have treasured these, not ripped them in a million pieces.”
“Here’s a couple that aren’t ripped.” Nick plucked them out of the box. “They’re just mangled.”
They were crushed the way Nick had wadded the bandage wrappers. “When you were angry,” she mumbled.
To which Nick had every right to respond, “Huh?”
Jazz took the crumpled cards from his hand and smoothed them out on the table. One showed Saint Joseph with the Christ child. The other was an image of an angel in a long white robe.
“When I was telling you what happened to me tonight,” she reminded Nick. “You were holding the bandage wrappings and you crushed them in your hand.”
To demonstrate, she grabbed the two prayer cards and squeezed them in a fist.
“That’s what she did,” Jazz said, looking down at the cards wadded in her hand. “Bernadette mashed these two cards, and I bet she’s the one who tore up the others.”
“But you said she was so religious, such a believer. Why would she?”
Jazz thought back to the last weeks Bernadette was alive. “I have no idea why it happened,” she admitted. “But I bet I know when.”
It wasn’t a cry; it was a high, tight keening. A sound that crept through the hallways of St. Catherine’s like a bone-chilling mist. It bounced off the ceilings like the echoes of a bad dream.
The wail of a lost soul.
Jazz paused at the top of the third-floor stairway and looked around. It was late and except for the Drama Club students practicing for the Christmas program and the staff catching up on their work, most everyone had left St. Catherine’s hours before. She’d volunteered to stick around so she could get Eileen’s Christmas gifts to teachers and staff wrapped and she’d come upstairs because she knew Sarah kept ribbon in the art studio and she wanted to add some to the presents.
There was no one in the hallway, no one in any of the classrooms Jazz passed, and for a moment, she wondered if the ghost stories the girls told about the unused fourth-floor space really were true.
Was St. Catherine’s haunted?
A door bumping closed and the high-pitched titter of girls giggling snapped Jazz out of her fantasies. Ghosts, she imagined, didn’t need to open and close doors to come and go.
Students were another story.
The sounds of scrambling footsteps confirmed her theory, but wherever the noises came from—whoever ran from the direction of the chapel—she didn’t see a soul. And the high-pitched wailing? It never stopped.
Jazz pushed through the chapel door and the sound washed over her, amplified by the whispering walls until it rang in her ears and vibrated in her breastbone. This time of the year, it was already dark, and with none of the overhead lights on in the chapel, she stood with her back to the door, searching the shadows for the source of the pathetic sound, letting her eyes adjust. A little light seeped from the neighborhood outside and through the chapel’s stained-glass windows threw muted pools of color on the floor and over near the altar, the sanctuary lamp with its red shade was lit, and its glow spilled over a shape crumpled on the floor.
Jazz’s heart bumped, and she raced to the front of the chapel, tallying the details as she went.
White blouse.
Plaid skirt.
She had her phone out and the flashlight app on before she dropped to the floor next to where Bernadette Quinn was on her knees, her shoulders crumpled, her chest heaving, her head bent until it nearly rested on the floor.
“Bernadette!” Jazz touched a hand to the teacher’s shoulder. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Like a wild animal, Bernadette reared up. Her face was gray and swollen, her eyes wild.
“What happened?” Tiny bits of spit collected at the corners of Bernadette’s mouth. “How dare you! How dare you ask me what happened!”
When she scrambled to her feet, Jazz did, too, and when Jazz stepped closer, Bernadette threw out a hand. She held a prayer card in that hand, one of the ones she gave out to the girls who did especially well on tests, and she gripped it tightly in desperate fingers. “You stay away from me! You all stay away from me! You just want to laugh at me. It’s all you’ve ever wanted to do. Well, now you can do it, can’t you? Now you know how stupid I am, how gullible.”
The cross on Bernadette’s chest did a wild rumba to the tempo of her rough breaths, and watching the fake jewels in it catch the light and flash, Jazz couldn’t help but think of everything she’d learned about dealing with frightened animals. She kept her voice down. She moved slowly. She stayed calm.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Jazz told her. “But if you want to sit down…” She motioned toward the nearest pew. “You can tell me what’s bothering you.”
Bernadette was not a tall woman, but when she stiffened her spine, threw back her shoulders, and lifted her chin, she looked formidable. Savage. “I’ll tell you right here and now what’s bothering me. You should know. The whole world should know. What we hear … what we…” Her voice choked over a sob. “What we believe…” She glanced over her shoulder toward the choir loft, then spun to aim a laser look at Jazz. “Sometimes we want to believe so much, so hard, that we deceive ourselves. Then the truth dawns.” She clutched at the prayer card and it crumpled in her fingers. “It’s not always the voice of God we hear. Sometimes the angels aren’t angels at all; sometimes they’re devils.”
By the time she was done telling the story, Jazz’s coffee was cold. Nick got up to refresh both his and hers, and when he came back in the dining room he had a bowl of grapes with him, too.
“Donuts,” he said, and set the bowl in front of Jazz. “At this time of night, we should be eating donuts, not healthy food. All you have around here is fruit and yogurt and stuff no person in his right mind should eat at three in the morning. Where’s the cold pizza? Where are the donuts? Everyone should have a supply of donuts for emergencies.”
She gave him a one-sided grimace at the same time she plucked a grape from the bowl. “Spoken like the cop you are.”
Oblivious to the sarcasm, his gaze drifted over the bits and pieces of the angels and saints laid out on the table, and Nick sat back down. “So what happened after that day in the chapel? To Bernadette?”
The thought still made Jazz uneasy, especially when she considered that the end of the story was not a happy one. “She was different after that night. Quiet. Withdrawn. There were complaints from the girls in her classroom. Bernadette had always made her classes interesting and challenging. After that night, we heard she was just going through the motions. She was never good talking to parents, but she at least made an effort. After that night, parents complained that she wasn’t even returning phone calls. Other teachers said … well, she’d never been overly friendly, but the other teachers saw a different side of Bernadette. They said she was short-tempered, crabby. One of the girls told us Bernadette even forgot to lead them in prayer before class. And she always started every class with a prayer.”
“Despair.” The single word carried so much weight, Nick sat back in his chair. “She’d lost her enthusiasm.”
Jazz looked at the ripped images of the saints and angels. “I think it goes deeper than that, Nick. I saw her in the chapel. She was frantic. Desperate. It was like her whole world had turned upside down, like the most important thing in her life—” Jazz sucked in a breath. “You know, she never would have destroyed or disrespected a prayer card. It just wasn’t in her makeup. But the one she was holding that night, she crumpled it like it was a piece of garbage. It was like whatever happened there in the chapel, it had caused her to lose her faith. She was suddenly in a free fall and she didn’t know how to stop it. How sad, especially when you think she was dead just a couple weeks later.”
Their sighs overlapped.
Nick grabbed a handful of grapes. “What do you think happened?”
A shrug was hardly an answer. “It was around the time Bernadette found out that Taryn Campbell plagiarized her scholarship essay. Even after the Titus incident, Bernadette never lost faith in Taryn or Juliette or Cammi.” A thought hit and Jazz sat up like a shot. “The Titus incident! I should have thought of that before. Taryn, Juliette, and Cammi had tricked Bernadette once with the cat. What if they kept on playing tricks on her? It explains why they were never at Drama Club practice, Nick. They’d hang around school, but they weren’t where they were supposed to be. What if they waited for Bernadette to go up to the chapel after school? Everyone knew she did it; that was no secret. That’s what Taryn was talking about when she said I should ask Juliette and Cammi about the angels. Could anyone be that mean? What if…” It was nearly impossible to comprehend, but Jazz put her theory into words. “What if the three of them, they were the angels?”
Nick groaned. “You mean the walls in the chapel—”
“Yeah, the whispering walls. The girls…” There was no reason Nick would know the details, so Jazz explained. “They got in plenty of trouble for Titus. Seems to me this would be the perfect revenge. They whispered to her while she was praying and made her believe she was being talked to by angels.”
“And that night you found her crying—”
“I heard the girls run out of the chapel. Maybe Bernadette did, too. Maybe that’s when she finally figured out there was a very real human explanation for what she thought were angel voices.” She glanced at the prayer cards. “Bernadette didn’t just want to believe that the angels were talking to her; she did believe it. Then maybe she caught a glimpse of the girls. Or maybe one of them gave away the hoax by laughing or something. That’s when Bernadette realized what was really going on. She found out she’d been tricked and it broke her heart. It destroyed her faith. How sad.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Nick wanted to know.
“I’ll have to tell Eileen.” The prospect made Jazz feel awful. “I’ll leave it up to her and the board. Maybe if the girls confess to what they did…”
“They won’t get expelled?”
Jazz put her face in her hands. “I thought the Titus hoax was cruel. This was even worse.”
“You’ll deal with it.” Nick put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “For now…”
He stood and peered into the box. “There’s a ton of other stuff in here,” he said. “It’s going to take us days to go through it.” He pushed that box to the side and retrieved the box from the long-closed department store. “This one’s smaller. How much junk could be in here?”
He was right. There wasn’t any junk in that box. Just a white blanket, carefully folded and tucked between pieces of tissue.
Knitted or crocheted?
Jazz never could tell the difference. “Pretty,” she said.
“And we can at least eliminate this box as telling us anything.” Nick popped the lid back on the box. “One more?” he wondered, but he didn’t wait for Jazz’s response. He grabbed the last of the archive boxes.
“Looks like stuff from a desk,” he said, and taking out the contents, he piled it on the table. “A calendar. That might be helpful except it’s from a few years before Bernadette was killed. Pens. A tape dispenser. A stapler. And…” He was nearly through the contents of the box, and his hands stilled over his work.
“That thing with Maddie…” He looked at Jazz at the same time he scooped some papers from the box. “Bernadette said there was nothing to it, right?”
“You mean the Parkers thinking Bernadette was stalking Maddie? No proof. Not a shred.”
“Then what about these?”
What he’d found were photos, probably taken by a phone, definitely printed at home on eight-by-ten pieces of computer paper.
Maddie buying popcorn at the movies.
Maddie in the park on her bike.
Maddie at the mall, walking beside her friend Della.
Jazz’s blood went cold. Her stomach bunched. She’d been about to pop down another grape, and she knew it would never get past the lump that suddenly blocked her throat. She tossed the grape back in the bowl. “The Parkers were right. Bernadette was stalking Maddie.”
“It sure looks that way.”
Jazz’s insides twitched. “What does it mean, Nick?”
“I’ll have to show these to Lindsey. It could have something to do with motive.”
“You mean Maddie’s parents found out and…?”
“Or Maddie didn’t like what was going on.”
“No.” Jazz refused to sit there and listen to that kind of nonsense. She refused to even consider that Maddie—sweet, sincere Maddie—could have possibly had anything to do with the skeleton on the fourth floor. “You can’t possibly think—”
“I don’t know what to think. And neither do you. I only know these pictures might be important.”
“But Maddie said she didn’t have a problem with Bernadette.”
“Maybe Maddie didn’t know she was being followed.”
Jazz wrapped herself in a hug. “That makes it creepier than ever.”
“Here’s more creepy.”
Carefully, he drew one last thing out of the box. It was a wreath of what had once been white and red roses. Now the flowers were brittle, brown. The tiny pieces of baby’s breath that were tucked between the roses crumbled when Nick lifted the halo out of the box and they sprinkled the table like snowflakes.
“Maybe not so creepy.” If only Jazz felt as assured as she tried to sound. She looked at the dead flowers, thought of the dead woman. “Flowers don’t mean anything. Maybe Bernadette was a bridesmaid or something.”
When Nick set the halo of flowers on the table, Jazz touched a finger to the nearest rose. A petal dropped off. The petals beneath it were crusted with gray mold.
Nick pulled one last thing from the box, an envelope. He opened it and unfolded the letter inside. He read it over quickly and whistled low under his breath. “You were right. Bridesmaid or something. Listen to this.”
The letter was short and to the point.
“‘Every soul has its mission and there are as many different missions of redemption as there are souls on this earth. It is with the deepest sadness and regret that we inform you that after a great deal of discussion and even more prayer, we have decided that your mission is not in alignment with ours. As of this day…’”
Nick checked the heading on the letter. “It’s dated about sixteen years ago.”
“From who? To who?” Jazz wanted to know.
He held up a hand to tell her to be patient. “‘As of this day, you are released from all obligations, responsibilities, and association with the Little Sisters of Good Counsel. From this day forward, you will no longer be Sister Mary Philomena but will be known once again as Bernadette Quinn.’”