The Little Sisters of Good Counsel was a teaching order of nuns whose mother house was located near Niagara Falls, Canada. It was a three-and-a-half-hour drive, but after she and Nick found the letter from the convent Jazz gave in to the exhaustion that overwhelmed her once the adrenaline drained. She was able to get a couple hours of sleep before an officer from the local precinct called to say he was on his way to take her statement about what had happened the night before, and ready to go by the time the officer left.
She was just going into the kitchen when she banged into Nick just coming out of it.
“What are you still doing here?”
He put a hand to her forehead, though how that was supposed to help she wasn’t sure. “Maybe you have a concussion. You don’t remember I slept on your couch last night?”
“Of course I remember.” Since Wally’s leash wasn’t on the hook where she always kept it, she knew Nick had already walked him and he’d fed the dog, too, by the looks of the smears of yogurt in his bowl, so she poured herself a cup of coffee and took a long drink. There was nothing like waking up to really good coffee. Nothing like waking up to a man who was considerate enough to walk the dog, feed the dog, and get a pot brewing while she was still in the shower.
Jazz twitched the thought away. “It’s a Saturday in June,” she said. “It’s noon and…” She didn’t need to confirm it, but she peered out of the window anyway and tried to sort the facts in her head. One of the things Nick loved most was coaching kids baseball and he did a good job of it. Every Saturday, come rain or shine, as long as his work allowed it. He was dedicated, devoted. There were times back in the day when she clearly remembered telling him he was obsessed. It wasn’t like she could blame him. She was convinced he was making up for all the attention he’d never gotten when he was a kid. Jazz got it. She really did. She knew it was why he never made an exception. He’d never let the kids down. “The sun is shining. Shouldn’t you be at the baseball field?”
“Just got off the phone with Patrick.” He was Nick’s assistant coach, a young guy who taught phys ed in the Cleveland public school system. “He’s taking over for me today.”
“You’re missing baseball?” It was Jazz’s turn to put a hand to his forehead. “Because…?”
“Because I’m going to Canada with you, of course. I’ll drive. My car is more comfortable than yours.” It was as easy as that. At least to Nick.
To Jazz it was the equivalent of a hug, or a declaration of undying love, and for a moment all she could do was drink in the wonder of it all and the way warmth tangled around her heart.
Nick went right on. “We’ll have to stop by my house and pick up my passport.” At that moment, the toaster popped, and he took two pieces of toasts out of it, slathered them with butter and apricot jam, and gave them to her, then gave the dog a look. “What about Short Stuff? He’ll be okay here until we get back tonight?”
Jazz had just taken a bite of toast and she washed it down with a sip of coffee. “I called Greg Johnson as soon as I got up. He’s going to take Wally to his house for the day.”
“So we’re set.” Nick rubbed his hands together. “If traffic’s not too bad, we might even have time to stop and look at the falls.”
They didn’t, but then, it took longer than they anticipated to find the convent. It was outside the city of Niagara Falls in an area lush with vineyards and wineries that on an afternoon so beautiful were packed with tourists. Traffic was snarled and they made wrong turns once, twice, three times before they finally found what they were looking for.
The Sisters of Good Counsel were headquartered in a massive building that looked like it came right out of a fairy tale. Or a medieval history book.
Stone turrets. Steeples. Stained glass. The windows along the front of the convent were arched, the gardens between the parking lot and the front door were filled with statues of angels and saints, and the deep, bonging sound of a low-pitched wind chime, like a cathedral bell, carried on the breeze. The wide front steps they climbed were bordered by rhododendrons, their purple flowers just popping.
Inside the front door in an entryway with a polished stone floor, a fresh-faced young woman in a gray skirt and trim white blouse welcomed them, and when they told her they wanted to talk to Sister Mary Henry, who according to the convent’s website was the Mother Superior of the order, she escorted them down the hallway and deposited them in an office that reminded Jazz of her own office back at St. Catherine’s with its high ceilings, its glass-fronted bookshelves. There was a portrait of a veiled woman above the fireplace to Jazz’s left, and a statue of the Virgin Mary on her right. The walls, paneled with dark wood, were filled with photographs.
“Nick, look. All the nuns in these pictures, they’re wearing flowered crowns. Like the one we found in Bernadette’s things. Look at what’s printed on this one. It says this is the day the nuns took their final vows.” Jazz didn’t need to point it out. Nick had picked right up on the flowers, and while Jazz was still thinking about what it meant and what it could tell them, he was already going from one photo to another, reading the dates on the brass plaques on each oak frame and the names of the nuns printed below where each sister stood.
“She was how old?” Nick wanted to know.
“Bernadette?” Jazz really didn’t need to ask. “I’d say thirty-five or so at the time of her death.”
“So we don’t have to bother with these.” Nick ignored the pictures that were obviously old. Sepia-toned prints, black-and-white group shots. The older the photos were, the more young women they featured. The more modern photos …
Jazz went to stand at Nick’s side and look at the picture he was examining.
“This one’s dated 1979. Dozens of girls back then…” She looked over her shoulder toward the older pictures. “And after that…”
“Not an easy life, I don’t imagine.” Scanning the dates, Nick skipped past an entire wall filled with pictures. “I’m thinking we at least need this century. Bernadette wouldn’t have been here any earlier.”
They found the newest pictures—and the smallest groups of new nuns—and discovered what they were looking for.
A line of seven newly minted nuns in their gray habits and wearing crowns of red and white roses.
“Sister Mary Philomena.” Jazz poked a finger against Bernadette’s nose. “There she is right in the center. She looks so happy.” She stepped back to take in the whole picture. Like all the nuns in it—the tall, skinny girl, Sister Mary Margaret, to Bernadette’s left and the short, round African-American girl, Sister Mary Veronica, on her right—Bernadette’s shoulders were back, her head was high, her smile was a mile wide.
Jazz felt a pang of sadness. “It was all she ever wanted. That’s what Eileen and I always said about Bernadette. All she ever wanted was to be a nun. We thought we were only kidding. We didn’t know how spot-on we were. But why—”
Her question had to wait. The door opened and a woman with a round face and busy hands strode into the room and introduced herself as Sister Henry. Like all those nuns in all those pictures, she wore a long gray habit, but unlike the nuns in the early pictures, her head wasn’t completely swaddled in a wimple and a veil. She wore a simple white veil bobby-pinned toward the back of her head and her hair, a glorious silver, peeked from beneath it. Her skin was pale and smooth, but there were wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Maybe because she smiled so much. Maybe because she always had her eyes closed when her lips were busy with prayer.
Sister Henry directed them to the guest chairs in front of her desk and sat down, her hands clutched together on the desktop.
“What can I help you with?” the nun wanted to know.
This was Nick’s bailiwick. Questions. Answers. Cooperative informers. Uncooperative witnesses. But he looked Jazz’s way and let her take the lead.
She explained that she had worked with Bernadette Quinn, the woman who was once Sister Mary Philomena.
“Oh.” Sister Henry’s expression gave nothing away, but her hands fluttered over the blotter on her desk. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long time.”
“According to the picture over there…”—Nick looked that way—“she took her vows here seventeen years ago.”
“Seventeen? Is it?” Sister Henry’s smile came and went like the wrens that fluttered around the feeder outside her window. “The years blend together so easily. Yes, as you saw from the picture, Sister Philomena did take her vows here. But if you’ve come to see her, I’m sorry to tell you, she’s no longer with us. She hasn’t been for a good many years.”
Jazz had wondered how she would break the news, but really, there was no other way than to get it over quickly. “Bernadette is dead.”
Sister Henry bowed her head and made the sign of the cross on her chest, taking the moment to collect herself. When she was done, she looked from Nick to Jazz. “I’m sorry to hear it, but I don’t understand how we can help.”
“She was murdered.” They were everyday words to Nick. Part of his job. Still, he gave them their due, and gave Sister Henry a moment to suck in a breath, stifle a sob.
“I’m so very sorry to hear that.” Her voice was low, pensive. Her bottom lip trembled. “What happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Jazz told her. “She was teaching at St. Catherine’s school in Cleveland at the time of her death. But none of us knew…” Thinking about it now, it seemed incomprehensible. “When she filled out her employment application, when she sent in her résumé, when she went through a series of interviews, Bernadette never mentioned that she’d been a nun.”
“I imagine that’s because she didn’t stay with us,” Sister Henry said. “But what a blessing it is to hear she had the opportunity to teach. It’s what she always wanted, and she’d already begun taking college courses when she was here. She was meant to be a teacher.”
“And she was a good one,” Jazz told her. She ignored the memory of the torn holy cards, of the picture of the angel mangled in an angry fist. “She was dedicated and devoted to her beliefs. That’s why we’re wondering why you told her to leave.”
Sister Henry sat quietly for a moment, her hands flat and suddenly still against the desktop. “It was a very long time ago,” she finally said. “Let me…” She got up and crossed the room to a row of file cabinets, opened a drawer, looked through it. She shut the drawer and turned around.
“Those records must have gone to our IT facility. There’s no reason we would keep them, not when they’re so old.”
“But you were here then, right?” Jazz knew she was. According to the website she’d consulted before they left Cleveland, Sister Henry had been involved in the administration of the convent for nearly thirty years. “You must remember. A promising teacher. Very devoted. Very religious. She didn’t just up and decide to quit. The letter you sent her—”
The color drained from Sister Henry’s cheeks. “She showed you the letter?”
“‘Your mission is not in alignment with ours.’ That’s what you told her. You signed the letter, Sister.”
“I really can’t help you.” Sister Henry hurried back to her desk, but she didn’t sit down, a clear signal that she expected Jazz and Nick to stand, too, to leave. “I wish I could. I have a feeling you’re looking for something that might connect Sister Philomena’s experiences here to the awful thing that happened to her, but obviously if there was anything like that, I’d remember it. And I don’t. I can only tell you she wasn’t suited to this life. We had no choice but to ask her to leave.”
“It wasn’t because of angels, was it?” Jazz wanted to know, wondering if somewhere along the line, sometime before she’d been fooled by three mush-headed teenagers, Bernadette had been lured by the promise of angel voices. But even before Sister Henry answered, she knew what the nun would say. Her expression was blank, confused. If Bernadette had told her she talked to angels, if the convent had cut her loose because they didn’t want to be associated with a woman who was delusional, Sister Henry would have at least flinched. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone—especially a nun—could pretend had never happened.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sister Henry assured Jazz. “We have angel statues here, of course. Angel meditations. We pray for the guidance of our guardian angels. But Sister Philomena…” She gave her shoulders a shake. “She was no more or no less devoted to angels than any of our other sisters. Not that I remember.”
Sister Henry moved toward the door and Jazz knew she wouldn’t have another chance.
“It’s unusual, though, isn’t it?” she wanted to know. “Once a nun takes her final vows—”
“We’re not the Mafia, dear.” Sister Henry’s smile was as wide and as innocent as all those smiles on all those nuns in all those pictures. “If things aren’t working out, we’re not going to make you stay. Or put cement shoes on you.”
“So you don’t remember much about why Bernadette was asked to leave, but you do remember things weren’t working out?” Nick asked.
At his question, Sister Henry turned a laser look on Nick. And a blind eye to the question. “While you’re here, I’d suggest you stop into the chapel. It’s quite lovely. It’s on the Canadian Register of Historic Places, you know. I can send someone with you if you’d like a tour.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Jazz told her. “We’ve got a long drive back home. Thank you, Sister.”
“Thank you for letting us know what happened.” She strode to the door and opened it so they could leave. “You can be sure we’ll pray for Ms. Quinn’s soul.”
“Well…” Outside in the hallway, with Sister Henry’s door closed behind them, Jazz turned to Nick. “That was odd, don’t you think?”
“People are odd when they don’t want to talk.”
“What is it you suppose she doesn’t want to talk about?”
His shrug wasn’t encouraging. “Maybe Bernadette was a drinker. Maybe she beat little children. Maybe she stole relics from the chapel and sold them on the black market.”
“Maybe,” Jazz had to admit. “But if that was the case—”
“If that was the case”—Nick wound his arm through hers and they headed for the door—“Sister Henry is going to keep her mouth shut because she doesn’t want to admit the convent knew what Bernadette was up to.”
“Which means what we pretty much found out was nothing.” Outside, Jazz drew in a breath of late-spring air, hoping it would make her feel better. It didn’t. Neither did the birdsong that filled the air or the scent of the roses in glorious bloom nearby. She was faced with the prospect of three-plus hours in the car, with ribs and a back that still ached and knees that stung like the devil. That, and the sad reality that they’d come a long way and were no further along in figuring out what happened to Bernadette now than they were when they left home.
Nick tried his best to cheer her up. “You want to stop at a winery on the way home?”
“You want to drink and drive?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. But we could buy a bottle and sit out on your front porch with it tonight. What do you say?”
“You’re not working?”
“Not until Monday.”
“And you don’t have other plans?”
“Are you dog training tomorrow?”
It was a fair question and a few weeks ago—heck, a day ago—she might have had to think about her answer.
She wrinkled her nose. “My knees hurt too much to go to training.”
“I’m thinking that means a bottle of wine tonight and a couple sandwiches from La Bodega sounds like a plan?”
It wouldn’t help with the investigation, but it was the best idea Jazz had heard in a long time and she grabbed Nick’s hand. At the bottom of the wide stone steps, a movement over on their left caught her eye and she turned that way.
“Chapel,” Nick said, looking where she was looking, at the stone building with its steep roof and the single nun who was heading toward its door. “I hear it’s historic.”
“Not at all what I’m thinking,” she told him, and she took off in that direction.
She got there just as the chapel door closed and pushed it open so she could hurry inside where a nun—a short, squat African-American woman—was just getting ready to genuflect toward the altar. Jazz waited until the nun had paid her respects and stood.
“You’re Sister Veronica.”
The nun stuck out a hand to shake Jazz’s. “I am. But I don’t think we’ve met. How do you—”
“We’ve just been looking at the photos in Sister Henry’s office,” Jazz explained. “There aren’t many other African-American nuns in them. You took your vows at the same time Sister Philomena did.”
Sister Veronica laughed. “That was a very long time ago. We were kids.”
“And now?” Nick asked her.
She patted her tummy, round beneath her gray habit. “A few more years, a few more pounds. I’m not the sacristan, but I can show you around the chapel if you like. We have some lovely late-Victorian stained-glass windows, a few relics that are interesting.”
“Actually”—Jazz thanked her for the offer with a smile—“we came to find out why Sister Philomena left the convent.”
“Oh.” Sister Veronica tucked her hands into the sleeves of her habit. “I remember the day it happened. Sister Philomena … well, we were told not to call her that once she left so I’ll just call her Bernadette. Bernadette and I, we were good buddies. We loved watching Cary Grant movies and sipping hot chocolate together in the evenings!” Her smile faded. “I missed her for a very long time. I guess I still do. I hope she’s teaching. My goodness, that’s all that girl ever wanted to do. Bernadette was still learning the ropes, but we could all tell that someday, she’d have a sort of magic around her when she stood at the front of a classroom. These days…” Sister Veronica sighed, and the cross she wore around her neck rose and fell along with her chest. “Every time I walk into a classroom, I think of Bernadette. That’s a good legacy, don’t you think?”
With a cough, Jazz cleared the sudden lump in her throat. Still, it wasn’t easy to find her voice, or the words, and Nick must have known it.
“We’re sorry to tell you,” he said, “that Bernadette Quinn is dead.”
Sister Veronica’s eyes welled and she sniffled. “Poor dear.” She shook her head. “Poor, dear Bernadette. I’ll never—” Her voice broke, and from somewhere deep in the folds of her habit she pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her cheeks. “I’ll never be able to watch another Cary Grant movie without crying.”
They gave her a minute to compose herself, but delivering the news about Bernadette wasn’t the reason for their visit and Jazz knew they couldn’t leave Sister Veronica alone with her grief, not until they’d done what they’d come to do.
“Do you know why she left here?” Jazz asked the nun.
Sister Veronica bowed her head. “It wasn’t her choice.”
“We saw the letter,” Nick told her. “Sister Henry says she doesn’t remember the details. You were friends. Maybe you—”
Sister Veronica shook her head. “It was a hard time. I remember how she cried and cried, even before Sister Henry and the others delivered the news that she could no longer stay. It broke her heart.”
“What did she do?” Jazz wanted to know.
“Do?” With a shake of her shoulders, Sister Veronica pulled herself away from her memories. “She didn’t do anything. Not that I know of. I always just assumed…” Her mouth twisted. “I wonder why Sister Henry didn’t mention it. Before Bernadette left here, she was not well. She wasn’t eating. She wasn’t sleeping. She had always been so enthusiastic about wanting to teach, about life. And yet in those weeks, she was a different person. Quiet. Withdrawn. I tried to talk to her. Of course I did. She told me she was fine. Then she was told to leave and after that … well, Bernadette never spoke another word. Not to me. Not to anyone here. I tried to contact her once she was gone, but I never heard back. I’m sorry I can’t help you more than that. I always assumed she left because she was just too ill to stay on. I hope…” A bittersweet smile lit Sister Veronica’s face. “I pray she had some years of happiness.”