And Then There Were Nuns Read online

  “Old and fabulous and still a work in progress,” I told Sister Mary Jean, who’d already reached for one of the bags of food and hefted it up in her arms. “From what I’ve heard, the kitchen isn’t exactly up to snuff. That’s why Elias asked me to help with the food.” I didn’t add that the original plan was for me—or more likely, Meg, who helped with cooking for my guests—to prepare the meals and for Elias to come get the food every day and take it back to the center. That had changed when Elias went to the mainland. Now I’d need to schlepp the meals up to the center, but there was no use mentioning that and making the nuns feel guilty.

  “Actually, I’ve been looking forward to checking out the house,” I admitted instead. “Everyone says it’s amazing, and when Mr. Findley lived there, no one was allowed near it.”

  “Oooh!” Sister Mary Jean shivered. “Sounds like something out of a gothic novel. I can’t wait. You don’t suppose it’s haunted, do you?”

  Sister Liliosa laughed and picked up the other bag of salads. “If it is, I think we can handle it, right?”

  Sister Mary Jean nodded.

  Sister Margaret, her eyes wide and her steps shuffling, mumbled something about extra prayers and angels.

  Sister Gabriel didn’t say a thing. In fact, when she followed the other Sisters toward the door and I stepped up behind her, she flinched and shot a look over her shoulder. Like she just remembered I was there, she offered a thin smile.

  “No worries,” I told her. “I’m not much for ghost stories, either.”

  “Things that go bump in the night?” From out on the front porch, Sister Liliosa’s silvery laugh flowed through the house on the tail of a spring breeze. “There are ten of us at this retreat, remember. And if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s never bet against ten nuns.”

  I stepped out onto the front porch just as Sister Liliosa stepped back to allow the other nuns to go down the steps ahead of her, and I would have followed right along if I didn’t stop to shoot a dirty look at Jerry Garcia. Jerry? He’s the cat that lives next door and loves to lounge (and do other less sanitary things) on my front porch. I glared at Jerry. Completely unconcerned and ever unrepentant, Jerry tossed his head and went right on doing his cat thing.

  The momentary pause gave Sister Liliosa a chance to step in front of me. Her grin melted. “I hope you’ll convey our apologies to that handsome young man who left here in such a hurry when we arrived,” she said. “I’m sorry if we interrupted anything.”

  My jaw had already dropped when she gave me a wink and allowed her gaze to slip to my feet.

  “He has your head in such a whirl, you’re leaving the house in your bunny slippers.”

  * * *

  It took me a couple of minutes to race back in the house and find my sneakers and put them on and a couple minutes after that—my SUV chockablock with nuns—we had already cruised to the other side of the island and were closing in on the retreat center.

  This is not as much of a big deal as it sounds. South Bass Island, three miles from the northern shore of Ohio, is a scant four miles long and only a mile and a half wide. Bea & Bees, the inn I’d owned and operated for the last year, is just about in the center of the island, near to a downtown that bustles in the summer season and a harbor that teems with fishing and pleasure boats, parasailers and fun-in-the-sun types of every ilk. What used to be known as Findley House and was now Water’s Edge was located on the western shore of the island not far from a place called Stone Cove Beach.

  During the busy summer season, golf carts zipped up and down island roads along with vans and vacationers’ cars, but at this time of year when the cottagers were just starting to think about opening their homes for the summer, things were still pretty quiet. As I navigated my way to the retreat center, I had a chance to appreciate the beauty of the island waking from its dreary winter doldrums and bursting into bloom. Yellow forsythia bushes brightened the landscape along with daffodils here and there that, just like mine, were just beginning to pop. I reminded myself to enjoy the peace and quiet while I could. Soon enough, the slow pace of off-season island life would quicken to the calypso beat of summer.

  In the year I’d lived on South Bass, my curiosity had been piqued each time I’d driven by what used to be the Findley House. But then, the house and the man who’d once owned it had given rise to a thousand island legends that claimed everything from the fact that Findley was once a big-time mobster who was hiding out from his old associates to the belief that he had come to the island and locked himself away after a doomed love affair. I didn’t know if any of the stories were true, but I did know that the setting was perfect for igniting any number of dark-and-stormy fantasies, from the windswept bluff overlooking the lake on which the house was built to the thick stand of trees that surrounded it so that even in winter when their branches were bare, it was nearly impossible to see more of the house than a glimpse of the slate roof and tall chimneys.

  The entire property was surrounded by a tall iron fence, and I’d been told that when its owner was still in residence, the gates across the driveway had always been shut—and locked. Even my closest island friends, Chandra Morrisey, Kate Wilder, and Luella Zak—the other members of the book discussion group we called the League of Literary Ladies who had lived on South Bass all their lives—had never been inside the house. Now, I had a chance to get a first look and I confess, when I made the right turn from Catawba onto Niagara, my heartbeat quickened when the property came into view.

  “Is this it? The place with the wrought-iron fence?” Sister Mary Jean was in the backseat and she leaned forward to peer out of the windshield. “When I said it sounded gothic, I never expected Dracula’s castle.”

  Today, the gates were wide open and there was a new sign to the right of them that glimmered in the morning sunshine. It had a soothing blue background and gold lettering that said, “Water’s Edge Center for Spirit and Renewal,” and was crowned with an orange sun.

  “That doesn’t look scary at all,” Sister Liliosa commented. “It’s lovely. In fact . . .”

  When we snaked up the driveway and rounded the last thicket of trees that kept the house from view, her words dissolved in a little hiccup of surprise.

  As it turned out, Dracula would have felt right at home.

  Water’s Edge was Gothic Revival to the max, a hulking mansion built from blocks of stone that over the years, had weathered to the menacing gray color of a thundercloud. The house was three stories high and there was a tower at one end of it and leaded glass windows everywhere that winked in the morning sun like watchful eyes. Pointed arches, gingerbread tracery, a steep-pitched roof. Water’s Edge had it all, including, at the back of the house, that stony bluff I’d heard so much about with its killer view of Lake Erie and stone steps leading down to a strip of rocky private beach.

  We rolled up the circular drive, and I parked the SUV next to three golf carts piled with luggage, and no sooner was Sister Liliosa out of the car than the front door opened and six more nuns poured out of the house to greet the new arrivals. None of them was dressed as traditionally as the nuns who’d appeared at the B and B that morning. In fact, two of them wore short gray dresses and veils; the rest were in street clothes.

  I stepped back and skirted the group so I could take the salads inside. The entryway just inside the front door was a massive room paneled with dark wood that smelled like years of history and lemon furniture polish, and I took a chance and followed the hallway beyond it past a dining room with views of the water and on to the kitchen where I stowed everything in a brand-new refrigerator.

  It was the only thing in the kitchen that didn’t look as old as the house, and with a glance at the massive old stove and another at the dripping kitchen sink faucet, I understood why Elias had asked for help with the cooking. Water’s Edge was, indeed, a work in progress, but one quick look at the plans that had been left out on the counte
r under the windows that lined the far wall and I could tell that when it was done, it would not only be modern and utilitarian, but lovely as well. Elias planned a breakfast nook, a door that led out to the patio outside the dining room, and even space devoted to what must surely be the luxuries of retreat life: latte machine, bagel slicer and toaster, waffle maker.

  For now, though, I would be forced to work within the confines of what was here, not what Elias had planned. Already convinced that whatever I’d bring for dinner would be individually packaged like the salads to allow for easier cleanup and taking it home for washing, I stepped back into the hallway just as the ten nuns streamed back inside, hauling suitcases and heading up the hand-carved mahogany staircase to the rooms that had been assigned to them for the week.

  “Oh, this is going to be just wonderful,” I heard one of them say. “The perfect week of prayer and reflection.”

  “Not to mention a little relaxation,” another one of them commented.

  “And if it warms up a little,” someone else called out from the top of the stairs, “I’d like to catch a few rays out on the patio.”

  The rest of the nuns laughed and before I knew it, I found myself joining in.

  Too bad my smile didn’t last.

  But then, it wasn’t like I could help it.

  Like everyone else, I froze when we heard a voice call out from one of the bedrooms.

  “No! Oh, no!”

  2

  I was the closest to the stairs and I took the steps two at a time not only because I was curious, but because the way I figured it, it made more sense for me to check out the cause of the scared, wavering voice than it did for a whole bunch of nuns to. After all, I’d had some experience handling bad situations. There was the Chinese restaurant owner who’d been killed on the island just about a year before, whose body I’d found behind his front takeaway counter. And the handyman who’d been poisoned in Levi’s Bar and the ghost hunter who was searching for our local headless ghost, and—

  I told my imagination to shut down and the little panicky voice inside me to shut up.

  Just because I’d been involved in a few murder investigations during my time on the island did not mean there were more to come. I was in a retreat center full of nuns, for heaven’s sake, and nothing could be more benign than that.

  This was all good advice, but it did nothing to calm the blood that was pulsing through my veins like a jackhammer by the time I made it to the wide landing at the top of the steps. There, I stopped for a second to catch my breath just as a couple of the nuns scampered up the stairs behind me. Up here at a wall of windows that looked out over the just-turning-green property that was all a part of Water’s Edge, the hallway split in two, one portion of it on either side of the wide staircase. To my right—the back of the house—I found a nun in a short gray habit standing outside an open bedroom door, her suitcase on the floor next to her and her mouth hanging open.

  “No,” she said, and she probably wasn’t talking any louder than she had been when we heard her in the foyer. The ceilings at Water’s Edge were twenty feet high, and the wood-paneled walls were perfect for projecting and echoing sound. The Sister shook her head. “No, no, no.”

  I wasn’t sure what was going on, but since I was Elias’s surrogate of a sort, I felt responsible. I stepped up beside the nun.

  “Can I help you, Sister?”

  She turned wide, moist eyes my way. “I’m sorry to be such a bother. I’m—”

  I put out a hand, the better to try to calm her and to relieve what was obviously a combination of terror and embarrassment. “I’m Bea and I’m helping out this week. What can I do for you?”

  Color rushed into her cheeks. This nun was probably in her mid-forties and just a bit taller than me. Her veil was the same mouse gray as her habit, and like elderly Sister Margaret’s, it was short and simple and anchored to her rusty-colored hair with bobby pins. She stared at my outstretched hand for a long time before she flinched and stuck out her own clammy hand.

  “Sister Sheila Buckwald,” she said. “From the convent of . . . of the Sisters of the Holy Spirit in . . . in Chicago. I need to settle into my room and . . .” She swallowed hard and licked her lips.

  I leaned forward so I could look where she was looking and peeked into the room. It was wide and spacious and included a bed, a desk, a couch with a reading lamp next to it and a coffee table in front of it, and its own private bath. There was a window seat built into the far wall made of the same rich, dark wood that lined the walls of the foyer downstairs and it was topped with leaded glass windows in diamond panes. Beyond the glass was a million-dollar view, a wide swath of blue lake as far as the eye could see.

  Sure, the kitchen of Water’s Edge was something of a fright, but if this was what each of the private suites was like, I could see nothing to complain about.

  “Do you have a problem with your room?” I asked her.

  “No. It’s lovely. It’s just that—”

  “I could switch with you, Sister Sheila.” One of the nuns who’d followed me up the stairs stepped up beside me. She, too, was wearing a short gray habit, but her veil was white instead of gray. Blond hair peeked from the edge of her veil and she had wide blue eyes and a broad, friendly face. She had the same rounded pear shape as Sister Sheila and was about the same height. “I’m Sister Catherine,” she told Sheila. “You remember, we talked on the ferry.”

  Some of the panic drained from Sister Sheila’s eyes and for a second, the look of terror on her face was replaced with a smile. “Of course.” Her smile vanished in a wave of memory. “You sat next to me and you . . . you brought me a cup of tea.”

  “And I just put on the kettle downstairs.” Sister Catherine wound an arm through Sheila’s. “I thought maybe you’d like another cup and I know I’m dying for one. Until then . . .” Sister Catherine made a face. “I just put my suitcase in my room over there.” She glanced to the other side of the stairs and the rooms that looked out over the front of the house. “The light isn’t as good in that room as it is back here and my eyes . . . Well . . .” Just like I had, she peeked into Sister Sheila’s room. “Any chance I could talk you into switching?” she asked.

  As if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders, Sister Sheila released a long breath of relief. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “You’d be doing me a favor,” Sister Catherine told her and she went to retrieve her suitcase at the same time Sister Sheila picked up hers. The way she hightailed it across the hallway, I couldn’t help but think she wanted to get installed in the other room before Sister Catherine changed her mind.

  “Well, what do you suppose that was all about?” I hadn’t realized there was another nun around until I looked to my right and saw a middle-aged woman in jeans and a red sweater with a tiny gold crucifix pinned to it. She watched Sister Sheila’s every move. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. With Sister Sheila, it’s always more of the same.”

  We stepped back out of the way when Sister Catherine went into what was now her room and closed the door behind her. “The same? Elias Weatherly told me the nuns who were coming here this week didn’t know each other.”

  The nun in the red sweater twitched her shoulders and gave me a smile. Her hair was cut fashionably short and shaggy and was the wonderful sort of true silver some women are blessed with. It glimmered in the stream of light that flowed in from the windows at the top of the steps.

  “We don’t,” she told me. “Well, most of us don’t, anyway. Most of us never met until a few months ago. We were all invited to New York, you see, to receive grants from a philanthropic foundation for the work we do. There was even a fancy dinner where we were honored. We’re from all different parts of the country and we never saw each other again until this morning at the ferry. But Sister Sheila . . .” She shot a look across the hallway and Sister Sheila’s now-closed bedro
om door. “Our paths have crossed a time or two over the years. I’m Sister Helene McMurty, and I’m involved in music ministry. So is Sister Sheila.”

  “Are all the nuns here musicians?”

  Sister Helene laughed. “Oh, no! We each have a different charism. Charism, that’s sort of the same as spiritual orientation. For instance, some nuns, like Sister Sheila and myself, are involved in music, though her calling is song and mine is dance worship. Sister Catherine Lang whom you just met, she runs a center for homeless women in Philadelphia, Sister Liliosa develops curriculum for schools that encourages nonviolence and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Sister Grace Donovan . . . I don’t know if you’ve met her yet, she’s wearing an orange sweatshirt . . . she works with death row convicts, and Sister Paul drives an old school bus around Los Angeles to teach English as a second language to immigrant children. Charism. Each of us has a different charism.”

  “But you’re all here together for the week.”

  Sister Helene nodded. “And it’s going to be wonderful! Richard Ward Parker is going to be conducting the retreat. Ever hear of him?”

  When I shook my head, she went right on. “Fabulous speaker. At least from what I’ve seen online. Truly inspirational, even if he is a Unitarian!” There was a twinkle in Sister Helene’s eyes that told me she didn’t hold this against Richard Ward Parker. “He’s written a few truly incredible books that I’ve enjoyed. It’s quite a treat to have a chance to meet him. It should be a wonderful week.”

  “So you’re all from different cities and you all do different things.” I thought this over for a second. “So how did you all get invited to this particular retreat?”