Authors: Robert W. Walker
"That was some twenty years ago, and I was not here in 1984," she thoughtfully replied, "and those records will be difficult to access."
"But you have them?" asked Lucas.
"In the basement, yes. Along with anything and everything stored there since before my time here." She made a tsk-tsk noise with her dentures, her wrinkled face puckering. Lucas guessed her age at somewhere between sixty- nine and seven-five.
Mother Elizabeth then pressed the button on what appeared an ancient intercom system, spoke to her aide, Sister Audrey, and asked her to round up the six girls she had in mind. "Anyone else you know who may have had any dealings outside the gates in the past week, send them along as well, Sister Audrey, dear."
A voice like a clanging cowbell came back over the intercom, "But Mother Superior, that will disrupt a number of classes."
"Just arrange it, Sister."
"Right away, Mother Superior."
"Would you care for coffee and a roll while you wait?" asked Mother Elizabeth, pointing to an um beside which lay an array of pastries, cups, saucers, and napkins. "All prepared here on the premises. I have made the school here completely self-sufficient, save for a few necessities we require. You must stay long enough to inspect our gardens in the courtyard, our dining facilities, the sleeping quarters, and the classrooms. We teach all the subjects, including the arts, music, Latin, and Greek, but we also teach self- sufficiency—self-reliance as well as a reliance on God."
"I'm not sure we have that much time this trip out," said Meredyth, "but perhaps next visit."
From somewhere in one of the buildings, the sound of stringed instruments wafted up to them, muffled with the occasional strident chord.
"Detective," said Mother Elizabeth to Lucas, "do help yourself to coffee and a pastry, and I'll have mine with cream and a cinnamon roll. Dr. Sanger?"
"Just coffee, black, Lucas, thanks."
Lucas played host for the elderly nun and Meredyth as they continued to talk. "How good is your success rate for placing children, Mother Elizabeth?" asked Meredyth.
"We pride ourselves on an eighty-five-percent rate, but that does leave fifteen percent behind, but even these girls have a better start in life than they might otherwise have had. The ones who grow up here, once they reach eighteen years of age, can decide on remaining or going out into the world."
"Finally given choice, hey?" muttered Lucas from the coffee urn.
"At age twenty-one, I'm afraid we must push them from the nest altogether. Church policy."
"Then actually they have no choice at twenty-one, only at eighteen," Lucas replied, serving Elizabeth's coffee and roll, and drawing a disapproving look from Meredyth, whose eyes clearly reminded him of what she had warned— don't challenge the old girl.
"We'd like a list of young women who've left this year, both the twenty-one-year-olds and the eighteen-year-olds who've opted out," replied Meredyth. "Is that possible?"
"I'm quite sure Sister Audrey can provide you with both lists, yes, before you leave today. I suppose one of our graduates could be your courier. Much likelier than one of the girls you'll meet today."
Meredyth and Lucas exchanged a glance as he placed her hot coffee between the two women. He sat back down with his own coffee and roll, not hungry but forcing it down out of an attempt to keep Mother Elizabeth happy. As in Cherokee custom, it felt true here that an offering of food should not be turned down. That it was an insult to do so.
Mother Elizabeth thanked Lucas and added, "You must tell us what you think of the girls' cooking. The children do all the food preparation themselves."
Lucas sampled the offerings. "Delicious," he declared.
"Has this work ethic of raising crops, food preparation, and doing other in-house jobs always been in place here?" asked Meredyth.
"I'm afraid not. I began slowly making Our Lady work as a self-sufficient entity with the children being the principal workforce when I came here in 1994. It took some doing to move the chore list out of the hands of the sisters of the convent and into the hands of the children, I can tell you, but it has paid off handsomely for the well-being of all."
"It makes good sense to me," said Lucas. "Keep them busy. Idle hands...devil's playground, all that."
"I'm just guessing, but did you grow up on a reservation, Lieutenant? You are Native American, aren't you?"
"Yes to both questions," he replied.
"Then you know the importance of a self-sustaining village. The Church was at one time planning to close down Our Lady altogether, but miraculously and with a lot of determination and everyone's effort, we returned it to a viable and healthy institution."
"What you mean is that the orphanage was no longer losing money. Is that right?" asked Meredyth.
"We must operate under a budget like any other institution, yes."
"You're paid so much for each child you take in each year they remain with you, correct?"
"Correct."
"Then what incentive have you to find them homes?"
Lucas wondered when Meredyth had decided to challenge the matriarch of this fortress.
"The incentive of the heart, Dr. Sanger." Mother Elizabeth's eyes penetrated through Meredyth now like ice picks. "The cost-saving measures I have implemented here do not include sabotaging legitimate foster care and/or adoptions. We are still quite aggressive in finding suitable families for our girls, and I resent any implication to the contrary, Doctor. I'm not so sure you're not still with Child and Family Welfare, Doctor, sent here by that terrible woman, Allison Talmadge, who has, for a year now, attempted to have our license to act as an orphanage and adoption agency revoked."
"Trust me," Meredyth quickly said. "I have no ties to that agency any longer, and I don't know anyone named Talmadge."
"We're here strictly on a police matter," added Lucas, fearful the woman would invoke the name of her lawyer again.
"That Talmadge woman has sent spies here before, all of them anti-Catholic in their thinking."
"I'm sorry, Mother Superior, please," Meredyth said. "I really didn't mean to imply—"
"You asked what incentive we have to place our children. The incentive that has always been the very spirit of Our Lady of Miracles, to inspire the love of God and the trust in Him and hope in their young and innocent hearts. Certainly, we are not always successful, but I am extremely proud of our results, so your coming here like this in search of one of our children, who may have had a hand in this crime, either wittingly or unwittingly, well, it is unsettling to begin with, but I am not so old and brittle as to have no fight left in me, my dear doctor."
Lucas simply smiled and nodded to her, displaying his admiration for the elderly woman. She was a match for anyone. He couldn't help but like her.
"Please accept my apology if I've offen—"
Sister Elizabeth's phone rang, and she halted Meredyth with an upraised hand, and grabbed the phone with the other. She began to converse with someone at the other end. "Don't be taken in, dear. Listen to yourself. You know very well what to do. You're telling me, so tell the man! You will not accept pitted, wrinkled, ugly discards!"
Meredyth took this opportunity to lean into Lucas's ear and whisper, "Don't forget that the abductor had a woman working with him."
"And you think she could be a recent graduate from here?" asked Lucas.
"I don't know. Do you?"
"Ask her if she's had any recent vandalism or destruction of religious icons in the church."
Mother Elizabeth continued on the phone. "Be firm, Rachel, dear! You're in charge down there! It's your kitchen, and what happens if you bake with poor ingredients? Exactly." She hung up, a smile and a lilting shake of her head, and she explained, "Some neighborhood vendor trying to pawn off bad cherries and vegetables back of the kitchen. Rachel's twenty years old, and she's leaving us next year, but for now she's still in charge of our kitchen."
Lucas made a mental note, picturing the savvier girls as knowing a way off the grounds via the kitchen. If vendors came to that back door to barter, that door must swing both ways.
"So Rachel's one of your fifteen percent whom you could find no home for."
"Not I. She was sixteen when I arrived. You know the odds of placing a child of sixteen? Of course you do. Mother Orleans tried to place her, of course, but Rachel simply never worked out in any of the homes Orleans placed her in. I've read the poor child's history."
"She's spent her entire life here?" asked Lucas, standing now, staring out the window down on the rain-soaked courtyard.
"Not so bad really. Since age four when her parents were killed in a plane wreck, but she has learned skills and life lessons to carry her through. Still, she has a hard time saying no to people. We have little time left to work on it, but she'll get it if I have to brand it on her forehead."
Elizabeth's intercom buzzed into life. Sister Audrey's voice came over. "First of the girls is here, Mother Superior."
"Who is it, Sister?"
"Melanie Polk, Mother. Do you want me to send her in now?"
Sister Elizabeth held Sister Audrey in suspense for a moment, addressing Lucas and Meredyth instead. "I know this child is innocent, but I promised you all our trustworthies who go out into the community. Shall we go into my conference room?"
"Yes, let's," replied Meredyth, gathering up her coffee.
"Send the child round to the conference room hallway door, Sister Audrey. We'll speak to her there. And Sister, send for Rachel Wade too, when she can get free."
As they moved into the conference room, Lucas and Meredyth sitting beneath a painting of the Last Supper, Lucas asked, "Mother, has there been any vandalism or destruction of property done against the convent?"
"Nothing major... nothing we haven't been able to handle internally."
"Then there has been some?"
"The usual mischief one expects with children."
"Defaced paintings, statues?"
"Mustaches and spectacles from time to time. Nothing serious, although someone set a fire in the convent once, again before I came on here."
Lucas asked, "The convent...the residence rooms, sleeping quarters, all that?"
"Yes, it was a fire begun in a broom closet beside Mother Orleans's room—now my room. On damp days, I can still get a whiff of the charred walls.
"Again, I was not here during Orleans's stewardship of the convent, but they determined it was student smokers. The little darlings had found what they thought a good place to light up. Carelessness and youthful stupidity. I'm told a book of matches and some butts were found among soiled rags."
"Anyone charged or reprimanded?" asked Lucas.
"From what I understand, the mother superior handled their punishment, and it was severe."
"This girl Rachel...was she involved in the fire?" asked Meredyth.
"Yes, among others. Orleans got to the bottom of it, got hold of the ringleader."
"Rachel?"
"No, Rachel is a follower. It was her friend of the time, Lauralie."
"We'd like to talk to this Lauralie as well then," Meredyth said. "Whoever our girl is, she's got a bold streak in her."
"That would be Lauralie, but she's no longer here. Graduated in 2000...January, and has been out there on her own since. She dropped by from time to time at first, but she stopped coming by."
"And why did she stop coming by?" asked Meredyth.
"She would have to tell you that, but I'm afraid I have no current address or way to get hold of Lauralie. So...shall we begin the inquisition of my young ladies now?"
Meredyth caught a glint in the old girl's eye, and she realized now that Mother Elizabeth wanted to corner their quarry as well, if and when she could be identified.
Mother Elizabeth opened the door on the first young lady, the voices of others who'd begun to gather at the bench outside wafting into the conference room. "Do curb your tongues, ladies," she called out to those in the hallway. "This isn't an amusement. Claudia, let's begin with you."
A frightened young lady demurely entered, her big eyes curious about the visitors from the outside world. Her attention to Meredyth's clothes and jewelry seemed all- consuming, like a fire burning from within, dying to get out but held in check.
Lucas put himself in the girl's shoes, faced with a detective, a psychiatrist, and a mother superior asking questions of her. Either it would terrify some truths from her, or it would cause her to shut down and provide them with nothing. Lucas had interrogated hundreds of teens with criminal records or on the way to building one, but he'd never interrogated anyone with an austere nun perched in a corner, looking on vulture-fashion. He feared they would get nothing from the girls.
THEY HAD EXHAUSTED the afternoon in interviewing nine young women, ranging in age from a plump fifteen- year-old to a series of seventeen-soon-to-be-eighteen-year- olds, and three at nineteen and twenty, two of whom sounded less than eager to leave the convent, and one who appeared downright troubled at the prospect of leaving, and was weighing the wisdom of becoming a nun herself. "Possibly in order to stay cloistered here," Mother Elizabeth said of the girl after she'd gone. "Not a good enough reason to join the order."
All the young ladies exhibited good manners and respect for Elizabeth, even love, mixed in with fear of her. They all spoke highly of Mother Elizabeth and the programs she'd instituted at Our Lady of Miracles.
Their last interview was with Rachel from the kitchen. As with all the other girls, Rachel knew nothing about delivering a parcel to Lucas's house above Tebo's tavern. "I'd never go near no tavern, Mother Superior," she repeated.
"Please, Rachel, dear, say any tavern, not no tavern," admonished Mother Elizabeth. "We do not never speak in no double negatives... not around here," she explained to the adults, making Lucas frown.
Meredyth quickly asked the girl, "Rachel, do you know how we could get in touch with your friend Lauralie who's left the home? Lauralie?"
"I dunno where she is. I swear I lost touch. We stopped being friends like way before she left."