Ruby stopped in her tracks and stared at me. "Somebody tried to kill you!" she exclaimed.
Maggie frowned. "If the shots came from the cliff, it had to be one of the Townsends. That's their land."
"Wait a minute," I said. "Whoever it was, he wasn't aiming to kill me. The shots went all over the place."
"It could have been a warning," Maggie said.
"It wasn't a warning," I said. "It was an accident. Some idiot was up there with a new gun, not paying any attention to-"
"If it was a warning, the guy had to know who China is and why she's here," Ruby said.
"Stu Walters knows," Maggie said. "He could have told Carl Townsend."
"Hey, you guys," I protested. "Haven't you been listening? It was an accident."
But now I wasn't so sure. Even if I allowed for Maggie's anti-Townsend bias, I had to admit she might be right. Given the influence of the county political machine, the sheriff and the deputy might very well be in cahoots with one of the county commissioners. Which meant that Walters could have mentioned to Townsend that the abbess intended to bring in her own arson investigator. And if Townsend had anything to do with the fires-which I had to admit was also possible, even though everybody insisted it wasn't-he might have decided to warn me off.
Ruby was frowning at me. "What are you going to do?"
"Eat supper," I said. "And think about it."
Sophia emerged out of the twilight at the end of the path, like a ghost of the old ranch headquarters. I almost expected to see tooled leather saddles hung over the wooden porch rail and the heads of trophy bucks nailed to the walls. But if they had been there once, they were gone now. Maggie opened a wooden screen door and we stepped into a high-ceilinged entryway that smelled of old stonework, overlaid with the scent of the lemon polish that had been used on the large oak cabinets along the walls and the pine oil used on the tile floor. But what struck me most was the utter silence, a calm, weighty presence that was almost as physical as the walls themselves.
"Gosh, it's quiet in here!" Ruby said in an awed whisper. She looked up at a heavy wooden cross encircled by a wreath of rusty barbed wire that was decorated with orange-red pyracanthus berries.
"Of course it's quiet," Maggie said in a low voice. "It's a cloister." She lifted her eyes to the cross.
"Do I have to whisper?" Ruby whispered to me.
Maggie turned, smiling. "No," she said. "People talk at mealtimes."
Ruby and I followed Maggie down the silent hall, past a large laundry room and kitchen on one side and a community room on the other. We turned a corner.
"That's the main office," Maggie said, pointing to a closed door. "Someone is on duty there during business hours. That's where the phone is located, if you need it."
The refectory-already crowded with sisters-was at the end of the hall, a large, square, cheerful room, brightly lit, with undraped floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto a small, shady garden. It was furnished with wooden tables and chairs arranged in orderly rows. At one end stood another large table, on which the food-soup, bread, sandwich fillings, salad, and fruit-was laid out on a bright yellow cloth, buffet style. Although the women were older than most students, the scene reminded me of a college dining hall.
But as I glanced around, I saw that there seemed to be an invisible line drawn down the middle of the room. On one side, the tables were filled with women wearing jeans, slacks, and skirts, talking in low voices, laughing and smiling, their heads close together. The women on the other side-most of them older-wore navy skirts, white blouses, and the same short blue veil and white wimple Sister Olivia had worn. They ate with their eyes cast down, observing what Maggie called ' 'modesty of the eyes,'' and only a few were talking. If I'd needed a visual demonstration of the gulf between St. T's and St. Agatha's, diis was it.
We filled our plates, then went in search of Dominica. We found her at a table with Sister Miriam, a thin-faced woman with hair the color of autumn oak leaves and an intense, darting glance. As I sat down, I saw a look pass
between Maggie and Dominica. I thought I understood that look now, and the softening at the comers of Maggie's mouth when Dominica returned her smile. Love is love, wherever you find it. The trouble is that some kinds of love are hard to fit into our lives. The glance wasn't missed by Sister Miriam, either, who turned away, her face unreadable.
We were still getting settled when we were joined by Sister Rachel, who was short, plump, and all in a dither. Her nose and eyes were red and she seemed distraught, not so much over Perpetua's death, but over the fact that her body had been taken away.
"We have a very special ritual when a sister dies," she explained to Ruby and me. "Our infirmarian-that's Sister Rowena-washes our dead sister and dresses her. Then we carry her to the chapel and light the paschal candle and take turns reciting the Psalms. It's all very beautiful, very reassuring. To have poor Perpetua hauled off like a dead cow…" She shook her head, despairing. "It happened the same way with Mother Hilaria. So horrible! Where will all this end?"
"With a new abbess, unfortunately." The angularity of Miriam's face was matched by her thin voice. "Unless a miracle happens, we'll be voting before compline tomorrow."
"We should have prayed harder for Perpetua," Dominica muttered.
I seconded that. Maybe Perpetua couldn't have told me anything more than I already knew about the letter she'd received. On the other hand…
"There won't be an election tomorrow," Maggie said, buttering her roll.
"Oh, really?" Miriam asked dryly. "With Perpetua dead, the score is nineteen to twenty. Just in time, too. Olivia is getting tired of holding her breath."
Who would want to kill poor old Sister Perpetua? Miriam had just given me an answer to Maggie's rhetorical
question. But that was ridiculous. Nuns only killed other nuns in murder mysteries.
"I'm afraid Olivia will have to hold her breath a little longer," Maggie said. "There are still twenty votes for Ga-briella." Everybody was looking at her, but she didn't seem to notice. "I asked Mother Winifred if I could come back to St. T's, and she said yes. It's up to the Council of Sisters, of course, and Reverend Mother General has to agree, but Mother says there won't be a problem."
Miriam didn't look overjoyed. "Reverend Mother will jump on the idea like a duck on a Junebug," she said, "even if it does put Olivia on hold a while longer. The order needs every vocation it can get."
Ignoring Miriam, Dominica clasped her hands, her round face shining. "Oh, Margaret Mary, I'm so glad! I've missed you so much. We've all missed you!"
Ruby was gaping. "But what about your restaurant? You've put two years of work into it, Maggie, You can't just turn your back and walk away!"
"Why not?" Maggie's face was sober but her blue eyes were twinkling. "It's just a restaurant. No big deal." She patted Ruby's hand. "This is right for me, Ruby. I belong here."
Ruby subsided, muttering. She enjoys an occasional retreat, but she also loves her fun. She would find life in a monastery unutterably boring.
I searched Maggie's face for a hint to how she was feeling, but all I could see was her normal serene calm. Her announcement wasn't totally unexpected, of course. She'd been telegraphing it all day. I hoped she was coming back for the right reasons, but I had to wonder.
"I don't suppose you're doing this to keep Olivia from being elected," Miriam remarked. She was watching Maggie obliquely, and I wondered how much she knew about the relationship between Maggie and Dominica. She herself was linked with Dominica, at least in the poison-pen