Sisters of Mercy by Tim McGregor

Author:Tim McGregor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tim McGregor
Published: 2017-05-10T16:44:42+00:00

Chapter 17

BILLIE DROVE, RELISHING the way the Charger handled the winding curves of the curiously named Snake Road. She could get used to driving this car, so unlike the battered, temperamental vehicles she was used to. Mockler sat in the passenger bucket, eyes on the passing foliage.

“Are you hating this?” she asked, glancing at him quickly. The road had too many curves to take her eyes from it for too long. “Being chauffeured?”

“I hate this,” he grumbled, lifting his right foot. The one with the freshest wound. He was wearing his running shoes, with the laces loosened. “Feels odd, though. Sitting in the passenger seat.”

Slowing the car, Billie turned off the road onto a long driveway. The Notre Dame Motherhouse, as it was known, rose up from the pine trees as they turned into the long driveway. A massive villa of off-white limestone with a grand portico and a tall sandstone cross peaked on the main building. Behind it a few clouds dotting an overly blue sky. A grand oasis of sorts, hemmed on all sides by the greenery of fir and oak.

“Maybe we should have called first,” Billie said, rolling past the grand entrance to an empty parking space. “To arrange a meeting.”

“Better this way,” he said. “It’s too easy to say no over the phone. Not so easy when someone’s on your doorstep.”

She retrieved the crutches from the backseat and came around the passenger side. His jaw clenched as he propped himself up, trying to hide the pain. Billie had initially wanted to come alone. With both feet injured, it was tortuous for him to amble more than a few feet, even with the crutches. But he ruled that out. The nun could dismiss a civilian like Billie, but not a police officer.

“She might be happy to have some visitors,” Billie said. “How old is she now?”

“Mid-sixties, I think,” he said, trying to remember the details he’d received from the clerk’s office. According to the information provided to him, Sister Pauline had relocated to the Notre Dame Motherhouse twelve years ago after working overseas for two decades. Close to retirement age now.

Gripping the crutches tight, he looked at Billie. “Do nuns retire?”

“I have no idea,” she replied, holding the door for him.

The reception desk was brightly lit from a bank of tall windows facing the east. A woman in glasses sat behind a long counter of blond polished wood. She looked up from her desk with some surprise at seeing a young couple, one clunking the floor with crutches. Her surprise deepened when they asked to speak to Sister Pauline Keller.

“Sister Pauline?” The woman rose, adjusting her glasses. “Are you family?”

“No,” Billie said. “We just wanted to have a chat with her. About the orphanage she used to work at.”

“We’re doing some research on the place,” Mockler added. “The history of it.”

Satisfied with that, the woman asked them to take a seat while she went off down a long corridor to the left.

“You okay?” Billie asked, watching him ease down onto the bench.

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