I nodded. Nuns lied, I was sure, but only if they thought they were doing it for God.

“Anything else you want to know?” Cordelia asked.

A lot of things. Few of them pertinent to this case.

“Why me?”

She sat up straight, perhaps taken aback at my question. I couldn’t be sure.

“Why hire me for this job?” I persisted.

“Well…Joanne…I talked to both Joanne and Danny. They said you were good. Also…I felt a woman nosing around would be better than a man. Those letters…the women might not discuss them with a man. A stranger.” She coughed. “And…I trust you,” she finished, turning her head, so she wasn’t looking directly at me. “Enough reasons?”

“Enough,” I replied. “When do I start?”

“Tomorrow. If you want.”

We looked at each other across her desk. I wanted.

There was a knock on the door.

“Dr. James?” It was Nurse Whatever-Her-Name-Was.

“Come in, Betty,” Cordelia answered.

“Everything’s finished and I’m taking off now,” Betty said, standing in the door.

“Great. Thanks a lot,” Cordelia answered. “Betty, this is Michele Knight, a private investigator who’s been hired to look into those letters and phone calls.”

I stood up and extended a hand.

“Betty Peterson,” Nurse Betty supplied, shaking my hand somewhat hesitantly. She wasn’t accustomed to shaking hands with women, it seemed. “How do you do?” she politely added.

“I’m going to be around tomorrow. Can we talk sometime, at your convenience?” I asked, getting down to business. She looked tired.

“Ah, yes, I think I can,” she replied. “I’ll see you then. Good night, Cordelia. See you tomorrow.”

Betty Peterson left. Cordelia had gotten up and was getting ready to leave, too.

“Oh, here,” she said, taking something out of her purse. She handed me a check. “A retainer.”

“You didn’t ask my fee.”

“I know what you’re worth,” she answered, ushering me out of her office. She turned off the light, then locked the door. “I’m meeting Alex for dinner. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you joined us,” Cordelia said as we walked out into the main hallway.

I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t even be sure that Joanne hadn’t told Alex about our sleeping together. But I could be sure that I didn’t want to spend the evening being polite and uncomfortable with Alex. Even though it meant giving up dinner with Cordelia.

“I can’t tonight,” I lied, as we walked down the hall. “But maybe…” Then I stopped. Sister Ann was reentering the building, but it wasn’t her presence that silenced me. It was the woman with her. My Aunt Greta. Here. And no way to avoid her.

“Working late as usual, Dr. James?” Sister Ann called to Cordelia, as she unlocked her office door.

It was not possible that Aunt Greta would not recognize me. She still looked the same, the same dry and humorless expression carved on her face, lips ever-so-slightly turned down, as if continually prepared for a frown. Her hair was a dusty brown, rid of all the gray I remembered from the years I had lived with her.

“Of course,” I heard Cordelia answer. “People don’t get sick on a nine-to-five schedule.”

Aunt Greta’s lips curled downward into a full frown and her eyes narrowed disgustedly. She had seen me.

“Sister Ann,” Cordelia was continuing. “I’d like you to meet Michele Knight. She’s a private investigator who’s going to be looking into some threatening letters we’ve received.”

“How do you do?” Sister Ann said politely to me. She reached out her hand to shake mine.

Aunt Greta looked like she had just discovered a three-day-old tampon dropped over the Christmas turkey. She broke in, “Michele, how odd to find you here.”

“You know each other?” Cordelia asked.

“My Aunt Greta,” I answered tersely.

“I’m not really an aunt,” she replied. “You see, we are not actually related. Michele was born, well…without the benefit of marriage. Claude’s brother LeMoyne took her in. He was a very kind man. Of course, after he died, we took over the care of her,” Aunt Greta explained.

“I am not illegitimate,” I irrationally defended. It wasn’t so much a reply to Aunt Greta as an explanation to Cordelia and Sister Ann.

Aunt Greta didn’t change her expression, her smile still rigidly in place. “A mark of LeMoyne’s kindness that he did marry your mother. Of course, that fooled no one. He wasn’t your real father,” Aunt Greta patiently explained, then turned her head ever so slightly, indicating that this conversation was over.

“He was my real father,” I answered. “He cared for me and loved me. That’s more real to me than just blood.”

“Now is not the time to get into our family history,” Aunt Greta responded primly.

“You should have thought of that before you called me illegitimate,” I answered churlishly.

“Some things demand an explanation,” Aunt Greta told me.

I didn’t answer. My father, the man I considered my father, had always let people assume that I was his child. Once, when someone had pointedly commented on how different we looked, he had replied, “Yeah, I’m real lucky. I don’t know how a freckled, pasty-faced, balding guy like me got a beautiful brown-eyed, curly-headed kid like Micky. Particularly with all those Sundays I spent fishing.” To me he simply said, “I love you. I consider you my child.” I began asking questions as I got older, prompted by Bayard taunting me, telling me, “We could get married, we’re not real cousins.”

Aunt Greta made sure I knew the truth about my background. At first I thought she did it to hurt me, shame me. Only later did I realize that she had to let people know I was not really related because she didn’t want anyone to think that someone “as dark” as I was shared her heritage. Aunt Greta never said it, but Bayard had more than once called me “half-a-nigger.”

“You know, Michele,” Aunt Greta continued, “I heard you spent Christmas with Charles and Lottie. I don’t know why you didn’t come by our house. You know you’re always welcome.”

“I spent last Christmas with Torbin. We only dropped by his parents’ briefly,” I explained, then wondered why I bothered answering her. Perhaps because she had done a good job of training me to answer her.

“Oh, yes, Torbin. How is Torbin? We don’t see much of him these days,” Aunt Greta inquired.

“Torbin’s fine.” Torbin had saved me from being the family scandal. He made it a point to send out flyers to his shows to the entire family. As he said, “I’ve flunked demure and discrete. But magna cum laude in outrageous is mine.”

“Fine? Or still the same?” Aunt Greta got her barb in, then continued, “My nephew Torbin is rather flashy. He’s an actor,” she explained to Cordelia and Sister Ann.

“He’s a drag star in the French Quarter,” I elaborated.

“Michele,” Aunt Greta chided me.

“Well, he is.” Torbin wouldn’t appreciate Aunt Greta stuffing him in the closet.

“I’ve met Torbin,” Cordelia said.

Aunt Greta gave her a quick look, then said to me, “Well, I’m glad Torbin’s fine, but I don’t think we need to flaunt his odd behavior.”

“Why? Because you really are related to him?” I retorted, suddenly tired of the polite dance we were engaged in.

Cordelia put her hand gently on my shoulder to restrain me. But I was beyond restraint.

“Michele! That was uncalled for,” Aunt Greta reprimanded me.

“Pardon me, I’m just the bastard cousin. Don’t got no manners,” I retorted. I briefly wondered what Cordelia and Sister Ann thought as they witnessed us, the hard, bitter intimacy that years of living together had ground in.

“Sister,” Aunt Greta said, turning away from me, “raising this child was a trial.” She was using the tone of voice that I’d learned to despise, sweet, rational, lowered so she could talk about me and pretend I couldn’t hear it. As if I weren’t there at all.

I knew I had to get away from her, from her unctuously insinuating voice. I muttered a good-bye as I spun away and stalked out of the building as quickly as I could. I felt like running, but I wasn’t going to give Aunt Greta the satisfaction.

What did you think, I wondered as I walked across the parking lot to my car, that she was going to apologize and admit she’d been unkind to you? She’s beaten you just now, by causing you to lose your temper, to act like the kind of person she said you were.

“Micky. Are you okay?” Cordelia called from behind me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled as she caught up.

“No, I’m sorry. I had no idea…”

“I shouldn’t have let her get to me.”

“You weren’t prepared to see her here,” Cordelia said.

“Still…after all this time, they shouldn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she gently replied.

“It should. Some day you should be able to stop dragging all your past around with you.”

“I know. I wish…I’m sorry this happened. And I’m even sorrier that…about the things that happened to you.”

“Not much, if you believe Aunt Greta’s version,” I remarked bitterly, knowing that most people would believe her. Pillar of the church versus promiscuous lesbian.

“I believe you,” Cordelia said firmly. She put her hand on my shoulder.

“Better be careful. They’re probably watching.” The parking lot was on Sister Ann’s side of the building.

“So?” Cordelia didn’t move her hand.

“Thanks.”

“Sure you don’t want dinner?”

“Lost my appetite,” I answered. “But thanks anyway. Maybe some other time.”

“Will you be okay?”

“I lived eight years with her. Ten minutes more hardly matters.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, I’ll be okay. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I replied. “Enjoy dinner.” I unlocked my car door.

She leaned forward and brushed her lips against my cheek. Then she turned and walked across the lot to where her car was parked.

I got in my car. I wondered if Aunt Greta and Sister Ann had been watching. I hoped Cordelia wouldn’t end up regretting standing by me.

I pulled out, not wanting them to think I was waiting for her. But I stayed at the exit until I saw Cordelia get safely into her car and start it. I waved, unsure if she would see it, then drove away.

Chapter 8

I arrived at the clinic around eight thirty, hoping to get there before it got too busy. But the waiting room was already packed. I decided that, until told otherwise, I had been given carte blanche to investigate this however I saw fit. I started by wandering around the building.

The building did indeed appear to be split down the middle according to use—Catholics on the west side, godless Commies on the east, with the hallway as DMZ or purgatory, depending on your outlook.

There were stairs at either end of the building. I climbed the nearest one. There had been little renovation up here. The classrooms were still definitely classrooms, complete with original graffiti. Some of the rooms had chairs left in an empty circle or scribbling on the blackboards, attesting to fairly recent use. I walked through all the rooms—only one had had any work done on it, the paint scraped; the other rooms remained peeled and blistered, institution green curling back to reveal a duller shade of institutional green.

I looked out one of the windows. This was the clinic side. It overlooked a scruffy lawn that was bordered with a wrought iron fence, then a broad, but cracked and broken sidewalk and the street. The wrought iron, a ragged army of spears, some missing their points, was embedded in a low stone wall, making the whole fence about eight feet tall. When it had been in its prime, freshly painted and scrubbed, the fence had probably been effective at keeping the world out of this school. Or the students in. But now it ended abruptly in the middle of the block. Whatever had completed it, either going farther down the street, or turning ninety degrees to enclose, was gone. The street beyond the fence was a slow side street, leading into the busier avenue that the front door opened onto.

I crossed the building to the window opposite. This side overlooked the parking lot. The white lines that used to order the cars were worn into illegibility. Beyond the lot, a few trees, one a stately oak, proud and defiant next to the shopworn asphalt, then a vacant lot.

“Can I help you?”

I turned to look. Sister Ann.

“No, as I’m sure my Aunt Greta has told you, I’m beyond help.”

“No one is beyond help. I heard footsteps over my head and came up to see who was here,” she explained.

“Have you gotten any strange letters?” I asked. I didn’t want to argue my state of helplessness.

“Me? No,” she replied. “What are you doing up here?”

“Me? Looking.” One terse answer deserved another. “Anyone on your staff? Any threatening phone calls?” I persisted.

She looked at me for a moment, as if making a decision.

“I’m not sure,” she finally said.

“Not sure?” I pushed.

“Nothing’s been said. Not that Sister Fatima would. But…I think it was last week. I saw her open a letter, her face turned white and she hastily threw it into a trash can. Could that be one of your letters?”

“Where is Sister Fatima now? Will she talk to me?”

“I doubt it. She didn’t talk to me. Sister Fatima is in her seventies and, bless her, lives in a more genteel age.”