Rueful Death Read Online Free Page A

the dispute been settled yet?" I asked. Estate claims are often appealed from one court to another, dragging on for ten or twenty years. "Last April, finally. The money's coming in now." Maggie's face grew somber. "Unfortunately, Mother Hi-laria didn't five to see it. She died in September. She was… electrocuted."
    Ruby gave a startled cry. I shuddered. "How did it happen?" "She was making coffee on the hot plate in her cottage. She spilled milk on the floor and apparently stepped in it when she switched off the hot plate. Even so, the jolt wouldn't have been enough to kill her if it hadn't been for her bad heart."
    "Mother Winifred-the woman I spoke with on the phone-is the new abbess, then," I said.
    "Yes. By the way, she's the one who's responsible for the monastery's herb garden. Not the garlic farm-that's somebody else. Mother Winifred grows all kinds of herbs. She's looking forward to showing you the garden."
    "I'm surprised that an abbess has time for gardening," Ruby remarked. She pulled out to pass a tractor pulling a wagon loaded with baled hay. A dog was perched on top of the bales, surveying the road ahead.
    "I'm surprised too," I said. "Especially an abbess with seven million dollars to manage-plus whatever the legacy has earned since it was invested. The principle must have doubled since then." Fourteen or fifteen million dollars, maybe more, depending on the savvy of the monastery's financial advisers.
    "I don't think Mother Winifred has much to do with finances," Maggie said. "The bank manages the trust. Anyway, she's only acting. Last spring, you see, there was another complication. A surprise, actually, and not altogether pleasant." Her voice darkened. "The Sisters of the Holy Heart has eight or ten communities, scattered around the country. The day after the court decision was announced, the Reverend Mother General closed the community in Houston, St. Agatha's. Three months later, she sent a bus and some trucks and moved the St. Agatha sisters to St. T's."
    "Closed the community?" I turned to look at Maggie. "Why?"
    Maggie looked out of the window. "It's the way things are these days, I'm afraid. The Holy Heart Sisters have been losing vocations, like a lot of other orders. When I came to St. T's ten years ago, there were thirty-five sisters. Now they're down to twenty. But the situation at St. Agatha's was worse-down from sixty-something to twenty. The St. Agatha property was valuable because it was close to the airport. So Reverend Mother General sold it and packed the nuns off to St. T's."
    The sun had given up and let the clouds take over, and the windows were beginning to steam up, a sure sign that the temperature outside was dropping. I pulled my denim jacket tighter around me and wondered whether I should have brought mittens and a scarf. "How do the St. Agatha nuns feel about garlic?"
    Maggie's laugh was wry. "I haven't visited the monastery since they moved in, but Dominica-one of my friends at St. T's-tells me that they're definitely not happy campers. St. Agatha's was a conference center. The nuns were used to seeing important people and being on the fringes of important decisions."
    "And St. T's is on the fringe of nowhere," I said. It must have been quite a comedown, from serving church bigshots in a conference center to digging in a garlic patch. The sisters must be terribly hurt and resentful about having been moved.
    Maggie was going on, her tone reflective. "The groups have different spiritual practices, too. When I lived at St.
    T's, Mother Hilaria encouraged us to design our own Rule, write our own liturgy, choose our own dress. St. Agatha's was the most conservative house in the order. The sisters still wear a modified habit and a veil, and they held Chapter of Faults until they moved to St. T's." She shook her head. "This was not a marriage made in heaven."
    Ruby glanced curiously at Maggie in the rearview mirror. "What's a Chapter of Faults?"
    "A meeting where the nuns accuse