“Maybe it was one of the cleaning staff then,” Meera said.
“It doesn’t look like hot chocolate to me,” one of the girls said.
“I think somebody threw up,” said another one.
Meera put a hand against a desk to steady herself. “Call maintenance and get it cleaned up,” she said. “We can’t stand around staring at it all day. Tell them they’re probably going to need some carpet shampoo.”
“Yes, Miss Agerwal.”
“Yes, Miss Agerwal.”
“Yes, Miss Agerwal.”
Meera went back into her office and shut the door behind her.
Now that she wasn’t staring at the thing, the regular sick was coming back. She felt shaky and unsure of her ability to stand. That might be the flu. She went to her desk and sat down again. The computer was up and running. She got on the Internet and typed in the web address of the only local news station she could think of.
She didn’t know if she should call Cary Alder about this, or not.
2
There were times when Sister Margaret Mary longed for the days before the convent reforms of Vatican II—even though she hadn’t been alive back then, and even though she didn’t think she could have survived in a wimple. In the old days, the convent had been a threshold. No newspapers or magazines had crossed its threshold. Radios and televisions existed, but hidden away out of sight except for emergencies. The Maryknolls were considered very progressive because they had allowed their sisters to listen to FDR’s fireside chats. A very old nun who had been at the motherhouse when Margaret Mary was a novice had told the story of being a novice herself on the day the mother superior had appeared in recreation with a television set and they had all sat down to listen to the news of the Kennedy assassination.
These days you had to work very hard to keep a lid on all the media, but there was no way to avoid it entirely. Sister Margaret Mary did what she could by insisting that no sister look at anything until after morning Mass, and no sister spend more than half an hour a day on the Internet. Sisters had to spend more time than that on computers, of course. Here, like everywhere else, everything was done on computers. Grades. Papers. Forms to be filled out and sent to the archdiocese and the superintendent of schools and the health department. It saved paper and storage space, but it gave Sister Margaret Mary eyestrain.
Sister Margaret Mary was polishing the brass candy bowl on the long coffee table in the convent’s front parlor when Sisters Rosalie and Jacob came running in from outside, worked up beyond recognition and completely out of breath. There were a lot of sisters in this convent, but still not enough to cover all the bases. Everybody pitched in to do housework on the days when school was not in session. Sister Margaret Mary put down the chamois cloth and looked up to see what the fuss was about. Sisters Rosalie and Jacob were very young, and they were also very flustered.
“Sisters,” Margaret Mary said. “Decorum.”
The wimple might have been a pain to negotiate, but an old-fashioned habit did slow everything down.
Sister Jacob was waving a copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer in the air. “We’ve got to call the police,” she said. “Right this minute.”
“The police?”
“Sister, we really do have to call the police,” Rosalie said. “This woman is unconscious and she didn’t have any identification on her and we know who she is. Well, we sort of know who she is. I mean, somebody here must—”
Sister Margaret Mary got up and took the newspaper out of Sister Jacob’s hand. The relevant headline was easy to spot. It appeared over the masthead in a banner with a picture on one side and the words DO YOU KNOW THIS WOMAN? across the top of the page. Sister Margaret Mary stared at the picture for a moment. Then she began to read the text. She had to turn to an inside page to finish it.
“She does look familiar, doesn’t she?” she said.
Sister Peter came into the parlor, carrying a vase of wildflowers. She was not running. “What’s all this?” she asked, putting the vase down on the mantel of the fireplace.
“We have to call the police,” Sister Jacob announced again.
Margaret Mary passed the paper to Sister Peter. “Remember all the noise last night? The sirens and all the rest of it?”
“I remember thinking somebody had been murdered,” Sister Peter said. “Was somebody?”
“Not exactly. As far as I can figure out from the story, a garbage bag fell out of the back of a truck and there was a woman in it, but she wasn’t dead. Look at the picture on the front.”
Sister Peter looked. “Oh,” she said.
“She lives in the parish,” Sister Rosalie said. “I’ve seen her a dozen times. And I’ve seen her in church at Forty Hours’ Devotion.”
“I’ve seen her at Mass,” Sister Jacob said. “The four o’clock English Mass. She’s a daily communicant.”
Margaret Mary nodded. “I’ve seen her too. I’ve never talked to her.”
“I’ve never talked to her either,” Rosalie said. “But Father Alvarez must have. If she’s a daily communicant, she must go to confession at least sometimes. He must have talked to her at least in confession.”
“He can’t go running around telling people what he heard in confession,” Jacob said.
“Of course he can’t,” Rosalie said. “I just meant that if she comes to confession, he probably knows who she is. What her name is. I know she doesn’t have to tell him her name in confession, but still, if you go then you have a relationship with the priest and a lot of people do tell their names in confession and talk to the priest just like they’d talk to anybody.”
“She was in a garbage bag,” Jacob said. “They put her in a garbage bag and dumped her on the street. Nobody knows who she is. We’ve got to call the police and tell them what we know.”
Margaret Mary sat down in the big armchair next to the fireplace. Then she reached out and took the paper from Sister Peter. “All right,” she said. “First things first. Let’s get everybody else in here and see if any of us knows her name, or where she lives, or who she knows. I’ve seen her, but I can’t remember ever seeing her with anybody.”
“I can’t either,” Sister Peter said. “But they’re right. I see her around all the time. Forty Hours’ Devotion. Stations of the Cross on Good Friday.”
“Let’s show this around and see what we come up with,” Margaret Mary said. “Then we can show it to Father Alvarez, if he hasn’t seen it already. He’s head of the parish. He’s got to be the one to decide who to call.” She looked at the paper again. “There has to be a number in here to call to give information. They always do that.”
Sister Peter looked at Rosalie and Jacob. “Why don’t the two of you go round up the troops and bring them here. And don’t run everywhere. Decorum, like Sister Superior said.”
Rosalie and Jacob looked at each other. Then they rushed out of the room together, full-tilt boogie.
Sisters Margaret Mary and Peter looked at each other and shook their heads. Margaret Mary deposited the paper on the coffee table. “Tell me I’m not crazy to think we were better trained in our day.”