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and shook her head in disbelief.
    “Not good,” he agreed.
    “Do you have anything yet?”
    “Nothing.”
    “How can I help?”
    “Well, we know where she worked …,” Carella said.
    “That’s recent, you know.”
    Brown was already consulting his notebook.
    “Six months, we have. From a nurse named Helen Daniels.”
    “Yes, that’s correct. St. Margaret’s is one of the three hospitals conducted by the sisters. Our order was founded expressly for the care of the sick, you see, especially the impoverished sick. That was a long time ago, of course. 1837, in fact, in Paris. The charism has changed somewhat over the years …”
    Charism, Carella wondered, but did not ask.
    “… to include teaching of the handicapped. We run a school for the deaf next door, for example, and another for the blind, in Calm’s Point.”
    Carella wondered if he should mention that his wife was deaf and that he did not consider her handicapped. He let the moment pass.
    “Mary was working with terminally ill patients. She was marvelous with the sick.”
    “So we understand,” Carella said.
    “A prayerful nun,” Annette said. “And a unique individual. She was only twenty-seven, you know, but so mature, so compassionate.”
    She turned her head aside for an instant, perhaps to mask a tear, her gaze falling blindly on the open leaded window beyond which the sprinkler persisted. There was a knock at the door. Sister Beryl came in bearing a tray, which she set on a low table.
    “There we go,” she said, sounding remarkably sprightly for a woman her age. “Enjoy.”
    “Thank you, Sister Beryl.”
    The old nun nodded, surveyed the table as if she had not only made the tea but the tray upon which it sat. Pleased with what she saw, she nodded again, and hurried out of the room, the skirt of her black habit whispering along the stone floor.
    “Where had Mary worked before?” Carella asked. “You said the job was recent …”
    “Yes, she’d just come here from San Diego. That’s where our mother house is. Actually, just outside San Diego. A town named San Luis Elizario.”
    “So then you’ve only known her since she came east,” Brown said.
    “Yes. We met in March. Our major superior called me from San Diego and asked that I help get Mary settled here.”
    “Your major? …”
    “What we used to call
mother
superior. Times have changed, you know,
oh
how they’ve changed. Well, Vatican Two,” she said, and rolled her eyes as if mere mention of the words would conjure up for them the sweeping reform that had swept the church in the sixties. “Even major superior is a bit outdated. Some communities have gone back to calling her the prioress. But she’s also called the president and the provincial and the superior general and the provincial superior and the delegate superior or even simply the administrator. It can get confusing.”
    “Was Mary Vincent living here?”
    “You mean here at the convent? No, no. There are only twelve of us here.”
    “Then where
did
she live?” Brown asked.
    “She was renting a small apartment near the hospital.”
    “Are nuns
allowed
to do that?”
    Annette suppressed a smile.
    “It’s different nowadays,” she said. “The focus today is less on the group than it is on the individual.”
    “Can you let us have that address?” he asked.
    “Of course,” she said.
    “And the name and phone number of the major superior in San Diego.”
    “Yes, certainly,” Annette said.
    “When you say you were Mary’s spiritual director,” Brown said, “what do you mean?”
    “Her advisor, her guide, her friend. Everyone needs someone to talk to occasionally. Women religious have problems, too, you know. We’re human, you know.”
    Women religious, Carella wondered, but again did not ask.
    “When’s the last time you talked?” he said.
    “The day before yesterday.”
    “This past Thursday?” Brown said, surprised.
    “Yes.”
    Both detectives were thinking she’d come to see her