Mother's Day Fiction, part 1

Sister Mary Fulgentius* gasped and wiped her chin with the edge of her habit. Yesterday, the garden path was carpeted with soft cherry blossom petals, like pink sprinkles adorning His Great Sundae, and today, the pristine petals were swamped in human blood.

Poor Jimmy Plechtani, the unskilled groundskeeper at Our Lady of Frequent Unlikely Occurrences, lay with his neck bent back in an acute angle, his forehead leaning on the leg of a granite bench donated by the parish's best patron, Tony Sciaglioli, the sharp edge of his trowel buried in the side of his fleshy stomach. Sister Mary crossed herself and whispered a quick Réquiem Ætérnam.

Father Michael waited for her to finish. As soon as she unfolded her hands, he whispered, "Oh, Sister Mahry. Cahn't we jost move the lad's head into a more rehstfol posetion? It hourts me hart to see 'im so."

In spite of herself, Sister Mary chuckled. "Now, Father Michael," she said, "you know I'd never have a word to say against you when it comes to parish policy or church doctrine, but you've got a thing or two to learn when it comes to solving murders."

As usual, her glasses hung folded by the arm over the rope Sister Mary wore around her waist. The lenses were hopelessly smudged. Mary was always forgetting her rosary beads, so she would touch her glasses instead: Hail Mary right, Hail Mary left, Hail Mary right, Hail Mary left--five times in a row. "It works just fine for prayer," she'd joke, "but it doesn't make finding cotton fibers on a corpse any easier!"

She rubbed her glasses on her vestments and pushed the arms over her ears, poked the bridge with her right finger to make sure they were securely on her nose, and knelt down next to Jimmy's body.

"You cahnnot mean thaht thes es mourder Sister Mahry! Who would wahnt to hourt poohr Jehmmy?"

Mary answered with her nose inches from the ground, scanning the path around Jimmy's body for anything out of the ordinary. "Well, at the moment only He knows for certain, Father, but if I had to make up my mind all at once, I would say that this most certainly is a murder, and the killer is--"

"--Ma'am, please step away from that man immediately! This is a crime scene and we need, oh! Sister Mary Fulgentius!" Detective O'Malley's face began to fade from an angry beet to it's typical borscht color. He had been delayed on the way by construction on Calvary Street, and was naturally concerned for the integrity of the scene before he knew that Sister Mary was there.

Detective O'Malley had worked with Sister Mary when the senator had been murdered last Christmas and the FBI came to aid the investigation, and around Halloween when the ambassador was pushed out a window and the CIA assisted, and on Memorial Day when the general was found floating in the river and the investigator from the Army came out. "For a small-town gumshoe, I worked with a lot a big shot government guys," O'Malley liked to tell the new recruits over a few Killian's, "I'd take just one nun over the whole bunch of em every time."

"What do you got, Sister, and who are we lookin for? I guess a big guy from the way this poor sap's neck is snapped." He held out a hand to help Sister Mary up.

"Thank you, Charles. Well, that's a good guess from your vantage point, but you didn't see the marks on poor Jimmy's right cheek, or see that glazed straw fiber under his fingernails, or smell the vegetable material in his hair and around his collar."

"Sister, you can see more through those schmutzy glasses of yours than a whole gaggle of FBI agents can see through a microscope. Noonan, Brecchialli, let's see what they're teaching you at the academy." O'Malley waved the two young officers towards the body. They nervously nodded at Sister Mary and knelt on either side of Jimmy.

Noonan photographed the marks on his cheek and sighed. He looked up. "Well sir, if I wasn't afraid to look like a fool in front of Sister Mary here, I might say these look like scratches from an animal."

Brecchialli used tweezers to pick up the straw fiber and then a few leaves and stems and place them in separate tiny zip-lock bags. "And I don't know what I'm looking at, either. Maybe a bit of a straw hat, and the plant I guess is some kind of herb." Brecchialli's eyes moved sheepishly back and forth between the detective and Sister Mary; Noonan was still snapping pictures.

"Nice work, gentlemen! Charles, there is simply no competing with your excellent department." The young officers exchanged happily surprised looks over Jimmy's head. "The marks are from claws, the fiber is straw, most likely fallen out of a weave pattern, and the plant bits are Nepeta Cataria."

Father Michael's eyes had grown wider with every exchange, and his head was oscillating between Mary and O'Malley. "Sister Mahry! You cahnnot be mehning--"

"Are saying what I think you're saying, Sister?" O'Malley narrowed his eyes.

"Yes, exactly. You are looking for a killer who could ride to hell in a handbasket!"