The Final Kill. Meg O'Brien

someday I’ll take vows and all that,” Jancy said, her fingers twisting in the veil as if it were hair. “It must be easier than living in this stupid world.”

      “Well, if that’s what you want,” Abby said, sitting beside her.

      “All my life, I’ve wanted to be like Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story,” she said.

      “Really? All your life?” Abby smiled. “You’re fourteen, Jancy. When did you see that movie?”

      Jancy blushed. “Last year, on video. But you know what I mean.”

      “Yeah. I became a nun at eighteen.”

      “You?”

      “You don’t have to sound so surprised. It was a temporary fling,” Abby said.

      “Wow. I never would have thought that you…I mean, my mom told me about you once, and I thought you were rich. You know…one of those society matrons.”

      Abby laughed. “A society matron? God forbid.” “Sorry.”

      “That’s okay. Have you informed your parents of your plans to become a Bride of Christ?” Abby asked.

      “Once. We were driving by a convent and I told my dad. But he pointed at bars on the windows. He said they lock the nuns up in there.”

      Attaboy, Gerry. Keep the kid off that vocational track.

      “It does seem that way to some,” Abby said. “But actually, in those convents where there are bars on the windows it’s because the nuns want to lock the world out.”

      “Really? On purpose?”

      “On purpose.”

      Jancy seemed to think about that. “Those people last night were looking for us, weren’t they? Mom said if they catch us they’ll lock her up.”

      Abby saw no point in telling her anything but the truth. “They said you and your mom had something to do with a man who was found dead at the Highlands Inn last night. They want to question her. And you, too, since you were with her.”

      She let that sink in a moment before she asked bluntly, “Did Alicia kill him, Jancy?”

      The girl gave a small jump. “No way! We just found him like that!”

      “Can you tell me how you and your mom ‘just found him like that’?”

      Jancy shook her head and didn’t answer.

      “You must know you can trust me by now,” Abby said. “I won’t repeat a word to anyone.”

      Jancy hesitated, but then it began to pour out. “He…the guy…he was some sort of reporter. I don’t remember his name, but that’s what Mom said. Some old guy.”

      “Old?”

      “Fifty, at least.”

      Abby tried hard not to smile. “So did your mom know this guy well?”

      “I guess. He was eating in the restaurant, and so were we. Mom went over and talked to him. I don’t know what they talked about, but he seemed pretty mad. He got up and walked out, and when she got back to our table she was mad, too. I wanted to go into Carmel and walk around the shops after dinner, but she said no, she had business to take care of. So I sat in the lobby while she made a phone call, and when she got done she said we were going to visit somebody.”

      She wiped her eyes, as if to clear them of unpleasant images. “It was awful. We went outside and up the driveway to some room that looked like a private condo from the outside. You know, not in a hallway like a hotel. Mom knocked on the door. Nobody answered, but the door was open a little, so Mom pushed it open more and we went inside. She called out a couple of times—”

      “What name did she call?” Abby asked.

      Jancy shook her head. “I can’t remember. I wasn’t really listening, because I felt like somebody could walk in any minute and shoot us for trespassing. All I wanted to do was get out of there.” She took a breath, and her voice began to shake. “Then we saw him. This guy, the same one in the restaurant, that reporter. There was one of those big square tubs with jets right in the middle of the bedroom, and he was there—”

      She gave a shudder. “There—there was blood in the water all around him. It looked like somebody had—had cut his throat.”

      “My God, Jancy! What a horrible thing to see.”

      She began to cry, covering her face with her hands.

      “I’m sorry, honey,” Abby said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Look, I just have one more question, then we’ll table all this and do whatever you want. Okay?”

      Jancy nodded and wiped her face on her sleeves.

      “Did your mom call the police?” Abby asked. “Or did someone else?”

      “I think it was the maid. She came in with towels or something, and when she saw us and this dead guy, she started screaming. She ran out, and Mom said she’d tell the police about us and we had to get away as fast as we could.”

      “And that’s when you came here?” Abby asked.

      “Yeah. Mom said this was the one place in the world she knew I’d be safe.”

      Abby started. “She said it just that way? That you’d be safe?”

      “Yeah, just like that. At the time I didn’t think it was odd, but now…I guess we’re thinking the same thing, huh?”

      “I guess we are,” Abby said. And kudos to this bright little girl for figuring out that Alicia had planned to leave her daughter with me all along.

      Now the question was: Why?

      6

      Eleven men and one woman—Kris Kelley—sat around an interview table in the Carmel police station. It was just before dawn.

      “Pass these along, please,” said a twelfth man, who was clearly in charge. He stood at the end of the table, passing slender blue folders to the man on his right.

      The lead agent was over six feet tall, with a ruddy tan and eyes like polished nickel. His taut physique was that of a man in his twenties, belying his actual age of fifty-six. The deep lines in his face and the untouched gray hair were the only telltale signs that Robert James Lessing had lived a difficult life. Those who didn’t know him might assume he belonged to a country club and played tennis every day—an incorrect assumption that served him well in his work.

      He took a seat at the long table next to Ben Schaeffer. “You’ve all met Carmel’s chief of police?” he asked the assemblage.

      They nodded. Every eye scanned Ben, but no one smiled. Lessing turned to Ben. “I understood the sheriff would be here, as well.”

      “He will be,” Ben said. “Soon as he can. MacElroy’s putting together a tactical team.”

      “All the more reason he should be here,” Lessing said with an edge.

      “This is the way it’s done in Monterey County,” Ben replied coolly. He didn’t much like being here, either. “Granted, we don’t have many murders in Carmel, but this one at the Highlands seemed routine—at least, until you folks showed up. The sheriff is following standard practice in bringing together a tactical team from the various law enforcement agencies in the county.”

      Lessing spoke dryly. “The murder at the Highlands Inn was anything but routine, Chief.”

      “Yeah, I’ve pretty much figured that out.” Ben looked at the other agents, who were busily writing in pocket-size notebooks. “And since I’m already on the tactical team,” he continued, “maybe you’d like to tell me what the hell is going on. You’ve got agents swarming all over the