The Prodigal Nun by Aimée Thurlo

purse and see if you can tell if anything’s missing.”
    “The sheriff already asked me how much money I thought was stolen, and I told him. It was around a hundred dollars. Besides that, she had one credit card, but it was still there.”
    “How about missing items that aren’t money related?”
    Louis picked up the purse and began to set the contents out on the counter.
    Seeing the prayer book, Sister Agatha suddenly knew what she wanted to ask next. “Didn’t Jane always carry a memo pad in her purse?”
    “Yeah, she did,” Louis said, checking every pocket and pouch. “It was one of those brightly colored ones. She was always making notes to herself or leaving them for me. Just look at the fridge,” he said, waving. “I haven’t had the courage to take them down yet.”
    “So that’s missing. Did she keep any other pads around the house?”
    Louis scratched his head. “Excuse me for a moment.” He left the kitchen and went into the living room.
    Sister Agatha heard a drawer open, then another. A moment later, she heard Louis walk into the hall, then the sound of another drawer opening. At long last, he returned to the kitchen. “That’s odd. She always left memo pads on her desk and on the bedroom dresser. There were several of them around in that same pink color. Now they’re all gone.”
    “Maybe the deputies took them,” Christy offered. “Or the sheriff.”
    “They would have given Louis a receipt,” Sister Agatha said. “I know that from my journalist days.”
    “Are those pads important for some reason?” Louis asked her.
    “You remember that Jane called last Friday and wanted to talk to me about something?”
    “Yes, but I still have no idea what that was about,” Louis said.
    “There’s something I didn’t mention before. When Jane called, she hung up almost immediately after telling me that she thought someone was listening in,” Sister Agatha answered, watching back and forth between the two for a reaction.
    “Like me?” Louis asked in confusion. “I might have been in the next room, but I never eavesdrop on purpose.”
    “Jane did,” Christy blurted out.
    “Christy!” Louis exclaimed.
    “Sorry to be so blunt, but you know she did, Louis. Jane was a snoop.”
    “Well,
I
wasn’t,” he said, his voice soft and strained.
    Sister Agatha wasn’t surprised about Jane. “She may have meant someone listening in through an open window, or maybe on the phone,” Sister Agatha reasoned. Looking over, she noticed that the phone was an older cordless model. Phones like that had a reputation for being vulnerable to bugs, or even neighbors on the same frequency.
    “Do you think that’s the reason Jane was killed, and it wasn’t just a robbery?” Christy asked. “The sheriff should be told about this if he doesn’t know already.”
    “He knows some of it, but I’ll speak to him and tell him the rest,” Sister Agatha said.
    “You’re thinking that maybe Jane wrote something down on a memo pad and the killer took them all to make sure nobody else could find out…why she was killed?” Louis’s voice faded at the end.
    “If that’s really what happened, Louis, you can trust Sheriff Green to get to the bottom of it,” Sister Agatha said. “In the meantime, if either of you thinks of anything, call him right away.”
    Both nodded.
    They were just leaving the kitchen when Sister Agatha heard the sound of metal clanking. That was instantly followed by Pax’s frantic barking.
    Christy went to the window. “Somebody’s broken into my garage!”
    Christy rushed out the back door, Louis and Sister Agatha at her heels. When they reached the garage, the right-hand door was half open. Sister Agatha saw Sister Bernarda inside, grasping Pax’s leash hard and trying to pull him back. The dog was totally focused on something in the far corner and refused to back away.
    Sister Agatha hurried over to help and, as she drew near, heard a dry rattle—a sound she instantly