L'Oro Verde Read online

  L’ORO VERDE

  A Sister Angela Mystery

  By

  Coralie Hughes Jensen

  www.coraliehjensen.com

  Copyright © 2011 by Coralie Hughes Jensen

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are drawn from the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  To my daughter,

  Megan

  who is there for me when I need her.

  ACKNOWLEDMENTS

  Cover: Covers by Cali

  Thank you to my editor, Kathy Brown. To my former employer who let me rack up enough frequent flyer miles to fly to Tuscany. And a special thank you to the people of San Gimignano and surrounding villages who inspired me to create Montriano and the diocese of Petraggio.

  OTHER BOOKS BY CORALIE HUGHES JENSEN

  Passup Point

  Lety’s Gift

  Winter Harvest

  The Pukeko

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Author Bio

  Excerpt: Winter Harvest

  ~ One ~

  Struggling up the side of the hill, Bernardo glanced over his shoulder to see who shadowed him. He could almost hear the raspy pant below but still could not make out his pursuer. Gulping for air, he paused to listen again. The wheezing stopped, but it started again as soon as he began to climb. He checked his watch—nearly two in the morning. Bernardo knew he was being stalked. He needed a place to hide and away to escape. But his mind raced, and he could not think clearly. Who was after him? How much time did he have? Would the stalker kill him? The former altar boy was not afraid to die. He had a strong faith and believed he would be with God after death. He did not feel bad for or think of himself. He thought of those who loved him and regretted the pain they would endure if he did not return. The light from the three-quarter moon shimmered as the sultry heat of summer condensed over the grassy fields and curvy rows of grapevines. But Bernardo did not look up until he got to the top of the hill. Before him, his hometown of Montriano unfolded over the crest. The ancient walls that once protected it on all sides had crumbled and were replaced by flowering thickets for shade with benches so visitors could look out over rows of grapevines, splashes of olive trees, and undulating mist shrouding the farmhouses and fields.

  Slowing to catch his breath, he stopped to stare at the deserted streets, slithering like snakes down the hill and disappearing into the blackness of the village. He should consider his flight, which way he planned to go. The road to the right would take him to his parents’ house where his father could protect him. The center one meandered down to his church, San Benedetto. The stocky spire of the parish church barely peeked over the nearby rooftops and was not as high as the town’s two towers. He imagined himself standing in the steeple and ringing the bell, summoning help to keep the stalker at bay. The street to the left led to the medieval towers, Polini and Grossa.

  Bernardo spun around until he could see the Milky Way in the starry sky above the towers. He knew the spot well since he often went there on summer evenings to study the heavens.

  One night months ago as he carefully identified the constellations, moonbeams spilled across his hand and forearm. It reminded him of a high school art lesson on Leonardo da Vinci’s use of moonlight in a famous painting. Bernardo owned a copy of it—Leda and the Swan. He kept it under his bed and pulled it out often to marvel at its beauty. He would run his fingers down Leda’s thigh, imagining what it would be like to feel a real woman, warm and soft. The boy never figured out what the moon and the stars had to do with the light in the painting. He never understood the lesson.

  At school conferences, his teachers told his parents he was slow, assuring them, however, that his handicap was surely temporary. Most of them said he would catch up with the other students soon enough. But Bernardo was already well past twenty, and he never caught up. Would he need to go back to school to catch up? He no longer wanted to learn Da Vinci’s secret of the moonlight. He could make out the constellations and a galaxy as well from the steps of Polini Tower. He saw it all for himself and that was enough.

  A dog barking in a distant field brought Bernardo back to the chase. He must find a place to hide soon or be captured. Gazing past the Montriano skyline, he raised his hands to the heavens, brown on black. He scrutinized the darkness and wondered if he wanted to keep running. There were few lights, but the plastered brick facades of the ancient structures within the walled village held the glow of dusk. Which of the three roads should he take?

  He decided to go right to see if his parents were still up. Edging deeper into the shadows of the walls and buildings, he scampered down the twisty road. But when he got to his parents’ house, the gate was locked. Pulling away from the building, he looked up. The windows were shuttered. When he lived with them, his father, Giuseppe, explained that parents need their sleep and that he should not wake them unless it was important. Was this important? A dog barked two yards over and lights went on in that house, but his parents’ house remained dark.

  Bernardo glanced up the road and was relieved that it was still deserted. Spinning around, he followed this street until it curled to the left, leading back into the center of town and the small piazza in front of San Benedetto Church. Pausing at the main road, he waited, listened and peered intently in all directions before quickly moving on.

  The thirteenth century Romanesque-style church had been written up in a brochure for tourists. Bernardo taped the picture that appeared there to the mirror in his bedroom so he could look at it every morning before he went to school. The outside of the church was unadorned; the front had a single door. It was arched but somewhat narrow, not grand like that of San Francesco Church farther down the hill. The interior, however, was beautiful. Chevron-patterned terracotta tiles decorated the floors, and dark beams crisscrossed overhead. High stained-glass windows tinted the rays of afternoon sun. Frescos graced the walls, but not so many as in San Francesco. Bernardo memorized the Biblical stories told in each one, but though famous artists painted them, he could not remember their names. Perched above the high altar, a beautiful Madonna, painted in the fifteenth century, looked down over all the parishioners. Bernardo knew she was there to protect them. He prayed to her often, asking her to care for his parents. Then he asked her to perform a miracle and heal the brain injuries that made him forget things and misunderstand them. The front door would be locked but Bernardo knew where he could get in. Veering right at the steps, he circled the building and turned left into a dark alleyway across from the rectory. Scaling a wall and dropping into the bushes behind a bench in the priest’s contemplative garden, he followed the stone walk to the sacristy and let himself in.

  The sacristy was always open. Rumor had it that Father Augustus broke the lock when he came in from the wine festival one night. Bernar
do smiled to himself. Father Augustus now lived in a retirement cottage in Petraggio. Last he heard, the old priest was still drinking his favorite whiskey, a habit he had picked up in seminary. No one ever bothered to fix the lock because the wall and a locked gate protected it.

  In the sacristy, Bernardo sat down and fingered the phone. He could call for help, but he did not want to wake anyone. Maybe he could rest here for a while and dial someone in the morning. Sitting back, he thought about one service in particular where he saw the old priest drunk. On Via San Lorenzo, old Valentino Rinaldi was dying. At eleven the night before, his daughter, Elena, called Father Augustus at the residence asking him to come to perform last rites.

  Unfortunately for the priest, it was a slow death. Rinaldi’s lungs sputtered and wheezed as the man made a last effort to hold onto his spirit. Elena was afraid and did not want the priest to leave. She asked that he delay last rites until the end and offered Father Augustus red table wine. Chianti was not one of the priest’s favorites, and it would take more wine than whiskey to gain the effect. Father Augustus was tired though and would need strength to administer the final sacrament. He probably promised himself that he would sip small doses so it did not disturb his blessing. Old Valentino finally made his exit at four, and in the last minutes, Father Augustus offered the final sacrament—with a flourish, it was said. But it was then Sunday morning, and the priest needed to preside at the ten o’clock mass. Bernardo assisted. The priest made it through the sermon with few slurs, or so it seemed to Bernardo who rarely listened to the whole sermon anyway. But in the middle of the blessing of the Eucharist, the sanctuary and nave of San Benedetto fell silent.

  Father Augustus had bowed down to place a piece of bread into his mouth and never came back up. Bernardo, his heart beating wildly and his hands still clasped tightly together, pretended to take his hushed prayers closer to the altar. The priest’s cheek was slumped against the paten, his pursed lips dotted with crumbs, his eyes closed. Bernardo’s heart sank. Aware somewhere deep down that the show must go on, Bernardo grasped the chalice of Christ’s blood, raised it high in the air, and then drank the sweet wine. When he brought the cup down with a thud against the altar, Father Augustus started. Bernardo pointed to the next prayer, and the mass continued without further interruption.

  Bernardo was so deep in thought he almost did not hear the noise. There it was again—the swoosh and crackle of bushes in the garden. Not even thinking of the phone, Bernardo moved toward the nave door. The white albs that hung along the wall glowed in the moonlight, and he fingered them tenderly. For a split second, he wondered if his was still there and had the urge to pull it over his head one more time. Perhaps the Lord would recognize him and spare him as the senior altar boy who faithfully assisted at all those masses. Until just a few years ago, he carried the processional cross up the long center aisle and sometimes swung the censer. Clouds of incense pulsed from the openings, making him want to sneeze, but he did not, recognizing how important it was to keep the censer steady. He often held the paten for Father Augustus during communion because even then the old priest’s hand shook uncontrollably.

  But Bernardo had to get out of there now. What was wrong with him? Why could he not keep his mind on his task? Turning around, his hand found the knob on the nave entrance. He twisted it to the right and then quickly to the left. It had a funny catch that no one bothered to fix. The only people who used it knew you had to manipulate the knob to open the door.

  Bernardo slipped into the dark church where he paused to let his eyes adjust, but he did not really need to. He knew the layout by heart. A foot to his right, his eyes settled on the offertory candles, all of which had flickered out. The smell of hot wax and incense was overpowered by the musty stones and decomposed humanity that inhabited the pews over centuries. Bernardo loved that smell—the scent of his ancestors held aloft in the damp air that mingled with the smoky prayer emanating from the candles. He lingered to inhale the memory, but hearing the squeak of the sacristy’s outer door, he did not wait there long.

  “He’s coming,” he whispered to the figure on the crucifix.

  Turning his back to the altar, he gazed down the long aisle, racking his slow and unreliable brain for a place to hide. Then it came to him. He remembered a small crawl space behind the vault of Giovanni Cardinal Bartoli who oversaw the diocese in the 1400s. A sleeping body, carved in granite, lay sprawled over the stone lid. When he was nine, Bernardo once watched in horror as his cousin, Tonino, and his friend, Piero, tried to pry open the lid to see if the body was still there. The cover would not budge because the top was far too heavy, but years later, Bernardo still dreamt about a shriveled corpse with yellowing teeth jumping out at him.

  A marble statue of St. Francis of Assisi stood over the tomb, his arms outstretched, his fingers that once supported a bird, broken off long ago. Bernardo knew the story of the saint’s life and felt protected by him. When praying, he would often run his fingers over the smooth folds of the robe, feeling uncomfortable because he had heard a preserved piece of the saint’s vestment was actually rough and worn.

  He knew he would be safe, having hidden here before. Tonino once tried to find him in the church and could not. He could see Tonino, though, observing him through a tiny hole and trying not to laugh when his cousin scratched his head. With his cheek against the floor, Bernardo could make out the sanctuary and altar as if he were a mouse peering through its front door.

  It did not take long for Bernardo to hear noises in the sacristy. The pursuer must have discovered the unlocked entrance. But the footsteps did not seem to come directly into the nave, making Bernardo breathe easier as the sound faded. Perhaps it was someone who worked in the parish, someone who had left the lights on downstairs or an altar lady arriving to press the albs. But his relief did not last. The stomp of footsteps began again. For the first time, Bernardo noticed the gait was somewhat uneven.

  Thump-ka-thump. The steps got louder until he heard the familiar right-left rattle of the knob.

  Thump-ka-thump. He watched a figure cross the floor in front of the sanctuary, pausing to cross himself at the altar.

  Bernardo wanted to cross himself too but could not extricate his right hand from the narrow space beside him. His breaths were short as he waited—waited for his pursuer to turn and try to find him.

  The figure finally spun to face the pews, and Bernardo realized it had no face. The cowled visage topped a long coarse robe. Was he crippled? Why did he waddle and why did he hold his side?

  More labored steps, and the shadow passed out of Bernardo’s line of sight. Thump-ka-thump, thump-ka-thump. The steps got louder. And suddenly, they stopped. Drawn toward the victim like a magnet, feet suddenly appeared directly in front of the young man’s peephole.

  Bernardo thought his heart had stopped. Screwing up his eyes, he examined the pair of shoes not a foot away. The rough fabric of the robe draped gracefully over the highly-polished shoe tops, and when the toes turned toward him, Bernardo watched the folds sweep eerily to readjust themselves.

  Relieved, the boy slithered backward out of his hiding place. “Father, please forgive me. I have no place to go,” he whispered as he struggled to his feet.

  Unable to distinguish the face in the hood’s shadow, Bernardo leaned forward for only a second before the blow came. A heavy object split his skull in the middle, giving him less than an instant to identify his assailant. But Bernardo was slow and would probably never have really recognized the face anyway.

  *

  Fine lines of tiny bones and a web of arteries popping out of the wrists, a pair of hands maneuvered the bludgeon to the side, and within seconds, yielded a blow to the ear. Bernardo must have never felt the second hit.

  If the boy had recognized his brutal attacker, his eyes did not reveal it. They rolled upward, creating the face of a martyr, beseeching the heavens to let him enter. The slight smile on his lips suggested his mind was filled with other images. The second strike sent
him into the marble rendering of St. Francis, where Bernardo finally crumpled, prostrate at the feet of the patron saint against dying alone.

  The figure brushed the hood back and slid out of the robe. There was work to do. Bernardo’s violent end had left a pool of blood on the floor and spatters on the walls. A long red stripe adorned the white folds in St Francis’ vestment. The body of Bernardo was hurriedly crammed back into its hiding place, the blood methodically mopped up with the hooded robe.

  Had Bernardo been watching through his peephole, he would have observed the figure, dragging a long object and robe, pause again to face the altar, and an arm pass first up, down, and then from shoulder to shoulder. As the shadow paused in front of the candles, a stream of smoke would curl upward. Bernardo would have heard the coins drop noisily through the slot and seen the figure kneel for a moment to pray. But he could witness none of this—at least in the way that one on this earth knows or senses things. Nor could he listen to the person follow the indirect passage through the sacristy or hear the outside door finally close as the shadow merged with the darkness that shrouded the tiny hill village of Montriano.

  ~ Two ~

  The mature figure of Sister Angela waddled up the steep slope of Via Pianello. She was agitated, heedlessly trundling over the street’s uneven stones, too preoccupied to consider a possible trip or fall. She would be there soon enough. Then she would know what she already suspected.

  Fortunately, she did not have to wear the old-style habit. Since Vatican II, the uniform had become much lighter and shorter. She no longer had to clutch her skirt as she tackled the steep thoroughfares. The blouse and knee-length skirt were still black, making her swelter under the intense sun, but the veil was short. Its wispy cloth flapped in the breezes and cooled her neck. The shoes, however, had not evolved. On hot days especially, her swollen feet complained bitterly. She carried a pair of white sneakers, just in case they refused to take another step. She still had to wear her black shoes around the convent and school, however. The sneakers were not a part of her uniform, after all.