Murder Superior by Jane Haddam Read Free Book Online Page A

you’re not involved in this nun thing,” he said. “It sounds interesting. Hundreds of nuns in one place. Maybe thousands. How are regular people ever going to tell them all apart?”
    “Take your clothes off.”
    “I’m taking my clothes off, for God’s sake. I’m just making conversation. What’s the matter, dealing with a bunch of nuns gets you spooked?”
    “Of course nuns don’t get me spooked. I just don’t want to talk about them. Why should I? A bunch of homely women who work off their frustrations telling themselves that they’re in love with God. I don’t believe in God.”
    “Do you believe in Hell?”
    “I believe Hell would be having to spend the rest of my life with those women in that convent,” Nancy said. “Now take your clothes off. Norm’s just doing his usual bit for employee relations. The boss is supporting the Sisters of Divine Grace, so Norm is making fun of them.”
    Mark looked startled. “VTZ owns that station? I didn’t know that.”
    “I don’t know why you didn’t. It’s announced practically every half-hour along with the call signal. It isn’t a secret.”
    “I’m not saying it was a secret. I’m saying I didn’t know.”
    “Lie out flat on your back,” Nancy said, “and stick your legs up over the rim on this end. Don’t fold them. Right. You look very cute.”
    Mark snorted, but he did what she’d told him to do. He unfolded his legs and lay as straight out as he could in the shortish tub. It was the old claw-footed kind and built for someone much smaller. Mark was six feet two and broad. Nancy waited until he had adjusted himself to her satisfaction, then shook the can of Reddi Wip hard. When she set it off against his belly button, it made a sound like a rocket going off.
    “Jesus Christ,” Mark said. That’s cold as Hell.”
    “I’ll bring a bunch of cans in this time,” Nancy said, walking out on him.
    He called after her, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
    Nancy went back to the kitchen table and began to tuck cans into her arms against her chest. On the other side of the room, the boom box was pounding out Norm’s closing theme and being overridden every fifteen seconds by Norm’s voice telling another juvenile joke. “What did the Japanese trade minister do when he got to Heaven? Looked out over the angels at work and said, ‘The Japanese are more industrious than you.’ ” “What’s the difference between a Japanese teenager and an American teenager? The American teenager doesn’t need someone to wind him up in the morning.” Nancy made a face at the boom box and headed back to the bathroom.
    “Here I come,” she called out as she came in, to find the whipped cream beginning to melt against the heat of Mark’s skin. “Norm is just going off the air. How can you listen to that idiot is beyond me.”
    “How you can be married to the idiot you’re married to is beyond me. You want to explain that one to me again?”
    “It wouldn’t matter how many times I explained it. You’d still be too young for me no matter what I did about it. Stop eating the whipped cream.”
    “I’d rather eat you.”
    “Well get around to that later.”
    “Is your husband going to be back in time to take you to this party you say you’ve got to go to at the convent?”
    “Of course he is. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t bother to go.”
    “If he wasn’t, maybe you could take me. I’d love to go.”
    Nancy waved this away, and started on another can of whipped cream. Nuns. Husbands. Whipped cream. Mark. Under her picture in the high-school yearbook were the words “Nancy’s Greatest Ambition: Never To Be A Housewife.” She didn’t know if she’d made it or not.
    She did know that she was sick and tired of hearing about those damned nuns. She’d been sick and tired of hearing about nuns all her life. Ever since her much-older half-sister Megan departed for the Mesdames of the Sacred Heart, Nancy had been getting chapter and verse on