"Why not ask for a transfer?" I asked.

"I already have," she said. "As soon as Reverend Mother General approves my request, I'm to go to our sister house in San Francisco." Her eyes took on a faraway look. "San Francisco. Can you imagine? It will be heavenly. Simply heavenly."

I didn't need to ask when she expected her request to be approved. Mother General might not know a thing about garlic, but she obviously understood a great deal about carrots and sticks.

' 'Now,'' Maggie said as we left the barn. ' 'I want to hear everything."

I told her what I had learned from the journal, including the fact that Mother Hilaria herself had received a letter.

"So," Maggie said when I finished, "all roads lead to Sister O and Sister R."

"The Bobbsey Twins." An odd nickname. I wondered how much animosity-and perhaps fear-might be behind it.

Maggie paused, frowning. "You don't suppose this poison-pen thing goes all the way back to the novitiate, do you?"

"I'm beginning to think it might." I looked at my watch. "I need to talk to Mother Winifred and let her know about Dwight. And I really have to talk to Olivia before I go any further-but I can't do that until tomorrow. That's when Mother expects her back from El Paso." I wondered what

kind of mood Olivia would be in when she returned. Not good, I guessed.

Maggie thrust her hands into her jacket pocket. "A few of us are getting together this evening to talk about the way things are going here. Would you like to come? We're meeting in Miriam's room. There'll be wine and munch-ies."

"The way things are going here-the changes, you mean?"

"Yes. There doesn't seem to be much we can do as long as the Reverend Mother General has her mind made up. But we're going to brainstorm anyway."

"Sorry," I said. "I'm having dinner in Carr tonight"

Maggie eyed me. "With Tom Rowan, I'll bet."

"And his father," I said quickly. Too quickly, maybe.

A smile quirked at the corner of Maggie's mouth. "Want me to say a prayer for you?"

"Why? Do you think I need one?"

"Why not?" she countered briskly. "A little prayer never hurt anybody."

Chapter Thirteen

The Lone Star Dance Barn was a couple of miles south of town on the Fredericksburg Road, just past Marvell's Meat Locker (Deer Processed Here-Try Our Venison Sausage!) and the livestock auction barn. It was fully dark by the time I parked the Dodge in the gravel parking lot and headed toward the building, pulling my denim jacket tighter around me. I was wearing a plaid flannel shirt under the jacket, as well as Levi's and boots and a wool cap, but the wind was cutting right through me. When it gets cold in Texas, you feel it.

The Lone Star Dance Barn was a giant metal building the size of an airplane hangar, splashed with red and blue neon. I opened a side door and found myself in an old-fashioned Texas dance hall, with a scuffed wooden floor bigger than a basketball court and a bare, uncurtained stage at one end. Scarred pine picnic tables were arranged a couple of rows deep around three sides, and beer signs and

banners-the tawdry graffiti of the country dancing crowd-covered the walls. It was 7 p.m. on a Monday night and the place was cold and empty and down-at-the-heels, like an old tart at midweek. But I knew what it would be like come Saturday midnight: the air hazy blue with tobacco smoke and loud with the wail of amplified fiddle and six-string guitar, the wooden floor packed with blue-jeaned, Western-shirted guys and gals wearing polished boots and silver belt buckles big as pie plates, arms linked, hip-to-hip, stomping and yeeha-ing happily through the Cotton-Eyed Joe.

There was no yeeha tonight, only the muted revelry of the barbecue joint at the front of the dance hall. This room was smaller and cozier, paneled with splintery barn siding and decorated with Texas memorabilia: rusty license plates that went back to the twenties, a Don't Mess with Texas sign over a Texas A &M trash barrel, Texas flags (all six of them), paintings of old barns and privies afloat on improbable oceans of bluebonnets, the stuffed head and shoulders of an enigmatic longhorn with red marbles for eyes. George Strait crooned a ballad on the jukebox, a cowgirl waitress in skintight jeans and Dolly Parton boobs shouldered a tray of beer pitchers through the crowded tables, and diners were hunched earnestly over plates of Tex-Mex, which is traditionally served in portions designed to satisfy the appetites of the entire Dallas defensive line. There was enough food on the tables to feed a third-world country for a week.

I did a quick scan of the room. Tom wasn't there, so I took a table against the far wall, putting as much distance as possible between me and the jukebox. I accepted a menu from the top-heavy waitress and ordered a Dos Equis. While I was waiting, I sat back to think about my conversation with Mother Winifred,- which had taken place at the foot of the garden in a fenced-in corner that was the home of a black and white potbellied pig named Delilah.

"Gabriella thought up her name," Mother had said as

she opened the gate. "She built that clever little house over there, too." The house, which was about five feet tall at the peak of its pitched roof, looked like a Hansel and Gretel cottage, with casement windows, a chimney pot, and a window box full of colorful plastic flowers. There was a miniature wooden ramp Delilah could walk up, and a pig-size swinging door, with her name painted on it in Old English letters. Mother dumped a panful of apple peels into a small trough and Delilah began happily to sort them out, deciding which to eat now and which to hide in her mound of hay and save for a midnight snack.

I knelt down and scratched Delilah's back while I made a full confession.

"You mean, Dwight didn't do it?" Mother exclaimed when I'd finished. "But I thought you said-"

"I jumped to the wrong conclusion," I said. There'd been plenty of justification, of course, but when it came down to it, that wasn't an excuse. I stood up. "I'm sorry, Mother."

"It's not your fault," Mother said.

"Yes it is," I said unhappily. "Of all people, I should know better." Some of my clients had been falsely accused, and I'd had to work hard to get them acquitted. And here I'd gone and done it myself. "It was a terrible mistake."

"Perhaps," Mother said. "But I do see the Lord's hand in it."

Mother must have better eyes man I have. "Where?"

She smiled. "Well, if Dwight hadn't gotten drunk and spent the night in jail-"

"You think the Lord put him there?"

"He works in mysterious ways, my child." She went to a faucet and refilled Delilah's water pan. "Of course, I'm glad to know that Dwight is innocent," she added. "Except for stealing Mother's journal, of course." She put the pan on the ground and Delilah, still chortling happily about her treasure trove of apple peels, trotted over for a drink. ' 'But now we're back where we started. If Dwight didn't set the

fires, someone else did." She looked up at me, distressed. "I'm sorry to tell you, but the sisters are very upset over the fire on Sophia's porch last night, especially in view of the fact that you are here to stop such things."

I wasn't surprised. Some probably thought that last night's fire might have been provoked by my presence, as perhaps it had.