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him. How'd you stop them this time?"
     
    "Told them I thought we'd found a relative."
     
    "John…"
     
    "So I fibbed. Just wanted to see what she thought."
     
    "This is an old lady, John, a nun. Maybe it's too rough…"
     
    Sister Mary Joseph was no aged but delicate flower. A glance was enough to show them that she was a tough old bird. Had to be. She was a first-grade teacher with twenty years service in the witch's cauldron walled by children, parents, and superiors in the archdiocese.
     
    "Sister Mary Joseph? Norman Cash."
     
    "You're the policemen?"
     
    "Uhm. This's Detective Harald. John Junior. His dad was a competitor. Episcopalian."
     
    "Why'd you want to see me?"
     
    "Just to ask a few questions."
     
    She seemed puzzled. "About what? Will it take long? I have classes…"
     
    "This man?" Cash handed her the picture of the corpse, the same one that had gotten a reaction from Miss Groloch.
     
    She frowned. Her breath jerked inward. One hand went to her mouth, then made the sign of the cross.
     
    "Sister?"
     
    "He looks like my brother Jack. But it can't be. Can it? He died in 1921."
     
    "Disappeared," Harald corrected. He presented the picture from the file.
     
    "Fiala Groloch. The heathen foreigner." This time she made a sign against the evil eye, then reddened when Harald and Cash looked puzzled. Cash had never seen an embarrassed nun.
     
    "Sorry. There was a lot of animosity. Would you explain now?"
     
    Cash took it, kept it simple, did no editorializing. "We're playing a long shot. Hoping this man might be your brother's son or grandson."
     
    John added, "We hoped you'd be willing to view the corpse. To let us know if you think that's possible."
     
    "Well, I suppose. Sister Celestine won't mind an extra hour with the children." She smiled a delightfully wicked little smile.
     
    Cash couldn't help observing, "I think you'd like my wife's aunt, Sister Dolorosa. She's a Benedictine. At a convent in northwestern Pennsylvania."
     
    "Oh? Well, I'd better tell Mother Superior. Be right back."
     
    Sister Mary Joseph returned while John was on the phone to the morgue. "I've always had a feeling this would come back on us. Fiala Groloch should've been burned for witchcraft."
     
    Cash didn't respond verbally, but his surprise was obvious.
     
    "I know. That's not charitable. Not Christian. But if Satan ever sent his emissary, Fiala Groloch's it."
     
    "That much bitterness? After all these years?"
     
    "Oh, it's not Jack. I was too young to understand at the time, but he was the devil's disciple himself. He probably deserved whatever he got. Did you meet her? I hear she's still there. And strong as ever."
     
    "We did. She seemed like a nice old lady."
     
    "Old? I wonder how old she really is."
     
    "About eighty-five, I guess. She only looked about sixty, though."
     
    "At least she's aged some."
     
    "I don't understand."
     
    "When it happened… whatever happened with Jack… she looked about forty…"
     
    "Early thirties, I heard, but you're the only one I've talked to who knew her then."
     
    "About forty. And even then there wasn't anybody who remembered when she didn't live there. Her house was built when that part of the city belonged to the private estate of a Mary Tyler. When I was a child, the old folks said it'd been built right after the Civil War."
     
    "I figured the eighteen eighties, just guessing."
     
    "My grandparents came over in eighty-three. She and the house were there then, and had been for a long time. My grandmother told me she'd heard that there'd been a man who was supposed to be Fiala's father. He disappeared too, I guess. Miss Groloch told people he went back to the old country. Nobody ever heard which one it was. She used to get out and around in those days. Didn't lock herself in till after Jack disappeared."
     
    "The name sounds like eastern European." He wasn't really hearing the sister. That Miss Groloch might be 130, or even older, seemed so ridiculous that her