“Who, the hawk?” Sister Celeste asked. “Big Red is at the monastery, too. At the time Lucy called me, she said she and the bird would be hiding out in the hills near Texas Canyon. I suggested that she come to Tucson. I offered to come get her right then, early Saturday morning. I even told her she could stay at the convent, although we aren’t really set up to accommodate boarders. Lucy refused. Said she couldn’t come because of the bird. She said since she couldn’t ride her bike on the freeway, she’d have to walk the whole way to Tucson because Big Red had never been in a car before and she didn’t think he’d go in one.
“When she was talking about her pet bird, I was more or less envisioning something like a parakeet or parrot. I had no idea what kind of bird Big Red was or how big. Someone came to where she was right then, and she had to get off the phone. She said she’d call me back. I stayed by the phone all day long, but I didn’t hear from her again until Sunday morning. When I talked to her that time, she was calling from a place called Walker Ranch. She told the people there that she had been hiking and gotten lost. She told me that someone bad had come looking for her Sunday morning, and she had run away, leaving everything behind—her bike, bedroll, water, and food. She said if it hadn’t been for her hawk calling a warning, she would have been trapped. She said Big Red was the only reason she got away.
“That was the first I really understood Big Red is a hawk. The woman who lived at the ranch gave me directions, and I told her I’d be right there as soon as I could to pick them up. Overnight I had been racking my brain to think of a place where a girl and a bird would be welcome. Sometime around midnight I remembered my friend, Father Mulligan.”
“At Holy Trinity in Saint David?” Joanna added.
Sister Celeste nodded. “Since Lucy was clearly so frightened, it seemed like an altogether more sensible place for her, and Holy Trinity is a retreat center that is set up to handle overnight visitors. Once I understood Big Red was a hawk, Holy Trinity seemed like a good place for him, too. Much better than the grounds at Santa Theresa’s, which happen to be in the middle of Tucson. The only problem was getting them there.”
“Wait a minute,” Joanna said. “Don’t tell me Lucy walked from Texas Canyon all the way to Saint David.”
“Lucy’s a very resourceful young woman, and I’m sure she could have walked that far,” Sister Celeste returned. “But right then, she was at the end of her rope. I remembered how in some of the old romance novels I used to read, falconers would keep hoods over their birds’ heads. So that’s what I did—got Big Red a hood.”
“Where?” Joanna asked, only half teasing. “What did you do, go to Pets-Are-Us?”
“I didn’t have to. One of the sisters at the convent, Sister Anne Marie, is a real wizard with a Singer sewing machine. She whipped one right up. And when Lucy put it on Big Red, it fit perfectly—like it had been made for him, which, of course, it had. Once his eyes were covered, he got in the van just as nice as you please.”
For several minutes the car moved through the bright desert afternoon sunlight with no further words being exchanged. When Sister Celeste spoke again, she took the conversation back several steps. “Back then, when I suggested Lucy take ballet, there was more to it than just the Indian situation.”
“Oh?” Joanna replied. “What else?”
“When it was time for the first parent-teacher conferences that fall, Tom Ridder showed up by himself. I told him both parents needed to be involved in what was going on at school. I explained that things weren’t going well for Lucy—that she wasn’t fitting in and that she wasn’t working up to her potential, either. I asked him if there were problems at home. He admitted that yes, there were. He said he and his wife were having marital difficulties. That things were so bad they might end up in divorce court. He said Lucy was the only reason he was hanging on and trying to hold things together.”
“Lucy’s grandmother claimed Tom Ridder had behaved violently with his wife,” Joanna said. “And from what I saw of the record and legal proceedings, the judge who sent Sandra Ridder to prison seems to have said pretty much the same thing—that Tom Ridder was prone to violence. Prior to the murder, did you see any evidence that would support that?”
Sister Celeste shook her head. “No,” she said. “I agree there was violence in the home, but I don’t think Tom Ridder was the culprit. One day, Lucy came to school with a handprint-shaped bruise on her face. Remember, this happened back before there were state laws requiring school personnel to report instances of possible abuse to the authorities. I asked Lucy about it—asked if her father had hit her. I’ll never forget what she told me. ‘The only person in our house who hits people is my mom.’ She said that her mother had a temper. That sometimes she would do mean things to Lucy and to her father as well, but Lucy insisted that no matter what people said, her dad never hurt anybody.”
“And you believed her?” Joanna asked.
“I had no reason not to,” Sister Celeste replied.