Free Holy Terror in the Hebrides by Jeanne M. Dams Page A

would be better. You’ll notify the family? I see. Sure. Good-bye.”
    He turned to me, looking a little gray. “The girl took it hard, wanted to talk about it. I hope her minister knows what he’s doing; she’s going to need a shoulder to cry on. She said they don’t know if he has any family—none in Chicago, anyway. But they’ll try to find out.” He sighed.
    “Well, at least someone is sad about his death. It’s almost—obscene—that no one here cares.”
    Jake shrugged again. “He wasn’t an appealing man. The Scriptures talk about casting your bread upon the waters—well, his was soggy and moldy even when it started out.”
    That was neither a pleasant nor a reassuring thought, however you looked at it. Depressed and apprehensive, I went back to the lounge. It was going to be a long evening.
    Andrew appeared at my elbow. “Mrs. Martin, would you perhaps like to finish your wine? We put it away for you; there’s a good half bottle left.”
    I smiled at him gratefully. “That’s just what I need. And I’m Dorothy, please. Here, Jake, let’s share it and drink it up.”
    Jake grunted again. “Not me, thanks. Such a headache I had last night! I’ll stick to water.” He lifted his eyebrows at Andrew, who obligingly brought him a bottle of mineral water and a glass.
    So I drank my wine by myself and listened to the wind. It was beginning to fray at my nerves, which were none too steady anyway, and from the electric quality of the silence in the room, I realized I wasn’t the only one ready to jump out of my skin. Something had to be done.
    And I still wanted to know more about our unpopular preacher.
    “I wonder,” I said, my voice, raised against the wind, sounding too loud. I lowered it a bit and tried again. “I wonder if anyone can tell me anything about Bob. I know only that he’s—he was—a youth minister. Somehow it seems wrong not to—to be able to talk about him.”
    Teresa spoke first. She sounded oddly angry, but then Teresa nearly always sounded angry.
    “He worked at St. Paul’s Methodist Church, as Grace told you. It’s a very large church, probably about two thousand parishioners. Or whatever Methodists call them. Anyway, it’s in a transitional neighborhood. Some of the oldest parts have been gentrified.” She spat out the word as if it tasted bad, and Stan, who had fallen asleep in her lap, woke abruptly. She stroked his head, but her tone remained bitter. “Lot of rich people moving in, forcing out the people who lived there. Other parts have gone downhill fast, areas where the gangs are starting to take over. And in the middle there are a bunch of students and young couples with kids in the cheaper houses.”
    “How you know all that?” asked Hattie Mae, her lower lip jutting out. “Ain’t your neighborhood.” We could all clearly hear her unspoken postscript,
And you ain’t poor or black,
and I held my breath, but Teresa only glared.
    “I did a paper on the changing face of Chicago, for graduate school. I wasn’t born a nun.”
    “Yes, well, what is important,” put in Grace in her crisp business-executive voice, “is the work Mr. Williams put in to try to make that area a decent place to live in again. He was tireless. He started the youth center on Rush Street, just around the corner from the church, to give the young hoodlums something to do besides dealing drugs on the street corners or killing each other, and he used to spend a lot of his own time there, playing basketball with them, teaching them soccer, that sort of thing. He welcomed everyone, children from all backgrounds and from all over the city. He was a lay worker, you know, not an ordained minister, and I believe he wasn’t paid a great deal. And he worked with some of your people, Teresa, to set up the day care center down the street.”
    “My people? Catholics, you mean? Or Italians?”
    Teresa didn’t even try to sound polite, and Grace bit her lip. “I meant an order of nuns. I don’t