Free Justifiable by Dianna Love, Wes Sarginson Page B

C’s by an enclosed breezeway.
    Her head throbbed, but her heart hurt more.
    If vengeance belonged to the Lord, she wanted to ride shotgun for him.
    Tomorrow. When she felt better. Hopefully.
    Extreme stress triggered really nasty head-bangers that forced her to spend some nights slumped over a toilet. Hearin’ about Sally Stanton and wee Enrique qualified as extreme. Margo swallowed the misery climbing her throat over the news she had to be givin’ Monsignor soon.
    And over havin’ to explain her delay in returning from lunch. Opening the weathered pinewood front door to the administrative offices and outreach center, she kept her dark shades on when she entered. No one should have to face all that yellow paint in the foyer without eye protection.
    Couldn’t Baylor have chosen a different color than sunshine? But Baylor was so indispensable to St. C’s running, not to mention the restoration work goin’ on, he could have painted the whole interior Pepto Bismol pink and Monsignor would have only nodded and been happy.
    A glare flashed off the newly stained hardwood floors.
    Did everything have to reflect the sun?
    Just kill her now.
    Her queasy stomach balked at the smell of fresh paint. More of Baylor’s doin’.
    Maybe she should be passin’ out a memo – Margo Cortese, not the mornin’ person. The school clock on the wall corrected her. Okay, not a just-past-noon person either.
    She snatched off her glasses when she reached the quieter central hallway that fed to all the offices. The hall ended in front of the door to the kitchen and had an exit door on the left for the parking lot in the rear...that Valdez was slipping out of at the present moment.
    Wasn’t he supposed to be upstairs tidyin’ up the construction area? The smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks, partnered with carrot-red hair, didn’t look like the mug shot of a young man convicted of burglary and assault. She couldn’t reconcile the name Valdez with all that red hair either.
    But then she was Irish as the day was long and didn’t have the first freckle – and hair more auburn than red.
    Valdez was Father Ickerson’s problem, not hers. She hadn’t figured out Valdez yet and was willin’ to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but she knew lazy and sneaky when she saw it. Father Ickerson, on the other hand, had high expectations for his protégé.
    She would leave it to the good Father to deal with his underling. Dismissin’ Valdez, she headed to her office that smelled of history like the rest of the original building. Of being inhabited by many others long before her time, quite a contrast to all the remodeling happening on the second floor.
    The remodeling was going slowly, but construction workers were donating their time and skills, plastering and painting the new outreach center up there. All under Baylor’s watchful eye for detail work and his love for St. C’s.
    Not that she didn’t appreciate his skill and sincerity, but...did he have to be so talented?
    Monsignor loved art and admired the man’s ability to shape things with his hands.
    The only thing she could do with her hands was type.
    Jealousy is not attractive . Especially when the old guy just wanted to do a great job. And he was far more spry and pleasant than some people, like Icky.
    Just thinking about the cantankerous Father Ickerson sharpened her headache.
    Rolling her shoulders, she worked on mind control, fighting the potential migraine that had become an unpleasant companion since her first menstrual cycle. Almost as unpleasant as when she reached the third doorway on her right to find Father Angus Ickerson inside her office with his back toward her. 
    Icky stood too close to Monsignor’s door on the far side, his head cocked at a snooping angle, hands squeezed together behind his back. No doubt trying to look more clerical and less like an accountant with a perpetually pinched expression.
    What was Icky doing in here? Waiting to see Monsignor?