Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

And St. Mark’s gets a lot of help and input from other local churches and some non-religious organizations.”

Now that was an interesting concept! The Catholic church of my youth would never allow a non-Christian presence at a Catholic facility. “So where does Doris fit in?”

He grinned. “She’s a pistol, as my old man would say. She doesn’t talk about herself much, but, from her demeanor, I suspect she was raised a country girl.”

“That’s a long way from homeless,” I observed. “Can’t go much lower.”

“Not so.” His voice turned deep. “You can be a fugitive, a criminal, an addict, a pedophile, an abuser …” He let the litany trail off.

It brought me up short. Am I so comfortable with my personal prosperity that I look down my nose at those who have less? “I’m sorry, Frank, that was judgmental of me.”

“It was,” he agreed, but his voice was soft. “Most of us are.” He stopped and gestured to a big old building across the street from where we stood. “Here it is,” he said. “A Place To Lay Your Head.”

The house was two stories high and symmetrical, like a much larger version of my papa’s Foursquare in Bay View. The pediment above the oversized front door was supported by columns, and each side of the house boasted eight windows, four on each story. Once, it must have been a fine family home, with room for lots of children and servants. Its bones were still fine, but the obvious signs of wear and tear, even of neglect, were there: chipping paint on the siding, an upstairs window propped slightly open with a thick book, holes in the front door where a prominent knocker once hung. Still, she was a beautiful old lady, if slightly marked by wear. More to the point, she probably could house forty persons in all those rooms.

“Who’s there in the daytime?” I asked Frank.

“Staff and cleaners, mostly. The residents are responsible for picking up their rooms, but some of them are paid a stipend to clean the bathrooms and hallways, and prepare the evening meal. And Doris. She’s the de facto liaison, mother hen and sergeant major.” His voice held admiration, amusement and a tinge of exasperation.

We approached the formidable front door and he rang the bell. From inside, we heard, “Hold yer horses.” There was the sound of metal rubbing against metal, and light flashed from the peephole.

“Door viewer?” I asked Frank. He gave me a blank look. “You know, a peephole with a little sliding cover.” He nodded. “Smart,” I said, thinking back to the Johnson case, where my client Adriana was scared by a man using a reverse peephole viewer to look inside apartments in the building where I had secreted her for safety. Although this wasn’t a safe house for abused women, I knew that many women in those situations ended up homeless. I was glad to see elementary safety precautions in effect here.

After the clicking of several locks and the screeching of an old-fashioned bolt, the door opened. “Frankie,” shouted the woman who stood on the threshold. She rushed forward and enveloped Jamieson in a big bear hug, slapping him repeatedly across the back.

She dwarfed both of us, standing at least six-two and weighing in at around one-ninety. Overweight, but not fat. Her biceps bulged with each pat—pound?—across Frank’s back. He turned his head sideways and grinned at me, then gently disengaged himself. Looking up—way up!—he said, “Doris, good to see you. You look well, as always.”

“I’m jim-dandy, Frankie. Us farm girls, we never get sick.” She stepped back a bit and turned to me. “Who’s the lady?” There was a definite coolness to her tone.

“This is a friend and colleague. Angie Bonaparte, meet Doris Appleberg.”

I held out my hand. She looked at it for a second, then wiped her own hand on the daisy-print apron she wore over jeans and a thermal pullover, and, with a fierce look on her face, took my hand. I recognized the battle that was to come and forced my hand as far into hers as possible, with the crotches of our thumbs meeting tightly, so that she couldn’t get a good enough grip to squeeze hard.

She grinned. “You pass.”

“Thank God. I wouldn’t want to arm wrestle with you!”

Laughing, she said, “Most don’t, after the first time.” Looking back at Frank, she asked, “So, you want to come in?”

We followed her through the kitchen, where a young woman chopped onions and an older man tasted liquid from a huge pot. “Janelle, can ya bring us some coffee into the dining room?” Her speech was a curious mixture of meticulous pronunciation—she pronounced the “g” in “dining”—and colloquialisms, like “jim-dandy” and “ya.”

The room held eight round tables, each large enough to seat ten. Doris led the way to the one farthest from the kitchen pass-through and we sat, clumped together. Janelle brought a tray with carafe, cups, sugar, creamer, teaspoons and napkins, and walked away without a word. Doris called, “Thanks, hon,” to her and poured us each a cup. Taking a slurp, she said, “So, what’s up?”

“You remember Jim Beltran, Doris? The guy who went into hospice care in December at Padua Manor?”

“Yeah, I remember him. I was surprised he passed so fast. He didn’t look all that sick, to me.”

“Well, Angie here is trying to find out about him. Seems he had a wife and kids, but he lost contact with them. They want to know about his life after he left the family.”

She didn’t say anything immediately, just took another swallow of coffee and stared down into the cup. When she looked back up, it was to face me with guarded features, her mouth thinned into a line. “Why?” The single word lay there in the silence.

I took a sip of coffee, using the moment to organize my response. “He walked away from them, Doris,” I said. “Now he’s dead. They want to understand why he abandoned them.”

“No good trying to understand why someone does something,” she