She breathed in, let the breath out slowly. “I’m not going back to Tanzania. I’m going to be teaching here.”

The news surprised me. I’d been expecting something awful, something dire. But it was just like Barb to gush it out like that, no toying around with it. “How’d that happen?”

She eased down onto the stone bench behind us. The very spot where I’d met Pop. “After, well, you know, I couldn’t get this place out of my head. Father Ray put a lot of years into this parish, into us—you, me, Whip, hundreds of others. He left a lot undone. I know I can help.” She looked up at me. “I called Father Pascoe.”

I frowned, but made no comment. Pascoe and I had gotten off to a rocky start. He’d tried to stop me from investigating Pop’s death, and then slipped seamlessly into his job, his office. Too soon, I guess.

Barb registered my reaction. “He’s a nice man, a little stiff, but it takes a variety of flowers to make a garden. Anyway, he was short a teacher and I jumped at it. I figured if I could teach halfway around the world, why not teach right here in my old neighborhood?” Barb stood, dusted off the seat of her jeans. “It’ll be like reclaiming this place for good after so much bad. What do you think? You’re not saying anything.”

“The neighborhood has changed a lot since we were here. Gangs, guns. You won’t have an easy time of it.”

“I’ve run up against African warlords.”

“You’re also very white. You’d be like a radish amongst a sea of onions.”

Barb surveyed her arms as though her complexion was a new thing she hadn’t yet noticed. “Only on the outside.”

“Then there’s the other thing.”

She was getting testy. “What other thing?”

“You’re as obstinate as a mule, and you’ve never met a rule you didn’t try to break.” I thought for a moment, then smiled. I’d just described Pop to a tee. He was a constant thorn in the archdiocese’s side, and in Father Pascoe’s, a man who always colored inside the lines. “Pascoe has no idea what he’s done.”

She nodded, her eyes dancing, her grin wide. “No, he doesn’t.”

The church bell sounded overhead, as if on cue. I glanced up at it, back at Barb. I wondered if she took the ringing of the bell as a good sign, too, a nod from Pop. “When do you start?”

“I taught my first class yesterday. Summer school. I’ll teach sixth-grade English when regular classes start up again after Labor Day. Till then, I’ll spend some time with the family . . . work up my lesson plans . . . unless you need another investigator? I think I’d be good at it.”

“Thank you. No,” I said, smiling.