Vess and Lightfoot began bellowing back and forth at each other. I spotted Riddick slipping down the hall, looking back over his shoulder with an angry look on his face. Then he stopped, closed his eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, moved his lips slightly—whether praying or cursing I couldn’t tell—and resumed his customary calm if slightly anxious expression.

“That man!” Mother muttered.

I waited to hear whether she was talking about Vess, Riddick, or Lightfoot, any of whom could possibly have provoked her displeasure.

“I hate to speak ill of someone,” she went on. “Especially at this time of year—but Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on him.”

That would be Vess.

“‘A tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge!’” I quoted. Thanks to Michael’s annual one-man dramatic readings of A Christmas Carol, I could quote Dickens with the best of them. “‘A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.’”

“Precisely,” Mother said. “If he posts one more notice asking who used the church office phones to make an unauthorized ninety-cent long-distance call to California, I may have words with him! And to make it worse, he has the manners of a troll.”

“What’s he done?” Minerva asked.

“Just last week he tried to have the cleaning service fired for not doing a good enough job,” Mother said. “And if you ask me, they were doing a perfectly adequate job.”

Coming from Mother that was high praise indeed—her “perfectly adequate” was equivalent to someone else’s “fabulous.” From Minerva’s nod, I could tell she understood this.

“What he really wanted,” Mother went on, “was to get rid of the cleaning service altogether, to cut expenses, and have the ladies of St. Clotilda volunteer to do the cleaning. We straightened him out on that notion.”

“I should think so,” Minerva exclaimed.

“Wasn’t it him who tried to get the twelve-step groups banned from using the church building?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mother said. “He claimed they weren’t leaving enough change to cover the number of coffee packets they used during their meetings. I realize that in these difficult times we all have to keep expenses down, but to begrudge a few pots of coffee to people who are struggling to rebuild their lives!”

“I completely agree,” Minerva said. “If he keeps it up, tell him that the Baptist Ladies’ Auxiliary would be happy to donate as much coffee as the twelve-step groups could possibly need.”

“I think we’ve already squelched him on that one,” Mother said. “But thank you. And perhaps if I could mention your offer, it would shame him into abandoning that particular crusade.”

“Please do,” Minerva said.