Her face was splotched with red. “Don’t you sit in judgment on me. You have no right. You may think you’re clever and that you know a lot, but you know nothing. You never had a child, you never lost a lover, you’re like a cool breeze floating over the ground, not touching it.”

51
Known Unknowns

I had just enough energy to find a park and sit on the cold ground with my dog. “Cool Breeze” Warshawski. Maybe I’d add it to my business cards. It would give me a certain swagger, like Cool Hand Luke.

“What a mess,” I said to Peppy. “Poor Cady. This is going to hit her like a piano falling from the sky. The whole thing is a mess, from the death of Matt and Lucinda and Baby Cady Number One to now, with Doris McKinnon’s and Dr. Roque’s murders, and the attack on Sonia. Why do you think Magda Spirova came back to Lawrence?”

Maybe if I had something to eat and wrote it all down, it would make enough sense that I could figure out what to do next. I walked with Peppy to the bakery for soup and bread. They wouldn’t let an emotional-support animal join me inside, so we trudged back to the Hippo. Anyway, the coffee was better there, and I could get a small whisky alongside it in case Peppy’s support flagged.

As I sat at our usual spot, the high counter in the corner, my phone rang. Unknown local number, which turned out to belong to Bayard Clements, the pastor at St. Silas.

“Ms. Albritten!” I said. “Is she all right?”

“Sister Albritten is the Pillsbury Doughboy with the Energizer Bunny inside,” Clements assured me. “I want to keep her that way.”

My stomach muscles tensed as I waited for the next sentence: Keep away from her. Instead he wanted my help.

“Jordan, her son, you know, and his boy, they had to go home. School’s in session, Jordan’s wife is sick herself. No one from St. Silas can be with Sister Albritten around the clock, and I worry about her right now, especially tonight when she’ll be on her own for the first time. I have to go to Atlanta this evening for a funeral, or I’d stay with her myself, but I won’t be back until Friday.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said slowly, trying to imagine how my day might play out. “If I could get one of the women from Riverside?”

“As a last resort,” he said sharply. “They live to gossip, and that’s the fastest way for word to get out that Sister Albritten is home alone and vulnerable.”

“Copy that, Pastor. I’ll work out something.”