Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

show that respect.” He shifted his gaze to Veronica—who looked down like a puppy caught standing over a shredded pillow—but he continued to speak to Ileana. “You try to help people. You’re a good person.” Then his voice sharpened a bit. “Nica, you haven’t been taking advantage of Miss Ileana’s kindness, have you?”

“No.” Veronica’s voice was flat but tight. “I’m tired, so I’m gonna go lay down now.” She stood and pulled from under her chair a pair of bulging cloth shopping bags. Then she moved toward an empty cot at the center of the room.

“You know we worked together,” Ileana said to Brother Grace. “She was—is—a doctor. She’ll never practice again but I’d like to get her back into rehab. Maybe then—”

“Wish I could help,” Brother Grace said. “I know what it’s like to hit bottom and I know she needs more than a bed. But I got my hands full keeping this place together every night, and I never know who’s gonna show up. The most I can say is, when she shows up here, she never tries to use.”

Because she’d be afraid to, I thought.

14

Ileana’s eyes were moist as she sipped her tea. “I hate seeing her like that, and I hate thinking Keisha might end up the same way.”

With our coats on the backs of our chairs, we were sitting at a small corner table in Spot Coffee on Elmwood. We had retreated there to discuss our visit to Sanctuary Nimbus. Ileana had given Veronica one of the tens I’d slid to her. The other we had used to buy green tea for her and black coffee for me. Now I drank my coffee in silence as Ileana said whatever she needed to say. I wanted her to vent before I asked any questions, to get past the distress of seeing Veronica before I shared what I now knew about Keisha’s drug overdose. Because it was almost closing time, few people were there, and no one was near us.

“I wish we could do something to help her. We tried before to reach out to her, several times—Keisha, me, other people at work. She pulled away every time and even ran when she saw us coming. But tonight she looked worse than ever. She didn’t run when I came up on her. Her eyes were glazed but she knew who I was. Her skin and teeth are awful. She’s lost so much weight, I don’t see how she can go on much longer.” Ileana finally wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Now it’s starting all over again with Keisha. God, I don’t know if I—if I’m strong enough to lose another friend to this shit.”

She began to cry, quietly enough not to draw attention to us. I handed her my napkin because hers was already in shreds. I waited for her to finish. Finally, after dabbing her eyes, she blew her nose and let out a deep breath. Smiling awkwardly, she looked at me. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be this way.”

“No need to apologize.” I placed my hand over hers. “I understand. We haven’t lost Keisha yet. I promise to do everything I can to find her.” I withdrew my hand, locked my fingers under my chin, and thought for a moment. I needed to talk, to get a reaction to all I had learned in round one of my investigation. But Ileana didn’t know any of it. I would have to ease her into it, which meant I would have to trust her. My gut told me I could, that her concern for Keisha was genuine. “I’ll need your help,” I said finally.

“Anything.”

“Your eyes and ears for one. But first, Veronica. Besides being wasted and wasting away, how did she seem to you?”

“Obscene.” She half-chuckled. “Always did have a mouth on her. If something struck her as stupid or wrong, Veronica wouldn’t hesitate to say so with language that used to get my mouth washed out with soap. She was persistent and stubborn enough never to back down.”

“So she was pretty gutsy.”

“Still is. I’ve heard from people she’s approached for money that if you give her a dollar, she’ll demand two. We must have seemed like a winning scratch-off tonight.”

I nodded. “Drugs, drink, power, sex, religion—all those things don’t change who you are. They just magnify it, right?”

“Yes.” She sipped more tea. “So does being on the street. Homelessness doesn’t make you less human. It underscores everything human about you, for better or worse. Got a drug problem? Now it’s hopeless. If you’re nice and fall on hard times, your kindness is a liability. Being homeless makes a happy person seem profoundly sad, a complainer a curmudgeon, a constant talker more annoying. Mental illness seems more pronounced—like Norm’s.”

“Did Veronica seem in any way less like herself tonight?”

“No, she was—” Ileana caught her lower lip between her teeth. “When it was just us with her, she was this bitter homeless Veronica that called everybody asshole. But toward the end she was different.”

“How?”

“Skittish. Almost afraid when Brother Grace came over.”

Feeling a stab of gratitude that she’d confirmed my perception, I said, “Tell me about Brother Grace.”

Ileana looked down for a moment, perhaps collecting her thoughts. “Sanctuary Nimbus started maybe nine years ago, with Pastor Paul funding it out of pocket until it was established. For a few years, it had a good board that helped it get a 501c3 designation, grants, and other support. It had a bookkeeper, a lovely older woman named Betsy Kling, who lived in the parsonage and may or may not have shared Pastor Paul’s bed. Whatever she was to him, she was the one who kept his quest organized and on track.” Ileana sighed.

“What happened to her?”

“Cancer,” she said. “Almost five years ago. Pastor Paul was devastated.”

“Was that the beginning of his current decline?”

She nodded. “The Sanctuary foundered for several months until Marco Madden came on as business manager and Brother Grace began to help with day to