City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2) Read Free Page A

had so long expected to see a headline just like this that when the shoe finally dropped, she felt only numbness rather than anguish?
    “Yes, Father Chang,” Susan acknowledged to Clover. “He was very charitable. We met because he would occasionally bring his parishioners here when they were in need. If they couldn’t pay, he’d pay for them.”
    “Given the rumors I’m hearing about why he was killed, I think it best to say little of that association,” Clover said in her infuriatingly Clover-like way.
    “What rumors?” Susan asked.
    “I won’t spread gossip,” Clover said airily before heading away. “Mr. Carreño is waiting for his pills in Room Four. Could you take care of that?”
    Susan nodded as she sank back against the wall. She didn’t want to deal with Mr. Carreño or his pills. For that matter she didn’t want to do anything but go home, find whatever alcohol she might have lying around, and drink herself into a stupor.
    Poor, poor Father Benny.
    Then she remembered Nan. Dear God. She grabbed her cell phone and dialed a number.
    “I’m so, so, so sorry I didn’t call back,” she said when it was answered. “Wherever you are, just come to meet me. You can stay in my office all day if you’d like. It’s terrible, and I know you don’t want to face the world right now. But I just don’t want to think you’re there all by yourself.”
    There were a few sniffles in response, a muffled sob of someone who’d been crying for some time now, then a grunt of acceptance.
    “I’ll expect to see you soon then,” Susan said. “And I’ll find someone to cover for me so we can go somewhere to talk about this. He loved us both so, so very much. ‘We three vagabonds,’ he called us, remember? Strangers in a strange land who’d found each other.”
    “He was  . . .” Nan began but couldn’t finish.
    “I know,” Susan said quietly. “I know.”
    As she hung up, still wondering how she would get through the next few hours, Clover poked her head out of her office.
    “Mr. Carreño. Room Four,” she said sternly.
    Susan nodded and headed to the supply closet, where a deliveryman was stocking the shelves with boxes of pharmaceuticals, the unlicensed clinic being an unlicensed pharmacy as well.
    In for a penny, in for a pound.
    “What’re you looking for?” the deliveryman, a pleasant-looking young man whose accent suggested he was also from Hong Kong, asked.
    “Um  . . . Hasix,” Susan said, snapping back into work mode and pointing to one of the open boxes. “Thank you.”
    The deliveryman obliged, and Susan carried the box of pills down the hall. For all she cared she could be handing Mr. Carreño rattlesnake poison rather than his hypertension medication. She tried to comport herself before stepping into the examination room, but one thought kept playing itself over in her head. It wasn’t a question of who wanted Father Chang dead but who didn’t ?

    “Is Christianity based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth?” Luis asked his students. “Or the interpretation and expansion on those by Paul the Apostle? That is what we’re going to tackle today.”
    Luis scanned the room. It was only the second week of classes, but he already had a sense of the group’s comfort level. They liked a little boat rocking, particularly when he said something that flew in the face of something they’d heard at Mass. Too far, however, and they got uncomfortable, as if fearing for their souls should they hear something outright blasphemous.
    “According to the historical record, James the Brother of Christ, also known as James the Just, may have been Jesus’s designated successor,” Luis continued. “But Paul, though he had never met Christ, had amassed a following based on his interpretation of so-called miraculous events authored by Jesus and what he claimed were Jesus’s own words to him from the afterlife. It’s hard enough having a conversation with a zealot. Now imagine if that