0aeaa1e36e6f2e625b6ba8d48f773062

“What investigation?” said the Mayor, turning a feverish eye on him. “WHAT INVESTIGATION!”

“Um, the one about the home invasion?”

She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “WHAT HOME INVASION!” she screamed, and suddenly picked up a small bust of the previous mayor and threw it at his head!

Chase expertly ducked the bust, and watched it crash against the wall behind him.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Charlene?” he asked. “You look a little… stressed.”

“What’s with people calling me Charlene!” she said. “It’s MADAM MAYOR to you, sir. MADAM MAYOR to all! And who are you?”

“Chase… Kingsley?” he said, starting to recognize the same signs Odelia’s mom was displaying. “Detective Kingsley,” he added, figuring that maybe using his official title would protect him from more busts being aimed at his noggin.

“DETECTIVE Kingsley,” said Charlene between gritted teeth. “Look at me. I’m a professional woman with a very, VERY busy schedule. So why did you think it was a good idea to BOTHER ME WITH THIS NONSENSE!”

“But—”

“GET OUT!”

“But Madam Mayor!”

“OUT!” she screamed, and lifted up a slightly heavier version of the first bust. Before she could throw it, though, he’d already followed her advice and hurried out of the office.

There was a dull clunking sound when the bust hit the closed door behind him, and a loud scream of frustration and then all was quiet again.

Chase cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at Charlene’s secretary Imelda, who gave him a distraught look.

“She’s not herself, Detective,” said the woman, stating the obvious. “I don’t think she even remembers who I am anymore. One moment she calls me Mildred, the other Deirdre. And she keeps telling me to gather the troops for an emergency meeting. I figured she meant the council members, butI really can’t expose her to their scrutiny when she’s behaving like this. They’ll have her carted off to the nearest loony bin!”

“I think she probably needs to see a professional,” Chase agreed. “She never should have been discharged so quickly.”

“Oh, but physically she’s perfectly fine,” said Imelda. “She’s got the strength of an ox. Only this morning she threw a bust of Mayor Moss through the window that must have weighed at least thirty pounds. It narrowly missed the head of one of the gardeners.”

“She threw a bust at me, too,” said Chase. “Two, even.”

“Maybe she should pursue a career in basketball when politics doesn’t pan out,” Charlene’s loyal secretary said, darting a worried look at the door of her employer.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Father Reilly gave the cord attached to one of the bells in the church bell tower an extra vigorous pull, making it spread its sound far and wide and inviting parishioners to join the priest for mass. Very soon now the church would not only have the new roof he’d been pestering anyone who would listen about, but a brand-new set of bells, too!

So it was with a swing in his step that the white-haired priest now set foot for his office, where he’d been working on a jubilant sermon to rival the Pope’s Easter homily.

Father Reilly wasn’t usually the kind of person to believe in fortune tellers or psychics or tarot readers or people of that ilk, but he’d been seduced to the dark side when one of his parishioners had returned from a visit to Madame Solange and had sang that talented woman’s praises. This particular parishioner had suffered from a very stubborn form of toe fungus and Madame Solange had told him that very soon now he’d come into the possession of a cream that would clear up that fungus once and for all.

And lo and behold, the very next day just such a cream had found its way into his possession in the form of a UPS delivery, and the first results were promising indeed.

So Father Reilly had momentarily suspended his disbelief and had paid a visit to the wondrous world of Madame Solange. The woman, after gazing intently at her crystal ball, had told him a new church roof would soon materialize, as well as a new set of bells for his bell tower, and so it was with a sense of anticipatory glee that the priest now opened his laptop and added a few more phrases to his latest sermon—a real scorcher!

“Jesus wants the best for each of us, and so nothing but the best is what each of us should expect,” he murmured as he deftly stabbed at the keyboard in his usual hunt-and-peck approach to typing.

Just then, a messenger suddenly appeared in the door, looking bored.“Package for Francis Reilly—please sign here,” the messenger intoned in a monotone, and held out a stylus for Father Reilly to use. After having jotted down a scribbled affirmation that he was, indeed, Francis Reilly, the priest eagerly began unwrapping the package. It couldn’t be a new church roof, as usually church roofs are a little bigger than the five-pound package that was now on his desk. But it could be a bundle of cash, or a sheaf of checks.

But when finally he’d opened the package, he found that it contained a set of bells—very, very small ones.

He sank back on his chair as he stared at them.