Holy Terrors by Mary Daheim

Author:Mary Daheim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Eddie La Plante was spraying the bushes in the small rose garden at the west end of the church. It was semi-enclosed, with a grotto where St. Bernadette knelt at the feet of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Dooley family had donated the shrine thirty years earlier when one of its members had been diagnosed as having a stomach tumor. Surgery had revealed that he’d swallowed a Ping-Pong ball during a particularly raucous St. Patrick’s Day revel. The planned trip to Lourdes had been canceled, and the money set aside for the journey had gone into the grotto.

The minute Judith saw Eddie, she remembered that he was the person who had first mentioned Stella. Judith approached him gingerly, never sure of how he would receive an intruder in his floral domain.

“I see there are some buds coming out already,” she said pleasantly. “Nice new growth, too. Did you prune all these yourself?”

“Who else?” retorted Eddie, still spraying away. “You think any of these snooty parishioners would lend a hand?”

Since most of the parishioners’ hands were already callused, at least symbolically, from putting on bazaars, auctions, bake sales, carnivals, and endless other fund-raisers, Eddie’s remark struck Judith as unfair. But Judith, determined to stay on his good side, assuming he had one, kept smiling.

“You’ve certainly done a good job here,” she said, trying not to inhale Eddie’s pest spray. “Did you work in the garden at your former parish?”

Eddie eyed her suspiciously from under the brim of his baseball cap. “What former parish? I hadn’t been inside a church in forty years until I moved here.”

“Oh.” Judith mulled briefly. “It must be quite a change from…where you were before.”

Eddie snorted. “Nope. One place is like another. A roof, three hots, and a cot. Big deal. Quince Street ain’t Park Avenue.”

Judith hoped Eddie didn’t notice the flicker of surprise that crossed her face. “The rain doesn’t bother you?”

“Nope.” He polished off the last rose bush and set the spraying equipment aside. “It beats that wind in the Bay Area. The earthquakes aren’t as bad, either, I hear. ’Course there hasn’t been a real shaker since I came.”

“Did the last big one down there scare you off?” Judith asked innocently.

Eddie took the baseball cap off and mopped his brow with a handkerchief that looked as if it had been borrowed from Phyliss Rackley. “Naw. It just rattled the dishes and made the lights blink. I was living down the Peninsula then. Moraga.”

“You have family here?” she inquired in her most guileless manner.

The suspicion in Eddie’s eyes intensified. His weather-beaten face screwed up. “Why should I? What good is family?”

Judith thought of her own, flawed and sometimes aggravating, but nonetheless dear. “Oh—sometimes relatives are a trial, but they can be a comfort, too. I just wondered if you had anybody close up here, that’s all.”

Eddie gave her a baleful look and started to turn away. “Got to separate the bedding plants,” he muttered.

“Eddie—who is Stella?” Judith’s voice had risen, her tone implying command. She used it rarely, but it was well-honed from her days in the library and her nights at the bar.

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