Despite setback after setback, a determined person won’t stay down for long—and Hope Saldana was a determined lady.
Early next morning, I stopped by the Hope & Salvation Mission just to see how the old woman was dealing with the destruction of her place. Even though McGoo had already told me she wasn’t injured in the attack, I wanted to make sure she was all right.
Over the years, some unnaturals had grumbled about Mrs. Saldana’s goody-two-shoes efforts to help down-and-out unnaturals, but she stuck to her guns and continued her missionary work. Her heart was in the right place, and she considered it her duty to help those who no longer had hearts, beating or otherwise.
When I arrived at the smashed mission, I saw Mrs. Saldana standing on the sidewalk out front, arms crossed over her pink flower-print dress. She guided the efforts of her assistant Jerry, a tall and lanky zombie, who was hanging a rectangle of plywood over one of the destroyed storefront windows.
Jerry was one of the first wayward souls that Mrs. Saldana had helped when she opened her mission. As the story went—and the old woman told the story whenever she delivered her sermons, since it made such a great example—Jerry had shambled up to her during a particularly bad jag, intent on eating her brain. But Mrs. Saldana accepted him, read him verses from her well-worn Bible, offered him hope and comfort, and talked him down from his slobbering hunger.
“God loves all His creatures,” she said.
“Even a wretch like me?” Jerry had answered.
She gave him a sincere nod. “Just like the hymn says.”
Jerry broke down and cried, and he’d been her inseparable helper ever since. His hunger hadn’t abated, but he was working his way through a twelve-step program, and there were plenty of rats in the basement.
Now Mrs. Saldana took a step back to inspect the patch-up job. “That’ll do, Jerry.” She gave a brisk nod. “Bless you. Now we can continue our work.”
The old woman had curly permed hair, gray but not yet old-lady blue. At first glance, she looked like everyone’s favorite school-teacher. No one I knew had ever heard Mrs. Saldana raise her voice or speak a discouraging word. She was an optimist, a caring person—and it pissed me off that anybody would do this to her place. Was it mere vandalism, or did someone hold a specific grudge?
Seeing the smashed-out windows, I unfolded one of the Black Glass, Inc. flyers I’d taken from our office. “Maybe you should give these people a call. It’s a new company that specializes in repairing and replacing windows in the Unnatural Quarter. I’m sure they deal with regular transparent glass as well as opaque windowpanes.”
She perused the advertisement. “Thank you, Mr. Chambeaux. I like to use local services if I can.”
Her zombie helper looked at me, and the hammer in his hands slipped out of his rubbery fingers. The tool fell on his foot, but he didn’t feel it.
Mrs. Saldana gave a schoolteacherly tsk. “Jerry, you just dropped a hammer. Pay attention. You wouldn’t want to hurt somebody. You could get damaged too. We wouldn’t want that, would we?” Embarrassed, the zombie bent over and picked up the tool.
“Anything else I can do to help out?” I asked.
Her smile reminded me of grandmother’s kisses and the smell of apple pie. “It’s not me you should be worried about, Mr. Chambeaux. It’s those poor unnaturals who need my help. What a setback!” Dismay was plain on the old woman’s face. “This damage caused a delay in today’s services. I don’t know how I’ll serve breakfast to the needy … although I think we can manage coffee. Jerry?”
“Coffee …” he said, and shuffled inside through the gaping hole of the ruined door.
Mrs. Saldana smiled at me. “Come on in. Jerry is going to sweep up some of the mess.”
Inside the front room, the old woman used a thumbtack to put the Black Glass flyer on a corkboard she had mounted on the wall. The rest of the board was crowded with snapshots of unfortunate unnaturals she had helped—a toothless grinning werewolf, two ghouls who wore angelic expressions on their faces, and rotting Mel, my very first case as a PI in the Quarter. A sincere handwritten note in blocky letters, written with thick clumsy lines, as if a child had used a brownish-red crayon: Thank you, Mrs. Saldana! We love you and the Hope & Salvation Mission.
In the main room, ten beige metal folding chairs sat in front of the small lectern where Mrs. Saldana delivered her sermons. Each folding chair held a well-thumbed Bible and a stained hymnal. A rarely used piano had been pushed off to the corner. I remembered that Mrs. Saldana had tried to teach Jerry how to play, but he wasn’t dexterous enough to keep up with any fast melodies. A card table held a tray of cookies as well as a large percolating coffeemaker.
From inside, the old woman turned around and looked out the damaged front of the mission, where plywood now covered one of the two windows like an eye patch. “I’ve got to get that door fixed, or maybe I should leave it off. This is a mission, after all—we’re here to help people. We welcome everyone in need.” She made up her mind. “Yes, indeed, the door to Hope & Salvation should never be locked.”
“A locked door didn’t deter whoever vandalized the place yesterday,” I pointed out. “Do you have any idea who may be responsible?”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” she said automatically, and her lips turned down in a flicker of a frown; I caught the expression before she formed an accepting smile again. “Whoever it is doesn’t know that God loves them. My life’s calling here, Mr. Chambeaux, is to give comfort and assistance to poor unnaturals. They can’t help who they are, but they can control their urges. They can be good people if they stay on the straight and narrow. If I find whoever did this, I shall have to show them love and understanding … although I’m inclined to give them a stern lecture as well.”
“Officer McGoohan is working on the case,” I said. I didn’t want her haring off in pursuit of whoever had done the damage. She might get hurt.
“Yes, indeed. Such a nice policeman. Always so helpful. I’ve given him all the information.”
I nodded. “He’s a good man, ma’am, but he is overburdened. He and I help each other out on cases, so maybe I can give him a lead.” I thought about the people harassing Sheldon Fennerman, wondered if they might have something to do with the vandalism here. “Have you had any dealings with a purist group called the Straight Edge, ma’am? I’m starting to wonder if they might be involved somehow.”
Mrs. Saldana’s brow furrowed. “Most unpleasant individuals. Straight Edge claims I shouldn’t treat the unnaturals as God’s children. They came here and talked to me twice, treated Jerry like dirt.”
On the other side of the room, the lanky zombie had picked up a push broom and plodded across the hardwood floor, sweeping aside glass fragments and wood splinters. He looked up when he heard his name and let out a low growling groan at the mention of the Straight Edgers.
Now my interest was piqued. “Were they trying to scare you out of the city?” I couldn’t imagine her closing the doors and giving up on helping the needy.
Her face grew pinched. “Oh, much worse than that, Mr. Chambeaux. They gave me posters to put up here in the mission—here!—proclaiming that unnaturals should just crawl back into the dirt, or wherever they came from, and decompose. How dare they treat my patrons that way!”
“It’s the way they think, ma’am.” I liked these people less and less.
“Not just that. They expected me to join Straight Edge! They assumed that we must be on the same side because I’m human. What they asked me …” She swallowed hard—I could see her throat clench. “It was horrible!”
“What did they want you to do?”
“They expected me to set up a trap for my own flock—for the wretches who come in here for hope and comfort, including Jerry!” She gestured to the wall of lovely photographs of her success stories. “I refused to do it, of course. They were quite angry, but I quoted Scripture right to their faces. They weren’t even familiar with the Bible!” She snorted. “No, indeed, I don’t like them—but I pray for them. I sent them back to their little clubhouse headquarters. Did you know they’ve opened a new office, just down the street? Right here in the Quarter! You should go there and talk to them, Mr. Chambeaux. I doubt they’d even deny trashing the mission.”
“A new office?” Some detective I was! “Can you give me the address?” I wasn’t surprised the purist group had a base of operations in the Unnatural Quarter, but I’d never had any face-to-face dealings with them.
“Of course.” She wrote it down on a small notepad printed with pink flowers. “And this attack occurred the very day after I had my little tiff with them. I don’t need to be a detective to connect the dots.”
“That’s a big coincidence, Mrs. Saldana, but there’s one thing I don’t understand: Whatever caused this monster mash was definitely not human. Look at the damage! What sort of unnatural would ally itself with the Straight Edgers? No monster would want anything to do with them.”
Jerry shuffled by with his push broom, sweeping around my feet, then disposed of the dust and debris beneath the unused piano.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Mr. Chambeaux,” Mrs. Saldana said with a solemn nod. “And so does Satan.”