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So I call the Chamber of Commerce and try to find about her charity. Nobody knows anything. I call the children’s department. They won’t talk to me, and they start to sound like the fucking FBI, asking me about who I am.
Most people are packing up for the holidays and hardly bother to answer their phones. Half the ones that do sound like they’re getting a long lunch out of a glass.
Everybody is suspicious of a man with a French accent, stalking a librarian. It sounds a bit like a dirty crime story, no?
But Danny does not give up. I start calling the churches.
Chapter Nine
Tinka
Of all people, you might think that a bishop would be the best person to make an appeal to for charity. But, no. Not this particular sour old bishop. He sounds so sad as he tells me that the diocese committed all of its funds for children this year. He wishes the church could have done more, but, alas—his eyebrows stretch for heaven—there is never enough, there’s always more to do, and we are just too late.
He does ‘happen’ to have reporters present to observe and report on him providing a bland, healthy meal in an echoing, raftered hall. A meal the kids don’t need. And they obviously hate every mouthful of it.
As the children hunch in silence over the long bare wood tables and chew, slowly, the bishop walks between them and makes his signs, then he offers his blessing. One of his big, gold, emerald or ruby rings would probably fetch all we need for the children’s party.
Afterwards, he tells me he wants to give me a private audience. There may be something that can be done.
I’m wary. “What kind of ‘something, monsignor?”
“I may be able to help in a personal capacity.”
I do not trust the spark in his eye.
“Sounds great.” I try to sound pleased, but it comes out flat and dry. “Why not tell me out here?”
He spreads his hands. They look ready to grasp. “There is a… delicate matter.”
I look up and see the tired and sad expression of the woman who is his helper. While the bishop’s eyes bore into me like gimlets, I look over his red cap and catch her eye. Her lips tighten and she shakes her head. Once. It is enough for me.
I know what she means by that.
“You can give me an audience out here,” I say. “I won’t leave the children unattended.”
“They are in the arms of the church,” the bishop tells me.
I say, “Exactly.”
Probably not my best effort at diplomacy, though. If he was unwilling to help before this, afterwards, he shuts down like a fake smile.
Still angry, I step outside and hold the door for my line of little charges. As I count them and call them all by name as I see them onto the bus, Bonnie makes ticks on her clipboard and her head shakes.
“I’m counting them. There’s no need for you to be here, unless we find one’s missing.”
When they’re all on the bus, Bonnie shuts the door behind her and Clive drives away.
I hate to watch the kids heading back to the orphanage. It’s such a grim place for them to stay, and I know that they all hate being there. Their faces always darken when they talk or think about it. But, however much I would love to, I can’t keep them with me. I have nowhere to put thirty children. And I haven’t got the resources to look after them.
I turn back to my shabby little compact, parked between the bishop’s stately, curtained limousines.
I’m stopped in my tracks when I almost barge straight into the open arms of a huge man with a wide, devilish smile.
His eyebrows shoot up. “Well, bonjour, cher.” His smile is dazzling. He has a soft burr in his voice, an accent that curls in my ear, and I want to eat it. And his body is too lickable to be decent. He has sly eyes, and his smile would eat you for breakfast.
“I’m not Cher,” I start to prattle. Not like anyone could ever mistake me for her. Even as I’m saying it, I realize he was talking in French.
“No, cher,” he tells me. “I know who you are. You’re the lovely Tinka Belle. Tireless and heroic doer of good deeds. And,” — he steps back to look at me. I’m shaking while his eyes travel slowly all the way down my body and my legs, and then even more slowly, all the way back up again, pausing at every curve — “even lovelier in the soft and gorgeous flesh, I have to say.”
