The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(10)

                The passageway between the rectory and the church had no heat, and was cold this time of year. I opened the unlocked door into the church, and inhaled the scent of sawed wood.



                             My volunteers, as inept as they were, loved doing the repair work.

                I went down the stairs into the basement and found five women in t-shirts and ragged jeans, discussing the finer points of electricity.

                “Val would never say she’d hire an electrician,” Louise said. She was a tall, middle-aged blond and one of my best volunteers.

                “And yet I will,” I said as I went by. Several women looked up in surprise. Apparently they hadn’t heard me come in. “We’re not going to remodel this place just to burn it down. If we’re at the electricity stage, let me know and I’ll hire someone.”

                “Consider yourself on notice,” Louise said.

                I nodded. Something else to take care of.

                I went all the way back to the main office, where we had our phones. We’d initially had only one line for the hotline and one private line. But our hot line had expanded after some recent publicity, and now, we had three separate desks with phones on them. The calls rolled over to a different line if one was in use. It was an expensive system, but well worth it.

                The afternoon’s volunteers were an undergrad named Midge who had just started a few weeks ago, and one of my old hands—Susan Dunlap, who worked for the phone company.

                “Don’t tell me you’re here on your day off,” I said.

                “Okay,” she said. “I won’t.”

                She was writing in the log book. We kept a record of each call that came in, the time, date, and what was said. The volunteer signed in at the beginning of her shift, and then, if there were no calls, she read what had been written between her shifts. We sometimes got repeat callers, women who tested us before they confided in us, and the volunteers had to be prepared for that.

                Susan was a middle-aged redhead who had never really lost her baby weight, even though her kids were in high school now. Like Louise, Susan was one of my most reliable volunteers, a main supporter, almost from the beginning.

                Midge was studying at the other desk. She had the secondary phone, not that it mattered. Right now, the phones were silent.



                             I hovered until Susan finished writing. Then I asked, “Do you know shorthand?”

                “Doesn’t every woman?” she asked so blandly that at first, I thought she was serious. Then I realized she was making a political statement.

                I smiled. “If so, then I’m decidedly not female.”

                “Me either,” Midge said.

                Susan grinned. “I’m older. Back when I was a girl, they forced us to learn shorthand while they suffocated us in girdles.”

                Midge looked alarmed. But I grinned back.

                “Come with me,” I said to Susan. “Midge, can you watch the phones?”

                “Sure,” she said, frowning at us.

                Susan and I went into the kitchen. It was a marvel, built to serve dozens at church suppers. And unlike the rest of the church, this kitchen had been in good condition when I bought the place. Apparently it was one of the few places that previous tenants had kept up.