Preacher Wore A Gun Read online

  “Tony may not like it when he realizes I’ve been in his room, but I’ll bet he’ll be glad to find everything put away and his bed made. Most boys don’t like to make their bed.”

  “I’m going to tell my daddy you were in Tony’s room.”

  “You can tell him if you like. He hired me to take care of his family. Cooking, doing laundry, and cleaning are part of that job. I have a feeling your father, too, will be glad I did it.” Then making sure her smile was pleasant and friendly, she added, “I was going to work on your sister’s room next but I can do yours first, if you like.”

  Babette’s face took on a scowl. “No! Don’t want you in my room. Stay out!”

  Tassie watched as the girl darted out of the room then flinched when she heard Babette’s door slam. That little girl was going to be a real challenge, but she’d be patient, just like her mother had said she should; and hopefully, by the time her three-plus months were up, they’d all be friends.

  She was still standing in the middle of the room, trying to figure out her next step, when the phone rang. It was Mr. Drummond, checking to see how things were going. Deciding she really hadn’t been on the job long enough to honestly evaluate the situation, she dodged his question by turning the tables and asking how his day was going.

  “Not too great,” he answered with a heavy sigh. “This case we’re working on really has me baffled. Looks like I won’t make it home for supper like I’d planned, maybe not even until morning. I might be involved in an important all-night stakeout. I hate it that this is happening on your first day. Is everything going okay with Babette?”

  “I—think so.”

  “Good. You have the number. Remember, you can always call me on my cell phone if you have questions or any problems.”

  “Thank you. I will. You have a good day,” she told him before cutting the connection.

  “Well,” she told Goliath as she hung up the phone, “Mr. Drummond isn’t going to make it home for supper. That means I’ll be dealing with his children by myself tonight. I was hoping he’d be here to help get things off to a good start, but that isn’t going to happen.”

  Goliath met her words with a cock of his head.

  “And if he is involved in that stakeout I’ll be spending my first night on the sofa instead of the bed in my room.” She smiled at the dog. “Guess where you’ll be sleeping. On the floor right next to me.”

  At noon Tassie fixed two peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches. One she ate, the other she placed on a plate on a pretty placemat and added carrot and celery sticks, in hopes that Babette would come into the kitchen when she wasn’t looking and eat like she had done with her breakfast plate. By one o’clock, the sandwich lay exactly where she had placed it. But the next time she passed through the kitchen the plate was empty.

  After checking the refrigerator to make sure she had everything she would need to prepare supper, she made her way back upstairs to Delana’s room to work on the trash that was strewn all over the furniture and carpet. How anyone could live in such filth and enjoy it was beyond her.

  Like most young girls, she herself had been rebellious as a teenager, but even with that she had kept her room in fairly decent order. Not as neat as her mother would have preferred, but decent. Not Delana’s. Her room was knee-deep with discarded clothing, hats, purses, scarves, shoes, hair clips, perfume bottles, shopping bags, empty hair spray cans, wadded up paper, fast-food wrappers and Styrofoam containers, napkins, and drinking straws. There were also textbooks, spiral notebooks, jewel cases from both computer software and music CDs, discarded posters, numerous partially used bottles of nail polish, playbills, receipts—you name it and it was probably there. Tassie stood in the middle of the muddle staring at it. The job looked impossible. She hardly knew where to begin.

  “What are you doing in my room?” a stern voice asked from behind her.

  She turned and found two dark-rimmed eyes glaring at her from beneath heavily darkened eyebrows and a head of hair boasting a broad streak of green running through her bangs. It wasn’t time for school to be out. Had this girl actually gone to school or had she skipped classes? Maybe spent the day with friends? She hadn’t had that streak of green when she’d left the house this morning.

  “I’m cleaning your room but now that you’re here you can help me,” she answered, forcing a smile and trying to sound nonchalant.

  “I don’t want my room cleaned. I liked it the way it was. You have no right to be in here.” The girl pointed a long fake nail painted with shiny black polish toward the door. “Get out!”

  “Look, Delana, I know life hasn’t been easy for you. Your father hired me to take care of you and your brother and sister because he loves you and is concerned about you. All I’m doing is making sure the trash is sorted from your personal belongings, throwing it away, and placing your clothing and shoes in their proper places. If you want to finish the job yourself, that’s fine with me. I’ll even help if you’ll let me, but you have to stop throwing everything on the floor. Believe it or not, I was your age once myself and not so long ago. I liked my privacy, too, and my mother let me have it—so long as I did my part and kept my room halfway neat and orderly. That’s all I’m asking of you.”

  Delana’s fists went to her hips. “Who do you think you are? God?”

  “Of course not, but I did pray about coming here before I took the job.”

  The girl glared at her. “And you think because you prayed you can come into our home and upset it like this?”

  Tassie’s eyes scanned the cluttered room.

  “This is my space, not yours,” Delana snarled. “You have no right to order me around. I’m going to call my dad!”

  Giving her a gentle smile, Tassie pulled her cell phone from the side pocket of her jeans and held it out toward the girl. “Here, you can use my phone. I’ve already put his number on speed dial.”

  Delana let out a snort, then, ignoring the phone, threw herself onto the bed and kicked off her shoes, letting them thud to the floor. Without another word, Tassie gathered up an armload of the strewn clothing and shoes and placed them in the trash container.

  Delana quickly sat straight up, her eyes bugging wide open, her face red and distorted with anger. “How dare you put my things in the wastebasket! I’ve had those shoes barely a week and that shirt was practically new! I’m going to tell my dad to fire you!”

  Tassie picked up several more items and added them to the trash container. “I just supposed since they were on the floor they were trash.” She picked up the container and headed toward the door. “If you don’t want your precious things thrown away, it might be a good idea to put them where they belong. Because anything I find on the floor I will assume is trash, and it will end up in the Dumpster.” She paused in the doorway. “Oh, and I want to remind you, supper will be ready at six.”

  A heavy object of some sort hit the door as Tassie closed it behind her and she sucked in a deep breath. Whew, that was close. This tough love thing is even harder than I imagined it would be, and I still have Tony to contend with when he gets home. I just hope Mr. Drummond will go along with me. Because if he doesn’t, and if he can’t understand that my heart is in the right place and I’m doing my best to help his kids, I may be quitting this job before my second day even gets here.

  But things didn’t go any better. In fact, they got worse. When she walked into the kitchen to prepare the taco salad she had planned to serve for supper, the room looked vandalized. Cupboard doors were standing open with grape jelly smeared on both the doors and the brass handles. More jelly was smeared across the countertops, with at least half the slices from a loaf of bread scattered haphazardly on the table and floor. The refrigerator door was standing open, and on the floor was an overturned carton with the full half-gallon of milk running in a trail across the floor. And, if that wasn’t enough, two ice cream cartons lay open and melting on the table.

  Tassie wanted to cry. Tony! It had to be Tony who had done this h
orrible thing while she was upstairs with Delana, but why? Had he come home early too? Surely me expecting him to keep his room clean wasn’t enough to cause him to do such a violent, destructive act. But when she discovered the words Go Home spelled out in red lipstick on the tile above the sink, she knew Tony hadn’t done it alone. He’d had an accomplice. A green-streak in her hair accomplice who had probably added her touch before coming upstairs and going into a tirade. It was obvious those kids were trying to get her to leave.

  She did the best she could to clean up the mess; after that, she prepared the taco salad. When the children showed up at the supper table, she wanted to personally strangle them with her bare hands, but instead she went through the entire meal without even mentioning the damage they had done to her clean kitchen. Since this was probably the last supper they would be having together, she decided to fake her way through the evening and leave them with a good taste in their mouths. Either that or they’d think her a bigger fool than ever for not wanting to retaliate. But regardless of what they thought, this would be her first and final evening in this house. She was going to quit. Maybe she had misunderstood when she thought God had called her to this family as a ministry. There were plenty of other places she could serve to honor Him, places where her efforts would be appreciated.

  By the time their father phoned at nine o’clock to say he wasn’t going to make it home until morning because he definitely was going to do the all-night stakeout, not only was Tassie ready to give her notice that she was leaving the next day, but she had begun to pack up the few things she had unpacked.

  “I’m really sorry about this, Tassie. Knowing firsthand how uncooperative my children can be, I had hoped to be there early this evening to relieve you, definitely before the children went to bed, but this case I’m working on really has me stymied. It’s about a missing child and this is the first real lead I’ve had. I could ask one of the other guys to fill in for me, but I really want to be there myself in case anything goes down. The guy we’re after is a real sleazeball. We have to get him off the streets before he harms another child.”

  “I—”

  “I—I really hope you don’t mind having to spend your first night sleeping on the sofa or in one of the girls’ rooms,” he went on, not giving her a chance to interrupt. “I’d sure like to be sleeping in my own bed tonight. This has been a really rough day. I’m beat, but I need to be here. Maybe I can catch a couple hours’ sleep tomorrow.”

  “But, Mr. Drummond, I—”

  “Call me Mitch. Everyone does. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to know that both you and your dog are there. I worry about my kids. I want them to grow into loving, responsible adults, so I’m glad you’ll be taking them to church with you. I’m definitely planning to go along myself the next time I can wangle a Sunday off.” He paused. “Oh, I’m sorry, you started to say something and I interrupted you.”

  Tassie blew out her cheeks in frustration. From the sound of it, he’d had a really rough day, too, maybe even rougher than hers, and he was going to have to stay awake all night. How could she add to his troubles by announcing that she was quitting and moving out the first thing in the morning?

  “You already have too much to think about. We can discuss it tomorrow.”

  “How did your day go with Tony and Delana? Did they give you any more grief?”

  Tassie huffed inwardly. Mr. Drummond, you don’t know the half of it. If what I saw today was their best behavior, I’d never want to be around to witness their worst! Deciding whatever complaining about the day’s happenings could wait until morning, she dodged the question as best she could. “I think you’d better ask Delana, Tony, and Babette. Their take on things might be a little different than mine.”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  She could hear mumbling, like he was talking to someone with his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Sorry, my partner is ready to leave. Gotta go. I’ll be home sometime in the morning to try to catch a little shut-eye. We’ll talk more then. But, Tassie, I want you to know how much I appreciate all you’re doing for my family. Thank you for being there.”

  She swallowed hard. “I—I’ll see you in the morning, Mr.—Mitch. Stay safe.”

  “Stay safe?” He chuckled. “No one has told me that since my mom passed away. She always worried about me. It’s nice to hear those words again. You stay safe, too. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Although Mitch had said he would be home in the morning and he did phone twice the next day, it was nearly six o’clock before he walked through the front door, face drawn, shoulders slumped, and in clothing that looked as if he had spent the night in the car, which he said he had. Tassie had never seen a man look so beat.

  She was tired, too—dead tired—from the day spent running the sweeper in rooms that looked as if they hadn’t been swept in months, washing windows both inside and out, cleaning bathtubs and showers until they sparkled, and completing a myriad of other household tasks that should have been done on a regular basis. Had Mitch and his children gotten so used to living in such disarray they hadn’t even noticed how bad things had become? The only decent and organized room in the house was Mitch’s room, and even that had needed a good dusting. She had decided early that morning, since she was going to quit, she was going to leave things in the best possible condition. Maybe that way, whoever replaced her could at least start out with a clean house.

  Mitch placed his briefcase on the hall closet floor then dragged himself into the living room. “Wow! Sure looks nice in here. Where’d you put all the stuff?”

  She smiled. “In the closets and desk drawers where it belonged.”

  “Where are the kids?”

  She motioned toward the stairs. “Delana and Tony are supposed to be in their rooms, doing their homework. Babette is watching a VeggieTales video and playing with her teddy bear.”

  “VeggieTales?”

  “It’s a terrific animated series designed for kids, fun for them to watch but with a great message. I picked up the DVD at the Christian bookstore today when I talked Babette into going with me. I bought her a book, too, and she actually let me read it to her.”

  “That’s terrific.” His brows rose. “And the other two are doing their homework? That’s a first.”

  “I said supposed to be doing their homework. At least they were the last time I looked in on them.”

  Mitch wandered into the kitchen, Tassie following, and sat down before leaning his elbows on the table and cupping his face in his hands. “Thanks for taking this job, Tassie. I know it’s not easy. My kids are a handful. Even though you haven’t said much about it, I’m sure they have given you all kinds of trouble both yesterday and today. I don’t know how to thank you for putting up with them.”

  “Your children are a handful, Mr. Drummond.” Somehow, since she was going to complain about his children, it seemed improper to call him by his first name. “I wanted to tell you this yesterday but when you called and said you wouldn’t be home at all last night, you had sounded so frustrated and tired that I decided to wait until now. I worked all day yesterday at getting Tony’s, Delana’s, and Babette’s rooms in order, and today at giving the rest of the house a good cleaning. Each of your children’s rooms was an absolute catastrophe.”

  Mitch hung his head. “I know. I’m sorry you had to see them that way. I never expected you to clean them up for them. Cleaning those rooms should be their responsibility.”

  “You’re right. That should be their responsibility but I didn’t mind cleaning them. In fact, I had hoped that by seeing them clean they would want to keep them that way. But apparently it didn’t work.”

  “I guess that means things didn’t go so well.”

  “Not well at all. My first real episode yesterday was with Babette and the second with Delana when she came home and found me cleaning her room. After that was with Tony, when he came home from school and saw what I had done to his room. I had half expected yo
ur older children to explode when they found I had been in their rooms, but Tony called me names I wouldn’t want to repeat. Delana didn’t call me names but she made it pretty clear she didn’t want me in her room. So did Babette. I was shocked when a four-year-old actually ordered me out of her room and threatened to call the police! I’m sorry to say it because I don’t want to hurt you, but your children’s behavior has been deplorable. And I haven’t even told you about the horrible mess Tony and Delana deliberately made of my clean kitchen by smearing the cabinets, countertops, and floor with grape jelly. Not to mention leaving cartons of ice cream out to melt, the refrigerator door standing open, and a milk carton turned on its side, spilling milk onto the floor I had just mopped.”

  Mitch gave his head a sad shake. “I’m sorry, Tassie. I don’t know what else to say. No one deserves to be treated that way.”

  “After the day I’d had with them, despite my resolve to stay, I came to the conclusion it might be better if I moved on, looked for another job, and forgot all about your family. But being an old softie, and feeling sorry for running out on you without notice, when all three children showed up for dinner right at six o’clock last night and consumed every bite of the taco salad I had fixed, and you weren’t able to make it home all night, I decided I would give things another day, hoping to see improvement. But I wasn’t staying today for them, Mr. Drummond, I was staying for you. Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say, today hasn’t been any better.”

  He gazed at her with tired eyes. “I wish I could say I’m surprised by their abhorrent behavior but I’m not. The decent thing would have been to have given you more of a warning before you took the job but I couldn’t. I was desperate for someone to stay with them and at my wits’ end. As much as I had hoped you’d stay I can’t blame you wanting to quit.”