The Way of the Wicked (Hope Street Church Mysteries Book 2) by Ellery Adams

to see that his wrinkled face was streaked with tears. “Gone, I tell you!”
    Cooper took his arm and led him to an upholstered wing chair. He sank down into the floral material and covered his face with his hands. He made pitiable sounds that sounded like a mewling cat.
    “What’s gone, Mr. Crosby?” Cooper prodded gently. “Is something missing from your house?”
    “Now everyone will know,” Mr. Crosby moaned. “Yellow, yellow, YELLOW! Someone stole our secret. Someone was in my bedroom. I can tell.” The hands covering his face quivered and he began to weep. His shoulders shook and he whimpered, “It’s gone. It’s gone,” over and over.
    Eventually, he fell silent and no matter what questions Brenda or Cooper asked, he wouldn’t speak another word. Brenda wiped off Mr. Crosby’s plastic-covered leather chair, put him in a clean T-shirt, and washed his face as tenderly as a mother would clean her own child’s. All the while, Mr. Crosby gazed unseeing at a football game on the television screen.
    Back in the Caddy, Brenda was clearly worried. “I’ve never seen him like that. He hasn’t got any memory problems—somethin’ must have happened to him yesterday.”
    “And I’m going to try to find out what,” Cooper declared angrily. “I don’t think he just lost track of time, Brenda. He seemed too lethargic and too confused to have just been taking a long nap. And now he believes something’s missing. Something that’s obviously very important to him. I overheard Lali say that items were stolen from several of our clients’ homes this summer. It looks like the thefts are still going on.”
    Brenda stared at Cooper in shock, even though the traffic light had turned green. When the car behind them laid on the horn, Brenda waved at them and managed to drive on. “You mean to tell me that the thief is one of us? A volunteer is messin’ with these folks?”
    Cooper nodded. “It looks that way, yes.”
    “Lord in heaven! What is this world comin’ to?” Her lips pinched in fury, Brenda gunned the engine. “If there’s somethin’ I can do to help, you just name it. I’m not gonna stand for folks givin’ our program a bad name. I’m mild as a kitten most days, but I got claws and a big strong body, and I’ll use them both if I find out that someone I know is dopin’ up old folks just so’s they can rob them blind.”
    “Doping them?” Cooper repeated. “That would explain why Mr. Crosby lost a day. But how would someone drug the clients?”
    Brenda clucked her tongue. “Are you listenin’ to yourself, girl? We’re the ones packin’ and bringin’ them their food. Now, I ain’t no rocket scientist, but I can put two and two together and figure out how easy it would be to stir a little somethin’ into the mashed potatoes.”
    Cooper nodded. As horrible as the idea was, it made sense. “I need to figure out what that something is, but my experience with drugs doesn’t go much beyond Tylenol and Robitussin.”
    “Go see Mr. Crosby’s son, then,” Brenda suggested as she merged into the next lane without using her signal. “That’s why the boy’s in jail. Probably knows more about drugs than anybody in Richmond. Just wasn’t smart enough to figure out he was sellin’ heroin to an undercover cop.”
    “Jail?” Cooper swallowed hard. She tried to envision herself sitting across from a convicted drug dealer in an attempt to elicit information from him.
    “But if you’re gonna go, you’d better take somebody along for the ride,” Brenda advised. “And you’d better pick wisely. Those prison boys don’t see many women and the Crosby boy might wanna talk to you about things you don’t wanna talk about. You hear what I’m sayin’? Take someone with you.”
    “I hear you,” Cooper said.
    Glancing out the window, she watched house after house pass by and thought, Do I really have it in me to sit across from a man in an orange jumpsuit?
    As they drove on, Cooper no longer