Sister Angel Read Online Free PDF

for Charlie. Is he in your room?”
    “He’s sleeping. I’ll take it.” She took it in the living room.
    “Constance? Hey, how’re you? It’s Tony.”
    “Fine, Tony. What a nice surprise to have you here. How is Frances?” They chatted another moment or two before he came to the point.
    “You want to give Charlie a message? It’s about that other set of prints on the glass. She’s Angela Schnabel, a runaway from Philadelphia juvenile court, but hell, she’s going to be eighteen in a few months, and she’s clean. No one’s going to haul her back now.”
    “Juvenile court? For what?”
    “Nothing. Abandoned by her mother. She was a ward of the court in a disturbed children’s home and split.”
    She paced the living room for several minutes, then sat down and called Philadelphia information and got two numbers—one of a colleague who had worked with her several times and another of a child psychologist she knew by reputation.
    At first, her friend protested that the information she wanted was not available. Constance talked hard for the next few minutes, hung up, called the child psychologist and talked even harder to her, then called her friend back.
    “Dr. Walker will intercede for you,” she said forcefully. “She has influence at the detention center. Just get over there, Vanessa, will you, for crying out loud?”
    Vanessa grumbled, but she would do it and call back as soon as she had anything to tell.
    Constance was still waiting when Gretchen joined her for a drink. Close on her heels was Charlie, who looked as if he had not slept.
    “Cheers,” Gretchen said, and upended her martini glass. “She’s giving us all the old heave-ho, I’m afraid. She’ll be down to tell us officially that we’re invited to leave at the first opportunity. That cat/ghost act last night was the last straw.”
    “Amos called her Sister Wanda today. I was afraid he had won,” Constance said morosely.
    “Maybe what I have to tell her will change her mind,” Charlie said.
    “I doubt it.” Wanda entered the room. She looked poised and calm, as if making up her mind had been a panacea. “Brother Amos already told me about his past. He went through a conversion last fall as real as that which changed the life of Saul of Tarsus.”
    “You know about his little mind-reading act with the carnival?”
    She nodded. “Everything. And he really does communi cate in ways not available to the rest of us. He said Constance knows that now.” She looked inquiringly at Constance, who nodded.
    “He knows things he shouldn’t.”
    “See? I’ve invited him and Sister Angel to come stay here, but not until my other guests have departed,” she said without a trace of embarrassment. “They will join us tonight for a short while, then move in to keep me company tomorrow. Will that be convenient?”
    Charlie poured a martini for her. She accepted it and sank into one of the overstuffed chairs, picked up her cig arettes, and lighted one. “He also said that you, Charlie, should leave here tonight. Whatever it was that haunted Vernon has now transferred its attention to you. You’re in danger.”
    “Vernon hasn’t told you anything about that ghost yet?” Charlie’s voice held a trace of mockery and there was the hard surface over his eyes that Constance had hoped would never reappear.
    “Not yet,” Wanda admitted. “But he will eventually. Last night was the first time he has shown such displeasure. That was directed primarily at you, Charlie, because you’re here under false pretenses. You’re the one who wanted to play with the cat, and you threaten Amos.”
    Charlie laughed. “You told him about us?”
    “No. I don’t break my word. I’ve told him nothing.” She stubbed out the cigarette and lighted another. “There’s no need to tell him anything. He knows.”
    Why didn’t Vanessa call back? Constance looked again at her watch.
    “Come down to my place in New York for just a few days,” Gretchen was urging