He snaked his lithe body off of the speaker and onto the dance floor where the Andrews Sisters were putting the oldsters in the mood for stiff jitterbugs. He did a slow solo grind, throwing out his crotch and grinning. That and the rebel yells of his drunken friends heard all the way from a back table sent the elderly pairs shuffling to the sidelines.
“No problem. I took care of it, Chief,” the best asshole yelled to Tim.
Catching the expression on the face of the bride’s mother as she made her way toward him, Tim knew he was in trouble again. He got momentarily distracted by a thunderous crash that sent shudders down his sound system, and its instant transition to mono.
“What the hell,” he said.
He wheeled in time to catch the guilty expression of the little boy tangled in speaker wire and leaning heavily against the toppled speaker. The kid, who was about nine, worked frantically and hopelessly to free himself.
“Shit,” Tim said just as the Andrews Sisters faded.
The kid’s eyes grew wide. He was a porker of a kid, the slowest and most uncoordinated of the pack of uninvited little monsters who’d been running around underfoot.
“You used a bad word,” he said.
“For heaven’s sake, it was an accident,” the bride’s mother sputtered. “I won’t have you cursing my grandson like that,” she bawled like a cow calling out helplessly on behalf of its barbwired calf as she made her way up toward them.
“Sorry,” Tim mumbled as he leaned into his toppled speaker and began to disentangle the kid. He wondered how many times he’d have to apologize to the woman before the nightmare gig was over.
“Kill him.”
Tim and the boy both yanked back their hands as if they’d come in contact with a live wire. Tim stared at the face of the speaker.
“What?” asked the kid. His eyes were wide with terror.
“Take the speaker wire and strangle him.”
“See, you’ve frightened him,” the mother of the bride snapped as she moved in closer.
Still far enough away that she obviously hadn’t heard. Tim and the boy stared at the speaker propped under the kid’s heavy prostrate body. Tim yanked a wire out to keep it from erupting again.
“Follow him into the bathroom and break his fucking neck.”
“Grandmaaaa!”
There was no mistaking the source of the guttural whisper. It came from the decommissioned speaker. Tim stared at the pulled wire in his hand.
“You’re scaring him. Are you going to help him up or just stare at him?” the mother of the bride demanded as she came up behind them.
“Grandma, he’s gonna kill me,” the kid wailed as Tim pulled free that end of the wire that had ensnared him. He scuttled away as quickly and nimbly as if his big ass had wheels. “Grandma, don’t let him kill me in the bathroom.” The boy thundered out of view, throwing fearful backward glances until the crowd swallowed him.
Tim remained squatting before his silent speaker. It looked and sounded as dead as it was supposed to sound. He slowly, hesitantly, plugged the wire back in and was rewarded by a blast of 1940s horn section. His hands shook as he set the big speaker back upright.
“I want to know what that child was talking about,” said the big woman who’d sign his check.
He ignored her, letting his mind race. He’d heard what he’d wanted to hear because he was so angry, that’s all. Which made no fucking sense whatsoever.
But it worked for him. Or would have if he could forget how the fat-ass little fuck had obviously heard the same thing.
The music played on.
Chapter Fifteen
“Hi, I’m Vincent,” the tall man said as he moved through the small crowd and extended a hand.
He had a face she liked, a bit too long to be handsome, but ruled by soft, intelligent eyes and a shy but warm smile. His voice had a gentle, comforting rumble to it that put her instantly at ease.
He turned to the others in the room. “Everyone,” he said in that gentle, pleasantly modulated voice, “meet Patty.”
The evening had started with a stroll. Just something to melt a little tension. There were people everywhere in her neighborhood. Walking, driving, biking. Kids chased each other around the feet of teenagers and young couples with strollers. As the shadows grew, Patty wondered how a woman could have possibly been attacked on the same street she now found herself and at virtually the same time of day.
She looked around and found herself staring at the Utica Lane Church of Redemption. The same modest, nondescript building where Tim, the man she was on course to share the rest of her life with, had insisted he’d spent much of the previous night.
What was she doing there at nine o’clock on a Saturday night? More to the point, had it been her destination all along? Had the Kayla Cosgrove incident so stripped her of trust in Tim that she was actually following up on his alibi?
“Shit,” she told the dusk.
The windows of the place were open. If she’d expected to hear anything from within, it would have been voices lifted in prayer or pipe-organ-propelled gospel music wafting out.
What she actually heard, quite surprisingly, was laughter. Party chatter.
She walked in the open front door. The people she saw were dressed in shorts or jeans, T-shirts and blouses, summer-weight sweaters. They were fat and thin, short and tall, old and young. Some she recognized from the neighborhood, others she didn’t. In the small kitchen at the opposite end of the vestibule, its swinging door propped open, she glimpsed church members talking and laughing, women shoving food into a hulking oven. The air smelled of ham and casseroles.
“Oh,” she said, “sorry.” Not sure what she’d done to require an apology, or whom to direct it toward.
She was backing out the front door when her arm was hooked by a slender and attractive woman who said, “Don’t worry, hon. You’re not crashing. I’m Sandy Applegate. We’ve got white wine, lite and real beer, diet and real cola. Who are you and what can I get you?”
And that was it.
Kent and Sara Lamplighter. Matthew and Roseann Porter. Travis and Gina Kendall and their baby. Chris and Abby Scranton and three very bored kids. Mr. Pierce, first name withheld. Dick Biddle. Mrs. Washinski and her grown son, Thad. William and Candy Tatum, the apparent guests of honor. A few others whose names she didn’t pick up, and of course Sandy and Vincent Applegate.
Most of them struck Patty as the sort of people who tend to join and fully partake of church activities—polite and friendly and eager to please, though a bit socially awkward. They all seemed honestly pleased to meet Patty, but most had little to say and most conversations sputtered out after a few exchanges.
Patty was annoyed to recognize but not be able to place a slight, middle-aged man with glasses and a befuddled air. When the information was relayed that Matthew Porter was her mailman, her mind immediately and successfully placed him in blue-gray shorts and iPod headphones stuck in his ears.
Dick Biddle was a shaggy-haired man who broke the conversational pattern with his inability to even pause for breath. He told Patty all about his exciting career in data processing, his recent front brake problems, the ineptitude of the Cleveland Indians and how his home had been tax appraised too high and his frustrating efforts to get a reappraisal.
Patty turned to the Lamplighters when Dick paused for breath and quickly asked them if she hadn’t seen them on her street walking a toy poodle.
Tonka Toy, as it turned out, was being treated for a canine condition ending in isis. The Lamplighters were surprised that Patty had never heard of the ailment. They both had the same silver shade of hair, the same plump, soft figures and protruding eyes. Patty at first had taken them for siblings rather than husband and wife and had made the mistake of asking if there was a blood relationship.
“What would make you think that?” asked the bug-eyed couple.
That’s when Vincent had come to her rescue. He steered her by her elbow into a relative clearing in the c
orner of the little church’s vestibule.
“I’m sure you weren’t expecting all this,” he said. “You wanted to be alone with your thoughts and it’s like New Year’s Eve in here.”
Patty hoped the tall minister didn’t notice her rueful smile at his overly bright description of the listless affair. “Well, it wasn’t my intention to crash your party.”
“You didn’t.”
He watched her, seemed to be waiting for her to say something. It occurred to her that he was, in some ways, as socially awkward as the others. Just hid it better.
She said, “My boyfriend has stopped in here a few times lately. I don’t think you know him, though. Apparently there wasn’t anyone else around at the time.”
An eyebrow shot up. “Try me. Since I own the only key, I hardly think he sneaked in.”
Her stomach twisted. She wanted to tell him to never mind, to change the subject. She knew how this one would turn out. But she also knew it was too late. “Tim Brentwood,” she said.
She watched his eyes as his brain processed the information. “I’ve met a lot of people lately…” he said, sounding as diplomatic as a politician.
She felt tears welling in her eyes and angrily blinked them away.
“Come here,” he said.
He directed her, with the barest elbow contact, to the darkened chapel beyond the vestibule. His voice sounded soft and hollow from the back of the larger, shadow-filled room. “This is yours whenever you need it.” He laughed, a clear, honest sound. “I’m not trying to steer you away from our little shindig. Just telling you that we’ll leave you alone if you’d prefer. If you need the solitude.”
Patty leaned against the back of the last pew. It felt cool and solid against her, its wood grain oiled and buffed for a century. Although the sorry little party could still be heard beyond the wide, open doorway, the room swallowed much of the sound.
“You’re not what I expected,” she told Vincent in an embarrassing burst of candor.
He smiled. “I got my clerical diploma in a cereal box, basically. I’ll be the first to admit that. My degree’s in social work and that’s my day job.” He stopped, seemed to consider how to proceed. “Over time I began to see that even the most well-funded, best-intentioned social programs don’t hold all of the answers.”
He brought the high-ceilinged room into the discussion with a wave. “I didn’t think you could actually buy a church, but I suppose if it’s in bad enough condition, it’s gone into foreclosure and you’ve got enough money…” Again he stopped, considered, shrugged. “My wife’s a corporate lawyer and a damn fine one, so we have the money. We’re not affiliated with any organized religion, but we’re not the next Branch Davidian sect either. There’s no spiked Kool-Aid. No weird sexual practices—at least not that I’m aware of.”
Patty laughed. “Well, what do you do?”
“When we’re not slugging down white wine by the jug, we actually pray some, sing some and talk out our problems. These days, it’s the economy, as well as the old standbys–money, sex, work/life balance, child-raising.”
It felt to Patty as though the young, unaffiliated pastor had seen through each of her suspicions and confronted them head-on. Now he seemed like nothing more than the neighborly, well-scrubbed family man that would have been her first impression if she hadn’t first known he headed the little church.
“Well, it’s been very nice to meet you,” she said. Or at least got most of it out before noticing his attention was elsewhere.
His face had changed. His lips were pressed tightly together, his eyes focused beyond her. She followed his gaze back to the vestibule, where Vincent’s wife, Sandy, was talking with—or, rather, listening to—the ever-talkative Dick Biddle.
Patty felt instant empathy for the minister’s trapped wife. She could almost see Sandy’s eyes glazing over while the hunched young man with the wispy moustache sucked her into his boring little world.
Vincent’s eyes seemed to dart from Sandy to Dick, Dick to Sandy. Without his disarming smile, which was definitely missing now, his features took on a harsher, more looming look, his eyes going hard, his mouth firm.
Patty scraped her feet noisily over the wood floor. Vincent twitched at the sound, peering at her as if she’d startled him awake. “Sorry,” he said, and his smile was instantly back in place, his eyes warm and liquid again. “I must have…what were you asking?”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m just wondering…is this it? Your whole congregation?” Thinking, You’re sure you haven’t run into a young man named Tim Brentwood?
“Just about,” he said. His face changed again, only this time it was a further softening of his features rather than the cold, hard metamorphosis of moments ago. “You might have read about one of our people,” he said gingerly. “The media never mentioned her by name, thank the Lord, but she’s one of ours. She claimed to have been raped not far from here.”
Claimed?
Patty said, “So they haven’t found the guy?”
Vincent’s eyes flicked past her again. Patty could no longer hear Dick Biddle’s steady drone. The general background chatter had definitely thinned out, the crowd evidently running low on small talk. She suspected they’d soon be making their excuses for breaking away.
When Vincent turned back to her he said, “I haven’t followed the latest developments. I’ve talked to the police once, but I’m sorry to say that I haven’t had much contact with the poor woman. I call, but she rarely picks up her phone. And she has no voice mail.” He paused. “Now that I think of it, I haven’t laid eyes on her since the incident.”
Chapter Sixteen
The blonde showed up well after midnight.
He’d had a few customers early, mostly neighborhood people. Then, later, the middle-aged men with out-of-town wives and DVDs programmed for smut. The typical married guy’s idea of a wild time.
Griffin knew things would pick up once the bars closed, but this was the lull. He made good use of it by straightening display boxes and checking in the few returns he’d gotten in the last hour. It was while crouching and sorting at a display case that he caught a quick peek at the blonde behind the black curtain.
Griffin wrinkled his brow. He’d definitely seen an eye-catching fluff of platinum hair in motion beyond the narrow vertical crack where the single felt curtain failed to meet the doorway. Knees crackling painfully, he stood and hobbled to the end of the aisle for a closer look. Fifteen feet from the adult room, he could say for sure—definitely someone back there.
He moved to the front door and ran a hand by the electric eye. It buzzed, proving that it worked. He frowned again. Even if he’d been so immersed in his work that he’d neglected to notice a new arrival, wouldn’t he have heard the door banging open, footsteps? Seen the girl? It wasn’t like he was so used to foot traffic at that hour that it wouldn’t have made an impression.
The blonde chuckled. It was a deep, throaty sound that made his groin stir.
Hot women, they never went in there alone. Only in his fantasies.
Griffin returned to his display case, slapping one cover against another for no reason except to look and sound busy. Occasionally he’d glance over his shoulder at the window overlooking the dark parking lot, hoping for a car, a bike, a pedestrian, someone.
At twelve twenty-four, his cell phone rang.
“How are we doing?” Polly demanded.
“Not bad, Ma. It’s a little slow right now, though. Lotsa folks looking for the new stuff we don’t have. Let’s place another order.”
“And the money’s coming from where?”
“Ma.”
Polly Solloway didn’t like to rove far from home, which fit Griffin just fine. The insurance money from his father’s death belonged to her, but AfterHours had been his idea. It hadn’t been an easy sell. Polly did the advertising, she paid the bills and handled most of the ordering. Fine with him. By doing all of that from her Parma home and never driving the ten minute
s it would take her to come to Old Brooklyn, it kept her from knowing—or at least acknowledging—the kind of business that went on behind that black curtain.
“Griffin? Griffin, are you still there?”
Just barely. He was staring at that curtain that wouldn’t leave his mind. He’d heard another sharp sound from back there. Like a single staccato sting of heel on the uncarpeted patch of floor. Now he caught a quick peek at black hosiery as a slender leg flashed into and out of view where the two curtains refused to meet.
“Yeah, Ma,” he said dully. “I got a customer. Let me call you back.”
What were the odds that he would have missed the entrance of a sleek blonde with black hose, stiletto heels and legs up to her neck? Man, he must be losing it.
He’d had three customers in the store at about ten thirty, a regular logjam for AfterHours. One guy had complained about his late-return fine and the other couple had tried to pay with a maxed-out credit card. Thinking back, that was the only time since he’d reported in that day that he could have been distracted by someone looking anything like the little he’d seen of the girl behind the curtain.
But that had been nearly two hours ago. Could she have been back there that whole time? If so, he could expect trouble. What if she was a radical feminist in the process of scratching all of his disks?
Then that dry chuckle came back to mind, and it didn’t sound like anyone displeased with what she was finding.
Maybe she was crazy.
Oh shit. He had to do something. Either throw her out or ask her out. He cleared his throat loudly in the hope that it would help make him sound manly and authoritative. Let the platinum radical maniac know how seriously he took his Fifth Amendment right to make pornography safe and readily available for all. He heard nothing back there now. Motion of any kind tended to send the curtain fluttering, but it hung still as death.
She was waiting for him.
Now where had that crazy thought come from? He peered out at the parking lot. The overhead neon lighting threw a reflection of blinking pink onto the pavement. There were no cars out there, no foot traffic, no nothing.
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