by Cheever, Sam
As Gertie pulled the door closed, Ida Belle sighed. “Well, that takes care of one problem.” She gave me a smile. “Come on, Felicity, I think you could use some cough syrup.”
I frowned. “Cough syrup?”
Fortune nodded. “Trust me, it’s exactly what you need right now. I’m having a shot or twelve myself.”
I shuffled toward the kitchen behind them. After the night I’d had, a little brain bleach in the form of moonshine seemed just about right.
CHAPTER TEN
Sinful’s Catholic Church was right across the street from the Baptist Church where Ida Belle, Gertie, and apparently Fortune all went. I’d heard about the banana pudding runs on Sunday mornings and hoped I’d be there to witness it the next time it happened.
Plus I fully intended to get in on that banana pudding. My mouth watered just thinking about it. “None of us are Catholic.” I told my cohorts in crime. “We aren’t going to be struck down by lightning when we go inside are we?”
Ida Belle snorted, “More like attacked by demons. This is where Celia Arceneaux goes to church, remember?”
Fortune grasped the aged, brass handle of the front doors and pulled one open. We all stood there, peering inside like we were exorcists about to enter the Amityville Horror house. Despite our obvious reluctance to go inside, the foyer looked pleasant enough. Dark paneling covered the walls and slate tile overlaid the floors. In the center of the space a round table held prayer books and a large clipboard with a sign-up sheet for something. Wandering over, I saw the church was sponsoring a Fourth of July picnic.
Gertie shouldered me aside and grabbed the pencil, adding something to the clipboard with a crooked scrawl.
“What’d you write?” I asked.
“Celia just committed to bringing all the hotdogs and hamburgers.”
We bumped knuckles, grinning.
“Are you two done screwing around?” Ida Belle asked.
Though her crankiness grated, a quick glance told me that she was more than uncomfortable in the enemy camp. Maybe she really did believe demons would attack us. “We need to find the collection baskets,” I told her, holding up the envelope I’d found. “I’m assuming whatever my father wanted me to see is in one of them.”
“This way,” Gertie said. She seemed to know where she was going so we fell in behind her. Gertie led us through a set of open doors, down a long aisle lined with hard, wooden pews on either side. I looked around, fascinated. My family had never been religious and the only time I’d been to church was when I’d gone with my best friend Angie growing up. Her family had been Baptist so I’d never been inside a Catholic church.
The thirty foot ceilings made the place feel enormous and the rows of stained glass windows on either side depicted terrifying scenes that I assumed came directly from the bible. From what Angie had told me about that notable book, Steven King had nothing on the guys who wrote the bible.
Gertie climbed a shallow rise of stairs toward a large wooden object that I guessed to be the altar. An enormous vase of flowers adorned the center of the ornate wooden table, along with a silver tray filled with small glasses on one end and two piles of velvet-lined circular trays, which were also silver.
Gertie headed for those. They resembled the collection plates I’d seen in the Baptist church years earlier. I prayed my father hadn’t put the clue in the church safe or lockbox. If they even had such a thing.
Gertie pulled the stack of plates off the top of the altar and started separating them, running her fingers over the velvet in her search for hidden items.
A soft gasp sounded at the back of the church and echoed its way toward us. All our heads snapped up, just in time to see a wide-eyed woman with a blue-gray bouffe hairstyle dialing a number on her cell phone as she ran out of the room carrying a greasy paper bag.
“Gladyce Parker!” Ida Belle growled. “Hurry. Celia will be here any minute.”
“Who’s Gladyce Parker?” I asked.
“Celia’s head busybody. She probably saw us coming in here and decided to see what we were up to. She has Celia on auto dial.”
Gertie jerked her head toward the second pile of plates. “Quick, Felicity, go through those.” She gave up restacking them and just started dropping them on the floor after searching each one.
I grabbed the second stack just as the front doors slammed open. My terrified gaze shot to the open doors, seeing a wide ribbon of sunlight painting the tile and, within the sunlight, a short, squat shape that looked like it had horns. The creature held a three pronged item in one hand and something whipped behind it, like a long tail.
“The head demon’s here,” Fortune shouted.
I dropped the plate I’d just finished searching and it hit the floor with a clang. We started to run as Gertie and I continued to search, leaving a trail of collection plates in our wake.
Behind us, the voice of Beelzebub rang out. “Stop, thieves!”
“Quick, in here,” Gertie shouted. She dropped her last plate and ducked through a door marked, Choir. “There’s another exit through here.”
Footsteps pounded toward us. Ida Belle grabbed my arm. “There’s no time. We need to hide.”
Fortune pointed toward a long closet at the side of the room. “In there.”
I threw the remaining plates into the closet and Ida Belle, Fortune and I ducked inside with them, diving into a tidy array of choir robes and slamming against the back wall. Gertie didn’t follow. As a terrifying growling sound emerged on the other side of the hallway door, I poked my head out to look for her. “Psst! Gertie, hurry!”
She unlocked the side door and then dove toward the closet, tripping on the carpet and falling head first into the robes. She grasped the burgundy satin and slipped toward the ground as Fortune reached out and grasped her scrawny ankles, wrenching her inside. Ida Belle and I managed to close the doors just as the hallway door slammed open.
My heart hammered so hard in my chest I was sure Celia could hear it through the door. Gertie was sprawled beneath me, her feet shoved against the closet door so that we had to hold onto them or they’d open back up and expose us.
We all stilled as Celia came into the room, barking orders at her minions from Hell.
“Search the room, they have to be here somewhere.”
My heart pounded harder, faster, as I became sure we were going to be discovered at any moment.
Footsteps neared the closet.
There was so much growling and slavering I thought Celia had unleashed a Hellhound on us.
Strangely, amid the terrifying noises, the enticing aroma of fried chicken dominated.
“Put down that chicken leg, Gladyce,” Celia barked from way too near the doors we were holding closed.
“I’m hungry. I skipped breakfast.”
“You sound like a pig in a slop bucket with that thing.” Something tugged on the doors. Gritting our teeth, we struggled to hold onto it with our fingertips. “It’s stuck again. Gladyce, help me get these doors open.”
More tugging. I was so scared I was dangerously close to peeing my pants.
“My fingers keep slipping.”
“Of course they’re slipping!” Celia screamed. “They’re coated in chicken grease.”
“Here!” Somebody shouted. “The door’s unlocked. They must have gone out this way.”
The room beyond the doors stilled for a beat and then there was one last tug. Footsteps led away from the closet and I allowed a relieved breath to escape.
“Find them! They were stealing from the collection plates. I’m going to go call Carter and have him arrest them.”
My relief was short lived. As the outside door slammed shut under Celia’s gentle touch, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I shoved the closet open. “Ohmygod, ohmygod!”
Fortune pressed against my back, forcing my head down. “Head between the knees and breathe.”
I sucked in a few deep breaths and started to feel better.
“What was up with th
at hair style?” Ida Belle asked. “It looked like she had horns.”
“Judging by the enormous hair pick she was holding I’d say she just left Desi’s Hair Salon. You know she always restyles her hair after Desi’s done with it,” Gertie said.
I took another breath, feeling my panic start to recede. “What about the tail?”
Silence pulsed between my three cohorts. Finally Fortune asked, “What tail?”
“Ohmygod, ohmygod!” Then I forgot to panic over the demonic vision of Celia because my vision clamped onto something white on the floor beneath the overturned collection trays. Reaching down, I grabbed hold of it and tugged it free.
“What do you have there, Felicity?” Gertie asked.
I straightened, peering at the curved stiffness of bright white in my hand. “I think it’s a clerical collar.” I looked up into the startled gazes of my friends. “Do you suppose my father’s become a priest?”
###
The Order of Saint Francis Assisi on the Bayou was housed in a building barely longer than its name. To me, its harsh lines, formed in some kind of pink brick, seemed more conducive to a prison than a church, but having some idea of monks as creatures of discomfort and sparsity, I guessed it made sense.
Parked on the road, we stood outside Gertie’s caddy and stared at the building, whose stark lines stood out from the untamed Bayou encompassing it like spectacles on a gator. “I just can’t believe it,” I said for about the hundredth time since we’d looked up Monasteries on the Bayou and decided to take a drive to the most likely one. “Felonius Chance…a monk?” I shook my head. “This is a waste of time. The collar must have meant something else.”
Fortune frowned toward the distant affront to good taste. “If you think about it, though, it makes perfect sense. Who would ever think to look for him here? It’s out in the middle of nowhere and from what you’ve told me your father is about as far from a monk as anyone can get.”
“I guess.”
“We might as well go on up and ask if he’s here,” Ida Belle said with practical efficiency.
Gertie slapped the steering wheel. “Come on, ladies, let’s get ’er done. I have an appointment with Desi later. I need to be back in Sinful by two o’clock. Time’s a wastin’.”
I slid into the back seat with Fortune and sat chewing a fingernail as Gertie negotiated the long, winding drive to the ugly building. We pulled into a small paved lot and climbed out. At the center of the building was an area that jutted out, with a pointed roof that was taller than the rest of the building and a plain, white cross at its peak. We headed for the glass door in the center.
The moment we walked through the doors, it was like we’d entered an alternate universe. The floors were tiled in a pinkish-gray stone and a fountain sang wetly in the center, providing a tropical air to the oppressive heat of the space. The walls were painted in a brightly garish depiction of critters in their natural Bayou habitat. The scene was filled with gators and other local fauna such as snakes and turtles, brown pelicans and even a Louisiana black bear or two. In the midst of the strangely peaceful comingling stood a man wearing long white robes, sandals and a beard. Presumably the peaceful looking person was supposed to be Saint Francis of Assisi.
Part of Saint Francis suddenly opened inward and a man wearing brown cotton slacks and a matching short sleeved shirt dissected him, a serene smile on his face.
Considering how chaos seemed to be following the four of us around, I sincerely hoped the man’s piety-induced calm wasn’t about to be obliterated.
“Can I help you?”
I stepped forward. “Hello. My name is Felicity Chance. I was hoping you could tell me if my fath…” I cleared my throat. “If a man named Felonius Chance might be here.”
The monk’s eyes sparkled. “He might be, yes.” He folded his hands and continued to smile.
I fought a frown, wondering if my mind was just mushy from being recently battered, nearly drowned, almost shot and then pursued by a creature from the dark underworld. I glanced around to see how my friends were taking his response. Gertie was smiling and nodding. She had her hands crossed in front of her just like the monk, her purse drooping off one shoulder. Ida Belle was frowning. And Fortune looked like she was wanted to bolt.
I figured she was reacting to the truly terrifying spectacle of a peace-filled human being. It was a little creepy.
Finally our host laughed gaily. “I see we need our humor balloons re-inflated.”
I shuffled my feet, forcing a smile onto my face. “Ha. Ha ha.”
Inflate this! Fortune murmured behind me.
I quickly spoke up as his happy smile tilted. “Let me rephrase my question. Has a man named Felonius Chance recently joined the order?”
The man inclined his chin and pressed his hands together, prayer like. “No.” He grinned.
“Oh. Well, thank you.” I started to turn away and stopped. Another thought occurred. “He might be using another name.”
The happy holy man before us lifted bushy brown eyebrows. “Oh? How strange.”
“Yes. He…” I frowned. “He has a checkered past, I’m afraid. But I believe the alternate name signifies a new beginning.”
Behind me, Fortune snorted softly. I elbowed her in the gut.
“Oh, well we’re all sinners aren’t we?” He fairly beamed.
“Some of us more than others,” Ida Belle agreed. “If sinning makes you happy, you’re gonna love this guy.”
I used my other elbow to shut her down.
Gertie still stood to the side, looking like she’d been bitch slapped into supreme happiness by the divine spirit.
“Um, anyway. He could be here under the name Lance P Fenus.”
There was a violent choking sound behind me. Giving up on trying to remain sober, Fortune turned and headed out, Ida Belle smacking her on the back and choking along with her. The door shut behind them with a whoosh, leaving me feeling uncomfortably alone in a strange land.
I glanced at Gertie for support. She seemed to have gained a golden aura. I wondered if sainthood could be immaculately bestowed just by being in the presence of the holy.
The man standing before me frowned, his formerly serene face turning pink. I realized I must have done something truly horrendous. “I’m sorry.”
He blinked. “What are you sorry for?”
“I’m not sure actually. I’ll just go now.”
But he spoke again, stopping me. “I’m just so touched to discover that Lance has family. We’ve had an awful time getting him to open up.”
I blinked. “He…he’s here?”
The blindingly bright smile returned. “Of course! Now, if you’d like to retrieve your friends we’ll go see him.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Why is your father using a name that sounds like a porn star?” Fortune whispered into my ear. Ida Belle snorted and they were off.
I glared but it only served to set them off again. “Hush! It’s an amalgam.”
Gertie frowned, “An amal…what?”
I turned my glare on Sinful’s newest pseudo-saint. “She speaks.” Dropping my butt onto the edge of the fountain, I sighed. “A mix of his names. I’m only aware of the name because he had some businesses in the Lance P Fenus…”
Hilarity ensued behind me.
I spoke up to drown them out. “There were some contracts on his desk at home with the name on them. I’m nosy so I asked.”
Gertie nodded, looking thoughtful. I decided Saint Gertie might not be so bad after all. At least she wasn’t laughing at my dad’s recently acquired alias.
“Felly.”
My gaze jerked around and I jumped to my feet. My father was floating toward me in a sea of white robes. His hair was long enough to touch the collar of the robe and he had a mustache and beard. Not a tidy little goatee, mind you, but a full blown Duck Dynasty abomination.
I barely recognized him.
He took my hands and pulled them to his mouth, kissing the b
acks. “I knew you’d find me.” He frowned. “You didn’t tell Detective Rouse where I was, did you?”
I channeled the intrepid Cal’s “you’re an idiot aren’t you” look, which he’d found so many opportunities to use on me. It felt good to use it on somebody else for a change. “Of course not.”
Father opened his arms and I went into them, sighing against his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
I felt hot breath down the back of my neck and turned to find Gertie standing an inch away with a beatific look on her face. She extended her hands to my father, clasping his hand in both of hers. “Mr. Penus. It’s so nice to see you again.”
“It’s Fenus!” I hissed.
Hilarity erupted again and I sheered a glance toward my two juvenile cohorts. “Stop it, you two!”
My father chuckled good naturedly. “Don’t concern yourself, honey. The name has been a favorite around here too. Just because we’ve found God doesn’t mean we’ve lost our sense of humor.” He took my hand and turned toward a couple of long benches on the other side of the walkway. “Come, sit with me a while.”
I allowed him to lead me to a bench and sat down next to him. I was brimming with questions and didn’t know where to start. My father saved me the trouble.
“You’re probably wondering why I left witness protection.”
“And why you came here. And how you became a monk so fast. And why they took you in…” I sucked air and clasped his hand. “I’ve been so worried. The Russians are here, father. And Detective Rouse is looking for you too.”
“They won’t find me here, Felly. This place is a true sanctuary. He looked around the lush, half-wild grounds with a reverence that seemed genuine. There was a nearly fanatic light in his eyes as he took in his surroundings. I felt guilty for thinking it was a little bit disturbing. He seemed genuinely happy for the first time since I’d known him.
“The answer to the first question is…” He leaned close, lowering his voice. “Someone tried to kill me, Felly. Whoever it was fired a bullet into the shower when I was in there. The bullet mostly missed…” He touched his stomach and winced. “I grabbed the shower curtain and flung myself out of the shower, taking the shooter down with me. Then I snatched the hairdryer and beat him over the head with it. When he went limp I ran.”
