At that, I arrived at the church none too early, as I discovered when I wheeled the Mercedes into the big parking lot at ten-twenty-two. The blacktop already was well over half filled with cars ranging from Lincolns and BMWs to subcompacts, and a platoon of earnest, well-scrubbed young men in dark slacks and white, open-collared shirts deftly motioned drivers into spaces, neatly filling one row at a time.
I fell into step with dozens of others zeroing in on the tabernacle doors; except that most of us were dressed in going-to-church clothes, we could as easily have been surging toward the gates of the Meadowlands to see the Giants knock heads with the Redskins—although there were no bratwurst-scented tailgate parties in the tabernacle lot.
Inside the gold-and-chrome lobby, I took stock of my fellow worshipers: The majority were in their twenties and thirties, almost all of them white. My instant survey told me slightly more than half were couples, and that the overall man-woman makeup of the crowd was too close to call.
I sauntered to a counter along one wall that was manned by two grandmotherly types and stocked with pamphlets and books, including Bay’s Inspiration Theology, on sale for six-ninety-five in paperback and eleven-ninety-five in hardcover. I selected instead a free brochure headlined “What the Silver Spire Ministry Can Mean in Your Life” and moved toward the auditorium. Like the parking lot, it already was well-filled, and organ music wafted over the crowd.
A perky young woman with long red hair, a handful of programs, and a badge identifying her as “Jennie Amundsen—Usher” greeted me. She wore one of those little spire-shaped lapel pins just above the badge on her light blue dress. “Hi, do you worship with us regularly?” she asked as she slipped me a program.
“No, this is my first visit; I’m from out of town,” I improvised cleverly.
“Well, we’re really happy to have you with us today, Mr.…”
“Goodman.” I was on a roll with my new identity.
“How far down would you like to sit, Mr. Goodman?” Her smile was dazzling.
I said about halfway would be fine, and she led me to a single open seat on the aisle next to a couple who looked to be about ten years out of high school. As I eased into the cushioned theater-type seat, they both pivoted my way with grins as big as Jennie Amundsen’s. “Hi, I’m Cal Warren,” said the full-faced, prematurely balding male half of the pair, who occupied the seat adjoining mine. He thrust a thick paw at me, vigorously shaking hands. “This is my wife, Darlene.” She nodded a head of short blond hair, and her blue eyes danced. She probably didn’t push the pointer on her bathroom scale over the one hundred mark, while her husband easily doubled that figure.
“You a member here?” Cal asked in a breezy tone.
“No, I’m in from out of town on business.”
“That’s what usually happens to us.” He laughed with satisfaction. “You see, Darlene and me—we’ve been members for five years now—every Sunday we sit here so there’s just the one seat between us and the aisle, you know? That way, we almost always meet a first-timer, somebody like yourself who’s giving us a try here at the Spire. Darlene and me, we just love to meet new people. Where are you from, Mr. …?”
“Goodman. Alan Goodman. Chillicothe, Ohio.”
“Ohio. A doggone nice place, from what I’ve seen of it so far. I get over to Cincy once or twice a year in my work. Darlene went with me once. You liked it, too, didn’t you, honey?”
She nodded and made her eyes dance again. “How did you find out about the Silver Spire, Mr. Goodman?” she asked. “Have you seen our service on television?”
I told her I had a friend back home who recommended it, and she looked as if she was ready to ask another question when the lighting intensified, probably for the TV cameras, and a trumpet fanfare blasted from somewhere behind us, halting the murmurs throughout the big auditorium, where every seat now was taken. I turned and saw that the trumpeting came from three men in maroon blazers standing in one corner of the balcony. They stopped as abruptly as they had begun, and on their note, Barnabas Bay strode purposefully across the stage to the lectern that I knew—thanks to Nella Reid’s tour—had only seconds before been hydraulically raised from out of the floor. Bay was wearing a light gray suit, a blue patterned tie, and the hint of a smile.
“Good morning, brothers and sisters,” he intoned, spreading his arms wide, palms up. “Welcome again to our Hour of Glory. And to start us off right, the Spire Choir, directed of course by our own Marley Wilkenson, reminds us of ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’”
With that, the choir, some sixty strong on risers at stage left and resplendent in silver-and-crimson robes, poured out one of the hymns I grew up on back home. Wilkenson was plenty theatrical in his directing, waving his arms more than a midtown traffic cop during the evening rush hour. And on the last verse, he pivoted smartly toward the audience and urged us all to stand and sing, which we did—following words projected on a screen above the choir. I spotted Carola in the center of the first row of singers—she’s hard to miss—but I’m sure she didn’t notice me, just another face in the crowd.
After the hymn, Wilkenson wiped his brow with a handkerchief and bowed. “You’re all in marvelous voice this fine morning,” he boomed into his lapel mike. “Now I want you to welcome a truly gifted young musician to our stage. She’s only nine, but she plays the violin like a Stern or a Perlman.” He introduced a taffy-haired little girl in a pink dress and petticoats who knew how to use her violin, all right. For those who were sitting more than a block from the stage, and there seemed to be plenty of them, her televised, twelve-foot image loomed on yet another screen, which had been noiselessly lowered from a groove in the ceiling. Lily probably could have identified the piece she played; whatever it was, it sounded good.
After she finished and bowed to the applause, Bay came back on stage, put an arm around her shoulders, and said, “Isn’t she wonderful, folks? What a gift. Her parents, Tom and Marie, are right down front here; they’ve been members of our Spire family for—what?—twelve years, isn’t it?” He looked toward the couple, who sat in the second row and nodded. “And, honey, you’ve been coming to Sunday school here for how long?” Bay bent down and thrust his microphone at the girl.
“Seven years,” the small voice responded.
“Seven years—isn’t that great?” he beamed. “Let’s give her another Spire-style round of applause.” We all did, and the girl left the stage while Bay resumed his place at the lectern, his expression now somber. He looked out over the crowd and said nothing for fully fifteen seconds. He then squared his shoulders.
“Brothers and sisters in Christ, I stand before you this morning heavy with sadness, weighted with grief. As most of you here in the tabernacle, and”—he stretched an arm dramatically—“many, many of you watching us from across the country and around the globe know, our beloved brother and friend at the Silver Spire, Roy Meade, has gone to take a place with his Father above. We cry out at the injustice of Roy’s sudden death, his violent death, his inexplicable death. We—or at least I—ask Almighty God why, oh why, have you allowed such a thing to happen to one of your good and faithful servants?” Bay’s shoulders sagged, and he paused once more, letting his eyes move over the hushed audience.
“There is an answer to this question, my friends,” the preacher said in a rising voice. “And, of course, it is here.” He held a Bible aloft and let it fall open on his palm. “Please take your own Bibles and come with me now to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter eight. I am reading as usual from the New International Version.”
The sound of turning pages filled the hall. Cal and Darlene Warren each opened their Bibles, and Cal held his so I could read along. “Starting with verse thirty-five: ‘Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors throug
h him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’”
Bay closed the Bible loudly and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the lectern. “Brothers and sisters,” he said gravely, spacing his words for effect, “God has a plan for each one of us, and whatever that plan may be, nothing—repeat, nothing—can separate us from His love through Jesus Christ. You may be assured that God has a role for our beloved friend and colleague Roy, and it is not given to us to comprehend that role; it is all part of our Lord’s grand plan.”
Bay then launched into a sermon on death and salvation, and although much of it I either didn’t agree with or didn’t understand, I had to concede that the guy was one high-octane speaker. He talked for twenty-five minutes, again using his southern-tinged voice like a musical instrument—now loud, now soft, almost a whisper—and there weren’t more than a couple of coughs the entire time from the three thousand plus in the audience.
After the sermon, we sang a hymn, the collection got taken—I put a finif in the offering plate to be sociable—and we sang another hymn. Wilkenson’s choir got to perform once more, too, and in between all this, Bay led us in prayer. We closed with a singing version of the Lord’s Prayer, and as I rose to leave, Cal Warren stopped me. “Pardon me, Mr. Goodman,” he said with a wide smile, “but have you got a card?”
“I … left mine at the hotel. Forgetful of me, sorry.”
“Well, how’s about writing your name and address down for me? I’d be happy to send you some material on the Spire.” I told him I’d already taken a brochure, which I proudly produced from my breast pocket, but the boy was insistent. I tore a sheet of blank paper from my pocket secretary and wrote “Alan Goodman, Route 1, Chillicothe, Ohio” on it, feeling slightly guilty.
“How ’bout the zip code?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” I took the paper back and scribbled the five numbers I had long ago memorized from sending cards and letters west. Never mind that anything Cal mailed would either be returned or end up in the Chillicothe Post Office’s dead-letter department. We shook hands, and Darlene Warren smiled with her dancing eyes, saying she hoped I’d come back. I answered that I would try, not wanting to total up the number of fibs I had told in the last hour. And in a church, no less.
The cars moved out of the huge parking lot remarkably well, probably because of all those young men in the white shirts plus several of New York’s Finest who were waving traffic through intersections in a radius of several blocks around the tabernacle. A half-hour after I turned the key in the ignition, I had the Mercedes back in the garage on Tenth Avenue.
My watch told me it was twelve-fifty-six. I contemplated going back to the brownstone, but the thought of being under the same roof as Mr. Relapse was more than I could handle at the moment, so I went for a walk.
New York takes plenty of knocks both from within and without, most of them well-deserved. The city, at least Manhattan, is overpriced, overcrowded, and dirty, and everything from bridges to subways seems to be wearing out and falling apart faster than the funds can be found to patch them up. To say nothing of miseries like random violence, drugs, and homelessness. But despite its appalling and maybe insurmountable problems, the place still possesses a fascination for me, although I can’t always tell you why. That early afternoon, with spring showing its best, I felt that old pull once again.
Part of it had to be the weather: sunny, seventy, and slightly breezy. I ambled east to an almost traffic-free Fifth Avenue and turned north, eventually finding myself at Rockefeller Center, where I looked down into the sunken plaza. Brunch was being served at umbrella-sheltered tables on the very spot where ice skaters—Lily Rowan and I among them—had cavorted only two months earlier. I briefly considered hiking another half-mile or so to Lily’s penthouse, but I nixed the idea faster than you can say Renoir, one of whose paintings hangs on her living-room wall. Lily loves to sleep late—very late—on Sundays, and far be it from me to disturb other people’s routines. Besides, in my present state, I hardly qualified as good company.
I headed back south, this time taking Park Avenue for variety and slipping a sawbuck into the paw of a grizzled panhandler at Forty-eighth who gave me a toothless smile and a hoarse “God bless you, sir.” I almost asked if he had ever been to one of Bay’s homeless shelters.
Picking up my pace, I chewed over the situation one more time. Fred sat at home in Queens sweating and moping, not that I blamed him. Wolfe also sat at home, with his brain on strike—and I did blame him. I tried him and found him guilty of terminal laziness in the first degree. One of six people—seven, counting Bay—had to have been Meade’s killer. But what was the motive? True, the guy hadn’t exactly been Mr. Popularity at the church, but if healthy dislike for a fellow employee were stimulus enough for murder, most of the New York work force would either wind up in jail or pushing up posies.
I was still on the fence about Carola Reese. I had told Wolfe I’d give slightly more than even money that she had something going on the side with Wilkenson, and I wasn’t ready to change my mind. Even if she and Wilkenson were playing games, though, what did Meade have to gain from harassing her? And if he blew the whistle on them, what was in it for him, other than seeing them both tossed out of the Circle of Faith and maybe out of the church as well? Was fear of being exposed great enough to spur one of them to commit murder? And was this the “situation” that Meade had mentioned to his wife? And what about the fact that Meade had known of Carola’s child? How much did she fear that would get out? Enough to silence him?
Then there were Gillis and Reese. Meade hadn’t endeared himself to either of them with his carping about their job performance, and he apparently held a low opinion of Morgan as well. Was one of them so terrified of losing his job that he got rid of his primary critic? I gave each of those possibilities long odds—particularly Morgan.
And I still couldn’t generate much enthusiasm for either of the Bays as the culprit. Religion and I have barely a nodding acquaintance, but nonetheless, the thought of the head man at a church—any church—being a murderer struck me as implausible to the point of absurdity. And although I knew now that Elise Bay had a deep-seated dislike for Meade, I couldn’t conceive of a circumstance in which she would feel compelled to kill him. Wolfe might scoff at that conclusion, claiming as he has before that beauty often blinds me to reality. Maybe he’s right, but unless Meade was doing something to threaten Bay’s life or his ministry, Elise was clean.
So there I was, with a boss who refused to work, a friend who was one quick trial away from prison, and a bunch of religious types, none of whom liked Meade much, but none of whom seemed to have a strong motive for dispatching him. And now we had two sets of Bible verses—the ones threatening Bay and the ones I found on Meade’s desk. What, if anything, was the connection between them?
As I walked, I kept asking myself questions, but I wasn’t getting any answers, and by the time I climbed the steps to the brownstone, I was good and mad.
“Is he still up in his room pouting?” I snapped at Fritz, who was sitting in the kitchen reading pieces of the Sunday paper. He took off his half-glasses and nodded. “But, Archie, he did come down to the office for a while. It was most unusual—he turned on the television set.”
“Interesting. What did he watch?”
“I don’t know. I took coffee to him just as he turned it on, and he had me shut the door when I left. It was closed the whole time he was there. Then he went back to his room, where he has been ever since.”
“When was this?”
“He came down about eleven and was in the office for at least an hour. I am worried about him, Archie. He is behaving very strangely.”
“I wouldn’t fret. You know I’m not much for giving orders—I usually take them. This is a special c
ase, though. Am I correct in assuming that you want to see Mr. Wolfe snap out of this funk?”
“Of course, Archie.”
“Okay, take off. It’s a beautiful day, absolutely gorgeous. The air will do you good. I promise to maintain things here.”
Fritz set his glasses on the butcher’s block and frowned. “Archie, if I leave, are you going to pick a fight with him?”
“Me? Not a chance—my middle name is Peaceful. Now give yourself a break. See a movie. Eat a pizza. Smile at a pretty woman. It’s spring, and the Mets are in first place.”
Fritz shrugged and took off his apron, but he was still frowning and shaking his head as he headed for his basement apartment. He stopped in the doorway and turned back. “He will be ringing for beer again soon.”
“I know where to find it,” I answered, reaching for the Times “Week in Review” section he had left on the butcher’s block. I had read about a terrorist attack in the Occupied West Bank, a banking scandal in Arizona, and student riots in Paris when the buzzer from Wolfe’s bedroom sounded twice—his signal for beer. I got two chilled bottles of Remmers from the refrigerator, put them on the circular brass tray Fritz uses, and marched up the stairs, rapping twice on Wolfe’s door and opening it.
He was dressed in a brown suit, yellow shirt, and brown-and-gold silk tie and was parked at the small table near the window working the Times Sunday Magazine’s crossword puzzle. He scowled. “Where is Fritz?”
“I told him to enjoy the rest of the day,” I said lightly, taking the bottles from the tray and placing them in front of him. “He gets Sundays off, remember?”
Silver Spire (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 6) Page 15
