by Joan Hess
“I’m sure she knew you didn’t mean it.”
“All I ever did was gripe at her about how she took me away from my friends and dragged me all over the country. I stole money from her purse every time I got a chance. Last month someone gave her a kitten, and one night when she and Malachi were gone, I took it out in the desert and dumped it. She suspected what I’d done, but I swore I’d left the door open by accident. I tore up the only photograph she had of our mother and flushed the pieces down the toilet.” She doubled over as if she’d been punched in the gut and began to moan. “How could I have been so goddamn awful?”
By this time, I had no doubt her reaction was genuine, but nothing in my training had covered handling a spontaneous effusion of guilt and I was relieved to hear a car drive up and stop. I watched out the window as Thomas went into the tent; seconds later, Malachi halted in the doorway of the RV, staring first at Chastity and then at me. “What’s going on?” he said. “Is she in trouble with the law?”
“We found Seraphina’s body near Boone Creek. There’s evidence of foul play,” I said.
Malachi’s knees buckled, and he barely made it to a chair. He bent his head, clasped his hands together, and began to mumble under his breath. I couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders were twitching and his breathing was labored and erratic. Chastity stared at him, then rose unsteadily and went into the bathroom.
Some days it’s mildly entertaining to be a cop. This was not one of them; “I have to ask some questions,” I said apologetically. When he looked up at me, pale but composed, I added, “We need to move quickly to catch this person.”
“The same one who killed Norma Kay Grapper?”
“It’s possible. I’m trying to find a link between the two victims. Did Seraphina ever meet Norma Kay or talk to her on the telephone?”
Malachi thought for a moment, then frowned. “If she did, she didn’t mention it to me. I told her about what happened in Norma Kay’s office last week; of course, and we discussed how to handle the situation. It would not have been wise to alienate the property owner’s wife. On the other hand, previous scandals involving evangelists have made it clear that there should be no hint of impropriety, which is why I initially decided not to meet her at the gym.”
“Did Seraphina know you changed your mind?”
“She knew nothing about it. I didn’t have a chance to tell her about the note before the revival, and once the revival began, I completely forgot about it. The spirit of the Lord is a powerful and mysterious force that prevails over earthly concerns. Only after Seraphina had left to find Chastity and I was changing clothes did I rediscover Norma Kay’s note in my pocket. I couldn’t leave her sitting alone in her office, waiting for me.”
Despite the gravity of the moment, I allowed myself the petty indulgence of a digression. “The spirit of the Lord didn’t do much for Lottie Estes’s driving skills. It seems you cured her last night and told her she wouldn’t need her glasses anymore. Today she ran down an old woman in the road.”
“How unfortunate,” he murmured. “Her faith must not have been as strong as she professed it to be. Tell her to come tonight and I’ll pray again for her.”
“Tonight?”
“I can’t ignore the Lord’s work because of a personal tragedy. I have a calling to bring lost souls back from the brink of the abyss and provide them with the opportunity to experience prosperity and inner peace.”
“Your wife was murdered early this morning, Mr. Hope. Surely the Lord will give you the night off.”
“I am in great pain, Miss Hanks, but I cannot turn people away or ignore their needs. The Lord allowed Job to lose his property and his children and be afflicted with boils in order to test his faith. Perhaps this is my test—to continue the Lord’s work while struggling to understand why this dreadful thing happened.”
It was impassioned, but I suspected it was motivated by the less lofty goal of raising cash for the corporation. “At the moment, I don’t have a reason to close you down, but rest assured that I will the first chance I get. Please tell me everything you did after I left you this morning.”
“I made a few phone calls to motels, hoping I’d get lucky and find out where Seraphina was. At noon, I asked Thomas to go with me to Farberville to look for her car. You saw us arrive back here.”
“You weren’t worried about her earlier,” I pointed out. “You said she did this all the time. Why was this time different?”
“She’d had an argument with Chastity.”
“So I’ve been told,” I said, glancing at the closed bathroom door. “What was the argument about?”
“Chastity went off with some teenagers. Seraphina was quite angry when she found her almost an hour later. I can’t tell you the exact conversation, but Chastity was nearly hysterical when I arrived back from the gym. In fact, she used such profanity that I was forced to threaten her with my belt. She locked herself in the bathroom, and she was still there when I decided to make sure Norma Kay was safely at home.”
“All that seems excessive for a minor lapse,” I said. “From what I heard, the teenagers were doing nothing more heinous than drinking sodas on the picnic table in the Dairee Dee-Lishus parking lot. If that’s all they ever did, their parents would sleep better at night and I might be out of a job.”
Malachi Hope gave me a condescending smile. “Your local teenagers will earn high school diplomas, marry each other, and settle down to a life of unpaid bills, alcoholism, adultery, ailing parents, rebellious children, and eventually an unappetizing demise in a cheap nursing home. I know these people, Miss Hanks. They write me letters, they clutch at my hands when I walk down the aisle, they come crawling to me to tell them how to help themselves rise out of their pathos. Chastity is different. She’s unpolished now, even crude at times, but I will take her and shape her until she is touched by the glory of God and can take a significant role on the stage. To achieve this, I must protect her from not only the common people but also from her own primitive instincts. A child is born with a pure soul; only when she is indoctrinated into the ways of the world does she become contaminated with sin.”
Thomas had told me Malachi was not an Old Testament prophet. If this was the contemporary yuppie version, I sure as hell didn’t want to run into an older model in a dark alley. “I’d like to speak to Chastity,” I said stiffly as I stood up. “Out in my car, I think.”
“She’s a minor. I will not allow you to question her unless it’s in the presence of an attorney.”
“No one’s accusing her of anything. All I want to do is find out if she might have any idea where Seraphina might have gone last night.”
“Either get a warrant citing probable cause to arrest her or wait for me to arrange for a time when an attorney can be present,” Malachi said. He opened the door and watched me as I went past him and down the concrete block steps.
I should have said something to wipe the self-righteous smirk off his face, but I’d been trying to do the same with Mrs. Jim Bob for ages. I might as well have been filling in the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon.
“We are not going to drive to Topeka!” Estelle said so loudly the truckers in the back booths liked to have spilled their beers. “Topeka is all the way in Kansas. Do you know how long that would take?”
Refusing to look at Estelle, Ruby Bee refilled a pitcher and set it down in front of Earl Buchanon, who should have been home instead of getting drunk. She went into the kitchen to check the mashed potatoes while she futilely tried to remember where Topeka was. Kansas was nothing but a big, flat, boring expanse of wheat fields and highways; even if Topeka was tucked up in a corner, how long could it take to get there?
She came out of the kitchen, made sure nobody was wanting anything, and went down to the end of the bar. “I just have a feeling that Norma Kay’s past has something to do with all this,” she said in a low voice so Earl couldn’t overhear. “We might ought to ask Edwina Spitz about this neighbor of her niece’s that she met a
t the funeral. Norma Kay wasn’t your run-of-the-mill girls’ basketball coach. I could tell there was something gnawing at her.”
Estelle had to pause while she pondered what exactly constituted a run-of-the-mill girls’ basketball coach. She finally realized Norma Kay was the only girls’ basketball coach she’d ever met, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “I ain’t sure Edwina Spitz can pull out the name after all these years,” she said, hoping she sounded meditative instead of bewildered. “Just last week, I saw her talking to the rutabagas in the produce department.”
“We’re doing this for Arly.”
“To keep her in Maggody?”
“Why else, Estelle?” Ruby Bee went back into the kitchen before allowing herself to wipe her eyes with the hem of her apron. To think she herself had kinda liked the fellow from Washington, D.C. If he’d materialized at that moment, she’d have grabbed a rolling pin and chased him clean out of the county.
“We can get this to you tomorrow afternoon,” the owner said after consulting the delivery schedule. “With the deposit, the first payment comes to fourteen hundred sixty-two dollars and nine cents.”
Mrs. Jim Bob slapped down a fresh credit card.
Going door to door in search of witnesses is not nearly as effortless as movies and television shows would have you believe. No one was home at half the houses; I kept a list of them as I worked my way down the road toward the high school. In two instances, I’d barely escaped being dragged inside for refreshments. In another, I’d been regaled with a long-winded account of the perils of allowing Communists to infiltrate the town council. (I wasn’t sure which members were the guilty parties, but it was hard to picture Jim Bob, Larry Joe Lambertino, and Roy Stiver consulting Das Kapital before voting not to put in a second stoplight.) Virella Buchanon wanted me to arrest her next-door neighbor for impersonation. Her next-door neighbor wanted me to haul Virella off to a psychiatric facility.
I was almost directly across from the gym when I finally got a break. Edwina Spitz listened to my question, smiled brightly, and said, “I reckon I did. Why don’t you come inside out of the heat while I tell you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, resisting the urge to throw my arms around her.
Once I was settled in a rocking chair with a glass of lemonade, she said, “I’ve been having trouble with my lower back lately. There are nights I can’t hardly sleep, so I get out of bed and watch those infomercials on cable. Only last night this scientist was saying how dangerous it is to drink water straight from the tap on account of all the poisons that seep into the ground and—”
“You saw cars at the gym?” I inserted hastily.
Edwina gave me a disapproving look that rivaled Ruby Bee’s best efforts. “As I was saying, Arly, after I finished watching this scientist, I went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water to see if there was anything drifting in it. I happened to hear a car door slam across the road, so I looked out the window just as a big, gold car drove away.”
“Did you notice the time?”
“It would have been just after twelve-thirty. I could see Norma Kay’s car parked next to the door in her usual spot. I thought it was kinda curious, but I told myself it was none of my business and put on the kettle to make a cup of tea. Sometimes it helps me sleep.”
The earth was not trembling beneath my feet. I set down the glass and stood up. “Thanks, Edwina. I guess I’d better get back to work.”
“You don’t want to hear the rest?” she said, the corners of her mouth drooping. They perked up when I nodded. “While I was spooning sugar into the tea, I heard another car door. I figured Norma Kay was going home, but to my surprise, her car was still there and a truck was parked next to it.”
“What color?”
“My eyesight’s not as good as it used to be. You’ll have to ask Cory Jenks if it’s black or real dark blue.”
I sat back down and stared at her. “You recognized it? Are you positive it was Cory’s truck?”
“He’s been parking it by the gym almost every day for two years now. There was enough light from the utility pole for me to make out the gun rack on the back window and the bumper stickers on the tailgate.”
“Oh, Edwina,” I said, “I think your eyesight’s just fine.”
Brother Verber poured the last drops of sacramental wine into a tumbler and jammed the empty bottle into a grocery bag under the sink with the others. It was getting time to put the bag in his trunk and find a Dumpster in another town, he thought as he drank the wine. As a servant of the Lord, it wouldn’t be fitting for him to have bottles in the garbage can behind the Assembly Hall, where mischievous little tykes might find them and get the wrong impression about him.
Then again, it might not matter what anybody thought if Malachi Hope stole the whole darn congregation. He’d be preaching to empty pews—except for Sister Barbara, who was too faithful to be blinded by slick promises. Preaching to her would be like preaching to the choir, though. There wasn’t any need to warn such a saintly woman about eternal damnation. Why, she was the guardian angel of his flock and an inspiration to everyone she met.
The flock, on the other hand, had some explainin’ to do. Not one of them had showed up for the evening service and the opportunity for a fun-filled session of popcorn, soda pop, and bingo. He didn’t need a stool pigeon to tell him where they’d been. No, the traitors had trooped right up to the pasture behind Bur Grapper’s house and sold their souls to Satan himself. Judas held out for thirty pieces of silver, but Lottie Estes and Eula Lemoy and the lot of them had been seduced by cotton candy—and whatever else was going on up there.
From what he’d overheard at the SuperSaver, it sounded like a rock concert combined with a carnival. Spotlights going every which way, peppy hymns, clouds of pink and white smoke, an angel descending from the top of the tent, and dozens of aluminum buckets going up and down the rows and filling up with dollar bills. Brother Verber figured any one of those buckets was likely to have more in it than he collected from his entire congregation at any given service. Ex-congregation, he corrected hisself with a sigh. This time next year he might be in some godforsaken mission in the middle of the jungle. There he’d be, shivering with fever, battling mosquitoes and snakes, eventually succumbing to malaria and dying in a bleak room with heathens hovering over him to steal the gold fillings right out of his teeth.
The scenario was so painful that he opened another bottle of sacramental wine, filled his glass, and tried to think of a plan. Part of the problem was he didn’t know exactly what all Malachi Hope and his hussy were doing that impressed folks. As a child, little Willard Verber had been hauled to camp meetings and tent revivals with homespun preachers, hell-and-damnation sermons, gospel music that rocked the rafters, and folks writhing on the floor when they were possessed by the Holy Spirit. Between services, there’d be picnic suppers and relay races, and an occasional walk in the woods with a pretty girl.
But Malachi Hope was too sophisticated for that.
Brother Verber was halfway through the bottle when the Lord blessed him with an idea. It wasn’t a complicated plan, mind you, but it was better than dying in the jungle. What he needed to do was go to one of the services and see for hisself exactly what the enemy was up to. Only then could he prepare a plan to win back the loyalty of his congregation and continue to live in his cozy rectory under the sycamore trees.
There was one small problem with the idea: If he went to the service, there was no way on God’s earth that Sister Barbara wouldn’t hear about it by noon the following day. Her heart would break right on the spot and she’d wither away and die on account of his treachery, while other folks would snicker and make impudent comments about how he was doing the very thing he’d bawled them out for even considering.
What he needed was a disguise so that no one would know what he was up to. Sunglasses and a fake beard wouldn’t fool anybody. A trench coat would only call attention to him. The good Lord got busy and made a suggestion that soun
ded promising, if a bit outlandish.
Brother Verber was well past being able to make sober judgments. He took the keys to the Assembly Hall, weaved across the lawn, and went in through the back door. In the storeroom were boxes and boxes of items collected years ago to be sent to the heathens as soon as he got their address in Africa. He thudded to his knees and pawed through a box of clothes until he found what he wanted. A second box was equally fruitful. Others were less so, but he finally assembled his disguise and weaved back to the rectory in a haze of gratitude to the Lord, who could always be counted on to come through in a pinch.
“The witness recognized Cory’s truck,” I said to Harve, my feet propped on his desk for a change. I could barely see him over the heap of cigar stubs and burnt matches in the ashtray, but I had no problem hearing him harrumphing and wheezing. “I asked him point-blank if he’d left his house after he got home from Emmet shortly after twelve, and he said he hadn’t. He also denied that he was having an affair with Norma Kay. It may be time to see if he wants to change his story.”
Harve regarded me with the impassivity of a backwoods Buddha. “I don’t know if you’ve got enough of a case against him to go to the county prosecutor as yet. Even if Cory was sleeping with Norma Kay, that don’t mean he killed her. He ain’t much more than thirty years old, and he’s not married. The worst thing that could happen if Norma Kay went public was that he’d lose his job and slink out of town with his tail between his legs. I can’t see why he’d risk life imprisonment—or worse, if the jury was in a bad mood—just to save his job.”
“People who are obsessed with a goal can commit irrational acts to achieve it,” I said, thinking of Dahlia’s most recent misdemeanor. It occurred to me that I’d not yet allowed Kevin to explain the crisis on the home front; when I had a free moment, I’d have to hear him out. “We need to bring Cory in, let him repeat his lies, and then confront him with what witnesses have said. He might fall apart.”
