The Preacher's First Murder (A Pastor Matt Hayden Mystery Book 1)

by K. Gresham

  James W. put hands to hips and blew out a frustrated breath.

  “You’re the sheriff. You can ignore a no trespassin’ sign,” Angie said.

  James W. bowed his head and looked at the ground. “Not when it’s a deer lease, Angie,” he said quietly.

  “Deer lease?” Matt echoed.

  “Farmers lease their land to hunters for deer season,” James W. explained. “There’s thousands of acres around here that haven’t been cleared for pasture.”

  “I thought deer season was in November.”

  “Starts in November.” James W. looked helplessly at Angie. “Ends at sundown today.”

  “That rain’s not gonna hold until sundown,” she said quietly. “James W., please, Shadow will lose the scent.”

  “Can we find out who owns this property?” Matt interjected. “Maybe no one’s hunting on it this weekend.”

  James W. dropped his gaze. “I already know who owns this property. This used to be Novak land. Not Wilks.” He chuckled humorlessly. “My mother always said it like that.”

  “Used to be? Who owns it now?” Matt pressed.

  “After my father died . . .” James W. cleared his throat uncomfortably. “My mother sold it to Ernie Masterson.”

  Chapter Six

  Not My Problem

  “Ernie, it’s for you.” Pearl Masterson brought the phone to her husband where he sat in his lounger. She hated to bother him. Sundays were sacred to Ernie. She could barely keep him at church long enough for the final hymn before he was heading across the street to their apartment to catch the TV’s pre-game football analysis.

  “Dammit, Pearl . . .” Ernie swiped the phone from her hand. “What?” he barked into the receiver.

  Pearl tiptoed back into the kitchen, despite the fact the television blared loudly from the front room. She noticed that Ernie finally turned the volume down when he heard who was calling.

  “Yeah, Richard, what’s so all-fired-up important?” Ernie asked the deputy.

  Pearl went to the refrigerator and pulled out another beer, then grabbed a frosted mug from the freezer. Ernie’s glass was almost empty.

  “Yeah, I got it rented. To a damned Yankee.” Disgust mixed with disdain resonated in Ernie’s chuckle. Even Pearl had to admit the man from Michigan had sounded like he didn’t know much about hunting.

  “I’m supposed to pick him up at 4:00. Later if the game’s not over. Why?”

  Hating to break a nail, Pearl used a can opener to pop open the beer, then poured it into the mug. She scrunched her nose at the sour smell. Thank goodness, Ernie hadn’t made her drink one for a while.

  “He’ll shoot at anything that moves,” Ernie said. “The man’s an idiot.”

  Pearl brought the beer to Ernie as he hung up the phone.

  “Gotta go to the deer lease,” Ernie said. He looked at the drink she held. “What’s that for?”

  “Your beer was gettin’ low.”

  Ernie shook his head. “I gotta go. Don’t waste that one, baby. Drink it down.”

  Pearl looked at the drink, repulsed.

  “That’s right,” Ernie said. “Beer ain’t your style. You like convicts better. Beer-pourin’, murderin’ convicts.”

  “Ernie, I was just talking to Bo after he brought you home the other night. That’s all.”

  “After he punched me.”

  Pearl held her tongue. She knew Bo had been forced to manhandle Ernie to get him out of a brawl over at the Fire and Ice House Thursday night. Bo had probably saved him from a far worse beating at the hands of Zach Gibbons, the meanest man in Wilks.

  Ernie opened the front door. “Go ahead and drink that beer, Pearl baby. Maybe when I come home you’ll feel as friendly toward me as you do to that ex-con.”

  Pearl suppressed a shiver. Most likely there was nothing to be afraid of. On the way back from the lease, Ernie would probably have a few at the Ice House and come home ready to pass out. “Are there problems at the deer lease?” she asked instead.

  Ernie smiled. It was a cold smile. “Not mine.”

  Chapter Seven

  Taking a Punch

  James W. walked through the search party as they awaited Ernie Masterson’s arrival. Matt watched the sheriff give instructions and pats on the back as he went. James W. offered an encouraging word to Warren Yeck, who had the hood of the church van up and was pounding with pliers on the engine. For the first time since Matt had known him, James W. looked worried.

  “It’s all right.” Angie O’Day comforted her dog as she brought the water bottle to his mouth. Shadow looked at her, then turned impatiently back toward the fence.

  “He’s a keeper,” Matt said.

  “I don’t need you tellin’ me that. He’s my dog.”

  Matt watched the young woman bite back her tears and knew that anger was the only thing that kept her in control of her emotions.

  He’d always been a curious fellow. At least that’s what his mother, Jewel Hogan, used to say. Now his curiosity might be satisfied at the same time he gave Angie the only kind of help from him she would accept.

  “I was wondering, Miss O’Day,” Matt said. “Do you dislike pastors in general, or is there something about me in particular that bothers you?”

  Angie’s gaze flared with anger, and Matt knew he had accomplished his goal. Angie O’Day had a good Irish temper.

  “Both,” she snapped.

  “Care to talk about it?”

  “Like you give a damn?”

  Matt leaned against the bumper of James W.’s truck. “I’m curious.”

  “I know exactly what you holier-than-thous have under that pious appearance you put on to the world. Nothin’. No heart. No soul. Just a bunch of hypocrisy.” Angie screwed the lid on the water bottle and spit.

  “You don’t know me well enough to know if I’m a hypocrite or not.”

  “I know your kind.” She slung her backpack over her shoulder. “Known you ever since I was five years old.” She stalked off toward the barbed-wire fence. Shadow followed closely at her heels.

  Matt decided pursuit was his only choice if he wanted to find the underlying cause of what was bugging Angie O’Day. He pushed off the truck bumper.

  The wind kicked up clouds of dust and sent them scurrying across the dirt road. With the wind came the wild scent of earth and crops and animals. Matt breathed in and felt its untamed violence stir something deep inside of him. His gaze stayed on Angie and he realized in that moment that Angie was at one with this place. She was as wild and natural as the wind that howled around her, blowing the flames of her hair toward the thunderous sky overhead. He swallowed hard. If he wasn’t careful, he might be falling into dangerous territory in his feelings about this woman.

  Angie walked through the dust, impervious to its grit. She came to a halt at the barbed-wire fence and hitched her boot on its bottom line. Matt realized he was looking at one of the strongest women he had ever met.

  The thought had him taking a good swallow before challenging her again. “What happened when you were five years old?” he asked, coming up beside her.

  “None of your damned business.”

  “If it’s what you’re holding against me, it is.”

  Angie turned on him. She looked angry and wild and brave. Her red hair flared in the wind like a bright flame. Her eyes were brown and steady. She had no fear in her, he realized.

  “I was a guest at your church once. Grace. Great name for a church.” She laughed humorlessly.

  “When you were five years old?”

  She nodded. “The guest of Delia Yeck. Warren’s granddaughter.” Angie stared out onto the grass field beyond the fence. “She and I were classmates at kindergarten.”

  “Go on.”

  “Her Sunday school teacher was Miss Olivia Wilks-Novak.” Angie’s voice grew terse. “The great lady of Wilks—owns Grace and the whole damned town. Except for Mamma’s Ice House.” Angie looked back to the field. “At the Sunday school openin’, we sang t
his song about how Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black, and white . . .”

  “I know the song.”

  “Then Miss Olivia went to the front of the church and called me up to join her. I was real honored. Here I was a guest, and I was goin’ to be introduced to everybody.”

  Matt swallowed uncomfortably.

  “Miss Olivia, she turned me around to face the whole Sunday school. She proceeded to tell them all that I was the daughter of a prostitute.” Angie glared hard at Matt. “She grabbed me by the hand, jerked me all the way down that aisle and out the front door of the church. Said God didn’t want sinful little children like me in his church.”

  Matt bowed his head.

  “The whole time, the kids laughed at me. They laughed at me the next day at school. And for years after that. And they threw dirt on me, first the real stuff off the ground, then later the kind that comes out of people’s mouths. They said I was dirty.”

  Angie’s pain, still fresh and deep even thirty years later, was almost tangible to Matt. For the first time since he’d met her, Matt realized Angie was as vulnerable as she was strong.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, finally.

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Angie said, impatiently wiping at a tear that threatened to drop. “I didn’t believe her. My mamma told me not to believe her. Mamma told me that I was beautiful. That I’d been made in love.” This time a tear did slip down her cheek. “She told me that God loved me very much.”

  Matt mustered a smile. “Your mamma must be a very special person.”

  Angie stared hard at him, and all vulnerability drained from her face. With a determined move, she raised her hand, then swung it with all of her might against his cheek. “I don’t need you, or your approval of my mother.”

  Matt’s gaze locked with hers. His face stung from the strong slap.

  Slowly, to make sure she understood his gesture, he turned his other cheek toward her and closed his eyes.

  He held the pose for a full second, then another. Waiting for the next slap.

  He realized only too late that Angie O’Day wasn’t one to be told what to do. Even in the offer of the other cheek.

  Instead, he felt her balled fist hit his gut only a moment before the second blow caught him full in the solar plexus. The air rushed from his body. With the helplessness of a jelly fish, he fell to the ground. So stunned was he by her punches that he hit the dirt with his mouth open. He got a full taste of Texas clay for his troubles. Amid a chorus of distant snickers from the onlookers, Matt rolled onto his back, counting his bones to make sure none were broken. “Feel better?” he asked, spitting out the grit that coated his teeth and tongue.

  “Some.”

  He lay back against the ground and realized he’d barely missed falling on the barbed-wire fence. God was looking out for him after all, he realized. Matt had kind of wondered where the Almighty had been a moment earlier.

  Then his gaze caught on the middle wire of the fence, and all thought of pain left him. “Get the sheriff.” He rolled to his knees and crawled closer to inspect the fence. Fear filled him as he gingerly touched a finger to the rusted metal. He pulled his hand away to study it.

  “What is it?” Angie asked, alarmed.

  Matt looked from his hand to her face.

  “Blood.”

  Chapter Eight

  Damn Yankee

  Chip Carouthers was a man of purpose, good-looking at six foot two with still-blonde hair. Above all, he was intelligent. At least that was what he told himself every day of his CFO job at the tire factory up in Detroit, Michigan. He surrounded himself with the most talented people he could find, though every one of them knew less and less the more he got to know them. His wife, who had once been pretty and smart, had only gotten uglier and dumber as their marriage of twelve years had endured.

  Because he was totally surrounded by nincompoops every day of his life, he’d decided that for once he was going to have a vacation where he could spend time with his one and only favorite person.

  Chip Carouthers.

  To that end, he’d had the company librarian do an Internet search of Texas hunting leases. When his wife and kids became unbearable last Christmas Eve, he’d decided to give himself a special Christmas present. He deserved to get out from behind the desk and back to basics on a vacation. What could be more basic than a hunting trip?

  Man versus animal. Brain versus brawn. A weapon that gave purchase when balanced in a warrior’s arm, held against the shoulder. A campfire at night to cook the day’s prey. Living off the product of the hunt, sleeping under a starlit sky. That was what Chip needed. He knew it instinctively.

  At least it must be instinctive, he figured, since he’d never before been hunting.

  Sure enough, after weeks of waiting for that lazy librarian’s research, Chip had a list of deer leases available in the Texas Hill Country. He’d called down the list, and finally hit on the perfect vacation spot. Four hundred acres of land all to himself for three whole days. The price had been a little heftier than some of the other plots for lease, but that only insured him a good location, right?

  Somewhere, however, something had gone terribly wrong.

  Chip Carouthers stared at the dying embers of the fire before him. He was in his sleeping bag, buck naked. His clothes hung across the bushes that surrounded the small clearing he’d called home for the last three days. He prayed they would be dry before that idiot hick who had leased him this god-forsaken acreage came to pick him up. He held in his hand a cup of tea. He wanted coffee, but couldn’t stomach the stuff he’d tried to cook up that morning. Who the hell knew how to make coffee without electricity?

  It had all been that stupid dog’s fault. Chip had spent all day Friday getting the feel of his weapon. He’d never held a rifle before. Or was this a shotgun? That sales clerk in Houston had made a big deal that rifles and shotguns weren’t the same thing, but Chip finally blew him off. The gun was long and had a trigger. It could kill.

  Nonetheless, that good ole boy at the hunt store in Houston said that it was definitely the weapon for him. Twelve-gauge shot gun with a something-or-other caliber bullet. Chip haggled over the price, as he knew he should. He talked the country boy down to two thousand bucks. That should prove that he was not some dumb city dude.

  So Friday, he practiced with his shotgun. He lined up bean cans on a stump. Worked ’til he could stand almost twenty feet away from his target. Friday night he drank a twelve pack. He hadn’t done that since college. No one needed to know he’d puked up most of the beer in the bushes beyond his campsite. But drinking and hunting were the manly thing to do.

  Then Saturday morning, albeit late Saturday morning, he finally pulled on his camouflage gear, which he’d also purchased at the Houston hunt store. He loaded up his rifle, smeared bug repellent over his face, and started to stalk his prey.

  Around mid-afternoon, he stopped to munch on a sports bar. Nasty things, he’d come to realize, sports bars. Not very filling, either. As he was biting into the last one, he caught sight of movement near the road that led out of the deer lease. Quickly he shoved his health bar in his pocket, mounted the shotgun against his shoulder, aimed in the general direction of the motion and squeezed the trigger.

  In a hurry to get off his round, he forgot to brace himself against the kick of the weapon. He landed on his backside, which was still sore from the same gymnastic exercise of the day before. He’d just managed to crawl to his knees when the dog came racing across the field at him.

  The dog was big, its body like a German Shepherd’s. Its face was all teeth and jowls.

  Chip had barely enough time to get to his feet and scramble onto the small scrap of a building that stood alone in the center of the field. He never would have guessed that he’d’ve had enough strength to pull himself up onto the seven-foot-tall wood structure, but he figured fear must do that to a man.

  He was afraid for
his life.

  The stupid dog stayed beneath him for at least thirty minutes, biting and jumping at the shack’s rotted wood. The animal made itself sick and finally limped off, disappearing into the brush. Chip, despite the realization that he’d found refuge on the top of an old outhouse, stayed there another half hour, just in case that beast came back.

  Apparently, he’d nicked the dog with his shot, Chip figured as his heart rate returned to normal. The dog had been covered in blood. He wished he had his gun on the roof. He would have been dead on the target the second time.

  The rest of the weekend, Chip hunted as far away from the road as possible. And he kept looking over his shoulder for that damn dog. That was how he came to fall in the creek last night when he was heading back to his base camp. He was certain, as he got closer to the camp, that he would run into that animal again. Every snap of a twig and rustle of a leaf kept him jumping and crouching in fear. About ten last evening, his final jump landed him in a muddy mess of green scum.

  He went to bed drunk, for the third night in a row. And hungry. He’d eaten all of his food Friday night, thinking he’d have his kill to eat Saturday night.

  The worst of it came when he awakened late this morning. His clothes were covered in green scum. Worse, those little red ants that were probably used to torture heretics in the Spanish Inquisition had found the remains of the sports bar in his clothes and decided to colonize on the spot.

  He threw his clothes, ants and all, into a creek, scrubbed them best as he could while avoiding the angry ants, sure that at any moment a snake was going to bite his backside. Then he hung his clothes out on the bushes and took refuge in his sleeping bag until they dried.

  The weekend was ruined, all because of that mongrel.

  Which was why, as he sat there in his sleeping bag on the cement slab of what used to be a homestead, sipping at the last dregs of his tepid tea, he was horrified to hear a dog’s bark coming his way. He jumped to his feet, battling to keep the sleeping bag around his middle without falling over. He hopped over to his refuge—the outhouse—and grabbed a finger hold on the half-moon carved in its side.