by Anne Hagan
All of the council members were present but, even at that, the room was silent. The shock of him confirming the story Kara Bradshaw had already told them had given way to the reality of wondering where things went next. Faye shifted her eyes around the table at all them. She knew Seth would be finished with his confessions soon and Aiden wouldn’t let the discussion get too far into what to do about the Pastor going forward because she’d clued him in the night before that there might be other fish to fry at the meeting.
She caught him stealing a quick look at her and she felt bad. She knew his mind was probably flying through all the possible things she might be about to dish up. She looked briefly at Doris. The older woman’s eyes brimmed with tears and she dabbed at them with a tissue.
“I’m not asking your forgiveness,” Seth finally continued. “It’s far too soon for that. I have a lot of atoning to do first and I know that. I’ve spoken with the head of the district and I’ll be meeting with him in the morning to talk much more in depth about my transgressions and my path forward, if any. In all honesty, he may flat out fire me and I don’t blame him. I’d like to remain a Pastor but that’s in God’s hands, his hands and all of yours. Yours because I’d like to remain your Pastor too, after a sabbatical he’s likely to order, and if he’ll allow me and you all will have me. Again, I offer you my deepest apologies. Thank you.”
Seth stopped pacing as he finished speaking. Addressing Aiden, he asked, “Would you like me to leave now?”
Aiden shook his head no and indicated Seth should sit again and then waited while he did. “Reverend, we appreciate your candor and I think it’s safe to say that everyone here is praying for you and your family.” He looked around the table at the faces of all of the others present. “At some point, we’re going to have to discuss where we all go from here – whether that’s together or whether we part ways. I’m not inclined to jump into that discussion tonight. I think we need to wait until you’ve spoken with Reverend Curtsinger and he shares his thoughts with us.”
Seth nodded.
“Agreed,” Evan Brietland added, “but I do want to go on record as saying that it’s not my place to judge you at all and I forgive you for misleading the church.”
“Thank you Mr. Brietland; I appreciate that,” Seth said.
Aiden stood, drawing attention back to himself and cutting off any further conversation. “This is far from resolved and it may be some time before it is. I’d like to caution each of you against speaking out of turn to your fellow congregants about the matter. This is between Reverend Scott and…”
Seth interrupted. “If you think I should address the congregation briefly and explain what I’ve done…dispel the rumors, I’d be willing to do that.”
“That’s probably best,” Evan said. There were nods around the table.
“I would seem most everyone here is in agreement but, again, let’s wait to decide anything until after you see Reverend Curtsinger. He may be of the same mindset but I can’t speak for the man.”
Aiden half turned then and looked at Faye. “Ready?” he mouthed.
She gave him the barest nod in response.
“There was more than one reason to have you all in here this evening,” he began again as he resumed his seat. “I’m going to hand the floor over to Mrs. Crane and I believe she has a couple of guests waiting just upstairs.” The last part came as a question.
Faye nodded in response, then stood and walked over to the back stairs that led to the front part of the sanctuary above the fellowship hall. She called out, “We’re ready for you,” and then waited at the base of the steps as Chloe and Mel, who was in full uniform, descended and joined her.
“This meeting was requested by Reverend Scott yesterday and agreed to by Mr. Quinn.” Faye tipped her head toward Aiden. “The Reverend actually approached me and my family yesterday evening and spoke to a group of us that included my daughter Melissa here and also Mrs. Rossi. During our discussion, some things came to light that, where we might have written them off previously as accidents or coincidence, now there is some evidence to the contrary.”
“Just what are you getting at?” Kent Gross asked.
“I’m saying,” Faye replied, “that there are things that have happened around the village – bad things – that only point to one person as being responsible and that person isn’t Reverend Scott.” Heads swiveled back and forth around the table but Faye ignored the obvious curiosity passing between the board members and pressed on.
She held up a hand and started ticking off her fingers. “There have been people in and out of and around the opera house besides the teenage boys that broke in there and found Gregory Sellers. Then, there is the death of Mr. Sellers, God rest his soul. There’s the fire that consumed the old shop next door and could well have taken the opera house as well.” She ticked off a third finger.
“Just wait a minute!” Kent thundered as he rose from his chair. “I can see what you’re trying to do but, might I remind you Faye, and all of the rest of you too, that I wasn’t even in town when that man died, and I had no incentive whatsoever to burn that old auto body shop down. For at least the tenth time, there was no insurance on it and you can’t just go tossing around theories about me trying to burn it, just hoping that your precious opera house went up in flames in the process!”
Faye held a hand up to him, stopping him. “You’re right, this time, Mr. Gross. Your hands are clean. At least, they are as far as Seller’s murder is concerned.”
At the word ‘murder’ both Doris and Mildred gasped. Mel moved a little closer to the table and reflexively rested a hand on the grip of the service pistol holstered at her side.
“The dirty hands are right here in this room,” Faye went on, cutting Kent off again as he started to speak. She looked at the church secretary. Yours aren’t clean, are they?” She asked.
“What are you saying? Me?” Much like Kent, Doris was practically shouting herself. “I have nothing to do with…with murder or setting fires or…or…”
“But you did cook the books here at the church, didn’t you?”
“Mrs. Crane,” Evan Brietland cautioned, “we’ve already been through all of that and we know what happened.”
“Do we really?” Faye quizzed him. “Or, did we just buy what Doris here told us?”
Evan’s eyes narrowed. “Go on,” he said, “but you better have all your ducks lined up if you’re going to be making such strong accusations.”
“Oh, our books were cooked for her own gain or maybe for her on pain,” she said as she swung a finger at the secretary, “and I can prove it, but I’ll get to that in a minute. I’ve asked Mrs. Rossi to join us tonight for a reason. Chloe?”
Mama Rossi left Mel’s side and moved to stand between Aiden and Faye who sat adjacent to each other at the table. She faced down the table toward the whole group and started to speak.
“The day before Cole and some other boys found Gregory Sellers in the opera house, Seth came into the store to leave his church credit card information with me. He told me Doris would be down later to order meats and cheeses and other sandwich fixings for a ladies group meeting the next day. He’d just gotten a new card in but hers hadn’t arrived and he didn’t want her to have to pay out of pocket and wait for reimbursement.”
“So,” Doris asked, “what’s so odd about that?”
“Nothing; it’s just that you came into the store to place your order not even five minutes after he left.”
“And,” Faye said, “When he left, he admitted in front of multiple witnesses last night to seeing Gregory Sellers, an old friend of his go by, headed toward the opera house; isn’t that right Pastor?”
“Um, yeah,” Seth said slowly as heads swiveled back and forth between he and Faye. “Ms. Proctor wasn’t at the store or there at the opera house when I was, though.”
“Not that you saw,” Chloe said to him, “but she did go down there after leaving the store. She left her car parked out beside our sh
op and walked down. Didn’t you Doris?”
“No. I took care of what I needed to with you and then I…I walked over to the post office.”
“Ms. Proctor,” Mel said as she caught on to the line of reasoning Faye and Chloe were presenting, “I have a reliable witness who will swear to seeing you going around behind the opera house that day where the entrance is that Mr. Sellers and Reverend Scott used.”
Faye was slightly taken aback by Mel’s admission but she bit her lip and tried to play it cool. It occurred to her that she was right after all and that Mel had spoken to Calvin Howe.
“But Doris wasn’t there,” Seth repeated. “I promise you she wasn’t. It was just me and Gregory. I’m not trying to protect her from anything; I’m just telling you what I know to be true.”
With her eyes first darting between Mel and Seth, Doris finally realized she’d been had and she gave in. “Okay, I did go down there,” she admitted. “The back door was open. I slipped inside and figured if either Seth or the man I’d seen him talking with outside asked what I was doing there, I’d just excuse myself and say I saw them going in and I was curious to see if the building looked as I remembered it from years ago.”
She glared at Seth then. “The two of them were talking and, when I heard their conversation, I…I got upset. I started to cry and then I started to panic that they were going to find me there so I left before they discovered me and I’ve kept quiet about what I heard, all of this time.”
Doris turned on the former object of her affection. “How could you do that? How could you marry a woman knowing you were already married? What else don’t I…don’t we know about you?”
“This isn’t about Reverend Scott, right now,” Faye said. “This is about you and what really happened that day. You went down there, you heard what was going on and you hid when Seth was leaving. Then, seeing your chance to ‘save’ the man you were in love with, you rushed Sellers on the stage, pushed him into the orchestra pit and killed him. That’s what really happened, isn’t it?”
“No, no! I did no such thing. That’s crazy, and you can’t prove it!”
“Just like you didn’t really cook the church’s books for your own benefit?”
“I’ve already answered to all of that and we’ve worked out a deal for repayment. You know why I did it. It was for my sister.”
“Don’t bring me into your crazy little circus,” Doris’s sister Denise said as she stepped out of the kitchen, just off the fellowship hall, where she’d snuck down to via the front stairs and waited while everyone was focused on who Faye had coming down the back stairs. “You’ve done it all yourself.”
Denise, dressed stylishly and dripping in gold and diamond jewelry, looked around at the gathering and nodded toward Evan Brietland and Aiden Quinn, the only faces she recognized from her younger days living in the village besides that of Doris. She held a hand out in her sister’s direction.
“I haven’t heard from Doris in years; ever since we had a spat about her lusting over my husband and our life style. For the record, we’re still very much married and we couldn’t be happier. Meanwhile, Doris, from experience and from what I’ve just heard, seems to have a pattern of falling for married, successful men that she admires for one reason or another.”
“So Doris,” Denise dug at her sister, “What did you really do with the church’s money? Still have that slots addiction?”
Doris shrank back in her seat and didn’t say a word.
Faye charged forward. “There are two witnesses Mel that saw Doris in the station the night of the fire at Kent’s empty shop building when Blake went in to pay for his gas: Kris, who was on the register, and a customer that was at the pumps,” she informed her daughter. “They both say Doris probably saw where he put the can.”
“That’s not evidence of any wrongdoing on her part, Mom.”
Doris came to life. “It sure isn’t and, might I remind you, that maintenance shop – or, whatever it was – burned while we were all at a meeting here. I was right here, the same as Kent, and I was being grilled by all of you over the accounting at the time, so I couldn’t possibly have set the fire.”
Realizing, she’d not helped her theft case with her statement, Doris sat back hard and stated she wouldn’t say another word until she talked with a lawyer.
“Ms. Proctor,” Mel informed her, “I’m about to place you under arrest for grand theft. If you don’t want to be charged with the murder of Gregory Sellers, I think you ought to keep talking.”
Proctor’s lower lip began to tremble. She shook her head and scrubbed at the tears forming in her eyes to keep from crying but she broke down anyway.
“Okay,” she whimpered, “I’ll tell you what happened. I didn’t kill him though, I didn’t. I admit, I do have a gambling problem but I’d never hurt a fly; most of you know that.”
“Tell us what happened Doris,” Faye asked her softly.
“I admit that I did hide that night and wait until Seth left and then I surprised Gregory while he was tapping on his phone and confronted him about what he was doing with the opera house. He admitted he and his ex-wife had inherited it from an Uncle of his who’d written it into his will when they were still married and he’d never changed it. When he died, it passed to both of them. They were checking it out, seeing what possibilities it had for income for rent or sale.”
I asked him where his ex-wife was and he told me Kara was due there any minute, he’d expected her already and was worried she was lost because she’d driven to meet him there and had texted that she was only a few minutes out more than 15 minutes before that.”
She shuddered and rubbed her arms with her hands. “I really wanted to talk to him about Seth but I realized, with Ms. Bradshaw on the way, I couldn’t do that, so I left.”
She raised a hand then and dabbed at the tears that were falling steadily now.
Faye and Chloe looked at each other and Chloe shrugged. Two mysteries were solved but they really had thought Doris committed the murder. Mel saved the day.
“It looks like you folks have your Pastor back and you know for sure what happened to your money now,” she said. “I don’t envy the task of putting your church back together. As for the death of Mr. Sellers and the fire, that’s where I come in. Kara Bradshaw is in custody tonight in New York waiting for extradition to Ohio for the murder of her ex-husband. She’s singing a different song to anyone who will listen though about how things went down at the opera house that night.”
A gasp went up in the room and Doris Proctor’s face turned ashen. Faye and Mildred moved quickly to grab her arms to hold her in place in case she had a fainting spell again.
Mel moved to the Secretary’ side and told her, “I’ll get back to you.”
“I swear,” Seth proclaimed, “I had nothing to do with it.”
Mel simply nodded at him. She looked across the table and said, “That’s where you come in Mr. Gross.”
“Me? I’ve told you and I’ve proven that I have nothing to do with any of this whatsoever.”
“Oh, not directly, I agree. I’m not even sure what I can charge you with yet but arson is definitely on the list.”
“For the hundredth time,” his eyes rolled up as he shook his head, “I was here that night just like Doris was. I didn’t set that fire any more than she did.”
“No, you’re right. You didn’t but Blake Wagner did.”
Kent leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms as he continued to shake his head with disdain. “We’ve already been down that road too Sheriff. Blake didn’t set it and, even if he had, I wouldn’t press charges. The building is no loss to me.”
“Let’s just back up for a minute,” Mel said. “Seth, what was Gregory driving that night?”
“A grayish colored Chevy something or other…I really don’t know cars that well and, anyway, I assumed it was a rental. When we talked, he told me he’d flown up from Florida.”
“Now then,” Mel said, “a witness corro
borates that but, it’s funny in a morbid sort of way, that no such car was outside the opera house the next day when the teenage boys broke in there and found Seller’s body or when any of my department arrived on the scene. Someone killed Sellers and then drove that car away but, how did they get back for their own car unless there were two people who were working together?” She scanned the faces around the table.
Doris and Kent both started to speak but Kent shouted everyone down. “This has nothing to do with me! I. Wasn’t. Here!”
“I’m just getting to that,” Mel said. “Gregory Sellers family owns a boating business in Florida. They also own quite a bit of property and a property management company with properties owned and managed in Florida and also here in Ohio, where they’re originally from.”
“The opera house was willed to Gregory and Kara by an Uncle when he died, as Ms. Proctor said. Gregory’s family managed it from afar and, according to his sister Amanda Sellers, Gregory wanted to keep the property because it galled Kara who, even after their divorce, was a legal joint tenant with rights of survivorship, according to the way the bequest and transfer had originally been set up. She was the singer and the old uncle thought she’d get a kick out of owning it, apparently. Maybe he thought she’d make a go of operating it again.”
“According to witnesses at the property management business in Florida, when Sellers got a report from a local contractor they use to do basic maintenance and to keep an eye on stuff back here that the roof was in bad shape, he decided to make a trip up here and have a look for himself. He told Kara he was flying up here and she told him she’d meet up with him because she’d been contacted by a potential buyer and she wanted to discuss it with him. That’s you Mr. Gross. You contacted her at the last known number the county auditor had for the property owners, the number to the rent controlled apartment she maintained after her divorce from Gregory.”
