“Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20
Olympia felt something brush her shoulder. She jumped and whirled around in her chair, causing the Bible to fall to the floor with a crash. The office was empty.
Unsettled, she picked up the Bible, marked the chapter and verse, and set it out on her desk for when she returned from lunch.
~
The Black Dog Tavern was about as charming and folksy as anything Olympia could imagine. It was totally without pretense—or else carefully constructed to appear that way. The wide, well-worn floor boards creaked when she walked on them; the view of the harbor was indeed panoramic; and the food, when it was later presented, was delicious. As she, Jack Winters and his sister Melody made their way to a table by the window, a pale but steady Jack was greeted by over half the people in the place.
“Popular with the locals, then?” asked Olympia as she slid along the plank bench to her place.
“Popular with the year-rounders in the off season. Mostly tourists now, but if the locals get here early, we can usually get a seat.” Jack took his napkin from beside the plate and smoothed it onto his lap. “I suppose I’m both. We have a house in West Tiz, but in the summer we mostly stay on the boat.”
“West Tiz?” said Olympia.
“West Tisbury,” said Melody. “It’s an island thing.”
The three made small talk while they perused the menu, decided upon their choices and waited for their meals. It was only later, over coffee and a huge slab of dangerously chocolate cake, that Jack began to talk about his health.
“They went in, had a look around with a little lighted thingamajiggy and found some serious stuff.”
“Serious but not without hope,” said his sister.
“Tell me more,” said Olympia, setting down her fork and leaning forward.
Jack was twisting a drinking straw in his fingers. “Basically I need the whole nine yards, surgery, chemo, and radiation. It won’t be pretty or fun, but if I do it all, I’ve got least a fifty percent chance for a few more good years. I’ve always enjoyed playing the long shots. Why should I stop now?”
Olympia said nothing but looked across the table at Jack’s sister.
“We’re going to have another consultation later in the week, but he should get started as soon as possible for the best results. I’m going to see if I can get a personal leave and come out here when he has the surgery and when he first comes home. I have responsibilities out there that I just can’t walk out on.”
“I can help,” said Olympia.
Melody smiled. “You have responsibilities yourself, Reverend. Say a prayer, and be there for him and Janney. When we know more ourselves, I’ll know what he and we all will need.”
“So, I’m bad but not dead … yet,” said Jack.
“Shut up and eat your cake, big brother. I may be five minutes younger than you, but I’m still the boss. You always were a contrary pain in the … I mean …” said his sister, turning as red as her hair.
Olympia giggled, waved away the embarrassment and tucked into the fragrant mountain of moist chocolate cake topped with melting vanilla ice cream. “When in doubt, eat,” her mother had always said, and Olympia always agreed with her mother, at least when it came to matters of food.
Nineteen
At fifteen minutes after three, Daniel Parker stepped into her office, tapped his watch and said, “Seems I operate on island time.”
“I heard it called black folks’ time when I was in college. Then my priest friend, Jim Sawicki called it Polish time. Either way, I’m glad you’re here. Do sit down.” Olympia gestured to a small wooden armchair to the left of the door, and Daniel Parker moved it closer to the desk before he sat down. He wasted no words.
“My mother, Mary Parker, was very clear about not wanting a church service. She wanted to have only a few words said at the grave site, family only, and then have her ashes buried next to my father. After that, she wanted a big party at the P.A. club with everyone invited. My mother enjoyed a number of things, but being center of attention in a crowd of people was very high on the list.”
“Tell me about your mother, Mr. Parker.”
“It’s Dan. My mother was a bright, able woman. She was generous, funny and demanding as hell … and for her age, she was amazingly fit. She liked having things her way and usually found a way to make that happen. So it’s no surprise that she made her final wishes so abundantly clear. What is a surprise is that she died falling down the stairs.”
Dan Parker blinked his eyes a few times, then finally took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Sorry about this. It’s just that she wasn’t ready to go. She was a tough bird, my mother. Pain in the behind sometimes, but she was terrific. It doesn’t make sense.”
Olympia cocked her head to one side. “What doesn’t make sense, Dan?”
“My mother falling down the stairs. She was OK on stairs, she always held the railing. I warned her about that. She didn’t take chances.”
“What exactly happened?”
“I’m not sure, but she must have been going downstairs with the laundry. The machines were in the basement. We were talking about having them moved upstairs, but she maintained that’s how she got her exercise.” He shook his head and dabbed at his eyes. “I should have insisted.
“Anyway, the day she fell, she must have started down and tripped or caught her foot or slipped on something. She must have grabbed for the railing and missed. That was it. Bang! Gone. The medical examiner said she was probably killed instantly.”
“It wasn’t a massive heart attack or a stroke, was it?”
“We’re still waiting for the results of the autopsy. What tears me up is that she was there on the floor for a couple of days before we found her.”
“That’s dreadful, Mr. … uh, Dan. I’m so sorry.”
“But that’s not all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know I should have visited her more, but she was always so busy with everything she did that she rarely had time. And after my divorce and with the kids grown, it seemed that I had twice as much to do as before. Can you imagine having to make an appointment to see my own mother? How could I have known she’d gone and sold the house? That was an unpleasant surprise on top of all of this.”
“What are you talking about?” Olympia’s voice was sharper than she had intended.
“I don’t know all of it yet. That’s another thing I’m trying to understand and pick my way through. Right now, it looks like sometime in the last year she put everything into a limited family trust with a lifetime tenancy agreement. At least it sounded like that when she told me. Why in God’s name would she do that? She had money, and she knew how to manage it. So do I, if anyone’s asking—and if they do, it’s none of their business. But this is a small island, and everybody pretty much knows who’s got what. That was a long way around to saying that I don’t need her money. I wanted the house, though. I grew up in it. But I wasn’t in any rush. I just figured that one day it would come to me. Now I’m not so sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m still trying to put it all together, but I think that somehow, without her knowing it, my mother signed away the house. I mean, it’s simply not like her. On the other hand, maybe she was a little more past it than I realized.”
“Dan, this is going to sound a bit strange, but would you mind taking me up to see your mother’s house?”
“Not at all, but what are you getting at? What good would that do?”
“Now I’m the one who’s not sure, and for the time being, anyway, I need to keep my reasons to myself; but if you don’t mind, I’d like to look at the stairs that she fell down.”
Dan shook his head. “Well, as a matter of fact I was planning on going up there tomorrow morning. We can’t do anything about the service until we get her body back and have i
t cremated, so I suppose we could talk about that on the way. But I don’t understand, what good would looking at her house do?”
“Right now, it’s best that I not go into that either, because I don’t want to be quoted; but read between the lines, Mr. Parker. For the time being, may I ask that you keep this conversation and anything we might talk about tomorrow confidential?”
“Of course, Reverend. About tomorrow, shall I pick you up here?”
“That makes sense. Around ten?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Thank you, Mr. Parker.”
“Dan?”
“Dan.”
When he was gone and the door had closed behind him, Olympia reached for the phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.
“St. Bartholomew’s.”
“Is Father Jim available? This is Reverend Olympia Brown calling.”
“He’s out, Reverend Brown. May I have a number where he can reach you?”
Olympia recited her cell phone number and added, “Please tell him it’s urgent.”
She checked the time. It was well into the afternoon. Where had the day gone? With a dubious title taken from an ominous verse in the Bible as a starting point for her next sermon, there was nothing left to do but go home and get going on it, but she couldn’t seem to get her mind off the inconsistencies and troublesome events of the last several days. She sat back and started counting them off on her fingers.
She had heard nothing from Julia or Dory or William Bateson. Those first three were related to Dory and what was going to happen to her and her house. Jack Winters and his cancer and his alcoholic wife and the shared tragedy of their lost son were an entirely different and totally convoluted set of issues, but they were very much related to the church that she currently pastored. She moved on to the fingers of her other hand: her daughter Laura and the coming baby, her future with Frederick, her professional future in ministry, and what else? Although it was some distance from where she was presently sitting, the house in Brookfield, Massachusetts had its own untold story and cast of characters. It, too, was part of her unfolding story.
Olympia shook her head, closed up the office, locked the door of the church and walked down the brick path to her borrowed car. As she got in, she looked back at the wood shingled chapel and smiled. The building was capped by an open bell tower, and it was perfectly framed by the branches of a stately New England maple tree on one side and a towering long-needle pine on the other. It really was about as quaint as it gets. But then she had a very dark and unsettling thought. When she was alone in her office at the far back of that darling little chapel, she was really alone. What would happen if I fell down or had some kind of emergency? Who would hear me if I called for help?
When she got home she set her papers on the table by the window and looked around the tiny cottage she called home. The cats greeted her enthusiastically, because she was the bringer of food, but something was different. What was it? The impatient animals distracted her from her unease with much ankle-twirling and kitty chatter. It was mostly related to their stomachs, but it was also partly because they really were happy to see her. It was only after she’d fed them that she spotted what it was that had alerted her. It was the antique clock, the one she’d brought with her from Brookfield that she believed had originally been owned by her house-ghost and Mayflower descendent, Miss Leanna Faith Winslow. It was lying face down on the braided rug in front of the book case where it had either fallen or been knocked off by one of the cats … because clocks don’t jump!
Olympia reached down, picked it up and checked to see if it was damaged. Everything seemed to be intact, which was really immaterial, because it never had worked, at least not since she had claimed ownership of it. But it did sometimes send her a signal when Miss Winslow was trying to get her attention. Good grief, has that spectral busy-body actually followed me here? And if so, what the hell is she trying to tell me this time?
She laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. Who would believe she had a traveling house-ghost who seemed to have appointed herself her personal advisor and protector? Well, actually, two people would: Father Jim, her best friend ever in the world, and more recently Frederick, the man who could very possibly be a permanent part of her future. But she stopped laughing when she looked at the clock a second time. The two filigreed hands pointed to ten minutes after eleven, the exact time that very morning when she had opened the Bible looking for a sermon title and found one she didn’t like. Trust Miss Winslow to make her opinions known, even from a distance.
Olympia replaced the clock on the bookcase and reopened the Bible. She had two choices: ignore the ominous warning and find herself a new quote that would be easier to work with, or stay the course and meet the challenge head on. Olympia shook her head and answered her own question. She really only had one choice, and accepting the challenge might help her sort out some of the mysteries that seemed to be plaguing her itinerant ministry here on the island. Maybe that’s what Miss Winslow is trying to tell me.
With that question settled in her mind, she addressed the larger curiosity of the dark forces that seemed quite literally to be coming out of the woodwork and what, if anything, she should do about them. That, in turn, involved contacting Jim as soon as she could and asking the dear man if he was up for a visit to an idyllic, sleepy little picture book island? And what about Frederick? What’s he going to think? Two is company, and three is a crowd, especially in her shoebox of a cottage. Olympia took out her cell phone and speed-dialed Jim’s number.
“Hi, Jim? This is Olympia. I think I may need your help down here. How soon can you get to the ferry terminal in Woods Hole?”
~
When she got back to her apartment in Somerville, Laura Wilstrom placed the teddy bear she had been cradling since she left her birth mother on one end of the blue plaid sofa and lowered herself somewhat awkwardly onto the other. After a few minutes of contemplative silence, she reached for the phone and dialed her adoptive mother.
“Mum? I know you’re probably curious, so I called you the minute I got back. All in all, I’d say it went well.”
“You know this is your business, dear. All I need to know is that you are OK, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. What’s she like?”
“She was nervous, but I was, too. It was a little awkward at first. I do want to get to know her more, but I need to let this much settle before I do.”
“What do you mean?” said her mother.”
“She’s not what I expected. I wanted to be angry, and I guess I was until I actually met her.”
“What happened?”
“I felt sorry for her. We were both pretty emotional. I want to get the whole story. Maybe next time. She’s a minister.”
“You told me that.”
“And I have two half-brothers.”
“Oh.”
“Mum?”
“Mmmm?” It was more of a sigh than a question.
“You’re my mother, and you always will be. You wiped my nose and gave me a great life until I went and messed it up. I did that all by myself. You had nothing to do with it.”
“You didn’t mess up your life, Laura. You made a decision that had unforeseen consequences. He seemed like such a nice man in the beginning. The important thing is, you’re going to have a baby, and your dad and I are going to be grandparents. That trumps everything. We’ll support you however we can. This is one baby that’s not going to be given up for adoption.”
Olympia’s daughter didn’t bother to wipe away the tears that were running down her face and dripping off her chin.
“Thanks, Mum, you’ve always been there for me.”
“I always will be.”
“I know that.”
“Mum, would you like to invite her over here sometime?”
“Of course, if you want to, but not just yet, OK?”
“One step at a time, didn’t you always tell me that?”
“I did,” said her mo
ther.
Twenty
William Bateson and the rest of the people that made up The Gingerbread Men were once again gathered in the back office of the pink and blue cottage that both fronted and disguised their operation. They were seated, each with a glass of something cold on the table in front of them, reviewing the details of the West situation. Because of the summer heat, a rusty air conditioner wedged into the single window was wheezing and clanking almost continuously as it chilled the room and completely obliterated the voices of the men inside to anyone passing by.
William Bateson was speaking. “As far as I know, the daughter is coming this week. I haven’t met her, so I don’t know what to expect. I can only hope that because she’s an artist type, she doesn’t have too much of a business head. When the time is right I’ll propose the idea of putting the house in a protective trust so that she doesn’t have to worry about it, and her mother is safe.”
“What’s not to like about that?” said Mary Beth Lessing, lawyer and legal consultant to the group. “That’s when I usually come in with all the answers.”
“They don’t call us confidence men for nothing,” said Mike Barnes, punctuating the statement with a laugh that sounded like someone choking.
“What about the Parker deal? Everything OK on that one? Nobody questioning the will?” Al Francis was drumming his fingers on the table, much to the evident irritation of William Bateson.
Mary Beth shook her head. “So far, so good, but she went to the same church as Mrs. West. That could be awkward if we’re not careful. We didn’t know that until recently. She never went to services. We don’t want anyone getting curious. I had everything signed and notarized when Mrs. Parker started talking about calling her son, saying maybe she should take it back and have him look it over. But then the poor dear fell down the stairs.”
“Accidents happen.”
“Don’t they just,” said Al Francis. “We’ve never actually killed anyone before. That’s not part of the plan.”
A Despicable Mission (Olympia Brown Mysteries) Page 11
