Ocean Blues

by Glen Ebisch

  Clarissa nodded, hoping that would happen.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Clarissa spent the afternoon visiting with two families in the congregation. The first visit was part of her effort to put together a history of the church for the last fifty years. They were long time members of the church, so she talked to them about the changes they had experienced in the church during the past few decades and how the city of Shore Side had developed. Clarissa had talked to almost half the members of the congregation by now, and she was surprised to find how wide the difference of opinion was on whether the last fifty years had made things better or worse.

  The other family had someone in hospice care whom Clarissa had visited last week, and she wanted to talk with them about the changes their loved one was going through and the ways they could be of help. Although it was easy to give lip service to the idea that death was simply part of life, when it came to actually confronting it, almost everyone struggled. Clarissa felt a deep obligation to be present to people during major changes in life because if religion didn’t help one cope with change, in her opinion, it wasn’t a very valuable practice.

  By the time she got back to the parsonage she was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. One of the few problems with being a minister, she was finding, was that on a Friday afternoon such as this one, instead of being able to look forward to a relaxing weekend, she had her busiest day of the week coming up on Sunday. Usually on Saturdays she tried to carve out some time for herself, but people in the congregation who had that day off from work often seemed to think it was the perfect time to get in touch with her.

  She was just heating up a serving of one of Mrs. Gunn’s patented casseroles when the phone rang. Figuring it was a church member with an emergency, she felt duty bound to answer.

  “Hi, it’s me,” Tyler said when she answered.

  “How are you doing?” she said, struggling to sound happy to hear from him.

  “No complaints, except for the fact that I’m sitting around twiddling my thumbs while the police are building a murder case against me.”

  “I’m sure that being patient given the circumstances is very difficult.” She knew that sounded a bit stilted, but Clarissa was afraid to go down the road of offering too much in the way of personal emotional comfort. Once you starting giving comfort to Tyler, he would just want more and more.

  “I was thinking. I know you said that it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to see each other here in town where people might spot us, but I was wondering if we could have dinner together tomorrow night somewhere a distance away from town where we’d be safe from prying eyes.”

  “You know I don’t like to go out on Saturday nights because of having so much to do on Sunday.”

  “Yeah, but I figured that these might be exceptional circumstances. But if you don’t see it that way . . .”

  “How about tomorrow for lunch?” Clarissa said quickly, immediately regretting her offer.

  “I guess that will be okay. Where do you want to go?”

  “I’ll meet you at the Sea Shell diner. You probably know it. It’s in North Shore Side on the way to where you work.”

  “Where I used to work,” Tyler pointed out.

  “You’ll be back there again some day.”

  “I’m not holding my breath.”

  “See you tomorrow,” Clarissa said, anxious to end the call.

  “Right. Have a good night.”

  “You as well.”

  Clarissa hung up the phone and stared at the food congealing on her plate. Her appetite had disappeared. She knew she’d handled the conversation with Tyler badly. Aside from looking for comfort and some information on how she and Andrew were doing in getting him exonerated, he would also doubtlessly make a pitch for them to get back together. She knew she should have remained firm, and refused to meet with him until his case was resolved. But she still had feelings for him. Not love, over time she had come to realize that she no longer felt that for him. By now it had morphed into something close to sympathy. The way you might feel for a brother who had been harshly treated by life. But she knew that he would take any sign of caring as an opportunity to make his pitch for them to become a couple again.

  She also knew that what she felt for him was more complex than mere sympathy. He was her last connection to her life as a student. A link to a time when everything seemed possible and life was full of potential. Clarissa smiled to herself as she realized that she was thinking back to a time less than a year ago, but so much had happened that it seemed like a decade had passed. Now she was on a career path. It was a good one, and she was happy with it. But it also meant that other choices were closed to her. In the last year she had become an adult, and she knew that meant leaving childish preoccupations behind. And she felt that one of them was Tyler. She was now a different person, but somehow Tyler hadn’t changed.

  Change was hard, whether it came at the end of your life or early on. Cleaning her dishes, she decided to put her own advice into action and see if her religion did help deal with change. She went upstairs to pray and meditate.

  *****

  Saturday morning proved to be a sunny and cloudless day, so Clarissa went out for an early morning run along the beach promenade. Since it was late September, it was getting cool in the early morning, so she put on a sweatshirt with her shorts. If her torso was warm, she knew the rest of her body would be.

  When she got down to the promenade, she could see the lights on in the restaurants that served breakfast. Many of them were only open on the weekends now that the tourist season was coming to a close. She had been told that after December, everything along the beach would be shut up tight. She wondered how it would feel to be running through a virtual ghost town. Clarissa imagined that it might be peaceful but also eerie. She was already noticing that church attendance was dropping off as the number of visitors to Shore Side decreased. In a few months, only the residents of the town who were members of the congregation would be attending. Revenues would diminish, but it would give her an opportunity to really get to know those who made up the core of the church.

  When she reached the southern tip of the promenade, Clarissa paused for a moment to look out to sea. Once again she had to remind herself that because of the way the southern coast of New Jersey gradually turned, she was actually facing more south rather than east. So straight ahead of her was Africa rather than Portugal. When a change of perspective comes about slowly, it’s often difficult to realize that a change has taken place. That was what had happened between Tyler and herself. They had parted in stops and starts until now she felt that there was no going back, although she suspected that Tyler didn’t feel the same way. That was going to make today’s lunch particularly hard.

  When Clarissa got back to the parsonage, she made her own small breakfast of cereal and a piece of toast. Only with some difficulty had she convinced Mrs. Gunn to take off Saturdays and Sundays. She still insisted on leaving meals to be heated up for dinner, but at least Clarissa now had control over her own breakfasts and lunches. Although she loved Mrs. Gunn and enjoyed talking with her over meals, she also enjoyed having the occasional peace and quiet of eating alone with only the newspaper for company. She had just finished her meal and was settling down to read the rest of the paper when there was a knock on the door.

  She glanced out the kitchen window as she headed for the door and saw Samantha Jones’ pickup truck in the parking lot.

  “Hi,” Samantha said, as Clarissa pulled open the door. “Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to let you know that I’ll be working up in the steeple. I have a couple of plastic tarps on the truck, and I wanted to put them down on the floor in the bell tower because they’re predicting rain for tonight. I don’t want it to leak down into the ceiling over the vestibule.”

  “Can I give you a hand?” Clarissa said.

  Samantha paused. “Well, it might be a good idea if I showed you what the problem is, so you’ll know about it firsthand.
”

  “Good idea. It’s on the agenda for the church board meeting next week. If I can say that I actually went up there and had a look my report might sound more convincing.”

  Clarissa followed Samantha to her truck, and they each carried a blue tarp through the back door into the church.

  “How do you get up to the steeple?” Clarissa asked, suddenly realizing that she had never ventured into that part of the church.

  “It’s in the back right corner through a concealed door. I almost missed it myself when I did my inspection of the building.”

  Samantha led the way to the corner and showed Clarissa a half-sized panel that pushed open to reveal a twisting stairway. Clarissa followed the sacristan up the narrow stairway until they reached another small door at the top.

  “Somebody wired this for electricity sometime in the twentieth century,” Samantha said, reaching up and pulling a string. A naked light bulb went on. “You see, this is what I meant about the floor.”

  Clarissa studied the floor, but it looked completely normal to her. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

  Samantha smiled. “Let me demonstrate. The floor is pretty solid for a foot or so along the edge, but the closer you get to center where the bell rope goes through, the weaker it gets.”

  Samantha cautiously walked out toward the center of the floor, testing the wood with each step. At first everything looked fine, but suddenly the wood beneath her foot crumbled to dust, and she quickly pulled back as Clarissa grabbed her arm.

  “That’s dangerous,” Clarissa said in alarm.

  “If anyone came up here and wasn’t paying attention, they could easily fall through and be badly hurt.”

  “How are we going to put the tarps down?”

  Samantha smiled. “If you don’t mind living a little dangerously, I was going to suggest that you walk along the edge on this side, while I go out to the front and shuffle along. That way we can stretch the tarps out between us like making a bed. It’s not a permanent solution, but it will give the ceiling below some protection until we can install that new floor.”

  They did as Samantha proposed. Clarissa shuffled along the edge, expecting at any minute to end up in the church lobby with a broken leg or worse. With somewhat more grace and an appearance of fearlessness, Samantha did the same on her side. In a few minutes they were done.

  “This is quite the old place,” Clarissa said, once they were back down the stairs and standing in the sanctuary.

  “It is beautiful and unique.” Samantha chuckled. “But also a maintenance nightmare.”

  “Would you like to come over to the parsonage and have a cup of coffee?”

  Samantha checked her watch. “Sure, that would be great.”

  Once they were seated around the kitchen table with steaming mugs of coffee in front of them, they discussed various maintenance issues for a few minutes. Then Samantha changed the subject.

  “How are you making out with your investigation into the death of that boy?”

  “I suppose every member of the congregation knows about that,” Clarissa said with a rueful smile.

  “Several folks have mentioned it to me, and they aren’t all in your church. I guess it’s something of a topic of conversation around town, given that the accused is your former fiancée.”

  “Yeah, I can see where that would spark interest.”

  “I don’t know Tyler personally, but I can’t imagine that you’d be involved with someone who could bash in a boy’s head that way. It would take a desperate individual to do that.”

  Clarissa nodded. “Sam, the boy who was killed, worked at the Slipped Anchor. I keep thinking that he more likely ran into someone there who was violent.”

  “I know the place has a bad reputation, but since Ed Schyler has owned it, I’ve heard there’s been considerable improvement.”

  “Do you know Schyler?”

  Samantha nodded. “I’ve worked on a couple of his properties. I won’t deny that he’s a pretty hard-driving guy, and he might even skate along the edges of the law when it comes to town rules and regulations. But I certainly wouldn’t figure him for a killer.”

  “What about someone who works for him?”

  “From what I’ve heard, Ed generally hires people he knows pretty well and who are loyal to him. I don’t think there’s much going on in one of his operations that he doesn’t know about. And he’s not going to run the risk of seriously breaking the law.”

  “Well, if the Slipped Anchor doesn’t pan out, I’m not sure how we’re going to get Tyler off the hook. There just don’t seem to be any other suspects.”

  Samantha reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m sorry, Clarissa, I know not being able to help someone you care about can be a very difficult thing.”

  “I feel so ineffectual, and I really don’t like thinking that something is beyond my control.”

  “Maybe you should put it in the hands of God.”

  Clarissa smiled. “Somehow I think I should be the one saying that. But I just have the feeling that God is expecting me to do a better job at helping bring about the right result.”

  “Maybe you’re right. So keep working on it, and inspiration may come.”

  “I hope so. I really do.”

  After Samantha left, Clarissa returned to her office and spent an hour doing a final read through of her sermon. The topic was the end of summer and how change, even change that may at first seem negative, can lead to new beginnings. When she was done, Clarissa spent some time staring out the window thinking about Mrs. Gunn and her boyfriend Joe, and of herself and Tyler. Mrs. Gunn’s future looked bright, but she couldn’t help feeling that her own looked more uncertain.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tyler walked into the Sea Shell Diner looking pretty much the way he must have felt, a bit down and out. In response to his question about how their investigation was going, Clarissa told him about the visit she and Andrew had made to the Slipped Anchor Inn.

  “Nobody seems to know what happened to Sam that night,” she concluded as the food arrived.

  “Then they must be lying,” Tyler said with a stubborn expression. “All sorts of illegal activities have to be going on in a place like that, and somehow Sam found out more than he was supposed to know.”

  “Since Ed Schyler bought the place, it seems to have cleaned up its act.”

  “Ed Schyler? Sam told me he had a conversation with somebody by that name.”

  “Maybe it was when Schyler got him the job there.”

  Tyler shook his head. “It was more than that. Sam thought the guy was interested in his Mom, and he wasn’t happy about it.”

  “Could that have been why Sam was so anxious shortly before his death?”

  “He mentioned it to me the first time we met, but never again. So I don’t know.”

  “I’ll ask Lieutenant Baker to check on Schyler’s whereabouts on the night of Sam’s death.”

  “You can’t trust the cops to do that sort of job. All they’re interested in is convicting me. They don’t want to find any other suspects.”

  Clarissa bit back a comment about Baker being a good man. Tyler was obviously in no mood to hear it.

  “Okay. I’ll go see Schyler myself and find out what he has to say.”

  Tyler nodded, and shoved his half-eaten hamburger aside.

  “Look, I didn’t just want to see you about my case. I also wanted to talk about us.”

  Clarissa started to say that they should put that off until after he was exonerated, but Tyler held up a hand to silence her.

  “We have to talk about this now because it’s eating me up. I moved down here so we could make a fresh start, but somehow that never seems to have gotten off the ground. At first I blamed it all on Andrew, that he’d taken my place in your affections. But now I’m starting to feel that you just aren’t interested in me anymore.”

  Tyler looked at her expectantly, obviously hoping for a denial. When none was immediately fo
rthcoming, he slumped on the seat as if all the air had gone out of him.

  “Is it because I didn’t keep my side of our bargain that whoever got the better job out of seminary could expect the other one to follow them?”

  Clarissa sighed. “It was at first, but now I think it’s more than that. I’ve changed.”

  “This isn’t where you say that it isn’t my fault, it’s yours?” he asked with a grim smile.

  “It would be partly true. I have changed since leaving school and taking this job. I know it’s been less than a year, but I feel differently about things.”

  “And you feel differently about me.”

  “I see the future in a new way, and you were a big part of how I used to see it.”

  “Is that new future going to be centered on Andrew?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I’m just not certain.”

  Tyler glanced around the room, and she could see the tears glistening in his eyes.

  “I’m still going to do my best to guarantee that you don’t go to prison. You can count on that.”

  He gave her a level stare. “I know. You’re a woman of principle and you keep your promises.” He got to his feet and put some money down on the table. “I admire that in you, I really do. But somehow—right now—that just isn’t enough.”

  He gave her a long glance, and walked out the door.

  Leaving her own meal virtually untouched, Clarissa stood up and added some money to what Tyler had left, making sure to cover the bill and a good tip. Ignoring the open stares of the waitress, she left, and headed back to her office. Still thinking about Tyler’s remark that Sam had thought Ed Schyler was interested in his mother, Clarissa immediately called The Lazy Dolphin Restaurant. The woman who answered was reluctant to put her through until she identified herself. Clarissa marveled at how being a minister could sometimes help to cut through red tape.

  Once Ed Schyler answered, Clarissa explained that she and Andrew Corrigan were talking to people about Sam Cryer’s death.

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. My manager told me that you visited The Slipped Anchor last evening. I hope everything was satisfactory.”