The Preacher's First Murder

by K. Gresham

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Promise to Mamma

  Angie dumped a glob of bleach into the floor drain nearest the kitchen door, then in the one by the big walk-in freezer, and again in the drain nearest the sink. The routine ended what she called her Health Department cleaning. Every month, she gave the kitchen a shine that would make Martha Stewart proud. The trouble was, she’d gone through this entire routine only two days earlier.

  She looked around her kitchen. The grease in the fryer was drained, the industrial dishwasher scoured. She’d taken the shelves out of the fridge and bleached ’em down, taken the oven apart and degreased every inch of it, and even cleaned the ice machine. The kitchen was spotless.

  Thinking about Mamma was the only activity left to do.

  The funeral earlier had been a beautiful tribute. Angie was glad people had come out of the woodwork to say what Maeve O’Day had meant to them. Of course, they had been talking about the Maeve O’Day of twenty years ago, ten years ago. Even six years ago. Maeve O’Day of recent times hadn’t really been Maeve O’Day at all.

  The glint had left Mamma’s eyes, replaced with confusion. Her once-lilting voice had sunk to depressed moans and complaints. Maeve’s quips of sage wisdom had given way to a blank expression. Maybe that’s why Angie felt like such a traitor on this night of her mother’s funeral. A part of her was glad that Maeve O’Day would no longer suffer.

  Angie put the lid back on the bleach bottle, placed the bottle under the sink where she kept all of her cleaning supplies and took off her apron. She walked through the swinging doors into the bar.

  “Done in there?” Bo asked.

  He looked worried. Small wonder, she reckoned. She hadn’t said a word since the funeral had ended when she, Bo and Dorothy Jo had returned to the bar and gone back to work.

  “As done as it’ll ever get.” She shrugged. She looked at the Budweiser clock behind the bar. “It’s only nine o’clock,” she said more to herself than to Bo. “Feels like midnight.”

  “Why don’t you head upstairs, Angie,” Bo suggested. “It’s quiet. If anyone wants food I can shove a pizza in the oven.”

  Angie looked around the Fire and Ice House. Whereas last night there had been plenty of patrons around to watch her kick Ernie Masterson out, tonight there were only three customers in the place. Two of them were regulars who sat at the bar most every Tuesday.

  A thought struck her. “Any sign of Masterson tonight?”

  “Not if he wants to live,” Bo said, and his look was violent. Angie understood his dislike for Ernie Masterson. Bo had taken Ernie home more than once. The last time Bo returned from such a trip, he had been hosting a bloodied lip.

  “Don’t beat me to it,” Angie said wryly. A streak of lightning blazed outside the front window and Angie walked forward. A rumble of thunder greeted her when she reached the glass. “Gonna be a bad one, I think,” she said.

  “Another norther. Freeze warnin’s up,” Bo said. He glanced at the TV silently playing an NBA game behind him. “They’ve run a couple of advisories.”

  She nodded. “G’night, Bo.” She gave the street a last look, then headed past the bar and kitchen to the very back of the Ice House.

  “Hey, Angie?”

  She turned. “Yeah?”

  “That was a good thing you did for Dorothy Jo. About Lawrence, I mean.”

  Angie nodded. “She’d never wanted to get him a plot of his own. She was afraid somebody would vandalize it. Not havin’ his ashes in the ground, though, I don’t think Dorothy Jo could ever really put him to rest.”

  “Puttin’ that urn on top of your mamma’s casket was about the nicest thing I’ve ever heard of anyone doin’ for somebody else.”

  “It was Mamma’s idea years back when she first got sick. Said it wasn’t right for Dorothy Jo to have to see her son’s ashes on her front room bookshelf every day.” Angie slapped her leg for Shadow to join her. The dog pulled himself off the brick by the wood-burning fireplace and followed her out the back door into the cold night.

  The wind whipped at Angie’s hair as she climbed the back steps to her small apartment. She fished a key from her jeans, unlocked the apartment’s kitchen door, and headed inside. Shadow followed close behind. He went to his braided rag rug and lay down with a huff. Angie wasn’t sure if the dog was in mourning or still feeling sick from the poison. Either way, she envied his ability to fall fast asleep. She shut the kitchen door.

  Mamma.

  The place smelled of her. The bacon she’d fried up every morning, the cedar from the chest where she kept her best linens, the after-bath that hinted at lilacs.

  The kitchen was small, with barely enough room for a two-chair table, fridge and oven. Yet Maeve O’Day had cooked many a family meal in this room. Angie fingered the lace doily that topped the table. Mamma had been proud of her doilies. Said her family in Ireland had been famous for the lace they made. Angie had never met any of them.

  She moved beyond the kitchen into the small living room where a faded maroon couch sat across from the triple-paned window that looked out onto Mason Street. Restless, she kept moving until she reached Maeve’s small bedroom at the end of the hall. Angie went to the small Victorian walnut dresser and picked up the silver-backed brush that had been her mother’s treasure. Had it been a gift from a lover? Maybe even her father? Angie stroked it through her hair. Her gaze fell on the tube of delicate-pink lipstick her mother had always worn. Smoothing it on her lips was like getting a kiss from Mamma all over again.

  Everywhere was Maeve. The little touches that she had added as her small budget allowed had given Angie some semblance of a normal childhood. Maeve’s had been anything but normal.

  As a toddler, Maeve Catherine O’Day had come to Texas when her father was stationed at Fort Hood in 1944. A month before D-day he’d shipped out. Maeve’s father had never come home.

  Maeve and her mother had made do as best they could. Maeve’s mother, while working as a cleaning woman at the Killeen hospital, had caught polio and died. The next year Jonas Salk’s vaccine had been released to the public. Maeve O’Day, seventeen and penniless, had gone in search of a job.

  Angie was pretty sure Maeve had never considered actually selling her body at Lida’s Rose Hotel. Her Roman Catholic upbringing had been strong, and her backbone even stronger. Still, only the likes of Miss Lida were interested in helping a girl who was down on her luck. Miss Lida had known what that had been like. When the madam had learned that Maeve could mix a drink of whiskey and rye and not waste the liquor, Miss Lida had recognized a marketable skill in the young Irish girl. Maeve O’Day had been employed at the pony house for over twenty years.

  Angie walked back into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. She pulled out a bottle of Irish Mist. She poured a shot, turned toward Maeve’s bedroom door and held up her glass.

  “To you, Mamma,” she said aloud. “You did right by me.” Angie downed the shot in one swallow. “Now, I swear, I’ll do right by you.”

  Angie put down the glass, took one last look at her sleeping dog and headed back into the cold, wet night.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Phone Call to Action

  Elsbeth Novak picked up the phone from the heavily carved pine desk, walked to the soft leather recliner and heaved a sigh as she lowered herself into its buttery smoothness. The den was James W.’s room to be sure, its heavy paneling and assortment of antique weaponry a tribute to his masculinity. He’d made sure of it when they’d built the five-bedroom ranch fifteen years ago. “You can have every other room in the house, Elsbeth,” he’d said. “This one is mine.”

  Well, tonight James W. was on duty, and Elsbeth wanted to be comfortable for her phone call with Jimmy Jr. Sure enough, the call came in at precisely ten o’clock.

  “Sheriff Novak’s residence,” she answered officiously. She loved the fact that her husband had a title of such import. Add to that she had started out a Wilks—third cousin on the father’s side—and she’d m
arried a Wilks. Well, technically James W. was a Novak, but he was half-Wilks, anyway. That meant she remained a member of the famous Wilks Dynasty for which the town and county were named. Elsbeth figured she had plenty to be proud of.

  As Elsbeth Novak saw it, she was the most important woman living in Wilks, Texas, now. Miss Olivia—well, Miss Olivia was old.

  “Hi, Mom. It’s me.”

  Elsbeth smiled. “Jimmy.” She settled back into the chair. The leather squeaked beneath her weight. “How’s your day been?”

  “Long.”

  Elsbeth heard the weariness in her son’s voice and her heavy brow wrinkled. “Are you all right?”

  “Tired,” came the reply, and Elsbeth could picture her fit son pulling off his tie and sitting on the edge of the bed in some hotel room. “I’m in the Panhandle tonight,” he said, answering her unasked question. “Never shook so many hands or ate so much barbecue in my life.”

  “You make sure you wash your hands,” Elsbeth said.

  She heard a chuckle on the other end but let it pass.

  “I heard Maeve O’Day was murdered,” Jimmy said, by way of conversation.

  Elsbeth sat up with a start, and the chair’s footrest went down with a thud. “It was an accident,” she said tersely.

  “That’s not what Henry Jacobs said.”

  “When did you talk with Henry?”

  “He called Leroy, my press agent. Thought he’d catch me up on the news.”

  “He shouldn’t be botherin’ you with such gossip.”

  “Mom, that’s all we did as roommates through four years at UT. Besides, why would anybody want to kill a nice old lady like Maeve O’Day?”

  Elsbeth stood, her face turning purple. “Nobody killed her, and how can you call a woman of that reputation nice? She was a dark smear on this town.”

  “Mom, Maeve O’Day was harmless.”

  “Is that all we’re goin’ to talk about tonight?” She huffed.

  “I’m looking forward to coming home,” he said hopefully. “Thinking maybe your sauerbraten might be the best thing to perk up a tired candidate.”

  Elsbeth’s mood brightened. “You’ll be home for supper on Saturday?”

  “If everything goes all right. I’ll call Friday night to confirm. After the Kiwanis fund-raiser in Midland.”

  “You’re not callin’ me for two nights?”

  “Mom, I won’t be home until after midnight the next few nights. There’s a lot of hands to shake between now and November.”

  “I suppose so,” she said. She would pay the price to have her son in the governor’s mansion, but she didn’t have to like it.

  “On this Maeve O’Day thing, though, Mom. Since I’m coming in to speak on Sunday, isn’t this something I could use to talk about my crime message? I mean, little old ladies aren’t safe anymore. That kind of thing? Leroy thinks we could get some mileage out of it.”

  “James Wilks Novak Jr., I won’t hear you preach about that woman from the pulpit on Sunday. Your grandmother would keel over right there in the pew.”

  “If you say,” he hedged, “I won’t talk about it from the pulpit. But I still think the outrage angle is a good one to play. Maybe I could hold a press conference after church or something.”

  Before Elsbeth could reply, Jimmy was getting off the phone. “Room service is here, Mom. Gotta get some real food. Hey, watch for me on KXAN. They had a camera crew at my luncheon speech today. They’re giving me lots of air. Love you.”

  The phone clicked dead, and Elsbeth put it back in its brass-embossed cradle. She stared at it for a moment, then at the clock. She’d have to catch the midnight version of the Austin news.

  She crossed to the green, marble-tiled entranceway, put on her suede coat, and walked out into the night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  An Unexpected Visitor

  “Angie.”

  Matt Hayden let the word escape on an exhalation of surprise as he opened the parsonage’s front door.

  “I know it’s late, Preacher. But you said anytime.” A crack of thunder rent the air behind her, and Angie jumped. “I’m a little antsy, I guess.”

  She was standing there, dripping from the hard rain that framed her silhouette against the street light. She glistened with the life of the storm; the lightning reflected in her eyes. Wildness glowed in her cheeks.

  Matt shook his head. Noticing things like that was not the way to start a conversation with Angie O’Day.

  “Not too late at all,” he said and opened the door wider for her to enter.

  The parsonage was an average-sized affair, its walls painted antique white for whoever might be the occupant du jour. Matt’s small furniture collection—a secondhand couch and a brown La-Z-Boy rocker—sat in front of the brown-brick fireplace. Unpacked boxes littered the room. The only light in the room came from the corner where a halogen scoop illuminated the ceiling.

  Matt looked with disgust at the framed pictures that leaned against the far wall. He hadn’t taken the time to hang them yet. He’d done little to personalize the place since he’d moved in seven weeks earlier.

  “Homey,” Angie said as she walked into the room.

  Matt wanted to glare but resisted the urge. “You’re soaking wet.”

  “Clouds burst right as I came across the bridge.”

  Matt looked out the window as the mantel clock struck ten o’clock. “Can’t see across the street,” he commented.

  Angie walked over to the fireplace and checked the flue. “It’s open.” She pulled two logs from the bin that had been full since before Matt had moved in, then fished a lighter out of her pocket. She looked up at him after the first dry bark caught. “What? I’m cold.”

  “Can I get you some coffee?” The tug of appreciation he felt at the wet clothes hugging her body had him walking away. Fast. “A towel, maybe?”

  Angie didn’t notice his discomfort. “Coffee. I guess you don’t have anything stronger?”

  “I might be able to find a glass of wine.”

  “Make it two. I don’t like to drink alone.”

  He went into the kitchen and emerged moments later with two paper cups filled with a Merlot. “I don’t do dishes.” His smile was sheepish. “But the laundry is a must.” He handed her a terry towel.

  “The life of a bachelor,” Angie replied. She took the cup he offered, then sat on the edge of the couch. “I guess you’re wonderin’ why I’m here.”

  Actually he could care less why she was there. He was fascinated with watching her rub the towel over her hair and shoulders. He brought himself back to the conversation with effort.

  “I’m figuring it has to do with your mother.” He sat in the recliner.

  She chuckled. “Not a hard figure.” She sipped her wine, grimaced, then put it down on the crate of books before her. “Might as well get to it. Do you still think Mamma was murdered?”

  Matt sighed. He’d been expecting her inquiry—only not at ten o’clock at night.

  He took a sip of his own wine, then realized with dismay it had turned to vinegar. So much for offering her a drink, he thought. He put his cup down on a box.

  “My brother was a cop,” he said flatly. “You might say it was the family business.”

  Angie recognized the reply for what it was. She’d tended bar too often not to know when a man had a story to tell. The relationship between a bartender and her patron was about as sacred as a preacher and his parishioner, she figured. She nodded for him to continue.

  “Five years ago my brother, Bry . . . sorry, Bryson . . . was working a drug bust in . . . another state.” Careful, boy, he told himself. Witness protection programs were not about giving out details, yet he had to make Angie understand where he was coming from. “He had Crutches with him.” He smiled at her puzzlement. “Crutches was his dog. Canine cop.”

  Matt leaned back in his chair. “Crutches and Bry had worked together for six years. Bry trained him. He lived with us.”

  “A membe
r of your family,” Angie murmured. “Like Shadow.”

  Matt nodded. “Crutches and my brother were responsible for bringing in over two million dollars’ worth of illegal substances.”

  “They were a good team.”

  “Until a warehouse raid they were doing right before Christmas. When Crutches set off a bomb that was hidden in a suspicious shipment. He and Bry blew two hundred feet into the air.”

  Angie furrowed her brow. “Drugs and explosives? That doesn’t sound like two things a trained police dog would mix up.”

  “Crutches was trained to sniff drugs, not explosives. The bomb was hidden in a stash of crack. Explosives-trained dogs sit. Drug dogs go after the packages like they sniffed their first meal in weeks.”

  “That made it obvious the bomb was a plant, right?”

  “Not to the Miami Chief of Police. Howard P. Rutledge, believed otherwise.”

  Great. Now he’d let the perp’s name slip. What was he doing?

  “So, someone put crack in with the explosives—” Angie looked horrified. “—To get your dog to trigger a bomb? That’s awful.”

  Matt took a drink of his wine, despite its sour taste. He’d better not go any farther down this road. His Federal Marshall would have a cow if he knew Matt had spilled this much information. “First your dad, then your brother. You wanna be next?”

  “How did you stand it?”

  Matt shook off the memory. “I didn’t. My brother and that dog were murdered.” Matt looked at her. “I don’t know how else to say it. I hated.”

  “How do you live with knowin’ he was murdered and no one would do anything about it?”

  Matt stared into the flames. “I don’t. I give that part to God to handle.”