A Touch of Grace (4 page)

“It’s been a hard day for you.”

Gretchen was too uncertain about his motives to answer.

“Maddy was a sweet girl,” he went on. “A gentle and kind person.”

“And weak.” She took another sip of lemonade. The sides of the cup dripped condensation onto her black crepe dress.

“We all have weaknesses.”

“Even you, Reverend?”

“Me most of all. And one of my weaknesses is being called Reverend. I prefer Ian.” Lightly, he slid a hand under her elbow. “Your nose is getting pink. You need to get out of the sun.”

Normally opposed to anyone telling her what to do, Gretchen was too numb and exhausted to resist. She walked with him to an iron bench in a small, shady spot. Her insides trembled with fatigue and emotion. She really should go home.

“My roommate will be worried.”

“The woman with you? Tall. Black hair.”

She expected him to expound on her roommate’s beauty as most men did, but he didn’t. He settled onto the bench, keeping a polite distance between them. Gretchen couldn’t help but appreciate that.

“Carlotta Moreno. She’s a good friend.” She shook her head and studied the real slice of lemon floating in her cup. If Maddy had more friends like Carlotta, maybe someone would have been with her that night. “I wish…”

As if he understood the direction of her thoughts, Ian said, “Maddy had friends, too. People who cared about her.”

Unable to stop a bitter laugh, she swept her arm around the cemetery. “Oh, yes, the place is brimming with them.”

“They were here.”

She looked at him, trying to comprehend why he would tell an obvious lie. His startling eyes gazed back at her, steady and quiet.

“Are they invisible?” she asked sarcastically.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Metaphysically speaking, you mean? As in astral projection or some spiritual out-of-body experience?”

He laughed. She was dead serious and he laughed.

“I meant that some of Maddy’s friends were here, paying their respects out of sight of the other mourners. They were worried that you’d be upset if they showed themselves.”

“Are you telling me that there were people behind the tombs listening to the funeral service?”

“The residents of the mission who knew her and a few street people.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged. “Come to Isaiah House and ask them yourself.”

Gretchen smiled grimly. She should have seen that one coming.

“Maybe I will.” But not for the reasons he had in mind.

“We have chapel mornings and evenings at seven. Bible studies are pretty much ongoing, some formal, some informal.”

“Or I could come for the soup.” The silliness slipped out and she laughed. Then guilt rushed in. How could she laugh on the day of her sister’s funeral?

“Laughter is the best medicine, and it’s a lot less expensive.”

The preacher was uncannily intuitive. She’d better be more careful. “But my sister was buried today.”

He grew quiet for a minute, as if he drew inside. Gretchen wondered if he was praying. Elbows to knees, hands clasped together in front of his face, he bounced thumb knuckles against his chin.

“I won’t pretend to understand Maddy’s death, because I don’t. If I was God, she’d still be alive today.”

His intense honesty surprised her. He didn’t sound like any preacher she’d ever heard before. She had expected platitudes.

“Aren’t you going to tell me that Maddy’s suffering is over now? Or that she’s in a far better place?” Trite little sayings that infuriated her.

He shook his head. A small scar gleamed white through the brown hair above his ear.

“All I know for sure is this, Gretchen. God cared about Maddy. He loved her. And Maddy wanted to love Him in return.”

Yes, Maddy had always longed for God, tormented that she’d left the faith but too wise and too scared to go back. She could almost hear her sister’s frequent worry. “What if Brother Gordon was right? What if we’ve lost our only chance at Heaven?”

Gretchen jabbed the straw up and down in her lemonade cup, rattling ice. The noise seemed out of place here among the quiet tombs. “Do you think my sister went to Heaven?”

“I don’t know.” Again he answered honestly and she
was grateful. “No one but Maddy and the Lord knows what transpired between them in those last hours of her life. But she
was
on her way back to the mission. Don’t you think that means something?”

Sincerity oozed from the man like whipped cream between the layers of a sweet cake. She wanted to believe he was the “real deal” as Maddy had claimed. But she always came back to the same thing. Maddy was dead. Where was Ian Carpenter and Isaiah House when her sister needed them most?

“Why did she leave there in the first place?”

He drew in a deep breath and leaned forward, shoulders hunched. His gaze grew distant. “At some point in her counseling Maddy hit a wall. She was afraid to face something from her past.”

Gretchen knew Maddy held secrets. She also suspected what some of them were. “Did she give you any indication?”

Ian shook his head. “More than once she talked about needing to find her higher purpose. And then she’d clam up.”

Gretchen froze. Higher purpose? A vision of Brother Gordon’s gentle face reared up before her, urging her and Maddy to do things in order to attain their higher purpose. In the end, the higher purpose had been Brother Gordon’s bank account and his desire to control others.

The memory had no place at her sister’s funeral. She stood. The movement, coupled with the heat and fatigue, made her wobble. Ian reached out to steady her, his strong hand oddly comforting. She slid away from his touch, not wanting her reporter’s objectivity to be
hindered by the fact that the preacher was an attractive man and outwardly kind. The inner Ian was the one she needed to know about.

What was his part in Maddy’s death? Was he as innocent and kind as he seemed? Or did he make false promises and give false hope to the vulnerable? She’d once reported on a ministry that had tragically convinced a suicidal teen to stop taking his antidepressants and spend more time in prayer. The boy had shot himself.

Did Isaiah House also indulge in unethical and dangerous practices?

A headache pushed at the inside of her temples.

It wasn’t that Gretchen disliked preachers or religious groups. Not at all. Some were excellent, but the public had a right to know. Her job was to find out what the general public couldn’t, to force charities, especially religious groups, out into the open. To make them stop hiding behind the cross.

An idea for a new investigative series popped into her head. After the hurricane, she’d worked day and night for weeks investigating distributions to the relief effort, uncovering any number of discrepancies, misappropriations and downright theft of public monies. She wasn’t too popular with the local authorities but a couple of her stories had been picked up by the networks, and since then the station allowed her free rein.

She was a watchdog, a guardian for the people. Her viewers depended on her to shoot square. To help them choose the best groups to support and those to avoid. Gretchen took this responsibility very seriously. She and
her family had once been duped. She didn’t want such a thing to happen to anyone else.

The hair rose on the back of her neck. Had it already happened to Maddy?

“Would you mind if I visited Isaiah House?”

Blue eyes blinked at her. “Everyone is welcome at Isaiah House.”

“I meant in an official capacity.” She watched him closely, eager to see if the suggestion rattled him. It didn’t.

Serene as a blue sky, he said, “We’re an open book.”

Satisfaction curled through Gretchen’s mind. If Ian Carpenter and his mission had anything to hide, she and everyone else in Louisiana would soon know.

Chapter Three

“I
an, I think you’d better come outside.”

Ian looked up from his desk at the heavyset young woman standing in the door of his ground-floor office. Tabitha was one of the day counselors who worked with the female residents. He thought her name was appropriate since the Biblical Tabitha had also been a servant to those in need.

“What’s up?”

“The newswoman’s here again. Channel Eleven.”

“Already?”

When Barracuda Barker said she was coming to the mission, Ian hadn’t expected her quite so soon. The funeral was only yesterday.

He pushed up from the cluttered desk where he’d been praying about the runaway he’d taken in last night. After two hours of negotiation and countless calls to other agencies for social services Isaiah House couldn’t provide, he’d gotten the girl and her parents
to agree to one more try. He only hoped things worked out this time.

As he came around the desk, Tabitha glanced down at his feet. “Another new pair of shoes?”

Ian held out the pristine white runners for inspection. “Like ’em?”

“Cool. How many pairs does this make?”

That was a question Ian would rather not answer. He gave away his shoes to the needy on a regular basis, but every time he passed a shoe store he came home with a new pair. All his friends teased him about his one vice, but try as he would, he couldn’t seem to stop buying shoes.

“Don’t start about the shoes.”

Tabitha laughed. As a licensed Christian counselor, she teased him more than anyone, claiming his shoe buying indicated some kind of psychological disorder. He laughed, too, but sometimes he wondered about the compulsion.

They crossed the dayroom together and headed for the door of the converted home. The room was quiet by Isaiah House standards. This time of day, some people were in Bible study groups. Others were in classes or at jobs secured with the help of Ian and his small staff. Nobody sat idle around here for long.

Ian stepped out on the Southern-style porch. Sure enough, the Channel Eleven News van was parked at the curb and the blond reporter hopped out, photographer in tow. As he walked toward the mission the photographer aimed his camera at Ian and started shooting.

Ian stifled a groan. He really didn’t need this today with all he had to do. Hopefully, after a few questions,
she’d be on her way. After all, yesterday after the funeral when they’d parted ways, he felt they’d made progress, at least to the point of mutual respect.

“Gretchen,” he said cordially when she approached the porch.

Her loose-fitting white jacket swung open as she extended her hand. Beneath she wore a tank top the color of his mother’s daffodils.

“Reverend.”

Ian let the emphasis pass, studying her with an intensity she couldn’t miss. Though carefully applied makeup covered the dark circles, nothing could erase the hollow expression in her eyes. She had no business working today.

“How are you?” And he meant it. How was she after yesterday?

Her face closed up. “I’m here on business, not to be counseled.”

Ouch. Apparently, his thought that they’d come to some sort of mutual understanding yesterday had been way off base.

Gretchen not only didn’t want to discuss the loss of her sister, she wanted to forget that she and Ian had ever talked. Even if he couldn’t understand her reasoning, he could deal with her rejection. Preachers felt the cold shoulder all the time. The woman had been through a nightmare this week, and she needed time to grieve. For her own sake, he hoped she would give herself a break. Grief was a powerful emotion that took a toll sooner or later.

He held open the door and stood aside to let her en
ter the cool interior of the mission. As she passed, a gentle waft of lemon, like the magnolia in the courtyard, tickled his senses.

When the occupants of the dayroom saw the camera, most of them scattered like startled mice. The one or two who remained stared in open curiosity.

“I take it you’re here on that official business you mentioned yesterday,” he said.

Her pixie face turned upward. Yesterday’s predicted sunburn tinged her tilted nose and the crest of her cheekbones. As he’d noticed the morning Maddy died, Gretchen was a small woman with fragile looks. But those looks were deceiving. Unlike her sister, Ian suspected the reporter’s backbone was solid steel.

“Channel Eleven is running a new series on compassion ministries. We’d like to include a piece on Isaiah House.”

“Hatchet job or fair story?” He didn’t know why he’d asked that. He wasn’t usually defensive about the mission, but something in her attitude today made him uneasy.

“Everything depends on your cooperation. The more open you are with us, the better we can represent you to the public.” As she spoke, Gretchen’s gaze raced around the room, missing nothing. Not that there was all that much to see. Couches and a table, a tiny reception area with a pay phone, a TV and a few plants potted and tended by Roger. “The one thing I can promise you is to be fair. My stories are honest portrayals from the inside of ministries. The public has a right to know what they’re supporting.”

“I can’t argue that, but I’m not really prepared for anything extensive today. I’m pretty busy.” He glanced at his watch. “Could we schedule another time?”

Her eyes narrowed in speculation. “Have something to hide, Reverend?”

He was gonna let that pass. For now.

“Nope.” He slouched against the reception desk, sliding one hand in his pocket. Feeling the little fish key chain calmed the jitters that had invaded his stomach. “But I don’t allow anything to jeopardize the recovery of my people, either. I’m sure you understand.”

“
Your
people?” She emphasized the word as though it was loaded with insidious intent.

Ian liked to be cooperative, usually enjoyed sharing his vision for the mission with others, but he wasn’t interested in playing word games with a reporter looking to catch him in a slip of the tongue to boost her TV ratings.

“Look, Miss Barker, I’m a straightforward kind of guy. If you have questions to ask, ask them.” He smiled, hoping to soften her bulldog attitude with a little friendliness. “Why don’t we have this conversation in my office? I could offer you an ice-cold orange soda.”