Hell on Church Street (12 page)

“That you see to it Angela stays here in town.”

“Angela…”

“The preacher’s daughter.”

“Oh,” he said, stretching the syllable out. “The preacher’s daughter.” He shook his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“She’s got an aunt in town,” I said. “See to it she stays here. I don’t want them sending her down to Texas to stay with her grandparents. Say she needs to stay here. Throw some police
jibberish
at them.”

“And then what?”

I shrugged. “As soon as the case closes, you get your papers.”

He pushed himself off the wall and said, “I’ll be in touch with you. Don’t you call
me.
Expect me to show up.”

“Okay.”

He nodded and went to the window and peered out. Then, without saying anything else, he slipped out into the breaking dawn.
 

Looking back on it, I think he’d already decided to kill me.

Chapter Twelve

The next few days were consumed with managing the reaction to the Cards’ deaths. The chairman of the deacons called me crying in the early hours of the morning of the murders to let me know what had happened. He was an old man, but I don’t think he’d ever experienced anything like this.

I reacted like he would expect me to react. I was daunted, shaken, horrified, but brave and ready for what lay ahead, assuring him that we needed prayer and supplication before the Lord now more than ever. I asked him to arrange a meeting with the deacons for that night.

“The important thing for us in a time like this,” I said, “is to stay close to the Lord and close to each other.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said.

“How many people have you talked to?”

“Just a few. Nick Hargrove called me and let me know.”

The bright young man was moving forward already. It figured. “How did he find out?” I asked.

“Well, his brother-in-law, as you may know, is the sheriff,” the chairman told me.

“I didn’t get the impression they were on good terms.”

“I don’t believe they are,” the chairman said, “but I believe the sheriff felt compelled to tell his sister that her pastor was dead.”

“I see. And you didn’t talk to too many others before you called me,” I said.

“I made one or two calls, but I assume the word is all over by now.”

“That’s a safe bet,” I said. “That’s one very good reason for the senior staff and the deacons to meet.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m sure Nick will feel the same.”

After I hung up, I made the rounds. I went by the music minister’s home, went by the home of the Senior Adult minister, and stopped by the church to help the secretary field calls for a few hours. Then I went by and saw Nick Hargrove.

The bright young man had a nice house in a new subdivision up by the school. There was a new car shining under a basketball goal in the driveway. As I walked up to his front door, I could see the edge of a swimming pool jutting out from behind the house.

Nick’s wife answered the door. Lacey Hargrove was a rosy-cheeked blonde with a cute overbite, but she had a crying baby on her hip and she looked grim.

“He’s in his office,” she said.

I tried to see the similarity between her and Doolittle Norris, but there wasn’t any. Nothing about her marked her as a Norris. Whether that was genetics or the work of the Holy Ghost is anyone’s guess.

She led me through the house, and I watched her ass as she went down the hall. The baby stopped crying and watched me watch its mother’s ass. I shrugged.

“Nick,” she said, tapping on the door.

Nick sat at his desk and turned when we came in. He stood up. “Hey there.” He kissed his wife on the cheek and shook my hand.

“Could you take her?” Lacey asked.

Nick grimaced but took the kid without a word. Lacey left.

“Have a seat,” he said.

I sat in a hard-backed chair by the desk, and we exchanged some words of remorse about the Cards. I went on autopilot and said everything you’re supposed to say. While he talked, I looked around the office a little.

It was neat and clean. There were two bookshelves full of history, religion and politics. Paintings of flaxen-haired angels and sun-kissed clouds hung along the walls, and above his desk, next to a partial list of Southern Baptist missionaries, a tack-filled map of the world gave Nick his view of the big picture.

He stopped talking and held the baby to his chest. The kid looked ready to cry.

Nick smiled when he saw me looking at the kid. “She likes me. It’s funny,” he said. “She’s more at ease with me than her mother.” He shook his head. “Odd.”

“It is,” I said.

“Have you thought about kids?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I’ve thought a little, I guess, but right now I’m married to doing what the Lord wants me to do.”

Nick nodded, but he looked down at his baby daughter instead of at me. He knew, on some level, that I was full of shit. I wanted to laugh. He and I could not have been more different. He was energized, handsome, a devout family man, politically active with several conservative groups, athletic and outgoing. He was the future of the church and everyone knew it.

But the church was up for grabs now.

“Have you been by to see Angela?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I said.

Nick frowned. “I would have thought that would be your first step,” he said.

“Well I, I wanted to discuss church matters with you,” I stammered.

“There’s a meeting scheduled,” he said. “We’ll be discussing ‘church matters’ for days and months to come. Don’t you think you should be tending to your flock?”

The truth was I was scared as hell to see Angela, but how could I say that?

“I’m going by there,” I said, trying not to get pissed at him. “I just wanted to drop by and discuss your thoughts on where we should go next with the church.”

He sighed and patted his daughter’s tiny back. “I think we should start looking for a new pastor as soon as possible,” he said. “I think that’s the most important thing, but, honestly—speaking of first things first, I think you should go see Angela. I think that’s where you’re needed.”

There was nothing to do but nod and get up. “Just wanted to stop by,” I said. “I was on my way over there.”

He grinned.
Of course.
“We’ll talk soon,” he said.

“Count on it,” I said, with just a little too much force behind it.

I had no choice in the matter now. I had to go see her. The funny thing is, I hadn’t even realized I was avoiding talking to her, but now my hands were shaking. I went out to my car and drove over to the house of Brother Card’s sister. She was a skinny blonde woman with tiny teeth and large gums, and I could tell she’d been crying when she answered the door.

“Angela’s in the back there,” she said.

“How is she?” I asked.

The woman pressed her fist to her lips and bit down on a sob. “She won’t say nothing,” she told me. “I’m glad you’re here.”

I gave her a hug and went back to see Angela.

She was in her cousin’s room on the bed. Surprisingly, she wasn’t crying. Her face was locked in a thoughtful scowl. Indifferently wearing jeans and a sweater, she just sat against the wall like someone had placed her in timeout.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I went to her and took her in my arms—‘took her’ being the operative words there. She lay limp against me.

Slowly she pulled away and leaned against the wall.

I patted her knee.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

She examined her thumb and pressed down on a cuticle, and I noticed her freshly painted nails. I supposed she’d painted them at the sleepover, thinking of when she’d show them to me.

“The Lord loves you very much,” I said. “And so do your parents. They’re in heaven now, looking down on you. Do you know that? They’re at peace. They’re not in any pain at all.”

She pressed harder, wincing a little.

“You know I’m here for you,” I said, leaning in. I touched her knee. She looked at my hand like it was something she’d never seen before. “I love you very much,” I told her. “You know that I’ll be here for you. I love you and I always will.”

I stood up and moved toward the door. There was a poster tacked to it of By His Stripes. I thought of the poster in her room peeling off the wall in flames.

“I’ll come by and see you tomorrow,” I said and opened the door. Then I closed it and asked, “You didn’t have a diary did you?”

She shook her head. Then she frowned and asked, “Why do you want to know?”

I told her, “Well, I don’t want to be at all callous right now, but I was thinking of how bad it would be, you know, if someone found it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have a diary.”

“Okay. I just had to ask, you know.”

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

I said, “You know, there’s no reason we can’t talk all the time now. Anytime at all, you know where I am.”

She raised her head and looked queerly at me for a moment. Then she nodded again and went back to her thumb.

Chapter Thirteen

The meeting with the deacons went well. If a preacher is like the president of a church, the deacons are like Congress. Our deacons were mostly a bunch of old men, and they’d been serving the church for years. Now they just seemed tired.
The whole meeting was run, more or less, by Nick
. He’d only been a deacon for a year, but he was obviously the star of the show, everyone’s bright young man. The chairman of the deacons was named E.W. Herschel. He was a retired pharmacist pushing eighty, and I don’t know if he was exhausted or if he simply believed in the younger man, but he pretty much sat back chewing on his eyeglasses and let Nick control things.

After we’d prayed and sat around canonizing the Cards for an hour, Nick turned to me and said, “There’s been some discussion of having you run the church in the interim.” He didn’t say it as if it was the greatest idea in the world.

I took a deep breath. “That’s an awesome responsibility,” I said.

The deacons nodded, but Nick added, “We’ll need to start a pastor search after the funeral. You’d just have to handle things until we could get a new man in the pulpit.”

Dr. Samuels, a retired dentist with a
bald head
and a booming voice, asked, “I wonder if starting the pastor search that soon won’t look like we’re jumping the gun a little.”