Pastor Needs a Boo (11 page)

“Baby, I keep telling you that you watch way too much LMN,” Metro admonished, and then said, all in the same breath. “Don't let her give you anything to eat or drink, though. I don't trust her.”

Dayeesha laughed. Metro knew that lady look like one of those smooth LMN killers who plotted and schemed about everything she did—down to simple stuff, like what kind of soap she was going to put in her bathrooms.

“Metro, you know that girl looks like an LMN killer woman.”

Metro tried to ignore Dayeesha. He knew his wife was right. That woman did look like one of those crazy heifers on Lifetime. But Metro didn't want to answer Dayeesha, because then he'd have to confess to watching a few Lifetime Movie Network movies when he was home watching the kids. It wasn't like Metro didn't love ESPN or MSNBC. But sometimes a brother wanted to sneak and watch a good Lifetime Movie Network movie.

“Daddy likes watching Lifetime Movie Network when you aren't home, Mommy,” their older son, Joseph, said.

“How do you know?” Dayeesha asked.

“Cuz we all like to watch them with him, too. He makes us popcorn and juice when we we watch those movies with Daddy.”

“I see,” Dayeesha answered her son, with a smirk on her face.

Metro looked at his children and said, “Why y'all got to front a dad off like that? Y'all don't have to tell your mama all of that.”

“So you don't want us to tell Mommy that one of those movies made you cry, Daddy,” their daughter, Jeneene chimed in.

Dayeesha looked at the supercool Metro Mitchell with a raised eyebrow. He said, “Okay, it was the movie about the little ten-year-old boy who hid under water, breathing though a piece of reed, so he could hide from the killers. Then he climbed out of the lake and sneaked back up to the house and found his parents, who had been beaten real bad, untied them, sneaked and started the car, and then drove them to safety before the killers, who were out looking for him, came back.”

“Yeah,” Dayeesha said, tearing up. “I saw that one. I cried for thirty minutes after they made it safely to the police station, and the killers got shot running up in there trying to get them. That was a good movie.”

“Yeah, it was real good, Mommy,” Jeneene said. “The little boy's name was Jeremiah, like our Jeremiah.”

“Umm hmm,” Jeremiah Mitchell said. “At the beginning of the movie, the movie Jeremiah used to walk around his house with his parents, telling them to fix their security system. He kept giving them a warning just like the prophet Jeremiah in the Bible. They should have listened to him, then they wouldn't be all beat up and tied up like they were.”

Jeremiah's older brother popped him in the back of his head.

“Oww, why you hit me?”

“Because if they listened to him there wouldn't have been a movie. They were supposed to be all hardheaded and not listen to a little boy with sense, to make the movie good.”

“Yeah,” Jeneene added. “See, that's why you and Mommy need to make sure you listen to us, Daddy. We might be telling you something that will keep all of us safe.”

Metro shook his head and went to get the car. His three children with Dayeesha were something else.

 

Chapter Seven

Reverend Denzelle Flowers was at his desk studying the portfolio on the church's Pastor's Aide Club account that had only recently become available. The fund had been set up years ago by a now deceased church mother, Clara Mae Davidson, in honor of her late husband, Reverend Chuckie Lee Davidson, who served as the assistant pastor at New Jerusalem back in the 1980s.

The Davidsons had been prominent church members with deep pockets because their family owned the Clean Car Wash Company. There wasn't a black person in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and Mebane, North Carolina, who didn't take their cars to the Clean Car Wash Company at least one time.

Denzelle almost fell out of his chair when he saw the eight-hundred-thousand-dollar account balance for the fund Mrs. Davidson had set up for New Jerusalem, only to fix it so that she controlled it until the day she died. Mrs. Davidson had been the nightmare church member every black church in America wished it didn't have to have—a mean and unsaved lifelong church member who tried to run the church and tell the pastor what to do by any means necessary.

Denzelle didn't even know how much money was in the account until Mrs. Davidson died three weeks before Marsha, Veronica, and Keisha got fired from their jobs. Clara Mae Davidson was clearly good with money and investments. But Mrs. Davidson would not give the church access to the money because she didn't like Reverend Flowers. In fact, Mrs. Davidson didn't like anybody she couldn't rule over. Rumor had it that the late Reverend Chuckie Lee Davidson didn't do anything without Clara Mae's permission. He didn't even pick out his own underwear.

So the money had been sitting in that account, collecting interest like it was dust, until Mrs. Davidson got so mad at all of the people she couldn't stand and died just to get back at them. And all of that money she sat on all of these years would now become accessible to the very man she vowed to never help—Reverend Denzelle Flowers. Imagine that: Close to a million church dollars from a woman who once bragged she had never tithed a day in her life.

When Dayeesha first told Denzelle of the three women being fired, he immediately thought of using that money to hire them to do some much needed work for the church. But that was proving to be a problem. Even in death, Clara Mae Davidson was reaching out from the grave to try and put a stranglehold on the pastor and her church. Denzelle learned that he could use the money—as long as he used it solely to fund activities for the now defunct Pastor's Aide Club at New Jerusalem Gospel United Church.

Church lore had it that Mrs. Davidson had once been the head of the Pastor's Aide Club, back in the day when those types of auxiliary organizations carried clout in the church. The backlog of church gossip, however, claimed that Clara Mae was so invested in the Pastor's Aide Club because she was having a hot and torrid affair with the man who pastored the church before Reverend Boudreaux came to New Jerusalem. The club was just a ruse for her to have an excuse to see her man.

At first Denzelle didn't want to believe that about Mrs. Clara Mae Davidson. For starters, she wasn't exactly the prettiest woman in the church. Denzelle always thought she looked like an ostrich with a tiny silver afro. And then, Mrs. Davidson was uptight, and so prim and proper he couldn't fathom her holding a man's hand, let alone sneaking off to the hotel to get her freak on. Just the thought of Mrs. Davidson calling some man “Daddy” was enough to give Denzelle nightmares for weeks on end.

He had been ready to jump right into using that money until it became clear it was only for a Pastor's Aide Club that nobody at New Jerusalem wanted back in action. Many folk in Denzelle's age group and younger dreaded being asked to run the Pastor's Aide Club, or having to go to one of the club's activities. They had grown up with this organization and didn't have the best memories of Mrs. Davidson and her club.

As one of the Trustee Board members said when they met to discuss the merits of reactivating the Pastor's Aide Club, “Pastor, I don't want to do any Pastor's Aide Club business. When I was little I got tired of getting in trouble for asking for more cake and extra punch when that haint decided to put on something for the pastor. Miss Clara Mae was so stingy with her food that she measured out slivers of cake with a ruler.”

Denzelle laughed. His trustee was right. He and his brother, Yarborough, had grown up in Fayetteville Street Gospel United Church under their uncle, Reverend Russell Flowers. Denzelle knew, firsthand, the kind of terror someone running the Pastor's Aide Club could inflict on fellow church members.

But he was going to have to get over it, where Pastor's Aide Clubs were concerned. Denzelle needed that money, and if reactivating the boring Pastor's Aide Club was the only way to get it, then New Jerusalem was going to have to just suck it up and deal with it. Now that he'd made up his mind to get it back up and running, the only thing left to do was convince those three unemployed women they needed to help him run it.

Denzelle was sitting in his office with three checks and three tasks for the new and improved club. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about how to deal with all of the questions he knew Keisha Jackson was going to shoot at him. Veronica was going to try to reshape his proposal to suit her sensibilities. And Marsha Metcalf was going to be real quiet—and dumbfounded when she saw what he had instructed Dayeesha to prepare for her to do.

He flipped through the three proposals and suddenly got cold feet about this venture. What in the world was he thinking, letting Dayeesha talk him into this? It had all sounded real good over breakfast with the Mitchells. But now Pastor was getting a little nervous about enlisting these women to give him the help he needed.

Denzelle opened his Bible to find a scripture that would help him run this meeting right. He went to Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Ephesians, and 1Kings before turning to Proverbs 3 and reading verses 5 and 6. That was it. Why was he worrying? All he had to do was trust in the Lord with all of his heart and mind and soul and try real hard to refrain from leaning on his own limited understanding.

There was a hard knock on the door before it flew open. Dayeesha never knocked to ask permission to come in. Her knocks were just to warn him that she was coming in. Denzelle didn't know what to do with Dayeesha Hamilton Mitchell sometimes. She was something else—just like her crazy daddy. She was also the best administrative assistant he'd ever had.

“Reverend Flowers, Marsha is here,” Dayeesha told him, and then chuckled softly. This was going to be good—watching Rev trying to be all cool, like he wasn't superhappy that Marsha was earlier than the other two women.

“Send her in,” Denzelle answered, hoping he sounded preacherly. He had secretly hoped Marsha would arrive earlier than Veronica and Keisha, because he wanted to be alone with her.

“Okay,” was all Dayeesha said right before Marsha walked in solo. Dayeesha knew she was so wrong to call Veronica and Keisha this morning and ask if they could come to the church twenty minutes after the time Marsha was scheduled to arrive.

Marsha walked into Denzelle's office and stood in the middle of the floor. She did not want to be in here with him all by herself. That was just too much Denzelle for her.

Denzelle got up and came around from his desk and got himself an eyeful of Marsha—his eyes going over her like a high-powered scope.

“Yes, lawd,” he whispered to himself.

“Huh?” Marsha said, looking perplexed, and quickly reminding Denzelle how uncool the girl was.

“You are looking very nice this morning,” he told her in his preacher voice. Truth was, Marsha was looking better than very nice this morning. The girl was looking downright delectable in a pair of dove gray denim capris and a ruffled T-shirt in pale pink. Those pink, gray, and white–sequined Chuck Taylors added some nice flava. And Marsha's thick, chocolate-colored hair, with silver streaks running through it, was pulled up in a bouncy ponytail with a pink, gray, and white scarf that made it hard for Denzelle to refrain from reaching out and giving it a good tug.

All of that pink on that toffee-colored skin was working on Denzelle. And he deemed it totally unfair that Marsha was wearing one of the scents in the Vera Wang line of colognes. He knew those colognes well, even if he didn't know the name of each one. Denzelle had bought a lot of Vera Wang for his women before he “retired” from being a career “ho.”

Marsha looked up at Denzelle, smiled, and extended her hand. She didn't know what else to do with a player like Denzelle Flowers—especially since she had a crush on the man. She hated that—having a crush on Denzelle Flowers, of all people. Denzelle was a ladies man—the worse kind of man to be sweet on, as far as Marsha was concerned.

Denzelle stared at Marsha's hand and then looked her dead in the eye, right before he got close enough to whisper, “You know I do not want to just shake your hand,” in a low sexy voice.

Marsha jumped back and sat down in the first chair she saw. What was wrong with Denzelle? Why was he always messing with her like that, and then never making good on those little hints? It was frustrating, and at times infuriating.

When Marsha was reserved with Denzelle, he came after her. If she responded in any way, he would pull back and act like she'd just talked about his mama. She couldn't understand why he did that to her. It was wrong.

Didn't Denzelle know that a good woman would petition the Lord on him about that mess? And didn't he realize this petition would include asking the Lord to send another man who really appreciated her if this man was too dumb and stupid to recognize how blessed he was to have her in his life? And why did this irritating man have to look and smell so good? Marsha wanted to pistol-whip Denzelle for looking so good.

He was dressed in navy slacks and a crisp white Tommy Bahama camp shirt, with thin caramel and navy stripes running down the sides of the tailored strip for the shirt's brushed silver–plated buttons. Marsha sneaked a peek at his shoes. She felt like she needed to call the police. That man was wearing a pair of navy, split-toe oxfords that had a strip of caramel accenting the detailing on the split-toe design. The shoes alone screamed “fine, sexy black man.”

She could hear the Bose system on the credenza playing softly. Marsha strained her ears, thinking she was going to pick up some notes from Maurette Brown Clark or the newest church theme song, “Let the Church Say Amen,” by Andraé Crouch and Marvin Winans.

Jill Scott and Anthony Hamilton. That is what her pastor was listening to.

Denzelle went and turned the music up on the system. He said, “I always thought you were a big Jill Scott fan.”