The Wedding Planners of Butternut Creek (15 page)

“You don’t?” She paused, digging out a piece of grapefruit. “When I was in school, coaches taught health or PE.”

“You didn’t grow up in Texas, did you?”

She shook her head.

“Here assistant coaches teach a couple of classes, but head football and basketball coaches only coach.” He held up his hand. “Not that that doesn’t take a great deal of time. During the season, it’s pretty much seventy or eighty hours a week, maybe more. But now, with the season over, I don’t have to keep regular hours as long as I have my cell on.”

Having finished the waffles and sausage, he moved on to the hill of eggs. “I do know about the deviousness of the Widows. They already tried to set me up once. Didn’t work.”

“Really? With whom?”

He paused, not sure if he wanted to say, but he had brought this up. “Adam’s sister, Hannah.”

“You’re kidding, right?” She tilted her head as she thought about that. “Even I know she came home exhausted and mentally…I don’t know. Stressed? Fragile? Probably not ready to even think about marriage.”

“We discovered that. Hannah ran off rather than sit next to me.”

“Ouch.” Mattie’s voice held deep sympathy.

“Yeah.” He took another bite and swallowed. “Want to go to Austin with me Friday? Maybe dinner and a movie?”

“You mean it? You’re not just saying that to make the Widows happy?”

“Exactly the reason I asked. I live to make Miss Birdie happy.”

“I’d like to go to Austin with you.” She scrutinized him for a moment.

What had he done or said to require that?

“But I have a question or two first.” She leaned forward. The smile had disappeared.

Uh-oh. Maybe Mattie wasn’t as easy to get along with as Gabe thought. Adam had told him she had a strong personality, but she didn’t look tough.

She started that counting-on-her-fingers thing again. “First.” She touched her index finger. “What happened to that college student you were dating a while back?”

“You know about her?”

She nodded. “Everyone does. You live in Butternut Creek.”

“I thought if I went into Austin…”

“No, people from here go to Austin, too. Saw you with a blonde, a very young blonde.”

“No secrets here, huh?” He shrugged. “I discovered I’m too old to date a college student. She didn’t know anything about the world and had atrocious taste in music.”

“Even gorgeous can’t make up for that?”

He nodded again. “Must be getting old. I’d always thought gorgeous made up for almost anything.”

“Okay, that third-grade teacher from San Saba.” She counted on her next finger.

“We’re no longer dating.”

“Everyone said she was getting too serious.” She grinned at his look of consternation. “No secrets here.”

“Why all the questions?”

She sighed. “I’m a minister. An unmarried woman minister. That makes dating hard. I have to be careful. There are people who will use anything to get rid of me because they cannot believe God called me.”

“How would they know? Wasn’t that conversation between you and God?”

“I’d thought so but evidently not, because those people say God doesn’t call women.” She took another sip of coffee. “Second”—she held up two fingers—“there are guys who think seducing a minister would be fun. I really have to be careful about my reputation.”

“I’m not dating anyone now. Will knowing that you aren’t a scarlet woman luring me away from other females satisfy the gossips in Butternut Creek?”

“I’m not sure they’re ever satisfied, but this should help. Churches prefer their ministers to be boringly and unrealistically pure, especially the women.”

After spending a few more minutes eating and chatting, Gabe stood, tossing a few bills on the table that would easily pay for the meal without a senior discount and leave a nice tip for Miss Birdie. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

As he left, he could actually feel Miss Birdie’s eyes on his back. He didn’t give anything away. Let her and the other Widows find out about that date. They would, soon enough. He didn’t have to help.

When he got to the door, he glanced back to see Miss Birdie heading toward the booth where he’d left Mattie alone. Didn’t feel a bit guilty. With the woman Adam called “the pillar,” it was every man for himself or woman for herself, whichever applied.

Adam woke up at two
AM
. Why?

The phone hadn’t awakened him, thank goodness. Calls in the middle of the night didn’t bode well, meant a health problem, usually a severe one.

No, not the phone but something had interrupted his sleep. Maybe the unusual experience of not having the enormous dog attempting to shove him out of the bed had awakened him. Adam rolled over and stretched out in the warm and slightly canine-scented space Chewy had vacated.

Had the dog heard something? Had Adam? He listened. No noise came from the hallway or from outside the parsonage, but Chewy whimpered a few feet away. When Adam ignored the sounds, the dog scratched the bedroom door.

“Chewy, stop,” he mumbled.

As usual, the dog ignored his master’s suggestion and kept scratching. Someday Adam was going to have to teach him to open the door for himself.

“What is it, buddy?” he asked, although he didn’t really expect a reply. “Have to go out?”

Chewy kept scratching. Answer enough.

Adam rolled over and stood, slipped on jeans, and pushed his feet into flip-flops.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said to Chewy.

The dog ran through the open door ahead of Adam and hurled himself down the back steps. By the time Adam reached the first floor, Chewy stood by the back door and whimpered, his body shaking with excitement like the most eager of guard dogs.

“Something out there? What do you think it is, buddy?” he asked. Still no verbal answer.

The light on the back porch illuminated the area around the stoop but left the rest of the yard in darkness. Had he left it on?

Then Adam opened the door. Chewy zoomed past him, baying, and bounded down the back steps. The dog disappeared into the shadows but, from the panting and woofing, Adam knew where he was: in the corner of the yard that contained the recently planted vegetable garden. Then the creature howled.

Had Chewy caught something? A rabbit or a mole or some other creature? Had someone climbed over the fence? Should he call the police? Probably not a good idea—he’d have to wake up the patrolman who, everyone knew, grabbed a nap in the grade school parking lot at this time. If criminals took out the sleeping cop, they’d open the entire town to anarchy until the chief arrived at the police station the next morning.

Knowing he was delaying his investigation, Adam shoved the thought of criminals and anarchists aside, stepped outside, and said, “Hello?”

No answer.

“Hello?” Still no one answered, and he didn’t want to shout and awaken his neighbors. Adam glanced around at the houses close to the parsonage. No lights showed yet.

Squinting, he tried to penetrate the darkness beyond the circle of illumination from the porch light but couldn’t. Was there a movement in the corner of the vegetable garden? Other than Chewy’s wiggling? With a final glance around, he called, “Chewy.” The silly dog didn’t come but had stopped howling.

Might as well give up. He’d leave Chewy outside until he started barking. Once he was back inside, Adam closed and locked the door so anyone skulking back there couldn’t get inside and turned the porch light off.

“Hey!” came a voice from the outside.

From that one word, he couldn’t recognize who spoke, but he knew someone actually did lurk out there. He didn’t believe a murderer or thief would call
Hey
, but he could be mistaken. He opened the junk drawer in the kitchen and took out a flashlight before flipping the outside light back on. Cautiously, he opened the door an inch as if the narrow gap would deter anyone with a nefarious plot in mind.

“Who is it?” He pitched his voice low, in a menacing tone he hoped made him sound big and tough and mean.

“For heaven’s sake, speak like yourself,” Hannah said. “You sound ridiculous.”

Yes, obviously his sister. With that assurance, he opened the door and stepped out to shine the flashlight toward the vegetable garden. At first he didn’t see anything.

He descended the steps. When he strode closer he could make out Hannah crouching on the ground and attempting to fight off the excited Chewy and his enormous, friendly tongue.

Adam stopped and watched her in the weak glow of the flashlight, which really needed new batteries. “What are you doing?”

“N-nothing.” Her voice shook a little.

Hannah never sounded uncertain, even during arguments when everyone knew she was wrong and seven reference books didn’t back her assertions. So why did she sound timid now?

“Meditating,” she suggested and pushed Chewy away.

He took another step toward her. “Why are you out here?” he demanded. “You scared me.” He picked up a rock and tossed it toward the middle of the yard. Chewy took off after it.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Hannah said in a voice dripping with scorn. “There’s nothing to be afraid of in Butternut Creek. Ax murderers seldom creep around in the backyard of the parsonage.”

Deflect, don’t answer the question, that had always been Hannah’s strategy. Usually successful with people who didn’t know her well but never with him.

He asked for a third time, “What are you doing out here?” and took several more steps toward her, entering murky darkness as the flashlight died. The glow from the porch didn’t reach this far.

“Gardening,” she said in a soft voice and gestured toward what he thought was a flat of tomatoes.

“You’re gardening in the middle of the night, in the dark?”

“Not that dark. Moon’s out.”

“Not that dark?” he asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“You’ve said that. Let your eyes get used to the dark.”

“Hannah.” He took another step, hunkered next to her, and gazed at the pale oval of her face. “What’s going on? Why are you out here? Why are you gardening?”

“I like to dig in the dirt.”

Partial answer, another of his sister’s favorite defenses. In the futile hope he could intimidate her, he stood, crossed his arms, and tapped his toe to show his annoyance. Unfortunately, tapping one’s flip-flops on the dirt of a garden made very little sound. “Well?”

“Your sermon helped me a lot. Thank you. But even with that, I was feeling a little…nervous. You know, anxious.”

“I know what
nervous
means, thank you. That still doesn’t explain why you’re here.” He pointed to the ground as if she could see that. “In the backyard in the middle of the night.”

“Gardening calms me. It makes me think of growth and life. When I bury my hands in the soil, I feel at peace.”

He knelt next to her. “Okay, if sitting in the garden helps, I’m all for it, but could you do it when the sun’s out?”

“I’m anxious now.”

“Could you…”

Before he could finish the question, the back light at the home of his next-door neighbors flashed on and George stuck his head outside.

“Everything okay over there?” George asked.

“We’re fine,” Adam yelled back, a soft shout so he wouldn’t awaken more of the neighbors.

“Chewy sick?” George asked. “One of the kids?”

“No, we…”

“Praying?” he asked.

Sounded like as good a reason as any to be kneeling here after midnight but before he could agree to undertaking this odd mystical practice, his truthfulness gene kicked in. Instead he said, “No, chatting with my sister.”

“Outside?”

“Right.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Yup.”

Fortunately, George had learned to accept odd behavior from the inhabitants of the parsonage and didn’t pry. Good old George waved and said, “Let me know if you need anything.” With that, he backed inside, shut the door, and turned off the light.

“Why would your neighbors come out and check just because we’re in your backyard at night? Seems really nosey.” Hannah deflected again.

“That’s how small towns are. Neighbors care.” He paused then, to pull her back on track, asked, “Do you want to talk?”

“I want to plant tomatoes.”

“All right.” Before he could stand, he heard a siren and saw a flashing blue light in the parking lot that separated the church and the parsonage, then a faint blip, like a siren dying. Adam realized the patrolman didn’t spend every night sleeping in the elementary school parking lot because he was right here.

Had someone broken into the church?

He wanted to leap to his feet and stride to the fence but next to him, Hannah shivered. She’d wrapped herself in a heavy sweat suit, so she couldn’t be cold. Maybe she was, but the quaking felt more like fear. Was she experiencing a flashback to something that had happened in a refugee camp? He slipped his arm around his sister and pulled her against him.

The spotlight on the side of the patrol car went on but only illuminated the second and third stories of the parsonage. The section of the backyard that the high fence cut off remained pretty dark.

“Sir, I’m Patrolman Oglethorpe,” the cop called from the other side of the barrier. Then he shone the brilliance of his huge flashlight over the fence and into the yard where Hannah and Adam crouched in the deep shadows. “Got a report of suspicious behavior here,” Oglethorpe continued. “Sir, who are you and why are you lurking out here in the dark? Would you explain that?”

“Yes, sir,” Adam started. Before he could, a light from the second story of the house that backed up to the parsonage went on and Philemon Roberts, a deacon at AME Church, leaned out.

“What’s going on here, Brother Adam?” Philemon boomed. The man sounded exactly the way Adam thought God did, if God spoke from a second-story window. “You need help?”

The booming voice woke up the neighborhood. Windows lit up in two houses to the south, but it didn’t faze the patrolman.

“What are you doing out here, sir?” Oglethorpe asked, completely ignoring the deacon but turning his Maglite on the yard.

Adam searched for a reasonable, believable answer but came up only with, “Gardening.”