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“Lexy’s friend will make sure he doesn’t stay in jail any longer than he has to.” It was small comfort but the best I could give from a human perspective. “Why don’t we all pray for Matt again like we did the other day?”

“Okay. Can we go to the big room, the house room?”

“Okay, if you want to,” I told her. “Let’s tell Candace’s mom where you want to go.”

I repeated Lucy’s words, hoping that Dot would enlighten me as to exactly where we were going. Dot looked puzzled for a minute, then her face cleared. “You mean the sanctuary, Lucy? Where they had Frank’s funeral, right?”

Lucy nodded. “Somebody said that’s God’s house. I thought maybe He’d hear us better this time if we went to His house.”

Dot put an arm around Lucy and handed her a tissue to wipe her face. “Lucy, God hears us wherever we pray, because God is with us wherever we are. But if you feel better talking to Him in the sanctuary, then that’s where we’ll go.”

We sat in the front row of the upholstered chairs that the Chapel uses instead of pews, all of us linked and holding hands in a line. It was far more difficult for me to add Ray to my prayers this time. I knew he was only doing his job, but it still bothered me that he’d take Matt away like that in front of Lucy and the rest of us in a church building.

“Will you help me take the girls back to Rose House? I think they need to be in familiar surroundings,” Dot said as we left the sanctuary.

“Sure. Let me grab my purse from the classroom and I’ll be ready to go.” We could always swing by later and get my car.

Kirsten looked troubled when we told her why Candace and Lucy were back earlier than planned, and why Lucy especially seemed so upset. “I ought to call her sister right away and let her know about this. But that will cause as many problems as it solves.” She sighed, watching the roommates head toward their bedroom. “I think Estella’s ready to pull Lucy out of Rose House because of all the commotion. Although what she’d do with her while she works all those shifts at the hospital is beyond me.”

“Maybe it won’t come to that. Maybe this will all settle down soon and the police will figure out they’ve made a mistake in arresting Matt.” Dot sounded hopeful while she said that, but I could see that the hope in her voice didn’t carry over to her eyes.

Sunday after church I think we all felt pretty glum. Dot caught up with me after the service while I waited for Ben. My suspicions of the week before had proved correct; there was a cute girl in the praise band that he just had to talk with after the service. I tried to contain my curiosity and not speculate which of the three young ladies close to his age was the one. While he chatted, I stood out in the narthex where I wouldn’t embarrass him.

“Lexy’s friend wasn’t able to get Matt out of jail right away. But Lexy says we can plan strategy over dinner tonight.” I’d almost forgotten that we had the Christian Friends potluck.

“See you at six,” I told her and Dot hurried on. I looked at my watch, wondering how much longer Ben would spend in the sanctuary. Just about then he appeared with a funny grin on his face.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you stranded out here, Mom. If Kylie had a car, I’d just tell you to go on without me, but she caught a ride with one of her friends, so I can’t very well tag along. Could you take me home so I could drive back up here and offer her a ride after the next service?”

“Would Kylie be the mystery woman you went to the movies with?” Things were beginning to add up. Ben nodded, but didn’t say much more, leaving me to do the talking. “Sure, I can take you home. Do you want to grab a quick bite of early lunch someplace while we’re out?”

“Yeah. Not much, because I want to offer to take her out for a late lunch or coffee at least if she can go, but I’m starving. How about In-N-Out?”

It sounded good to me, so we headed to the hamburger stand that is the epitome of Southern California for me. How anybody can eat a normal fast-food hamburger after going to In-N-Out is beyond me. Everything’s fresh, the staff is made up of unfailingly cheerful teens and they have John 3:16 printed on their drink cups. What could possibly be better?

Even on Sunday it didn’t take us that long to make a quick burger and fries run and get Ben back home to pick up his car. While he dashed back to church, I stayed at the apartment for a little while, putting together my dish for the potluck. I wondered if it really mattered what anybody fixed, or if we’d all be so busy talking about Matt that the food would go by the wayside. Thinking about other Christian Friends gatherings, I decided to still put just as much effort into my chicken casserole. This bunch always needed sustenance while we thought and planned. We seemed to do our best work over coffee and dessert.

T
he Christian Friends meeting that night was supposed to be our Christmas potluck. We all still brought food, but the meeting was much more somber than any Christmas party I’d ever been to before. Mostly the meeting turned into a working dinner and planning session on how to get Matt out of jail as quickly as possible. It took a while to come up with any concrete, realistic ideas.

First Lexy had to explain to the rest of us why Matt got charged with suspicion of murder in the first place. According to her, the fact that it was second-degree murder should make us all relieved. I wasn’t so sure. “It really all boils down to one handprint,” she said over Dot’s tempting broccoli salad. “Before they found that, nothing else added up to enough to charge him.”

“So why does one print make the difference?” Dot, of course, was enjoying my chicken casserole—Mom’s recipe—and Heather’s chili-cheese dip far more than her own salad. Nobody ever seems to like their own stuff best at a potluck dinner, no matter how tasty it is.

“Before the hand print, the three key steps for charging somebody with murder were there, but they were pretty weak.” We must have all looked confused then, because Lexy went on. “Police look for means, motive and opportunity. The means were there, but due to the lack of prints where it matters,
anybody
could have shot Frank Collins with his own gun. Matt had motive, but it was not the world’s strongest. Granted, men have murdered each other before for hitting on a girlfriend, but Matt doesn’t seem like that type of guy.”

“Opportunity was there,” Dot supplied, as realization dawned on her. “Buck and I proved Matt had the opportunity when we told the detective we’d seen Matt talking to Frank in the driveway.”

“Right.” Lexy waved a fork to make her point. Fortunately it was a clean fork. “But you saw Matt talking to Frank when both were upright and in seemingly good shape. And you didn’t see a real fight, correct?”

“No pushing, shoving or hitting,” Dot agreed. “And since the windows were rolled up in the van, we couldn’t tell whether they yelled at each other or not.”

“So at that point the police had a lot of things that could tie Matt to the murder, but probably none any stronger than they might have on Darnell or any of several other guys working on the remodeling project. Then they found the handprint inside the portable toilet.”

“But that could have been there for weeks. You can’t date a fingerprint or handprint, can you?” That bothered me the most. Probably a dozen of the guys’ prints could show up inside that facility. As far as that went, they most likely found my prints in there, too. But most of the prints including mine had been made while using the facility for the intended use, not stowing a murder victim.

“No, you can’t date prints, not the way you’re talking about. It would have been a lot stronger evidence if the handprint had smeared blood in or under it, of course. Even without that kind of evidence, though, a good prosecutor will use that print to argue that Matt could have put it there while disposing of the body.”

“But it’s not like they have a witness to anything like that, right?” Heather hadn’t added much to the conversation so far, using most of her time instead to feed Corinna lovely stuff out of jars and eat a few bites from the buffet herself once the baby slept. Since I remembered having a little one on the verge of walking and talking, with all that boundless energy, I couldn’t fault her a bit for taking care of herself. Ten-month-old babies weren’t known for their patience, so their parents had to be resourceful.

When you added to that the fact that Heather was doing all the parenting alone, it was a double burden. Right now Corinna looked like a doll, sleeping in her stroller while wearing an adorable red velvet Christmas dress. Half an hour from now the baby would probably look more like a hurricane, awake and shrieking for attention.

For the present, she slept on, letting her mother and the rest of us talk about Matt’s problems. “You’re right, Heather, there are no witnesses to the murder. If somebody had seen anything while it went on, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation. We’d know for certain whether Matt had been involved in this whole mess.” Lexy drew a design in the ranch dip on her plate with a carrot stick. It was easy to see how she stayed so skinny. Anyone who would rather play with their food than eat it could fit in size four jeans like she undoubtedly did.

“Witnesses or not, I still don’t think Matt’s capable of killing anybody, even Frank Collins.” Dot looked like the protective mother hen she usually was, only now she had more than one chick to look after.

“I agree with Dot. I’ve only met the young man once, but he just doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who could kill someone, even in anger.” Of course I could be wrong. But I really hoped I wasn’t because Matt Seavers seemed like a pleasant person. Of course that’s what the neighbors always tell the newspaper reporters when they’re talking about serial killers, isn’t it?

“Fortunately the presiding judge agrees with you.” Lexy went on to actually eat her carrot stick. When she finished with it, she went on. “He’s apparently open to Brian making a motion to get Matt released on his own recognizance, or maybe into Brian’s custody. Without a car or a license, and having a steady job he’s likely to keep, the young man isn’t a flight risk. Coupled with the fact that he has no criminal record, it should be relatively easy to get him out of jail.”

“Couldn’t we just bail him out?” Heather rocked the stroller while she talked. Lexy shook her head.

“Nope. Nobody Matt knows has the kind of money he’d need to get out. The Ventura County bail schedule starts murder bail bonds at five hundred thousand.”

Heather gulped. “Half a million dollars? That’s incredible. Nobody could pay that, could they?”

“You’re right. Even what somebody would have to give a bail bondsman, which would be fifty thousand dollars, is more than anybody I know would risk at this point.”

“More than I’d be willing to spend on bailing somebody out of jail who probably belongs there in the first place.” Paula’s lip curled in contempt. Too bad she held that opinion, because the real estate agent might have been the one Christian Friend who would have connections to someone with enough money to bail Matt out.

Dot looked at Paula in consternation. “Now how can you say that? I don’t think you’ve ever met Matt.”

Paula’s chin rose. “Actually, I have. Leopold Plumbing redid the wet bar in our game room. They did a decent job but charged us double what our old contractor did. When I complained about it, Matt Seavers had the nerve to tell me that none of the other firm’s work would pass code.”

Given the strict nature of Ventura County’s codes on remodeling, I imagined Matt had been right. That wouldn’t have made it any easier for Paula to hear, especially coming from somebody as young-looking and tentative as Matt. In her line of work she expected to be right most of the time, and not crossed.

Lexy appeared to be trying to be diplomatic. “I’m sorry to hear you don’t think much of Matt, but I don’t see what his lack of tact has to do with his likelihood of being a murderer.”

Paula sniffed. “Anybody who could be that rude to a paying customer certainly doesn’t have any respect for others.”

Dot shook her head and rolled her eyes but stayed silent. Paula couldn’t see the gesture from where she sat, but I could. Still, I didn’t even think of laughing because I’d already promised myself that I would be as kind to Paula as possible. Her prickly nature hid a wounded heart just like any of ours. It was a pity she didn’t like Matt, though.

“Does Brian need money for expenses? I know he’s doing this pro bono, but there have to be things involved that cost money,” Dot said.

Lexy shrugged. “There are things, but Matt’s family doesn’t have any money. Brian talked to his father, for all the good it did. Matt basically supports him, not the other way around. Even if the man had any extra money, Brian said he expected it would go for alcohol, not helping his son. Brian’s just a good-hearted Christian guy who will eat the costs.”

“That’s too bad. We’ll just have to work on it ourselves,” Dot said, getting that stubborn look I’d seen more than once on my friend. “I imagine I can talk Buck out of the three hundred dollars we got for that last puppy of Sophia’s. If he argues I’ll tell him it will be instead of the diamond earrings I asked for this Christmas.”

“Buck is getting you diamond earrings?” Linnette looked surprised.

Dot grinned. “No, but I always ask for them. I always get something far more practical, like a new blender but that doesn’t keep me from putting them at the top of the Christmas list every year as a joke. Whether the package contains a blender or diamond earrings doesn’t matter to either of us. And this year I’m happy for it to go toward help for Matt.”

“I could probably come up with fifty dollars,” Heather said softly. Her new teaching job at the closest community college covered the bills for her and Corinna, but didn’t leave a lot afterward. Like me, she found herself challenged by losing her savings to Dennis Peete over year ago.

Paula’s shoulders slumped. “I guess you could put me in for a hundred. Maybe Matt Seavers was just doing his job when we argued.” It was easy to see she hated to be bested by someone of such limited means.

“Put me down for fifty,” I told Lexy. It would be a stretch, but that inner voice that urged me to do things I didn’t think possible was nudging me. I’d learned not to ignore that voice.

“Okay, that’s enough to cover any out-of-pocket costs for Brian just over dinner. I wonder what I can get out of Steve if I make puppy eyes at him.” Lexy had a grin to match Dot’s. “And I haven’t even talked to Linnette yet, or Pastor George about the church’s emergency fund. We’re making progress.”

The meeting got a lot less somber from then on, especially when Linnette brought out a tray of cookies. There’s nothing like chocolate, sugar and hope to lift the mood of a group of women.

I felt pretty chipper by the time I drove home after the meeting. We hadn’t exactly solved all the world’s problems, or even all of Matt’s problems, but at least things looked better. When I pulled into the driveway Ben’s car was there and through the window I could see the Christmas tree lights on.

When I opened the door I heard the familiar sounds of video games on the TV and saw my son sprawled out on the floor. The only surprise was that there was a young lady sitting close to him, also holding a controller and laughing while she apparently beat him at a game.

“See, I told you I could, and you didn’t believe me,” she crowed. The room got its light from the tree and the TV screen, so I couldn’t tell right away who this girl was. I had the suspicion, however, that this might be the mysterious Kylie. I flipped on the light switch next to the door, knowing it would probably earn me a howl from Ben. That was tough, because while I appreciated the art of playing video games in the dark, I didn’t want him in the living room with a girl in the dark, even playing video games.

“Whoa. Hi, Mom.” Ben looked up from his screen just long enough to say hello, then went back to the game. In less than a minute the screen was flashing with things like “game over” and “winner, player 2” that had Kylie laughing again and Ben putting down his game controller in disgust.

“Now that we’re to a good stopping place, let me introduce you.” Ben got his long legs untangled and stood up, putting out a hand to his friend to hoist her off the floor as well. She had a lot less trouble getting up, being compact to his gangliness. “Mom, this is Kylie. Kylie, this is my mom, Gracie Lee Harris. Kylie goes to school with me, Mom, and she’s in the praise band at your church.”

“Hi. Nice to meet you,” the young lady said, bouncing up for the typical hug-and-air-kiss female California greeting. Her black hair was glossy and a wonderful sweet floral scent wafted around her.

“Nice to meet you, too. Ben’s been talking about you some and I wondered how long it would be until I met you.” Now that I had a chance to look at the mystery lady close up, I saw that I was going to have to mentally change the way I spelled her name. Instead of the Irish or Midwest American lass I’d expected with a name like Kylie, this girl was Asian. She was also pretty enough that I had to wonder what she saw in my scruffy-looking son with that awful goatee, but then it was grown to appeal to her, not me.

“Oh, so you’ve been talking about me?” she asked, looking up at him and arching one delicate eyebrow. I was quite thankful to see that said eyebrow had no rings or other jewelry pushed through it. In fact, what I could see of her didn’t sport any unusual holes or piercings at all. Even her earrings were small and her speech was too crisp for a tongue stud.

Ben shrugged. “Not that much. I said we were going to the movies last week. And I might have said something about the praise band being good at the chapel.” His smile looked softer when he talked to her. I hadn’t ever seen Ben before with a girl he appeared to care much about. This was interesting.

“So, since you play in the praise band, does this mean you live here in town?” I had to keep making some conversation and that felt like a safe subject.

“My parents live in Newbury Park,” she said, naming another suburb between Thousand Oaks and Camarillo.

“She’s a scholarship student like me, so she lives in the dorm when school’s in session. That’s how we got to know each other, going to advising meetings together.”

“Yeah, they were spectacularly boring, but at least they had benefits,” Kylie said, grinning. How did she spell her name? It was a goofy detail that would aggravate me until I asked.

Instead of launching a question like that, which would have Ben doing an eye roll in front of her, I sat in the armchair while they took the couch and I cast about for another subject. I found one easily enough when they both picked up plastic drinking cups with huge straws poking through a taut sheet of plastic wrap. The contents of each cup had unidentifiable objects in the bottom of the cup, surrounded by pale liquid. Ben’s was green; Kylie’s was sort of a peachy orange.