“As soon as Doc Linden removes the skeleton. She said the bones are of a young woman around twenty to twenty-five.” Dylan’s jaw tightened. “Someone bashed her skull in.”
“Oh no.”
His curt tone continued. “She’s not sure exactly how old the bones are yet—won’t know for sure until she runs carbon-dating tests—but she estimates they could have been in the ground anywhere from fifty to a hundred and fifty years.”
“Really?” Then I realized why the deputy was being so brusque. Dylan was afraid the skeleton with the bashed-in head was his surrogate-grandfather Harry’s wife. The wife who had supposedly left her husband and run off with a traveling salesman sixty years ago.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
Dylan looked down at the floor. “The man I knew wouldn’t kill his wife. He loved her.”
“You don’t know for sure it’s Betsy Guthrie. Doc Linden said the bones could be up to a hundred and fifty years old.”
His jaw worked. “Except the doc also said she found a tarnished locket with a broken chain in the grave. The locket had a worn inscription on the back: B—or maybe R—and H. Always. Dylan released a bitter laugh. “Harry really fooled everyone, didn’t he? What’s that saying? There’s a sucker born every minute?” The deputy stood up abruptly, startling Bogie. He jammed his hat on his head. “Sorry I woke you, Pastor.” He strode out the front door.
Bogie and I watched as Dylan got in his truck and slammed the door. Then he backed out of the driveway and peeled off.
Poor guy. Picking up the bowl of vinegar from the table beside me, I took it to the kitchen and poured it down the sink. Then I went through the rest of the house, collecting all the other bowls of vinegar and dumping them as well. Next I opened all the windows to air the place out. Bogie nudged me for his morning treat. I gave him his Milk-Bone and led him to the kitchen door to let him outside, but he would not budge.
“Poor baby. You don’t want to run into that nasty skunk again, do you?” I patted his head. “I don’t blame you. Although you know, those smelly critters only come out in the evening, right?”
He cocked his head and sent me an anxious look.
“Okay, buddy, after last night’s debacle, I can understand your nervousness.” I clipped on his leash and headed to the front door. “Let’s go for a quick run.” Bogie gave an excited yip and almost took me out with his tail propeller.
When we returned, I took a quick shower, put the kettle on, and toasted an English muffin. Then I settled in with my PG Tips, muffin, and prayer book. As I said my morning prayers, I included Deputy Dylan in them.
By that afternoon, the news of the young woman in my yard with a bashed-in skull was all over town. After connecting with Christopher and doing some paperwork in my office, I stopped by Suzie’s for a late lunch. Susan was running ragged around the full diner as everyone discussed the latest bombshell.
Dorothy and Patricia beckoned me to join them. As I slid into the booth beside Patricia, I said, “Well, I guess this has pushed Stanley’s murder out of everyone’s minds.”
“Not everyone’s,” Patricia said. “It’s still at the forefront of the police investigation. Folks just like having something new and juicy to talk about.”
The bell over the front door jangled, and Liliane Turner fluttered in, wearing a purple caftan shot through with gold threads. Upon seeing us, she rushed over and squeezed in next to Dorothy. “What did I tell you?” she asked with a triumphant smile.
“What?” Dorothy asked innocently.
“Didn’t you hear?” Liliane’s face was flushed with excitement. “The bones in Pastor Hope’s backyard are of a murdered young woman in her early twenties!”
“You don’t say.”
“Ah most certainly do.” Then Liliane saw Dorothy trying to suppress a smile. “Oh, you’re teasing. I should have known y’all would already know.” She focused her denim-blue eyes on me. “What you probably don’t know, Pastor, is that poor Betsy was only twenty-one when she disappeared.” Liliane expelled a dramatic sigh. “And ah hear an old locket was found in the grave as well. Harry gave Betsy a silver locket in high school. That proves it’s Betsy!”
“Not necessarily,” Dorothy said. “Plenty of people have lockets, including me.” She pressed the heart-shaped gold locket resting against her red silk blouse. “I keep my Randy’s photo on one side and my wedding photo on the other.”
Patricia said she had a locket as well—a Mother’s Day gift from her kids. She wasn’t wearing it because the clasp had broken and she hadn’t had a chance to get it fixed yet.
Liliane did not let those pieces of logic deter her, however. She babbled on, her theatrical southern accent coming and going as she gestured dramatically with her hands. Tuning her out, I thought of Dylan’s disillusionment, which made me wonder how this latest information would hit Albert Drummond, Harry Guthrie’s war buddy and longtime friend. I resolved to pay another visit to Albert.
“Ah don’t care what anyone says.” Liliane’s impassioned voice punctured my pastoral musings. “I’ll bet my bottom dollar that’s poor Betsy Guthrie in that grave, and you can’t tell me any different.” She sent us a knowing smile.
“Well, aren’t you precious?” Bethann Jackson said, stepping out from the booth behind us, Wendell at her side. “Liliane, ah do declare, you’re grinnin’ like a possum eatin’ a sweet potato. Be careful it don’t go down the wrong way, now.” Bethann, clad in a pink-and-purple flower-power dress, matching bow, and her ubiquitous white boots, sent Liliane a syrupy smile. The former leader of the Blondelles then nodded to the rest of us. “Pastor. Nice to see you again. You too, Patricia. Dorothy. Ah’m really lookin’ forward to that nice ladies’ tea y’all are having. Let me know if you need any help now, hear?”
As Bethann walked away, her arm linked in Wendell’s, Liliane muttered under her breath, “I doubt we’ll be having Twinkies at the tea.”
* * *
The next day The Apple Springs Bulletin blared the headline “Murdered Woman’s Bones Found in Harry Guthrie’s Yard!” The lead article repeated the archaeologist’s findings along with everything else known about the skeleton so far, ending with the sentence, “Could this be Betsy Guthrie?”
Nice to see objective journalism is alive and well in small towns.
Albert Drummond phoned me, beside himself. “It’s not true, Pastor,” he said in a quavery voice. “I know that’s not Betsy. Harry wouldn’t have touched a hair on her head. His good name is being dragged through the mud. Can’t you do something? They are decimating a man’s reputation, and he’s not here to defend himself. It’s not right.”
No, it wasn’t right. I promised Albert I would see what I could do. I knew my backyard skeleton was a low priority for the police, and I understood why, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do a little sleuthing of my own to find out more. The question was, where to begin?
How about where it all began, my inner Trixie suggested.
Huh?
Outside.
There was nothing there now except an empty grave. Doc Linden had removed the skeleton the day before and taken it to the lab.
Yes, but maybe inspiration will strike when you return to the scene of the crime. Besides, you need to fill in the hole anyway before someone falls in it, right? Like your next-door neighbor Maddie, for instance?
Good point. Since I wasn’t working until later, I pulled on my faded UCLA T-shirt and grubbiest pair of jeans and went to the backyard, a hesitant Bogie on my heels. “It’s okay, boy. The bad skunk is gone.” Bogie skirted the area where he’d been sprayed, however, and stuck close to my side, lying down beside me as I squatted on my haunches in front of the now-empty grave.
Looking into the six-foot-long, four-foot-deep cavity in the ground, I tried to imagine who the murdered young woman might have been. The obvious answer was Harry Guthrie’s wife, Betsy. What if I looked beyond the obvious, however, and examined the facts logically and unemotionally, like Sherlo
ck Holmes, for instance?
Sherlock Holmes would have already solved this mystery, my inner naysayer snarked. Especially the one played by that yummy Benedict Cumberbatch. You have to admit, you don’t have his brilliance or deductive reasoning skills.
True. However, I could take the facts I had, line them up, and go from there.
Fact one: The skeleton was a young woman between the ages of twenty and twenty-five.
Fact two: The young woman had lived between fifty and a hundred and fifty years ago.
Fact three: The young woman had been in love with someone who gave her a locket with their initials and the word Always engraved on it.
Fact four: Those initials were apparently B or R and H.
Fact five: The young woman had been murdered by someone who bashed her skull in.
Putting all those facts together, it was simply a matter of looking for a young woman whose first name began with the initial B, R, or H and who had gone missing during that hundred-year time frame. Piece of cake. Needle in a haystack. I picked up the shovel and began filling in the hole. As I did, I ran through potential B names in my head: Barbara, Beatrice, Betty, Belle, Belinda, Bonnie, Bailee. I scratched the last one—too contemporary. Then I started on the Rs: Rachel, Ruth, Rebecca, Ramona, Regina, Rose, Rosemary, Rosalie … As I tamped down the final shovelfuls of dirt, I came up with several old-fashioned H names: Hannah, Hattie, Hilda, Hester, Hermione, Hildegarde, Hortense …
When I finished, I went inside, scarfed down a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, and opened my laptop, where I typed into a Word doc all the women’s names I’d come up with. Then I did a Google search of missing women within a sixty-mile radius of Apple Springs during the relevant hundred-year period. Instantly a couple dozen stories of missing women popped up. As I skimmed the headlines, however, I discovered that the stories all related to the same older woman with dementia who had gone missing from a nearby community last year. Luckily, she had been found. I narrowed my search by adding in the twentysomething age range. No help. The same current stories reappeared. Maybe if I typed in a specific year? I took a wild guess and typed in 1900. Nada. 1905? Nothing. 1920? Same. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.
What about The Apple Springs Bulletin? Maybe it’s online.
It was, but only for the past decade.
Then I realized I had neglected to come up with men’s names. Someone had to have given my mystery woman the romantic locket; therefore, one of the initials inscribed on the back belonged to a man. I exhaled a sigh and did another Google search, this time looking for old-fashioned men’s names beginning with the letter B, H, or R. I added the following names to my list: Barclay, Barney, Bartholomew, Benjamin, Bertram, Bradford, Balthazar. Then I typed in the Hs: Harold, Henry, Howard, Herbert, Herman, Hiram, Homer. I ended with the Rs: Randolph, Raymond, Reuben, Richard, Robert, Roger, Russell.
My phone chirped with a text from Virginia.
Virginia: Wazzup, Trixie?
I filled her in on my futile search for the identity of the murdered woman in my backyard.
Virginia: Can’t you narrow down the parameters? A hundred years is a long time.
Me: I know. I may have to wait until I get a more specific timeframe from the archaeologist.
Virginia: Sounds like a plan, man. What about the Stanley murder? Anything new there?
Me: Nope. Same old, same old.
Virginia: Keep me posted.
At choir that night, the room was buzzing with the rumor that Harry Guthrie had killed his wife, Betsy.
“Harry always was a jealous guy,” Rosemary said to an enthralled audience during break. “My mother went to high school with him, and she said if any boy even dared to talk to Betsy, Harry would beat him up.”
“Oh my goodness,” murmured her pal, second-soprano Helen. “Really?”
“Sounds like one of those controlling types,” Ed the lone bass said.
“I’ve known a few of those,” said alto Judy, sending me a knowing glance. “Nothing makes me run for the hills faster.”
Rosemary turned to me. “Pastor Hope, it must be awful for you, living in the same house where poor Betsy was murdered.” She shuddered. “I know I certainly couldn’t do it.”
“Me either,” soprano Helen said.
Before I could respond, Elizabeth called us back to rehearsal, which was probably a good thing.
Chapter Twenty
Sunday I preached my first sermon at Faith Chapel. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. Already I wasn’t batting a thousand with some members of the congregation—Marjorie, Bob Hastings, and a couple of Bob’s old-guard cronies—and what I had to say might just push them over the edge.
I had a fun, feel-good sermon I’d already delivered to great success at St. Luke’s last year that I figured would be a slam-dunk with the congregation—even Marjorie—and I was sorely tempted to use it. After all, who doesn’t want to hit a home run their first time up to bat? It would even work well with the scripture texts appointed for this Sunday. Yet with everything that had happened since I’d arrived in Apple Springs, and particularly with all the rumors and speculation swirling through town, I felt compelled to deliver a different sermon altogether.
Saturday I stayed up half the night studying, praying, and refining my homily. By the time Sunday morning arrived, I was exhausted, but peaceful. Although my words would likely ruffle some feathers, I knew they were the ones that needed saying. This was confirmed Sunday morning when we sang the ancient Irish hymn “Be Thou My Vision,” which reminded me to heed not riches or man’s empty praise but to keep God my vision above all.
Ascending the pulpit, I looked out at the small congregation and saw the expectant smiling faces of the Beachams, Dorothy and her son Randy, Todd and Samantha King, Bonnie and Megan Cunningham, Albert Drummond, Riley Smith, the choir, and a dozen or so other church members.
Marjorie and Lottie sat together in Marjorie’s customary second pew on the left. Lottie gave me a tentative smile, while Marjorie looked skeptical. I did not see Bob Hastings, but then I hadn’t expected to. Nor had I expected to see such non–Faith Chapel–goers as Liliane Turner, Don Forrester, and James Brandon. All three were there, however, sitting next to their Faith Chapel friends. James, sandwiched between Todd and Samantha, sent me a lopsided grin.
Riley Smith, who had sailed through her job interview and hadn’t gotten offended when told she would have to cover her sleeve tattoo at work, gave me a wide smile and a thumbs-up.
Then I began to preach. Referencing Proverbs 12:18, Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing, I talked about the power of the tongue and how easy it is to make a rush to judgment before having all the facts, and how damaging both can be. I made sure not to look at Liliane or Rosemary as I preached. Instead, I shared a difficult mean-girl anecdote from my college days: I was trying so hard to fit in and be part of the cool crowd that my gossip hurt someone I cared about and caused them great emotional pain. Thankfully, the hurt in my friend’s eyes pierced me like the proverbial sword, and in that moment I realized that nothing was worth causing that kind of pain to someone—particularly someone I loved.
“Let us try to look upon others through the eyes of Jesus,” I preached, “rather than through our own limited, sometimes judgmental, perspective. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to ‘love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, and souls, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.’ Let us leave this morning following his commandment.”
After we processed out and waited to receive the congregation, Christopher hugged me and said in a stage whisper, “Great job! You knocked it out of the park.”
Others echoed his sentiment, starting with vestry senior warden Patricia. Behind her, Harold sent me a thumbs-up.
“Nicely done,” Elizabeth Davis said, shaking my hand with her slender piano hand. “Although we missed you in choir, your voice was more needed in the pulpit.”
Riley Smith approached. “Pa
stor Hope, your sermon rocked!” She gave me a big hug.
“Sure did,” said Megan Cunningham, just behind her. Megan stood beside her mother, a smile lighting up her teen face in place of her usual sullen expression. “Women rule.”
While enjoying a drama-free chat with Riley, Megan, and Bonnie, I noticed Liliane Turner slip out the side door.
Don Forrester linked his arm with Bonnie and flashed his blinding-white teeth at me. “Well, Pastor, this morning was a couple of firsts for me. First time in an Episcopal church service, and first time hearing a woman preacher.”
“Welcome. I hope I didn’t scald your ears too much.”
“Not at all. It was a good sermon—I like a preacher who tells it like it is.” He pretended to mop his forehead. “But you Episcopalians sure like to give a guy his morning workout. Baptists don’t pop up and down so much.”
“We call that pew aerobics.”
He guffawed.
Albert Drummond followed Don, taking both my hands in his. “Thank you, Pastor,” he said in a husky tone, his eyes bright. “You made my day. Harry’s too, I’ll wager.” His lips curved upward. “I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but you preach as good as you look.”
“I’ll second that,” James said, coming up behind Albert with a smiling Todd and Samantha. I was happy to see that the family members seemed to have patched up their differences.
“James!” Albert clapped his hand on James’s shoulder in delight. “Pastor Hope, have you met my friend James Brandon? He’s my chess buddy.”
* * *
That afternoon we held a dry run of the women’s tea at my house to test the recipes and presentation. Patricia, Dorothy, and Lottie all promised to bring their specialties, with Lottie and Patricia each baking a different kind of scone as well. Susan had to work but sent a sampling of her fruit tarts home with me.
As I made Virginia’s ham and apricot cream cheese sandwiches, I mused over the morning. I was relieved and pleased at how well the sermon had gone and hoped it might make people think before they spoke. Then my thoughts turned to Albert and his friend James. Even though I had no interest in dating, I had to admit Albert had good matchmaking taste.
Hope, Faith, and a Corpse Page 19