The Undoing of Saint Silvanus

by Beth Moore

  Bully stiffened his posture for full measure as David eyed him. “Every bit as tall. Yes, he was. And equally—” David paused a moment—“well, hefty. No offense.”

  “No offense taken! Mama says I came into this world so big that they left the hospital and drove me right to junior high.”

  Adella wanted to laugh, but Sergeant DaCosta and Olivia were so unamused that she thought better of it. Thankfully, David had manners enough to chuckle.

  “Is there anybody else that you want in on this dialogue?” Sergeant DaCosta wanted to know.

  “Are we looking for a quorum?” Olivia pulled out a stool from the kitchen island and sat on it. “We’ve already counted out Caryn and Mrs. Winsee. Unless you mean to question Clementine, that leaves us with Miss Slater. She’s about to leave for work. Shall we summon her?”

  Bully gave up a yes with an air of enthusiasm that could have blown the bird feeders off the limbs. All four of them looked expectantly at Adella.

  She turned and headed toward Jillian’s door. “If y’all need me to round up the neighbors, just tell me and I’ll grab my foghorn out of my handbag.”

  Adella returned to Olivia, David, and the two officers in under ninety seconds. “Miss Slater will be out in no time. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if we got started.”

  The sergeant seemed distracted, but he proceeded. “Mr. Jacobs, I’d like to ask you to concentrate again on the night of the incident. Is there a chance you saw the pocketknife in the intruder’s hand at any time?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t see it until you spotted it on the doormat.”

  “Is it possible that he dropped it or pitched it and it landed randomly in that spot?”

  “I suppose it is, but I cannot recall seeing anything leave his hand.”

  Olivia fidgeted. “Officer, what place of importance does this have?”

  “We have a person of interest, Mrs. Fontaine. We lifted a set of prints off the knife and found a match.”

  Olivia stood. “Who is it?”

  “Numerous arrests, but not a single instance of violence. Petty theft, disturbing the peace, that kind of thing. And nothing in recent years. He’s been a nuisance as much as anything. At six-three, he fits your description. But this is outside his pattern. He’s not really been the type to show up in a residential section far from the quarter.”

  “Types can change,” Adella responded.

  “That’s true. And that’s one reason we’re here. We’re trying to establish a motive.”

  “What does this have to do with how the knife got to the mat?” David asked.

  Bully interjected, “We’re trying to figure out if he came to leave the knife or use it.”

  The statement made the hair on Adella’s arms stand up. “Surely you’ve interrogated him. What does he say he was doing there?”

  “We haven’t made an arrest yet. But make no mistake—we will. He’s just dropped out of sight for a while. He didn’t likely go far. We’ll find him.” Sergeant DaCosta looked at Olivia as he said those words. “Between now and then, we’re compiling facts and trying to find some missing pieces.”

  Olivia’s words came forcefully. “Sergeant, I’ll ask you again. Who is it? By that I mean what is his name?”

  He fastened his gaze on Olivia like a man who knew he had only one chance to gauge a first reaction. “His name is William King Crawley.”

  Olivia drew down her brow and stared off into the backyard while everyone else in the circle stared at her.

  Adella had to bite her tongue to keep from spewing a stream of questions, but the sergeant was commanding the lead, studying Olivia’s expression, and obviously not wanting to rush her to an answer.

  Finally he started the inquiry. “Do you know him?”

  “My memory is not what it used to be,” Olivia responded with a palpable discomfort, “but I am trying my hardest to run that name through every mental file I have, and for the life of me, I cannot recall ever hearing that name.”

  “Go to the mental file of your husband’s relationships and dealings, Mrs. Fontaine,” he instructed. “Does it ring any kind of bell there? A William Crawley? Bill Crawley? King Crawley?”

  Bully suggested, “Think even in nicknames, like King Craw. Anything?”

  Olivia sat down again and rubbed her forehead. “Nothing. But I was involved in very few of my husband’s relationships, business or otherwise.”

  Adella was the only one in that gathering who could fully appreciate Olivia’s level of cooperation with the officers who stood before her. Her vulnerability in front of them was hard for Adella to watch. She sat on the barstool next to her, wishing she could pat her hand, touch her shoulder, or show some kind of support and solidarity, but she didn’t dare. Adella knew that a gesture of gentleness would reveal to Olivia that she looked as vulnerable as she felt. She’d withdraw so fast their heads would spin. Adella settled for rubbing her own forehead.

  “Perhaps if I could see a picture, Sergeant DaCosta.” Now Olivia had actually addressed him by name, a departure Adella took to mean one of two things: either Olivia was having a breakthrough or a breakdown.

  Adella shifted in her seat and studied the room. Jillian should have been out here by now. What could be taking her so long? David had remained silent throughout the dialogue, but she knew he was as focused as a bird dog sniffing a covey of quail.

  She stared at the three men standing next to one another: two policemen and a choir teacher. In stature David lacked their size, but as a man, he stood toe-to-toe with them and looked them in the eye. Adella hadn’t always been a great judge of male character, as her mother might have testified, but since the day Emmett Atwater walked into her life, she’d steadily developed some good taste.

  The sergeant glanced at Bully, who pulled a printout from between the pages of a legal pad. Bully placed the page faceup on the kitchen island and carefully slid it in front of Olivia. His approach seemed a sincere attempt to convey that he was friend and not foe.

  “I wanted you to focus on name recognition before you saw his picture,” Sergeant DaCosta explained. “Recognize him? It’s not recent, but it’s what we’ve got, and who knows—it might be better this way if his original connection was in past years.”

  Three heads immediately dropped over the picture as Olivia, David, and Adella studied the mug shot. Without lifting his gaze from the page, David was the first to speak. “So this is the face behind the mask of the man who hit me.”

  “Well, we can’t say that for sure,” the sergeant countered, “but we have plenty for questioning when we find him. We can say this much: this man’s prints are on the pocketknife and he fits the size you described. Mrs. Fontaine, does he look at all familiar to you?”

  Olivia looked up from the printout with a wearied expression. “No.” She slid it back toward Bully.

  “I know it’s uncomfortable to be the one singled out in this kind of questioning, but you understand why. If he’s the one who has pulled the rest of the stunts, it’s obviously personal. He has some kind of tie to you. If all these things are connected—a theory we’re still sorting through—why would this man in this photo—” he tapped the picture emphatically—“leave flowers at the burial with an ominous card, plant baby paraphernalia outside the house, possess and leave a torn picture of your son, Raphael, as well as a pocketknife your son received as a child?”

  Olivia stood, anger flashing across her face. “Do you think I know that? Do you think I am not more anxious than you to get some answers? Or do you think the ice woman is oblivious to the fact that this whole household has been endangered?”

  “Nobody’s said that,” Sergeant DaCosta responded.

  “Nobody’s thinking it either.” Unlike Adella, Bully didn’t hesitate to reach out and pat Olivia on the shoulder. “We just want to get to the bottom of it for all your sakes. A necessary part of that is figuring out why this guy right here would do those exact things.”

  Adella spoke up. “He’s obviously pla
ying sick jokes.”

  Sergeant DaCosta’s expression took on a whole new level of seriousness. “He’s officially surpassed sick jokes. Mrs. Fontaine, listen carefully to me. We think there is every possibility that the pocketknife was the murder weapon. According to the medical examiner’s report, it could be consistent with the wound. We’ve contacted the office requesting further inquiry.”

  The face that had been red with anger instantly went white. Olivia walked over to a chair in front of the fireplace and dropped down in it, turning her back to all four of them. “Rafe, killed by his own father’s fancy pocketknife.”

  They remained silent for a moment. David moved toward Olivia and sat on the hearth where he could look her in the eye. His words came barely above a whisper. “His father’s father’s pocketknife. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what I remember you saying—that it had first belonged to your husband’s own father?”

  Perhaps the difference had little bearing on the case, but Adella well understood what David was doing. However detached or hard-hearted Rafe’s father had been, the last thing Olivia needed right now was to think that one of the few nice things he’d done for his son had ended up killing him.

  When Adella walked over to the sitting area in front of the fireplace and sat down, the two officers followed suit. The sergeant sat forward on the edge of the chair, his head down and his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his hands together before he looked up and spoke. “They’re testing the knife for DNA. There is no visible trace, but they can tell us more than we can see.”

  “Do you need something?” Olivia’s question came across odd.

  He glanced at Adella, who gave him a puzzled look. “Of what nature, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Do you need something to match it with?” Olivia spoke matter-of-factly.

  “Oh no, ma’am,” Bully replied too hastily but without a hint of guile. “We still have the clothes we found him in.”

  A lump welled in Adella’s throat when she saw Olivia wince. “And a sword will pierce through your own soul also.” The words of Simeon’s prophecy over Mary, the mother of Jesus, were pulled like a single piece of yarn from Adella’s memory and looped in perfect script on the fabric of her mind.

  Sergeant DaCosta spoke with a mixture of professionalism and compassion. “What we need most from you is any piece of information, now or in the next few days, that could remotely have to do with this man or this case. For now, is there anything at all that you haven’t told us that might help us?”

  A door opened and closed in the hall, and Jillian appeared at the entrance to the great room. Bully wasted no time standing and greeting her. Sergeant DaCosta stood as well, but more nervously, brushing some cat hair off his pant leg.

  Adella knew the instant she saw Jillian what had taken her so long. Not only had she changed out of her uniform, she’d touched up her hair and, Adella was fairly sure, her makeup. She was a sight to behold in that midnight-blue top and those jeans, but a suspicious one. “Jillian, did they cancel on you? I thought you were going to work.”

  “I am.”

  “Where’s your uniform?” Adella was perplexed.

  “It’s in here.” Jillian held up a plastic bag. She also had her purse over her shoulder.

  Adella craned her neck to look around the dining table at Jillian’s feet. She had on a pair of black leather boots, with a hint of Western flair to them, astride at least two-inch heels. Adella had never seen them before, so she was pretty sure they were brand-new. “Your work shoes in there, too?”

  “Adella,” Olivia said, annoyed. “Jillian is a grown woman. She is perfectly capable of knowing how to get herself ready for work.”

  “I’ll change there,” Jillian explained.

  “I see.” What Adella saw was a young woman who’d spruced up her appearance for somebody in that room, and it was neither Olivia nor her. Adella gave a once-over to each of the officers.

  Bully? Maybe they had bonded behind Adella’s back when she insisted that Jillian walk him to the car after he’d delivered the pink-iced donut. She wouldn’t have taken Bully for Jillian’s type because he had such a naiveté about him, but goodness knew opposites attracted.

  Adella felt puffed up with pride over Jillian. Look how far she’d come under her tutelage. If Vince—sly, savvy, and self-consumed—had a polar opposite on this planet, Adella supposed it was Bully. But she sure hadn’t seen that one coming. She’d really just meant Jillian to be nice to the young man.

  When Jillian walked over to the middle of the great room, the gentlemen sat down. The cat seemed to have everybody’s tongue.

  Bully broke the ice. “We’ve had some breakthroughs in the case that we’ll get you up to speed on. Sarge was just asking Mrs. Fontaine if there was anything she hadn’t told us. We’re trying to make sure we’ve heard everything.”

  Adella tried to keep from rolling her eyes, especially now that she suspicioned something between Bully and Jillian. But the mere thought that those two officers had hopes of a tell-all coming from Olivia would have been laughable under lesser circumstances. Adella was almost certain that everything Olivia had told them was the truth. She just highly doubted she’d told them, or anyone else for that matter, everything.

  Adella glanced at Jillian, anticipating the expression the young woman always seemed to have on her face when she had fresh cause to look cynically at her grandmother. After all, Olivia was the one on the hot seat, a fact that Jillian had earned the right to enjoy. But at this particular moment, Jillian seemed oblivious. Adella took a good look at Jillian’s eyes and followed her path of vision like a clothesline hung taut between two poles. That line led east of the hearth where David was sitting, west of the chair barely holding Bully, and landed right on the face of one Sergeant Cal DaCosta. Remarkably, he had an identical look in his eyes.

  “Oh, Lord,” Adella whispered louder than she should have.

  “Anything at all, Mrs. Fontaine? Anything out of the ordinary, even if it seems unrelated?” Bully brought the wanderers’ attention back to the matter at hand.

  When Olivia didn’t respond immediately, everyone perked up. She tended to be a quick draw with a no.

  “I’m missing some money. I can’t see how that has anything to do with this, but you said—”

  Sergeant DaCosta interrupted, “From your purse? Had you left it in plain sight of the back porch?” He was clearly trying to establish whether the perpetrator had entered the house.

  “No, no,” Olivia responded. “It was not in my purse. It was in my desk drawer in my bedroom. I’ve kept a little cash on hand ever since the hurricane, in case the banks closed for several days.”

  “How much cash are we talking about here?” Sergeant DaCosta steered the questioning while Bully jotted a note on his legal pad.

  “I’d say a thousand dollars, give or take.”

  Adella would regret what she did next as much as anything she’d ever bemoan. It was pure reflex, like someone had hit her just below the kneecap and caused her to kick. The instant she heard the amount, she swung her head back with enough force to squeak the chair and looked at Jillian.

  Jillian stared at Adella with a look of disbelief. Her eyes jumped from Adella to Bully, from Bully to Olivia, from Olivia to David, and from David to Sergeant DaCosta. By now they were all looking back and forth between her and Adella.

  “I didn’t take it!” In the immediate confusion, no one responded, but the silence masqueraded across the hardwood floor as accusation. “Adella, you told them! I trusted you and you told them!”

  “No, Jillian!” Adella jumped to her feet and tried to grab her by the arm. “I didn’t! I didn’t mean that you—”

  Jillian ran to her room and turned the lock while Adella knocked insistently on the door. “Girl, let me in this minute!”

  Moments later Jillian sprang from Rafe’s room with her borrowed suitcase, her purse, and the plastic bag filled to capacity.

  “Jillian, I didn’t look at you becaus
e I thought you did it. I just couldn’t believe the coincidence! The desk drawer and all.”

  Jillian stormed past Adella through the great room where everyone stood with their jaws dropped. Before she slammed the door, she glanced behind her and said, “Nobody better follow me. I never want to see any of you again. I mean it!”

  CHAPTER 34

  JILLIAN CHANGED HER CLOTHES in the cramped stall of the ladies’ room at Café Beignet with tears dripping from the end of her nose. The second she’d arrived, a coworker had asked why she was so dressed up, making Jillian feel twice the fool. She set her dark-blue top on the small metal shelf and, in the twisting and turning of putting on her uniform, knocked it into the toilet bowl.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding.” She stuffed the dripping-wet shirt into the plastic bag with her toiletries, put on her work shoes, stashed her things in a corner of the kitchen, and clocked in. Her hands were shaking so badly that her first two orders were practically illegible. A woman at the second table who couldn’t have passed a sobriety test if her life depended on it asked Jillian if anything was wrong. That was it. Jillian went straight to the night manager and begged for the evening off.

  “Why? You just got here. You sick?” the manager asked.

  “Yes.” Jillian should have left it at that but she didn’t. “The truth is, I’m so upset about something that I’m sick. My stomach feels awful and my head is killing me.” Her voice broke.

  At first the manager looked perturbed, but her face softened somewhat when tears pooled in Jillian’s eyes. “You have the flu?”

  “No. I just feel sick all over.”

  “I think you have the flu. Go. Take your germs out of here. You think I can afford to get sick? Shoo.” Jillian knew this was the woman’s way of showing her mercy. She’d be less likely to get fired for leaving sick than upset.

  Jillian started down the sidewalk with only one place to go. She had enough cash on her for a week in a cheap motel but she didn’t know how long she’d need to make the money last. The dollars would stretch further if she could stay at Stella’s. More than anything, Jillian needed to buy some time until she could bring herself to do the inevitable: call her mother for help. The one time she’d risked using her phone to call Jade, her usual live-and-let-live mother had flown completely off the handle about Jillian staying at Olivia’s. The whole conversation had been so childish Jillian could hardly believe it.