The First Ladies Club Box Set

by J B Hawker

  “Lets him stay? What’s that mean?” Bunny asked.

  “Judy doesn’t believe in keeping pets, but her girls begged for the pup, so Judy said he could stay as a guest. They named him Mr. Jones and they treat that dog like an equal, even ask his opinion on everything. Fortunately, Ken treats him like a dog and took him to obedience school. Judy has the poor thing on vegan rations, so Ken slips him some meat, now and then.”

  “I’ve met him out walking Mr. Jones, and I think Ken is really quite fond of the dog, in spite of himself,” Scott added.

  The fog began to roll in, so the little group gathered their things and walked up to the parking lot.

  “Rosamund called before I left the house, Naidenne. She’s got a basket of ripe tomatoes for us, if you can use them,” Scott said.

  “That sister of yours has a green thumb, Scott. She gave me a big bunch of spinach and some of her green beans just yesterday. I love taking her garden’s abundance off her hands,” Bunny commented.

  “Len’s been lending a hand with the hoe, too, since he retired from the bank. Turns out he’s a regular Mr. Green Jeans,” Scott quipped.

  “I’ll walk down the road to their place and get the tomatoes after I put Talitha down for her nap. Would you like to stay for dinner, Bunny?”

  “Thanks, but I can’t tonight. I’ve got a book club meeting in Tillamook. It’s just a bunch of wannabe writers who get together and read and critique each other’s work, but I wouldn’t miss it.”

  As Bunny waved and drove off, the Davidson family turned and, with Naidenne pushing the stroller and Scott leading their boisterous dog, the happy family strolled toward home.

  Dear Reader:

  If you enjoyed The First Ladies Club, please tell your friends and post a review.

  A

  Body

  in

  the

  Belfry

  J. B. Hawker

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 J.B Hawker

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1507696620

  ISBN-10: 1507696620

  Dedicated to

  the blessed preaching women among my own family and friends.

  Prologue

  No one ever expects to meet their Maker wearing a designer outfit.

  The woman peering through the arched window’s weather-beaten wooden louvres to admire the rugged coastline below felt confident in her smart taupe cashmere Donatella Versace pencil skirt set off with an emerald green Dior silk shirt.

  She shivered in the fresh breeze and failed to notice her shabby companion kneeling to pick something from the cluttered platform.

  When a rusty iron counterweight smashed against her stylish temple, she emitted a stunned grunt and crumpled to the dusty floor, blood now mingling with her makeup and spoiling the lines of her expensive hairstyle.

  Her assailant clung to the blood-stained weight for a moment, as though surprised at what this rough lump of metal had done, then shuddered and cast it into the shadows.

  Who could have imagined a thoughtless, unkind comment, and a sudden, irresistible impulse would lead to this? Not the fashionable woman now lying motionless on the worn and splintery floorboards; a dark stain seeping into the wood beneath her head.

  Spying a coil of rope in the shadows, the attacker snatched it up and hurled one end awkwardly toward a ceiling beam, but it fell short. Several frantic attempts later, the rope cleared the beam and was immediately hauled down and slip-knotted around the unconscious woman’s neck.

  After several energetic pulls on the rope, its ends were secured, leaving trendy bronze metallic Manolo Blahnik shoes swaying inches above the floor.

  A wooden crate was tipped onto its side beneath the twitching body, as though it might have been kicked over in a final, desperate act.

  Scrawling the words, “FORGIVE ME,” in the dust, the killer disappeared down the stairs into the darkness.

  Chapter 1

  Alone in the unfamiliar pre-dawn darkness, with the sounds of wind and surf whispering in the distance, Indigo Merrillanne Bishop choked and gasped, “I can’t breathe.”

  Her feverish sleep interrupted, she sat up, coughing, and flung off the smothering tangle of blankets.

  She stumbled from the bed and shuffled through the surrounding chaos. Making her way through a narrow hall into an equally cramped bathroom, she began pawing through packing boxes in search of decongestants.

  This was the pits.

  Merrill arrived in Bannoch, Oregon only the day before, after driving for hours from California’s Bay Area in a rental van crammed with all her worldly goods.

  Her brothers, Wolf and Sage Rose, had come from their homes in Seattle and Springfield to help unload the truck.

  After the last cardboard box was safely off the truck, they’d set up her bed and driven away, leaving their sister alone in this strange, new environment.

  Her brothers would have stayed, if they could, but Wolf ran the finance desk at a major Seattle newspaper and Sage ran his own contracting business, Rose Construction, and was in the middle of a big job.

  As she stood in the doorway waving, Merrill had felt an ominous tickle in the back of her throat and erupted with a not very lady-like sneeze.

  She’d tried to tell herself her sniffles and weepy eyes were from being sentimental about her brothers’ departure, but when the chills and fever set in during the night, she had to admit she was really sick.

  Despite congestion, aches, and pains, Merrill was determined to carry on. She had only one week to get settled before assuming her duties as the first female pastor of the struggling Bannoch First Baptist Church.

  Fortunately for Merrill, her pragmatic, no-nonsense mother had never coddled her children when they were ill.

  If the usually reliable regimen of two aspirins, plenty of weak tea and a coating of mentholated petroleum jelly didn’t bring about a swift recovery, her mother might resort to one of the few patent medicines Merrill could remember from her childhood.

  She thought fondly of the delicious cherry-flavored cough syrup, absolutely loaded with codeine and a sure cure for a cough, which was guaranteed to provide an afternoon of blissful sleep.

  For occasional tummy troubles, there was an off-white liquid tasting of bananas with extract of opium as its main ingredient. This nostrum stopped diarrhea in its tracks with a single dose.

  Merrill supposed she and her brothers were lucky to have survived.

  Today’s government regulations requiring warning labels to alert parents to the perils of every medication spared modern children from the threat of rare side effects or a potential life of drug abuse from dosing with opium byproducts.

  Her parents hadn’t been too concerned about the drugs in those medicines. Their youthful flirtation with the hippy culture had resulted in nothing worse than Merrill’s and her brothers’ unusual given names. After dabbling in the alternative lifestyle, they’d transformed into solid members of the establishment.

  Merrill glanced, now, into the spotty mirror above the chipped pedestal sink and wondered if she had escaped her childhood unscathed, after all.

  Her middle-aged face, flushed and mottled with fever and framed by a tangle of shoulder-length faded blond hair, didn’t exactly reflect blooming health.

  Still, she and her brothers had survived their unusual upbringing to become strong characters who faced each new challenge with courage and faith.

  Victoriously clutching a bottle of FDA-approved non-drowsy cold and flu medication, Merrill tottered down the steep, narrow stairs to the kitchen.

 
; This parsonage apartment was built onto the back of her new church, an imposing nearly two-century old building boasting a single square Norman bell tower. The venerable structure stood on a high bluff overlooking the Coast Highway and the Pacific Ocean beyond.

  Merrill stretched on tiptoe to look out the kitchen window and admire the view of sky and sea before turning back into the cluttered room. When she found an only slightly used paper coffee cup among the packing boxes, she rinsed it and filled it with tap water to wash down a dose of medicine.

  She groaned when she spied her scrawled “FRAGILE-GLASSWARE” warning on a sagging carton containing her good dishes and drinking glasses. It sat at the bottom of a stack of heavy boxes labeled “cookbooks” and “pots and pans.”

  She could only hope at least a few of her dishes remained intact under the heavy load.

  With a rueful grimace at the disorder in her kitchen, she headed back up the stairs, intent on pulling herself together before facing the unpacking.

  A steaming shower gave the cold medicine a boost and Merrill, dressed in jeans and an old shirt of her late husband’s, felt restored enough to return to the kitchen, root out her utensils and fix a light breakfast before digging into the stacks of boxes.

  She cleared a spot on the cluttered island and perched on a stepstool to eat a slice of whole grain toast and a poached egg.

  Merrill sipped her coffee slowly, trying to delay her unpacking chores a few more moments.

  Her glance fell on her jacket lying on a stack of boxes and the bundle of envelopes sticking out of one pocket. She’d grabbed the unopened letters from her mailbox before climbing into the rental truck for the trip north.

  A foreign stamp on the top envelope brought a smile to her face. She pulled out the letter, eager for news of her missionary brother-in-law in Nigeria.

  Merrill was fond of her husband’s brother, Robert and his wife, Jeanie, the parents of Merrill’s favorite nephew, Ryan.

  She scanned the three-page missionary newsletter, eager to reach the handwritten personal notes on the back of the last page.

  A frown wrinkled her brow as she read of the latest attacks on the Christians in the region.

  She’d written to urge the family to consider returning stateside more than once, without effect. Robert and Jeanie were committed to their flock and their calling. Merrill knew it would take something pretty drastic to bring them home.

  She offered up a quick prayer before stuffing the pages back into the envelope and plunged into the unpacking.

  Much later, knee-deep in crumpled newspapers, with inky smudges on her red, stuffy nose, Merrill was putting the last of her spices away in the tiny pantry when a knock on the door interrupted her.

  “Who can that be?” she grumbled.

  Side-stepping empty boxes, she made her way across the kitchen to the door, wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans as she went.

  “I hope it’s not door-to-door proselytizers from some cult or other,” she muttered before opening the door.

  “Yes?” she rasped at the pair of women standing on the step before turning away to blow her nose.

  Although taken aback by Merrill’s abrupt manner and her disheveled appearance, Elizabeth Gilbert and her friend, Judy Falls, managed tentative smiles.

  “We’ve come to welcome you to the community,” she said.

  Elizabeth was in her late fifties, wearing a neat navy skirt suit and with her gray hair in a tidy French twist.

  “Have we caught you at a bad time?” her younger companion, in a crumpled dirndl skirt, asked. “Moving is such a pain. Do you need any help?” she added, gazing through her stringy dark blond bangs at the confusion inside.

  Still wary, but ashamed of her unfriendly greeting, Merrill stepped back, gesturing for her visitors to come inside.

  “It’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid. As you can see, I’m in the middle of unpacking. Would you like something to drink? I think there’s still coffee in the pot.”

  “No, don’t bother. We won’t stay. We came to welcome you to the community and invite you to join our group,” Elizabeth said, moving an empty packing carton from a kitchen chair and sitting down.

  “Shall I flatten this for you?” she asked.

  “Thanks. I’m just about up to my ears in empty boxes and there’s not much storage here. What group do you represent?” Merrill asked, with more than a little trepidation.

  “We call ourselves The First Ladies Club,” Judy explained. “We are a support group for pastors’ wives. We also do community service projects.”

  “There hasn’t been a pastor at First Baptist for quite a while, so when we heard your husband was coming, we were all excited to have his wife join us,” Elizabeth added.

  Relieved, Merrill began, “Oh, but I’m not married to the new pastor…”

  “What! Oh, dear, I guess we’d better be going, then,” Judy interrupted, hopping up. “Our group includes lots of different theological interpretations and traditions, but I don’t think any of the ladies would be comfortable having a pastor’s, uh, well, uh, ‘domestic partner’ in the group.”

  Merrill laughed when she realized Judy thought she was ‘living in sin’ with the new pastor.

  Baptists come in all shapes and sizes and range from conservative fundamentalists to liberal progressives, but there weren’t any denominations Merrill was aware of who would welcome a pastor with a live-in girlfriend.

  “No, you misunderstood me,” she finally managed. “I’m not the pastor’s wife, you see, because I am the pastor.”

  “You are the Reverend Doctor I. Merrill Bishop, like it says on the welcome sign on the message board in front of the church?” Judy asked.

  “That’s me,” Merrill nodded.

  “Hallelujah!” Elizabeth shouted, startling the others.

  “Dr. Bishop, until you arrived, I’ve been the only ordained woman in this community. My husband and I co-pastor the United Methodist Church downtown. You will be joining the Ministerial Association; I hope?”

  “Of course, and please call me Merrill. Why do you ask?”

  “When Gil and I came to Bannoch, many years ago, I accompanied him to the Ministerial meetings. I was treated very politely, of course; exactly as any pastor’s wife would have been, but after that I was completely ignored, unless they needed a hostess. I couldn’t fight it, so I stopped going. Those men couldn’t see me as an equal. I was Gil’s wife and nothing more. With you here, another ordained woman, I’m ready to take one more stab at breaking through the testosterone ceiling.”

  “I understand,” Merrill chuckled. “My late husband was a minister. When I felt the call to seminary, I encountered the same attitudes you describe.”

  “Well, hey, since you were once a pastor’s wife, couldn’t you still represent your church in our group?” Judy said, and then added, “You don’t have a pastor’s husband, now, do you?”

  “No,” Merrill said with a grin. “Would that be so bad?”

  “I guess not, but I’m not sure how a pastor’s male spouse would fit into the First Ladies Club,” Judy explained.

  “Will you consider joining us, Merrill? You are going to need a support group outside of your congregation and we would love to have you,” Elizabeth urged.

  “I don’t know if my schedule will allow me to attend on a regular basis, but I would love to come whenever I can. Thank you.”

  “Good. That’s settled. We’ll let you know when and where the next meeting will be. Now, what can we do to help you get unpacked?” Elizabeth said, hanging her jacket on the back of a chair and rolling back the cuffs of her white shirt.

  Merrill was about to decline this generous offer but was overcome by a coughing spasm.

  When she was able to catch her breath, she gratefully gave her new friends directions for unpacking the boxes in the living room and excused herself to take another dose of cold medicine.

  Several hours later, the three tired women were sitting around an open pizza box nibbl
ing on a few leftover crusts.

  “I cannot thank you enough for everything,” Merrill said. “I never could have gotten this done today by myself.”

  “Certainly not, and you shouldn’t have to when you aren’t feeling well,” Judy said. “Besides, this has been fun. I always love looking at other people’s stuff.”

  “Even ‘stuff’ as boring as mine?” Merrill grinned.

  Judy tried to brush powdered parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes off the front of her scoop-necked peasant blouse before speaking, but only managed to sweep most of it into her generous cleavage.

  “Oh, but it isn’t boring,” she said. “Every item has a past, and a use. And when its useful life is over, it can get a future by being re-purposed. For instance, that ratty old bathrobe hanging behind your bedroom door could make throw pillows or even a stuffed animal, when you finally get rid of it.”

  “Ratty bathrobe, eh?” Merrill asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “Omigosh! Did I say that?” Judy cried.

  “Yes, dear, you certainly did. Merrill, you will have to forgive Judy. There doesn’t seem to be any filter between what she thinks and what she says, but her heart’s in the right place,” Elizabeth teased.

  “It’s all right,” Merrill said. “I know that robe is pretty worn out, but I can’t get rid of it because it is so comfy. Also, it was a gift from my late husband. I wore it all through seminary, during those late-night study sessions, and while writing and researching my doctoral thesis. It’s sort of my good luck charm.”

  “Was it really hard getting your doctorate? I’d love to go back to school and finish my BA degree, but I don’t seem to be able to concentrate very well since the twins were born,” Judy said.