The First Ladies Club Box Set

by J B Hawker

  Giving up on her hospital meal and pushing the tray away, Merrill held out her hand for a slice of pizza.

  It smelled heavenly and tasted delicious.

  Her blissful expression as she ate the first bite made her brothers laugh.

  They remained with her, teasing and reminiscing, until she began to yawn.

  “We’d better go, so you can get some rest, but we’ll be back tomorrow before we head out for home,” Sage said.

  “You’re going back so soon?” Merrill asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” Sage said. “This little vacation was sort of unexpected and I can’t be away any longer. I suppose Wolf has something he needs to do, too, like drink coffee and watch the stock market, or whatever he gets paid for.”

  “We’ll drop by before we go, though. And if you need anything, just call,” Wolf added, giving his brother a sideways look.

  Both men kissed Merrill on the forehead and went out. She could hear them grumbling good-naturedly to each other as their voices retreated down the hall.

  Merrill whispered a prayer of thanks for her family, and for the doctors and nurses who were taking care of her, before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.

  Chapter 31

  Merrill was sitting up in a wheelchair beside her hospital bed after saying a sad farewell to her brothers, when someone tapped on the door.

  She looked up, expecting Doctor James, and was surprised to see Peter enter the room.

  “Hi, how are you?” he asked, bending down to kiss her.

  Merrill turned her head and the kiss landed on her cheek.

  “What’s the matter? Are you in pain?” he asked.

  Merrill breathed deeply, trying to compose herself.

  She had been longing to see Peter, but now he was with her, she felt angry and wounded over being abandoned for his precious news story.

  “No. I’m not in pain, not with all the medication they keep giving me, but I am hurt,” she said.

  “Where? What do you mean?”

  “Where have you been?” Merrill asked, turning to look at him directly.

  “I had to go to Seattle, didn’t your brother tell you?” Peter asked.

  “Oh, he told me. He told me as soon as you got the full story out of me in the ambulance, you ran off to Seattle with your big scoop just as fast as you could.”

  “That’s unfair. I do have a job, you know. I’d been away too long. I had to check-in personally.”

  “I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose. After all, the story is what you came for…and it was obviously the only thing keeping you here,” Merrill cringed inwardly to hear herself sounding so petulant but couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Darling, Merrill, I understand you have been through a terrible ordeal, and you are under the influence of pain-killers, but you’re being ridiculous. I came for the story and stayed to be with you. I needed to file my story, but I came back as soon as I could. See? Here I am!” he said, holding out his arms and taking a turn like a fashion model.

  Peter squatted down beside the chair, grasped her upper arms gently and held her gaze, while speaking slowly and clearly.

  “I told you I like you very much and I wanted to get to know you better. Well, now we’ve spent more time together, and I’ve changed my mind.”

  Merrill gulped and her lower lip began to quiver. She bit her lips to make it stop.

  “I am no longer fond of you, Doctor Indigo Merrillanne Bishop. I am in love with you,” Peter whispered.

  Merrill blinked rapidly, trying to clear the tears from her eyes.

  “What?” she gurgled, coughed and began to laugh.

  “I think the drugs are making me hallucinate,” she said, when she finally managed to speak.

  “Then maybe we better wait to have this discussion until you are clear-headed, because this is important stuff, lady,” Peter said, mock seriously.

  “Would you like to try that kiss, again? I promise not to turn away.”

  *

  Sitting in the intricately carved pulpit chair on the platform in the First Baptist Church’s magnificent sanctuary, Merrill looked out over the full room, observing the sacred music’s effect on the worshipers.

  Peri and Ryan were putting their full hearts into the performance and more than a few in the pews were moved to tears by the glorious sounds. Their months of practice were bearing beautiful fruit.

  Merrill spied Alden Boreman seated on one side in the back, his face shining beatifically, obviously moved by the music.

  Alden had surprised her when he’d visited her in the hospital, shortly before her release, to tell her he’d installed a portable ramp to the apartment entrance.

  It seemed his pivotal role in her rescue had made him one of her biggest fans. She’d overheard him praising her sermons to a visitor before this celebratory service.

  Across the aisle from Boreman, Thom Ortello and his sweet wife were similarly captivated by the instrumental harmony.

  Her near-death experience seemed to have softened Thom’s heart toward Merrill and other ordained women, as well. He had begun teaching a study on the important women of the Bible to his Sunday school class.

  After Peter’s newspaper story and the follow-up magazine article came out, the local news had picked up the bizarre tale.

  The initial flurry of reporters calling and tourists poking around was irritating, but this full sanctuary was largely due to all the publicity.

  People came out of curiosity, but some of them stayed to become part of the FBC family.

  Merrill thanked the Lord, once again, for transforming what was meant for evil into blessings.

  As the organ and piano strains swelled toward the composition’s final crescendo, Merrill’s eyes connected with Peter’s.

  He sat in the front pew on this Sunday, as he always did whenever he was in town.

  His supportive smile gave Merrill added confidence when she stepped into the pulpit to begin her message.

  Merrill and Peter were settling into their long-distance relationship and taking things nice and slow as they moved closer to making a permanent commitment.

  With each passing day Merrill relied less on the ebony cane Ariadne had so generously loaned to her.

  Merrill would miss its dashing touch of elegance after she returned it in a few more weeks.

  “Thank you for that inspiring music, Peri and Ryan,” Merrill smiled at her nephew and her friend when she stepped up into the pulpit. “Thank you for sharing God’s gift of music with us this morning as we dedicate ourselves to His service and His glory.”

  Merrill looked out over her congregation of family and friends with gratitude for all the Lord had done.

  With a lump in her throat she began the service.

  “Everyone, please turn in your Bibles to this morning’s text and read along with me as, with joy and thanksgiving, we prepare to worship our great and marvelous Creator God.”

  If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and consider posting a review

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my hard-working proof-readers/editors Neal, Donna, Robyn, Michele and Heather.

  Thanks to all my faithful fans for their support and kind reviews.

  Special thanks to the members of the Facebooks groups, Sweet Cozy Mysteries and Clean Indie Reads, for their amazing generosity and support to fellow authors by sharing experience, wisdom, encouragement, and welcome advice.

  A

  Corpse

  in

  The Chapel

  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.
r />   Copyright © 2016 J.B Hawker

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1534638181

  ISBN-10: 1534638180

  Dedicated to all

  the precious preborn babies and those delivered directly into Heaven.

  Prologue

  A shiny new 1965 Thunderbird convertible sped north on Oregon’s Coast Highway, its driver hunched forward over the wheel, squirming uncomfortably, as though the luxurious tuck-and-roll upholstery was a bed of gravel, muttering to himself as he drove.

  He reached his destination and, bringing the car to a squealing stop across two parking slots, he leapt from the vehicle and stumbled inside his building, not stopping to raise the car’s top.

  Once in his room, the young man began rummaging in his bureau drawers, pushing clothes onto the floor, while uttering in a shaky voice, “So much blood, so much blood.”

  He pulled a fifth of whiskey from beneath the tube socks and jockey shorts, fumbled with the cap, and clamped his lips onto the neck of the bottle like a starving infant suckling at its mother’s breast.

  Coughing, he sank to his bed and began to moan and mutter between pulls on the bottle.

  “Oh, man! What am I gonna do? It wasn’t my fault! I did everything right. I know I did. Only there was so much blood. I couldn’t make it stop. How could there be so much blood? So much blood…”

  The empty bottle fell from his grasp, clattering to the floor unnoticed, as the young man sank gratefully into the cold comfort of drunken oblivion.

  Chapter 1

  Deep within the shadowy forest overlooking rocky Ramparts Beach, a thicket of brambles trembled and began to shake wildly, emitting a series of snorts and squawks.

  “Get off me!” a disheveled woman growled as, twisting and turning, she struggled to disentangle herself from the clinging brambles. Squinting through her shaggy mane of dark blond hair, she crouched, glaring angrily at the thorny blackberry vines. Her impressive bosom strained the fabric of her peasant blouse as she breathed deeply from her exertions.

  Surveying her situation, she grabbed a handful of her many-layered gypsy skirt and tugged hard. Judy Falls, forty-something wife of the local Presbyterian minister, pulled free from the thorns and collapsed backward onto a cushion of twigs and pine needles. Herbs and fungi spilled from the hand-woven basket she carried.

  “Drat!” she exclaimed, sitting up, dusting herself off and plucking twigs from her hair.

  “Ken told me to dress for a hike and not as if I were going shopping. Maybe I should have listened to him...this time,” she said with a rueful grimace.

  She hated to admit it, but not listening to her husband was just one of the many little rebellions Judy allowed herself in order to cope with his controlling ways. Ken meant well. He was a dear, really, but being so much older, he naturally felt he always knew best. He called it this time, she thought with a chuckle, wiggling her fingers through the fabric of her torn skirt.

  Judy righted her basket and scrambled around on hands and knees reclaiming her pickings before standing up and brushing away the dirt and leaves still clinging to her clothes. One puffy sleeve of her embroidered blouse was stained near the smocking detail and her skirt was torn, but a little strategic decorative stitching would soon cover the damage.

  Taking in her surroundings, Judy was surprised to see she had climbed well beyond any familiar landmarks.

  That morning, browsing through the latest issue of Vegan Life magazine, she’d come across an intriguing recipe calling for mushrooms and a variety of fresh herbs. Thinking she might find these growing wild in the nearby woods, Judy set out as soon as she’d cleared away her family’s breakfast dishes.

  She’d collected everything, except the wild sorrel which was the main ingredient of the soup.

  Her eyes lit up as she spied a large clump of this herb growing beside a pile of rotting logs beneath a nearby tangle of blackberries. Carefully pulling away the prickly stems to get to the sorrel leaves, she discovered the logs were remnants of a hand-hewn door frame.

  Judy pushed through an opening behind the ancient beams and found herself in the vine embowered remnants of a small building. Sections of three walls remained more or less upright, framing the dimensions of a room about the size of her bedroom back at the Presbyterian manse. A warped and weathered wooden table leaned against the far wall under a diamond-shaped window opening.

  Judy tiptoed across the decaying floor, avoiding broken boards and branches, to see if the table might possibly be salvageable. On closer inspection the wood was too pitted and rotten for reuse. She poked through the ruins in search of anything worthy of restoration or re-purposing.

  Pinned under what might have been the top of a steeple, with its rustic cross still clinging tenuously to the point, a long wooden box or trunk caught her eye. An abandoned trunk was a treasure chest of possibilities for a recycler of Judy’s caliber.

  Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the sagging remnants of the roof as Judy lifted splintered boards off the chest. Before trying to open it, she paused to imagine what treasures might be inside. Like a child on Christmas morning, she wanted to savor all the delicious possibilities.

  Finally, nearly trembling with excitement, she lifted the lid from the chest and exposed what lay within.

  *

  On this rare sunny April morning, the fogbank a mere smudge on the western horizon, tourists and commuters sped along Oregon’s Coast Highway. They paid little attention to the faded blue ten-year-old Subaru parked on a gravel turnout near a narrow path meandering up the rocky hillside to the high meadows and shadowy forest above, where Judy crouched beside her treasure chest. Birds chirped and twittered in the treetops, and squirrels chattered, ignored by the nocturnal creatures in their cozy dens and burrows, all blissfully unaware of the drama about to unfold.

  The occupants of a beige SUV passed their friend’s car and suspected she was clamoring about in the woods, again.

  “I wonder what Judy’s foraging after today?” Olivette Vernon, Judy’s friend and a fellow member of the Bannoch First Ladies Club, remarked to Elizabeth Gilbert, who was driving.

  “Whatever it is will probably turn up on the refreshments tray the next time she hosts our meeting,” Elizabeth replied. “Why do her vegan dishes all have to taste like grass and dirt...organic dirt, of course.”

  “Now, Elizabeth, that isn’t fair. Some of Judy’s recipes are really quite tasty, and not nearly as nasty as they look.”

  Elizabeth, co-pastor with her husband of the Bannoch Methodist Church, chuckled at Olivette’s unwittingly snide remark. She knew her friend hadn’t a snarky bone in her body and would be mortified to think she’d said anything unkind.

  “Of course, you are right, dear. I’m sure Judy has grown accustomed to her unusual ingredients and finds them as yummy as all get out. She means well, I know that,” Elizabeth said.

  “I believe Eskaletha is hosting the next meeting in the AME social hall, so anything Judy gathers today will be used up before her turn comes around. She only uses the freshest ingredients in her unusual dishes,” Olivette said.

  “Eskaletha will have some elegant refreshments for us, I’m sure, she always does,” Elizabeth added.

  “Eskaletha does everything with such elegance and style. I wish I had her flare.”

  “You and me both!” Elizabeth agreed.

  The two friends continued on their way to the Tillamook shopping mall, chatting as they went.

  *

  Judy’s husband, Ken, was sitting in the Pastor’s Study at the Presbyterian Church, working on his sermon for the following Sunday.

  Ken adhered to the liturgical calendar of the Revised Common Lectionary for his Scripture texts. This sermon would be covering the Ascension of Christ following the Resurrection. The topic usually called for a retelling of the historical events. Following as it does on the heels of the glorious celebration of Easter, Ken often struggled to breathe life into this text with its more prosaic rec
ounting of history. Although these facts were inspiring in themselves, he was having trouble finding a new, exciting way of conveying them to his congregation to underscore the reality of the resurrection.

  After nearly forty years of sermons, Ken’s well of creativity was drying up. Slogging away at this week’s sermon, Ken worried that coming up with a compelling message for Pentecost, in only another month, would be even more daunting. Pentecost was all about the gift, and the gifts, of the Holy Spirit. With miracles, speaking in unknown languages and tongues of fire, it called for a message of excitement and power. He wasn’t certain he was still up to the task and was toying with the frightening idea of retirement.

  “Excuse me, Reverend Falls, your wife is calling. Shall I put her through?” Jane Wilson, his secretary, stood in the doorway.

  “I’m in the middle of something here, Jane. Please take a message and I’ll call her back later.”

  *

  “Oh, bother!” Judy said, her voice shaky. “Now, what am I going to do?”

  She looked down at the old chest and its contents with growing nausea.

  Only moments before, she had been so eager to see what wonders she might find in this old box. Now, she wished she’d never wandered so far into the woods.

  When she’d lifted the lid, she saw a long bundle wrapped in a rotting rug. Gently peeling the covering back on one end revealed a moldy once-red sneaker. The shoe’s mate was nestled beside it and Judy thought she had discovered a discarded sack of old clothes. She tried to pick up one of the shoes, but it was attached to a bundle of sticks.

  Folding back a little more of the tapestry revealed those sticks were the foot and leg bones of what had once been a human being.