The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  “Is Torian with you?”

  “‘Torian? Forget Torian. This is between us.”

  He sighed. “What is, Lise? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I need to come in. We can’t talk out here.”

  He looked at the trophy as if he had to ask her damn permission. She nodded and he stepped aside for Lise.

  Anger raced up her spine like a flame. He had never asked her permission for anything—they hadn’t communicated at all. And there was another thing. She could see that both Wilson and the trophy were naked under their robes. The last year or so of their marriage—Wilson and Lise’s—he had pointedly worn pajamas.

  She walked into their beige-on-beige living room with its Hurwitz-Mintz furniture and felt herself consumed by the flame inside her. It metastasized in the space of a millisecond from her spine to every cell in her body. Her tongue was a lightning bolt.

  “Goddamn you, Wilson Gernhard. Goddamn you! Look at this place! Do you know what kind of squalor your only daughter is living in?”

  The trophy—Carol, wasn’t it?—looked as if she were about to wet her pants, and as if on cue, a baby wailed somewhere in the bowels in the house. Carol left, but not before shooting Lise a look—a very different look from the hateful one she expected. Carol looked terrified.

  Wimp, she thought. If she stays married to Wilson long enough, she’ll end up this way too.

  “Torian isn’t my only daughter, Lise.” He spoke in a perfectly modulated voice, the voice of someone trying to calm a mental patient. It made Lise want to rip his liver out.

  “No wonder you don’t care about her anymore. No wonder . ..”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  Lise heard noises in the kitchen, as if Carol were cooking.

  “I’m sick and goddamn tired of your stinginess, your utter abdication of responsibility, the way you can never quite come up with our little bitty checks, paltry as they obviously are compared to any others you might be writing. Now that I see the way you live, I understand why you never have any money for us.

  “Do you have any idea what I have to do for the few bucks a month I get from the goddamn insurance company? I have to sell my soul to some power-hungry supervisor the minute I get to work, and then five minutes later I have to turn around and sell it again to some numb-nuts who’s mad at the world because he didn’t have any better sense than to get drunk out of his skull and total his car. Half the time I have to work ten hours a day without overtime. And I still don’t make enough to keep decent clothes on your daughter’s back.”

  “Lise…”

  But she wouldn’t let him talk. “Wilson, I can’t take this anymore. My life is the pits, do you understand that? I’m going nuts. This is driving me stark raving crazy.”

  “Something obviously is.”

  “Go ahead. Be fucking sarcastic; go ahead. I have no money, Wilson. Do you know what it’s like to have no money? Not to know if you can afford to park your goddamn car? Or go to the movies? Hell, rent a video! My life is so awful I really think I’m going crazy. I swear to God I do.” She put her face in her hands, trying to hold back what she had almost said. She must not tell him what she had done. She must not, no matter what.

  “You’re the one who wanted the divorce, Lise. You’re the one who wanted to be on your own. You were the dumper; I was the dumpee.” The sneer in his voice was so nasty she recoiled.

  Perhaps it was the trigger, or perhaps the night of drinking had reached a plateau—suddenly she began to sob into her hands. To her horror, she felt a soft arm go around her shoulders. Carol’s. Goddamn phony bitch!

  She jerked away, uncovering her face, and spilling the coffee the trophy had brought her.

  While she and Carol stared at each other in mutual revulsion, Wilson marshaled his strength. Carol offered the cup, and for some reason, Lise took it.

  When Wilson spoke next, it was in a new tone entirely, a clipped, angry one. “Lise, why the hell are you here? What do you want?”

  “I can’t stand your damn hypocrisy.” She screamed it. “That poor daughter of yours—your number two daughter, it would seem—honestly thinks you want her to come live with you, worships you and your phony wimp of a wife, when you don’t even want to buy her a pair of jeans to wear to school.”

  He spread his hands, palms up. “Fine, fine. I’ll take Torian. If you recall, you insisted on custody, but you can just forget it now. I’ll fight you all the way on this. I’ll tell the judge how you came over here drunk and abusive, and I’ll get custody. Make no mistake, I’ll get it.” His lips were set in a nasty, grim line, one that Lise had seen before, maybe one of the principal reasons she’d divorced him.

  The trophy was grim, too. She looked as if she’d lost her last friend.

  “The hell you will,” said Lise. “You’ll give us enough money to live on.”

  He was smiling. He kept talking as if she hadn’t said a word. “It’ll really be better for Torian. We can send her to Country Day …”

  “Country Day! The only reason she’s not going to Country Day right now is because you won’t pay for it.”

  “No, Lise, I don’t think you remember correctly. We decided not to send her to Country Day because you didn’t want to drive her in the morning.” She hated his goddamn, supercilious, self-righteous, hyper-rational tone.

  “You bastard!”

  “She’ll thrive here. She needs something to love. You should see her with Marly—like she’s absolutely starved for affection. And Carol’s a wonderful cook, and of course, her room’s a teenager’s dream. Let me show it to you.”

  Lise’s jaw had dropped when he began, but the shock had worn off. The flame consumed her now, the anger that had been simmering in her cells for the last twenty minutes.

  “You son of a bitch.” She yelled so loud she saw the trophy flinch, and as she yelled, she flung the coffee at him, first the liquid, then the cup. It splattered his beige robe and a little of his chest. The cup thumped against his torso.

  Balling up her fists, she went for him. She managed to land one blow, on his chest, but unfortunately in the robed area, before he caught her arms. He said to Carol, “I think we’d better call the police.”

  “No.” Lise whispered the word. “Don’t do that to me. Let me go.” She sank to her knees, Wilson still holding her wrists.

  Carol came up behind her, once again slipping a condescending arm around her. “Come on, Lise. You’ll be fine.” They started to lift her to her feet, Carol and Wilson working together.

  * * *

  Skip was awakened from a sound sleep by a phone ringing. “Hello.”

  “It’s Jane Storey.”

  She sat up. “Jane! What’s going on?” Her bedside clock said seven-thirty.

  “I’m so goddamn mad I couldn’t sleep. I spent the night in St. Martinville, or anyway I tried. I got up in the middle of the night and came home. I got here half an hour ago, had a cup of coffee and half a dozen cigarettes and finally couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “What is it?”

  “The sources dried up.”

  “What?” She didn’t get it, wasn’t fully awake yet. “Who backed out?”

  “Ralph did. The wonderful Ralph Washington who just thought the story ought to be told. And the little girl’s parents. All of them. Count ‘em, three.”

  “Well, what excuse did they give?”

  “They’d been giving it some thought and realized they’d been hasty. They’d slept on it and decided nothing would be served by ‘digging up old bones.’ That’s what the parents said. Grisly, huh?”

  “And Ralph?”

  “Pretty much the same thing without the bones.”

  “Jacomine got to them.”

  “Of course Jacomine got to them. Jacomine always gets to them. I’m going to go nuts, you know that? This whole thing’s going to drive me nuts. There’s no way out. You just get caught in some sticky web that won’t let go, and next thing you know, you’re trying to
chew your way out of a straitjacket.”

  “How the hell could he have known?”

  Jane snorted. “That’s as close as I get to a chuckle. He had you followed. Why should you be different from anybody else?”

  Because I used to be a cop. Last time I looked I could spot a tail.

  “Jane, I’m sorry about this. It’s not the end of it, though. I’ll get you something. I promise.”

  “Get me my sanity.” She hung up, and Skip reached for the phone book.

  An hour and a half later, she was on a plane for Atlanta. It was too early to check anything out by phone, so she hadn’t. Just hopped on the first plane she could get, as impatient as Jane Storey. Atlanta had been in her mind ever since Adam Tardiff said he thought Jacomine must have learned some “real slick tricks there.”

  Just to get warmed up, she started with “Jacomine” in the phone book, but that was no good. She’d known it wouldn’t be. She didn’t think that was a name he’d had for long.

  Okay, then, Christian Community World Headquarters.

  It had an address in Cobb County. The best plan, she thought, was to go there and produce her badge.

  After driving for what seemed half the morning, she ended up at a tacky brick building barely off the expressway, and learned the Christian Community occupied half the third floor. Either the Community had fallen on hard times or it hadn’t been much to start with. She suspected the latter.

  The receptionist took up about half the front office.

  She was a white woman, maybe fifty or sixty, maybe forty or seventy—her skin had the smoothness obesity affords, and her face was as pretty as heavy women’s are reputed to be. Her makeup was thick and shiny with the heat. Her hair was hennaed a delicate peach, and her dress was fuchsia. Her hands were carefully manicured, dainty fingers and perfect nails, feminine and lovely, adorned only with a wedding ring. Skip had noticed that a lot of fat women had perfect hands and wondered if that should be added to the pretty-face stereotype.

  “Jesus loves you,” she said. “I’m Mary Lou.”

  Skip was momentarily speechless. Finally, she stuttered out her name, and said she needed to ask some questions about a Community member.

  “Why, sure,” said Mary Lou. “I’d be glad to help you.” She turned expectant sapphire eyes on Skip, eyes sooty with perfect mascara and liner. Except for her odd penchant for pinks and oranges, she was one of the best-groomed women Skip had ever seen.

  “I wonder if I could talk to …” Who? The director? The bishop? She finally said, “Someone who’d know.”

  “Honey, I been here nineteen years. Know where every body’s buried. Believe me, we got quite a history.”

  Skip wanted to ask why she wasn’t worried about a stranger asking questions, but she certainly wasn’t going to. Her quizzical look must have given her away.

  “Honey, we got a policy. We were born naked before God, and tha’s the way we’re gon’ leave this world. We don’t mind talkin’ about ourselves. Only thing is, we don’t keep real good records, and the way things have been goin’, we lose a lot of staff. So mostly, if you want to know anything, you have to ask Mary Lou.”

  Is she for real? Skip thought. But it didn’t matter, because Mary Lou was very effectively placing herself between Skip and any other sources. In short, it was Mary Lou or nothing.

  She drew in a breath. “The person I want to ask about may or may not still be connected with the church. His name’s Errol Jacomine.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Errol Jacomine. He used to be assigned to St. Martinville.”

  Mary Lou looked stumped. “Why no, we never had a …” She stopped in mid-sentence and chewed her lip. “You don’t mean Earl Jackson, do you? Come to think of it, I think Adam Tardiff called him something funny.” She nodded a couple of times, then pushed back her chair, turned around, and went to a file cabinet. Skip saw that her dress fit immodestly over jiggling bottom cheeks, each the size of a small moon.

  She brought back a thin file, from which she pulled a photograph. “Is this who you mean?”

  It was a much younger Jacomine. Skip nodded. “He was called Earl Jackson?”

  “First I’ve heard of that other name. ‘Cept maybe once, and I thought Adam was just a little forgetful.”

  “May I ask his middle name?”

  Mary Lou frowned. “Well, it’s—” She seemed to be struggling with something.

  “What?”

  She frowned some more and said something that sounded like “fee.” There was evidently more.

  “May I look?”

  Mary Lou turned the file around.

  “Ah. Theophilus.” Skip noted his date of birth as well.

  “I wonder why he changed his name.”

  “Any idea?”

  Mary Lou gave Skip a quick, sharp look. Her wonderr ment had obviously been rhetorical. She shrugged, looking through the file. “I guess we’ve lost track of him.” She pulled out a letter. “He wrote us, sayin’ he’d have to leave St. Martinville, which is our only outreach post in Louisiana—see, Earl started the church there. That’s how we work—if a preacher wants to start a church, he just does. Anyway, we got this letter and that was it.”

  “What do you mean that was it?”

  “Well, as far as I recall, we just never could reach him after that. So we sent Adam on out there—Earl started something, somebody had to finish it.”

  Skip was beginning to wonder if there really was any “we”; maybe Mary Lou was the entire administration of the Christian Community.

  “He has a church in New Orleans now.”

  Mary Lou tightened her carefully painted mouth. “Not under our auspices.”

  “Tell me something. Is healing a normal part of your community?”

  “Some of our ministers are gifted. God gives the power to some and not to others.”

  “What about Earl?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I never attended one of his services.”

  “Why did he go to St. Martinville in the first place? I know Adam has relatives there. But why Earl Jackson?”

  She stared at the file and pursed her lips. “It was his time to do outreach.”

  Skip waited awhile, hoping for illumination. None came, and she asked, “Why was that?”

  “From time to time we call on a member to start a new church. Have you ever heard of the Buddha with the begg ging bowl? We think of it as somethin’ like that.”

  “An act of humility.”

  Mary Lou nodded. Some kind of curtain had come between her and Skip; but when it had happened, Skip wasn’t sure. She said, “Any particular reason?”

  Mary Lou shrugged. “It was just his time, bless his heart.”

  It was a different story from the original—”if a preacher wants to start a church, he just does.”

  Skip asked: “Was it some kind of punishment?” And did it work so well he decided to change his name, divest himself of his former life, and start over as a charlatan?

  Mary Lou looked uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry. Am I stepping on toes? I believed you about being naked in the world. Am I asking too many questions?”

  Mary Lou closed the file and looked Skip full in the face. Her face was damper now, though it was no warmer in the office. She pulled a tissue seemingly from nowhere, and dabbed at her forehead. “This is a personnel file.”

  And I’ll bet there’s something pretty sensitive in it. “I wonder who could tell me more about Earl Jackson?”

  “I’m afraid our executive director hasn’t been here long enough to remember him.”

  But maybe he ‘d let me look at the file. “Just the same I wonder if I might talk to him.”

  “I’m very sorry. Mr. Moore is out of the country just now.”

  “I see. When will he be back?”

  “I really don’t know. I’m just a secretary.” She seemed to have demoted herself. A few minutes ago, Skip could have sworn she more or less ran the pla
ce.

  “Well, Mary Lou, you’ve been a big help. I want you to know how much I appreciate it.”

  “I don’t get that many visitors anymore—’cept for the UPS man. I’ve certainly enjoyed talking to you. Jesus loves you and God blesses you.”

  “I’m sure she blesses you, too.”

  * * *

  Skip left, found a telephone, and called Jane Storey. “I finally have a name for him. And I think something happened with the Christian Community. Do you have any contacts here in Atlanta?”

  “I’ll talk to Stanley. Call back in ten.”

  When Skip called back, Jane gave her the name of a reporter at the Atlanta Constitution. “Stanley didn’t know a religion editor, but this is someone he went to school with. Education reporter or something—Charlina Digby. She’ll do a clip search for you.”

  Skip called first. Charlina had already done the search. She sounded harried and uninterested. “You want printouts?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, come get ‘em. Ask at the reception desk.”

  Half an hour later, wiping away September sweat, Skip presented herself at the Constitution’s reception desk and was in turn presented with a paper-clipped pile of papers.

  Unable to wait, she sat down and started reading, the most recent first, a little squib that might have appeared on the religion page: Rev. Jackson Transferred, as if anyone cared.

  Going back in time, she saw why some readers would—and when Mary Lou had dropped that curtain on her. She must have done it when she realized who Skip was really asking about. Earl Jackson had had a church in Atlanta for some years, and quite a big church, it seemed. In fact, Skip gathered he’d been rather a prominent minister.

  Then a lady in the congregation had dropped a dime on him—in the form of a letter to Community headquarters saying he’d had an affair with her, gotten her pregnant, and dumped her. The matter might have ended there if her husband hadn’t tried to kill Jackson, which got the police involved.

  Once that happened, other ladies came forward. It seemed he had treated them to some fairly unorthodox pastoral counseling.

  It wasn’t a huge scandal, but it was a start. And she had Jacomine’s real name.

  Chapter Fourteen