by K. J. Emrick
Leaning across the car, I let my lips linger against his cheek in a warm kiss.
His fingers touched the spot where my mouth had been after I moved away. “What was that for, now?”
“For being you,” I explained simply. “You’re the man I love, James Callahan. Don’t let anything that’s happening now make you believe different.”
His smile mirrored mine, and then we were getting out of the car and walking up to the Thorne house.
We weren’t even to the front porch when the door opened and Mrs. Thorne met me with a frown.
“What’re the two of ya doing here? Told everything there was to tell last time, Miss Powers.”
Her stringy brown ponytail was fraying, and I could see in her eyes that her nerves might be doing exactly the same thing. There’s a look that women get in their eyes sometimes when they’re holding back more than they can contain. Beverly Thorne had that look about her now.
I wondered what my eyes looked like right now.
“Mrs. Thorne,” I said, keeping my voice low and calm. “I was wondering if Barnaby was home from swimming in the lake yet?”
“How did…?” Her eyes went wide, and then narrowed at me. “Oh, that’s right. I heard about the way ya go round sticking your nose into everyone’s business. Got some smarts in that noggin. Well, don’t come peddling them here, Miss Powers. Ya got no right to talk to my boy, and I got no reason to stand here and let ya be all high and mighty with me.”
She went to shut the door and I figured that was the end of my chance. Because she was right. I had no way of forcing the issue. I took a step anyway, about to ask her again, when a hand reached out and slapped against the door, keeping it open.
Beverly jumped.
The boy who shoved the door open wide was stocky and probably over tall for his age. Barnaby Thorne’s hair was the same color as his mother’s, shaggy around his ears and down into his eyes. The t-shirt he was wearing had the emblem of some band on it that I’d never heard of and a rip at the seam on the right side. His eyes were an icy shade of blue in a face that could be best described as puggish. Like the dog.
“Mother,” Barnaby said in a voice that had already broken low through puberty. “If somebody comes here to talk to me, I say if they talk to me or not. What did I tell ya ‘bout that?”
Beverly shrank back from her son and raised her hands up to her chest, for all the world looking like she was bracing for him to strike her.
I decided I did not like Barnaby. Not one little bit.
His eyes turned to me as he leaned up against the open doorframe. “What d’ya want?”
James stepped forward in front of me, mumbling something about ratbag little bullies, but I caught hold of his hand and held him in place with a silent glance between us. This was my battle of wills to win or lose. “Hello, Barnaby. I’m Dell Powers. I was wondering—”
“Know who ya are,” he told me, eying James in a dismissive way. “You’re the owner of that Inn over on Fenlong Street. Heard they found a body in there. Lots of people dying in your place.”
I set my lips in a thin line. Nope. I didn’t like him at all. “I wanted to ask you about Pastor Albright’s dog.”
His frown turned sour. For just a moment he looked off to his left, and then his cold eyes focused on me again. “Me and the Pastor never did much get along. What, is he saying I flogged his precious mutt?”
“Nobody’s accusing you of stealing the dog,” I told him, although that was pretty much exactly what I was here to do. “The pastor just thought you might know something. His dog’s been gone for a few days now and it seems you might have been there when the dog went missing.”
“’Course I was around,” he scoffed at me, as though I’d just said something really stupid. “Bogus arrest by Cutter. Had to do this probation thing. Cleaning pine needles off the church lawn and sweeping the floors. Great for building me character. Know what I mean?”
He flexed his arms as he said it. The only part of his character this kid cared about was his muscles. That was obvious.
“Barnaby,” his mother said timidly from behind him in the gloom of the house, “why don’t we go back inside and I can fix some—”
“I said to leave this to me!” Barnaby barked at her.
She flinched this time as if she’d already been hit.
James untangled his fingers from mine and in two steps was up on the porch and taking Barnaby by his elbow.
“Pardon us, Mrs. Thorne,” James said to her, adding a polite nod of his head to the woman of the house. “Your boy needs to learn some manners.”
Then he shut the door, to the shocked expression of Beverly Thorne and her son alike. Stepping backward took him off the top step of the porch and to the ground, smooth as silk. Barnaby wasn’t prepared for it. He stumbled and lost his balance and the only thing that kept him from falling on his face was James’s hand on his arm.
Part of me was left wishing James had let go.
“Now listen to me, ya little snot,” James growled in Barnaby’s ear. “I can’t do a thing about what goes on behind that door. That’s between your mom and this raggedy weasel shark of a son she’s been strapped with. But, by the hand of God above, ya pathetic waste of air, if I ever see ya treat your own mother like that again I’ll teach ya what it really means to be a man!”
Barnaby twitched in James’s grip and went to take a swing at him, relying on what he assumed was his superior strength and nearly equal size. James met the kid’s motion with a sidestep and a rotation of his upper torso that put Barnaby’s arm around behind his back and put young Barnaby up on his toes.
“Ow! All right, all right, ya cranky bugger!” The kid’s once deep voice had risen a few octaves. “Lemme go!”
“Oh, sure I will. Once we’ve got some answers to some very simple questions. Think ya can handle that, boyo?”
“Don’t call me—ow!”
“Asked a question,” James repeated. “Can ya handle that?”
“Yes. Yes, yes!”
I don’t think I ever loved James as much as I did in that moment. The things that were wrong behind those closed doors of the Thorne household were probably too many to count. Most people would turn a blind eye to it. Call it not their problem. James stepped up. More than that, he stepped in.
My man did that. James Callahan.
“Okay, then,” James said to me. “Ask away.”
It took me a few seconds to remember what I had wanted to ask. The situation was… distracting. Watching James be himself stirred my heart and, I have to admit, thoughts of how I was going to thank him for this.
“Um. Right.” I walked over to where I would be in front of Barnaby, so he wouldn’t have to crane his neck to see me in the hold James had him in. “You saw the dog at the church, right? Arthur Phillip?”
Barnaby snorted, still trying to act like the tough guy even though it was obvious he wasn’t in charge here. “Yeah, I saw the mutt. Little mixed breed. One white ear. One black. Stubby little tail. Ugly mongrel, ‘s what it is.”
“Okay. Putting aside what you think of the dog’s looks, let’s get to the real question. When did you see the dog last?”
“How should I know?”
James lifted up on Barnaby’s arm again. Just a little.
“All right, all right, all right! I saw the dog day before I finished my probation service there. It looked happy as a pig in—ow!”
“Watch your language, son,” James warned him.
“I ain’t your son!”
“Too right,” James agreed. “My son would never treat his mother like ya did just now. Maybe somebody shoulda done this for ya a long time ago.”
“Get off me!” Barnaby demanded, although there was less heat in his words now than there had been before. James was getting through to him.
“Where was the dog when you saw him?” I asked, sharing a secret smile with James over Barnaby’s shoulder.
“In the church. Pastor Albright knows a
ll this. He was feeding the thingo.”
“It’s not a thingo,” I told him. “Arthur Phillip is a dog. Now he’s missing. Do you have any idea where he went?”
Again, he looked off to his left, his eyes shifting up the street. Nervous habit, I figured. “Do you know where the dog is, Barnaby?”
“No, I don’t,” he insisted, looking down at the ground now, giving up on any attempt to get away from James. “Got no idea where the thingo… where the dog went.”
I tried to read the truth or lie of what he’d just said in his face but he kept from meeting my gaze. That in itself made it feel like he was lying to me. Thing was, I had no idea how to prove anything he said. If he was alone there by himself in the church when the dog went missing—which he had been, according to Pastor Albright—then there would be no witnesses to prove things one way or the other.
Which was probably what Barnaby was counting on. Whether he stole the dog or not, nobody could challenge his story.
“So you don’t know where the dog is now?” I asked him one more time.
Again, Barnaby’s eyes darted off to his left. “Don’t know, and I ain’t got no reason to care.”
Interesting turn of phrase. “Fine. Let him go, James.”
James held Barnaby for a few seconds longer than he needed to, then let him go so suddenly that the young man who thought he was tougher than anyone else stumbled forward and only just caught his balance. Rounding on James, fists up like he was ready for a blue, Barnaby snarled. “That’s right, old man. Better not come ‘round here again. I’ll give ya more’n a twisted arm, I will!”
With that, he rushed past both of us and straight inside his house, slamming the door behind him. It couldn’t keep us from hearing the way he shouted and carried on in there. When something crashed, James started up the steps again.
“James…”
“Be back in a sec.”
When the door closed this time, it ushered a thick silence inside the home.
I took a step to follow him in. Not that I didn’t think James could handle himself, especially after what I just saw, but I wanted to be in there in case something happened and he needed a witness here in this troubled home on Revelation Way.
Revelations…
Huh. Now that’s interesting.
A fragment of memory chose that moment to bubble up through my consciousness. The man with his cane in the church. Heeral Stone. He’d said something to me… this morning. Wow, was it really still the same day?
Poor dog. That was it. He’d said, Poor dog. Might have to search to the ends of the Earth to find him again.
And now here I stood, on Revelation Way. Revelations was the book in the Bible that detailed the end of the world.
In other words, the ends of the Earth.
As I was still putting that together in my head, James came out of the Thorne house with a little smile on his face. “That’s settled. For now, anyways. I let the little bugger know that I’d be asking the new senior sergeant to stop every now and again to make sure there was peace in our times.”
I hugged him fiercely. “Thank you.”
“Not just a great reporter, ya know.” He winked at me and led me over to his Charger, holding me around my waist the whole way. “I’m also a bit of a heroic daredevil.”
I smiled and leaned into him, but my mind was on something else. What had Heeral been trying to tell me?
That was ridiculous. There was no way he could be trying to tell me anything at all about this, even if coming to see Barnaby Thorne had brought me to the exact spot where Heeral had told me to go. The ends of the Earth.
Unless, maybe, Heeral knew something more about Jonas Albright’s missing dog than he was letting on.
He was the pastor’s friend, wasn’t he? He’d known Jonas for years. Although, when I’d suggested that very thing to Pastor Albright, he’d turned white as a ghost and been violently sick. Strange thing to do over a friend.
I needed to talk to Pastor Albright again. And to Heeral.
In James’s car, turning at the intersection, I looked back up the street. To the end of Revelation. It occurred to me that young tough kid Barnaby Thorne had done the same thing each time I’d asked him a question. He’d looked off to his left, to the ends of the Earth.
Figuratively speaking.
What was he looking for down there?
Oh, yes. I definitely had to speak to Heeral Stone.
I smiled as I asked James to bring me over to the church. If nothing else, this little mystery I’d taken on had distracted me from the mystery of why Mick Pullman had killed my husband.
For now.
The sun was setting when we got to Pastor Albright’s church. Was it really that late? Did I even eat today? There was a plate of food at the Inn. I think. I don’t remember… did I touch that? No. The Milkbar. I ate lunch at the Milkbar. When I saw Mick.
My husband’s killer.
As James parked in the church’s little driveway, I had to sit back and take a breath. All of this had really happened in one day. I’d gone from looking for a book to read in Mabel Quinn’s bookstore to investigating a missing dog… to hoping my son can figure out why one of our own neighbors killed my husband.
And now I’m back at church. Which I suppose is as good a place as any to end up at when your day’s this packed full of heartache.
The final slanting rays of sunset painted odd shadows over the building, black against the white. The branches of the cross hung on the front cast a long, dark X. I’m not a superstitious person, even if some of my best friends are ghosts, but it was like the church was being marked as off-limits.
Forbidden.
“You okay?” James asked me.
“You’re going to be asking me that a lot, aren’t you?”
“Too right,” he promised. “Today, tomorrow, day after that. For a long time, till I believe ya don’t need me to ask any more.”
I leaned over to his side, hugging him as hard as I could behind the steering wheel. “I love you.”
“I know,” he said, in his best Han Solo impersonation.
We laughed together, softly, and that more than anything was how I knew I was going to be okay. If I wasn’t exactly all right in that moment, I would be able to make it there with this man’s help.
“So,” he said to me, after I’d nearly hugged the life out of him, “we here to see the good pastor?”
“No, actually. Someone else.”
He arched an eyebrow but didn’t press me. We trust each other, me and James. He’d find out who I was here to see when we got inside, and he was fine with that.
I only hoped Heeral Stone was still here. I mean, the man didn’t live here. There was barely enough space inside for Jonas to have his little apartment. I still thought it was odd that I’ve never seen him around Lakeshore. I’ve never seen him anywhere, in fact, except here. At church.
A nighttime floodlight popped on over the front doors, illuminating the front steps and the sidewalk in the waning light of the approaching sunset. Another one flickered on over the sign declaring services were at ten a.m. on Sundays, all welcome.
That one flickered again, and went out.
“Strange how those lights keep doing that,” Heeral said to me. He was standing there in front of the doors in his black suit, leaning on his stout cane, hat in hand. The lights had distracted me as I stepped out of the car. Hadn’t even seen him come out of the church. “Hello again, Dell Powers.”
“Hello, Heeral.” He smiled when I said his name. It made him just that much less creepy. “Do you mind if I talk to you?”
“Not at all, my dear. Come on inside. Er, just you, if’n ya would.”
James hadn’t gotten out of the car yet. I wanted to ask why James couldn’t come with me to talk about Jonas Albright’s dog, but Heeral answered before I could.
“I’m a bit shy, ya might say. Come on in. Just you.”
He turned away as James finally opened the door on his sid
e. He slid out and turned to me, and as he did, his brows knitted down. “What is it?”
“Um. I’m going to go talk to someone. By myself. Just for a few minutes. Okay?”
“You’re sure?”
Just that. I nodded to him. It wasn’t like I was walking into the red light district of King’s Cross up in Sydney. I was just going to sit in a small church for a few minutes and talk to a slightly suspicious old man with a cane. What could go wrong?
“I’m sure, James. Wait for me here. I won’t be long.”
“Just going to see a man about a dog,” he joked.
“Right.”
Inside the church the lights were on. The place was never locked. I suppose Pastor Albright locked up the door to his apartment, but anyone who needed to come inside at night and say a few prayers to the Almighty was always welcome here. I guess that extended to women like myself, hoping to find a lost dog.
Heeral was seated in one of the pews towards the back, close by, his hands resting on top of his cane, his focus toward the front of the room where the altar stood silently waiting for the next service to begin. “I often come here and sit, you know. The silence. The emptiness. It suits me.”
“An empty church suits you?” It was such an odd thing for someone to say. Of course, I was beginning to see just how odd Heeral was.
“Oh, it’s not so bizarre as all that,” Heeral assured me, holding a hand out for me to sit next to him. “Sometimes you can find answers in the silence. Elijah found God’s voice in a whisper, ya know.”
It took me a moment to remember he was talking about a Bible verse from the Old Testament. Something about thunder and lightning and a great roaring storm, and then God coming after in a silent kind of way. Been a long while since I’d read any part of the good book, but scenes like that tend to stay with you, to be sure.
Like the scenes from Revelations, for instance.
“I wanted to ask you,” I said to him as I sat down, “about what you told me earlier. About the pastor’s dog.”