“One way or another, their messages are rejections of the forgiving Holy God. The most obvious is the elevation of their leader to a godhead. In order to do this, they manipulate scripture to prove their message.
“One of the biggest indicators, though, is a dual set of ethics. They nearly always have an ‘us’ set of rules and an ‘everybody else’ set. A practice that scripture tells us used to infuriate Jesus when he came up against it.”
Tracy’s burger was getting cold, so I released her from her lecture for the time being and we returned to small talk. I was interested in her private practice, especially her focus on Christianity and how that worked in therapy.
“I’ve had some clients ask if I was Christian,” I said. “I knew it was important to them, but I really wasn’t sure how to answer. I mean, boundaries and all.”
“I know,” Tracy replied. “It’s a shame, but our profession seems to have no problem asking about sexual orientation but gets hung up on spiritual beliefs. I’m constantly surprised at colleagues who have no problem recognizing how physical symptoms—chronic pain and depression, for example—can affect a client’s treatment but can’t accept that religious beliefs can do the same, if not more. People have no problem talking about holistic approaches when they discuss crystals, shakras, or meditation, but bring Jesus into it? They freak out.
“Basically though,” she went on, “I feel better when God is in the process too. As far as I’m concerned, God heals; I just ride shotgun.”
She laughed at herself. “Did I go overboard? Sorry. Just remember you invited me here for my opinions.”
“I remember,” I said, picking up the check. “I’m still buying.”
Later, as I was mulling over all that I had learned, I realized I had driven all the way back to work without once worrying about having an attack. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since that had occurred. In between clients, I dove back into the Internet.
I felt alive again.
On Monday, work started as a test of endurance. Marital truces that had been established between clients the week before disintegrated into an audition for War of the Roses II. A colleague’s bipolar client abruptly went off his medications, and another client suffering from depression upped hers—all without benefit of medical advice. Another colleague had two clients seek “permanent pain relief” through near-miss suicide attempts.
After listening to our therapists’ assorted tales of woe, our receptionist surfed to the weather link and confirmed the presence of a full moon. While most of us chuckled over the absurdity of the notion, we all secretly felt relieved at the chance to blame outside—hopefully transitory—factors to the widespread hysteria flooding the clinic.
With all the unrest at work, it took me until late Tuesday night to realize I hadn’t heard from Beth. We had seen each other briefly over the weekend at our A.A. “home,” the HP & Me club, but she had been about to meet with Reggie and I hadn’t wanted to keep them. She had seemed pleased when I told her I had met with Tracy.
Either she’d forgotten to call or she hadn’t left town, but if she had canceled the trip, it was even stranger that I hadn’t heard from her. A glance at the clock confirmed that, barring an emergency, it was too late to call. No matter how I worked it, I couldn’t make a three-day silence meet the requirements of an emergency, but it bothered me. I didn’t sleep well.
I left three messages the next morning, trying to catch Beth between errands or appointments. When she didn’t answer her cell phone either, I started to wonder if she was angry with me after all.
It wasn’t until I was driving home after work that I finally got a response from the Collier residence. Jimmy, Beth’s husband, picked up on the fourth ring, just before it would have clicked over into voice mail.
My relief died quickly, however. When I asked Jimmy when he expected Beth home, he responded with a very un-Jimmy-like awkwardness that set my heart thumping wildly.
“Jimmy? What’s wrong?” My fears that Beth was shutting me out flooded back, and I barely heard his reply. It didn’t matter though because the more he talked, the less sense he made. It finally broke through to me that Beth wasn’t mad. She wasn’t avoiding me.
Beth had disappeared.
Chapter Four
Considering the stress I was under, I needed a meeting. Instead of heading to the Club, I drove across town to the UW-Eau Claire campus and started to search the community bulletin boards. I found what I was looking for on the second one. A notice for the “Living Peace” workshop told me the Elect held their meetings in the back room of a coffee shop in town. They offered lectures once a week, seven p.m. on Wednesdays.
The saffron-colored handbill was distinctly at odds with the doom-laden catalog of present day terrors: war, 9/11, tsunamis, hurricanes, plunging economies, rising crime, the decline of family values. The dire litany droned on, tapping into the subliminal fears of everyday people, and then went on to offer a solution.
I snagged the notice off the board and left the campus. I needed to hurry if I was going to meet Jimmy before tonight’s meeting.
We met at a coffee shop near the mall. Jimmy looked different. I had never seen him frightened before. Even last summer, during a close call with a trespasser intent on breaking into his house, Jimmy had maintained a calm, collected demeanor.
Sitting across from each other, I watched his jaw muscles flex and his eyes, wide and dilated, dart from object to object with the hyperalertness of a man seeking answers. In spite of—or maybe because of— his anxiety, he started the conversation off in a professional, businesslike approach. I almost expected him to tap his spoon against his water glass to call us to order.
“Thanks for coming, Letty. I have to tell you I was pretty shocked last night when you called looking for Beth. I thought you were with her.”
“Did she tell you I would be?”
“Beth doesn’t tell me direct lies,” he half grinned. “At least, not anymore. But she’s a master at lies of omission. Basically, she let me assume you two were in this together. I would have felt safer if you were, and she knew that.” His eyes reflected the question he was holding back.
Avoiding his gaze, I picked up a sugar packet and began to tap the crystals from end to end while I contemplated what to say. Avoidance—after denial, an alcoholic’s best friend.
“You mentioned she’d gone to a Living Peace meeting?”
“Three of them,” Jimmy answered.
So Beth had been looking into this well before she and Reggie had broached the subject with me. More lies of omission.
“What did she say about them?”
“Well, she didn’t see hide nor hair of Maggie, for one thing. And she said the people smiled too much. Creeped her out. It wasn’t until the Discussion Suppers that the group started delving into more controversial topics like dedicating one’s life to the Elect and totally rejecting the world’s values. By that, they meant leaving jobs or families that don’t support the Elect’s beliefs.”
I had to backtrack. “What’s a Discussion Supper?”
Clearly surprised at my ignorance but ever courteous, Jimmy refrained from commenting. As he explained, I concentrated to stay focused through the waves of guilt and fear that were building in my chest.
After the second Peace meeting Beth had attended, she’d been approached by two group members. Smiling, of course. They offered tea and muffins and lavished attention on her.
“Beth said that even though she knew they were phony as hell, she could feel herself wanting to respond,” Jimmy said. “They ended up inviting her to Corinth House for supper with some of the righteous ones.” Jimmy’s fingers hooked air quotes over the last two words.
“Corinth House is where the group lives?”
“Only some of them. Just a few, really. I don’t know where the others stay, and that’s what worries me.” Before clarifying his concerns, Jimmy methodically returned to the chronological recitation of Beth’s path.
&nbs
p; “She went to a couple Discussion Suppers and at least one more Living Peace meeting. During this whole time, she kept laying it on about wanting God’s will in her life and about being frightened of me. She was building a cover story that I was overly controlling of her—and her money—and hinting at abuse. It was the money that got their attention. They offered her a safe refuge. She went to Corinth House two days later. That would be Sunday afternoon.”
My mind was reeling. The entire time we had sat together on Saturday evening, she had this planned. Here I had been congratulating myself on making her see reason, and she had been planning her packing list. Jimmy wasn’t the only one who had assumed too much.
“What did you mean when you said you were worried about where the others stay?”
“The Corinth House folks made it clear that they were just the tip of the iceberg. Before she moved in, they told her she would be part of a large community of believers dedicated to preparing The Way. Whatever that is. But they wouldn’t give her any hint where this community was located or if she would qualify going there.”
“Building a sense of exclusivity,” I said.
“And intrigue,” he agreed. “Before she went in, we set up a signal. She was supposed to call the bank each morning, ostensibly to monitor her accounts, but would ring my private line instead. She called Monday and Tuesday mornings. I haven’t heard from her since.”
He held up a hand to forestall my objections at his alarm after only two missed phone calls.
“I’m hoping it’s nothing more serious than being relocated from Corinth House sooner than we expected. Still… Everything she learned beforehand told us it would be several weeks of proving her commitment to the group’s ideals. So of course I have to wonder why the sudden departure. And why hasn’t she called? She has to know I’m worried sick. On the other hand, if she was taken to the main commune or whatever you call it, then we knew there would be a period of time where it would be difficult for her to get word to me. Frankly, we had hoped she would have seen Maggie before having to make that transition.”
We fell silent while we each pondered the risks my friend had taken.
After several minutes, Jimmy said softly, “Why didn’t you go with her, Letty?”
Reaching for my water glass, I swallowed a sip, but the water tasted like guilt. Now it was my turn to avoid eye contact. The silence strung out while the question lay between us like a living thing. For a person who makes her living from insight and communication, I was a pretty useless.
As we walked to our cars, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. His eyes pored into mine and searched. Whatever he saw made him shake his head, frowning.
“Letty, be careful. Don’t go off half-cocked. I don’t want to be worrying about you too.”
“Don’t worry, Jimmy,” I said. “I’m too careful for my own good.”
Following my talk with Jimmy, I spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting in the public library, researching and making illicit phone calls from between the racks of the nonfiction section. A librarian walked up from behind once, startling me into a yelp, and scaring the hell out of both of us. I tried to catch Tracy between clients, to no avail. I left a message, but my need wasn’t great enough to warrant use of the emergency protocol listed in her greeting. I also left a message for Eli, wanting to fill him in. Regardless of our fight, he would want to know about Beth.
The pungent scent of designer drinks hit me as soon as I walked into the coffee shop later that evening. The cafe, divided into cozy conversational nooks as well as solitary Internet escape hatches, was set up to attract the college and career-minded crowd. The décor was a studied attempt at casual funky.
Surveying my surroundings, I noticed a few people moving to the back. A hand-lettered Living Peace sign on yellow construction paper had been thumbtacked to the wall, a big cartoon arrow pointing right.
The far less trendy backroom had flecked blue industrial carpeting and pale blue paint that felt more utilitarian than soothing. Plastic folding chairs added to the generic meeting room ambiance. Knots of people stood scattered across the room, and it was easy to pick out who belonged and who didn’t. Beth was right. Several members skipped “pleasant” in their expressional repertoire and headed right for “beaming maniacally.” Definitely creepy.
Also creepy, but less obvious, was the evidence of a possible power hierarchy at work. The folks with the face-splitting grins seemed to be doing most of the grunt work of setting up—hauling tables and chairs, dragging a podium up on the small stage, unpacking food from brown paper grocery bags, and arranging it on a long banquet table. In contrast, three or four members whose facial expressions didn’t make them look stoned or orgasmic concentrated on the organizational end of the class—giving directions to the Smilers, setting up a name/address roster, arranging a stack of pamphlets and so on.
I moved in for a closer look at the snack table laden with homemade breads and muffins. No donuts. No butter or margarine. Not even any jam. Dreading what I might find, I approached the large coffee urns and realized the worst: herbal tea or sugar-free lemonade. I toyed with the idea of going out to the front for real coffee and, regretfully, decided it would set the wrong tone. A Smiler caught my frown and spread her arms invitingly across the refreshments.
“Maranatha! Be at home!”
With nerves already raw, I had to stab my fingernails into my palms to keep from barking out a laugh. She looked like a bit player in a cut-rate butter commercial. Not everyone shared my cynicism. A wispy thin woman with a minefield of acne across her cheeks, forehead, and chin accepted the offering and shyly selected a fibrous-looking muffin. Her jeans were at least one size too big, and the bulky sweatshirt she wore reduced her form to a gray wasteland. In contrast to her bland, don’t-see-me demeanor, her hair was a glorious riot of auburn richness which she had scraped back into a ponytail.
I watched one of the group’s higher-ups move to the thin woman and, putting a hand lightly on her shoulder, gently lead her to the row of chairs lined up before the lectern. They sat next to each other with the member angled in, nodding and smiling. The Elect woman was dressed in a simple skirt and blouse, sensible shoes, no makeup. Her long gray hair was pulled back into a bun, and she didn’t wear any jewelry. A man in a short-sleeved shirt and tie approached and flanked the thin woman, sitting on her other side.
Choosing a seat a row back, I watched the scene play out and thought about Tracy’s description of love bombing. The pair tag-teamed the newcomer, who appeared pathetically grateful for their concentrated attention.
For Maggie, after a childhood spent coping with an alcoholic mother and having just been jilted, the maneuver would have been irresistible. Attention was the bait; acceptance, the hook.
A woman sat down next to me. She too wore the no-makeup-and-long-skirted uniform of the group’s females. Smiling gently at me, she made eye contact for a full count of three seconds and then turned to face front. Her approach was decidedly more subdued than the one I had just witnessed, demonstrating a higher level of skill. Accurately assessing my discomfort with lavish attention, she had adjusted her approach accordingly.
Let the games begin…
For a span of a minute, I pretended to ignore her, then turned as if to examine her covertly, letting my eyes skitter away when she glanced in my direction.
A stirring at the front of the room interrupted our dance of manipulation, drawing everyone’s attention. A short elderly man in black dress pants and matching black button-down shirt walked in and crossed over to the lectern. As one, group members bowed their heads in a ceremonial greeting. Those of us who were as yet unaffiliated cast nervous glances around. Then, one by one, the uninitiated touched chin to chest, and closed their eyes. Even I, knowledgeable about group persuasion, felt the pressure. Complying, I tucked my head down but peeked from side to side noting the almost unanimous compliance. All but one man, who sat one row back with his arms crossed, joined in the homage or prayer or whate
ver it symbolized.
“Maranatha, children.”
As a chorus of voices returned the greeting, I wondered what maranatha meant. I raised my eyes to the man standing in front of the group. If Santa Claus were a businessman, he would look like this. A full head of frosty white hair and matching beard surrounded gently twinkling eyes. A closer inspection revealed dark brown eyes instead of Kris Kringle blue and he didn’t sport a jelly belly, either. Altogether, an attractive man.
He introduced himself to us as Dr. Abe. The professional title without surname gave him an aura of gentle authority. His voice, soft and tender, carried well, made him even more compelling.
He began the lecture with a gloomy litany of the world’s problems. He spent time on each issue he raised, reciting statistics, detailing tragic events and natural disasters in that gentle tone. His speaking voice had a trained resonance to it, an even, rhythmic cadence that contrasted sharply with the horrific images his message conjured.
His appeal was frighteningly obvious. To me, anyway. Dr. Abe appeared to be a master at regulating his speech patterns and tonalities. While falling just short of hypnotic, his voice soothed and captivated. He was particularly adept at shifting back and forth between expressing infinite sadness over the evils of the world and a kind of paternal pity at the misguided methods most of us used to guard against them.
However, the message itself wasn’t as sophisticated as the delivery. A portion of time was spent on the effects of stress, a simplified explanation of our body’s immune system, and modern medicine’s inadequate methods of dealing with it. He pushed on with more grim talk about medications with a healthy dose of anti-pharmaceutical rhetoric thrown in as well. Regardless, he played the issue up well, and a few of the attendees wanted to comment. One woman raised her hand tentatively. Dr. Abe made no move to recognize her and, lacking encouragement, she lowered it.
The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (A Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery Book 4) Page 3