Murder in the Second Pew

by K. P. Gresham

  He headed for the kitchen, not needing to turn on any lights. The ranch house was a four bedroom—churches had to prepare for pastors who might have lots of children—but it was utilitarian in style. Bedrooms were on the south side, all off a center hallway. A family bathroom was wedged in between the smaller of the two. Front room, kitchen, dining room and study were on the north side.

  The parsonage was built for a family. Matt was all alone.

  The moon shone through the window over the sink as he headed into the kitchen. He pulled open the fridge door. Not much there. He grabbed the milk and then went to the cupboard for Frosted Flakes and a bowl. He moved to the sink to look out into the night while he ate.

  He’d known she was coming back. That had always been the plan. So why was he so unprepared to see her again?

  He slurped an overfull spoonful of cereal into his mouth and took in the silhouette of Grace Lutheran’s steeple spearing the starlit Texas sky. Picture perfect. His gaze strayed to the yard between church and parsonage, then to the river, then to the new back porch of the Fire and Ice House. With all the trees shading the deck, the area was pitch black. The void left him feeling disappointed.

  Then he saw the flare of a match, a shadow of a beautiful redhead’s face and the end of a cigarette.

  Angie was out there.

  He stepped back from the window, lest she catch him looking at her with the bright moonlight beaming into the kitchen. Then he chided himself. What was that? Pure middle school. Weren’t they both adults?

  Leaving the cereal bowl half-finished in the sink, he went back to the bedroom and threw on a pair of jeans, tossed a T-shirt over his head and shoved his feet into loafers.

  He was out the back door and halfway through the church yard when he realized that Angie could plainly see him in the moonlight from her porch. He’d made it even more obvious by choosing a white T-shirt.

  Heck. Bring it on.

  Matt crossed the bridge and walked the stone path around the Fire and Ice House to the back porch.

  She was still there, and, realizing it too late, he had no idea what to say to her.

  “You didn’t look too pleased to see me last night,” Angie said, breaking the silence.

  “I was just surprised is all.” He walked up the three steps to the deck, pulled a plastic chair from one of the tables and sat down next to her. Well, not next to her, but a good conversational space away. He shook his head. Hadn’t left the middle school mentality yet.

  He’d learned as a pastor that sometimes generalities were the best way to start an awkward conversation. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  Angie gave a chuckle and pulled a drag on her cigarette. “I’m sure Elsbeth shares your appreciation.”

  He smiled in spite of himself. Elsbeth Novak had almost had a stroke when construction had begun on the porch that would be in full view from almost every room in the church. Elsbeth had even gone to the city council to protest that the Fire and Ice House was breaking the city ordinance requiring that bars be at least three hundred feet away from churches and schools. The city council had gone out and measured Angie’s new porch. It was exactly three hundred and one foot away from the church.

  “I heard Elsbeth has a good mad goin’ for you right now,” she said.

  “I made the most heinous mistake,” he said, chuckling. “I had the audacity to suggest that the church needs new altar cloths without going through her first.”

  “Well, that’ll send you to hell, for sure.”

  He sat back more comfortably in his chair. “No, really. I like this porch. Lots of room. The TVs. No mosquitoes.”

  “It’s too dry for mosquitoes.” She started to laugh at him, then relented. “Okay, I did have the mosquito misters put in since we’re by the river.”

  “Rain’s gotta come sometime,” he said hopefully.

  They sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the wind blow through the leaves overhead and the cicadas sing their wiry song. The night air had cooled to a tolerable eighty degrees or so.

  “Heard a kid found a body in the river a coupla days back. Not too far from here.”

  Angie’s voice was still sexy as hell, he noted. “Yeah. Scared the boy half to death. Some girl that disappeared about ten years back. Melinda Platt.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Did you know her?” Matt asked.

  “I knew her.” Angie’s tone sounded less than sympathetic. She dashed out her cigarette and reached for the pack. “Whole high school knew her. Some better than others.”

  Matt could hear the innuendo and dislike in her tone. “I take it you two didn’t get along.”

  “Melinda wanted work to buy a horse. She had visions of being some national rodeo barrel racing star. Whatever. My mother wouldn’t hire her.”

  “Melinda retaliated?”

  “Let’s just say she knew where to find horse manure and how to sling it. It was a good week before Danny Don Dube caught up with the”–Angie paused–“uh, wench, and told her to quit vandalizin’ the Fire and Ice House front windows.” Angie chuckled. “Callie Mae was fit to be tied.”

  “I’m waiting for Callie Mae to tell me when she wants the funeral.”

  Angie tapped a Winston from the pack. “Let me know when, so I can arrange a beer delivery that day.”

  “Angie.” He smiled in spite of himself.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “No love lost, that’s all.” She lit her cigarette and fanned out the match. “Don’t worry, Preacher. I won’t spoil your beautiful funeral.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Angie puffed her cigarette. “My bar closes at 1:00 a.m. What’s your excuse for bein’ up at this hour?” She still sat in the darkness, but his eyes were adjusting to the black. She’d taken off her ever-present bandana and was letting her hair flow free in the breeze. She still wore her cut-offs and Fire and Ice House T-shirt, but her feet were bare.

  “I said, whatcha doin’ awake at this time of night?” she repeated.

  He refused to tell her that her appearance had caused him a sleepless night. “I had an inspiration for a sermon,” he said instead.

  Again she chuckled. “For the funeral? Good luck. Or maybe for Sunday mornin’. Let me guess. The prodigal son returns?” She drew another puff. “Only nobody’s killin’ the fatted calf for me.”

  “I don’t know about that. Bo and Dorothy Jo are pretty happy to have you back.”

  “Chelsea sure isn’t,” she said. “And I’m not real happy she’s workin’ at my place. A girl dresses like that, she’s askin’ for trouble. Brings in the wrong kind of customers, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Apparently, she helped out in a pinch.”

  “I’m back now, and we’re not goin’ to have any more pinches—in work shifts or asses. Though I might miss the revenue from all the men comin’ in to gawk at her. Even got one of your council members becomin’ a regular.”

  He wondered if she was talking about Owen Seegler but decided not to rise to the bait and ask her who it was. This time he changed the subject. “So, what’d you think of your family across the pond?”

  He could hear her smile. “I understand a lot about Maeve, now. About me.” He swore he could see her eyes gleam in the darkness. Damn, she was beautiful.

  “They’re all Catholic, they all smoke, they all drink, they all laugh and they all have tempers,” she continued. “Sound familiar? I’ve even got a cousin that could pass for my twin. Almost.”

  He stopped just short of saying the woman must be stunning.

  “Learned a lot about the history of the family. Of Ireland.” She paused. “And I learned a helluva lot about the Protestants.”

  Matt sighed. The thought of people killing and using God as the excuse turned his stomach. “Sometimes I think the second commandment is completely misunderstood,” he said quietly, realizing too late he’d actually uttered the words out loud.

  “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord
thy God in vain?”

  He’d forgotten she was a good Catholic.

  “Most folks think it’s about swearing. I think it’s about people who do things in the name of God to justify their crimes.” Hadn’t he said almost those exact same words to Elsbeth?

  “Well, well.” Angie inclined her head. “Thus endeth that lesson.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You never cease to surprise me.” She rose and headed toward the bar. “You want a drink?”

  “No.” He stood as well. “I just wanted to come over and welcome you back. Last night was…awkward…with Chelsea and Zach. I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t glad to see you.”

  A warm gust blew through the trees overhead, revealing her face in the moonlight for a brief moment. She was laughing at him. “Still don’t know what to do with me, do you?”

  “Not a damned clue.” He walked down the steps and into the night.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Pastor’s Day Off

  Thursdays were Matt’s day off and he often took the day to drive to Houston to see his old friend and mentor, Fred Osterburg. Fred had been the senior pastor at Grace when Matt had interned, but he was now retired and teaching part time at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

  One thing Fred had impressed upon Matt was to make sure to plan for retirement. Lutheran pastors’ pensions were slim to nothing.

  Matt enjoyed the two-hour drive into Houston. It gave him time to think about things—maybe a theme for a sermon series, maybe a solution to some problem at the church, sometimes even a thought to the future, although that was dangerous territory. Sometimes looking to the future had the sinister effect of throwing him back into dealing with the past.

  Today his mind was on none of those things. He hadn’t slept well last night due to Angie’s parting words: Still don’t know what to do with me, do you?

  Oh, he knew what he wanted to do with her, all right. She was everything a man wanted. Smart. Funny. Real. And he’d be a liar if he didn’t admit she was the sexiest woman he’d ever met. Between her fiery red hair and a body no apron could hide, he wanted her more than he’d ever before wanted a woman—including the fiancé who had dumped him when he said he wanted to become a minister.

  Yet Matt Hayden was also a pastor, and Angie O’Day was everything in a woman he needed to avoid. Her reputation around the movers and shakers in his church was that of a wanton harlot, the product of a whorehouse tryst. Neither was true, of course, but Angie’s curse was the harsh judgment of perception. Then, there was her religion. She was Roman Catholic. He was Lutheran. That old war had played out for over five hundred years. He wasn’t much into history, but his parishioners certainly were.

  Well, make that Elsbeth Novak, though he wasn’t sure that others wouldn’t make trouble for him once their paradigms were challenged.

  Matt had made it his business to always be in control. Whether he was an undercover cop trying to ferret out drug lords, or a man on a mission to fight corruption, or a pastor who, albeit a bit more humbly, shepherded his flock, Matt was a man who decided what needed to be done and did it. He didn’t squirm with uncertainty or indulge philosophical debates about “thought, word and deed” versus instinct, which others might call original sin. He allowed that primal wants came from the need to exist, and that it was up to the human to control those desires.

  There was nothing humane about his trying to control his primal desires for Angie O’Day. He had thought, given the length of her Ireland visit, he’d be able to master himself when she came back.

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a pastor after all. He chuckled. Elsbeth would sure be happy if she heard him say that. And Frank Ballard, the U.S. Marshal in charge of his safety, would never let him live it down if he quit. The fact of that matter was, however, he was still almost more cop than pastor. Whenever a crime was committed or a wrong done, it was his cop mode that came to the fore first.

  Now he was on the road to see Fred. Should he discuss Angie with Fred? Or whether or not he should even be a pastor? Maybe Matt should look for another line of work.

  Something stirred in his memory. Angie had been talking about finding work last night, hadn’t she? No, wait a minute. Not work for her.

  No, Angie had said that Melinda Platt had come to the Ice House looking for work. Melinda had wanted a job so that she could purchase her own horse. The girl had visions of rodeo stardom, and from what James W. had said, she was pretty good at barrel racing.

  Without realizing it, Matt finally found relief from his thoughts about Angie as his mind clicked back into cop mode, thinking about the murdered girl.

  He needed to find out more about rodeos. Where would someone who wanted to be a rodeo star travel to catch the—what did they call it? Circuit?

  Matt shook his head at that. She wouldn’t be looking for a circuit until she had a horse, right? He was pretty sure that professional barrel racers had their own horses. It was like a psychic thing between the horse and rider, from what he’d heard.

  So, Melinda didn’t have a horse when she left town.

  And that business about buying a bus ticket to Austin. James W. had said she could’ve taken a bus anywhere out of Austin—it was a hub for the Greyhound Bus Company. However, when people bought tickets, didn’t they usually purchase a ticket through to their end destination? For instance, if Melinda Platt had wanted to go to, say, Laredo, Texas, wouldn’t the ticket she had purchased in Dannerton been for Laredo? It had been years since he’d ridden a bus. Maybe they did things different now.

  Just about the time Matt had that thought, he realized he was only two miles out of Dannerton. Shrugging, he decided to stop by the bus station and check out his theory.

  As he drove down its main street, he unwillingly remembered his first impression of the small, dirty town. Dannerton was a den of deadbeats. Yes, Matt knew that was a less than “Christian” view of the place, but that had been his initial take less than a year back when he’d first arrived, and try as he might, he hadn’t shaken off the impression.

  Its main claims to fame were the gas stations and fast food stops that called to drivers heading east or west on I-10. The further you got from the Interstate, the dirtier the town became. Dannerton was home to three junk yards, seven bars, Paradise Funeral Home, McDonald’s, the Greyhound Bus Station and the high school. There was a grocery store as well, but its filthy aisles and grimy freezers kept most folks away, except for the high school kids that came after classes to “hang.” Most area-wide parents were unhappy that the high school was in Dannerton, but its central location between the small towns made sense from a commuting standpoint. Only a mile down I-10, even the well-known Bertska’s BBQ and Bakery had managed to get itself incorporated into its own township—Farmer’s City—to escape the Dannerton image.

  Though Matt hadn’t been to the bus station before, it was easy to find, situated as it was on the town’s main street.

  Walking into the station’s lobby, he was reminded quickly of Dannerton’s grocery store. Didn’t anyone in this town own a mop? He went to the ticket window and waited for the attendant to look up from her crossword puzzle.

  “Where you headed?” the gray-haired, gray-faced woman asked.

  Matt attempted a charming smile. “Actually, I’m just looking for information. If I wanted to buy a ticket, say, to…” He considered. Where would a rodeo barrel racer find a rodeo? “To Cody, Wyoming, for example, and that route took me through Austin, would I buy the ticket to Austin, and then another ticket to Cody?”

  The gray lady sat up straighter and started working her computer keyboard. “The fare to Cody, Wyoming, is—”

  “No, I don’t need a ticket. I just want to know if I have to purchase a ticket for every junction on the trip.”

  “You mean first a ticket to Austin, then a ticket to…” she studied her screen, “to Dallas, then to Amarillo, then to Pueblo—”

  “Yes, that’s wha
t I mean.”

  “No. You’d purchase a ticket to Cody, Wyoming. Those would just be stops along the way.”

  “So if I bought a ticket that said Austin on it, that would mean Austin was my final stop.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is that the way it worked ten years ago?”

  She gave him a tired look. “That’s the way it’s worked ever since I’ve been here, and that’s over twenty years.”

  “Thanks for your help.”

  He walked out of the lobby and back into the Texas heat. So Melinda specifically wanted to stop in Austin. Why not Houston? Why not Dallas? Were there better horse deals to be had in Austin? Maybe she’d gotten a line on a job. The bus fare for Dannerton to Austin, a two-hour drive, had to be more expensive than the one-hour trip from Dannerton to Houston.

  Matt got back in his car and headed out of town. He passed the first of the three junkyards, then came to a stop at the traffic light in front of a derelict-looking bar with its “Pit Stop” sign dangling precariously by one bolt above its front door. What a difference between that place and the Fire and Ice House. He did a double-take at the bar’s parking lot when the light turned green.

  One thing he disliked about small-town living was that everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business. One reason that happened was because everyone knew what vehicles everyone else drove. He didn’t much care for the thought that he was turning into a small-town gossip himself, but he was pretty sure he knew who owned that old Ford pick-up in the Pit Stop’s parking lot.

  That truck belonged to Owen Seegler.

  ***

  Fred Osterburg was a short, slightly built man with an unusually long face. Coupled with his crooked nose and oddly trimmed beard, Fred brought to Matt’s mind an image of a short Abe Lincoln, which always caused Matt to smile.

  Matt had spent three years at Wartburg Seminary in Iowa, studying to become a Lutheran minister. He’d learned Greek and Latin and taken homiletics and church administration. His seminary experience had not truly prepared him for shepherding a congregation; however, his internship under Fred Osterburg had been priceless. Matt was happy to still have the elder preacher to guide him along the shaky way of pastoring.