by Alt, Madelyn
I scrambled off his lap, ignoring his growl of protest and evading the grab of his hands. Swallowing hard against the insistent twirling of desire that was having its way with me, I backed away, just so that I could keep my eye on him.
Some of the tension left his shoulders. He met my gaze. “No?” he asked simply.
I shook my head. “No. Not . . . yet.”
It was all I could offer, and yet it seemed to be enough. Marcus sprang up out of the chair, his lean body all taut muscle and masculine vigor, not to grab me again but to head for the door.
“Where are you going?” I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t not ask.
“We.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t seem to summon a single protest. Not that I really wanted to.
Allowing Minnie the run of the place, I slipped on my Mary-Jane tennies, grabbed my cell from my purse, slid my stretchy wristband of keys over my hand, and followed him out the door. At that point, I think I might have followed him anywhere.
Yes, the kisses were that good.
Outside the sky had darkened considerably. Marcus lead me to his motorcycle and handed me the spare helmet he kept strapped onto the back. I glanced up at the sky. “Looks like it’s going to rain.”
“Nah. It’s not supposed to rain until after midnight. There’s plenty of time to take you for a ride.”
Oh, now if that didn’t give me all kinds of forbidden ideas . . .
He strapped on his own helmet, then swung one long leg over the back of the bike. Looking back at me, he patted the seat behind him. “Hop on.”
I eased onto the seat, shimmying up close to him. Hey, I had an excuse. One pothole and I’d have road rash if I didn’t.
He reached around and drew my arms around his waist, giving me even more of an excuse. Turning my face to one side, I smiled against his shoulder and tried not to hold on too tightly.
Something told me he was using excuses, too, because every once in a while he would take his hand off the handlebar and curve his fingers around my knee, holding my leg tightly in place next to his.
At a stoplight, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket to check the time. Six fifty-seven. I also noticed I had two text messages. Making sure that the light was still red, I clicked the first, from Steff: I saw that, you hussy. I grinned, and texted back, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The next text was from Tom, sent only five minutes before. I started getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach before I clicked on it. Had he seen us out on the bike? My nervousness proved all for naught, though. It read only, Thx. Short, not so sweet, and to the point. Not even a sorry, a we-need-to-talk, or a have-a-good-evening. It was beginning to crystallize just where I stood with him, and I didn’t think it was by his side. Tom’s questionable weekend activities only added fuel to that already smoking fire.
And then there was Marcus, my own secret flame-thrower.
Marcus patted my leg to let me know the light was about to change. I flipped the phone closed and tucked it back into the fold-over waistband of my yoga pants, determined not to give Tom another thought. At least not for the time being.
We rode up and down city streets and county roads, letting the early evening air cool our bodies and our thoughts. But when we somehow ended up on the road that Grace Baptist Church was on, an undeniable urge overcame me. I leaned forward, plastering my body along Marcus’s back in order to shout over the air whipping past us: “Can we stop?”
He shouted back over his shoulder, “We can stop anywhere you like if you’re going to do that.”
He pulled the bike into the parking lot, his body moving as one with it, leaning into the curve. I rather enjoyed that. After we’d removed our helmets and I had shaken out my helmet hair, he took my hand, linking his fingers with mine. I tried not to smile too much, but . . . yeah, it was a struggle.
A light was on in the church office. We walked up that way and tried the door. “Hellooooo?” I called up the hall. “Anyone here?”
I heard the scrape of a chair on hard floor, and in the next moment Emily Angelis poked her head out of the doorway to her husband’s office. “Oh, hello there,” she said as though wondering what we must be doing there at that time of the evening.
I cleared my throat and offered a friendly wave. “I hope you don’t mind. We were out in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d show Marcus your lovely flower garden.”
Her face brightened. “Oh, of course not. Spend as much time as you like. It does look like rain, though, so just keep an eye on the sky.”
“Thanks. Would you mind if we walk straight through to the back? I’m sure Marcus would love to see your sanctuary as well. It’s so beautiful.”
How could she not give her permission? “I’ll probably not be here when you are through—Mother will have me off to bath and bed soon, I’m sure. I’ll let her know to check in on you later, to be sure you got off all right.”
“Fine. Thank you,” I told her with a smile.
“The flower garden?” Marcus said as we meandered down the hall.
“Well, not really. Hush,” I said, as we entered the cavernous sanctuary. I paused and pulled his head down to whisper in his ear: “Voices carry like crazy in here.”
“But we’re not saying anything important,” he whispered back, taking the opportunity to nuzzle my neck.
I swatted him playfully. “Come on.”
Through a door on the opposite side of the sanctuary, we found our way to the church’s first expansion wing, the one the new addition would mirror to create Pastor Bob’s “Y for Yahweh” layout. Most of the doors along the hall stood open. But which one might it have been? I paused in each one, trying to see out the windows into the garden beyond in order to pinpoint . . .
“This one,” I said, gazing into a comfortable lounge room fitted with several mismatched sofas arranged in a circle. Even through the dense screens in the open windows I could easily see across the garden to the rose arbor where I had sat the day of the fundraiser. “I’m almost sure of it. We would have had perfect acoustics out there—there isn’t much stuff in here to absorb sound.”
“Hm. Sounds like an intriguing assessment. Want to tell me what we’re talking about here?”
“Well . . . I just wanted to be sure of something. It’s been bothering me off and on ever since that day. Pieces just weren’t fitting together.”
He chucked me lightly under the chin. “You’re talking in circles.”
“Not really. You remember what I told Chief Boggs about that day?”
“About seeing Ty Bennett arguing with Ronnie Maddox?” he asked.
I nodded. “And I did. And it was vicious, ferocious, everything you don’t want to witness in an argument between two people. For a moment, I was really afraid that she was going to go off on him in a big way . . . but never him,” I said, musing along with a troubled brow. “Oh, he was mad all right, and I’ll bet he had some fairly large bursts of testosterone running through those veins, egging him on to give as good as he got, but he remained in control. He stood his ground. He never once reacted in a physical way to her taunts or even to her attacks.” I met Marcus’s gaze. “And they didn’t know I was there until the end. They were inside the church, away from prying eyes. They had no reason to censor themselves.”
“You don’t think he did it?”
“I don’t think he did, no.”
He paused, thinking. “They have him in custody right now.”
“Presumably on eyewitness testimony placing him at the site in an altercation with the victim. Mine. But how many other people were on site that day as well?”
“Not everyone could have done it. Not everyone had a reason to kill her. If not Ty, then who?”
“Who even said a reason was needed?” I argued, playing devil’s advocate. “Sociopaths don’t always need a reason, do they?”
“You’re thinking a sociopath showed up out of the blue at the church fundraiser and selected Veronica Maddox out of hundreds of o
ther women to be his next victim?”
“Well . . . no,” even I was forced to concede. “But there’s something else.”
“Something that involves the garden.”
I nodded, pleased by his perceptiveness. “After that first fight, they went their separate ways. Ty disappeared into the church to meet up with his buddies on the construction crew. Ronnie wheedled her way into an impromptu counseling session with Pastor Bob. The two of them went off to Pastor Bob’s office.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It didn’t occur to me until today that Pastor Bob’s office is on this side of the sanctuary—you saw so yourself tonight. It was the room that his wife was working in. That day, the two of them—I would swear to this, even though I only saw it in passing—paused at his office, then continued on through the sanctuary. And then I left and went to sit in the garden.”
He was beginning to see my point; I could see it in his eyes. “And then you overheard the second argument from the garden sometime later.”
“Yes. I think from this very room. And that’s not the only thing that’s strange,” I said as I watched Marcus more closely assess the room we were in.
“There’s more?”
“Pastor Bob told Tom that he didn’t know Ronnie well. That he had too many parishioners to keep track of them all, he said. It was a lie, Marcus. He’d counseled her that very day, however briefly. Why would he lie?”
“People lie for all sorts of reasons, most of which don’t make sense to anyone but themselves. Maybe he thought he would be involved in the investigation and didn’t want the negative publicity.”
“Maybe. But a man who will lie to protect himself might also act accordingly, mightn’t he? Because I think it was Pastor Bob in this room with Ronnie. I don’t think it was Ty at all. Letty Clark, the pastor’s mother-in-law, had come around back to try to catch up with whoever it was, but they were long gone. I had gone around to the front door and saw Ronnie leave the church in a hurry, wiping tears from her eyes. I went inside to try to head off Mrs. Clark at the pass, and Ty was coming up the stairs from the basement at that time. He hadn’t seen anyone.”
“So . . . if Ty was downstairs . . .”
“Someone else had to be in this room with Ronnie. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“You know what? I’m starting to get an uneasy feeling about this.”
“Join the club. I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t know what.”
He took my hand. “Let’s get out of this room.”
In the hall, I said, “That way. To the right. I want to go out to the garden for a sec to see if I can get Elias to connect with me again.” I smiled up at him as I grabbed the doorknob and pushed . . .
And nearly bowled over Letty Clark, who had been reaching for the doorknob from the outside.
“Oh my goodness! Mrs. Clark, are you all right?” I reached out to steady the older woman, as it appeared she was wobbling on the edge of the concrete slab ready to topple. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know anyone was there, and—”
“Thank you, dear. Yes, of course I’m all right. What on earth are you doing in here? I just came to check on the two of you to see if you needed anything. My daughter said you’d be in the garden.” Her lips pursed almost accusingly.
“We’re sorry about that. I guess we just got to talking,” I told her as Marcus gripped my hand harder. Why, I wondered. “By the way, have you seen Pastor Bob? I was hoping to be able to talk to him for a moment before we leave. I saw your daughter just a little while ago.”
“They’re both off to beddy-byes by now, dear. A touch early, but poor Robert has been so overwhelmed by things, he’s been allowing himself to get a bit under the weather. I sent them off to get some much needed rest.” She glanced up at the sky. “Well, if you’re going to have a little look-see at the garden with your beau there, you’d best be doing it now,” she told us. “The wind is starting to pick up. I have a feeling we’re going to get that rain earlier than the weatherman told us.”
“We’re on our way out there now. Thanks for letting us know.”
“I think she was listening to us,” Marcus whispered as we rounded the corner toward the garden.
“Mrs. Clark? Why would she do that?”
U-L-C
The thought prodded its way into my brain, unbidden.
“I don’t know. But I got that feeling—you know, the quick, look-over-your-shoulder, someone’s-there feeling. And then there she was.”
I frowned. “Hm. You could be right. Maybe she’s just bored. You know, one of those old ladies who likes to stick her nose way too deeply into other people’s business.”
Out in the garden again, I noticed Mrs. Clark was right. The wind really had picked up. It was whipping the trees in the wooded patches at the far edges of the field, not to mention the big maples in the windbreak along the church sidewalk. Dried leaves, crisped by too little rain, drifted down from them and were tossed around by vicious air currents. At least it would be harder to hear us now; the roar of the wind was pretty constant.
“I think he’s with us,” I told Marcus. “Elias. Back there, I heard one of his usual Ouija clues in my head. U-L-C. Maybe we can tap into him out here, closer to the cave-in. You’re a medium. You should be able to zoom right in, shouldn’t you?”
“I could try. But Maggie, for whatever reason, he’s chosen you to come through to. He might not feel comfortable with me.”
“But why?” I wailed, distraught. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear at all. “He has to realize I can’t help him. I’m not clairvoyant. I’m not a medium like you. He has to see that I’m just a plain old empath, hardly of any use to him at all.”
“Plain old . . . come here.” He spun me around to face him and took both my hands in his, lifting them to his mouth. “Darlin’, you are not a plain old anything. You have a light to you that is so bright. I wish you could see that. I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.” He paused, then added, “I do think you’re selling your abilities short. If you’re getting cues, visual or thought or otherwise, then you do have mediumistic gifts as well. The way these things present themselves from person to person varies. Few of us are ‘just’ anything.”
U-N-I-C-E
Aw, thanks, Elias, I thought back in response, for that vote of confidence. You’re pretty nice, too, for someone who doesn’t actually have a body anymore. No offense.
Letty came marching briskly around the corner of the building, carrying two steaming cups in her hands. “I thought you two lovebirds could use a bit of warming up,” she said. Never mind that in spite of the wind and impending rainstorm, the temps were still hovering around the eighty-degree mark. A nice drop from the mid-nineties of earlier in the day but hardly one that would inspire the need for hot drinks.
“Thank you,” I told her, reaching for the offered mug. I took a sip, grimacing at both the heat and the thick, syrupy quality of the tea. “How sweet of you.”
I gave Marcus a pointed look. He quickly followed suit, taking a gulp of his own. His eyes widened and met mine, but he managed to force it down.
She hemmed and hawed a moment, shifting her weight from one foot to another as she watched us. “I, well, I hope you’ll forgive me, but I couldn’t help but overhear the two of you a little while ago. Do you really believe that Tyler Bennett isn’t responsible for Veronica Maddox’s death?”
Again Marcus gripped my hand harder, but I couldn’t exactly deny what she’d already overheard. “Well, no. I don’t believe he is, Mrs. Clark.”
“That’s impossible. He must be. There’s no one else.”
I was not going to tell her that it could possibly have been her son-in-law. I had to wonder if she had heard us discussing that possibility. “I’m sure there were lots of people it could have been,” I assured her. “So many people were at that fundraiser. It could have been any of them.”
“No. No, no, no, it couldn’t. There has to have been a reason. It doesn’t make se
nse without a reason. There always has to be a reason.”
She was getting more and more upset. I took a deep drink from my tea to mollify her, hoping she’d notice. She seemed to care so deeply about taking care of things—her daughter, Pastor Bob, her father before them. Probably her brother, too, before he died . . .
I frowned as something hovered tantalizingly along the edge of my memory, calling to me. What was it?
“Drink your tea, dears,” she said agitatedly, “while I mull this over.”
Marcus and I sat on the arbor bench and obediently sipped at our tea as she began to pace, twisting her gloves in her hands. She was back to her old favorites again—grimy, well-worn leather. A man’s style but small enough to fit a woman’s hands. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision. She tucked her gloves into her waistband, put her hands on her ample hips, and looked around the garden. With a resigned sigh and a resolute straightening of her rather thick body, she walked decisively over to where she had left her garden tools out, placed her spade and a crescent-shaped root-chopping blade across a wheelbarrow, and began to push it down the path toward the garden gate. It seemed an odd thing to do unless she was moving them to the shed for safekeeping—obviously she wasn’t planning to do any gardening, not with a storm brewing. But then, some people have to stay busy when they are upset or worried, to take the edge off their distress.
Always taking care of things.
She set the lot of it down, blocking the gate, and turned to look at us, cocking her head to one side. “Not long now,” she said.
I glanced up at the sky. “No, not long now. I guess we should be going.”
I stood up with a stretch, tipping too far forward as I lost my balance. “Whoops.” My head was feeling a little funny. I closed my eyes a moment, waiting for the vertigo to pass, then turned to Marcus. His eyes were unfocused and his head was tipping dangerously to one side. “Marcus? Marcus, are you okay?” Stumbling forward on feet that felt like someone else’s, I took his face in my hands. “Hey. Come on, big guy, say something.”