Corruption of Faith

by Brenda English

  Once there, I hung the garment bag in the closet and pulled a set of lightweight navy-blue sweats, which I use for pajamas, out of the dresser. Habit took me through my nightly routine of washing my face and brushing my teeth, after which I turned out the lights and sank down on the bed without even pulling back the covers. In the dark, I realized the red message light on my answering machine was blinking, so I fumbled around until I managed to press the play button, hoping to hear Chris’s voice.

  There were three messages, but none was from him.

  “Sutton, it’s Marlee Evans,” I heard when the first message began. “I was just calling to confirm our meeting Monday at nine A.M. to plan Cara’s memorial service. I hope everything went okay in Georgia. I’ll see you on Monday morning.”

  The machine beeped several times.

  “It’s Rob. Just checking in to see how things went at the funeral. When you’re back in town, give me a call. We can talk about work, but take as much time as you need to get everything taken care of.”

  The last call was from Detective Peterson.

  “Sutton, it’s Jim Peterson.” I had become Sutton somewhere during our daily telephone conversations about the investigation. “We’re all done processing your sister’s apartment for evidence. I figured you probably needed to get’ her things packed up and moved out, so I just wanted to let you know that it’s okay to do that now. And just so you’ll know, we didn’t find anything to indicate that she was abducted from there. I still think someone took her from the church parking lot.”

  I sat up and pressed the erase button on the answering machine and then fell back against the pillows once more, a tremendous sigh escaping my lungs, followed by a long indrawal of air, as if I was breathing for the first time in days. And when I thought about it, that was exactly how it felt. As my eyes adjusted to the darkened room I stared at the ceiling and thought again of my sister and how she had died. But the hypnotically plain, off-white surface above me remained blessedly free of images, and I never even knew when my eyes closed and I slept.

  Monday

  Five

  After a Sunday of sleeping late, doing my laundry, napping, reading, and going to bed early, my first stop on Monday morning was going to be at the U-Haul store just down Duke Street from my apartment. I had decided to go over to Cara’s apartment as soon as I finished my meeting at the Bread of Life Church, and I needed packing boxes for Cara’s things.

  Over a breakfast of toast and an apple, I scanned the News and found a brief story under Rudy Black’s byline inside the metro section. The Fairfax County Police, he said, were not happy about their lack of progress or leads in Cara’s murder.

  “We know there’s someone out there with information that could help us solve this case,” Rudy quoted Jim Peterson as saying. “We urge them to come forward with anything they might have seen or heard.”

  I read that to mean the police were still facing the brick wall they seemed to have run up against at the beginning and that, without some new development, and soon, I would be the only other person still interested in the case. It was a grim realization.

  Rudy also mentioned Cara’s burial in Georgia over the weekend and reminded readers of Sennet’s reward offer because I was a News employee. Dispiritedly, I put the paper aside and got up to go to the U-Haul store.

  Just before nine A.M., I pulled off Old Keene Mill Road and into the parking lot of the Bread of Life Church. The sign in front gave the church’s name, followed by the biblical quote from which it had been taken: I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE: HE THAT COMETH TO ME SHALL NEVER HUNGER, AND HE THAT BELIEVETH ON ME SHALL NEVER THIRST. JOHN 6:35. Underneath were listed the minister’s name and the times of Sunday and Wednesday-night services.

  The church was an expansive edifice of modern architecture that looked as if its brick-and-glass wings would take flight at any moment. It was a long way from the small, white, wooden-sided Hilton Baptist Church to which Cara and I had been taken on endless Sundays as children. I didn’t much care for the newer model.

  But Cara had loved it, and all the people connected with it.

  “I do wish you would come with me just once,” she had said again for the umpteenth time early on a Sunday afternoon some seven or eight weeks ago. We had met for lunch at Mick’s, a restaurant in the Springfield Mall, after her obligatory Sunday-morning church attendance, and Cara was still on an emotional high from the services.

  “The people there are all so nice,” she went on enthusiastically over our soup and sandwiches, hoping to convince me. “And Reverend Brant is one of the best speakers I’ve ever heard. I love to listen to his sermons. He has this terrific deep voice, and when he’s preaching, it just sends shivers through you.”

  “No thanks,” I had told her. “That’s what I have Chris for—to send shivers through me.”

  “That isn’t what I mean, Sutton, and you’re terrible,” Cara had said, partly in jest because she knew I was teasing her.

  “I know,” I conceded. Teasing Cara was too easy to be fun for long. “But I’ve told you a hundred times, honey, that I’m just not interested in going to any church at the moment, no matter how good the minister is.”

  “I worry about your soul,” Cara replied, her expression looking as if she sincerely did worry about me, which was touching. “What if something happened to you, and you still felt this way? Don’t you think about what happens when we die? Don’t you want to be in heaven with Mom and Dad?”

  “Well sure, as long as it’s more than boring harps and clouds, and there’s something else to eat and drink besides milk and honey. I don’t like milk, and honey gives me hives,” I replied, teasing again. It just wasn’t a topic on which I felt in the mood for a serious conversation with her. Especially given the number of times we had had this same conversation, or its first cousin, before.

  “If I could only get you to come, I just know Reverend Brant could change your mind about so much,” Cara had concluded wistfully, knowing it was the subject I was ready to change.

  Now, ironically, here I was. At the Bread of Life Church, right where she had wanted me. And it had only taken her murder to bring me here.

  The double glass doors to the main foyer closed behind me, leaving me in a cool, quiet space of brick interior walls and tall, green ficus trees in brick-red tubs. On the wall to my right hung a display case with a black grooved backboard and those little white, removable letters. The board repeated the information on the days and times of services, gave Reverend Daniel Brant’s name just ahead of a list of seven deacons, and provided the additional information that the church had been founded by Reverend Brant. Ahead of me were a set of wide wooden doors standing open into a large, darkened space that I was sure was the main sanctuary. On the wall next to the doors were signs that directed me down a hallway on the left, to the church offices. When I reached the end of the hallway, I looked through a smaller open door to my right and saw a young redheaded woman of about twenty-two typing on a computer and sitting at a desk that faced me. She looked up as I stood in the doorway, her blue eyes and full mouth smiling at me.

  “Are you Sutton?” she asked.

  “Yes. Are you Marlee?”

  “I sure am,” Marlee Evans answered as she stood up from the desk and crossed the carpeted floor to meet me. We shook hands. She was a tiny thing, probably only about five-foot-three without the heels she was wearing. She had an open, smiling face, a delicate build, and a somewhat high, childlike voice.

  “Come have a seat,” Marlee said, delicately touching my upper arm and motioning me over to a small sitting area along the wall next to the office door. I sat down on the black leather sofa, and Marlee took the gray upholstered chair at the sofa’s end, sitting down gracefully and crossing her ankles below the full skirt of the pastel-blue shirtwaist dress that she wore.

  “I just can’t tell you how sad we all are about Cara,” Marlee said, leaning in my direction across the cushioned arm of the chair. “It just isn’t going to be the
same without her. Everyone liked her, and she was a terrific secretary. I learned a lot from her.”

  She reached out a hand to pat my right arm. “How are you holding up through all this?”

  “I’m all right,” I answered. Her mother-hen manner in a woman even younger than Cara made me smile. Marlee apparently knew no strangers, and I could see why Cara had liked her friendly, easy manner. It was, I knew, part of the reason she and Cara had become friends as well as colleagues, and Cara had mentioned her to me more than once. “It has been difficult,” I told Marlee, “but what choice do I have but to get through it?”

  “Do the police have any idea yet who… did it?” Marlee hesitated, stumbling over her words in an effort to avoid the harsh reality of murder.

  “I don’t think so,” I told her. “It could have been anyone from anywhere. They haven’t found any witnesses, and they don’t have much in the way of physical evidence to go on.”

  “Yes,” Marlee said, shaking her head in a sympathetic negative. “That Detective Peterson was here two different times talking to us about whether anyone would have wanted to hurt Cara and if anyone was here when she left.”

  “No luck on finding anyone who saw anything, I take it?” I asked dispiritedly.

  “No. The night she died was one of the few nights when there wasn’t some sort of activity going on here. And Cara was working late by herself. I left about six-thirty, and she said she still had at least two or three more hours of work to do.”

  It was basically what Peterson had told me the last time we had talked: no witnesses, no motives, nothing to indicate anything other than a random robbery and killing. He hadn’t sounded very optimistic. I didn’t know how I could accept the prospect of never knowing exactly what happened that night or why Cara had been killed.

  Voices came toward us down the hall, and seconds later two men walked into the office, stopping as they saw us. Marlee jumped up from the chair, smiling in greeting at them.

  “Good morning,” she said to the newcomers.

  “Morning, Marlee,” responded the first man. He was tall, well built, with brown eyes and a full head of dark hair graying slightly at the temples. Both he and the second man, who stood slightly behind him, looked to be somewhere in their late forties. The second man merely nodded at Marlee.

  “Reverend Brant,” Marlee continued, walking over to take the first man by the arm and move him in my direction, “this is Sutton McPhee, Cara’s sister. She’s here to arrange the memorial service.”

  I stood and shook the hand Reverend Brant extended toward me.

  “I’m sorry we have to meet for the first time under such tragic circumstances,” he said, smiling solicitously. “I just don’t know how we’ll manage without Cara here to keep us in line. She’s in all our thoughts and prayers.”

  Brant carried himself well. His physical appearance, the custom-tailored look of his glen-plaid suit, his strong, accent-free voice and facility with language all said substance, strength, directness. No question that he would stand out in any gathering, and I was certain it all was a real asset in his career as a minister. But I noticed that his handshake was tentative, brief. He doesn’t like to touch people, I realized, and thought it odd for someone in his job. I looked at him more closely, wondering where my thought had come from. Was it the result of the sort of intuitive knowing I sometimes had about people, or was it a product of my general indifference—if not outright aversion—to organized religion and those who tried to sell it to the rest of us?

  As a child, I had realized I had an ability to sense things about people, things that appeared to escape the awareness of most others around me. My mother said it was my legacy from my Gaelic ancestors—all that Irish, Scottish, and Welsh blood. They were a race of people who had been famous for two thousand years or more for their fey abilities, abilities that had resulted in more than one of them being tried as a witch. Whatever it was, it seldom was pronounced enough for me to articulate what I sensed, just that something was wrong, off-key, or not what it seemed to be. I also had learned to pay attention to this special sense of mine, and now it was telling me that the surface here did not match what was underneath.

  To be fair, however, I didn’t have much use for ministers as a group. It wasn’t that I was an atheist; I felt there must be some organizing force or intelligence in the universe. I just thought it was pretty presumptuous of humans to be so certain they knew the thoughts of this intelligence that they could insist on everyone else adhering to their particular beliefs. My own farewell to organized religion had stemmed jointly from my dislike of anyone else setting rules for me and from a conversation with a Baptist minister who told me that those who died without baptism, including babies, went to hell. So it was highly possible that I was put off by Reverend Brant for reasons that had more to do with myself than with him.

  When Brant turned back to his left and introduced his companion, however, I had no trouble identifying the source of my negative reaction to the man who stood behind Brant. “Sutton, this is my assistant, Al Barlow,” Brant said. Barlow made no move toward me, kept his hands in his pockets. As he had with Marlee, he merely nodded silently in my direction.

  Al Barlow looked completely out of place, both in the church and in the company of Daniel Brant. Barlow was rail-thin, with a sallow complexion. He had jet-black eyes that looked around him with the same lack of emotion as a cat’s—or a snake’s. In contrast to Brant’s expensive suit, Barlow wore an ill-fitting, dark brown jacket on which the collar stood awkwardly away from his neck, and tan knit slacks. While Brant worked to project sophisticated ease and bonhomie, Al Barlow was dark, coiled energy, hard-bitten and taciturn. What a mismatched pair, I thought. What could Barlow possibly do to assist Brant?

  “Well, if you will excuse us,” Brant was saying apologetically, “we have work to get to. You’re in good hands with Marlee. She’ll help you set everything up, and we’ll all do our best to make sure the service for Cara is something special.”

  “Thank you,” I told him. “I know it would make Cara happy to think people here will remember her.”

  “Of course, of course,” Brant responded. “So we’ll see you on… Saturday?” he said as a question, looking at Marlee for confirmation of the day. She nodded yes. “Saturday,” he concluded, looking back at me, his hale-fellow-well-met smile still in place. With that, he and Barlow turned and went into the first of two inner offices, the one that had Brant’s name engraved on a tastefully small brass plaque on the door. Through it all, Barlow had remained as silent as the grave.

  “Is Barlow always that talkative?” I asked, a little sarcastically but also curious, turning back to Marlee once Brant’s office door had closed.

  “Don’t mind him,” Marlee said, smiling reassuringly. “He’s like that around everyone.”

  “He’s not much of a people person, is he?” I observed understatedly. “What does he do as Brant’s assistant?”

  “Whatever Reverend Brant needs,” Marlee explained. “He runs errands, drives Reverend Brant around. Mostly he makes himself available for whatever comes up.”

  “I guess he just didn’t strike me as Reverend Brant’s type.”

  I’d say that’s putting it mildly, my personal Greek chorus chimed in. He looks like an escapee from the carnival. I wouldn’t trust him with my quarter. He was right, but I wasn’t in a place that I could discuss it with him at the moment.

  “I think they go back a long way,” Marlee was saying in explanation for the odd match. “I don’t know any details, but Reverend Brant said once that he helped Al out with some trouble several years ago and gave him a job. Al is very loyal to him, sticks to him like glue.

  “So,” she went on brightly, in a complete non sequitur, “would you like to see the chapel where we’ll hold the memorial service? And then we can come back here and go over the details.”

  “Sure,” I told her, wondering if the abrupt change of subject meant she wasn’t terribly comfortable discu
ssing Al Barlow or just that she found him a less than interesting topic of conversation.

  “Let me just turn on the answering machine to catch the phones,” she said, walking over to her desk and pressing a sequence of buttons on her telephone. As she straightened up, a third man came through the office door. He looked to be in his mid-twenties and was carrying a garment bag. He gave me an assessing look as he walked past me toward Marlee.

  “Oh, John,” Marlee said, “this is Cara’s sister, Sutton. We’re setting up Cara’s memorial service.”

  John whoever-he-was stopped at that bit of information and turned back to look at me more thoroughly. He started at my feet and slowly brought his gaze up my body to my face. The boldness of his once-over surprised me; we were in church, after all, not some cheesy singles’ bar.

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked. “Her sister, huh? You don’t look much like her.” Although Cara and I had shared a slight resemblance physically, people who had met both of us were more likely to notice the differences in our personalities and demeanors than any similarities in our looks.

  I silently gave this John-person the once-over in return, though mine was of a completely nonsexual nature.

  “Behave now, John,” Marlee said hastily. She tried to affect a light tone, as if chiding an innocently mischievous child, but I could hear the anxious embarrassment beneath the tone that told me she thought John’s behavior was something other than innocent mischief. She looked at me apologetically. “This is John Brant, Sutton, Reverend Brant’s son.”