Corruption of Faith

by Brenda English

  Eight

  It took two trips in my VW Beetle to the Salvation Army store on Little River Turnpike in order to haul over all the boxes of Cara’s things that I decided to give away. While I was there I also made arrangements to donate all her furniture, which the Salvation Army would send a truck to pick up. I gave the clerk I spoke with the phone number at the apartment rental office in order to make the arrangements. I told Charlie, when I made my last stop at the Easton Arms to return the apartment key, that someone from the Salvation Army would call him to arrange a pickup time and that they would be taking everything left in the apartment. Finally, I was on my way back to my own apartment with the three remaining boxes, each filled with things that had been special to Cara. The afternoon had warmed up considerably. My car had no air-conditioning. I was hot and tired and angry and frustrated. It had been an exhausting day, and tomorrow I expected to have to go back to work.

  I decided that what I needed more than anything at the moment was a yoga class. I kept my five-foot, eight-inch frame in some sort of shape through regular sessions on my NordicTrack and through yoga classes whenever I could squeeze them in, preferably two or three times a week. It had been almost two weeks since I had gotten to a class, and I was needing one badly. I fully expected to find that every muscle in my body had tightened up during the time I had taken off.

  I had begun practicing yoga in Tallahassee, primarily as a way to keep myself flexible. Long hours of sitting at a desk in front of a computer or in interminable school-board meetings had taken a toll on my body in terms of back problems and headaches, and a chiropractor friend had suggested that yoga might help. So I had signed up for a class and soon became a convert. Initially, there was nothing philosophical or mystical about my enthusiasm for the discipline. It was simply that it worked. My back problems and headaches went away, and my body seemed to function better than it ever had. Eventually, I realized that the yoga also had other effects, not the least of which was its ability to energize me when I was tired and to soothe and relax me when I was too wrought up to sleep. And I found it seemed to fine-tune my mental processes as well. More than once, as I lay in the total relaxation of Corpse Pose or sat in the meditative silence of Lotus, I had felt my thoughts effortlessly fall into place involving some question I faced—whether about a story I was covering, some important personal decision, or a necessary insight into myself. All the good things I got from yoga were habit-forming, in the best possible sense, and I felt the lack when I was too busy to get to a class every few days.

  I looked at my watch and saw that I probably could just make Teresa’s four o’clock class. I swung in at my apartment in Landmark just long enough to change into a leotard and tights, over which I threw a T-shirt and jeans shorts, before heading into Alexandria.

  Teresa, my yoga teacher, lived in Alexandria’s Rosemont section, just off Commonwealth Avenue. She had converted the entire upper floor of her 1930s-something house into a yoga studio, where she taught a variety of daytime and evening classes. Teresa had left her job as a registered nurse about ten years ago, after the back injuries from a car accident had almost crippled her. It was the discovery of yoga that had rehabilitated her back and provided her with a whole new career. Her own centeredness, which she attributed to her years of regular yoga practice, made her a popular teacher and, I suspect, amplified the positive mental effects that her students experienced in her classes.

  Too bad you can’t keep her with you all the time, my little friend piped up as I turned into Teresa’s driveway and pulled into the parking area she had created in back. If we could keep you calm on a regular basis, you might not do dumb things like fly off the handle at that detective.

  I know it was dumb, I thought back at my voice, but I was annoyed and frustrated.

  Chronic conditions where you’re concerned.

  I gave a mental snarl and grabbed my gym bag from the passenger’s seat.

  The little jerk wasn’t saying anything I didn’t already know, of course, but it didn’t make me feel any better to hear it again. I did regret going off at Peterson, and I was unhappy that none of my excuses fully explained why I had lost control. As I climbed the exterior stairs that led directly to Teresa’s yoga studio, I relegated my confusion to the back of my mind, a place that sometimes gets pretty crowded, for later consideration.

  Some ninety minutes later, however, as all my muscles sank into the floor in the mental and physical cleansing of Corpse Pose, or Savasana, I had a sudden understanding of the real source of the frustration that I had taken out on Peterson. I was angry at everything and everyone—at Cara’s killer, at fate, if there was such a thing, at the universe—angry that I hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye. Most of all, I was angry at myself.

  Corpse is a position of total relaxation, usually done at the very beginning or end of a yoga session. As you lie on your mat with your arms at your side, palms up, eyes closed, you consciously relax each set of muscles in the body from head to toe, muscles that have been stretched back and forth and are happy just to lie there. As I worked to empty my mind of all thoughts, I remembered that my last conversation with Cara had been about mundane, meaningless things. Work, dinner, the need to wash my car. But I hadn’t told her how much she meant to me, how much I loved her. In fact, I couldn’t even remember the last time I had said it. And now she was dead, and I never would have the chance to say it again, to explain what a gaping hole had been ripped in my life by her absence. All the things I could have said, should have said, and hadn’t. And now never could.

  You’re just like that guy you’re sleeping with.

  The fact that my voice could intrude even as I was supposed to be emptying my mind of thoughts showed how much I had needed the yoga class. I didn’t encourage it by answering back, but the observation made me feel even worse than before.

  Had I been as negligent of Cara as Chris suddenly had become of my own feelings? Was I as locked inside myself as he seemed to be, withdrawing when someone else reached toward me? I certainly hoped not, but the fact that there might be any grounds for comparison just made me angrier at myself.

  I was so filled with regret for the time that I never could get back that I could hardly bear it. Although my mind could stand outside my anger in the objectivity of Corpse, I saw that I was furious with myself for having been so careless of the person I loved most in the world. My only salvation, my only hope of living with my anger—and my anguish—was to find Cara’s killer. I had lashed out at Peterson in my frustration that something or someone might keep me from finding the answer, which would condemn me to a lifelong hell of regrets.

  Finally, I could see the shape and power of what drove me. I wanted answers, in part to ease my own conscience. I didn’t expect the need for those answers to disappear with my new understanding of what was wrong with me, but at least I now knew what it was I was feeling. The anger wouldn’t leave me, I knew, until Cara’s murder was solved and someone was held to account. But at least now I could try to focus the anger at Cara’s killer, where it belonged, instead of letting it scorch everyone around me—including me.

  By the time I got home to sit out on my small balcony, catching the breeze that wafted by at fourteen floors up and eating the salad that I had picked up from the salad bar at the Giant supermarket off Van Dorn Street, my brain was working full-time again. Ironically, my insight into my anger at the end of the yoga class had helped calm the turmoil I had carried around since the day I learned Cara was dead. I was thinking a little straighter now, feeling a little better, but I still wanted answers as much as ever. I was more determined than ever to have them.

  I read Cara’s letter to Amy again, trying to find a place to start in figuring out what connection her cryptic comments had, if any, to her death. If there was a connection, where would I even begin to look to find it?

  Eventually, I decided the logical starting point was where Cara spent most of her time: the Bread of Life Church. Okay, so John Brant and Al Barlow
were off the list. But the church staff were people who knew Cara pretty well, who spent a lot of time with her. Maybe someone there knew something that would point me in the right direction. Marlee Evans, for example. Considering how much time the two of them had spent together, perhaps Cara talked more to Marlee than she had to me. Marlee was quite a chatterbox. I decided to start with her.

  I took my empty plate and glass into the kitchen, refilled the glass with fresh lemon and more iced tea, and took it and the cordless kitchen telephone out into the dining area, where I could look out the windows and enjoy the fading afternoon light that came through. I dialed the church office, expecting to get the answering machine. Instead, Marlee answered on the third ring.

  “Bread of Life Church. This is Marlee. How may I help you?”

  “Marlee, it’s Sutton McPhee. I didn’t expect to find anyone there at this time of day.”

  “Oh, hi, Sutton. It’s good to hear from you again. I was just finishing up some things here that Cara had been working on.”

  “Look, I don’t want to keep you, but do you have ten minutes to talk? I need to ask you some questions about Cara.”

  “Sure,” Marlee said. “You know I’ll help in any way I can.”

  “I’ve learned recently that Cara was upset about something,” I went on, “that there was someone she was having a problem with. Whatever it was, it bothered her enough that she had even thought about going back home to Georgia. So I’m trying to figure out whether or not it might be related to what happened to her. If I could find out what she was unhappy about, maybe I could at least rule it out as having any connection to her murder.”

  “That makes sense,” Marlee said agreeably.

  “You told me about her problems with John Brant,” I went on. “The police already have eliminated him as a suspect in her death because he was with friends the night Cara was killed. But I thought you might know whether there was anything else unusual that had happened in the last few months, anything you might have seen or that Cara might have mentioned to you. Anything that seemed to be bothering her more than usual.”

  “Nooo,” Marlee said, thinking as she answered. “I can’t think of anything like…” She paused. “No, wait, there was one thing I just remembered, but I don’t see how it could have anything to do with Cara being killed.”

  “It probably doesn’t,” I told her, “but fill me in anyway, just so I can rule it out.”

  “Well, this was about three or four weeks ago. It involved Nash Marshall.”

  Nash Marshall. The name rang a bell, but it took me a few seconds to track down the information in my brain.

  “You mean the ElectroTech guy?”

  “That’s right. The one who died in the car wreck.”

  Nash Marshall, I remembered, was the CEO of a Fairfax-based company that specialized in the research and development of high-tech medical diagnostic equipment. Some three weeks before Cara was murdered, Marshall had been on his way home from the office late at night and had died in a fiery one-car accident on the Fairfax County Parkway. Police never could determine exactly what caused the accident, but speculated that he might have lost control of his car while swerving to avoid a deer. Deer are one of the very real hazards of driving in the rapidly growing but still heavily forested northern Virginia suburbs and are especially numerous along the less developed stretches of highways such as the new cross-county parkway.

  “Mr. Marshall was a member of our church,” Marlee went on, “so of course people here were upset when he died. But Cara seemed to be as upset as anyone about it, and I remember it surprised me because I didn’t think she knew him very well. He hadn’t come to church much in the last year.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t really know, but these things happen. Sometimes people get real interested in a church at first, and then after a while they lose interest and go someplace else. But in all the time Cara worked here, I don’t think she could have seen him more than two or three times.”

  “So why would she have reacted so strongly to his death?”

  “I think it must have been because of the argument.”

  “What argument?”

  “The one she overheard between Mr. Marshall and Reverend Brant. You know how Cara was. She wanted everyone to get along. And she always thought so much of Reverend Brant that I just figured maybe it bothered her to think that he and Mr. Marshall had had an argument just before Mr. Marshall died.”

  “Did you overhear the argument, too?” I asked hopefully.

  “No, not really. I was on the way out the door to go down to one of the Sunday-school rooms when Mr. Marshall came into the office. He looked real unhappy about something. I spoke to him and he just ignored me, walked right into Reverend Brant’s office without asking if it was okay or even knocking. Thank heaven Reverend Brant was alone. Mr. Marshall closed the door, and I went on out.”

  “But Cara was in the office?”

  “Yes, she was,” Marlee said.

  “So then what happened?”

  “Well, I was coming back up the hallway a few minutes later when I saw Mr. Marshall go storming across the foyer and out of the church. I hurried back up to the office to explain to Reverend Brant that I hadn’t been able to stop Mr. Marshall from barging in the way he had. And when I walked in, I saw Reverend Brant over at Cara’s desk. I couldn’t hear what he was saying to her. He was sort of leaning over her and speaking softly, but she looked—well, not right. She was pale and tense looking.”

  “So what did Reverend Brant say when you came in?”

  “I started trying to apologize, but he just said to forget it and went back into his office and closed the door.”

  “And what about Cara?”

  “She got her purse out of her desk and left. She didn’t say a word, just left.”

  “Had she ever left like that before?” I asked.

  “No, never. It wasn’t like her at all. I even asked Reverend Brant about it when he came back out of his office.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said that he and Mr. Marshall had had a disagreement that had gotten a little heated, and that it had really upset Cara to hear them arguing. So he had told her to take the rest of the day off. I asked Cara about it the next day, and she wouldn’t talk about it at all. So when Mr. Marshall died and it seemed to bother her so much, I figured it was the argument thing again.”

  As I listened to Marlee’s story there were a hundred different questions going through my head. If Marlee was right, and Cara barely knew Nash Marshall to speak to, why had his death been so upsetting for her? Did she know him a lot better than Marlee realized? It was doubtful. I thought I remembered from the news stories when he died that Marshall had a wife and some kids. And that he was a middle-aged guy, probably at least twenty years older than Cara. He didn’t sound like her type, and I would have bet everything I had that there was no way Cara would knowingly have been involved with a married man. So if it was the argument that had disturbed her originally, what had the two men argued about? Was it the fact of their arguing that had bothered her, or something she had heard them say?

  Perhaps, I thought, it would be worth my time to go back and reread the stories about Nash Marshall. And while I was at it I might as well find out what I could about Reverend Brant. He had told the police that he was at home having dinner with Barlow when Cara died, and I couldn’t think how any of this could be connected to Cara’s murder. But, reporter that I am, I figure it’s always best to turn over all the rocks.

  “Well, you’ve been very helpful, Marlee,” I said. “I think you’re right that it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what happened to Cara. But I appreciate you telling me about it. There is one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” Marlee asked.

  “I know that everyone there is very interested in what’s happening with finding the person who killed Cara, but I really need for you to keep this conversation to yourself for the time being. I
don’t think it has any bearing on her death, but I wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong ideas about where the police are looking. For the church’s sake and all.”

  “Oh, yes, I see what you mean,” Marlee agreed. “Well, don’t worry, Sutton. I won’t talk about it.”

  “Not even with Reverend Brant, please. If it looks like there is some connection, I’ll speak with him about it then. But there’s no point in worrying him for no reason.”

  “Okay.”

  Keeping things to herself might be easier for Marlee to say than do, I thought, but I could only hope that she would try to squelch her natural chatty inclinations.

  I thanked Marlee again and promised to see her on Saturday at the memorial service. Then I went to the kitchen to hang up the phone and refill my glass. It was time to sit down and think hard about where to go from here.

  Wednesday

  Nine

  The first place I had to go was back to work the next day. As I walked into the newsroom I realized how glad I was to be there. My ennui over the school beat notwithstanding, I realized I had missed the office and the only slightly controlled chaos that a newsroom can be—although it was relatively calm at the moment. The first local copy deadline at 6:45 P.M. was still more than eight hours away. That meant a handful of editors and reporters were in, but things wouldn’t really heat up until late in the afternoon, when the rest of the editing staff arrived and the other reporters began wandering back in from their coverage of daytime events.

  There was no sign at the moment of Rob Perry or of Mary Blaine, the general-assignment reporter Rob had pulled in to cover the suburban Virginia schools while I was away. Rudy Black, the temporary reporter on the Fairfax County cops, was at his desk, however, so I stopped by to check in with him.