As with the Pursell obituary, Kelton’s also listed his membership at the Bread of Life Church. His survivors included a son, a daughter-in-law, and one grandchild living in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a daughter, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren in Massachusetts.
Unlike Pursell, however, there was a follow-up article to Kelton’s death. A reporter at the Fairfax Journal explained that police had learned that Kelton was in big financial trouble. In the months prior to his suicide he had liquidated most of his assets, unknown to anyone around him. A special audit of the day-care chain’s books after he died turned up the fact that he also had embezzled at least half a million dollars from the business as well—leaving the other three investors in the privately held company to file for reorganization under the Chapter 11 bankruptcy statutes. An unidentified police investigator in the case was quoted as saying that neither the police nor Kelton’s family or business associates had been able to track down what Kelton had done with all the money.
“It all just vanished,” I heard Phoebe Marshall saying again. I looked up from the Kelton article.
“Jesus,” I said, my chest feeling tight. “What the hell is all this? What did Cara get mixed up in?”
“You really think this is all related to her being killed?” Cooper asked.
“She thought this list was important enough to put it in a bank vault,” I told him. “The men whose names are on it all went to Cara’s church. She probably either knew them or knew they were members there. But all three are dead. And now their names show up on some list that Cara apparently was afraid for anyone to know she had, a list she hid in a bank vault. And now Cara’s dead, too. Maybe it’s all a coincidence.”
“And maybe not,” Cooper finished for me.
By the time I got back to my apartment, where I could sit and think without interruption, I was becoming pretty sure that “maybe not” should be “probably not.”
I was sitting at the dining table, all the articles Cooper had copied spread out before me and a second glass of Chianti in my hand when I saw it, when I saw the first outline of a picture beginning to come into focus. It was then that I realized where Cara had gotten the list of names. I was mentally going over what I had learned in the last few days and was thinking back to Marlee and her story of the falling-out between Cara and John Brant. How Marlee and the younger Brant had come back into the main office to find Cara walking out of John Brant’s office and how he had gone ballistic at the idea that Cara might have been doing something with his computer.
In fact, I realized, she had. She had printed out this list of names. She had lied to John Brant about what she was doing in his office. And telling such a lie really would have been unlike Cara—unless she had some extremely compelling motive for doing so. I didn’t know what, exactly, the list had meant to Cara. And I didn’t know whether she really had gone in to look for a dictionary and had seen the list up on the screen or whether she had gone in to look specifically for information about Nash Marshall. But whichever it was, she had found the list and made a copy, a copy that she wanted to protect—or hide—enough to rent a safe deposit box for it. I remembered Marlee saying the run-in with John Brant had happened on the Thursday before Cara was killed the following Monday. The day before Cara had rented the safe-deposit box at her bank.
And, I realized something else. John Brant believed Cara had tampered with his computer. Had he known what she found? He was good with computers, Marlee had said. Did he have a way to identify the file Cara had seen and what she had printed? And if he had carelessly left the file open when he stepped out of the office, then he knew exactly which file Cara had looked at.
Detective Peterson had ruled out John Brant as a suspect. He had questioned other people at the church and had found nothing. Yet everything I was finding kept coming back to the Bread of Life Church: Cara’s job there. Her fight with John Brant. The argument between Brant and Nash Marshall. Three dead men who belonged to the church, at least two of whom had mysteriously lost all their money, and all of whom had died as suicides or in unexplained accidents. The questions about Daniel Brant, about his phony résumé and name, and who he really was. The company in the Caymans. I didn’t have the connections yet, but I knew the answer was in there somewhere. Somewhere in a jumbled picture that was painting itself in increasingly ugly colors. My stomach suddenly decided that it didn’t want any more Chianti. I got up and dumped the rest of it down the kitchen sink and stood there seeing Cara’s face again through the viewing window at the medical examiner’s office.
Was I prepared to take the next step to find out what I needed to know, even it meant doing something questionable?
We’re talking about murder here. Your sister’s murder. Isn’t that worth a few risks?
I got out the northern Virginia White Pages and looked up Cooper Diggs’s home phone number.
“Cooper, it’s Sutton,” I said when he answered. “I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I need to ask you a question.”
“Shoot,” he said.
“Is there a way you can use your computer to get into one at another location, someone else’s computer?”
“Only if the other computer has a modem. If it does and if you can tell me the phone number for the modem, I can get into it. Do you have the number?”
“Not yet,” I told him, “but I think I can get it. Thanks. I’ll let you know.”
“No trouble,” he answered. “I eagerly await your next challenge.”
The next challenge facing me, however, was one with which Cooper couldn’t help. I had to go to Cara’s memorial service at the Bread of Life Church tomorrow morning and pretend that nothing was wrong. Other than the fact that Cara was dead.
Saturday
Fifteen
Promptly at nine A.M., I pulled into the parking lot at the Bread of Life Church. Marlee and Daniel Brant were standing in the foyer, engrossed in a conversation, when I walked in, but they stopped to greet me. Brant gave me another of his phobic handshakes, and I wondered again how on earth he endured his profession when he disliked touching people—or having people touch him.
Brant excused himself and went back into the office, while Marlee walked with me down to the chapel.
“I was just on my way down to set up the guest book,” she told me as we reached the chapel’s double oak doors. She placed the black, imitation leather-bound book she had been holding onto a wooden stand next to the chapel doors and turned on a small brass lamp over the book’s blank pages. From the pocket of her gray skirt, she took a black ballpoint pen and laid it vertically in the crease between the book’s pages. “Families always like to have a record of the people who came to the service,” she explained, clearly proud of the fact that she was aware of such small but important details.
“Thank you,” I told her, even though I never expected to look at the book again after today. Everyone who would be at this morning’s service would be a complete stranger to me.
“Oh, we’re happy to do it for you,” Marlee said, stepping around me to unlock the door to a small sitting room next to the chapel. “If you want to sit down while people are arriving, feel free to greet them in here. I’ll stick my head back in to let you know when Reverend Brant is ready to start and it’s time to go in.”
I thanked her again.
“And would you like to see the chapel before people get here?” she asked. I realized that I would. Regardless of my doubts about Brant, it was my sister’s memorial service, and I wanted it to be done in a way Cara would have approved.
Marlee opened both of the chapel doors and dropped the doorstop at the bottom of each to keep them open. We walked inside, where the perfume from the multicolored profusion of roses that stood at the front of the chapel, next to Cara’s picture, mingled with the morning sunlight pouring through the east-facing stained-glass window. I inhaled the scent of Cara’s favorite flowers and looked again at the now glowing Jesus beckoning to the children around him, and I almost lost it. I
clamped my teeth together so hard to keep from sobbing that I was afraid Marlee could hear the sound from where she stood behind me.
Marlee was watching for my reaction to what she had done with the chapel. I swallowed hard a couple of times and finally relaxed my facial muscles enough to speak. I turned my head to look back at her.
“It’s beautiful, Marlee,” I told her sincerely. “Cara would have loved it like this.”
Marlee smiled happily. “I thought a lot of Cara,” she said. “I’m glad you approve.”
We stood together for a moment longer in silence, and then Marlee touched my arm gently.
“I’m going to leave you here and go back up to the front door so I can direct people this way,” she said. “I expect they’ll start arriving at any time.”
She was right. About five minutes after I claimed an upholstered chair in the sitting room in order to close my eyes and calm my emotions, I heard a hello from the doorway. The first guests, an elderly couple and a middle-aged woman who turned out to be the church organist, had arrived.
The final notes of the organ’s melodic drone fell away into the open spaces under the chapel’s high ceiling as the Reverend Daniel Brant stepped up to the pulpit.
“Thank you all for joining us here this morning,” he said into the microphone, to the sixty or so people who sat around the chapel, “as we gather to honor the memory of Cara McPhee, the sister of Sutton McPhee and a loved and valued member of our church staff and family. Please join me in prayer.”
The room was filled with the rustle of heads bowing and bodies shifting for a few seconds before Brant’s “Heavenly Father…” rang out. As I listened to his voice reflected around the chapel, I began to understand what it was he had, what had affected Cara and, apparently, many hundreds of others who had chosen Brant’s church. The voice was full and deep, its resonant timbre at its best in a space such as the chapel provided, where the shape and textures of the room combined in an ideal acoustical chamber. Remembering my own small-town church upbringing, I could imagine Brant’s voice ardently proclaiming God’s love, passionately exhorting sinners to heed the call to salvation, even instilling the fear of hellfire if necessary. Whether there was a sincere bone in his body or not, I thought, the man’s voice was a real gift, one that I suspected could reassure people who were searching for answers in a confusing and frightening world, one that could stir them to an emotional fervor in which they would readily respond to his directives.
“In Jesus’ name, amen,” he said, and the Christian audience echoed the ancient closing affirmation of its Hebrew roots.
“And now,” Brant went on, “Cara’s sister, Sutton, would like to say a few words.”
I had hoped the passage of several days since Cara’s funeral had lessened the immediacy of the pain of losing her. But as I stood and walked to the pulpit, where Brant nodded at me and then stepped back to take a seat in the farther of the two handsomely carved wooden chairs that sat behind it, the loss swept over me again, its pain full-blown and raw, as if Peterson had only just given me the bad news. I stepped behind the pulpit and wondered if I would be able to utter a single word. I had no remarks planned, no speech written. My mind simply had refused in the preceding days to wrap itself around any words for this moment. Now my emotions threatened to paralyze my vocal cords, cutting off whatever comments might form in my mind. I looked out at the rows of expectant faces, the people who had shared a large part of Cara’s life that had held no meaning for me. I closed my eyes for a long second and consciously relaxed the muscles of my throat and face. I had no idea what I would say, but I opened my mouth and words came out.
“My sister is dead,” I remember telling the other mourners. “And I’m alone. Cara was the last of my immediate family. Now there is just me, left here with my grief and my anger at how she died.
“I know that if Cara were here, she would tell me to forgive, that the only answer to the evil in the world is love. But Cara was an angel, even before her death, and I’m only human. Right now I hurt too much to forgive. The person who killed her has taken too much from me. Taken the Cara I loved. Taken the Cara who would be in all the years to come. Taken away my pleasure in the memories of the Cara who was. At the moment those memories bring only pain.
“My hope is that tomorrow or the day after or some day soon after that, the person who killed my sister will be found and named and brought forward to answer for what they did. Perhaps that will ease some of the pain, dissipate some of the anger. Maybe then I can find room in my heart to be more like Cara was. Maybe then I can find something of her somewhere in me, as I look out and see something of her in all of you.
“I know she must have touched each of your hearts in some way, or you would not be here today. And so, because she isn’t here to ask you for herself, I will ask you for her. Ask you to remember her and who she was. Ask you to keep her alive by touching another in the way she touched you. Whether it was a smile, or a kind word, or a helping hand, or an understanding heart, take what she gave you and give it to someone else. Then something of her still lives here with us, and that thought makes my pain a little easier to bear.”
The words stopped, as unexpectedly as they had begun. I drew a deep, ragged breath, which the microphone amplified, and looked again at the faces before me, some of which now shed tears.
“Thank you for coming,” I said abruptly, not knowing how else to end it, and I moved quickly to the front pew and sat back down, feeling drained of every ounce of energy.
Two of Cara’s friends from the church spoke after I did. Although their names sounded familiar, I didn’t know either of them, and even now I don’t remember what they said. My concentration was shot. I just wanted it to be over. And once it was, once Brant had added his brief closing remarks, I still had to stay through all the condolences and good-byes. I couldn’t leave until I had the other thing for which I had come here: the phone number of John Brant’s computer modem.
“Would you like some coffee?” Marlee asked as we walked back into the church office. We had the place to ourselves. Brant had left as soon as the service was over, saying he had to visit a couple of church members who were hospitalized. There was no sign of either John Brant or Barlow on a Saturday morning.
“No thanks,” I told her. “I’m shaky enough as it is.”
“Cara would have liked what you said at the service,” Marlee told me, sitting down at her desk.
“It was just what came out when I opened my mouth,” I said.
“Oh,” Marlee went on, turning to look at her computer screen, “speaking of Cara, I have something I want to give you. It’s a poem she wrote for next month’s church newsletter. I thought you might like to have your own copy.”
“Yes, I would like that,” I answered, surprised again by one more thing about Cara that I hadn’t known. A poetess, no less.
Marlee turned to the computer and typed several keystrokes, and in seconds a page of type rolled out of the printer and into the tray. Marlee handed the sheet of paper to me.
“If you don’t mind, I don’t think I can read it right now,” I told Marlee, folding the poem and putting it in my purse. “I think I’d better wait until later.”
“I understand,” Marlee answered, nodding sympathetically. “I just wanted to get you a copy before I forgot.”
I saw a segue to getting on with my other pressing piece of business.
“Isn’t it great having computers around so you can just print things out in seconds?” I asked her.
“Boy, I can’t imagine what office work must have been like when you had to completely retype things if you needed error-free copy,” she agreed. “And now I’m learning how to do desktop publishing so I can take over laying out the church newsletter. Our volunteer who has been doing it is moving to Florida in a couple of months and is teaching me how to use the software.”
“Good for you,” I told her. Steering the conversation in the direction I needed it to take, I said, “Yes, I c
an see how John Brant could get so interested in computers. Does he have all the bells and whistles like modems and stuff on his computer here?”
“Oh yes,” Marlee said. “Everything you can think of. We don’t have nearly as much on mine and Cara’s computers, but John insisted on getting it all for his.”
“So, if I wanted to send you a message or a fax from my office, I could just send it over his modem?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s great,” I said enthusiastically, as if realizing the possibilities for the first time. “You know, I was thinking I should send the church a thank-you letter for everything you folks have done, and you could put it in your newsletter for everyone to read. If you could give me the modem number, I could just modem it over when I’ve got it written.”
“That is a good idea,” Marlee agreed. She picked up a photocopied list of what looked like names and telephone numbers and copied a number from it onto a sheet of notepaper.
“Well, thanks for everything, Marlee,” I said when she handed me the number. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all your help. I know Cara liked you, and she would be very grateful, too.”
Marlee told me again how much she had thought of Cara. I took my leave, fled the Bread of Life Church out to my car, and pointed it east on Old Keene Mill Road toward I-95, which would take me back into D.C.
I wanted to spend some time over the weekend outlining the feature on women school-board members, but I had walked out of the paper on Friday afternoon and absent-mindedly left the folder containing the printouts of my interview notes on my desk. So I had decided to swing into the District after the memorial service and get it. It was lunchtime on a Saturday when I walked in, and the only person in sight in the newsroom was Mike Dalton, a summer intern who was working on a journalism degree at the University of Missouri.
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