Corruption of Faith

by Brenda English

  “Right. Sutton McPhee.”

  “Well, Ms. McPhee, I don’t see what possible connection there could be. My father committed suicide several months ago. I’m sorry about your sister, but I’ve never even heard of her. I don’t understand what her murder could have to do with my father.”

  “It’s a little complicated,” I told him, “but I think the connection may have been through the Bread of Life Church. My sister also was a secretary in the church office.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kelton said, beginning to sound irritated. “I really don’t know how I can help you. Now, if you’ll ex—”

  I interrupted him.

  “Mr. Kelton, please don’t hang up,” I pleaded. “I know I’m imposing on you and that this probably makes no sense to you. But I really think you may be able to help me piece together what happened to my sister. If I could just ask you a couple of questions.”

  He thought some more, but at least he stayed on the line.

  “All right,” he said finally. “I can’t see what good it will do, but I’ll answer your questions if I can.”

  I turned from the windows and sat down in one of the two club chairs opposite my sofa.

  “Thank you,” I said in relief. “Why do you think your father killed himself, Mr. Kelton?”

  “If you’re a newspaper reporter, I’m sure you’ve read the stories that were done when he died. We’ll never know for sure, I suppose, since he didn’t say anything to anyone beforehand and didn’t leave a note, but he apparently was having some… ah… some financial problems.”

  “I saw one story that said the police learned your father had liquidated everything he had and that there was no trace of what he did with the money.”

  “Yes,” Kelton said somewhat hesitantly. “That’s right.”

  “Could he have gambled the money away or lost it in bad investments?”

  “My father didn’t believe in gambling,” the son replied. “And his stockbroker had no record of any sort of bad investments. In fact, my father had pulled out everything he had invested as well, and his stockbroker wasn’t happy about it.”

  “I know that he was very active for a while in the Bread of Life Church and that it completed a large expansion program just over a year ago. Could your father have donated the money to the church?”

  “That was one of the things the police checked,” Kelton said. “Dad did make regular donations for a while, but according to the church records, they were nowhere near the amount of money that was missing. And the dates when he sold off his assets were all later than any of his donations to the church.”

  “How could you be sure the church records were accurate?”

  “I asked the same question at the time. The police said that all donations were logged in by a rotating subgroup of the church’s deacons. There was no reason to think their records were anything other than accurate.”

  Of course, I thought to myself, it wouldn’t be the first time the leader of a church had found a way to take his followers for a financial ride without their knowing it.

  “Did your father ever mention any sort of personal business arrangement with Daniel Brant, the minister at the church? Anything they might have been involved in together that your father was putting money into?”

  “Never. Not that he would have necessarily, but why wouldn’t the minister have told us about it when my father died? He never mentioned any sort of business either.”

  “So where do you think your father’s money went?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” Kelton said emphatically. “I wish I did. I’m a high-school history teacher. I could use the money. But it’s as if it just disappeared.”

  I thought again of Phoebe Marshall. Her comments to me had sounded disturbingly similar.

  “Mr. Kelton, I really appreciate your patience, and I know this must still be difficult for you to talk about, but did you or the police have any reason to think your father’s death might have been anything other than a suicide?”

  “Well, it clearly wasn’t an accident, since the hose couldn’t have gotten from the exhaust to the car window by itself. So what you’re asking,” Kelton concluded, “is whether someone else killed him. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I take it you didn’t know my father,” Kelton answered, sounding offended. “People loved him. The police looked into all the possibilities, but they never came up with any hint of anyone having a reason to kill him. And there was no evidence in the house or garage, or on his body, that there was anyone there at the time but him.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I know this brings back painful memories for you. But clearly there was something going on in your father’s life that you didn’t know about, something big enough to drive him to kill himself. I’m just trying to find out who killed my sister, and I was hoping that the answers to your father’s death might help me.”

  “Well, as I said, I’ve never heard of your sister, never heard my father mention her, or any business with Reverend Brant. So I just don’t see what possible connection there could be.” Kelton now sounded exasperated and out of patience. I figured there was nothing to be gained by pushing him any further. If he knew anything that might help me, he didn’t know he knew it.

  “You’re probably right,” I answered. “Again, I apologize for imposing on you. But my sister was murdered, and I have to do everything I can to find out why.”

  “I know how you feel, and I really wish I could help you,” Peter Kelton said, clearly getting ready to end the conversation, “but I just don’t know what I could tell you that would have anything to do with your sister.”

  I thanked him for his time, apologized again for disturbing him, and hung up.

  But I didn’t turn my brain off with the click of the phone. Peter Kelton had told me more than he probably realized, I thought, rising to walk over to the windows again. He had confirmed the story about the elder Kelton’s money disappearing. He had ruled out the Bread of Life Church as a recipient of the money, so I knew the ledger sheet Cooper had downloaded from John Brant’s computer was not an accounting of church donations by the five men. And Peter Kelton’s lack of any theory about where the money had gone meant that my suspicions about it were still a possibility. The money, I was convinced, had gone directly to Daniel Brant. But for what?

  I couldn’t imagine that businessmen of the caliber of Marshall and Rivers were investing their money in Brantlow, Inc., which appeared to be a one-man show in the person of John Brant. Was the Cayman Islands company a front for what they really had been investing in? Was the money going through the account and then being shunted off to someplace or something else?

  And I didn’t understand Carl Rivers’s reaction to my question about the other men. If he was involved, and I knew he was from the ledger page Cooper had downloaded, why wouldn’t he have known about Brant’s other partners?

  It was then that I saw another key piece of the puzzle, or at least a key question, a piece that Rivers had given me without my realizing it at the time.

  Why, Rivers had asked, would he be giving money to Daniel Brant when he had not been involved with the church or Brant in months? As I rehashed our brief conversation I realized just how important that question was. Why would he, indeed?

  And he wasn’t the only one. Both Marlee and Phoebe Marshall had said the same thing about Nash Marshall, that he had stopped attending the Bread of Life Church a year ago. Was this some sort of pattern? If I checked with Marlee, who seemed to keep close tabs on people’s comings and goings at the church, would I find out that Kelton, Pursell, and Ulm also had dropped out of church? If the answer was yes, what did that mean? And why would they continue to give Brant such huge sums of money? Or were their breaks with the church simply a way to try to erase any evidence trail to whatever it was they were doing?

  I didn’t know the answer, but I knew it was an important question. I could feel it in the tingle that went up my spine and neck a
s I thought about it. If I could find the answer to that, I thought, somewhere in it I might find at least a hint of what had happened to Cara.

  Wednesday

  Twenty

  The next morning I was at my desk working on revisions to the school-board feature, based on suggestions from Rob Perry, when I got a call from Detective Peterson.

  “Sutton,” he said in a very unhappy voice, “what are you doing?”

  “I’m working on a story about—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Peterson interrupted. “I mean why are you stirring up problems with old investigations that have been solved and closed?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked innocently, not willing to confess to anything without knowing how much he knew.

  “I’m talking about the phone call I got first thing this morning from a Peter Kelton down in North Carolina. He called one of the investigators on his father’s case to complain, and he was transferred to me. Mr. Kelton says you called him with all sorts of wild ideas about his father’s suicide having something to do with your sister’s murder.”

  “Oh really?”

  “You mind telling me where you got such an idea?”

  Actually, I realized, I did mind. I didn’t have it yet, that irrefutable piece of information that would force the police to give credence to everything else I had learned. Would I ever find it? Maybe, maybe not. But I was determined to keep looking until I either had that piece or could satisfy myself that it didn’t exist.

  “I’m grasping at straws, detective,” I told him, which was true at the moment, even if the straws were looking pretty suspicious. “I thought if there was some chance Kelton didn’t commit suicide, it might connect somehow to Cara’s murder. They did go to the same church.” While I realized how flimsy that sounded as a reason to connect their deaths, I wasn’t certain if I was ready yet to tell Peterson about the real connection: the lists from John Brant’s computer.

  “He killed himself,” Peterson said shortly, clearly exasperated with me. “Months ago. So how could that have any connection to your sister’s murder? I’ve pulled the files on the investigation. The detectives on the case are good. If there had been any sign of foul play at the scene, they would have found it. He pissed all his money away somewhere—gambling, women, who knows where—and when he went through the last of it, he sat down and sucked on his exhaust pipe.”

  “You do have a way with words, detective,” I said sarcastically.

  “I apologize if you think I’m being harsh,” Peterson replied somewhat stiffly, “but you don’t do yourself any good this way. Kelton and your sister belonged to the same church. Period. So what? At a church that size, people die on a regular basis. From all kinds of causes. That doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I told him blandly.

  “I know you’re a reporter, and you look for answers for a living,” he went on, now in full lecture mode. “But you really ought to just let the police do our job. We haven’t given up on finding the guy who killed your sister. I’ve got people out every day asking questions about it. And if you think you’ve got some kind of real evidence in the case, I want to be the first one to hear it. But it isn’t helpful when you take up our time with stuff like this. You see what I mean?

  “Yes,” I answered, and I did. He thought I was letting my imagination run away with me, seeing evidence where none existed, so unnerved by my sister’s death that I had lost all perspective. “I’ll try not to create any unnecessary work for you.”

  What I didn’t say was that it was because I intended to keep doing the work myself.

  Doing the work myself seemed to be the story of my life lately, I thought after I hung up from my conversation with Peterson. Because there was another area where I knew that I was going to have to do the work—finding out what was wrong with Chris Wiley. Here it was Tuesday, and I had not heard a word from him since his unexpected early-morning departure on Sunday. Regardless of our lack of some sort of commitment to each other, this was not like him. And I couldn’t let it go any longer. I wanted to know what was going on. I picked up the phone and called his office.

  His secretary answered, even though I had dialed his direct line.

  “Marsha,” I told her, “this is Sutton.” I didn’t have to say Sutton who. Although I hadn’t met her, Marsha had been taking my calls and occasionally calling me with a message from Chris for months now. “Is Chris around?”

  “He’s in a meeting with a client right now, Sutton. Would you like me to have him call you?”

  “Do you know whether he has lunch plans for today?”

  “Just a minute. I’ll check his calendar.” She put me on hold, where I was treated to a sluggish, elevator-music version of “Proud Mary.”

  “It looks like he’s free,” Marsha said when she came back on the line.

  “Great,” I replied. “There’s no need for him to call me. I’ll be out of reach anyway. Just tell him to meet me at noon at the Blue Point Grill at Sutton Place Gourmet. If he hasn’t been there, it’s down on South Washington Street at Franklin. Tell him it’s important.”

  “I’ll give him the message,” Marsha assured me. “Oh, and Sutton?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just wanted to say I was sorry to read about your sister. It must be very hard for you.”

  “Thanks, Marsha,” I told her. “It’s nice of you to think about me.”

  Christ, I thought as I hung up, even Chris’s secretary is more concerned about how I’m handling my sister’s murder than he is. It just reinforced my decision to bring things to a head. I went back to my story, determined not to answer my phone if it rang because I didn’t want to give Chris an out. We were going to meet for lunch. And one way or the other, I was going to find out what was on his mind.

  I was waiting at an outdoor table in front of the Blue Point Grill when I saw Chris’s red Miata turn off Washington Street and drive down Franklin past the restaurant, on his way around the corner to the entrance for the underground parking garage. A couple of minutes later he came up the stairs that opened into the foyer between the popular Alexandria restaurant and its even more popular gourmet-foods shop and joined me at the table. He didn’t look pleased to see me.

  “So what’s so urgent, Sutton?” he asked, sitting down in the other chair and leaning back as if distancing himself from me. “I wish you had checked with me instead of just leaving a message. I had to put off a client who wanted to go out to lunch with me today.” He was making no effort to hide the irritation in his voice. It was clear he felt I had overstepped my bounds in my assumption that he would make himself available. I didn’t like his tone of voice one bit, but I decided that it would defeat my purpose in getting him here if I started out by getting angry, too.

  The waitress came by to fill our water glasses and to get our drink orders. We both asked for iced tea.

  “I apologize,” I told Chris when she left. “But there’s something we have to talk about, and it just seemed very important that we do it today.”

  Chris gave me a long look, then turned at an angle in his chair and crossed one leg over the other, out to the side of the small table. He put his right arm down on the table-top and picked up a fork, which he proceeded to tap lightly against the hard white surface. He looked up at me, the fork still tapping. It was an offensively irritating gesture that said I was on trial here and that my reason for pulling him away from the office had better be worth his while.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m here.”

  In body, anyway, my little friend opined.

  The waitress reappeared with the glasses of tea and wanted to take our order. Flustered, I quickly grabbed the menu and order the grilled salmon salad.

  “I’ll have the same,” Chris told her, without looking at his own menu. The waitress left again, and Chris and I looked at each other for a few seconds in silence. In those seconds I was overcome with the feeling that this was a pi
votal moment, one of those times when you intuitively understand that you aren’t going to like what you’re about to hear and that it’s going to send your life off in a whole new direction. The damned fork kept up its drumming on the table. Chris looked back down at the fork when the meeting of our eyes became too intense. My stomach felt hollow, but I plunged ahead, unable to back away from the cliff edge I felt I was suddenly facing.

  “I need to know where you’ve gone,” I told him, deciding that I owed him no more apologies and might as well get straight to the point.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Chris answered, finally looking up for a few seconds. The fork paused.

  “Yes, I think you do,” I responded, unwilling now to let him escape by pleading ignorance. I was determined to make him say what had to be said. “Come on, Chris, this is me. I haven’t spent the last eight months getting to know you without being able to tell when something is wrong.”

  “What makes you think something is wrong?” he asked, apparently equally determined to avoid confronting it if he could. He knew the answer, of course, as evidenced by his shifting gaze, which kept moving to look anywhere else—at the lanes of passing traffic on Washington Street, at the sky, at the other diners—anywhere except directly at me.

  “You’ve withdrawn,” I told him flatly. “It’s as if only part of you is there. I need to know where the other part is and why.”

  “This is crazy, Sutton,” Chris responded, his voice carrying the message that he was really put out with me. He laid the fork down next to his glass, uncrossed his legs, and swiveled back to face the table, where he leaned forward to talk, his voice now lowered as the conversation took such an intimate turn. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve just been really busy.”

  “Don’t do this, Chris. I deserve better. I know we’ve both been satisfied with where our relationship has been, and I’m not looking for anything beyond that at the moment. But ever since my sister was killed, it’s as if we’re no longer even at that point anymore. As if you’ve disengaged for some reason and I’m not reaching you.”