by Steph Post
Shelia was concentrating on blowing a bubble as Cindy Lauper came screeching through the speakers. When the front door banged open, Shelia let the gum pop and whirled around. Frank whistled.
“Well, lookie, it’s your boyfriend Slimmy Jimmy. I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to be over at the Tropix. You know, working. Like I pay him to do.”
Shelia rolled her eyes at Frank as she watched Slim Jim stomp the plaster dust off of his boots in the doorway.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“What, did you marry him or something?”
Shelia pursed her lips but ignored Frank as he walked away down the bar, chuckling to himself. Slim Jim stormed up to her and Shelia sighed. What would it be this time?
“Have you seen the motel room lately?”
Shelia narrowed her eyes.
“You mean the one we live in? Yeah, I think I know what it looks like.”
Slim Jim shook his head and rested his grimy elbows against the edge of the bar.
“It looks like a bomb exploded in there.”
“So clean it up.”
Slim Jim grabbed her wrist and looked as if he was going to say something, but Frank came around the bar and crossed his arms over his chest. Slim Jim let go of Shelia and turned to Frank.
“What?”
“Since it’s still daylight out there, but you’re in here, I’m going to assume that you finished patching up the walls in 101 and 102.”
Shelia watched Slim Jim’s jaw tighten. One of these days it was going to come to blows between the two of them. She’d love to see Slim Jim take a swing at Frank, belt him one right in the kisser. Over Frank’s shoulder, Shelia could see Harry holding up his empty cup and waving it at her. Shelia rang in another drink and then dropped it off. By the time she made it back to Frank and Slim Jim, both of their voices were raised. Frank slapped his hand down on the soggy bar mat.
“So, what? You’re just not going to do the pool at Tropix?”
“There’s a pool?”
Slim Jim’s mouth was twisted in ugly sarcasm.
“Oh, you mean that hole in the ground out back of the motel? The one that all the kids pee in?”
Frank stepped in closer to Slim Jim.
“You need to watch your mouth, sonny boy. Or you and your old lady here are gonna find yourselves out on your asses. I’m doing you a favor and you’d best not forget it.”
Slim Jim balled up his fists, but just shook his head in disgust.
“Whatever. I don’t have time for this shit.”
He backed away from the bar and cut his eyes at Shelia. She tried to give him a sympathetic look, but Slim Jim only smirked at her and then bolted out of the bar without saying goodbye. He nearly crashed into several guys coming through the door and they all looked each other up and down for a tense moment. Shelia shook her head and jammed the ice scoop further down into the bin. It amazed her sometimes that men could even manage to take their own pants off without a woman doing it for them. Jesus, how did they survive?
Frank nudged her hard and she looked up from the ice.
“Girl, you’d better get a smile on that mug.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really.”
Frank’s voice had taken on a strained tone that Shelia hadn’t heard before. He quickly popped out the ’80s mix and put in a Dwight Yoakam CD. He carefully adjusted the volume and then grabbed her shoulder, shaking her roughly.
“What the hell, Frank?”
Frank nodded toward the corner booth. One of the men who had just come in was sitting there alone. The other two were standing around one of the high tops, but it didn’t look like they wanted a drink. They were shifting their eyes around as if surveying the bar from all angles. Frank leaned in close and whispered.
“You see the guy sitting alone in the booth?”
Shelia snapped her gum loudly.
“So?”
The man was haloed in red light from the Budweiser sign above his head. He had a beaked nose and straight black hair that fell along the sides of his face like curtains. Despite the heat, he was wearing a bomber jacket, the brown leather scuffed and mottled. He was sitting up perfectly straight with his fingers steepled on the table in front of him. Shelia had never seen him before. Frank nodded solemnly.
“Take special care of him, okay? I mean it.”
Shelia tried to wriggle out from underneath Frank’s hand.
“Why? Who is he?”
Frank shoved her shoulder.
“Just do it. And spit that wad out or he’s likely to smack it out of your mouth for you. He doesn’t like gum chewing. I’ll be in the office for a minute. Just make sure he has everything he needs and don’t be a smart-ass about it.”
“Okay, okay.”
Shelia waved him off and spit her gum out in the trash before crossing the bar to the man sitting at the booth. She was aware that the other two guys were eyeballing her, but she didn’t look their way. She tugged on her tank top so that her cleavage was more prominent and then flashed the man in the corner a flirtatious smile. He didn’t smile back.
“Can I get you something, sugar?”
His voice was like gravel and this close up Shelia could see that his eyes were an unexpected, startling light blue. She rested two fingers on the edge of the table and arched an eyebrow. The man’s stagnant expression didn’t change.
“Mai Tai. No fruit.”
“Sure thing.”
Shelia waited a second to see if the man wanted to make small talk, but it was obvious he wanted nothing to do with her. She cocked her hip out and winked anyway.
“I’m Shelia, by the way.”
His eyes narrowed slightly and though Shelia knew she could hold her own with any man, she felt the chill of someone walking over her grave.
“Weaver. Now get me my goddamn drink.”
Sister Tulah heaved herself into the driver’s seat of her sleek, black Lincoln Navigator and wrenched the door shut. She started the engine and adjusted the air conditioning vents. They were already pointed directly at her, exactly where she wanted them to be, but she fiddled with them anyway to calm her frustration. Yesterday, it was the ATF agent harassing her; today, it was the claims adjuster. Didn’t these people have anything better to do with their time than bother her with their nonsense and incompetence? The cold air blasted her, prickling the mustache of sweat hanging above her upper lip, and Tulah let her head drop back against the headrest. She brushed her fingertips across the arch of the tan leather steering wheel and tried to relax. At least she had the cool, quiet interior of her Navigator to escape to.
Like clockwork, Sister Tulah bought a new Lincoln every year in the fall, when the new models rolled out. She had been doing so ever since she had first slid the letters across the marquee in front of the church to form the words: Pastor Tulah Atwell. That had been back in 1982, and during that first year there had been a few rumblings from the congregation. Sister Tulah was preaching hellfire and damnation on swimsuits, movie theaters and Coca-Cola, and a few of the brothers and sisters had taken issue with their preacher zipping around Kentsville in a brand new Continental. The dissenters had soon been taken care of, though. Sister Tulah couldn’t always govern the few outliers, the few backsliders who hovered at the fringes of her church, new spouses and friends of her true believers, but she could certainly shut them up in a hurry.
And not even those heathen Baptists up in Starke at Holy Living Waters could fault her purchase this time. Sister Tulah fingered the fine leather stitching on the steering wheel. Her last Navigator had ended up looking like a piece of Swiss cheese, riddled with bullet holes from the shootout in the church’s parking lot three months ago. At least the insurance on her vehicle had come through quickly. The church, however, was another headache altogether and half the reason she was still using that mouse hole in the back of the furniture store for an office.
The Last Steps of Deliverance Church of God was still functional after the fire, but barely.
Sister Tulah continued to hold Wednesday night and Sunday morning and evening services in the crumbling building, but there was no way she would still use it to do business. The back of the church where her office was located had been relatively untouched by the destruction of bullets and flame, but the entire incident had opened the church’s doors wide to police and investigators, none of whom she needed poking around in her business. While the fire was still roaring, and she was trying to hold the goopy remains of her eye against her face, Tulah had ordered Felton back through the choking smoke to retrieve a folder of documents from the safe in her office. If discovered by the wrong people, its contents would have had her in prison for the rest of her life. Fortunately, she had known everyone who arrived at the scene and they hadn’t dared to rifle through her office. In her mind, though, it had still been too close a call.
Sister Tulah had moved her base of operations from the back of Last Steps to the back of the Elders’ lair: the used furniture store on the other side of town. She hadn’t bothered to ask if they minded her sudden takeover of their sacred space. The Elders, four men who had been with the church since it had been under the steerage of her grandfather, would not hesitate to slit their own throats if Sister Tulah commanded it. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. It was almost impossible to tell them apart, and while Tulah suspected that the ancient men were brothers, she couldn’t be sure. Not that it mattered. The Elders were more loyal to her than dogs, and though she would never share her deepest secrets with any living being, she trusted the old men. More than she had her limp-wristed husband Walter and certainly more than she did her moon-brained nephew Felton.
A squabble of voices pierced the sanctuary of the Navigator and Sister Tulah snapped her head around. Two women tumbled out of the laundromat, screeching at one another in Mexican or some other gibberish. Sister Tulah scowled at them. She had been enjoying her respite before heading home, but it seemed she would never find a moment’s peace. Tulah glared at the women, one now shoving a pink towel in the other’s face, and was about to put the Navigator in reverse when it was suddenly filled with the eerie sound of a phone ringing. Sister Tulah was startled, but then primly corrected herself, even though she was alone. She peered at the Navigator’s stereo as the car phone continued to ring. Sister Tulah pushed a button.
“Yes?”
It kept ringing. Sister Tulah pursed her lips and jabbed at another button.
“Hello?”
She twisted the radio dial back and forth and poked at more buttons, feeling as though she were in the cockpit of an airplane. Tulah had been hesitant about the car phone feature, but the slick man at the dealership had finally persuaded her that it was about time she joined the technological revolution. She had taken no time in informing him that the only revolution she needed was that of God’s angels smiting down the rest of the world, but she had gone in for the luxury package anyway. Sister Tulah mashed one more button and a voice finally came through the speakers.
“Hello? Sister Tulah?”
Tulah sat back in her seat and took a few deep breaths before answering.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Um, this is Cary Lane.”
The man calling her acted as if she should know and then Tulah remembered that the stereo was supposed to tell her who was calling. She looked at the display: First National Bank. Tulah turned away from the stupid car phone and gazed across the mostly deserted back parking lot.
“Yes, Brother Cary. I know that. What do you want?”
Cary coughed a few times and cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Sister Tulah. I know you’re probably busy…”
She interrupted him.
“Yes. I am. What is it?”
The voice hesitated a moment and Sister Tulah smiled to herself, picturing the squat, bald bank manager squirming in his wingtips.
“Well, I just thought you would want to know. That is, a man just walked into First National and started asking Julie at the counter some questions.”
Tulah frowned and put the car into reverse. She craned her neck over her shoulder and began to back out of the parking space.
“What kind of questions?”
“Questions about the church fire. The shooting.”
“Why would someone be asking your counter girl about my church?”
Cary coughed again.
“Well, I don’t know exactly. To tell you the truth, he was mostly asking questions about you.”
Tulah’s frown deepened.
“Me?”
“I hurried over there as soon as I saw Julie talking to this fella. I made sure he was talking to me.”
Sister Tulah pulled out in front of a minivan. She responded to the squeal of brakes with a menacing look in the rearview mirror.
“And would this happen to be a dark-skinned man? Not from around here? A little ahead of himself?”
“That’s for sure.”
“And the questions?”
“Well, he was just asking general things about you. How long you’d been preaching in town. How long the church’d been around. If you had any enemies. Were you well liked in the community.”
Sister Tulah’s eye widened and she raised her voice to a near-screech.
“Am I well liked?”
She could imagine Brother Cary cringing on the other end.
“I just gave him basic answers, you know. Nothing specific. I would’ve told him to leave right away, but he had a federal badge.”
“I know, a Fischer-Price one. ATF.”
“It’s still federal.”
Sister Tulah snapped.
“Yes, I know that. I am aware, Brother Cary. So this man, his name is Special Agent Grant, by the way, came into First National Bank and was asking questions about me. Anything else?”
There was a pause and Sister Tulah sighed. Sometimes it was hard with Brother Cary. Because he handled so many of her business accounts, because he had a few crumbs of inside information, he sometimes felt he was above the rest of her flock. Yet because of what he knew, Tulah was obligated to occasionally humor him and let him believe that he was. Sister Tulah hated negotiating. She hated tact. It was so tiresome.
“I stepped next door after the man left and talked to Barney. The ATF guy was asking questions in the barber shop, too. Barney said he’d seen him across the street, coming out of the hardware store earlier. I think this guy’s asking questions all around town about you.”
Sister Tulah nodded slowly and turned off the main road.
“All right. If you hear anything else you think I should know, call me.”
It was the closest to a thank you that Tulah could muster.
“Will do, Sister Tulah.”
“And, Brother Cary, while I have you, I need to know the status of the one eleven account.”
Sister Tulah waited patiently through the awkward pause. When Cary finally spoke, he sounded flustered.
“I’m still working on it. I’ve had to transfer some money around, shift the holdings for a few of the other accounts. If the insurance for the church had come through already, I’d have a lot more to work with.”
“The one eleven account is never supposed to be touched, Brother Cary.”
Cary stumbled over his words.
“It hasn’t. Usually, you have a lot more, um, cash flow going into other accounts that can then be diverted. It’s just that all of your accounts have been a little low lately. The, uh, the issue with the mine…”
“Yes, Brother Cary, I am aware.”
“Anyway, you’re going to need to give me something more to work with if you want the account at a hundred.”
Sister Tulah rolled through a stop sign.
“How much more?”
“I’ll have to double check, but I think it was only a few thousand short. I’ll need the money by the ninth, though, if you want to make the transfer by Friday.”
“You’ll have it. Hang up now.”
Brother Cary star
ted to say something, but obviously thought better of it and the stereo beeped that the call had ended. Sister Tulah pursed her lips. She was certainly not going to explain that she had no idea how to hang up the car phone. Tulah turned down the sandy driveway and finally parked the Navigator in front of her tall white house. She glanced in the rearview mirror, eyeing the husk of her church, just down the road and on the same property as her home. Sister Tulah smirked to herself and adjusted the elastic band of the patch over her eye. She might have to lay the brimstone on a little thick this week, and send the Elders knocking on some doors, but coming up with a few extra thousand dollars would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
CLIVE PRIED the cap off his sweating bottle of Heineken and flipped his laptop open. The sudden brightness cut through the gloom of the motel room and Clive leaned back, staring at the screen on the table in front of him. He had only allowed himself to turn on the buzzing fluorescent light above the bathroom mirror so that he could fill the sink with cold water and dunk his six pack of beer. If the state of the room was anything like that of the hallway, with its thin, moldering carpet and bubbling, water-stained walls, he figured it was best just to not look too closely. He gripped his steadily warming beer and held it out next to him, directly in front of the rattling air conditioning unit, which didn’t seem to be producing much more than a musty odor. The ice machine was broken. Of course.
There were only two hotels to choose from in Kentsville, and The Pines had seemed like the better option compared to its competitor down the road. Clive had gotten one glimpse of the palmetto bugs contentedly dozing in the corner of The Travel Inn’s lobby and backed out the door immediately. At least the woman at the front desk of The Pines had assured him that “they sometimes sprayed for those damn dinosaur critters,” so Clive had felt a little better about staying there. He wouldn’t be getting under the sheets anytime soon, though. Or turning on all the lights. Clive chugged half his tepid beer and rapped his knuckles on the particleboard tabletop. He needed to decide what to do about the report.
It should have been simple. All Clive had to do was declare whether or not he believed the arson committed at The Last Steps of Deliverance Church of God was a religiously motivated hate crime. If it was deemed so, then the crime would come under the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996 and be deemed a federal offense. ATF would need to conduct a full inquiry and the Scorpions would have to be tried in federal courts. If the church location was merely incidental, then ATF could check the arson off its list and let the state’s attorneys handle the whole mess. All Clive had to do was make the determination.