“Warren?” Lindsay stood in the doorway, baffled by her boyfriend’s unexpected presence.
“Morning,” Anna and Warren grunted in unison. It was hard to tell which one of them looked worse. The usual fresh-faced peach tinge in Anna’s complexion had been replaced with a sickly olive green. She clung to her coffee mug with white knuckles. Warren’s face was covered in orange stubble, and half-moons of puffiness had emerged below his eyes.
“Why are you here?” Lindsay asked. Her tone was sharper than she had intended, but the sight of him was so surprising that she wondered for a moment if she was still sleeping.
“Happy to see you, too,” Warren replied.
Anna took this as a cue and rose from her chair. “I’m gonna get going. Drew and I are heading to the beach in a few hours, so I better do what I can to look, feel, and smell less like a fungus.” She moved gingerly across the dining room, like a stroke patient who was relearning how to walk. She hugged Lindsay as she passed her. “Thanks for the party, Lins. It’s been real. I’ll see you guys in Duck.”
Warren poured a cup of coffee from the carafe for Lindsay, adding the copious amounts of milk and sugar that he knew she favored. “Look, I know it was rough the other night.”
Lindsay shrugged in acknowledgement and sat down across from Warren. Her tiny 5’1” frame was dwarfed by the oversized oak dining set, with its ponderous heft and enormous scroll-backed chairs. John and Rob were both diminutive men, and she had never understood how they could be comfortable sitting in chairs that left their feet dangling two inches off the ground.
“Are the dogs okay?” she asked, doing her best to muster an appropriate amount of concern for the wellbeing of the ill-mannered little beasts.
“Yeah, they’re fine. Like you said, milk chocolate’s not gonna kill them. Honestly, I’m not even sure a silver bullet would kill those dogs. Anyway, I guess there was some, uh, unpleasantness from Ringo and Muffin on the car upholstery, but they bounced back in no time.”
Lindsay and Warren sipped their coffee and regarded one another.
“Where’s Rob?” Lindsay asked.
“He was gone when I got here. Anna said that he went out to help John and Old Joe at the tree farm for the day.”
“He probably doesn’t want to face me,” Lindsay said.
“Why? Did something happen?” Warren asked.
“Yeah, we had a fight.”
“What about?”
“Well, I said I wouldn’t... Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“What? Did he ask you to cover a shift for him so he can spend more quality time with his cat?” Warren said.
Naturally loyal, Lindsay would, under normal circumstances, have sprung to her friend’s defense. However, Rob’s request went a bit beyond covering a shift, and she hesitated to reveal it to Warren. Despite her best efforts, there was very little love lost between Rob and Warren. In fact, each encounter between the two men and each new piece of information they discovered about one another seemed only to add fuel to the slow-burning fire of their mutual animosity.
With growing frequency, Rob told Lindsay his opinion of Warren—he was an overly-ambitious good ole’ boy with an Oedipus complex. Even though Warren was more circumspect, he had managed to communicate his belief that Rob was manipulative, immature, and a bad influence on Lindsay. Their palpable distaste for one another was part of the reason why Lindsay had been so surprised by Warren’s presence in Rob’s house.
Lindsay shifted uncomfortably in her chair, avoiding Warren’s gaze. She decided to leave his questions about her fight with Rob unanswered. “So, what happened with the investigation the other night?”
“That’s why I’m here, actually,” he said. “Have you seen your mother lately?”
“What? Why would I have anything to do with that soulless harpy?” Lindsay hadn’t laid eyes on Sarabelle Harding since the previous July, when her mother and her boyfriend had broken into Lindsay’s house, threatened and harassed Lindsay and her father, and attempted to blackmail them both. Sarabelle had escaped in the aftermath of Hurricane Amanda—leaving a trail of emotional destruction that rivaled any natural disaster.
Lindsay had few memories of the time before her parents went to prison, so she couldn’t say for certain how the experience had changed them. All she knew was that Sarabelle had careened in and out of her life for the two decades since she was released. There was, of course, Sarabelle’s initial desertion about a year after the family was reunited. When months had passed with no word, the twelve-year-old Lindsay convinced herself that some terrible accident had befallen her mother. She begged her father to call the police, the FBI, anyone who could bring her mother back home. He would just shake his head sadly and promise her that he would never leave her.
As Lindsay grew older, Sarabelle became like a rock star who occasionally toured Mount Moriah, bringing chaos, glamour, and excitement in her wake. During Lindsay’s teenage years, Sarabelle opened the door to an alternate reality—a space away from the strictures of her father’s church where Lindsay was allowed to smoke and swear and cake on makeup by the pound. But over the years, the excitement gave way to bitterness, as the scars of repeated abandonments began to accumulate on Lindsay’s heart.
Their interactions seemed so unfathomable that it had taken years for Lindsay to discern their pattern. Out of the clear blue, she would receive a letter or a phone call from her mother. Sometimes these would contain an apology, but more often they were cheerful, mundane communications that ignored the long history between the two women. Sarabelle would announce her intention to visit, and within days, she would show up on Lindsay’s doorstep, blinking her big blue eyes like she had just awoken from a strange dream and was surprised to find herself there. With the blinding force of her charm on full blast, she would sweet talk her way past Lindsay’s objections and rationalizations, carving out a space for herself in her daughter’s life.
Sometimes she stayed for lunch. Sometimes she stayed for a week, sleeping until noon and then spending the rest of the day fixing shrimp and grits or baking red velvet cupcakes for Lindsay. Sometimes, she would visit regularly over a period of weeks or months. Sometimes, a year would pass with no communication at all. When she left, she always left abruptly, as if she had suddenly remembered a terribly important appointment across town. Her whereabouts during her absences were a never-solved mystery. Every time Sarabelle left, Lindsay swore that it was the last contact she would ever have with her mother. But always a little spark of hope—for acceptance, for love, for a different ending—stubbornly refused to be extinguished.
“Well, you remember Leander Swoopes?” Warren said, bringing her attention back into the room. This was a rhetorical question, for there was no way that either of them would forget the terrifying criminal with the luminous green eyes. Sarabelle Harding had been Swoopes’s girlfriend and accomplice, standing by him as he stalked and terrorized Lindsay the summer before. Swoopes had finally been arrested and extradited to Kentucky to face an assault charge for a violent attack on a previous girlfriend. “Well, he managed to fix himself up with a brand new girlfriend.”
“I thought he was in jail in Kentucky,” Lindsay said.
“There was some kind of plea bargain. Apparently he sold out some meth dealers he’d worked with previously. Allowed the police there to score a good-sized bust. He served three months and was released. He made his way back here and has been living with a local woman named Lydia Sikes.”
“Before I met you, I went four years without a serious boyfriend and a slimy little worm like him lands another girlfriend straight out of prison? When the prison term he was serving was for domestic abuse?!”
“Well, I hope your standards for a partner are a little higher.”
Lindsay smirked. “Debatable.”
“Lindsay, this is serious. You know the dead body from the trailer? That was Lydia Sikes, the unlucky lady who shacked up with him.”
Warren’s words sucked all the humor
out of Lindsay’s face. “Did he…hurt her?” For some reason, the word “kill” stuck in her throat.
Warren was silent. He took an orange from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table and began to peel it. His focus shifted entirely to the task; a surgeon transplanting a new set of lungs into a critically ill patient couldn’t have concentrated his attention any more completely.
A minute ticked by. Finally, Lindsay grabbed the orange from his hand and ripped the remaining peel haphazardly away from the fruit in a matter of seconds. Warren raised an eyebrow at her but said nothing. She returned the fruit to him, placing it on the table with a dull thud.
“I’d say for almost definite that he hurt her,” Warren continued. “Her right wrist and hand had some bruising, like she was grabbed or held. That might not mean anything. If she had been living with Leander Swoopes, it wouldn’t exactly be a newsflash to discover that she’d been getting knocked around a bit.”
“I meant could he have forced her to shoot herself?”
“It’s a point to ponder,” Warren agreed. He separated a section of orange from the whole, pausing to carefully remove a string of white pith and add it to the neat pile of orange peelings in front of him. “But there’s a bigger puzzle. She had just bought five oxycodone pills from her friendly neighborhood drug dealer about two hours before she died. But she didn’t take them. All five were still in her purse, and the Medical Examiner said the only thing in her stomach was a soda.”
“Maybe she forgot about them? Or decided to die sober?” Lindsay posited. Even to her own ears, though, those possibilities sounded far-fetched. For a drug addict to spend money on pills and then decide to kill herself before taking them seemed highly improbable. “Well, say it wasn’t a suicide. What does it have to do with my mother?”
“Maybe nothing. But here’s the thing. Sarabelle was still writing letters to Swoopes while he was in prison. In fact, he told his cellmate that when he got out, he was going to hook up with her again.”
“This is so typical of her! She couldn’t stay faithful to my dad for five minutes, but she’ll wait patiently for some domestic abuser criminal scumbag while he’s in prison.” Lindsay had addressed her first outburst to the ceiling, but a sudden realization made her turn back to Warren. “How long have you known about this? Why didn’t you tell me that she was still involved with him?”
“I was trying to protect you. And to be honest, I was afraid of how you’d react. Every time her name is mentioned, you go completely off the rails.”
Lindsay realized that she was kneeling up on her chair and pointing her finger in Warren’s face. She couldn’t deny the truth of his assessment. The name Sarabelle Harding set off a landslide of emotions that threatened to swamp anything in its path. She sat back on her heels and sulked. “Fine. But I still think you should have said something. I mean, it could have been her who died.”
“Hold on. One minute, she’s a soulless two-timer and now I’m in trouble because you’re so concerned about her wellbeing that you want me to keep you up to date on her correspondence? You’re all over the place. I just don’t understand what I’m supposed to do.”
“I’ll tell you what to do. Leave. Now.” The words were out of Lindsay’s mouth almost before they registered in her brain. Warren slammed his half-finished orange on the table and stormed out the back door. She half rose to go after him and apologize, but she immediately slumped back down again.
Through her work, Lindsay had slowly cultivated an ability to stay calm and reasonable in challenging circumstances. Just the previous day, she had sat for hours with the family of a gravely ill man as they made a series of heart-rending decisions about his end-of-life care. After it was all over, the man’s children thanked her profusely and referred to her as “a beacon in the storm.” But for the past few weeks, it seemed that her feelings of control and serenity were confined almost exclusively to her work. Outside the walls of the hospital, it was as if her emotional equilibrium had come unhinged and was flapping like a storm shutter in the wind. She knew that Warren had been right, but that knowledge wasn’t enough to make her want to listen to his advice or reach out to him.
After arguing with Rob for years about her punishing work schedule, she was now one shift away from a solid week at the beach with almost nothing to do. And the prospect filled her with a creeping sense of dread.
Chapter 5
“Nice quiet day. Nothing too vexing.” Lindsay’s fellow chaplain, the wise and wizened Geneva Williams, was handing over case notes as Lindsay began her overnight shift. Geneva had passed a quiet afternoon, giving communion to a patient who’d requested it and chatting at length with an old friend of hers as he underwent chemotherapy. Often, the days of the chaplains at Mount Moriah Medical Center were filled with urgency—long lists of patients to see, emergency summons to bedsides, intense conversations with the sick and the dying. There were slow days, though. Days of paperwork, sermon writing, knocking on patients’ doors to see if any spiritual solace was required. Such days always seemed to fall at the worst times for Lindsay—times when she had some creeping tiger of worry or self-doubt stalking through her mind, times when she desperately needed the distraction of someone else’s crises, someone else’s mess. Overnight shifts could be particularly quiet. If there were no emergencies, then the chaplain on duty was welcome to catch whatever sleep they could manage on the narrow cot in the chaplain’s quarters.
As the older woman buttoned up her jacket, Lindsay said, “Geneva, can I ask you something?” Although Lindsay was technically a senior chaplain, and Geneva was still a trainee, when it came to personal matters, Lindsay frequently sought the older woman’s unique brand of no-nonsense advice. Geneva’s life experience included long careers as a schoolteacher, a minister at a local A.M.E. church, and a mother to seven children. There wasn’t a single corner of human nature that she hadn’t thoroughly explored.
“You know you’re gonna ask no matter what I say.” Geneva rifled through her giant white leather purse as she spoke. With a triumphant “A-ha!” she pulled out a full-sized bottle of cocoa butter lotion and proceeded to rub a large dollop over her tiny, nut brown hands. “You waiting for me to write you an invitation?”
Lindsay inhaled deeply. “Do you think I’m losing it?” Lindsay asked.
“Losing what? You lost your phone again? Did you look in the break room fridge? You know you always leave your phone up in that fridge.”
“No. It’s not my phone. Although actually I did lose it, and I already checked the fridge, so keep an eye out, okay?” Lindsay paused. “Do you think I’m going crazy, like having an early mid-life crisis or something? I just feel that I’m not myself lately. I keep picking fights with Warren. Or maybe he’s picking fights with me. I don’t even know. And Rob asked me to be his fake wife, and I’m seriously considering it even though I know it’s totally nuts. And I’m trying to be happy for Anna and Drew. I mean, I am happy for Anna and Drew, but I feel weird about going to their wedding. It’s like I’m losing her, but I’m also losing myself. Does that even make sense? And I’ll be staying with my aunt for the first time in forever, and I’m not sure that I can handle it.”
Geneva sat down, gesturing for Lindsay to do the same. “Here’s what I think. Number one: your man. Do you love him? Does he treat you right? If so, then marry him. You’re not getting any younger. If not, then get rid of him and move on because, like I said, you are not getting any younger. Number two: Rob. That boy is a fool. John is a much better cook than you and he’s better looking. He doesn’t need you as a wife, even as a fake one.
“What else you ask? Oh, yeah. Anna and Drew’s wedding. If you’re jealous because she found someone, you need to get over it. Anna’s your friend and she’s happy. Find your own man and get married. If you’re not jealous, are you sad because she’s not gonna be around all the time anymore? If so, you need to get over that and be happy for her. You’re a grown woman. You should be out finding your own man and marrying him,
having babies and naming them after me. And as for staying with your aunt, the woman is old. She’ll be dead soon and then you’ll be in here whining to me that you didn’t get to spend enough time with her and make peace before she died.” Geneva rose from her chair. “Speaking of dead soon, I’m tired and I’m going home.”
“Thanks a lot, Geneva,” Lindsay said wryly.
The older woman smiled at her with a surprising tenderness. “Lindsay, honey, you do everything too hard. You work too hard. You think too hard. You worry too hard. Book of Matthew, Chapter Six, ‘Can worrying add even an hour to your life?’ Give your problems to the Lord and He will take care of it all.”
“I just can’t believe that’s how God works. I mean, I’ve ministered to people who thank God for finding them a good parking space. It’d be comforting to think that there was someone up there making sure things turn out okay for me all the time. But that would mean that that same God was up there making a lot of people’s lives turn out pretty crappy. Is it God’s plan for somebody’s baby to be stillborn or for their daughter to slit her wrists? If that’s what they believe and it gives them comfort, then I’ll support them in that because this job’s about helping them, not about what I believe. But personally, I think we just have to trust that God has given us the tools to work things out for ourselves.”
“I know you do, baby.” Geneva squeezed Lindsay’s hand. Her skin was smooth and warm, like freshly-oiled leather. “I’m gonna have to have a word with your father about it. You the most disbelieving minister I know. How did Jonah Harding manage to raise this Doubting Thomas?”
“He asks himself the same thing all the time, believe me.”
A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) Page 4