It would have been awkward to leave, so I stood there making funny faces at the baby in front of us, who responded by crinkling up her face into a serious frown and then bawling into her mom’s shoulder. When the mom turned around, confused, I smiled and played dumb, as though I had no idea what had happened.
“First time?” I asked the woman.
She smiled. “My sister comes here, and she’s been doing nothing but buzzing about this place for years, so I decided to drag Rick along and see what all the fuss was about.”
Rick turned around and shook our hands. “What did you guys think?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested.
“I, well, I liked it,” I said, trying not to gush. “I’ve never been to anything like this before. The hour went by like that.”
Carlos smiled but stayed mum.
“It sure did,” Rick said. “I usually hate church, butâ”
“You wouldn’t believe how often I hear that,” a voice interrupted. Rev. Clavette had sidled up behind Rick and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Welcome, everyone!” he beamed.
I reached out to shake his hand, but he wouldn’t have it. Instead, he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me close for a bear hug. “And your name is?” he whispered in my ear. I could feel his warmth through his suit. His cologne was understated and manly.
“Raven,” I responded. He was strong, so I let the hug take its course without trying to fight it. When I’d had enough, I whispered back into his ear. “And this is my boyfriend, Carlos.”
The hug dissipated swiftly as the minister eyed my beefy bouncer “boyfriend.” “Very nice to meet you, Carlos,” the minister lied, extending a hand.
Carlos took it. If it was possible to offer a skeptical handshake, Carlos did. The minister ignored him and turned back to me and the young couple with the baby. We chitchatted for a few minutes, and he encouraged us to stay for punch and cookies. Carlos declined, but I overruled him.
We found ourselves in a massive underground complex that looked more like an airport or shopping mall than a church basement. There were two coffee stations, a half dozen food stands, and a giant play area for kids. Adults of all ages and colors were standing around chatting and eating as though it was perfectly normal to be hanging out in a church basement on a Saturday night.
“Look at the prices,” Carlos said.
Coffee was twenty-five cents. Pizza was fifty cents a slice. “Wow. Donuts are twenty-five cents!” I exclaimed, my body succumbing to the inescapable gravitational pull of the donut stand.
“The parish must subsidize all this,” Carlos muttered.
“Always about the money with you, isn’t it?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It’s an interesting business model. That’s all.”
I bought Carlos a donut, which, to my disappointment, he didn’t turn down.
“Cheap junk food and an entertaining service. This is better than dinner and a movie,” I said.
Carlos nodded. “Are you saying I’m a cheap date?”
“Get real,” I scoffed. “This ain’t no date.”
Carlos frowned. “You know. You always sound like an idiot when you talk like that.”
“I know,” I said. “It comes from being raised by grammar Nazis. It’s so unnatural for me to use anything but the Queen’s English. But sometimes I do it, just to try to sound like the commoners.”
He rolled his eyes as he licked the donut sugar off his fingers.
“The commoners?” he asked. “You’re a damned stripper. That’s pretty common if you ask me.”
“Correction,” I said. “I’m a stripper-slash-private-detective.”
“Even lower on the totem pole,” he said, shaking his head.
“Whatever.” I knew he was right, so I let it drop. “Are we having pizza or what?”
He shrugged again, meaning that if we were having pizza, it was up to me to make it happen. Which naturally, I did.
On my way, I bumped into a few guys from the blackjack team, but neither of them had seen Dan or Laura at the service. They usually went on Sunday mornings, they explained. That’s when the real service took place. I expressed my wonderment that anything could be a bigger production than what I’d just witnessed, but they looked at each other knowingly and smiled. “It’s big,” they said in unison.
Three bucks’ worth of pizza filled us both up and then some. After a couple of free ice cream cones, we decided we’d had enough of the church for one evening and split. I knew that if I went home, I’d succumb to my donut-pizza-ice cream coma and crawl into bed, so I had Carlos drop me off directly at Cougar’s where I had a few outfits I could slip into. Some coffee and loud stripper music would do the trick to keep me awake, at least long enough to make a few hundred bucks, I hoped. I wasn’t sure what God would think about my going to work at a strip club directly after church, but I reasoned that since it hadn’t been my church, it wouldn’t offend Him in any way. As I’ve repeatedly said, I can rationalize just about anything.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sunday morning had me scratching my head. It was one of those days, increasingly common, when I woke with a hangover despite having just a single drink the night before. Or had it been three? After a few minutes, I gave up trying to reconstruct the last hour of the previous evening, knowing all too well that a fastidious and accurate recount of the previous evening’s imbibing would produce a total I didn’t want to admit.
Feeling old-fashioned, I took the elevator down to my lobby to pick up a newspaper and, since I was there, a couple of bear claws from the little market. Even though it was much more expensive than any other store around, I made sure to frequent the place because a couple of the guys who worked there carded me every time I bought a bottle of wine. That alone was worth the extra few bucks.
The caffeine and sugar rush that followed breakfast was as predictable as it was annoying. I wasn’t a rush kind of person. No roller coasters for me, no skydiving, no rock climbing, and certainly no mind-altering drugs. Except for an attraction to fast cars, most of my leisure activities tended towards relaxationâspa treatments, sunsets on the balcony, and lazy, mindless novels about misunderstood loner cowboys.
I was pacing around, trying to work off the sugar energy, trying to figure out where we stood with the case of the missing blackjack money. The teams themselves had been a dead end, which Dan himself had guessed in advance. I didn’t know how else to get to Laura, though. I still hadn’t told Dan that I’d seen her holed up at the minister’s house. After that had sunk in, I began thinking maybe I had jumped to a needlessly seedy conclusion. After all, would two people get together in the middle of the afternoon in broad daylight like that? What if one of the two thousand or so parishioners happened to drop by to seek spiritual guidance or just to drop off some nonperishable goods for the food drive? Laura had parked right in front of his house, making no secret of her presence. Wasn’t it at least possible that their rendezvous was a perfectly innocent one?
On the other hand, she had lied to Dan about her plans for the afternoon. And, after meeting Owen Clavette, I sensed that the Reverend had a healthy type-A kind of sexual appetite. He’d given me an overly friendly squeeze, and he had the kind of charisma and self-possessed swagger that suggested he was a ladies’ man, despite being a man of God at the same time. He wouldn’t have been the first minister to tend to his flock in more than one way.
But I returned to the central problem at hand which was that any relationship that might or might not exist between Laura and Rev. Clavette didn’t answer any questions about the missing money, which, after all, was the reason I’d been hiredâall of which reminded me that I still hadn’t reported what I’d found to Dan. I chose the easy solution. Like the coward I was, I waited until church time, when I knew his cell phone would be off. At about 9:15, I called and left a voicemail message, giving him only the basics of what I’d seen. I tried to play it down, assuring him that the meeting between Laura and Owen could have been inn
ocent. It would be up to him to draw his own conclusions.
I had a lunch date with Alex, my recently separated banker friend. It had been my idea, but it had been hard to work up the nerve to ask him out, which made me wonder if asking someone out would ever be easy or if (as seemed much more likely) I would be perpetually stuck at age sixteen when it came to men. My “excuse” for taking him to lunch was the fact that he had gotten so thin and I wanted to see him eat a solid meal. To my delight, he had jumped at the opportunity.
He beat me to the restaurant and was waiting for me at the bar, nursing a tall glass of club soda. He looked better now, more relaxed. After we made our initial eye contact, for some reason, I found myself beaming at him, almost giddy. I tried to shut that down real fast, but there was something bursting out inside me that was genuinely happy to be there. With him. And I couldn’t fight it.
We made small talk for a while, but lurking under the surface was something that was crying to get out, to break past the meaninglessness of the chitchat and explore the feeling that was going on, the passion I knew he felt for me and that I was beginning to feel for him. His eyes were burning again, boring a hole into me as I stirred my iced tea.
“Raven,” he said softly.
Buckle up, I thought. Here we go. Just then, the waitress arrived to take our food orders. Phew. Half flustered, I ordered a burger and an order of crab cakes to share. I wasn’t sure why I was getting flustered. I liked Alex. I knew he was a great man. Was that it? He was a man. A real live man. The other “men” in my life were much more like boys or, at best, adolescents. They were incomplete, hormone driven, spouting off at the mouth, impulsive, sloppy, churlish, childish, and only looking out for themselves. Alex had ten years on them, but that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t an age thing. It was a way of carrying himself, a mantle of quiet power he wielded through his soft confidence, easy smile, and the way his cheek muscles firmed up when he shut his jaw. This was a man of the world, a man who managed businesses and other men, who had traveled the world and had ventured something, who had taken a small bank and turned it into a billion-dollar company, and who had been rewarded for his efforts. He was scary and fascinating, and as usual, I was cautious. The fact that he liked me made me very nervous for some reason.
Alex was still studying the menu, caught off guard by the waitress. He settled on a grilled chicken sandwich with a salad instead of fries. Naturally. Salad, I thought. Well, no one was perfect.
When the waitress left us, I began babbling about my case, about the fact that I thought the minister was sleeping with my client’s husband. It was a grievous breach of client confidentiality, but it was the most interesting thing in my conversational repertoire at the moment, which seemed to trump any of those concerns.
“It happens,” Alex said. “These guys can exert a lot of power over people. They are role models. They’re the intermediary between God and man. Some women dig that.”
“And the rationalization points are right there,” I piped in. “I mean, if you’re sleeping with the minister, it can’t be wrong, right?”
He chuckled.
I was fully aware that women would do stupid things for men, even for men who were losers. Rev. Clavette was no loserâhe was a charismatic, handsome, powerful speaker, a guy who could get a crowd whipped up in just a few minutes. I had no doubt that if he set his mind to it, he could get a woman whipped up pretty good too. And Laura would have been a good choice, I had to admit. She was pretty, very athleticâa good catch. I wondered who else he might have thought was a good catch.
Alex was looking at me funny.
“Sorry. I was just daydreaming. I feel bad for her husband. I couldn’t tell him in person, so I left him a voicemail. Is that bad?” I was suddenly feeling very guilty about how I’d handled things with Dan.
Alex cringed. “Well, it’s not good. But there’s no really good way of telling someone something like that.”
He seemed to be speaking from experience. “Was your wifeâ¦?” I let the half question dangle in the air, unable to complete the thought.
He nodded. “She was projecting. She got mad at me for seeing you so often, but the reality is, I think she was mad at herself. She was seeing her masseuse. Nice guy, actually, gives great massages. But he’s about twenty-eight, and I think the only thing he’s after is all the money she must have promised him. I’m sure she’s getting ready to clean me out in a divorce.”
“She gets half,” I muttered. “It’s easy in Nevada.”
He nodded knowingly. “Sometimes. Anyway, Raven, let’s talk about something else. Why did you ask me to lunch?” he said.
The question took me by surprise. “Um, like I said, I was concerned about how skinny you were getting. You look a little better now, but the other day you looked like a skeleton! You need to eat something. And, by the way, the grilled chicken isn’t going to cut it.”
He waved his hand in the air and looked up at the ceiling as though my reason was so fatuous, so utterly silly, that it wasn’t worthy of a response.
“Raven,” he said softly, his voice gravelly again. “You expect me to believe you were concerned about my health, and that’s why you invited me to lunch?”
I shrugged. Was it that implausible, I wondered? I decided to drop it and turn the question around on Alex. “Why do you think I asked you to lunch?” I asked, trying to adopt a saucy air to cover up my apprehension.
Alex chuckled. “Raven, I’m much too old for you. You know that.” He didn’t sound convinced, almost like he was debating the point with himself, asking for ammunition he could use on the other side of the argument, hoping I’d disagree with him vehemently.
“How old do you think I am?” I asked him.
He smiled. “Twenty-one.”
I snorted up some water. “Seriously. As a factual matter, not a point of flattery.”
He considered it for a few seconds, studying my face. “Thirty-two?”
“Closer,” I said. “I’m older than that, but that’s good enough for now. Remember, age is just a number.” The last part was mostly a fib since I was dying to know exactly how old Alex was. I pegged him at forty-five, but that could have been a lowball estimate since he was in such great physical shape. I admitted he could have been fifty, which had a kind of psychological import for me. Fifty.
I was hoping he’d use the ensuing silence to volunteer his own age, but it wasn’t happening. Our food soon arrived. He eyeballed my burger with what I took to be a mixture of jealousy and pity, causing me to feel the slightest twang of guilt, which I immediately brushed aside with the first whiff of the medium-rare beef combining perfectly with the dill from the pickle on top.
“Fry?” I asked, holding one out to him. I must have been a crack dealer in a previous life.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, swiping it from me and depositing it into his perfectly toothed mouth.
So there was hope, I thought.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
To my way of thinking, strippers and ministers shared one thing in commonâMondays were their quietest day of the week. The weekend was for performing, where they made their money, and the rest of the week was just prep for those few hours when they took center stage.
Apparently, I was not alone in this view. Just as I was about to bite into my first nibble of scrambled eggs, my phone rang. It was a local number, one I didn’t recognize. For the first time ever, curiosity won out over hunger. I picked up.
“Raven McShane?”
“Yes,” I said.
“My name is Corinne Van Fleet. I work at The Meadows Worship Center. How are you this morning?” She was a little on the bubbly side for a Monday morning, I thought, but so was everyone else in that church. I was puzzled, though, since I hadn’t signed up or given them my contact info. How had they found me? I decided to play along for now and worry about that later.
“I’m very good, thanks. How can I help you?”
“Well, R
ev. Clavette likes to welcome new members personally,” she explained. “To get to know them just a little bit, you know, and to see how they are doing spiritually. How he can minister to their specific needs. That kind of thing.”
I’ll bet he does, I thought, keeping it to myself. I wondered if the Rev had her call every new member or just the ones with ten-thousand-dollar breasts.
“I see,” I said, trying to conceal my skepticism. “So is there, like, a group orientation or something? A coffee and donut kind of thing?”
She paused for a second and then offered what I perceived was a fake little chuckle. “Oh, no. He much prefers one-on-one. Don’t you? Some things are too personal to bring up in a group session. The reason I’m calling is that he actually has a three o’clock session open today due to a cancellation. Mrs. Feeney’s dog needs surgery, so she couldn’t make it.”
Huh, I thought. Meeting up with a minister was about the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but if I played along, I might learn something. And Dan had paid me in advance.
“Three o’clock, huh? I suppose I could shuffle some things around,” I said, trying to sound like I had something to do, which I didn’t.
“Great! I’ll pencil you in, and we’ll see you at three.” Again, too bubbly for my tastes. But, I supposed the whole church was like that.
I stared at my eggs, which were now cold and sad looking. The obvious solution was to butter up a slice of bread, add some sharp cheddar, put the eggs on top, and then microwave it for fifteen seconds to get the cheese bubbly, the butter melty, and the eggs piping hot. It was almost perfect but a little on the bland side, so I forked some horseradish onto the top, and that completed it nicely. I would have to write that one down.
Prior to my meeting with Owen Clavette, I poked around on the internet to see if it could tell me anything about him. The Meadows had a website, of course, but it was more primitive and sedate than I’d expectedâcertainly not the glowing, effervescent experience that the church service itself had been. All it told me was that “Rev. Owen” (as he likes to be called) was born in Illinois, had a divinity degree from Valley State Bible College (Tennessee), and had founded The Meadows Worship Center six years earlier after serving as an assistant pastor in a megachurch in San Jose, California.
Double Down (Raven McShane Mysteries Book 4) Page 9