by Diane Noble
Kate and Paul exchanged a confused look, and Nehemiah chuckled. “James Jenner. Helped me set up my IP address, whatever that is, for the Internet. Installed some sort of powerful little gadget that I don’t even know the name for. Now I can pick up Wi-Fi—whatever that is—from quite a distance,” he added with a grin. “Not very savvy about all this newfangled techie business. I’ll leave that to the experts. About all I know is that it’s wireless and fast.”
Kate smiled at his explanation. “Someday we’d like to get wireless Internet. Our personal computer and my laptop are set up for it, but they’re not powerful enough to get a signal unless we’ve got a hookup here in the house.”
Right now, they just didn’t have that kind of money in their budget. But she didn’t mind. It gave her an excuse to head to the library for research—and to get together with Livvy for a visit at the same time.
Paul chuckled. “So we’re still on dial-up. It may be old and slow, but it’s reliable. Just like me.”
They laughed as Kate poured them each a mug of coffee and sat down at the table opposite her husband.
Paul took a sip, studying her face over the rim, then put down his mug. “How was the ceremony?”
Even as she answered, she could feel his gaze on her. Her husband knew her well and seemed to discern that she was anxious about something. She reached for his hand and patted it as if to say, I’ll tell you everything later.
Kate got up and reached into her handbag for one of the brochures Celine Diamante had handed out during her talk, then, sitting down again, she said, “These are the paintings the museum will be exhibiting.”
She told them about the arrival of Davis Carr and the art expert, Celine Diamante, by stretch limo, the cutting of the ribbon, and the unveiling of the paintings. “I took a quick look at them before I left. The brochure doesn’t do them justice. They really are magnificent. I think they’ll be a great draw for the museum. I can’t wait to see where they’re placed.”
“That’s very generous of Mr. Carr,” Nehemiah said thoughtfully as he studied the paintings in the brochure. He looked up and handed it to Paul. “I’m trying to recall if I met him during my years here, but I’m drawing a blank.”
“He spent only one summer here as a child. He said he was eight at the time,” Kate said. “Even so, apparently our little town made quite an impact on his life.”
Nehemiah smiled as he took a sip of coffee. “It can do that to a person.” He closed his laptop. “Did I ever tell you that Rose and I spent our honeymoon here? We fell in love with the place from the first moment we arrived. Came by train and stayed at the old Copper Creek Hotel. From that day onward, my Rose prayed that God would call me to a pastorate here.”
“Now that’s a story I hadn’t heard,” Paul said. “What year was that?”
“1949.”
Kate sat forward, elbows on the table, holding her mug with both hands, suddenly more attentive. “What time of year?”
“Summer. To be exact, the end of June.”
“Amazing. That’s the same summer Davis Carr said he was here. You must remember all the wonderful things he talked about.” She went on to describe the traveling circus on the Town Green, the soda shop with the ice-cream sundaes, buying penny candy at the Mercantile and comic books at the newsstand of the friendly shopkeepers.
“That’s strange,” Nehemiah said. “I don’t remember any of those things.”
“You were on your honeymoon,” Paul said, waggling his brows. “I’m sure a circus in town wouldn’t have been especially notable to newlyweds. Or a soda shop that served sundaes.”
But Nehemiah looked serious as he leaned forward. “There was a big epidemic that came through the mountains of Tennessee that year. I’m sure of it. What we saw was a town under siege. Houses were taped off—quarantined. People, entire families, weren’t allowed to leave the premises for weeks, and in some cases months. Even shops were boarded up. It was diphtheria, and people were scared out of their wits.
“What we fell in love with, Rose especially, because she had volunteered at her local hospital, was the gratitude and loving-kindness of everyone who lived here—the sick as well as those who jumped in to nurse them back to health.”
“Rose actually did some nursing during that time?”
He nodded. “She wasn’t formally trained as a nurse. Her mother had been a nurse, though, and when Rose was old enough, she spent time at the hospital where she worked, reading to patients, emptying bedpans, bringing them water—and watching her mother in action. We both did, though she was the one with the training. That Victorian that you’re talking about?”
“The new museum.”
“It’s on the corner of Main and Euclid, right?”
Kate nodded, and Nehemiah continued. “My Rose nursed the whole family, including a child who was visiting his aunt and uncle.”
“Do you think it could have been the same child? That Rose actually took care of Davis Carr when he got sick?”
Nehemiah shrugged. “We were here less than a week. We were very young. I had just been admitted to Bible college, I had to get back to college, and Rose’s mother had found Rose a job at her hospital, filing reports for one of the doctors. It didn’t pay much, but we needed every penny we could get in those days. We couldn’t stay in Copper Mill any longer. We never found out what happened to the child—or to the family.”
Kate frowned. “So there couldn’t have been a circus?”
Nehemiah shook his head.
“Or trips to the creek to play in the water, where he and his cousins pretended they were Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn?”
Another head shake.
“And the soda shop was boarded up?”
“Yes.”
Kate sat back, her shoulders slumping, and she puzzled over what she’d just been told.
“Why...,” she began, then stopped to puzzle some more. “Why would Davis Carr tell such a tall tale? Didn’t he stop to think about old-timers who lived here back then and would remember?”
“Maybe he just got his dates mixed up,” Paul suggested.
Kate sipped her coffee, turning that idea over in her mind. “He’s a well-known, savvy businessman. It’s not likely he’d slip up while recalling something this important to him.”
“The epidemic hit the elderly and the young especially hard,” Nehemiah said. “High fevers caused delirium, sometimes lasting for days.”
“Delirium,” Kate mused. “You don’t suppose his memories were actually caused by his illness, do you? Could he have just thought he’d done all those things?”
“Wouldn’t you think someone—his aunt or uncle, or even his cousins—would’ve set him straight once he came out of it?” Paul asked.
“And if they didn’t,” Kate said, “why?”
“Maybe they did, and he just didn’t believe them,” Nehemiah said.
Davis had said he was from a broken family, abandoned first by his father and later perhaps by his mother. “Maybe the dreams brought on by delirium were more pleasant than the truth.”
Chapter Four
After supper that night, Nehemiah retired to Paul’s study, which doubled as their guest room, to work on his sermon for the following morning. Paul helped Kate with the dishes, and as he was drying his hands, he seemed to be studying her face again—just as she’d caught him doing several times since she got home from the grand opening at the museum.
“Something’s worrying you,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s about Davis Carr and the time he spent in Copper Mill as a child.”
Kate reached for Paul’s hand, and they walked into the living room. “You’re right,” she said as they sat down on the sofa. “Livvy called this morning just as I arrived for the museum’s grand opening. She’s been concerned about James since he took the summer job with Safe Keeping.”
Paul nodded.
Kate knew he’d read the article in the Chronicle about the company and its affiliation with Davis Carr at the sa
me time she did, and that he was also aware, from their friendship with the Jenners, what a plum of a summer job it was for their teenage son.
“She wanted me to find the head of security—”
“Clive Garfield.”
“That’s right. James’ boss. She wanted me to ask him some questions, get a read on him. She’d searched for him on the Internet at the library, and absolutely nothing showed up. It was as if he, and his company, didn’t exist.”
“Yet, as I remember reading in the paper, he’s worked with Davis Carr for years, guarding his artwork.”
“That’s right.”
Paul’s forehead wrinkled in thought as he leaned back. “Shouldn’t that be enough of an endorsement?”
“It’s not that easy. An endorsement isn’t what has her worried. It’s the change in James’ behavior since he started working there.”
Paul was paying closer attention now. “What kind of change?”
“He’s fearful. Secretive. Sneaking out in the middle of the night. Completely intent on keeping both Livvy and Danny out of the picture.”
“Not a good time for Danny to be gone.”
Kate sighed deeply. “He’s talked to James on the phone, but it didn’t help.”
“Did you talk to Garfield?”
Kate nodded. “It didn’t get me anywhere, but yes, I did.”
She told him the details of the evasive conversation, the camaraderie she observed between Garfield and James, and also that she caught Garfield watching the old man with the walking stick in front of the Victorian.
“Of course, security is his job,” Paul said. “It could be he was just being watchful for that reason. Maybe it was nothing more than that.”
Kate agreed, then remembered how Caroline reacted to the old man. Also how Davis Carr visibly froze when the man moved his gaze to the podium...and to Davis himself. But she didn’t say anything; she wanted more time to ponder what all that could have meant. If anything.
She had just stood to go to the kitchen to put on the teakettle when they heard a shout from the study. A half second later, already in pajamas and robe, Nehemiah shuffled into the living room, laptop in hand.
His eyes were wide with wonder. “Wait till you see what just showed up on the Web.”
Kate exchanged glances with Paul, who gave her a look that said he’d explain later.
Nehemiah kept shuffling until he reached the kitchen table, then sat down and opened his laptop. “Take a look at this,” he said.
Kate and Paul followed him into the kitchen and leaned over the table, one on each side of him.
He clicked a few keys, got on the Internet, then typed in an address. “I was trying to watch a Webcam at a monastery near Barcelona,” he said, “when this came up. I’ve been to the site a dozen times, but I’ve never had the camera pull a switch on me.”
An ancient-looking monastery appeared on the screen. “This is real time,” Nehemiah said. “Watch for a moment. The monks are about to file into the chapel for morning prayers.”
The sound of bells came out of the computer’s speakers, then a single-file line of monks moved into view, high, jagged mountains in the background. It was early morning, so the shadows were deep. The monks chanted as they went through an iron gate and had just about reached the arched wooden double doors of the chapel when the screen flickered and a new image appeared.
“There, you see?” Nehemiah said breathlessly. “What does that look like to you?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said, frowning. She leaned closer. “It looks like an exterminator. Someone in a white uniform with a dead-bug logo on the back.”
“Yes, it does appear to be exactly that.” Nehemiah almost shouted in his excitement. “But where is this exterminator working?”
Kate frowned. “It’s indoors someplace, but it’s very dark—except for the white of the man’s uniform. The drapes are closed, so it’s hard to tell whether it’s day or night.”
“Exactly!” he said. “Look again.”
Kate glanced at Paul, who gave her a little shrug. “No clue,” he said.
Then the figure moved out of the camera’s range, and Kate blinked. “That’s one of the paintings Davis Carr gave the museum. I saw it in the brochure.”
“To be exact,” Nehemiah said. “It’s the one titled The Enchanted Garden. Somehow my computer has picked up live feed from the new Victorian Museum.”
“That can’t be,” Kate breathed and bent closer for a better look. “That’s a closed-circuit, intensely secure system. Clive Garfield made that clear in his speech today. No one can access the three Webcams at the museum. They’re highly sophisticated, multilayered, state of the art...” She halted and almost rolled her eyes. She was beginning to sound like Garfield and his infomercial-speak.
“That’s the beauty of my new little hobby,” Nehemiah said, giving his laptop an affectionate pat. “I can watch live action all over the world. The surprises are endless.”
“Have you ever picked up something from a secure system before?” Kate asked. “I mean a system that supposedly can’t be accessed?”
He shook his head and grinned. “Not that I know of. But there’s always a first time.”
Kate was still staring at the screen when it flickered again and the monastery returned.
“Montserrat again,” Nehemiah said, sounding pleased. “We will be blessed if they sing a psalm as they process out of the chapel after their prayers. Often in the mornings, it’s ‘Venite,’ my favorite of all.”
While Paul and Nehemiah hummed along with the psalm, their eyes riveted to the computer screen, Kate studied the painting in the brochure—The Enchanted Garden.
Less than twelve hours since Livvy’s worried phone call, and something—or, more clearly, several little somethings—were beginning to nip at the edges of Kate’s brain.
Out of habit, she ticked off the details in her mind: her encounter with the bearlike, evasive Garfield; her observation of his animated interaction with James; the look that passed between the hermit on the street and Caroline, then Davis Carr’s stunned reaction to the old man; her discovery of the faces behind the second-floor window curtain—with the foremost, Garfield again, intently watching the hermit make his way down the street.
How did the puzzle pieces connect? Or did they?
And now, what about the strange Webcam switch that had happened on Nehemiah’s computer? It was almost as if someone else had taken over its controls. She’d heard of that happening before, but it involved hacking...which produced a new thought she added to her list.
She told Paul and Nehemiah good night, and then as she got ready for bed, another thought hit her: Who would have thought the newly refurbished Victorian needed an exterminator?
Wouldn’t one of the museum’s volunteer workers have noticed any little unwanted critters long before now?
Chapter Five
Faith Briar was crowded for the Sunday-morning service. Since Paul had announced the former pastor’s visit—and preaching—scheduled for that Sunday, word had spread like wildfire.
At the beginning of the service, Kate sat in her usual spot with the choir in the front of the church, but she slipped from her place to join Paul in the pew behind the choir just before Nehemiah began his sermon.
The place she chose was directly behind Renee who held Kisses on her lap. Kisses spotted Kate and scrambled to stand, his hind legs propped up by Renee’s crossed arms, his front feet hooked over Renee’s shoulder, his big eyes fixed on Kate. Kate avoided exchanging glances with Paul, or Caroline, sitting on her left. She apparently decided she could miss just one Sunday at St. Lucy’s Episcopal Church to hear the beloved Nehemiah preach.
Nehemiah looked out over the congregation, the love for his former parishioners shining in his face.
“Dear friends and family,” he said, “I would like to focus our attention on the Beatitudes this morning. Turn with me please, in your Bibles, to Matthew, chapter five.” After a few moments of t
he rustling of pages being turned, Nehemiah read the verses aloud, and then he looked up and said, “Jesus gives us, in these verses, a beautiful summary of how our lives will be abundantly blessed if we live according to the words we read in this passage.
“Jesus also tells us in chapter twenty-two that the most important commandment is to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’...and just as important, to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“If we tie these two passages together, we get a wonder-ful portrait of how the Beatitudes represent the way we are to live out in our daily lives these two most important commandments.”
He stepped out from behind the pulpit and smiled gently as he scanned the congregation. “God created each of us as unique and beautiful. In Jeremiah, he tells us, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love,’ and in Zephaniah, he says that he will take great delight in us; he will quiet us with his love; he will rejoice over us with singing.”
His smile broadened. “Dearly beloved, if he loves us that much, we can surely love ourselves in the same way. So, then, what does that say about loving your neighbor? Well, if we truly see our neighbor through God’s eyes, then we will see this person as someone unique and beloved—just as we are seen the same way in God’s eyes.
“The next question, then, is who is my neighbor? Every single day, God brings people into our lives to love with grace and mercy. We are his representatives to share his love with anyone we encounter.
“Sometimes I need to pause and ask myself if there’s anything in my life that blocks my ability to reflect God’s love and grace to others. It might be something as simple as being too busy to visit the sick or the homebound. Or perhaps it’s a negative attitude that drives people away. What about pride? Or jealousy? Or even gossip? Do we ever get so caught up in our own little worlds that we simply don’t think of ourselves as God’s representatives on earth?”
Kate noticed that Renee pulled out a notepad and pen. She began to write hurriedly. Taking sermon notes, Kate assumed. Kisses was stretched out between them in the pew, looking longingly at Kate’s lap.