Servant

by J. S. Bailey

Bobby forced his nerves to unwind themselves, but he feared that if he got busy doing something else, the man would enter the church, sneak up behind him, and scare him to death.

  Or worse.

  He would have to do the logical thing and lock the door.

  “God, don’t let him come in here,” Bobby said as he headed toward the entrance. “Make him stay away.”

  Whether God was listening or not from beyond the nonexistent door that sat between them, Bobby didn’t know.

  But then a car door slammed.

  The man was coming back.

  Bobby froze midway between the office and front doors, knowing he wouldn’t get to them in time. It took him half a second to decide he would rather hide than face whoever was about to come through the door.

  He turned and made a mad dash toward the open janitor’s closet. He slammed the door behind him, let out a mild curse when he discovered he couldn’t lock it from the inside, and sank to the floor amid the clutter.

  He left the light off so it wouldn’t spill out through the crack under the door.

  His heart continued to pound.

  Far away down the hall came the telltale squeak of the wooden doors opening and swinging shut.

  Footsteps echoed on the tile floor. “Hello?”

  Bobby didn’t dare call out a reply.

  The man spoke again in a voice fraught with anxiety. “Is anybody here?” The footsteps moved into the sanctuary for a minute and back out again, stopping in the area close to the first office. “Father Preston? Mr. Bellison? Are you here?”

  For a second Bobby wondered if the man might be the one who’d tried to kill Randy but decided otherwise. Graham was an old man, and this man’s voice bore none of the telltale rasp indicative of advanced years. If Bobby had to guess, he’d have said the speaker was in his thirties or forties.

  That didn’t mean the man could be trusted.

  The footsteps continued his way once again. “I know somebody’s in here.”

  Well, duh. Unless cars drove themselves and church lights were left on all night to illuminate ghosts.

  Bobby could only hope the guy wouldn’t look in the closet.

  “Hello?”

  Now the man stood just outside the closet door. Please don’t come in.

  “Mr. Bellison,” the man said, “if you’re in here, we need to talk.”

  Since Bobby was not Mr. Bellison, he felt no need to reply.

  Bobby shifted an arm so he could scratch his nose and accidentally knocked into something he couldn’t see, which then fell to the floor with a loud thunk.

  And though every cell of his body dreaded it, the closet door swung open with a squeal.

  The man standing in the doorway wore black sunglasses, a black jacket, and black pants. “You’re not Mr. Bellison,” he said, a note of surprise in his voice.

  Bobby stood. “I guess not.” He heard a tremor in his voice and hated himself for it.

  A crease formed in the man’s forehead and he backed up a few steps into the hallway. “What are you doing here?”

  “Working.”

  “You don’t work here.”

  Bobby felt his confidence begin to build. “I do now. Randy hired me to replace him.”

  Brown eyebrows arched over the top of the sunglasses. “I wasn’t aware he’d intended to quit.”

  “And I wasn’t aware that people go sneaking around churches this late at night.”

  A smirk. “I’m not the one hiding in a closet.” The man straightened his sunglasses. “Step on out so I can see you better.”

  “Maybe if you take those glasses off, you will.”

  The man’s manner became terse. “Look. I don’t have a lot of time. I was supposed to meet someone here and she hasn’t showed.”

  “She?” Bobby stepped forward into the closet doorway.

  “Yes, a woman in her twenties. She has to have gotten the message, and I know she wouldn’t refuse to come.”

  Well there’s your problem. “Maybe her phone died and she couldn’t get to her voicemail.”

  He shook his head. “It was the written variety.” He clasped his hands together and glanced in the direction of the entrance. “I’m hoping the note wasn’t stolen. This is very important.”

  The man’s agitation seemed genuine. “I could keep a look out for her,” Bobby said. “Something might have held her up.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” The man stared down at his feet, deep in thought. Then, “I can’t stay any longer. If she shows up, can you tell her she missed me? Here.” He pulled a tiny notepad and pen out of his jacket pocket and scrawled out a phone number. “You can give this to her. If she still doesn’t show, throw it away or burn it.”

  Bobby took the paper without looking at it and stuffed it into his jeans. “What’s her name? So I know it’s her, I mean.”

  “Do I need to tell you that? At this hour, she’ll be the only person looking to meet someone here.”

  That made sense. “And what’s your name?”

  The man hesitated. “You can tell her my name is Paul.”

  “Is it?”

  His face became impassive. “Also,” he continued, “if anyone aside from her shows up asking about me, pretend I was never here. You didn’t see anyone, not even a man named Paul. Do you understand?”

  This situation was becoming stranger by the minute. “Sure. I never saw you.”

  “Thank you.” The man who wasn’t Paul moved a few paces toward the entrance and stopped. “I mean it. Even if someone threatens to hurt you, you’ve got to remain silent.”

  Bobby opened his mouth to ask him why in the world someone would torture a mere janitor to obtain information about the black-clad man, but he was off in a flash. Seconds later the outer doors opened and closed, and not long after that Bobby heard the thump of a car door slamming shut.

  A whirlwind of thoughts spun through Bobby’s head.

  One: Paul knew Randy.

  Two: Randy was being targeted by Graham Willard.

  Three: Paul was being targeted by persons unknown who might resort to harming an innocent bystander in order to obtain information.

  Could Graham and Paul somehow be connected?

  He prayed Paul was wrong in his fear and nobody except for the woman would arrive at the church this evening. Luckily, the sense of foreboding he generally felt before the occurrence of unpleasant events remained as silent as the church building itself. Paul meant him no harm, and if other men did, they would not show themselves tonight.

  Not for the first time, he’d worked himself up for nothing.

  As Bobby started back toward the office where he’d left the binder, it occurred to him that he hadn’t heard the engine of Paul’s car as he had when the man arrived. To sate his curiosity, he looked out the window for what felt like the thousandth time and saw that the light in the man’s car had not yet clicked off. Paul—or whatever his name was—sat half-turned as he stared out toward the empty street.

  Bobby dared not move. Even though it was none of his business, he had to see who the man desired to meet.

  No one came for as long as Bobby watched. Five minutes later, Paul backed the car out of the space and made toward the exit.

  Bobby let the blinds snap shut. Curiosity burned inside of him like an unquenchable fire. The man couldn’t just leave without telling Bobby more.

  Hardly giving thought to his actions, Bobby raced down the hallway, out through the main doors, and into the parking lot, fortunately not succumbing to another dizzy spell. Paul’s car turned right onto the street just as Bobby threw his car door open and hopped inside.

  His tires squealed as he tore off in Paul’s direction, but now three other cars accompanied his on the road. Which one was Paul’s? There. The darker sedan up ahead looked like a potential candidate.

  Paul traveled at the posted speed limit, and Bobby pushed the pedal a little harder so he could catch up to the man at a pace that wouldn’t alarm him. He stopped two ca
rs behind him at a traffic light and eased back a bit when traffic got moving again.

  After ten minutes of tailing the man at a distance through residential streets, Bobby’s quarry pulled into the driveway of a small white two-story house along a less-populated street on the far edge of town. Bobby turned around three driveways up, cruised past Paul’s house again, and committed the number on the mailbox to memory: 2128.

  Tomorrow he could do additional detective work and try to figure out who owned the place. In the meantime, he had to get back to work before someone learned that the new janitor had run off leaving the building easy pickings for burglars.

  He returned to the church. Bobby checked all of the rooms to make sure no undesirables had crawled in during his absence, and soon it became clear that St. Paul’s remained as vacant as it had been when he left.

  He continued cleaning where he’d left off. And though from time to time a faint tapping noise in a far corner of the church he couldn’t pinpoint made him think that some other entity kept him company, he saw no one else for the rest of the night.

  MORNING DAWNED all too soon, and Bobby found himself rolling out of bed at the ungodly hour of nine o’clock. He’d returned home at two and tossed and turned half the night as images of Randy, Caleb, Joanna, and Trish fought for dominance in his semiconscious brain; and when he finally did fall asleep, he’d dreamed he was ransacking the bungalow from top to bottom while he searched for something that he never found.

  He left the room after dressing and stuck his head through Caleb’s doorway. Empty. Like he’d expected any different.

  He went into the kitchen and pulled a stale bagel out of the breadbox, and when he went to the refrigerator to get out the cream cheese, a plain white envelope stuck to the door with a guitar-shaped magnet caught his eye.

  All thoughts of breakfast were immediately forgotten.

  He tugged the envelope out from under the magnet and stared dumbly at it for a few seconds. It had not been sealed. He lifted up the flap and removed a folded piece of notebook paper.

  Tucked between the folds was a check for $1,000.

  The note read:

  Bobby,

  I’m sorry I can’t stick around. I wish I could explain but it isn’t my place to do so. I hope this check will help cover the cost of rent for a little while. Your friend, Caleb.

  The check came from Caleb’s bank account, and the signature was his. Even though the letter explained nothing, Bobby felt some of the weight lift from his chest. Caleb did exist! And he still cared enough to help Bobby with the rent as usual. Something personal must have come up that required Caleb to leave town.

  “But how did you get out of here without me hearing it?” Bobby asked the room.

  It was a mystery he had no way of solving, and perhaps it was best left that way.

  Bobby could solve one mystery. The man at the church lived at 2128 Maple Road—Bobby had paid close attention to the signs so he wouldn’t have to retrace his steps today just to learn the name of the street. An Internet search might inform him of the man’s identity.

  Sacrificing the cream cheese for the sake of haste, Bobby ate his bagel, washed it down with orange juice, and fired up his old laptop that sat on a table in the corner of the living room like a forgotten friend.

  He pulled up Google and typed the man’s address into the search bar. The search returned links for sites listing estimated property value, but none mentioned anything about who lived there.

  He leaned back in the swivel chair and folded his arms. The fact that Paul felt threatened bothered Bobby more than anything else about last night’s encounter. Just what sort of meeting was supposed to have taken place between him and the nameless woman?

  Spies, said the voice in his head, but he disregarded that idea the moment he thought of it. This was Autumn Ridge, Oregon; not Washington, DC or London.

  What, then?

  Remembering the piece of paper Paul handed him, he went to his bedroom and withdrew the slip from the jeans he tossed on the floor when he’d returned home.

  The note was short. Paul had written down a local phone number and the request to “Ask for Paul.”

  By asking for the false name, Paul would have known the woman spoke with Bobby and received the paper from him. Too bad she’d never arrived so Bobby could deliver it.

  Bobby stood up, unable to continue his detective work on the computer. He had the whole day ahead of him with little to do other than practice guitar solos on the Fender Stratocaster that had been his one constant companion on his journey from Ohio to New York to Utah to here.

  He put on his shoes and pocketed his wallet. Guitar practice could wait.

  First he went to the bank and deposited the check Caleb gave him.

  Next he drove to 2128 Maple Road. The white house sat at a slight distance from its neighbors, its driveway unoccupied.

  Bobby occupied it, killed the engine, and got out.

  The lawn in front of the house had recently been trimmed and the mulched flowerbed running along the front wall and porch was populated with bushes and decorative grass. The white siding on the house gleamed in the morning sun, and the welcome mat at the edge of the porch looked as though it had never been touched by human feet.

  Despite the fact that nobody appeared to be home, Bobby boldly went to the porch and pushed the doorbell.

  He stepped back to wait and looked back out toward the road. The green rectangle of the Autumn Ridge corporation limit sign sat on metal posts about a tenth of a mile away. A few cars passed. Some birds swooped through the air and alighted in a treetop.

  Bobby pushed the doorbell again. Still no one came to greet him.

  He walked back to the car, not knowing what he had hoped to accomplish by coming here. If Paul had been home, he would have accused Bobby of being a stalker. He might have even thought that Bobby was in alliance with whatever person who sought to hurt him.

  Maybe Randy would know more about the man.

  As Bobby drove back into town, he dialed Randy’s number.

  Randy answered on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

  Other voices spoke in the background but Bobby couldn’t make out the words. “Randy?” he said. “It’s me.”

  Bobby sensed that something was amiss when Randy next spoke. “Oh. Hey, kid.” Then, “Can you two quiet down? I’m on the phone.”

  “Who’s there?” Bobby asked. “Are you at home?”

  “Yes. Bobby, I hate to cut you short, but this is a bad time to talk.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Long story. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, okay?”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Bobby disconnected and gazed unseeingly at the traffic in front of him. Could this be about Trish again? Maybe her body had been found! Or maybe not, and the continued absence of it weighed heavily on Randy’s mind.

  Bobby mulled over his options. A: He could go home, practice his songs, and go to work in the evening as planned. B: He could try to be a useful, helpful human being who thought of others before himself.

  He chose Option B.

  One car he didn’t recognize was leaving when Bobby arrived at Randy’s artificially-junked home. He had to pull his car so far to the right on the lane so the other car could pass that branches and brambles screeched against his passenger-side windows. The driver—an overweight man with salt and pepper hair—raised his eyebrows at him, and in response Bobby gave the man a sheepish wave.

  Bobby pulled up to the house and parked next to Phil Mason’s Taurus. He went to the porch and was about to knock when the door flew open. Today Randy wore a black skull t-shirt, black jeans with a chain connecting a belt loop to the left pocket, and an unbecoming scowl.

  “I said I’d call you back,” Randy said. Stubble peppered his chin and his hair looked as shaggy as Bobby had ever seen it.

  Bobby took an involuntary step backward. “I thought you might need me for something.”

  “What would make you
think that? I didn’t even tell you what’s going on.”

  Clean-cut Phil appeared beside Randy in the doorway. “This kid keeps turning up like a bad penny,” he said with a frown.

  Bobby’s face flushed. He had to prove to Phil there was no reason to distrust him. “Look. I thought this might be about Trish, and I thought maybe I could be useful for once in my life and come out here to be with you guys.”

  Randy’s expression softened. “I appreciate your concern, but this isn’t exactly about what you’re thinking.”

  “Should I leave?”

  Randy sighed. “No. Come on in. There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want it.”

  Bobby followed the two men inside. “I’m sorry if it seems like I’m intruding,” he said, joining Randy at the kitchen table while Phil busied himself at the coffee maker. “I’m not trying to be a pest.”

  To his surprise, Randy’s face cracked into a grin and he laughed. “You, a pest? You’re more like a stray dog.”

  Bobby didn’t know if that was supposed to be an insult or a compliment.

  Phil placed a mug of hot coffee on the table in front of Bobby despite the fact he hadn’t asked for one—an odd gesture from someone who supposedly didn’t like him. Bobby sipped at the steaming drink and waited for someone to do or say something, but both Randy and Phil seemed to be waiting for Bobby to initiate the conversation.

  Here went nothing. “Something odd happened at the church last night.”

  “If it was more unexplained noises,” Randy said, “you know I told you to ignore it.”

  “It wasn’t that. Do you know if people like to meet there?”

  The question seemed to take Randy by surprise. “Of course. There’s a bereavement group, scouts, a writer’s group, a book club, the worship commission, planning committees . . . There’s a meeting of some kind or another four or five nights a week, and sometimes more than one a night. Most of them are cleared out by the time I get there.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. A man showed up looking for someone he was supposed to meet in the parking lot. He acted kind of strange, and it bothered me.”

  Randy’s brow furrowed. “Was he looking for the priest?”