by Karen Pullen
I hadn’t spoken with Scoop or his wife Tricia since the day of the wedding. They had been out of town, at a conference in Colorado, and had returned this morning. Scoop bowed low and shook my hand. He had a florid complexion and his comb-over made me want to reach for scissors. “Tricia is getting dressed. She’ll be right down,” Scoop said. His voice was deep, resonant. He held an unlit cigar in his hand.
Verwood and its rural surrounds are home to over forty churches, all Protestant but one, and the first thing a newcomer is asked—what church do you go to? But when you have an Internet church, your congregation is global. Scoop was proud of his pin-studded map of the world, prominently mounted in the hallway of his home. Each pin represented a soul who had joined God’s Precious Church via his website, godsprecious.com, for only ten dollars a week, all major credit cards accepted.
He offered to show me the broadcast room, and led me through their kitchen—the size of a basketball court—through a laundry area, and up carpeted stairs. The spacious room was furnished with a couple dozen folding chairs, a wooden pulpit, and several pieces of old-looking stained glass suspended on the walls like artwork. In the center, a camera on a tripod aimed its eye at the pulpit.
“My sermons are broadcast live on the web. We have music”—he pointed to a CD player—“and Bible readings and guest speakers.You’re welcome to join us,” he added politely.
“Yoo-hoo,” called Tricia from the foot of the stairs. “I’m ready!”
I could see why it took her so long to get dressed. From the artful arrangement of her dyed-dark hair, through perfectly groomed eyebrows, flawless freckled skin, pink linen dress set off by white pearls—every square inch of Tricia breathed maintenance. Her toenails, peeping out of three-inch heels, matched her dress and lipstick. We were quite a contrast—my hair barely tamed into a braid, my all-purpose black pants and leather jacket designed to fade me into the woodwork.
I was trying to ignore my preconceptions about Tricia and Scoop. Yes, Tricia encouraged bosses to foist their religious beliefs onto employees who probably risked losing their jobs if they spoke up. And Scoop’s online church accepted donations in exchange for prayers, like Scoop had a direct line to heaven. But it’s a free country, there’s one born every minute, and it wasn’t my job to question Scoop and Tricia’s share of the faithfuls’ pie.
“When was the last time you saw Justine? Either of you?” I asked.
“Why, Friday night, wasn’t it, Scoop? At the dinner?”
“We skipped breakfast,” Scoop said. “We’re not big breakfast eaters.”
“Would you say you knew her well?”
Scoop examined his cigar stub. “As well as one knows anyone.”
Tricia looked at him with squinty eyes, like he was a species she wasn’t familiar with. “We met her six months ago, in March. We had a party for them, remember, Scoop? For all our friends?”
“Was she well-liked?” I asked.
I could almost see Tricia’s hackles rise. “Where are you going with that?” she said sharply. “Justine was lovely. So perfect for Mike. They were in love. We supported them both.”
“However lovely and perfect, someone murdered her. Who might have a grudge or want to prevent the marriage?”
Scoop patted his comb-over, crossed his long legs, and looked at Tricia. She studied her fingernails. They exchanged glances. Tricia spoke. “I guess we should mention Gia Mabe. You probably already know about her.”
Mike’s irrational stalker. “She used to date your son, I heard.”
“Mike broke up with her when he met Justine,” Tricia said. “I felt so bad for her. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Heartbroken, abandoned. She didn’t take it well.”
“I know about her. Anyone else?”
“I can’t think of anyone, can you, Scoop?” Tricia said.
Mike had been adamant that he didn’t know about Justine’s sex change. Had anyone told his parents? Did I want to be the one to tell them? Well, someone had to point out the rhinoceros squatting under the rug. I studied them. Tricia was cucumber-cool, picking imaginary lint from her skirt. Scoop looked a little more nervous, patting down his hair strands.
I took a breath. “I’m sure you know Justine was born male? That she had sex-reassignment surgery?”
Scoop flushed and his hands tightened on the chair arms. He worked the cigar around in his mouth and made a noise, puh.
“Bless your heart, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Come again?” Tricia’s smile looked forced and her eyes wandered.
“She wasn’t always a woman,” I said. “She was born male, named John. She had surgery that changed her into a female.”
“I don’t believe you,” Scoop said. His voice rose, boomed. “That’s disgusting.You’re disgusting. Mike would never . . .”
Tricia patted his knee. “Scoop, you don’t mean that about Agent Lavender. We’re just shocked that anyone could say this about our Justine. Such a lovely girl in every respect. Someone has told you a terrible lie.”
“She was thoroughly a woman and Mike loved her. I resent your implication,” Scoop said. He chomped on the cigar.
I tried again. “She was a definitely a woman. However, it seems to me that it could have been a serious problem for you two, that she was transsexual.”
“ ‘A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.’ Deuteronomy twenty-two five.” Scoop’s rich voice thundered. Maybe he was a preacher after all.
“Amen,” Tricia said. “An abomination. We just don’t believe it. It’s unimaginable, right Scoop?” Her face crumpled and she began to cry.
Scoop nodded. His face was purplish. “I’m afraid we’ll have to end this visit.You’re distressing my wife.”
I wanted to crack their two heads together, frustrated by their overwhelming denial, but I couldn’t pin them down. Not yet.
I pushed the button that controlled the boom arm protecting Silver Hills. As it swung open and my car rolled onto the highway, I felt a wave of exhaustion so extreme I almost fell into sleep right there. It had been a very long day, starting predawn as I waited with Fredricks for the results of the raid on Jax’s house. Breakfast with Fern, a walk in the White Pines Preserve. Tea and cake with Camilla Phillips, and the discovery that Blue Stone was her son. Blue’s denial that he had anything to do with the sabotage at the B&B, yet black paint on his hand revealing his lie. Liesle’s claim to psychic abilities, the smell of peanut butter in her mind. A bereaved fiancé, a box of cookbooks. The amazing ability of Tricia and Scoop to deny reality.
I needed a nap. Tonight I had to hit the streets again with Fredricks, and to function at all, I needed to sleep. I planned to go home, walk the dog, then crash for a couple of hours.
Even a simple plan can take a detour. When I pulled into my driveway, I saw the oddest thing. Merle was standing there, tail a-waggin’, as happy as ever to see me. Odd—because he’d been inside, doors locked, when I left at four in the morning.
“How’d you get out, buddy?” I leaned down for a slobbery kiss. He didn’t tell me but I found out soon enough. My front door was still locked, so I walked around to the back.
The back door was wide open. I hadn’t left it open. When I moved in, I had deadbolts installed on both doors. Not an alarm system—Merle is the best possible alarm system, warning me of everything from newspaper delivery to garbage pickup to squirrels on the sidewalk. But I sleep better with deadbolts. And I’d locked both doors before I left. The door was not only open, but busted—someone had shattered the door’s glass pane, in order to reach through and turn the latch.
I stepped over the bits of glass into a horrific mess. The kitchen had been trashed. Every dish and glass smashed into smithereens. The refrigerator door hung open, its shelves emptied onto the floor. Milk, beer, and juice puddled around the broken jars of spaghetti sauce, salsa, and pickles. A box of rice, a jar of popc
orn, a bag of sugar—all opened and hurled around the room.
It wasn’t a typical break-in, some petty crook looking for something to pawn. This was deliberate and nasty. I didn’t, couldn’t, look at the rest of the house. I took out my cell phone to call 911. When I tried to talk, I had to struggle to get the words out.
I sat down on my front steps, clutching Merle to steady myself while we waited for the police. Merle leaned into me, now and then giving me a reassuring lick. At least he was okay. The damage was just a nuisance, really. But it worried me. Someone had it in for me. This wasn’t a burglary. It was retribution.
My neighbor Saffron pulled up in her minivan, with her two girls in the back seat. She parked and walked to her mailbox as the girls ran inside. They were quiet children who never seemed to misbehave. Saffron’s troubles were the only ones allowed in her house.
I waved her over. “Were you home today?”
“Yeah, except for taking the kids to school.” She leafed through her mail. “Look at these goddam bills. I’ve got to get a job. Carter is behind on the child support again and we’ll get evicted if I don’t make some money. You know what really gets me?”
“What?” I didn’t care. I wanted the cops to come and be gone, someone to repair the door, and a small army to clean up my kitchen. I longed for clean sheets and a white noise machine playing summer rain.
“Credit card late fees. On top of exorbitant interest. The payment’s twenty bucks, and if it’s two days late, they charge an extra thirty-nine. Makes me crazy.”
“A universal law, Saff. A disincentive.”
“Whatever. What are you up to? Keeping the world safe for the rest of us?”
I usually avoided engaging Saffron unless I was ready to surrender an hour. But today I needed someone to talk to. And not about our usual topic, her life. “Someone broke into my house. I’m waiting for the police.”
“You’re kidding!” She grimaced. “Who would dare?”
“Did you see anyone around my house? Any cars?”
“Around lunchtime there was a white car in your driveway. I didn’t think anything about it. I was on the phone with Carter’s attorney. I’m trying to get him to pay without going to court. Don’t ever get divorced, Stella. The stress will kill you. So, is anything missing?”
“The kitchen’s trashed. I didn’t go in.” I didn’t care about any of my stuff, except Fern’s paintings, and a desk of my mother’s. The rest of it was eclectic junk I’d accumulated since college, nothing of any value, economic or sentimental. “Did you see anyone in the white car?” I asked.
“You know, I didn’t look. Normally I’m curious, but I got so caught up in my bill problems.”
A Verwood black-and-white pulled into my driveway and two patrolmen stepped out, setting Merle into a frenzy of tail-wagging. I told them what I’d found, and unlocked the front door.The living room wasn’t too bad—cushions thrown around, bookcases tipped over. My mother’s desk drawers were pulled out and emptied but Fern’s paintings had been left alone. The worst of it was a white powder dusting everywhere. One of the cops swiped a finger through it and took a taste. “Flour,” he said.
I followed them down the hall. The first bedroom was empty except for a chair and the television, and neither had been touched. The next room, my bedroom, had been tossed—drawers emptied onto the floor, clothes pulled out of the closet.
And the bathroom nearly rivaled my kitchen on the disaster scale. Shampoo and conditioner bottles had been opened and sloshed onto the floor and counter. My junky drawers—full of cotton balls, Band-Aids, sunscreen, makeup—had been upended, some into the toilet. Broken glass, dusted with face powder, littered the floor. White Linen Breeze mixed with Diorissimo assaulted my nose.
While the police dusted for fingerprints, Saffron took me to her house for a glass of red wine. “I told them about the white car,” she said. “Honestly, I wish I’d paid more attention. Were you targeted? Because of your work?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I couldn’t think of anyone but Jax and Dana who might have been pushed to such hostility. Had they found out I’d deceived them, had set them up? Could they have harmed Merle, to teach me a lesson? I picked up the glass of wine. It was exactly what I needed. Especially if followed by the rest of the bottle.
Saffron’s house was full of color and each room was different. Mustard yellow walls in the kitchen, terra cotta red in the dining room, peacock blue in the living room. White trim and sheer white curtains made a nice contrast with the colors. I told her I liked the effect.
“Paint’s cheap,” she said. “Anyone can paint. I’ll help you if you want.”
There was something else different about her house. It was clean, but that wasn’t it. The kids’ things were out of sight, the furniture wasn’t anything special. “You have accessories,” I said. A ficus tree in a white urn and a pair of silvery crackled vases. Three Japanese teapots on a wall shelf, a paisley scarf over a tabletop. “I have no accessories. Unless you count broken glass and a coating of flour.”
“Aw, Stella. I have two words for you—yard sales. We’ll go around together when I find a good one.” She patted my hand. I sipped my wine gratefully, then remembered I was supposed to go to work tonight. I called Fredricks and told him what happened. I needed to deal with the break-in. “Any chance I could get a rain check until Sunday? I’m going to Wilmington tomorrow.”
“Sure, no problem. Need a hand with anything?” His voice was gentle and kind, and I almost lost it. My throat felt tight with tears I couldn’t allow myself to spill. I thanked him. But I couldn’t imagine Fredricks with a broom. I’d have to clean up myself.
The policemen only stayed for a half-hour, long enough to take pictures, make a few notes, and lift a couple of decent fingerprints. I asked them to let me know if they got a match on the prints. I was thinking of Jax and Dana, whose arrest records meant they would be in the FBI fingerprint database.
Saffron insisted on helping me. She parked her girls in front of the TV with a bowl of popcorn and told them she’d be next door. They seemed delighted with this arrangement, and so was
I. It would have been hard to face it alone. In the kitchen, hardly anything was salvageable, so we swept the mess into trash bags, wiped the flour off everything, and mopped the floor. I washed the bathroom floor three times to get rid of the oily perfume. My mop smelled really good, for a mop.
My landlord sent a handyman who replaced the broken door pane with unbreakable acrylic. Finally, the house was squared away, all traces of the intrusion stuffed into black plastic garbage bags, the only reminder a hint of Diorissimo. I gave Saffron a hug and made myself a vow to listen to her faithfully at least once a week. Maybe even babysit.
As I put the clothes away in my bedroom, I realized some recent purchases were missing—a black negligee and a pair of too-small jeans, purchased months ago in a brief pitiful attempt to lure Hogan back with my sexy body. Was the intruder really a burglar? A woman? Dana towered over me. She’d never fit into those clothes.Whoever took them—better luck to you, I thought.
CHAPTER 14
* * *
Friday Morning
I didn’t sleep well. Despite the presence of Merle, Guard Dog Supreme, I was edgy and afraid. I couldn’t relax. I could have escaped to Fern’s, to curl up in my girlhood maple bed under a chenille bedspread and faded quilt. An appealing thought, regression to a simpler time when my only worry was passing geometry. But I wanted to be tough. I wouldn’t be driven out. Instead, I woke up every half hour, breathing spilled perfume and sticky shampoo smells, listening to the wind knocking branches against the roof.
In the morning I took some groceries to Fern. “Here you go,” I said, putting away the tomatoes, coffee, cheese, and eggs. “How about pancakes this morning?” I hauled out her old iron skillet, a real workout just lifting it. I found the pancake mix and chopped up an apple to add to it.
“Darling, I finished Tricia’s book cover. Tell me what you think
.” Fern pulled her drawing board onto the table, and removed the sheet of paper protecting the drawing.
Jesus stood in front of a group of men and women, all clad in long robes. He gestured with his arms lifted, palms up, as though delivering a blessing. He was dark-skinned, with short brushy hair, a scraggly beard, a broad forehead and nose, and black eyes. He looked scrawny, sinewy. The style of the painting was more detailed, more meticulous than her usual broad-brush works.
“He looks like Bin Laden without the turban. What’s Tricia’s opinion?”
“She hasn’t seen it yet. I did quite a bit of research, you know. Jesus was Middle Eastern. Jewish, but not like today’s Israelis, who are mostly European. He would have looked like an African Arab.”
“I hope she likes it, Fern. It’s clear you put many hours into it.”
Fern studied the painting. “She won’t like it at first, but it’ll grow on her.”
I slipped a stack of pancakes onto each plate and we dug in. I didn’t want to tell her about the break-in—it would frighten her—but a warning was in order. “Have you talked to Jax lately?”
“Not since I turned down our date. What’s the problem, anyway?”
“I can’t tell you.” Delicately, I probed. Did she know where he was going to be this weekend? Nope. When was the last time she saw him? Last Sunday, nearly a week ago, when he came with the tape measure. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Don’t say I told you to drop him or let him know I’m police. In fact, don’t even mention me.”
Fern took my hands in hers. “I get it, darling. No need to quiz me like a suspect.”
I kissed her soft cheek and left her with the dishes. I had a long drive ahead of me to the Wilmington area.
Delia was already seated when I arrived at the seafood restaurant, a building up on stilts over the Intracoastal Waterway. She’d snared an outdoor umbrella table with a view of pelicans napping on the calm water. A couple of dolphin dorsal fins slid along the glassy surface in no great hurry.