Hello, Stranger

by Virginia Swift

  And the reply: “Well, at least it’ll be an architectural improvement. I mean, even if it’s a scale model of the enchanted castle at Disneyland, at least they won’t be holding services in something that looks like there ought to be corrals for shopping carts in the parking lot. And after all, it’s great for business. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?”

  “I’ve heard they’re even thinking about a university,” said a voice Sally recognized: one of the yoga Realtors, now sucking down one of those famous cosmos and signaling Burt for another. “I’ve got a couple of clients who are looking to unload a big parcel north of town. I think that’d make an ideal campus, don’t you?”

  “Ummm, sure. Yeah. I guess,” said Burt, bending down to pull the wine bottle out of the cooler and averting his face, ever careful not to alienate a customer.

  “It’s incredible. Laramie could be the next Colorado Springs!”

  Sally’s blood froze.

  Burt emerged with the wine, smiled charmingly at the Realtor, said he’d be right back to freshen her drink, and returned to open the bottle.

  “What’s all that about?” Sally asked him, keeping her voice low.

  Burt spoke quietly. “It’s the latest. That Inner Witness church is part of some Christian consortium that’s talking about starting an evangelical university, either here or in Fort Collins, to combat the evils of secular public education. It’s a multimillion-dollar project, and if they decide on Laramie, it’ll bring an ungodly amount of money into town.”

  “Odd choice of words,” Hawk told him.

  “I’ll stick by ’em,” said Burt, expertly uncorking the wine. “I mean, what is that woman thinking? Having those people taking over the town might be great for her business, but I’m not so sure about mine, right? I’m pretty happy with Sin City just the way it is.”

  A thought struck Sally with the force of a blow. “Where would a church that’s been holding services in a discount warehouse get the money to hire big-time architects, let alone bankroll a university?”

  “Maybe they’re doing big business with the collection plate,” Burt said, pouring their wine and moving off with a wave.

  Hawk frowned. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Sally put her hand on his wrist, speaking very softly. “She’s the link, Hawk. I mean, even if she didn’t know, at first, what kind of crap they were pulling at that clinic, she had to have found out eventually—at least when she got her paperwork back from the insurance company. And she kept sending Charlie back. She had to have been getting a cut, and I bet that cut kept getting bigger. It would be like an addiction.”

  “Yes and no. From what we’ve learned about Bea Preston, she’d tell herself that she was putting the kid in the hands of people who understood what she needed, spiritually and medically. Remember, this is the woman who talked her husband into thinking he had to beat his child to be a good father. She probably chose that clinic because she thought Charlie wasn’t getting enough discipline,” Hawk said. “I grant your point about the paperwork. But I can’t believe that every parent who sent a child there would have been endorsing fraud and torture. The bastards who ran the place had to be pretty good at deceiving people, if they’d been getting away with it for years.”

  “But the kids would talk, wouldn’t they? They’d tell their parents what had been done to them.”

  “And a lot of those parents wouldn’t believe a word they said. Or at least they wouldn’t want to. People can be incredibly good at deceiving themselves. Look at Brad Preston. For years he told himself that he was doing right by his daughter, even though it made him weep every time he hurt her. What the hell gets into people?”

  “It’s mind-boggling,” Sally said. “I mean, here was this man whose enemies, even, admit he was brilliant and tough-minded. And when it came to his own flesh and blood, he ignored the evidence of his eyes and his ears and his heart, and went on hurting her, until the lawyer in him found out what the father had been doing, what he’d permitted. It makes you wonder if he’d ever have owned up to what he was doing and stopped, if his job hadn’t forced his eyes open.

  “But how would he have felt about Bea at that point? Wouldn’t he have wondered how a woman as smart as she is couldn’t have suspected that something was rotten at that clinic?”

  Hawk shook his head and swallowed some wine.

  Sally leaned close and whispered. “She had to have known. She must have been involved. She killed Brad, or had him killed. She may have killed Charlie already. Oh God.”

  “God has nothing to do with this,” said Hawk, pulling out his wallet and tossing money on the bar. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

  “Me too,” said Sally, signaling to Burt. “Sorry, Burt, but we’ll have to take a rain check on John Boy’s retro specials. We’ve got some things to do. We’ll see you at the reception.”

  Burt blew them a kiss.

  Chapter 24

  Church Rocks!

  “Do me a favor,” said Sally, as they walked down Ivinson Avenue toward Hawk’s truck. “Would you mind driving out to the Sanctuary of the Inner Witness?”

  Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Why now?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a long shot. Maybe Bea’s got Charlie stashed out there.”

  “Sally,” Hawk said patiently, “she could be anywhere. In a motel room. In the back of a minivan. Why would Bea take her to the church?”

  “She has to have accomplices. The blond guy, for one. Alvin the Chipmunk. I can’t think of anything that ties them together outside of the church. I know it’s lame, but what else have we got?” Sally asked.

  “What happened to your plan to live a normal life?” Hawk said wearily.

  “It starts tomorrow. Just humor me.”

  “Okay. I admit it,” he said, “all that talk about universities and warehouses got me thinking too. I doubt we’ll see anything interesting, but I’m willing to take a look.”

  He opened the passenger door, helped her in. It struck Sally that she took his fine manners for granted. That, and his loyalty, his wondrous mind, his lovely body, a whole lot of his other fine points. Then he climbed in the driver’s seat, leaned over, opened the glove box, and slid out his pistol. Keeping it in his lap, below the level of the window, he checked to make sure it was loaded, put it back in the glove compartment.

  In the past, she’d have given him a load of grief about schlepping guns around. Tonight, Sally said nothing. Being shot at, in her own bathroom, had somewhat altered her views on Hawk’s tendency to go armed.

  So they drove out Grand Avenue, passing by the university and the football stadium, past strip malls and fast-food joints, past new housing developments on scraped-off prairie, to the giant parking lot surrounding the big tin box with the neon cross on top.

  “Wow!” said Sally. “This place is rocking!”

  Cars were jockeying for parking places in the packed lot. And what an array of cars! Fully loaded SUVs, mini-vans, reconditioned Volkswagen Beetles, Jaguars and Beamers. You name it, it was parked there.

  “I think I see a space in the next row,” Sally told Hawk. He drove around, approached the space, was about to pull in when they heard the deafening boom-boom of blasting bass notes from some overamped car stereo, accompanied by the hoarse roar of an engine coaxed into continuing service, long past its prime. A Cadillac Seville, late eighties vintage, lowered and dolled up with flashing rims. One side panel gleaming metal-flake purple, the rest of the exterior awaiting the removal of a deep coat of rust before re-painting. A work of art in progress.

  The driver cut Hawk off and slid into the space.

  Hawk said a really bad word.

  “Can you go to hell for cussing in a church parking lot?” she asked him.

  He said three more terrible words, glaring at the Caddy.

  “I don’t think,” Sally said, “that you want to get into it with whoever’s driving that thing, over a parking space.”

  The driver got out. Shaved
head. White ribbed tank T-shirt. Jeweled cross around his neck.

  “Oh Jesus,” said Sally.

  The passenger opened the door, unfolding himself upright. Big guy. Blond. Dressed in a designer polo shirt and khaki pants. Clean-cut.

  “The guy with the cross? That’s the Chipmunk,” she whispered. “And that blond guy. He’s got to be the one who works for Bea.”

  The pair were plainly engaged in a heated conversation as they headed toward the building.

  “Stop the truck!” she told Hawk. “I’m going after them.”

  “The hell you are, without me,” Hawk said. “Let me park this thing.”

  An empty spot materialized between a monster truck and a Mercury Marquis.

  Miracles did happen.

  She was about to leap out when he put a restraining hand on her arm. “No running,” he told her. “You don’t need to be drawing attention to yourself.”

  He leaned toward the glove box.

  “No guns,” she said firmly. “There are too many people in there.”

  “You think that bothers the Chipmunk?” Hawk asked her.

  “It bothers me,” she insisted.

  “Sorry,” he said, taking out the gun and slipping it into the waistband of his jeans, in the back, hidden under his jacket.

  “Great. I hope you don’t shoot your own ass off by mistake,” she said.

  “Me too,” he said.

  “Let’s go.”

  And then he laughed.

  “You aren’t exactly dressed for the Lord’s house,” Hawk observed.

  Sally looked down at herself, taking a minute to register what she was wearing. Snug black sweater, black leather skirt, fishnet stockings, high-heeled boots. “I didn’t start out this evening thinking we were going to end up in church.”

  “Nope,” he said, grinning. “You were expecting to end the evening where we’d begun, and dressed accordingly. I love that about you. The fishnets send me, by the way.”

  “If only they went with running shoes,” Sally said, limping a little in the too-tall boots.

  The marquee trailer out front proclaimed “Saturday Night Sing-Out, Featuring the Praise!”

  Now Sally heard the swelling sound, hundreds of voices joined in a rousing rendition of “Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham.” She gave in to it, just a little, let it sweep her up, just a touch. She couldn’t help it. Gospel music did for her what fishnet stockings did for Hawk. She swayed a little, humming along.

  “Steady now, Mustang,” said Hawk. “Not time to sign up for the choir.”

  She refocused, just in time to see the Chipmunk and the blond man disappear inside the entrance. Hawk took her arm and hurried her along.

  The place was jammed. Elsewhere in Laramie, on a Saturday night, crowds gathered to drink whiskey and whirl on a dance floor while guys in black hats banged out shit-kicking redneck tunes. Some got laid. Some got in fights. Some ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the music got it all started.

  It wasn’t that different at the Sanctuary of the Inner Witness, Sally realized. If the band at Brad Preston’s memorial service had been less than inspired, the group they had tonight (the Praise?) was ripping the place up. You’d never know from the looks of them that they were a Christian band. The guitar and bass players had enough hair and leather and studs to play in any thrash metal group on the planet. The singers, in baggy cut-down pants and sideways baseball caps, did dance routines. The drummer had a Mohawk.

  They’d segued from “Rock My Soul” into some kind of hot, hip-hop rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” a little something for everyone in that arrangement, that tune. Young and old, rich and poor, were out of their seats, swinging and clapping. If the folding chairs had once been in neat rows, they’d now been shoved back haphazardly as people got up and got into it. Little kids on their parents’ shoulders, groups of teenage girls moving in synch, old people banging their canes. “Man!” she said. “Church rocks!”

  She caught herself grinning. And realized she’d lost sight of the Chipmunk and the blond man.

  “Shit!” she exclaimed, drawing amazed looks and frowns from people nearby. “I can’t see them!”

  “I can,” said Hawk. “One of the advantages of not being a shrimp.”

  “Okay, big fella,” she said. “Let’s get closer.”

  He grasped her hand and pulled her along, slipping and squeezing his way between people and chairs, through the crush. Unable to see past the people around her, she was feeling a little claustrophobic amid the sweaty, rocking worshippers. Hawk was holding tight to her hand, but sometimes someone would get between them, stretching them out. Finally, when her arm was nearly wrenched out of its socket, she yanked back and pulled him closer. “Slow down,” she yelled, over the din. “I need this arm.”

  Hawk craned his neck, trying for a clear view. “Oh crap. It looks like they’ve split up. I can see the blond guy, but I can’t . . . no, wait. There’s the Chipmunk. And would you believe, he’s talking to your good friend Bea Preston?”

  “Come on!” said Sally, abandoning all pretense of politeness now, and elbowing her way through the crowd, dragging him along. A little voice in her head told her she wasn’t thinking clearly. The adrenaline rushing through her drowned the little voice. She kept moving, kept pushing.

  And ran smack-dab into the hard wall of Scotty Atkins’s chest, Hawk piling up behind her.

  “I thought you were Jewish,” Atkins said.

  Sally took a deep, steadying breath.

  Scotty looked her up and down, biting his lower lip.

  “Guess they dress differently for synagogue.”

  Now she scowled at him.

  “You can stay right here,” he told her. “We’ve got everything under control.”

  They were close enough that she finally had a clear view of the area in front of the stage. And now she saw Dickie Langham walk up and say something to the guy running the sound board. The sound guy gestured to the lead guitarist, who turned to the other band members, made a circular motion in the air with his hand, musician-speak for “Take it around one more time, and then wrap it up.” One more chorus. Then the singer announced a break.

  Dickie got up onstage, walked to the microphone, and said, “Sorry, folks, but we’re going to have to call it a night. Everyone go on home now.”

  “What’s going on here?” said a woman nearby.

  “That’s the sheriff,” someone replied. “Looks like he’s closing us down.”

  “The police can’t just come in here and shut down a worship service! I demand my right to freedom of religion!” the woman shouted.

  “Freedom of religion! Freedom of religion!” the crowd began to chant.

  “Just relax here, people,” said Dickie in his most genial, Gene Autry voice. “We’re not trying to interfere with anybody’s rights. But in the interest of your own safety, we would appreciate it if you’d exit the building in a quiet, orderly fashion.”

  “They’re busting somebody in our church!” somebody shouted.

  Sally realized that Scotty Atkins had left her side. And now she saw a uniformed deputy, hand on Bea Preston’s shoulder. Scotty was in the process of putting handcuffs on the blond man. The Chipmunk was nowhere to be found.

  Most of the crowd, eager to avoid trouble, streamed toward the exit. But some, visiblyangry, began to close in on the police. “What’s going on here?” a man demanded. “How dare you invade our sanctuary? This is police brutality!”

  Dickie had a careful arm around Bea. Aside from cuffing him, Scotty had barely touched the blond guy. It wasn’t exactly Selma, with dogs and fire hoses. But Sally had to admit, a bust in a church, maybe the fastest-growing church in Laramie, wasn’t going to spell great PR for the sheriff’s department.

  Bea looked up, an expression of noble sacrifice on her beautiful face. “Brothers and sisters, be comforted,” she said in a voice that carried, clear but sweet, without benefit of microphone. “The sheriff and
his men are simply doing their job.” She looked up at Dickie, admiration and gratitude in her gaze. “Praise the Lord,” she said, brimming eyes now turned to the blond man in the handcuffs, “they’ve got the man who murdered my husband!”

  Chapter 25

  In the Tall Weeds

  It took the police some time to clear the place out, but the band did them a favor, turning off the PA system and packing their gear. In the meantime, the deputy and the blond man disappeared. So did Bea Preston, much to Sally’s dismay, and Scotty Atkins. Dickie and another deputy remained, the deputy to watch the door, and Dickie to supervise, listen to complaints, keep things cool.

  “This thing in my waistband is digging a hole in my sacrum,” Hawk told her. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She could see his point. Maybe not the best thing to be hanging around a church with a gun in your pants. “Give me a minute. I need to talk to the sheriff,” she told him.

  Hawk looked at Dickie, who was pretending not to notice either of them. “I don’t think he wants to talk to you,” he observed.

  “Too friggin’ bad,” Sally said. “He’s going to talk to me.”

  “Watch your language,” Hawk whispered.

  “I am,” said Sally. “And he’s still going to talk to me, whether he likes it or not. Why the hell would they bust these guys at a big church thing? There’s something really screwy going on here.”

  Finally, everyone had left, and the sheriff walked out into the parking lot, still acting as if he was unaware that Sally was right behind him. She actually had to grab his arm and turn him around.

  “Why, Mustang,” he said, faking surprise in the least convincing manner. “I had no idea you’d been born again.”

  “What’s going on here, Dick?” she asked.

  “I thought I told you only this afternoon that it’s time for you to give this thing a rest,” he said, clearly exasperated. “And here you are, one more time, Miss Bad-News-inFishnet-Stockings. Get out of here.”