Elise wanted to get away from the man and the house. Russ’s prayer meeting. Of course. Fibbing, she hoped, wasn’t the deadliest sin. “I have someplace I want to be this evening. Anything else you need to ask? Murder I need to be charged with? Or I’ll find you some yarn and knitting needles. You can rock and knit and watch a game show.”
Steven Bly stood and stretched. “Thanks for the offer. Too much work to do.” He didn’t smile. “Murder is nasty business, Elise. Not only for your husband. We dredge up any possible dirt that might mean someone had a motive.”
“How much dirt have you found?”
“Very little. Your husband’s family is one of the pillars of the community. Not wildly popular outside their sphere. Not much gossip either. Except…” He reddened. “This is awkward. But you husband had been spending a noticeable amount of time with the senior pastor of St. Andrew’s. The Reverend Louise…uh…”
“Lucille. Montague. Yes, I was aware they spent time together. I can’t say for certain any romantic attachment occurred, at least on Timothy’s part. He was a generous benefactor to the church, which is how he justified the hours and hours of private consultation. He made certain Lucille knew how best to use all that money. Naturally people speculated.” She laughed. “Can you believe he came home once from meeting her, and had several of her hairs on his jacket? I pointed them out and he wasn’t so much embarrassed as mildly exasperated.”
“Did it upset you?”
“No. I had nothing to lose if he had an affair. You know the terms of our prenuptial agreement?”
“Your father-in-law was most forthcoming.”
“I’ll bet. For the record, I didn’t take a lover. And I wasn’t jealous of Lucille. I pity her if she loved a man who would never have loved her. Between mourning Timothy and the guilt she must feel…” Elise’s need to get out of the house grew into a surprising desperation. “Steven. I’m going to a prayer meeting at Russell Martinez’s church. You can follow me, or even go with me if you think I’m going to run. But I won’t. My parents live close and I’m all they have. Jeff is here. I need to pick up Mutt in the morning from the hospital because he almost died…” She would not cry. “I swear to you. I’ll keep answering questions. But please, please let me leave. I don’t want to be l-late.” The last word came out in a hiccup and Elise bit her lip to hold back any more. Jeff bolted over to lean against her knees and it took all her strength to keep from collapsing in a puddle next to him.
Steve had one hand on the rocker’s back, pressuring it into gentle movement. He seemed mesmerized by the kinetics but didn’t fool Elise. She knew he analyzed every word, each nuance, each sob.
“If I remember from my more pious days, don’t Wednesday night prayer meetings start at seven? You better get moving, Mrs. Amberson. Russell relocated his church downtown and it’s a bit of a trek from here. Let’s make sure the house is locked. Set that good security system too.”
She obeyed, hoping Godfrey hadn’t handed out too many more remotes for the gate, and they walked into the cicada-laden evening. Only a flicker of eye movement betrayed that he’d noticed the scraped sides of the vehicle as he held the door for her.
“Goodbye, Elise. I will want to talk more but please believe I’m not suspecting you. You could have driven right out any time that night and dumped the rock. Needless dramatics to hide it under a statue.” As she pulled on the door he caught it. “I don’t suspect you. But someone killed Timothy Amberson. I get paid to find out who.” He ambled to his nondescript car and preceded her out the gate and down the street.
Elise had a vague idea of where to find Russell’s church. Back in the early days of her “Naive Season”—when she believed God had plans to prosper and not harm her—Christopher had found a small church, meeting in a senior center. They’d been surprised to find the curly-haired, earnestly outspoken socialist-deist soccer player from school in attendance. More surprised when the pastor welcomed him into full fellowship. Russell Martinez, incandescent eyes burning, was asked if he wanted to share his testimony. He had nodded and, looking out the window at lowering skies, recited a very, very long poem, and did it from memory. “The Hound of Heaven” he told the congregation, by Francis Thompson. After church, as thunder shook the building, Christopher attacked Russ, almost literally, and begged for a copy of the poem about a God who, with relentless patience, pursued a rebel. Later, huddled on Christopher’s screened porch, one of Iowa’s finest storms raging around them, she and Christopher read the poem. They shivered with delight at the image of one scavenging the cosmos for fulfillment, and the One who tracked and claimed him with the promise of true, lasting satisfaction.
This time the image made Elise shiver with dread. She flipped on the radio, turning it loud in case she heard footfalls of a giant hound loping along behind her.
The church continued to grow after Christopher’s death and Elise’s desertion. They bought an old abandoned building downtown just before the urban renewal boom hit and prices skyrocketed. The elders encouraged Russell to attend seminary after college, and begged him to return as associate and then senior pastor when the previous minister retired.
Elise drove around a dozen blocks before spotting a sandwich board on a sidewalk indicating “Aziel.” By the time she parked, it was ten after seven.
A hundred years ago the square, brown-bricked building might have housed a greengrocer or haberdashery for the respectable upper middle class, who abandoned the inner city by the score half a century later. Now the solidly upper-hipster class returned in force while low-income residents were swept into untidy piles of low income housing. Russell liked hipsters, upper-middle class, impoverished class, and folks with no class. He probably invited them all to worship.
The sound of singing leaked through the front door, propped open a couple of inches with a wooden wedge. Unaccustomed shyness hit Elise and she paused by the sandwich board. Above the times listed for various weekly services and below the name “Aziel” she read the phrase, “Church of the Depraved and the Saved.” Her mouth quirked and she wished she’d known this when telling Palmer the name of the church. Her heart lightened and she nudged the wedge out of the way to let herself in before shoving it back.
She was in a large room, probably used for regular Sunday worship. Neat rows of chairs on a concrete floor faced a sturdy wooden pulpit, maybe the same one Russell had stood beside almost ten years ago when he quoted “The Hound of Heaven.” The singing continued and Elise followed the sound toward the back of the building, hoping to slip in before the actual praying began. When she opened the door beyond which the a cappella voices rang, she found herself facing several dozen pairs of eyes.
“Figures,” she muttered, locating Russ at the end of the semi-circle and glowering in his direction. He grinned back and gave her a thumbs up, but stayed seated to finish the song and leave her cooling her heels.
At the final note, several young men, including Russ, leapt to grab a chair for her. A few people waved and smiled, faces she recognized from the old days, the old building, the old Elise. One boy finished a split second before his pastor, flipping open a chair next his own. With a gracious smile for the boy and a smug one for Russell, Elise sat next to the victor.
Although she’d come with every intention of not praying, Elise now found herself petitioning Russ’s God to pass along the message that he better not, for his own good, make her stand and introduce herself. God must have been watching out for Russ because the pastor merely nodded at her before rising.
The prayer meeting turned out to be self-descriptive. No homily, no message. Just one prayer request after another. Some people wanted praises for answered prayers but most common were the pleas. For health. For safety. For success, comfort, joy in adversity. Poor people. God didn’t answer those kinds of prayers. He probably could, if He wanted. Some people in this very room had prayed every week for Christopher’s safety. When that failed miserably they switched to prayers for Elise to find comfort. She’d g
iven up on comfort years ago. And while she’d found plenty of adversity, joy proved more elusive than a successful, lasting marriage.
A voice she recognized expressed gratitude that her Saul’s last days had been pain free, and he’d slipped so gently into his Savior’s arms. Saul? Saul Washington? Elise leaned forward to see the speaker, half-hidden under an impressive lavender hat. She knew the woman. Mrs.Washington. Elise blanked out on her first name. Five years ago she had been a solid, dark lady, dark hair, skin, and eyes, even a molten-chocolate voice. She’d brought Elise what she called “southern comfort food” after Christopher’s death. Saul, who ran his own flourishing construction company, had found time to perform major repairs on the fixer-upper home Elise and Christopher had bought, the ones they’d planned to take care of when he returned from Afghanistan. But Christopher returned in a coffin, so Saul restored the little bungalow and his wife, Jerusha,—Elise remembered now—continued to nourish the young widow.
Until the day Elise’s frostbitten soul had begun to thaw. She clawed at the melting ice, begging it to remain and keep the searing pain at bay. But circulation returned with all its throbbing fever and Jerusha couldn’t stop it. Elise sold the bungalow, turned her back on the church and the God who, as a final insult, ignored her pleas to remain in her frozen state.
Saul died. Had she thanked him for everything he’d done? For taking no more payment than a cup of coffee and a piece of the cake his own wife had baked? Elise wished she hadn’t come. She’d always thought grief the worst of human emotions but guilt and regrets might rival it.
Another woman asked that this pregnancy, after so many failed ones, would finally “take.” She’d almost passed the point where she’d lost her previous babies. Amber. The name surfaced in Elise’s memory. She’d been in the church too, back in the old days, married not long after Elise and Christopher. Elise remembered more. It had been her first marriage although she’d been in her early thirties. She had protective hands across her stomach and Jerusha put an arm across her shoulder. Two women trying to defend a minuscule human with the useless weapon of prayer.
The pitiful requests and misguided praises eventually wound down. Russ had been keeping a list and, after asking if anyone had anything else, began tearing the sheet of paper into strips.
“For those of you who haven’t been here before”—he avoided eye contact with Elise—“we do what we call a ‘Hat Prayer.’ Anyone who wants to pray out loud pulls a slip from Jerusha’s hat.”
The woman took her arm from Amber’s shoulder and pulled a masterpiece of dyed satin and woven straw from her head. Handing it to Russ, she grinned around the room. “Haven’t missed a prayer meeting in years. I can’t, because I’m the only one who wears a hat.”
Everyone laughed, and Russ passed the hat. Most, but not all the attendees took out a slip and examined it. When the broad-brimmed, beribboned confection came near Elise she jerked away with more force than she’d intended. The startled young man next to her passed it to the gentleman in the next row. It finished its rounds, and returned to Jerusha’s head.
Russ nodded to the boy next to Elise. “Corey, if you start, we’ll go down your row, up the next one, and when Elder Markos is through, I’ll close us.”
Corey began to pray in a stilted manner. Elise wondered if she made him uncomfortable. He spoke only for a moment and after a short pause the woman next to him took over and then the one next to her and whoever sat next to that person and Elise wanted to jump up and scream at Russell to just say “Amen” and let her go. With every line, every petition or thanksgiving, she felt hands clutching at her. “You’re mine, you know. I’ll never let you go.” They squeezed tighter. She couldn’t breathe. No one would notice if she stepped out in the hallway for some air. And then kept going…
Did she hear footfalls, pacing down the hallway? No escape there. Or were they right outside the small window? Unhurried, never wavering, they came closer. The room, even through her scrunched-shut eyes, darkened. Did hot breath snuffle over the top of her? Elise needed to calm herself. If she took shallow breaths the hands around her didn’t feel so restricting. If she didn’t move, maybe her stalker would grow tired of her.
Russ took his turn praying. Elise tried to communicate with him telepathically. Hurry. Hurry and finish. Please. I need to get out of here.
He prayed for the nation. For servicemen and women, for those sharing God’s Word at home and abroad, for shut-ins and for those who have no home. Did he need to cover everyone in the entire world? Didn’t he understand that not five feet away an indefatigable beast prepared to devour an innocent woman? Russ paused and Elise tensed, ready to spring from her seat. But he had more to say.
“Dear Father, protector of the fatherless and husband to widows, we beg that those suffering the loss of parent or spouse will feel your hand upon them.”
Elise flew from the room and didn’t stop till she reached the sidewalk, leaning on the sandwich board and gulping twilight.
Less than three minutes later Russell stood next to her. He didn’t touch her, but stood with hands behind his back and head bent to see her face.
“‘Are you all right?’ seems like a silly question right now.”
“You either are a masochist or a psychic,” she told him, and straightened. Not anxious to explain her horror at his final, crushing request, she pointed at the sign. “Church of the depraved and saved? What kind of message are you trying to send?”
Not taking eyes from her, he brightened. “Exactly what the elder board wondered. They wanted us to be ‘Church of Undeserved Favor,’ which is great. But we can explain that a bit more once people come and start listening, asking questions. I want anyone passing to recognize this is a place for them. Think you’re too bad for God? Or so good you don’t need Him?” He flapped loose-wristed hands. “This isn’t an exclusive club for people who’ve ‘arrived.’ It also isn’t a den of unbridled iniquity. That’s what I want to convey. Think it is too obtuse?”
Elise shrugged. Her near escape from the hands and the hound left her tired and spiritless. “Sorry I disrupted your meeting.”
“It’s all right. You heard pretty much everything except ‘In and because of Christ.’ The rest of them are having lemonade and cookies now. Want to come back in?”
She shuddered. “No.” Regaining composure, she added, “I better get home to Jeff. It’s been a tough day on him. Ambersons swarming like swamp mosquitoes and no Mutt to schmooze with. Russ—”
“Yes?”
“Please tell Mrs. Washington how sorry I am about her husband. They were good to me.”
“He died the same day Timothy did. The funeral is tomorrow. You should come.”
The hound had his henchman, the hands their brass knuckles. Russ, in league with God, conspired to back her into the trap. Keep it up, Pastor Martinez. The cornered prey might bite.
“And I hope Amber has a healthy baby. Full term. I need to go. Nice place you have here.”
“Elise.” He hadn’t finished with her. Didn’t he see how tired she was? “It’s also a church for the scathed and the runaway slave.” The blue eyes glinted a moment, then he blinked, turned and strode back inside the grocery-store-turned-correctional institution.
Muttering threats about pastors who resorted to bad rhymes to belabor a point, Elise stomped to the parking lot. She made certain all Bubba’s doors were locked and windows closed tight before she pulled out on the street and toward the thin security of the Amberson Estate.
CHAPTER TEN
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together
“The Hound of Heaven,” Lines 88-89
To the gloaming west, a fallen sun dragged its shining finger along the horizon, a final reminder of its existence. The gates closed behind Elise, the glow slipped from memory and dusky senility dimmed the sky. Once again, she parked in front of the house, wondering why she didn’t feel guiltier. Timothy had hated leaving vehicles outside
. She wasn’t proud of this small-child defiance, but too exhausted to fight it.
Jeff practically fell out the front door. Elise held welcoming arms to him but he loped past her toward the detached garage, ears and tail bouncing. She watched him fondly. He might have a bit of bloodhound in him but practically any breed could be detected in Jeff. He put a tentative nose to the ground but seemed unsure what to do next. He cocked his ponderous head at Elise, baggy eyes intent.
“If you think I’m going down on hands and knees and demonstrate how to track a rabbit you’re ever so wrong. Let’s get in the house.”
He ignored her and snuffled around the corner of the building, out of sight. No lights shone in that section of the estate. They weren’t necessary. If any up-to-no-good character fought his way over the fence, past the pines and through the dense shrubs, he had two options. He could try to get in the four stall garage that had, in an even more flourishing era, housed the estate manager’s offices. Immediately the klaxon alarms would sound, lights burst into brightness, and any hope of stealth be confounded. Or he could, with perfect invisibility, walk up the back flight of rickety stairs behind the garage to the room over top of it, break the cheap lock, and, unheralded, let himself into the old Billiard Room. Where he’d find himself surrounded by several generations of Amberson Family castoffs, none of them capable of exciting even the least discriminating flea market junkie. The intruder would also discover this massive junk room led nowhere. Not to the garage below. Not to the house. Just back down the creaking steps and around to the neglected, overgrown mass of undergrowth.
Elise had no intentions of following Jeff into the narrow darkness bordering the garage. Whatever rabbit or squirrel he thought he had cornered didn’t need Elise’s help to escape. A flick of rodent whiskers and Jeff would turn a terrified tail and seek cover.
“Jeff! Get over here now or you’re staying outside for the night!”
No response. He didn’t believe her.
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