Never Preach Past Noon

by Edie Claire

  Get a grip, woman.

  She averted her eyes and tried to remember what they were talking about. Mercifully, it came back to her. "I can't explain, not just yet," she answered. "I promised somebody I'd keep my mouth shut. Suffice to say that your crazy family and my crazy family may already know each other."

  His eyebrows rose. "Now, that's a scary thought."

  She laughed. "Tell me about it."

  Chapter 3

  When Leigh approached the front door of her aunt's farmhouse late Saturday afternoon, she was not in a particularly good mood. Partly because she'd spent half the day scrubbing her shower and the other half wiping up kitchen grime. But mostly because she'd hoped to spend the day with Warren, and he'd had other obligations.

  Other obligations. And he wouldn’t even tell her what—a very bad sign.

  She sighed to herself and stretched out an arm to open Bess's door, but the door came out to meet her instead, followed closely by an agitated-looking Frances Koslow.

  "You can go in in a minute," Frances said shortly, grabbing her daughter's arm and propelling her back onto the front walk. "First, we need to talk."

  Leigh resigned herself to the inevitable. "About what?" she asked innocently.

  Frances let out a frustrated breath. "About your aunt, of course. She's not telling me the whole truth about this accident, that much is clear. Yesterday she insisted she fell down her own stairs, then it's all over the TV news and the papers that she's a hero for dragging a man out of a fire. We both know perfectly well that Bess isn't capable of modesty. There's something fishy going on with her, and I intend to find out what it is. What did she tell you?"

  Leigh bit her lip. What her mother said was true. If Bess had actually saved someone from a fire, she'd probably be calling the local news stations herself, offering interviews and distributing autographed pics. "She didn't say much," Leigh answered honestly. "We haven't really had a chance to talk about it."

  Frances humphed. "Well I've had plenty of time with her, and it hasn't accomplished a thing. That woman is as stubborn as a mule." Frances' voice trailed off as her eyes lit up with inspiration. Wanting no part in whatever scheme her mother was concocting, Leigh moved slowly towards the house. It was a fruitless effort—she'd only gone a few inches before her mother's hand clamped down on her arm.

  "You can get her talking," Frances ordered. "She's always been loose-lipped with you. Find out what's she's hiding. And do it soon, or God only knows what will happen."

  "I'll take good care of her," Leigh answered, forcing a smile.

  Frances frowned. It was the look she always got when she suspected her daughter was duping her, but couldn't prove it. She released Leigh's arm, straightened her coat, and hiked her purse up higher on her shoulder. "Lydie will come relieve you as soon as church is over tomorrow. Don't let Bess go up the stairs on any pretense or she'll kill herself. And don't go driving all over town with her either—her lungs can't take it."

  "Got it, Mom," Leigh said, inching away again.

  "And, Leigh," Frances said sternly, her eyes fixing on her daughter like cruise missiles ready for launch. "We'll talk more tomorrow."

  ***

  At the sound of Frances' Taurus revving up for departure, Leigh and her aunt shared another sigh. Bess wasn't looking so good this morning. In fact, she looked awful. "Bad night?" Leigh asked, concerned.

  Bess rolled her eyes with an exaggerated motion—one of several honed to perfection during her years in community theater. "Your mother is an angel—and Satan incarnate."

  Leigh suppressed a smile as she looked around the living room. Since Frances' arrival yesterday morning, a transformation had occurred. The house was now spotlessly clean, without so much as a cat hair in sight, much less a cat. Bess's entourage of potted plants, animal figurines, and food and water dishes were missing from the floor, and the furniture had been rearranged with wide aisles connecting the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. The carefully stacked pillows and blankets on the coffee table gave evidence that Bess had been sleeping on the sofabed, and the air—which normally carried the faint, mingled scents of antique wood and cat litter—reeked of floor cleaner.

  "You must admit," Leigh said playfully. "It is practical."

  Bess glared. "Francie's been waiting for years to get her paws on my dust. Now I haven't a clue where anything is, and the pets are all out freezing to death on the porch. Let them in, would you?"

  Hoping that Frances would not be returning unannounced, Leigh did as she was bid. The "porch" was actually a bright, semi-heated sun room with large, louvered-glass and screened windows, and only a few of the cats (Punkster thankfully not among them) wanted in. Chester, on the other hand, could not return to Bess's lap fast enough.

  A tea kettle began whistling as Leigh made her way back through the kitchen, and she smiled. Frances had set out two cups with tea bags—St. James, no less. Leigh poured the water with a grin. Her mother did have her moments. Tea was just the ticket for a relaxing—and enlightening—conversation.

  When the tea had cooled enough to be drinkable, Leigh settled herself next to Bess on the couch and started the interrogation as innocently as possible. "You remember my friend Warren, don't you?"

  Bess smiled. "Warren Harmon III, future President of the United States? Of course, dear. I voted for him for Register of Wills. I'll vote for him for President too, if I ever get a chance. What about him?"

  The last question was delivered with an insinuating tone that Leigh didn't miss, but chose to ignore. "He told me that his cousin is getting married next week. Oddly enough, she's being married in the First Church of the New Millenium, where your pastor friend is from. Small world, eh?"

  Bess paled slightly. "I never said he was my friend."

  "He did. The night I met him at the hospital."

  "What else did he say?" Bess's eyes had widened, and Leigh started to feel guilty again. Bess was a pretty together lady, but this person, whoever he was, really had her rattled.

  "Nothing really," she answered soothingly. "He just introduced himself, and said he had to run because he needed to find another place to stay. In retrospect, I understand why."

  Bess ground her teeth on one side. "Frances found out about the fire. I should have known she would—I just didn't think about it. I thought I could keep everything quiet, but that was pointless. I just can't have her nebby little nose mixed up in all this!"

  Leigh set down her tea and leaned forward. She was getting more and more worried. Bess was not above getting into a tizzy over life's little annoyances, but she wasn't the fearful type. This whole thing was really eating at her. "Aunt Bess," she asked gently, "what is it you're afraid of?"

  The older woman stared down at her hands and continued grinding her teeth.

  "Just tell me," Leigh urged. "Maybe I can help."

  After a long moment, Bess exhaled loudly. "All right. But you have to swear to me that you won't go blabbing all this to Frances, or Lydie, or anyone, understand? It could ruin everything."

  "I'll do my best," Leigh promised.

  "Just tell your mother that I said whatever happened is my life and it's nobody else's business. Okay? It'll even be true. 'It's my life and nobody else's business!'"

  Leigh grinned. "Check."

  Bess took a long swig of tea and began. "I've been going to the First Church of the New Millenium for a while now, but I haven't told anyone in the family about it because I didn't want to hear your mother lecture me about what wackos they are."

  Leigh's brow furrowed. Bess had always been—if not an exemplary Presbyterian—a very discerning person. She wasn't the type to shell out for an overpriced warrantee or buy into the health claims of the latest dietary supplement. She knew when she was being sold, and she rarely got taken. All in all, she seemed an unlikely candidate for a charismatic religious movement. Perhaps the First Church of the New Millenium was more legitimate than it sounded?

  "Why would anyone think they were wackos?" Leigh
asked carefully, taking a sip.

  Bess humphed. "Because they're outside the box. Because they don't cling to any of your standard boilerplate Protestant theologies. Ergo—they must be nuts, right?"

  Leigh took another sip of tea in lieu of answering. Her aunt's brand of sarcasm was hard to decipher sometimes, and she didn't want to make a translation error. "But you went to the church because—"

  "Because of the Presby people, of course. And because of Reginald Humphrey. If that's even his name—which I doubt."

  Leigh was getting more confused, not less. Bess went on.

  "You know what happened to my old church, Franklin Presbyterian—I'd been a member there almost as long as you've been alive. We had three duds in a row for pastors, all our young people defected, and at the end we were left with forty or so old fogies who didn't want to support the church on their own. We met and discussed and met and discussed, and finally decided to disband and throw our support elsewhere. The church buildings went up for sale, and this brand new group—the First Church of the New Millenium—bought them for a song, thanks to his powers of persuasion."

  Bess paused and took another swig of tea. Leigh wanted to urge her on, but refrained. Bess's stories were always high drama—if you tried to skip the theatrics, the curtain came down.

  "He visited each and every former member of Presby, even brought flowers and candy to the widow women. He went on and on about how bad he felt about Presby losing its young people, and how his congregation had the opposite problem—they were a group of young, enthusiastic Christians who needed the wisdom of an older generation to guide them."

  Leigh's eyebrows rose. "That's a heck of a pitch," she admitted.

  Bess sighed. "Yes, it was. As I said, he was quite persuasive. So, a few at a time, people started coming back to the building. After all, many of them still felt like it was their church. Only now it was alive again.

  "The 'First Churchers' seemed like nice enough people, and they welcomed the Presby folks with open arms. But from the first time I met Reginald Humphrey, I couldn't shake the feeling—" she paused again. "Well, let's just say a little warning buzzer went off in the back of my head. Only at the time I wasn't sure why. His theology wasn't too far out of the mainstream, even if it was hopelessly vague. And he oozed so much charm no one seemed to care. The people were all so energetic, so excited to have a real church building. Apparently they'd started out in Cranberry by meeting in people's homes, then they rented space. Now they've got almost two hundred members, and they're still growing."

  Bess's eyes turned wistful. "There's something terribly appealing about being needed, you know. And they certainly knew how to make the old Presby crowd feel needed. The others kept asking me what I thought—I'm the ringleader of that crowd, you know—and I told them I couldn't see anything wrong with the church's mission, which I couldn't. So we all kept going back, and by the time I realized what the little alarm bell had been clanging about, it was too late."

  "Too late?" Leigh asked. "Did something happen?"

  "Not yet," Bess replied uncertainly. "But something will. Right now, Humphrey is the First Church of the New Millenium. That's why I couldn't let it go."

  Leigh was lost again. "Let what go?"

  "Him, of course!" Bess's voice rose. "That man wants something from them—money, power, their firstborns…I'm still not sure exactly what. But the Reverend Reginald Humphrey is a class one, grade A con artist. I'd stake my life on it."

  She drew in a quick breath, then dropped her voice to a whisper. "And unfortunately, I think I might have."

  Leigh sat for a moment, blinking at her aunt stupidly. The last line sounded ominous, but since all the women in her family were consummate exaggerators, she didn't take it too seriously. Bess's feelings about the church and the pastor were getting clearer, but unless she had missed something, there was still a big black question mark hanging over the parsonage fire. Not to mention the biker outfit.

  Before she could formulate more questions, Bess started to struggle up. "Don't!" Leigh protested. "Whatever you need, I'll get it."

  But Bess waved her concern away and carefully positioned her crutches. "I'm not an invalid, although I would be if I had to spend another day with your mother." She hoisted herself forward and began making progress toward an antique rolltop desk. Stopping in front of it, she opened a drawer, pulled out a yellowed envelope, and laboriously turned herself around. Leigh resisted the urge to help her. If she herself were on crutches, she doubted she'd want help either.

  Bess made it back to the sofa and dropped down with a grunt. "Here," she said, extending the envelope to Leigh. "Open that, and you'll see."

  Leigh finished her tea and set down the cup, then took the envelope and flipped it over. It was postmarked Fort Jackson, South Carolina and dated April 13, 1952. She looked at her aunt questioningly. It was a sad story in the Morton family—Bess had married for the first time at eighteen, and had been widowed the same year. The letter must have been written from her young husband's basic training camp—perhaps one of the last he wrote before heading off to a tragically short stint in Korea.

  "Open it," Bess encouraged. "It's all right."

  Leigh extracted the folded yellow paper carefully. A black and white photograph was nestled inside.

  "I have better shots of Dan," Bess said fondly. "I don't like to remember him as a soldier, so I've never had this one framed. But I've spent countless hours staring at it. Look at it carefully. Go ahead."

  Leigh peered into a moment in time a half century before, when six teenage boys in army duds had huddled together to mug for a picture. They must have been only weeks away from an uncertain future in a foreign war, but there was no trace of anxiety on their faces at this moment. They were all laughing heartily, and Leigh couldn't help but wonder what the joke might have been.

  "Can you pick out Dan?" Bess asked, her voice optimistic.

  Leigh pointed to the heaviest of the four, a boy with a stubby nose and toothy smile whose face had decorated her aunt's piano for decades.

  "That's right," Bess said with a smile. "Now, who else do you recognize?"

  Leigh studied the other faces, but none seemed particularly familiar. It was only on the second pass that she stopped over the image of a short boy with a freckled nose and wicked grin. It was the same engaging smile that had greeted her Thursday night in the intermediate care ward. "Oh, my God," she whispered. "It couldn't be. Could it?"

  Bess's eyes twinkled. "And why not? He's the right age. There's more—look on the back."

  Leigh flipped over the picture and tried to decipher the smudged ink. Dan had labeled his buddies by their nicknames, with a little comment about each. Her eyes skimmed over "Jelly Roll," "DoDo," and "Tooter" and went quickly to the words describing the short boy. "Money"—who'll swindle the Reds down to their skivvies.

  Bess let the implication sink in for a minute. "Now do you see why I'm convinced Reverend Humphrey is a fake? There's more about 'Money' in another letter. Dan says he was quite an accomplished con, and was always in trouble with their sergeant. He hadn't cheated any of the boys in their unit, though—apparently he wasn't that stupid."

  Leigh considered a moment, then folded the picture back into the letter and replaced it in the envelope. "It could be him, Aunt Bess," she admitted. "But even if it is, it was an awfully long time ago. He could have changed."

  Bess looked at her niece with disappointment. "Oh, please. You mean maybe he 'found religion?' Hogwash. Once a con, always a con. These people's brains are wired wrong or something."

  The theological backing for such a statement was questionable, but Leigh knew better than to take her aunt to task over it. "All right. So you're convinced Reginald Humphrey is a con artist. Why haven't you tried to expose him?"

  Bess narrowed her eyes. "I have, of course! I've been working on it for weeks. But it's not as easy as just calling the police. I have no proof. And what's worse, the congregation really believes in him. There's n
o doubt the young folks would take his side over mine, if it came to that. Even the Presby folks who were hesitant at first have swallowed up his spiel hook, line, and sinker. I have to have irrefutable evidence that he's cheating them in some way. And in order to get it, I have to keep playing along. The trouble is, every day I can't get evidence is another day the whole situation is getting worse. And frankly, I've gotten a little desperate."

  Leigh looked at her aunt thoughtfully. Bess was a woman of passion—a woman who thrived not only on joining crusades, but on staying with them to the end. This was a woman who still had hopes for the ERA amendment. No way was she giving up on the salvation of the First Church of the New Millenium.

  The contents of the hospital garment bag flashed again across Leigh's mind. The serviceable black boots, the leggings, the turtleneck. All items Bess might normally wear—just not together. The leather jacket, Leigh realized, hadn't completed the ensemble because it cut the wind on the open road. It fit because it was black.

  Her aunt hadn't meant to be a biker chick after all. She had meant to be a burglar.

  Chapter 4

  "Aunt Bess," Leigh asked slowly, afraid of the answer. "Please tell me you didn't break into the parsonage Thursday night."

  Bess just looked at her.

  Leigh sighed. "Of course you did. You were looking for evidence. Evidence that Humphrey was a con."

  Bess touched a finger to her nose and grinned. "You have got a devious mind, kiddo. I like that in a niece."

  Leigh sighed louder. "But, Aunt Bess! Breaking and entering is a felony—at least I think it is."

  "It wasn't really breaking and entering," Bess wheedled. "As it so happens, I had a key, and the parsonage is the property of the congregation, not the pastor. Still, you're right—if Humphrey kicked up a fuss, I could be in some trouble."