Shepherd by the Sea: A Pastor Clarissa Abbot Mystery

by Glen Ebisch

  The phone rang. It was Cheryl, one of Karla’s sisters.

  “We have some new information,” Cheryl said, the excitement obvious in her voice. “Could you meet us for breakfast tomorrow? We’re staying at the Senator Hotel.”

  “I suppose I can.”

  “How about eight-thirty? We can meet in the dining room. It’s right off the lobby.”

  “Fine.”

  Clarissa hung up and gave a weary sigh, not sure whether it was at the thought of spending more time with the sisters or at having to heat up another casserole for supper.

  Chapter 17

  “What happened to your neck?” Mrs. Morgan asked, eying the bandage as soon as Clarissa entered the kitchen.

  “Just a minor injury, I’ll tell you later,” Clarissa said breezily, although she had to admit that her neck felt stiff and sore. “I have a breakfast appointment. Sorry I couldn’t let you know sooner, but it just got set up last night.”

  “That’s no problem. I figured you’d have your usual cereal anyway. Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

  “I’d better not. I’m going to walk over. The breakfast is at the Senator Hotel.”

  “Oh, very nice. They do a fine breakfast there. Be sure to try some of their breads.”

  “I’ll see you at lunch,” Clarissa said as she left the parsonage.

  She decided to go directly down Washington Street to the pedestrian mall and then through the three blocks to the Senator Hotel. The mall was quiet at this early hour in the middle of the week in September. By later in the day there would be a few tourists browsing the sleepy shops, but the weekend would see things getting positively crowded. Clarissa walked at a good clip enjoying the exercise and the refreshing air of early fall—happy to be alive.

  The Senator Hotel had a long porch supported by columns, giving it something of a plantation look. Clarissa slipped on her mask and went inside. The lobby sported an elegant mahogany registration desk to the right and on the left was a large fireplace with an arrangement of four upholstered leather chairs in front of it. A fire was already blazing on the hearth.

  Going straight through the lobby, Clarissa headed toward the hostess’ station for the hotel restaurant, which was called the Red Rooster. She paused at the desk and told the young woman that she was supposed to meet a couple of people for breakfast and asked if she could look inside to see if they were already there. The hostess waved her through.

  The restaurant was shadowy even on a bright day. The floor was made of wide dark planks and the walls had gray wainscoting. A fire was blazing on the hearth just below a primitive painting of a Red Rooster. The effect was early nineteenth century. Whereas most of Shore Side was Victorian in style, this predated that look by fifty years. She paused for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

  “Over here, Clarissa!” a woman called out.

  She turned to her left and saw Cheryl waving to her from a table over in the corner. It was a large circular table, and she was pleased to see that the three people around it were socially distanced. Fortunately, there was room for a fourth. She was surprised to see that along with Rhonda and Cheryl, a man was also seated the table. Cheryl made the introductions, informing Clarissa that the man was Richard Coppleston, president of Verve Pharmaceuticals, the company where Karla had worked.

  “Very nice to meet you, Pastor Abbot,” he said standing up and giving a short bow. Under the mask he had a chubby face, and he was rather on the portly side in general. He was wearing a sport coat with a knit shirt, as if he’d just slipped a jacket on after coming in from the golf course. Or perhaps he thought this was the proper casual wear for a middle-aged executive at the beach.

  “What happened to your neck?” Rhonda asked.

  “Occupational hazard,” Clarissa said dismissively. “How do you happen to be in town, Mr. Coppleston?”

  “Please, call me Richard. When the police called the office and told my secretary that Karla had been murdered, she failed to notify me right away. I was down here at a meeting in Philadelphia, and only got word yesterday. I called Cheryl last night and offered to make the trip over to see if there was anything I could contribute. Karla and I had worked together for a long time, and I felt I owed it to her to help as much as I could.”

  Before Clarissa could ask exactly how much help that might be, a waitress appeared at the table to take their order. Looking at the menu she was handed, Clarissa suddenly felt hungry and ordered eggs with a side of pancakes. She knew she could never let Mrs. Malone know how much she’d ordered or the woman would be amazed and hurt.

  “Richard has some valuable information,” Cheryl said, once the waitress had left. She looked over at the man with an expression that urged him to speak.

  He cleared his throat slowly, as if reluctant to get involved. “About a two weeks ago, Karla mentioned to me that she’d met someone on a dating site. She seemed very excited about it. She told me his name was Dan, and that he lived down here in Shore Side. She thought they had a lot in common, and was thinking about taking some time off to come down to meet him. Since I knew what a difficult time she’d been through with the breakup of her marriage, I urged her to do so.”

  “Did she show you what he looked like?” Clarissa asked.

  He shook his head. “Unfortunately, she did not. Nor did she tell me his last name. Since this was such a personal matter, I didn’t feel that I could press her for more information than she willingly provided.” He finished his coffee and glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid I have to leave now. I have an appointment to meet with the police and pass on my information. Then I have to get back to the conference that I’m attending in Philadelphia. I’m chairing a panel this afternoon,” he said with a crooked smile, as if it were the last thing he wanted to do.

  He stood up and nodded to each of the women in turn. “Nice to have met you all. I hope the police are able to get to the bottom of this.” He turned to Cheryl and Rhonda. “Let me know when the funeral will be held. The Verve family will miss Karla, and although we can’t gather because of the pandemic, I’m sure many of us would like to contribute to something in her memory.”

  As Richard Coppleston left the dining room, Rhonda turned to the others. “You know what this means. It means we should redouble our efforts to find someone who saw Karla after her fight with George. She must have gone on from there to meet up with this guy Dan. He’s got to be the one who murdered her.”

  “I thought you figured last night that George had done it,” Clarissa said.

  She gave a derisive snort. “George is too much of a wimp to kill anyone, especially someone as strong-minded as Karla. She scared him half to death.”

  “So we have to go back to trolling bars again,” Cheryl said unhappily.

  “But who are we going to be searching for?” asked Clarissa. “We have no idea what this Dan looks like.”

  “We know that George followed Karla after they had their fight in the bar. He probably saw her meet up with this Dan fellow. If we can find George again, maybe we can get a description. He might even know where the guy’s staying,” Rhonda said.

  “George is going to hide, now that he knows the police are after him,” Cheryl pointed out.

  “Or maybe he’ll turn himself in. What chance does he have since the police know where he lives?” said Clarissa.

  “I say we keep looking for him,” Rhonda said. “And this time we hang onto him,” she added, glaring at Clarissa as if his escape was entirely her fault.

  “The other thing we could do is forget about George,” Clarissa suggested. “Male bartenders, at least, probably remember women better than men, so we can just show Karla’s picture around. Somebody might remember seeing her and recall the man she was with. If Dan really is a local, we might be able to track him down that way.”

  “I like that plan,” Cheryl said. Rhonda reluctantly agreed that it had some merit.

  So while Clarissa tucked into her eggs and pancakes, they began to make up a lis
t of bars and restaurants to check on that night.

  *****

  An hour later, Clarissa finally made her way from the Senator Hotel back to her office. Rhonda and Cheryl had spent much of the time rehashing all that they knew about Karla’s murder, occasionally going off on tangents to relive some of their experiences from childhood. Clarissa had managed to keep them on track long enough to develop a list of places to check out that evening. She had doubts about the entire project, but couldn’t think of another way to get a lead on who’d murdered the woman. She knew that neither Baker nor Rudinski would be happy about their continuing search, but unless the newspaper story turned up something, she thought this approach was necessary. The police could only devote so much in terms of time and resources to going to all the bars and restaurants. Having the three of them augment the search couldn’t really do any harm.

  Ashley was sitting behind her computer when Clarissa entered the office. She glanced up at the clock. “Thought maybe you were taking the day off,” she said grinning. She stopped grinning when she saw Clarissa’s neck. “What happened?”

  Clarissa gave an abbreviated version of the incident.

  “I hope they throw the book at the guy. You could easily have been killed.”

  “Well, I wasn’t, so we should just move on.”

  “This Shepherd Jonathan is nothing but trouble.”

  “Let’s move on,” Clarissa said more firmly.

  Clarissa explained about her meeting with the sisters. Ashley nodded but didn’t say much, which was very unlike her. Clarissa went into her office wondering what was going on in the life of her assistant. She heard the phone in the outer office ring and a second later Ashley buzzed her.

  “The shepherd is on the line for you. Should I hang up?” she asked hopefully.

  Clarissa took the call.

  “Hello, Clarissa, how are you feeling today?”

  “My neck is a little sore, but under the circumstances, I’m feeling pretty good. I’ll live to preach another sermon.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it, and let me say again, I think what you did was absolutely heroic.”

  “If I’d had time to think about it, I probably would have been frozen in fear.”

  “That I doubt. The reason I’m calling is that I thought, since our last meeting ended so dramatically and we didn’t have a chance to talk afterwards, that you might be willing to meet me for lunch today. I meant it when I said I’d like a chance to talk with you about your views on life and religion.”

  “I’m free for lunch.”

  “Wonderful. How about we meet at Esther’s? A place with an appropriately Biblical name.”

  Clarissa smiled. “Sounds fine to me. Shall we say at twelve-thirty?”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  After putting the finishing touches on the newsletter, Clarissa e-mailed it to Ashley and printed out a hard copy for herself. Their usual system was for Ashley to follow the text on the screen, while Clarissa read it out loud. Between the two of them they usually caught any embarrassing mistakes. Clarissa went into the outer office. Ashley was sitting at her desk staring vacantly at the far wall, and she didn’t look over when Clarissa entered the room.

  “Everything okay?” Clarissa asked.

  Ashley blinked a couple of times. “Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “No reason. It’s time to proof the newsletter.”

  Ashley nodded, and they got down to work. Two hours later, they were both satisfied that all the typos, gaffes, and instances of weak sentence structure had been corrected.

  “I think this should be taken over to the printers today,” Clarissa said.

  “If you’ll let me leave for lunch right now, I’ll do it on the way,” Ashley volunteered.

  “Sounds fine.”

  Ashley quickly printed out a copy of the revised newsletter, grabbed her bag, and headed out the door.

  “By the way,” Clarissa called after her. “I’m going out to lunch, so I may be a little late getting back.”

  “Breakfast, now lunch. You’re developing quite the social life. This lunch wouldn’t have anything to do with the shepherd, would it?”

  “Just a meeting of colleagues.”

  Ashley winked as she went out the door. “I know a euphemism when I hear one.”

  Clarissa watched her go, wondering if she was right.

  Chapter 18

  Jonathan sat across the table and smiled at Clarissa as she dug into her food. Even though she’d had a large breakfast, she was already hungry again. Clarissa knew she’d definitely have to run again later this afternoon to burn off the extra calories.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked.

  “I admire women who aren’t afraid to enjoy their food.”

  “Then you must admire chubby women because that’s the way I’m going to end up if I keep eating like this.”

  Jonathan smiled. “I don’t think you have to worry.” He kept staring.

  “What now? Do I have food all over my face?”

  He shook his head. “This is just the first time I’ve seen you without your mask.”

  “Not too horrifying, I hope.” Immediately she could have kicked herself at fishing for a compliment.

  “Not at all, but it isn’t just a matter of good or bad looking. I think faces provide a map of how a person has lived their life to date. For example you have very pronounced laugh lines, which shows you have a sense of humor, but you also have small lines around the eyes that suggest you easily get concerned about things.”

  “I’m starting to feel like I’m having my face done at the cosmetics counter.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to cover up the kind of person you are.”

  “Hmm. I may have to rethink my position on that as I get older.”

  Clarissa stared hard at Jonathan, figuring turnabout was fair play. He was ruggedly handsome in an almost gaunt way. A pronounced scar to the left of his mouth had been revealed when he removed his mask.

  “What particular part of the map of your life does that scar relate to?” she asked.

  “My previous life in the military. That scar is a result of an unfortunate encounter with shrapnel.”

  Clarissa flinched. “That’s terrible.”

  “It’s no beauty mark, but the docs were great. It’s amazing that it looks as good as it does, considering how it appeared on first sight.”

  Clarissa recoiled inwardly at the thought of having her face laid open by a flying piece of hot metal.

  “That must have been painful.”

  “I won’t deny it. It was pretty bad at the time. But a month later I was patched up and back out in the field. I had plastic surgery six months later when I rotated home, which gave me the mug, such as it is, that I have now.”

  “Were you in the military for a long time?”

  “Ten years. I went in right out of high school, and got out at twenty-eight with no clue about what I wanted to do, except I knew it was time to go back to school. That was something I hadn’t really appreciated when I was younger. So I started in at a two-year college, then finished up at a four year school.”

  “What did you study?”

  “I majored in business with a minor in philosophy. I took a lot of religion and psychology along the way as well.”

  “How did you get interested in becoming a minister?”

  “Well, I worked as a bartender while I was in college. That’s only one step away from being a minister.”

  Clarissa smiled. “Except as a bartender you’re probably more popular.”

  “And not confined by any particular theology as to the advice you can offer. It gave me the opportunity to learn about people and what their spiritual needs are. No pun intended. I did a lot of reading on my own and sort of formulated a general approach to life that would meet the needs of young adults today. Then I used what I’d learned in all those business courses to put together a plan and get the show on the road. Getting a bank loan to
start a new church can be very challenging. Bankers don’t seem to think that religion can be a money-making proposition, even though there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary.”

  “Establishing a new congregation must be hard. Why did you choose to locate on the Jersey shore?”

  “I grew up in the Philadelphia area and used to come to the shore as a kid. All the time I was in the desert, I kept thinking about how I’d like to live within sight of the ocean. So when that became a possibility, I took advantage of it. And I’ve got no regrets.”

  “Unlike you, I didn’t plan to move here, but I have to admit that the area is growing on me.”

  Jonathan nodded and looked thoughtful. “One thing I’ve been meaning to ask you. Since I work almost exclusively with younger people and never have to deal with it, I was wondering how you counsel old people who are facing the end of their lives. Do you find that talking about an afterlife challenges your faith?”

  Clarissa slowly chewed her food to hide her reluctance to answer the question.

  “All the time. After all, when you talk about a life after this one, you can’t rely on life experience or first hand reports of others the way you can when you’re counseling people about relationships, family matters, or financial concerns. You’re basically telling them the beliefs of the religion that they, at some point in time, chose to accept. You can’t prove the truth of these matters to them, so I just repeat them to those that I think will find them consoling, and gloss over them with those who are skeptics.”

  “But what do you tell yourself when you wake up at three in the morning thinking about it?”

  “That there’s a possibility that it might be true, although it falls far short of a certainty. So I live my life as if the universe has some meaning, and I might have a place in it after death.”