Shepherd by the Sea: A Pastor Clarissa Abbot Mystery

by Glen Ebisch

  “Okay, that would be all right. When would you be coming down here?”

  “I have a few things to finish up here tomorrow morning, but if I get an early start, I can be there by late afternoon. Shall we say around three o’clock?”

  “Sounds fine.”

  “And let’s wait to tell the police your theory, until you’ve heard my story.”

  “Fine. We can meet tomorrow at my office at South Shore Community Church.”

  “See you then.”

  Clarissa went back to reviewing her sermon buoyed up at the idea that perhaps there was a new lead in the Evanston case. If her personal life was going to be in a shambles, at least she could take some consolation from getting closer to a solution to this troubling murder.

  Ashley popped her head into the office at four. “Can I leave early today? This is the evening I’m introducing Kevin to Aunt Mona. He’s coming over for one of her high calorie, high fat meals. I hope he doesn’t drop dead before we’ve gotten married.”

  “Your aunt serves up some great baked goods.”

  “She’s a great cook, but her grasp of nutrition is a few decades out of date.”

  “Who knows what they’ll be saying about our idea of healthy eating thirty years from now?”

  “I suppose. Do you have anything going on tonight?”

  Clarissa shook her head. “Supper and an early bedtime, I imagine.”

  “And some time spent stewing over whether you should have taken Jonathan up on his offer?”

  “Of course,” Clarissa said with a faint smile. “I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t have some second thoughts.”

  “Yeah, but usually the first thoughts are the best thoughts. They come from a deeper level of the brain, the lizard brain. The doubts we have later are from the rational part of our mind and don’t represent our truest feelings.”

  “So you’re saying go with the gut.”

  “That’s pretty much it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind and consult with my inner lizard. Now you go ahead home and have a great time with Kevin tonight. And good luck with Aunt Mona. Just tell Kevin to eat hearty. I’m sure that’s the best approach for a man to find his way into Mona’s heart.”

  Ashley waved goodbye and closed the door.

  Clarissa sat and stared at the mahogany walls of her office. Just a few months ago she’d said goodbye to her fiancé Tyler and then broken up with her boyfriend Andrew. But Rudinski had already been on the scene, so she wasn’t completely alone. But now, for the first time in three years, she’d be completely on her own, not even remotely part of a couple. She loved her parents and her two brothers, but had only occasional contact with them. So for all intents and purposes, she would be alone. Suddenly she could understand on an experiential level why people became part of Jonathan’s church. Humans really weren’t meant to live alone without close attachments to others. Acquaintances and work associates really didn’t provide enough support. A person needed closer ties, folks who would be there for them daily when problems arose.

  Clarissa realized that she now had the conclusion of her sermon on a sense of community. She spent the next half hour writing. When she was finished she read it over, and smiled to herself in satisfaction. She thought this might be her best sermon yet; one that would speak to people on a gut level, as Ashley would say.

  Chapter 27

  Clarissa finished washing up her dishes from supper, deciding that there were too few to bother putting in the dishwasher. That was one of her few bones of contention with Mrs. Morgan, who said that dishwashers were made to be used and Clarissa should fill it up over several days, so it was run at least two or three times a week. Maybe she was right, but a dishwasher with several days’ worth of dirty dishes didn’t appeal to her sense of smell or order.

  She’d just put the kettle on to boil, feeling in the mood for a cup of tea, when there was a knock at the kitchen door. Clarissa turned on the light and peeked out through the window. Richard Coppleston was standing on the porch, wearing a suit with a white shirt open at the neck. He gave her an embarrassed wave. She opened the door.

  “I’m sorry. I hope this isn’t too inconvenient, Pastor. I know we were going to meet tomorrow, but the more I thought about it, the more urgently I felt the need to see you. I left work early this afternoon and drove right down. It’s almost a five hour trip, and I hit some traffic in the Newark area, so I’m a bit later than I expected.”

  “No, problem. Come right in,” Clarissa said. “Would you like something to eat? I have some leftover casserole.” She nodded to the large glass casserole dish on the kitchen counter.

  “No, thanks. I’m going to eat later.”

  “How about a cup of tea, the kettle is on,” she said, motioning for him to sit at the table on the far end from her so they’d be socially distanced.

  “That would be nice.”

  Clarissa made a pot of tea, and served both of them. Mrs. Morgan had left half of a cherry pie, but Coppleston shook his head.

  “I’m afraid that I’m a bit too upset to eat. When Abby told me what the two of you had talked about earlier today, several things that I should’ve noticed sooner suddenly fell into place for me. You were right to wonder about Karla’s relationship with Jonas Samuels. It had been a very difficult one lately. She’d had to turn down several of his projects because of budgetary considerations. Over the last couple of years that she’d worked as comptroller, I’d come to depend on Karla to make those decisions for me, automatically signing off on them. After Abby spoke to me, I went back and checked over Jonas’ projects for the last six months. Karla had cancelled several of them on budgetary grounds that we probably could have developed.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Coppleston shook his head. “Karla could be rather opinionated and stubborn sometimes, and Jonas is irascible and often has problems working with women. There have been several complaints made to personnel by women who’d objected to some of his sexist comments. If he weren’t so good at what he does, I would’ve fired him a long time ago. I’ve certainly warned him about his behavior and sent him for sensitivity training, but nothing seems to help.”

  “So you think that he and Karla had a sort of adversarial relationship?”

  “Yes. I suspect that Karla felt that if she made life hard enough for Jonas, he’d leave and get a job elsewhere. That could easily happen. A man with his skills would certainly find a new position easily.”

  “Why didn’t he leave if she was making life so hard for him?”

  Coppleston shrugged. “He was as stubborn as Karla. He wasn’t about to let some woman push him out of a job he enjoyed.”

  “All of that makes sense, but it seems quite a leap to believing that he would murder her.”

  “Yes. Well, as I said, when Abby told me about your theory that someone had used this matchmaking website to lure her down to Shore Side to murder her, I remembered that one day I’d walked into Jonas’ office when he wasn’t there, and on the screen of his computer there was a dating website.”

  “Did you mention it to him?”

  “No, actually I was a bit embarrassed at invading his privacy that way, so I never said anything. He’s a single man, so why shouldn’t he look for companionship any way he wants?” Coppleston gave a small smile. “I even thought to myself that he would certainly need something like that to find a woman who would put up with him.”

  “So you think he pretended to be someone else, posted phony pictures, created a fictional biography, and managed to convince Karla that he was the man of her dreams?”

  “Jonas is very smart, and despite their conflicts, he knew Karla well. He would be aware of what she liked and admired in a man. He would also know the things she liked to do and her creative interests. Yes, I think he easily could have pretended to be her ideal man.”

  “Would he have had the opportunity to come down to Shore Side at the same time Karla was here? He would’ve had to take off from work on a Fr
iday?”

  Coppleston sighed. “Just another strike against him. He was down here with me in Philly at the same convention.”

  “Did you drive down together?”

  “No, we took separate cars. To be honest, the thought of spending hours on the road alone with Jonas was not a very appealing idea. His political views can be rather strident, and he enjoys sharing them.”

  “Did you see much of each other at the conference?”

  “Occasionally in the halls. But we went to different meetings. Mine were geared to CEOs, while his were aimed at project engineers. We didn’t eat meals together either. We each have different circles of professional friends.”

  Clarissa sat and sipped her tea. “I certainly think this is worth taking to the police.”

  “Good. For a while I thought I might have been fabricating some conspiracy theory in my mind. It sounds so elaborate, almost farfetched.”

  “You said Jonas was a very intelligent guy. He wanted to get rid of a woman who was a danger to him without having suspicion fall on himself, so he had to come up with an intricate plan.”

  “Do you think we have enough evidence to get the police to investigate him? I’d hate to see him get away with this. Karla and I had been together for a long time. We trusted each other.”

  Clarissa paused with the mug of tea at her lips. Something came back to her. It was Chris Grant discussing his conversation with Karla in the bar. Karla had said, “That’s what always happens with men you think you can trust. They turn out to be pathetic and dishonest.”

  “Is something wrong?” Coppleston asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “I was just thinking that it was fortunate for Jonas that Karla’s husband, George, decided to blackmail her killer rather than go to the police.”

  “Yes, even a perfect plan needs some help from luck.”

  Clarissa slid her chair back from the table as Coppleston smiled sadly.

  “I bungled badly there, didn’t I? There was no way I could have known about

  George being a blackmailer unless I was his killer.” He reached behind his back and pulled out a large kitchen knife. “I really didn’t want to kill again. I truly had hoped that we could go together to the police tomorrow and present the frame up I’ve created for Jonas. But now, I fear, I’ll have to go alone to the police because you’ll be dead.”

  “If you kill me,” Clarissa said, feeling her mouth go dry, “you’ll ruin your whole plan. How will you convince the police that Jonas killed me?”

  Coppleston smiled confidently. “I anticipated the possibility that you would somehow see through my scheme. Remember, you talked to Jonas today. The police will think that put him on the alert that you were suspicious of him.”

  “But what if he’s having dinner right now with a few friends?”

  “Sorry, but he isn’t. I assigned him a large report this morning, even told him to go home to work on it. I said that it had to be done and emailed to me by the crack of dawn. Jonas is nothing if not conscientious, so I fully expect he is all by himself, diligently applying himself to the busywork I gave him. He’ll have no alibi for your unfortunate murder.”

  “So you did everything that you blamed Jonas for doing?”

  “Precisely. I set up a dating account using Jonas’ name and work computer when Karla told me about her attempts at finding a match. I figured that if by any chance the police did conduct a full-scale investigation at Verve, they’d end up pinning the blame on Jonas. I arranged, posing as Dan Shaw, to meet with her down here. Of course, I stood her up and waited outside to follow her back to her condo. I’ll admit that I had a couple of bad moments when she came out with a man, but luckily for me, she walked away on her own.”

  “But you didn’t know her husband, George, was stalking her.”

  “She’d told me about that, but I didn’t think he’d follow her all the way down to Shore Side—a bad miscalculation on my part because he saw me go into her condo and recognized me. When he found her body, he gave me a call. Fortunately, he valued money over apprehending his wife’s killer.”

  “So you took care of George?”

  “George was a large, blustering lout. A former football player, he underestimated what a short, somewhat pudgy, middle-aged man is capable of doing with a knife. He agreed to meet after dark at a rather remote location. Problem solved.”

  “But why did you kill Karla?”

  “Ah, that was also something I didn’t wish to do, but Karla was tenacious. When she turned down Jonas’ last project, she started to wonder why so little money was available in the budget to fund new projects. On her own initiative, she began to delve into the books, and she discovered that I’d been siphoning off money for over a year.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Gambling is a weakness of mine. I really should get help, and perhaps I shall once I’ve managed to thoroughly conceal my malfeasance. Once Karla knew about it, she came to me and said that she was going to reveal what I’d done to the chairman of the board. I begged her for some time to pay the money back, and she reluctantly agreed. There was, of course, no way I could get enough money together to make restitution, so instead I came up with a plan to get rid of Karla. Very simple really, and Karla should have anticipated my actions, but she was far too trusting.”

  Clarissa shook her head. She was at the end of the kitchen table closest to the door. If she could get outside, she had no doubt that she could outrun him. However, she didn’t think she could reach the door and pull it open before he was on her, unless she created a distraction.

  “And now, my dear, there is another problem to be solved,” Coppleston said, brandishing the knife, and starting to stand.

  Clarissa threw her empty mug at his head and bolted for the door. Just as she was about to reach the doorknob, he grabbed her shoulder and forced her against the wall. The hand with the knife went up, ready to plunge it down into her chest.

  There was a gentle knock at the door.

  “Help!” she shouted.

  The door flew open and Jonathan stepped into the room. Coppleston spun around and without an instant’s hesitation drove the knife into the top of Jonathan’s chest. Jonathan staggered back a step, but as Coppleston came forward ready to strike again, Jonathan managed to throw a punch that hit his assailant on the nose. Coppleston fell backwards, grabbing onto the end of the table. His lower face a mask of blood, Coppleston reached up and touched his mouth. When he saw the blood, he gasped and turned pale.

  Both men were woozy, leaning against something: Coppleston, the end of the table; Jonathan, the doorframe. Clarissa ran between the two men to the kitchen counter. Coppleston recovered first, and came forward warily, ready to strike a fatal blow. As he walked past, focused completely on killing Jonathan, Clarissa picked up the glass casserole from the counter and hit him as hard as she could on the top of the head. He stood very still for a moment, as if trying to process what had happened. Then he crumpled to the floor.

  Jonathan tried to take a step forward, but began to fall. Clarissa caught him and managed to drag him to a chair. She called the police.

  When she’d gotten the police and an ambulance on order, she went back to Jonathan, whose upper chest was bleeding freely. She picked up a dishtowel and began to apply pressure to his wound. His eyes were unfocused, but he flinched as she pushed harder.

  He glanced in her general direction.

  “You know, it’s only fair,” he mumbled.

  “What is?”

  “You took a bullet for me, and now I’ve taken a knife for you. I guess it proves that we work well together.”

  Clarissa smiled. “Or else it shows that we’re a danger to each other.”

  He chuckled. “I came over here tonight to tell you . . .” His eyes closed, and he seemed to be asleep.

  “To tell me what?”

  “That I was wrong to make you choose so soon. I’m not going to go away . . . at least not right now.” He faded away again.

&n
bsp; I hope not, Clarissa thought.

  She heard a noise behind her, and turned around. Rudinski stood in the doorway with a uniformed officer behind him. Grimly, he looked at the bloody chaos of the kitchen.

  “Are you all right?’ he asked Clarissa.

  “Yes, I’m fine, but Jonathan needs help.”

  “Of course he does,” Rudinski said in an undertone, as if speaking to himself. “Of course he does.”

  Chapter 28

  Clarissa sat in the interrogation room at the police station the next morning, already exhausted even though the day was still young. Last night, Rudinski had sent her back to the station with a uniformed officer. There a young police woman had taken her into this room and gotten a statement about what had happened. Although she was young, the officer had managed not to look too goggle-eyed at what Clarissa had to say. Maybe the officer didn’t believe her, and had discounted the whole story as the ravings of a fantasist or lunatic. At any rate, Clarissa had been asked to return this morning to sign her statement. She figured that this was a euphemism for going through the whole thing again with someone of a higher rank.

  She hadn’t slept well either. After an officer brought her back to the parsonage, she’d straightened up the kitchen, trying, unsuccessfully, to scrub all the blood from the floor, and then gone up to bed where she’d collapsed. After sleeping soundly for three hours, however, she’d awakened and found it impossible to get back to sleep. After tossing and turning, she got up and read until dawn, not able to fully concentrate on the meanings of the words. Jonathan’s condition was on her mind. All the police had been able to tell her was that he was alive and undergoing emergency surgery. A call to the hospital in the morning had told her that he was resting comfortably and his condition was “fair.” Clarissa knew that in school a “fair” grade wasn’t very good, and she wondered if the medical terms were similar.

  Much to Mrs. Morgan’s surprise, Clarissa had already made coffee and consumed a cup before the woman arrived. Almost as soon as she entered the kitchen, Mrs. Morgan had noticed the dark spots on the floor. Clarissa had been forced to give her a concise summary of the night’s events. Perhaps because she was too stunned to ask much more, Mrs. Morgan had absorbed what Clarissa said, then focused on preparing breakfast, not asking any further questions. As Clarissa left for the police station, Mrs. Morgan had promised to give the kitchen floor a good scrubbing in order to get rid of any unsightly dirt. Clarissa wished there was a similar way to get rid of unsightly memories.