Pastor Rod walked past me, hand extended. “Rod Kinkle. I’m the pastor here at the Fifth Street Church. I met Mrs. Broussard this weekend at the Love Nest Bed and Breakfast. She and her husband were on their honeymoon. If you’re her mother-in-law, I guess that makes Gabriel your son?”
Of all the churches in all the world, I had to walk into his.
Dear God, please strike me dead. Now!
It was one thing to play honeymoon with Gabriel where it didn’t really affect Miss Frankie, but I saw a wounded look slip across her face as Pastor Rod talked, and the game changed in that moment.
She turned toward me slowly. “Gabriel. Yes. The honeymoon.” She’s always unfailingly polite in public, and I’m sure no one else could have heard the pain in her voice. No one else knew how hard it was for her to pretend that Gabriel was her son, even for a moment. But I knew, and the guilt stole my breath away.
“I can explain,” I said again. But before I got a chance, someone else came out of the sanctuary and my explanation was swallowed up by confusion. “Monroe Magee? What are you doing here?”
“What are
you
doing here?” Monroe countered, swearing under his breath when he recognized me. Pastor Rod shot him a warning look.
“We got caught in the storm,” I said. “I didn’t realize this was Pastor Rod’s church.” We all stood there for several uncomfortable seconds, waiting for someone to speak. Or maybe I should say, I waited for one of them to speak. Everyone else seemed to be waiting on me.
I mopped rainwater and nervous perspiration from my forehead with a sleeve. I knew I should call Sullivan immediately and tell him I’d found Monroe, but I convinced myself that turning in the missing Magee could wait a few minutes. “So this is where you disappeared to,” I said, stating the obvious. “Have you been here ever since Dontae died?”
Pastor Rod put a hand on Monroe’s shoulder. “It’s not what you think. He didn’t kill Dontae.”
A soft gasp escaped Miss Frankie’s lips and too late I remembered I hadn’t told her about the murder. She didn’t say a word, however, and I made a mental note to thank her for going with the flow. “Maybe not,” I agreed, “but running off with the Love Nest’s van may not have been the best way to convince people of that.”
Miss Frankie looked back and forth between us as we spoke, and suddenly the light went on in her eyes. “Monroe Magee! Of course, you’re the missing brother!”
Monroe flinched as if she’d tried to hit him, but then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Wait a minute. What do you know about my brother?”
“I can explain,” I said. “But it may take a few minutes, and I think we’d all be more comfortable if we could sit while we talk. Is there somewhere we can go?”
Pastor Rod looked a little less friendly than usual, but he bowed stiffly and led us into the sanctuary. He spent a few minutes turning on lights and air-conditioning to relieve the stuffiness. Miss Frankie and I sat on the front pew. The pastor brought chairs for himself and Monroe so we could face each other.
“Let me start by making a confession of my own,” I said when I couldn’t avoid it any longer. “My name is not Mrs. Broussard. I’m Rita Lucero. Gabriel Broussard and I are just friends.”
Pastor Rod creased his brow in confusion. “You came to the inn for a weekend tryst?”
Lightning flashed again, and a deep peel of thunder shook the windows. “Nothing like that,” I said. “We checked in and pretended to be married because Monroe’s brother asked us to.”
Monroe rocked back in his chair so hard it nearly toppled over. “Donald had you check up on me?”
First of all,
Donald?
And second, his outrage ticked me off. “Can you blame him? You took off without a word, and you stayed away for
forty years
. He didn’t even know if you were alive or dead.”
“You think I
wanted
to disappear like that? I didn’t have a choice! And if he cares that much, why didn’t he just come and see me like I axed him to in my letter?”
“Because he wasn’t sure it really was you. I mean, what kind of letter was that, anyway?
Hey, I’m back. Stop by if you want.
So he asked us to find out if you were the real deal or a con man up to no good.”
Monroe snorted, but a fresh deluge of rain drumming on the roof swallowed the sound. “All he had to do was come and talk to me. He coulda told who I was with one look.”
“It’s not that simple,” I snapped. “He lost his eyesight to glaucoma awhile back. He wasn’t sure he could tell just from talking to you, so he told us where to find your birthmark.”
Monroe shot a look at his shoulder as if he’d forgotten the birthmark existed, and all of his outrage vanished. “You telling me the truth? Donald’s blind?”
“Yes, he is,” I said, and Miss Frankie nodded confirmation. “He asked Gabriel and me for help, and we were happy to give it. He’s been worried sick about you for forty years, and you haven’t even bothered to let him know that you’re alive and well.”
As I spoke, Monroe began to hang his head, which I thought was exactly what he should have done. He should have felt ashamed of himself. But then I caught the look on Miss Frankie’s face and realized that, on the shame front, I wasn’t off the hook either.
She cleared her throat and clasped her hands on her lap—the very picture of a genteel Southern lady except for her rain-drenched clothes and her drowned-rat hair. “Now, don’t be so hard on the poor man, Rita. I’m sure he has an explanation, just as I’m sure he’ll give it to Donald when they finally get together.”
A grateful smile tugged at Monroe’s lips. “That’s right, ma’am. I surely will. Just as soon as I get out of this mess I’m in.”
“Monroe is trying to make his life right with God,” Pastor Rod said. “He came to me seeking sanctuary. I couldn’t turn him away.”
I guess I couldn’t fault him for that. I’d probably have done the same thing in his place. “I know you haven’t notified the police that he’s here. Am I right in guessing that you haven’t told the others at the Love Nest?”
Pastor Rod shook his head. “I don’t think they’d understand.”
I had a feeling he was right about that. “Why were you seeking sanctuary?” I asked Monroe. “Because you thought you’d be accused of murder or because you thought someone was trying to kill you, too?”
Monroe looked at me strangely. “Because I know what happened to Dontae.”
Miss Frankie leaned forward. “You saw? You know who killed that poor man?”
Monroe shook his head. “No. I wish I did. I was looking at the van that night.” His eyes shot to mine, and a little excitement seemed to energize him. “You remember. You were there. Hyacinth said it wasn’t working.”
“I remember.”
“Well, I was late back inside to dinner, so they saved me a plate.”
“Hyacinth did? I thought she didn’t serve latecomers . . . or guests.”
Monroe snorted a laugh. “Yeah. Well, I wasn’t really a guest, and I was staying in the annex with the others, so they included me.”
“Which is only polite,” Miss Frankie put in.
Right. “So Hyacinth saved some dinner for you.”
“Truth is, I don’t know who made the plate. It was just there in the kitchen, covered with plastic wrap and a piece of paper with my name on it. I was hungry, don’t mind telling you that. I put it in the microwave to heat it up and then Dontae came in.”
“Into the kitchen?”
He nodded. “Like he was watching for me, you know? He was mad. Said I had no business comin’ back to New Orl’ns. He wasn’t the only one who felt that way either.”
Pastor Rod sighed, and we shared a look of agreement.
“So what else did he say? What did he want you to do?” I asked.
“He told me to get the hell out, so that’s what I did.”
“But not right then,” I said.
“No. Not until later. Only thing I know for sure is, Dontae didn’t try to kill me. If he had, he never woulda eaten from that plate.”
“The plate that someone left for you in the kitchen?”
Monroe nodded. “He went off on me pretty bad. I didn’t have no appetite when he finished, so I just left the plate. He grabbed it and dug in like he hadn’t already had a dinner. An hour later, he was dead. But it coulda been me out there in the garden. Maybe it shoulda been me.”
“You see why I had to keep quiet about Monroe being here?” the pastor said. “Someone may have tried to kill him, and considering what happened at Letterman Industries, calling the police wasn’t an option. I couldn’t put him in danger by telling anyone else he was here.”
“I understand,” I said at the exact moment Miss Frankie said, “You really had no choice, Pastor.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said. “What were you going to do, Monroe? Hide out here for the rest of your life?”
He shook his head and frowned. “No, but I figured I could lie low until the heat was off.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Sooner or later, someone would have figured out where you were. But here’s the thing: the poison wasn’t in the dinner. It was in a bowl of pudding Dontae ate while he was in his room. Was that part of the meal?”
Monroe looked shocked. “Pudding? No. I didn’t see anything like that.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe it was in the fridge or something.”
Monroe rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as if looking for the answer there. After a minute, he shook his head slowly. “Nope. I woulda noticed that. Got me a bit of a sweet tooth.”
If the pudding that Dontae ate wasn’t part of Monroe’s meal, maybe Monroe hadn’t been the intended victim after all. And that was a game changer. “So does that mean someone meant to kill Dontae?” I said.
Pastor Rod looked shaken. “So it would appear, but that doesn’t make any sense. Who would have wanted him dead?”
I understood why the idea rattled him. It seemed pretty obvious that someone from the Love Nest had laced that pudding with the poison and then served it up to someone they’d called friend for nearly half a century. How could anyone be that cold? “Did any of the others have issues with Dontae?” I asked gently.
Pastor Rod shook his head. “Not that I know of. We’ve all been friends for years, but nobody has ever talked to me about having a problem with Dontae.”
“What about you?” I asked Monroe. “Do you know if anyone had an issue with Dontae, or did he have any arguments while you were there?”
“Sorry. No. But, you know, I’ve only been back in town a few days. I barely know any of them anymore. All I know is that about an hour after we talked in the kitchen I saw Dontae go outside. He looked sick. ‘Fact, he threw up right there. I figured he got sick on the food that was left for me, and I had a bad feeling about it.”
Miss Frankie looked confused. “Why was that?”
“I knew what some of those guys was capable of, didn’t I? And you saw the way they acted toward me. I was pretty sure my ass would be grass if I stayed.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “What are they capable of?”
Monroe slid a glance toward Pastor Rod and followed up with a shrug. “Couple of ’em used to be pretty hotheaded. You know . . . back in the day.”
“Cleveland still gets a little hot under the collar,” I said. “Did you see anyone hanging around Dontae’s room or hear someone moving around in the hall? Anything?”
Monroe shook his head. “Sorry.”
The thought crossed my mind that maybe someone had killed Dontae to frame Monroe, but that seemed like a real stretch. Who would kill a friend to hurt an enemy? Still, there had to be some reason for Dontae’s death.
Someone
had put that poison in the pudding and had been careful enough not to leave fingerprints behind. “What else did Dontae say to you that night?” I asked Monroe.
He ran a hand across his face and thought back. “He said I’d ruined everybody’s lives.” He turned to Pastor Rod as if looking for understanding. “Said it was my fault Willie died in prison. Said if I hadn’t tripped the alarm that night, none of it would have happened.”
“But they were all in on the robbery,” I pointed out. “They were all just as guilty as you were.”
“Try telling them that,” Monroe said sullenly. “They still think that if I hadn’t been there, they’d a been in and out. Nobody woulda been caught. Tyrone wouldn’t a been killed.”
Pastor Rod nodded slowly. “I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. Wondering whether things might have turned out differently. It’s impossible to say, of course, but some of the guys have convinced themselves that Monroe and Willie were solely responsible for Tyrone’s death. They’ve managed to separate the robbery from the murder in their own minds. I suppose they had to do that to live with the guilt.”
Big tears filled Monroe’s eyes. “But I didn’t know. I didn’t
know
. You know that, Rod. You know I didn’t do nothin’ on purpose.” Monroe mopped his face again and his shoulders began to quake. “Tyrone was my friend. I woulda never hurt him. I didn’t know Willie and the others was packing.”
I froze for a moment while that thought sank in. “Wait a minute. You mean Willie wasn’t the only one with a gun that night?”
Monroe blinked a couple of times, confused. “They all had ’em. Dontae and Cleveland both had ’em. So did Grey.”
“Did they pull their guns?”
Monroe’s shoulders sagged. The more agitated he became, the more he sounded like his brother. “Ever’body did.
Ever’body.
I was da only person in dat whole place didn’t have no gun.”
My nerve endings tingled, and I leaned forward, wanting to make eye contact so he’d understand how important my next question was. “In that case, are you sure it was Willie who pulled the trigger?”
Monroe looked surprised by my question. He shared a look with Pastor Rod, who now looked pretty rattled himself. “Yeah. I’m sure. He said he done it, didn’t he?”
I nodded. “That’s what he said, but what if someone else actually took the shot that killed Tyrone?” There had been six men in that warehouse, not counting “Hot Rod,” and three of them were now dead. “When you came back to town and stirred up the past, maybe the real killer got nervous. And if Dontae knew the truth, that would give somebody a pretty solid motive for wanting him dead.”
Monroe shook his head again. “It wasn’t like that. Willie did it. He must have. Why would he go to prison if he didn’t?”