Authors: Donna Andrews
Then, during the final verse of “My Lord, What a Morning,” I saw the tent flap pop open. Denton hurried off in the direction away from the courthouse, looking anxiously over his shoulder as if expecting someone to give chase. I waved, in case he spotted me, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Was something wrong? My anxiety increased when, just as the organ played the first few notes of the next song, Deacon Washington and the other choir husbands burst out of the tent.
My heartbeat slowed a little when the choir launched into “Blessed Assurance” and I realized the men were only dashing to take their seats in the audience before the end of the concert.
Of course, that still didn’t explain why Denton had made such a hasty and anxious exit.
“What’s up with him?” I asked Deacon Washington, who had paused by my chair before dashing for the audience.
“Got a text message on his phone and said he had to run,” the deacon said. “And he threw in four of a kind with the pot up over a hundred dollars.”
He shook his head as if deeply troubled by this suspicious behavior, and then hurried after the others.
I fretted all through “Blessed Assurance” and the applause that followed it. But I refrained from dashing into the tent—the Shiffleys were still there, on guard. And what if Denton had merely faked a text message to see what we’d do when he left, and was observing from some nearby patch of shadow? On the off chance that was what was happening, I stayed put and tried to look absorbed in the concert.
An expectant silence fell over the crowd, and then a rich, mezzo-soprano voice rang out with familiar words:
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.”
Althea, Deacon Washington’s wife, and probably my favorite singer in the New Life Baptist choir. She wasn’t singing full out, but deliberately holding back, making her voice sound soft and hushed. I found myself holding my breath to make sure I could hear every note, which was silly, because even when she was holding back you could hear Althea just fine from across the town square. The rest of the audience must have been holding their breath, too, because all you could hear between the notes were the frogs and crickets down in Pruitt Pond.
She sang the second verse the same way—a lot softer than we all knew she could, and with no frills or improvisations—just an achingly beautiful rendition of the familiar melody.
When she launched into “Through many dangers, toils and snares” at the beginning of the third verse, the choir began humming along—soft at first, so you almost thought you were imagining it, and then getting gradually louder and splitting off into harmonies.
By the time they got to “And Grace will Lead me home” at the end of that verse, the whole choir was singing full out in three- or four-part harmony, and the bandstand vibrated with the force of the music.
For the next two verses, the soprano section carried the tune while Althea and a soprano with almost as powerful a voice danced around and above the melody. And then for the final verse, they just sang the melody, unadorned, over a hundred voices in perfect unison.
It was so overwhelming that the entire audience was silent for a few moments, and then the applause started, all at once, like a crack of thunder. I joined in, clapping my hands together as hard as I could and shouting, “Encore! Encore!”
After the choir had taken a couple of bows, the organ struck up “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and the choir left the stage in groups of eight or ten, each group coming to the front in turn, performing a few stately yet surprisingly deft line dance steps, and then taking a final bow before sashaying offstage.
“We should do this every summer.”
The two Shiffleys from the poker game were standing in the doorway of the tent, clapping like the rest. They were both tall—one probably matched Michael’s six foot four, and the other was at least half a head taller than that.
“I hope we don’t have to every summer,” I said. “Good cover with that poker game.”
“We came over to do some prep work for the new trapdoor, and brought the poker fixings with us,” the very tall one said. “And it’s not a bad thing he showed up—not a bad thing if a rumor gets out we’re having a big poker game under the bandstand. Bunch of us are probably going to be coming and going over the next day or so, and if we carry our tools in beer coolers, it’ll just look like we’re dropping by for the game.”
“And if you look a little furtive and watchful—doesn’t that kind of game skirt a little close to Virginia’s gambling laws?”
They both chuckled.
“By the way,” the merely tall one said. “Randall said if we saw you to make sure you remembered about the Steering Committee meeting later tonight.”
I nodded. Since the meeting was taking place at our house, the only way I could possibly miss it was if I deliberately malingered here at the tent until it was over. I’d already begun racking my brain for some task that would keep me here in town for another hour, so the fact that Randall felt the need to remind me argued that he was a keen observer of human nature or possibly a mind reader.
“I’m heading home in a few minutes,” I said. “As soon as I make sure the trapdoor is shut for the night. But thanks for the reminder.”
The merely tall one looked around for eavesdroppers.
“We’re going to be working in there for a while,” he said. “Quietly,” he added. “And we brought our sleeping bags, so when we finish, we’re going to bed down in the crawl space. In fact, here.”
He reached into his pocket and handed me a set of keys.
“Just in case anyone finds us, we’ll say you caught us drinking after the poker game ended, and took away our keys, so we decided to sleep it off here.”
I took the keys—wondering, not for the first time, how many of the small subterfuges townspeople had resorted to in the last year and a half were necessary and how much they merely satisfied some collective thirst for intrigue and drama.
Not a problem I could resolve tonight. I checked to make sure all my stuff was secure and that there was water for the pigeons. Then I grabbed my purse and headed for home.
Chapter 18
All around the town square, tour buses were loading their tired but happily chattering cargo. The sidewalks swarmed with people heading for one of the two big lots that the college had opened up for tourist parking. Luckily I was heading the other way, toward the smaller lot that Michael’s faculty parking sticker let me use.
I passed Muriel picking up the daily special sign that normally graced the sidewalk in front of her diner. We greeted each other and I yawned while doing it.
“Hope you’re heading for bed,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Steering Committee meeting.”
She peered at me and frowned.
“I was about to throw out the last of the coffee,” she said. “Why don’t I throw it in a cup for you. Might help you get home safely.”
I could see the wisdom in that, so I held the door for her to carry in her sign and perched on a stool while she rustled up a cardboard carryout cup for the coffee.
“I see your friend’s gone,” she said over her shoulder.
“My friend?” I wondered for a moment if she thought I knew Colleen Brown. Was this her gruff but kindly attempt at offering condolences?
“That PI fellow.” She handed me a cardboard travel cup full of coffee. “Didn’t show up for his dinner. In fact, I haven’t seen him since lunchtime. Just before the murder,” she added, looking over her glasses at me to make sure I understood the significance.
“He hasn’t disappeared,” I said. “I saw him not an hour ago.”
Although from Deacon Washington’s description, he did exit the poker game rather abruptly.
“See? Right across the street, and didn’t drop by for his pie,” Muriel said. “Suspicious.”
Was she suspicious of him, or insulted that he’d spurned her pie?
“It’s still not what I’d call a suspicious disappearance.” I took several big gulps of coffee and tried to visualize the little molecules of caffeine leaping into my bloodstream. “Maybe he found some other place where the management’s less picky about who they serve. Or maybe having one of their staff murdered while he was here convinced the lender that he’s not doing his job, and they fired him.”
“Maybe.” Clearly Muriel wasn’t buying either of these explanations.
“Are you suggesting that he committed the murder and fled town?” I asked. “Or are you afraid that the killer has struck again, and Mr. Denton is also the victim of foul play?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of that last idea,” Muriel said. From her expression, I gathered it was not an entirely unwelcome one. “Do you really think someone might have bumped him off?”
“Not unless they did it in the last hour,” I replied. “And I have no idea why anyone would want to.”
“Well, maybe if you find him, you’ll figure it out,” Muriel said. “Here’s a lid for that. You want me to top it off?”
I held up my cup. And found myself holding my hand in midair while Muriel stared transfixed into my empty cup. I glanced in myself, half expecting to see the crystallized residue of some obscure poison, or perhaps a cryptic message spelled out in coffee grounds.
She finally shook her head and started pouring.
“I keep hoping I’ll remember more of what they were talking about,” she said.
“Who?”
“The PI and that dead lady,” Muriel said.
“They were talking?”
She nodded.
“Here?”
“No, back in the parking lot behind the drugstore. Couple nights ago. I was walking to my car after I closed up. And for that matter, they weren’t just talking. Looked to me like they were arguing.”
“About what?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t catch more than a few words,” she said. “They were at the other side of the parking lot, and they weren’t yelling. More like snarling and hissing at each other. Only thing I caught was when the PI fellow lost it for a second and snapped out something like, ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?’ And then they looked around and saw me and pretended to be smiling at each other. And he said, ‘Let me see you to your car,’ loud enough to make sure I could hear, and they both left.”
Interesting. And a little disconcerting, since I rather liked Stanley Denton. Not to the point that I wanted him to succeed on his assignment, of course. But I didn’t see him as the killer, and I was strangely upset at the thought of him becoming either a victim or a suspect. And from what Randall said, Colleen Brown was civil, professional—if not a joy to work with, at least not a pain like most of her colleagues.
What had two of the very small number of apparently nice and decent people on the Evil Lender’s staff been arguing about?
“You told the chief about this?” I asked.
Muriel frowned thunderously.
“I did. Fat lot of good it did,” she grumbled. “He won’t hypnotize me.”
“He won’t what?”
“Hypnotize me. I filled him in this afternoon, after I heard about the murder. He barely listened, and paid no attention when I told him maybe if he got one of those hypnotists, they could help me remember what else those two said.”
“I think for a hypnotist to help you remember it you’d have to have heard it in the first place,” I said. “If you were all the way across the parking lot, how could you have heard it?”
“Well, I didn’t consciously hear it,” she said. “But how does he know I didn’t hear it subliminally? You know, like those tapes you play to help you lose weight and stop smoking. You can’t hear them, no matter how hard you listen, but everybody says they work.”
“You could have a point,” I said.
“Chief says they don’t have a hypnotist on staff, and don’t have the budget to hire one,” she said. “So the evidence that could break the case remains locked in my subconscious.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so I just nodded and tried to look grave. It helped that when my mouth twitched with the uncontrollable urge to grin, I could hide it by sipping my coffee.
And then a mischievous thought struck me.
“Ask Dad,” I said.
“Beg pardon?”
“My dad went through a fascination with hypnotism a while back,” I said. “I have no idea if he learned how to do it, but even if he didn’t, he might know someone who does. And you know how he is when he gets fascinated with something. Maybe if you convinced him of the importance of your subconscious, he could do something about it.”
“Now that is a helpful idea.” Her tone seemed to imply that she’d been fending off a barrage of unhelpful ones all day.
“Time I hit the road.” I picked up my cup and slid off the stool. “What do I owe you for the coffee?”
“I was throwing it out anyway,” she said. “Drive safely.”
It was nearly eleven when I finally got home. I was exhausted, ravenous, guilt-wracked about dumping the boys on Michael for so long, and eager to see him and them.
Well, at least I got to see Michael.
“We missed you,” he said. “But Eric was a big help, and the boys have been bathed, fed, and read to almost as well as you could do it.”
“Eric’s working out, then?”
“He’s catching on, but he’ll need a lot more stamina to keep up with the Dynamic Duo. He collapsed a little after they did.”
“I’d love to follow his example,” I said. “After some food. Anything that’s not fried chicken, fried fish, or barbecue. I had a lovely salad for dinner, but that was five hours ago.”
“Okay, so will you be pleased or dismayed that the rest of the Steering Committee are waiting for you in the library with pizza?”
Pizza. That argued that someone thought we were in for a long meeting. Unless they’d just appropriated the pizza Michael had talked about ordering. I closed my eyes, controlling the urge to mutter several of the words I’d tried to expunge from my vocabulary before the twins picked them up.
“Dismayed’s closer to the mark,” I said. “If I’m not up in an hour or so, call and fake some kind of small problem with the boys that only I can handle.”
“Will do,” he said.
Encouraged at having an escape route, I headed for the library. But on my way, I stole upstairs to check on the boys. They looked so cute and angelic that I pulled out my phone and snapped a few pictures to send to the grandparents. Before the boys arrived, I’d hardly ever used the camera feature on my phone, and now I used it almost daily. And not just for my own enjoyment. I’d figured out that if I sent my mother-in-law enough baby pictures, her visits were shorter, somewhat less frequent, and a lot more peaceful.