"Do you happen to have one of his cards?" Cooper inquired.
"Sure thing. Jed's office is down in the other wing. He's got some cards in a dish on his desk." Eliza frowned. "But what's Jed's job got to do with anything?"
"I don't know that it does, Mrs. Weeks," Cooper confessed. "I'm grasping at straws a bit. Have you ever heard of a woman named Brooke Hughes?"
Eliza furrowed her brow. "Don't think so. Still, I don't know many people, honey, seein' as I don't get out much. I talk to my sister on the phone, but mostly it's just me and Jed." She twisted the sash of her robe in her fingers. "As y'all probably noticed, I don't go to church with Jed. I stopped after the accident. Guess my willingness to be looked at by that big congregation gave out along with my legs."
Clearing his throat, Nathan reentered the room. "There's nothing behind the headboard, ma'am. I even checked under the bed."
"There was over two thousand dollars in that envelope," Eliza told them. "That's not gonna last Jed forever." Tears welled in her eyes again. "If he's livin' on cash, he really didn't want to be found, now did he? Oh, I hope he's all right!"
"There, there," Savannah whispered. "All will be well, you'll see."
The three friends offered words of support and sympathy and promised Eliza they'd visit again soon. On the way out, Cooper darted into Jed's office, took a business card from his desk, and showed it to Nathan once they were all settled inside Sweet Pea.
"Je d Weeks, CPA, CFE," Nathan read. "I have no earthly idea what a CFE is. I'll have to look it up on the Internet when we get back to my place."
"Or we could call Quinton," Savannah said, brandishing a cell phone. "I've got him on speed dial because he drives me to church most Sundays." She held down a digit and greeted Quinton a few seconds later. After summarizing their visit to Eliza, she asked him about the acronym. "Certified Fraud Examiner?" She then repeated for Cooper and Nathan's benefit. "What exactly do they do?"
She listened for a few minutes, thanked Quinton, and then shut her phone. "Jed is trained as a forensic accountant. According to Quinton, he would have investigated a company's financial practices to prepare documents that could be used as evidence in court. As a CFE, it looks like Jed specialized in fraud auditing."
"A specialist in fraud. Just like Brooke Hughes," Cooper mumbled.
"You might be onto something here, Cooper," Nathan said as he accelerated in order to pass an old pickup truck filled with bales of hay. "Jed might not be off on a romantic getaway with a lover at all. He might be hiding because he's scared of someone."
"But who?" Savannah asked.
Nathan used his wipers to clear stray pieces of hay from his windshield. "Maybe the same person who shot Brooke. It would make sense that he wouldn't tell Eliza anything about his involvement. The less she knows, the safer she is."
"If you're right," Cooper said with a sigh, "we now we have to find Jed
and
Hazel."
"This is going to require a whole lot of praying," Savannah said wearily, as she rested her head against the seat and closed her eyes.
10
" You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor andhate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous a nd the unrigh teous."
Matthew 5:43--45 (NIV)
That weekend, on a morning filled with a breeze that coerced fresh dustings of pollen from the groupings of foxglove, snapdragon, and sweet William surrounding the Lees' patio, Cooper woke up unusually early. The spring sunshine had launched an invasion through the cleft in her curtains, prompting her to make the most of the day, so she slipped on a pair of jeans and a Richmond Braves sweatshirt and fixed herself some scrambled eggs and a slice of dark rye toast. After breakfast, she wandered into her parents' house to see if she could borrow some half-and-half for her second cup of coffee. In the kitchen, her father was contentedly dumping the contents of a Wal-Mart bag onto the counter. He rubbed his hands together and grinned like a little boy.
"Mornin'! Look here. I read about these in the paper." He held up a box illustrating a mole covering its ears as it fled from a large spike emanating pulses. "Two batteries is all it takes. We whack this gadget into the ground and it'll cover a whole acre. Scares the moles and the voles by thumpin' steady all day and all night." He handed the box to Cooper. "We can put 'em in the ground this afternoon. What do you think, my girl?"
"Looks cool, Daddy." Cooper smiled as her father began to fit batteries into one of the stakes. "You're firing the first shot of the season, I see."
Earl snorted. "Heck yes, I am. A man's gotta have
some
advantage over the vermin in his own backyard."
One of Ea rl's favor ite a ctivities was to wage war against the creatures attempting to invade the vegetable garden. He and Cooper planned to spend Sunday afternoon after church stringing aluminum pie pans and bars of Irish Spring soap around the perimeter and applying fresh paint on the owl decoys they would fasten to the split-rail fence further bordering the woods.
"You should just move Columbus's cage next to the garden," Grammy advised, shuffing sleepily into the kitchen. "No critter in its right mind would venture in that garden with a hawk nearby."
"But it would be teasin' the poor bird," Earl said. "He'd see all those rodents creepin' around and wouldn't be able to get out of his cage to catch them. No,"--he brandished the pie plates--"we'll make do, same as every year. Those folks at the food bank will get their greens from Lee Farm despite the bugs, moles, voles, deer, and rabbits we've got to fight against."
"Speakin' of rabbits... ." Grammy wiggled her eyebrows up and down suggestively. "You got back a bit late last night, Granddaughter. You must've finally spoke plain about your feelings to that man of yours."
"It was just dinner," Cooper mumbled, as she hid her flushed face inside the fridge and quickly poured some half-and-half into one of her mother's coffee mugs. She then made a show of looking at her watch. "I'd better go get dressed for church. See y'all later."
She scurried up to her apartment and spent several minutes pushing clothes around inside her closet. Finally, she laid an outfit consisting of pressed khakis and a lightweight mocha-colored sweater on top of her bed and started the shower water. It was almost unbearably hot by the time she stepped into the stall, but Cooper preferred it that way. As water streamed through her hair and over her shoulders, she leaned back into the heat, wishing that it had the power to erase the memory of her dinner with Nathan. The evening had gone from being amusing and comfortable to awkward and disconcerting.
At first, everything was perfect. They had dropped Savannah off at her house and then Cooper had washed lettuce and prepared a salad while Nathan decanted a bottle of Italian red wine. As the wine breathed a bit, he set his kitchen table using striped cotton napkins, heavy white dishes, and a copper candleholder. He placed a single unused taper in the holder and then rummaged through every single kitchen drawer in search of matches.
"As you can see, I'm not used to lighting candles," he had said, laughing. "I hope I'm not losing too many points as a host. First, I offer you chicken and pasta that someone else has cooked and now I can't find any matches. Can you tell I'm a bachelor or what?"
Cooper gave Nathan an encouraging smile, removed the candle from the table, and turned on the front burner of Nathan's gas stove. She stuck the wick in the blue-and-orange circle of flame and then handed Nathan the lit candle. He beamed at her as though she had produced fire from a magic wand.
"Okay, I feel a bit stupid now," he said ruefully and poured wine into glass goblets with wide mouths. "I'd be the first one voted off on
Survivor.
" Then he shrugged and his good humor returned. "Maybe I'll seem smarter after you've had some wine."
Feeling a bit spotlighted by the candlelight and the small table, Cooper fidgeted as Nathan clinked his wineglass against hers. Just as she was wondering if his flirtatious demeanor might morph into something more, Nathan served the food and they settled down to eat. To Cooper's relief, their conversation flowed easily. After all, they had shared an interesting day visiting Eliza Weeks and both of them wanted to rehash their experience and speculate further on Jed's disappearance.
"We sure have had an unusual start," Nathan began as he offered Cooper another helping of pasta. She declined on more food but gladly accepted another glass of wine, feeling warmed by the meal, the libation, and the company.
However, as she sipped on the fruity vintage, she mulled over Nathan's last remark. "Start ... ?" she prompted as he tried to maneuver a slippery piece of noodle onto his fork.
"I mean ..." Nathan cleared his throat. "Most people become friends because they've got something in common. You know, like a job or a hobby or they went to school together." He took a gulp of wine. "But you and I--our friendship has sprung out of trying to exonerate Wesley Hughes. It's kind of a unique bonding experience, wouldn't you say?"
Nodding, Cooper smiled and, made a bit reckless by the wine, said, "I'm really glad I ran into you in the hall at the high school. If I had gotten the right time for the worship service, we might never have met."
"I'll drink to that." Nathan raised his glass. "Here's to being guided by a greater power."
They gently knocked glasses and stared at one another above the flickering candlelight. Suddenly, something shifted in Nathan's brown eyes and his gaze grew more intense. Cooper felt her entire body grow warm and again experienced a prick of guilt. She tried to push thoughts of her ex-boyfriend away. For once, she didn't want her memories of him to invade the present.
"This is nice," Nathan whispered huskily and pushed his plate off to the side. Just as he made a move to reach for Cooper's hand, the kitchen phone rang, shattering the moment as effectively as someone throwing a rock through the window.
Cooper exhaled loudly. She hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath.
Nathan glanced at his watch. "I'm sorry," he said, standing. "Because I host Web sites on my server, I sometimes get client calls at odd times. The server might be down." He moved to the phone and examined the caller ID box beside it. He cast an apologetic look at Cooper. "I've got to take this call. Excuse me."
Picking up the phone, Nathan offered a quick greeting and then asked the caller to hold as he relocated to his office. Cooper drained the rest of her wine, feeling a strange mixture of disappointment and relief that Nathan's attempt to initiate physical contact had been interrupted.
I like Nathan Dexter
, she admitted to herself.
So why am I so nervous?
Perplexed, Cooper carried their dinner plates to the sink and, as quietly as possible, began to rinse and load them into the dishwasher. When that task was complete and Nathan's office door still remained closed, she hand-washed their wineglasses, wiped off the countertops, and put the leftover chicken and pasta in the fridge. All that remained on the table were the linens and the burning candle, which seemed to cast a poignantly lonely reflection in the bay window.
Cooper suddenly felt tired and had no idea what to do next. Should she sit back down and wait for Nathan or should she knock on his office door and signal that she should be heading home? After several minutes of indecision, she strolled over to where the phone sat and, her curiosity overwhelming her sense of decorum, took a surreptitious glance at the caller ID box. The caller was from RichmondCouplesMatchmaker.com.
Instantly, Cooper imagined Nathan holed up in his office, chatting with a potential date while his dinner guest cleaned up his kitchen. She felt a strong surge of irritation and was half-tempted to swat the candle off the table with the back of her hand.
How dare Nathan try to seduce her, and five minutes later field a phone call from a prospective girlfriend? Annoyed as she might be, however, Cooper didn't possess the nerve to barge into Nathan's office and interrupt his conversation, so she settled for blowing out the candle, turning off all the lights in the kitchen, and leaving a terse note thanking him for dinner.
"My mama raised
me
right," Cooper snarled under her breath as she left Nathan's house.
As she drove Cherry-O above the speed limit around the downtown streets in pursuit of an on-ramp for I-95 North, Cooper's indignation lost its edge. She suddenly felt foolish for having rushed out of Nathan's house without saying good-bye.
"But he was rude!" she exclaimed to the portion of her reflection she could see in the rearview mirror. Still, she knew that it was childish to base her actions on someone else's.
Now here she was the following morning on the brink of being late to Bible study because she had indulged in too long a shower. Forgoing any attempts to re-create the way her hair had looked after being cut and styled at the beauty salon, Cooper shrugged into her clothes, slid into Cherry-O, and found herself speeding most of the way to church.
"It's only a matter of time before I get a ticket," she said as she passed a police cruiser staked out on the opposite side of the highway. "I never drove this fast before I quit smoking and went back to church!"
Cooper was the last one to arrive for Bible study. All of the Sunrise members had eaten their "second breakfasts," and were settled in their places, ready to begin the lesson. Nathan immediately tried to catch Cooper's eye and held out his hand to indicate that she should sit next to him, but she pretended not to notice his gesture and sat next to Jake. As she opened her workbook, she remembered too late that she had been using the song written by Quinton as a placeholder.