The Tempest (13 page)

“I think maybe she wore him down a bit,” Brian said, smiling privately. “She did that.”

“Maybe,” Nancy said, disagreeing.

“Are you staying in town overnight?” Hunter asked.

“We are,” Brian said. “We're at the Old Shore Inn. We're going to church in the morning and then we're driving back.”

“Well, I'll probably see you in church, then. I hope you say hello to Pastor Bowers. I know he thought very highly of your sister.”

Hunter found John Linden's listing a few minutes after saying goodbye to Susan's siblings and left him a voice-­mail message. She surfed for Linden online. He was a tax attorney who collected antique clocks and owned a house in the suburbs appraised at $324,000. She found just one image of him, taken at an American Cancer Society fund-­raising dinner in New Castle. He was a wide-­cheeked man, well-­dressed, posing with his arm around his smiling blond wife. Hunter looked at it for a while and felt pretty sure about one thing: John Linden was the man with the elegant shoulders.

L
UKE
'S FAVORITE MUSIC
was silence. Often his best thoughts came late at night when he should have been sleeping. He'd open his eyes in the dark sometimes and think up an entire sermon while Charlotte and Sneakers slept soundly beside him—­although he was lucky if he remembered half of it in the morning. Some of those sermons were inspired by his parents, who had expected big things from Luke and seemed quietly disappointed at times that he hadn't achieved them by the time cancer began to eat away at his father. Luke still abided by some of the simple wisdom his father had given him as a boy, his rules for betterment:
whenever you think you've finished with something
, he'd say,
look at it one more time and ask, how can I make this even better? How can I give it more meaning?

Luke practiced today's sermon in his head as he lay in bed waiting for daylight. But his thoughts kept drifting to Susan Champlain—­the look of expectation in her eyes seemed as vivid in his mind as it had in his office five days earlier. Luke couldn't get back to sleep. When dawn broke over the marshlands, he was outside trotting slowly with Sneakers along the bluff, the sky turning silver-­blue above the farm fields. It was a gorgeous day, reminding him of the mornings when he first felt called to the ministry, walking along the beach in Northern California. He thought of the prayer of St. Francis, with its peculiar inverse logic—­in dying we are born; by giving we receive; comfort rather than be comforted; love rather than be loved. Luke had always been interested in things he couldn't see, from when he was a boy, gazing up at the dark infinities from his backyard. It was his job now to talk about them, to try to explain them in ways that encouraged and inspired ­people. The death of Susan reminded him of the enormity of that task, of making Biblical ideas live beyond the twenty minutes of his Sunday sermon. How do you make them resonate through the week?

 

Chapter Twenty

I
t's not often that we don't have enough parking spaces,” Luke told the congregation, which was full to the rafters that morning. “I'm reminded of the old story about the man who was late for an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place. He kept going around and around the block but nothing opened up. Finally he said, ‘God, if only you'll let me find a space, I promise I'll attend church every Sunday and read the Bible every night.' Miraculously, it seemed, a parking space opened up right in front of him. So the man told God, ‘Never mind, I just found one.' ”

The congregation chuckled, although there was a somber undercurrent in the room this morning, which seemed to expand when the chuckling stopped. Everyone knew that a member of the congregation was missing.

“When I think of the events of the past week,” Luke said, beginning his sermon, “I'm reminded of something the apostle James said. He was talking to a group of businessmen who were making plans, as all of us do. And James said, ‘Now listen, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go to this or that city, spend a year there. Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a vapor that appears for a little while and vanishes.'

“It's a theme that recurs throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New. First Chronicles tells us that our time on Earth is like a shadow. Job says, ‘My life is a breath.' In Psalm 102, we're told our days ‘vanish like smoke.' Psalm 103 says, ‘Our days on Earth are like grass, the wind passes through it and it is gone.' ”

Luke glanced up and noticed the sheriff was seated alone in the third row, making faces. Was he trying to suppress a sneeze?

“I'm also reminded of what David said, in First Samuel 20: ‘There is but a step between me and death.' ” He paused, glancing to the other side of the room, seeing Charlotte and feeling a tender emotion flow through him, thinking about their project. “There is only one step separating each of us from death. One step.

“Most of us here this morning have had to deal with the loss of someone close in our lives, whether a parent, a brother or sister, a neighbor, a best friend. Many of us have known someone who died suddenly and we've recognized—­painfully—­the truth of David's words.

“This week, we unexpectedly lost a friend and congregation member, Susan Champlain. And we were again reminded how close each of us is—­just one step—­from death. A week ago, Susan sat here with us in our sanctuary, as she did every Sunday. And three days later, she went to be with the Lord.

“Susan liked to sit on the right side, close to the front, often in the fourth row,” Luke said, pointing toward the pew where she sat. “We welcome her brother and sister this morning, Nancy and Brian, who are visiting from Iowa, and we share their enormous loss.”

An explosion erupted in the sanctuary, a single guttural sound like the roar of a lion. Luke blinked several times. It was the sheriff, finally sneezing. “Je-­sus! 'Scuse me!” he said.

Luke waited a moment for heads to swivel back. “One step,” he continued, pleased that much of the congregation chose to ignore the sheriff. “Susan visited with me this past Tuesday. We talked a little about faith, a little bit about her life, a little about her art. As many of you know, Susan was a talented photographer, and she had many plans for her future. As all of us do.

“If we knew how close that one step was, would we live our lives any differently? Would we look at our limited time here through a different lens? Would we place a higher value on the presence of God in our lives? On our interactions with one another?

“What is value?” Luke asked the congregation. “The pearl merchant asks that in Matthew. Often what Scripture says about value and what our society values are two very different things. And too often our society gives value to the wrong things.

“If I asked you today to rank the most valuable things in your life, how would you respond? Most of you would say your family. Your health. Your home. Financial security. Your freedom, perhaps. Then what? Some of you might mention some prized possession or other, a vintage car, mementos.

“But where would you put your relationship with God? Why wouldn't you put that first?”

He looked out and saw the sheriff shifting uncomfortably in the pew, his face lowered and contorted like he was about to sneeze again.

“We've all heard the saying ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.' God's like that, too. When we put God first, it lifts the value of everything else in our life. It gives us a greater appreciation for all of the other things that we value. We need to remember that, in good times and in difficult times. And in times of tragedy.”

He talked some more about value and then closed the sermon with a prayer for Susan Champlain, drawing from Psalm 139 and its parting message of darkness becoming light. Afterward, Charlotte helped him greet the congregants as they filed out. There were many ­people there he hadn't seen in weeks, or months, among them Jackson Pynne, the swaggering businessman whose new restaurant/bar, Jackson's, was having problems with the liquor license board again; Tim and Marty Sparrow, a retired ­couple whose surname had always struck him as a perfect fit; gift shop owner Roberta Tilghman, with her clangy bracelets and theatrical gestures, telling him how her parakeet Andy was “so looking forward” to the pet blessings; Anne Renault, a true-­crime journalist, who tried to interest Luke in helping her tell “the real story” about Susan Champlain, as Luke pretended not to notice the enormous stain on her blouse; Talmadge Lantern, a gaunt, white-­haired scarecrow of a man who'd once played drums with Bob Dylan; Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, visiting with his wife Joyce; Gab Bunting, the wavy-­haired publisher of the
Tidewater Times
, who still wanted Luke to go goose hunting with him sometime; Gabe Knoll, a retired astronomy professor and former atheist who now believed that science and religion were simpatico; and the pastor emeritus Manfred Knosum and his wife, Mabel, who lived in Florida but returned to Tidewater in summer to visit with their seventeen grandchildren.

After all of that, and saying goodbye to Charlotte, Luke noticed Sheriff Clay Calvert ambling toward him, coming down the corridor from the restrooms. He'd been lingering, evidently, wanting to be the last to leave.

“Well, that was sure a nice sermon, Pastor,” the sheriff said, gripping his hand a little harder than necessary and then not letting go. “But I gotta tell you, call it my prejudice, but I don't know as I like what I'm seeing so much out there anymore.”

“What is it you're seeing?” Luke said, trying to stay upbeat.

“A fear. Is what I call it,” he said.

“A fear?”

“A fear. Yes, sir.”

Luke held his smile as long as he could. There were several theories about the sheriff—­that he was becoming prematurely senile, that he was drinking too much, that he was having financial or marriage troubles (all of these Luke had heard from Aggie). Luke didn't think it was senility, but there was definitely something different about the sheriff lately.

“We've had it before, don't misunderstand,” he said, finally letting go of Luke's hand, “but not in a while. And not like this. And the thing is, it preys on itself.
Preys
on itself,” he said, liking the sound of that phrase. “There's a fear now that accidents happen and ­people start to talking like they're not really
acc
idents. And it
preys
on itself.”

“Well,” Luke said. “That's interesting. I'm glad you could come today.”

Calvert grimaced, and turned to the parking lot. “What you and I need is to go out fishing one of these weekends,” he said.

“We should do that sometime, yes.”

He clapped Luke hard on the back and walked away to his car.

Luke helped the custodians to clean up and close the church. He didn't realize until he was in the parking lot that Susan's brother and sister had been waiting at their car for him to come out. Nancy Adams gave him a long hug and Brian Wilkins shook his hand slowly but firmly. It was touching to see how grateful they were. They talked for several minutes, Nancy becoming emotional again. He invited them to visit with him in his office but Brian Wilkins said they needed to get on the road.

“It's almost like she knew this was coming,” Nancy told Luke. “She had an acute awareness that other ­people never had. I hate to think this, but she almost
knew
ahead of time what was going to happen.”

She gave Luke another hug before leaving. Brian was already in their rental car by then. Nancy had begun to mythologize her sister a little, Luke sensed. That was okay. It was one of the ways ­people dealt with death.

“Have a safe drive,” Luke told her.

H
UNTER WENT ON
a long run after church, around the commercial harbor and up along the bluffs, Radiohead in her earbuds, ending it with a wind sprint along the flat marina road. It was a hot, cloudless day and it felt good to work up an honest sweat.

She called out Winston's name as she came in—­“Hey Winnie! Ready for a lunchtime snack?”—­but heard nothing in reply. Normally, Winston squawked immediately, either proud of whatever hiding place he'd found or just wanting to announce his presence. She walked through all of the rooms of her apartment, sweat sliding down her face and neck, trying his name in different voices. She got down on hands and knees and peered under the bed. She looked in the closets, the washer and dryer, behind the sofa and in the bathtub. She searched each room carefully, first the places he favored and then everywhere else, beginning to worry that something had happened; that somehow Winston had gotten loose. Had she left the door open while she was lacing up her running shoes? Or when she was using the bathroom? It didn't seem possible. Hunter spent another fifteen minutes searching the apartment, retracing her steps and trying not to panic, her priorities suddenly falling away; she wanted nothing more in her life now than to find Winston. She began to imagine him outside, darting across the marina road, his mind in chaos mode; or cowering in the bushes near the seafood restaurant, too scared to do anything. She imagined finding him on the side of the road, after he'd been hit by a driver who didn't bother to stop or maybe didn't even notice. Hunter went outside, anxiously pacing the parking lot, shouting his name, walking onto the docks, her eyes combing the lawns and the boats. “Winnie!
Win
nie!” Probably sounding a little foolish. She went back inside and searched again, all the places she'd already looked and then places she hadn't, where he couldn't be; although with Winston, it was hard to tell. She opened the refrigerator. She felt along the upper shelf of the study closet and the kitchen counters, even though they were taller than she was. She lifted the toilet cover. At one point, she opened the middle drawer of her bedroom dresser, looked down and there he was—­lying on a white T-­shirt, curled up like a black half-­moon, asleep. It took a moment for it to register: had she really closed the drawer before her run and not noticed that Winston was inside?

She lifted Winston from the drawer and hugged him, cooing as if he were a human baby. Finally, he squawked disapprovingly. She set him down and he trotted away to his water dish, tail straight up in the air. Hunter followed him to the kitchen, feeling enormous waves of gratitude. Not only for Winston, but for everything else. She thought of Luke's story—­about the parking space. About how tempting it was
not
to be grateful.

Hunter took a ten-­minute shower, and then returned to normal life. She checked her messages: John Linden had finally called back, while she was outside frantically searching for Winston. She got a Diet Coke from the kitchen, and went to the back porch with her phone and notebook.

“You called me,” Linden said, in a guarded tone. “How can I help you?”

Hunter explained that she was investigating Susan Champlain's death.

“And how'd you get my name?”

“It came up in the course of interviews,” she said. “Could I come out and talk with you?”

He let some silence pass. “How did my name come up in the course of interviews, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Does it matter?”

“I'm curious. You're in
ves
tigating her death?”

“That's right.” She scribbled
Doesn't want
to meet
in her notebook. Then decided to push it into another gear. “The reason I'd like to talk with you is that I understand you were with Susan here in Tidewater County on Wednesday, the day she died. In fact, as far as I've been able to tell, you were the last known person to see her alive.”

Another silence followed. But this was a different kind of silence. The long, endless kind. “Hello?” Hunter said.

J
OHN
L
INDEN SEEMED
to be dressed for prep school: blue oxford shirt, pressed khaki slacks, natty burgundy loafers with tassels. His clothes were unwrinkled, despite the seventy-­mile drive from Delaware; Hunter wondered if he'd stopped nearby to change. His cheeks looked even fuller than in the picture and he had less hair, but what struck her most was how short he was. Probably an inch or two shorter than Susan Champlain. Hunter hadn't picked up on that from the photo, where he was standing beside his even shorter wife. Fooled by the elegant shoulders, evidently.

“So. Am I in trouble?” Linden asked, seated on the other side of Hunter's desk. Linden's dark eyes had a steady, attentive quality but the smile spoiled it a little, giving his face a crooked, indecisive look.

“I don't know,” she said. “Is there any reason you should be?”

“No, of course not. Who told you I was here on Wednesday?”