Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sunday was a bore. Well, worse than a bore.
When I woke up, I realized it was gay pride in Los Angeles.
Instead of spending the day getting sunburned and drunk with few hundred thousand of my closest friends, I was in The Middle of Nowhere, Michigan, taking care of a grumpy, homophobic old lady.
I spent the afternoon drifting through dreams of dreamy doctors whisking me away to a better future.
Monday morning, I got up early and let my dog out, made Nana Cole’s breakfast, then went to help her out of bed. That earned me a good shove.
“I can do it,” she spat.
I reminded her that she had a doctor’s appointment that morning. I was hoping I’d be able to leave her alone soon. Honestly, I was getting sick and tired of taking care of her. She was not the world’s easiest patient.
Eventually, I got her seated in the kitchen in front of a bowl of oatmeal and a banana.
I had a vague memory of a dietician coming into Nana’s room at the hospital and explaining she shouldn’t have eggs or bacon or sausages.
Or maybe nobody explained that. Maybe we just got a pamphlet.
Either way, it didn’t leave a whole lot of choices for breakfast.
“I hate oatmeal.”
“I think we’ve covered that.”
Luckily, my cell phone rang so I didn’t have to listen to her complain. I didn’t recognize the number, but it was local so I figured it was safe to pick up. Or at least safe-ish. It was Hanging Chad.
“I have some information. When do you think you can come into the library? Later today?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure. What did you find out?”
Obviously, he wanted to do this in person, but I really wanted the information.
After a moment, he cleared his throat and began: “So, my friend found some articles that might be relevant. The database they’re using just tells you that your search terms are present in particular articles.
My friend, who works at the library in Evanston—did I tell you that all ready? ”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Oh, okay. Anyway, she was able to print the articles out. She faxed them last night.”
“Okay. What do they say?”
“Well, R. Hessel was arrested—”
“Wait, who’s R. Hessel?”
“Richard Christopher Hessel. As soon as I figured that out, we did another search and got an article with the following headline: Church Leader Arrested for Meth Possession.”
“Shit,” I said.
“You watch your mouth, young man,” my grandmother said, obviously preferring to eavesdrop rather than eat her oatmeal. I called Reilly and walked outside. As I watched my dog bound off toward the raised gardens (unplanted this year), I asked Hanging Chad, “Is that article as bad as it sounds?”
“He got stopped for driving erratically. They impounded his car, which meant they had to inventory it—did you know they could do that? It’s sort of a work-around for not having a warrant. Anyway, they found four grams of methamphetamine in a gym bag.”
“Shit,” I said again, this time no one scolded me. “When was this?”
“1999.”
“What else did you find?”
“He went to prison for three years.”
“He would have gotten out last year.”
“It’s unlikely he served the whole time. He was probably on parole until last year.”
“Is that all you found?”
“There were some other things that weren’t really important. He’s mentioned in the West Milton First Church of Christ’s Christmas Service as the choir leader. There are a couple of other mentions like that.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“Did you want me to save these faxes? You can stop in and pick them up?”
“Sure, I’ll do that.”
I hung up. This was bad. This was very bad. My grandmother had a stroke when I came out to her. How was she going to react when I told her that her beloved minister was a meth addict? And then my mind clicked over to another possibility. What if he…
I mean, it wasn’t impossible. A lot of guys up here did it. What if he was like Denny? What if Reverend Hessel was into PNP?
Maybe I just had a dirty mind. But… it wasn’t that far-fetched. The AOL chat rooms were filled with married guys who wanted you to be discreet. It wasn’t that big a stretch to think that Reverend Hessel might be one of them.
Wait, had he held my hand just a bit too long at the hospital? Had he subtly… Ick!
I might be wrong. I certainly knew guys who thought everyone was gay, so maybe it wasn’t true at all. I was probably being an idiot.
But if it were true, it would literally kill my Nana Cole.
The first time she had a stroke was not my fault.
I had no idea that might happen if I came out to her.
But now? Now I knew. I couldn’t tell her that her minister was using meth and sleeping with guys (if that did turn out to be true) because I knew what could happen.
I’d need sedatives and a cardiac team on hand if I told her.
But I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. And there went the money. Crap. I was going to have to shut this whole thing down before she paid me. Seriously, though, this couldn’t go any further. I was not going to kill my grandmother in hopes of getting two thousand dollars, no matter how much I needed it.
I stood in back of the house looking at the blue, cloudless sky.
For some reason I’d never considered that the sky seemed bigger here.
It probably had to do with the fact there weren't a lot of buildings nearby. The only ones I could see were Jasper’s house—a white two-story, clapboard with a startling red metal roof—and his bruised and weathered barn.
Other than that, there was nothing but gentle hills and fields and trees for a very long way.
I couldn’t tell you why I was thinking about the sky. Mostly, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that I’d be spending the rest of my life in Masons Bay, which was about as appealing as being buried alive in a pine box.
I called for Reilly, but he didn’t come. He’d probably found something disgusting to roll in. It was fine. Nana Cole’s doctor’s appointment was about a half an hour away. By the time we got back from the doctor, Reilly would be ready to come inside.
After I got my grandmother situated in the SUV and before we’d reached the M22 at the end of the drive, she said, “Maybe we should go talk to Ivy Greene again. You know, if someone’s going to kill you it’s probably someone who cares about you.
I think that was on the Today Show. Matt Lauer was talking about it, I think. ”
She was right, of course. It might be Ivy Greene. She wouldn’t be the first person to slip out of a bar to commit a crime and hope no one noticed she was gone. The thing was, if she did kill her husband, she did it because he was a tweaker. Or worse. And I didn’t want Nana Cole to find that out.
“We need to stop,” I said, as simply as possible. “We should focus on your getting better.”
“What?” she asked, clearly confused.
“I don’t think we should ask any more questions about Reverend Hessel.”
“Well then I’m not going to give you the money.”
“I know. That’s fine.”
I kept my eyes glued to the road. I could feel her glaring at me. Probably not believing a word I said.
“I am better. Even if we’re not focused on it. I’m probably getting better because we’re not focused on it.”
“Well, good. I want you to get better.”
“So you can go back to Los Angeles?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Is it really so terrible here?”
Was it? Terrible? I did just have a date with a very hot doctor. And I wasn’t paying rent. And I had an excellent doctor giving me more Oxy than I could use. And I didn’t end each day smelling like a coffee bean. I mean, maybe it wasn’t that awful.
On the other hand, the weather sucked. And there was nothing even remotely resembling Santa Monica Boulevard. Even the singular gay bar wasn’t all that gay. And you never saw a movie star. And there was no sense that something amazing was right around the corner.
“I asked you a question,” Nana Cole said. “Is it really so terrible here?”
Shrugging, I said, “It is what it is,” as I pulled up in front of the doctor’s office. Dr. Blinski’s office was in the front half of an ancient house built of river rock. I think he lived in the back half house.
I guided my grandmother out of the SUV, up three steps to the house, and into the waiting room. There was a window for Dr. Blinski’s nurse—a sour-looking woman in her forties. She looked up when we walked in, and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Cole.”
“How are you, Nancy?”
“Well, I’ve been better. What about you?”
“I’m doing well, thank you. What’s wrong?”
“My daughter’s getting married,” she said glumly.
“You don’t like her young man?”
“Actually, he’s a wonderful boy. But he’s Black. I’m just afraid of what their lives will be like.”
My first thought was how did she find a Black boy up here? Meanwhile, my grandmother said, “Mmmhmph,” probably in an attempt to swallow an opinion or two.
To be helpful, I said, “Things aren’t as bad as they used to be.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s from L.A.”
“You’re from L.A. and you think things are better? They beat Black men in the street out there.”
Crap. She was talking about Rodney King. When was that? I was a teenager. Fourteen? Fifteen? All I could think to say was, “Not recently,” followed by, “Excuse me.”
I sat down in one of the chairs, which made my grandmother turn around and give me a frosty look. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting. It’s a waiting room.”
“You can go.”
“What do you mean, I can go?”
“You don’t need to come in with me anymore. I’m just fine.” I’d been attending her doctor’s appointments for the last two months. At first there was a question about whether she understood and then, well, it had become habit.
“You can find something more useful to do,” she said.
I wondered what exactly she thought I’d do. But then I stood up and said, “Fine. I’ll be back in forty-five minutes.”
“Make it an hour,” Nancy said. “Dr. Blinski is running a bit behind.
Outside, sitting in the Escalade, I wondered exactly what useful thing I could do. The only useful things I’d been doing were taking care of my grandmother and investigating Reverend Hessel’s murder. Apparently, I didn’t need to do either of those things anymore. So what exactly should I do?
Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in the doorway to Detective Lehmann’s office. It took a bit, but I finally decided if I wasn’t going to investigate Reverend Hessel’s murder any longer I should probably share what I knew with Detective Lehmann.
“I’m done. I don’t want to know anything else about Reverend Hessel’s murder.”
“So, what are you doing here?”
“I came to tell you what I found out.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Reverend Richard Christopher Hessel has a record.”
“Richard Hessel? A record?” he asked, faking confusion. “Yes, I knew about Hessel’s record. I knew the day after he died. We have his fingerprints.”
“Oh, yeah. So did the church know?”
“I don’t think so. I doubt they did much in the way of vetting. And… he never gave them much information.”
I thought about all the paperwork I had to fill out just to sell coffee drinks, so I asked, “But they were paying him, weren’t they?”
“He was paid through an LLC.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a simple kind of corporation. They paid his company then he paid himself.”
“Did he make a lot of money?”
“No. It’s not a normal kind of thing. He claimed to do music gigs on the side, but no one remembers him doing any. Mostly, I think he lived off Ivy Greene.”
I think he realized he was a being a bit too chatty because he stopped and asked, “Do you have any other revelations?”
“So, it might not have been an addict caught in the midst of a robbery. It might have been a drug deal gone wrong.”
He smiled at me.
“And that’s what you’ve thought since the start, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to hear you’ve been nosing around the local drug dealers, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I mean, I just said I was done, right?” I hesitated a moment, then said, “Hessel blackmailed Sue Langtree and Reverend Wilkie out of their positions.”
“They were boning, huh? I kinda thought that.”
“No, they weren’t, but it doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? I thought you came here to tell me what you know.”
“Yeah, but this could hurt someone if it came out.” I don’t know why exactly, but there was something about Bekah Springer that made me not want to see her get hurt.
“Murder is like that. People get hurt.”
I decided to give him part of the truth. “They helped a particular person get an abortion. That’s what Hessel blackmailed them with.”
“So they still have a motive.”
“They do, but… then what about the drug connection?”
“Let’s stick to what you found out and not what you think, okay?”
“Ivy Greene is the one who called 911.”
“I know that.”
“Why? Why was she the one to call?”
“She sent her son over to check on Hessel. When he found the body, he called his mother. She called 911 from their house.”
That seemed like a fairly reasonable explanation, but it still bothered me. I wondered if he’d checked all the phone records. Or had they told him? But then I reminded myself I was done with this. I didn’t need to know.
“Reverend Hessel claimed to have family in the area but then later denied it. Do you know if he has family nearby?”
“The only family I’ve found is in Wisconsin. They’re estranged and haven’t spoken to him since the mid-nineties. He was probably lying. Shocking, I know.”
“But why?”
He shrugged, and said, “I don’t think it has much to do with his being murdered. So, it’s not important.” Before I could ask anything else, he said, “I thought you said you’re done with this.”
“I am.”
“Then why are you still standing here?”