Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It rained most of that next week. Jasper came by and talked to my grandmother in tense monosyllables about the cherries.
None of it made a lick of sense to me. It had been too warm too early, and now it was raining too much.
To me those sounded like perfect conditions to grow most anything.
Strangely, their tense faces said otherwise.
I tried to get back on track with my hunt for Reverend Hessel’s killer.
I thought it was Carl Burke because he was in love with Denny, and Denny was partying and playing with his stepfather.
But it wasn’t Carl. So maybe it was someone else Hessel partied with.
For that matter, it could be Denny. Though I doubted Denny would want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
I spent quite a lot of time in a couple of AOL chat rooms asking leading questions about Tina. I found several guys willing to give me meth in exchange for sex, but that was backward. I really needed to find guys who were willing to exchange sex for drugs. They were notably silent.
Then I started to wonder if there really was a parishioner who wanted to see him that night. It was possible. It was also possible that Reverend Wilkie and Sue Langtree were not the only ones at the church he’d been blackmailing. If that was true, how was I going to figure it out?
The funeral for Barbara’s grandson was set for the following Monday.
She was flying over to Wisconsin the day before.
Sue Langtree planned a little get-together the Sunday before, right after church.
With the invitation, which she made to my grandmother after another really boring service, she added, “The funeral will be all about the parents, as it should be. I thought we should take a little time for Barbara.”
“Why can’t Bev take you?” I asked when Nana Cole said we’d be going at two.
“Because I want you to take me.”
“Fine, I’ll drop you off and come back and get you.”
“Do you have something else to do?”
In all honesty, I did not have anything to do. I just didn’t want to spend the afternoon with a bunch of old ladies, one of whom would be doing her best not to start crying. Apparently, I had no choice.
Sue Langtree lived on Murdock, which was a block from St. Pete’s where Barbara lived and two blocks from Main Street in downtown Masons Bay.
The house was one of the oldest on the street and on the outside looked kind of like the house on Charmed.
Inside, though, it was anything but charming.
What it was, was fussy. Every piece of furniture had fringe or ruffles, doilies, runners, draped blankets and artfully puffed pillows.
The windows were covered with sheer curtains and thick satin drapes that matched the busy wallpaper.
When we walked into Sue’s living room, I nearly took a step back from the shock.
My grandmother took it in stride, not noticing anything, intent on using her cane.
There were little collections everywhere; figurines, matching vases, a grouping of antique dolls on a shelf, paperweights on a table in front of the picture window, and silverplated spoons in a case.
The room was full of people I didn’t know.
The only people I did know, or at least sort of knew, had squeezed themselves onto the over-pillowed sofa: Bekah Springer, a woman who looked enough like Bekah to be her mother—so I figured she was—and Reverend Wilkie.
Sue fluttered into the room after we let ourselves in.
“Emma, thank you for coming.”
“I made my broccoli surprise,” my Nana Cole said, nodding her head at me. I was holding the warm casserole in both hands. On the way, she’d explained that it was a combination of frozen broccoli, mushroom soup and Velveeta. My stomach turned at the mention of broccoli.
“Wonderful,” Sue said. “Barbara is in the kitchen with the girls.”
I followed them into the kitchen, only to find that it was even more crowded than the living room. Nana Cole made a beeline for Barbara and her friends sitting at the dining table, while I hugged the wall.
Barbara looked up at my grandmother, saying, “It was supposed to be over in a few weeks. They were supposed to run into the streets to welcome us. Josh was afraid he would get there and it would be over.”
“We really shouldn’t talk politics,” Jan said. “It’s never turns out well.”
“Josh was a good boy,” Nana Cole said. “He was a soldier, and he did his duty.”
Thankfully, if I’d tried to do my duty, I’d have been booted out for being gay. I don’t know why some guys think getting shot and killed in some dinky foreign country is a civil right we should worry about. I mean, there has to be some benefit to being gay, right?
I started feeling anxious. I can be a little uncomfortable in crowds. I know that might seem odd for me to say, since I’ve spent more than my fair share of time on Santa Monica Boulevard flitting between this bar and that, but it’s true. I get nervous in crowds.
The only reason I don’t get nervous at Rage or Revolver is that I understand the currency.
I’m a young, reasonably attractive guy. I’m what everyone there wants.
All I need to do is spend the evening politely saying, “No, thank you, I’ll pass.
” Or, occasionally, “Absolutely.” But here, in an old lady’s kitchen, I didn’t know what the currency was.
I didn’t really know what people wanted from me.
Even if I did know, I wouldn’t know how to be that.
Suddenly, Bekah Springer was standing next to me. “I saw you come in.”
“Hi, how are you?” I asked.
“I’m okay, I guess. It’s been a weird year.”
I wanted to say, ‘Yeah, rape and murder will do that to you,’ but I said, “Yeah,” instead. Then I asked her, “Do you know where your grandmother was when Reverend Hessel was killed?”
“Oh gosh, that was a while ago.”
“I know but try to think. It was a Thursday.”
“Thursday? Oh, well, I think she was with me. We watch Dawson’s Creek together.”
“You and your grandmother watch Dawson’s Creek together?” I asked doubtfully.
“My grandmother’s cool. Cooler than my mother. My mother’s a librarian. All she ever does is read. That’s why my dad divorced her. He likes to say he’s not sure she actually even noticed the divorce.”
“Oh, wow.”
“She did notice, though. That’s when she started reading Russian novels. You know, the ones where someone kills themselves at the end.”
Wanting to get away from her, I said, “I should mingle. Make sure to have the broccoli surprise. My grandmother made it.”
“Oh, that sounds good.”
I made my way into the living room, figuring I could kill a half an hour staring at one of the collections: figurines or paperweights. Except the living room turned out to be a mistake. Reverend Wilkie saw me and came right over, like he actually wanted to talk to me.
“There’s a rumor going around that you’re asking a lot of questions about Chris Hessel’s murder.”
“My grandmother asked me to,” I said in my defense.
“Well, you really ought to stop. No matter who asked you to.”
That kind of pissed me off, so I said, “I guess it’s working out pretty well for you. I mean, that Reverend Hessel was killed and you got your job back.”
“I suppose you could say that. You could also say it was God’s will.”
“It was God’s will that a minister be murdered? That doesn’t sound right.”
“Chris Hessel wasn’t your typical minister. You and I both know that.”
I wondered what he meant by that. What exactly did he think we both knew?
“Do you remember where you were when Hessel was killed?” I asked, a tad too boldly.
“Of course, I remember. I’ve already been asked about it by Detective Lehmann. I was visiting my wife. Sadly, I’ve had to place her in a home.”
I flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess.”
“You don’t mean that. You couldn’t care less.”
At that moment, his sermon about lying came to mind. Had he been serious? Is this what it’s like to talk to someone being honest?
“You’re right. I don’t know your wife and I don’t really know you. I kind of don’t care.”
He smiled at me as though I’d just said something extraordinarily kind.
“You may be from one of the founding families, but you didn’t grow up here. You don’t know these people like I do. You won’t be thanked for exposing the truth. People up here would rather live with a lie they like than a truth they don’t.”
And then he walked into the kitchen.
Weird. Totally weird.
Bev showed up. I did my best to stay away from her.
I’d finished making calls for her and had gotten more than enough volunteers for her event.
I hadn’t wanted to tell her though. It was still a couple of weeks off.
If she knew I was done she’d just give me something else to do. Frankly, I had enough on my plate.
I started looking for the bathroom so I could take at least one of my emergency Oxys.
I opened a door off the living room and found a bedroom.
I almost turned around and gave up, but then I thought, maybe?
I went to the far side of the bedroom and found that there was a large bathroom shared by this bedroom and another.
I went in and locked the doors on both sides.
On a set of shelves above the toilet, there was a terrifying collection of ceramic fish (most of them seeming to be leaping out of the water, so I’d guess they were suicidal fish).
I unwrapped my pills and took both. I ran the water in the sink and scooped up a handful to swallow the pills.
Then, I flushed the toilet, so it sounded I’d done what people usually do in a bathroom.
After all, anyone could have been outside the door.
I went back out to the hallway, and then through to the kitchen. Bev had brought wine. I wasn’t going to not have a glass, so I went over and talked to her.
“Can I have a glass?”
“Sure. How’s it going with those calls?”
“I’m about halfway through,” I lied.
“That’s encouraging. Let me know when you’re finished. I’ve got some other things you could be working on.”
“Oh, I will. I will.”
I took a big gulp of my wine—red, lots of tannins—and noticed a plate of pigs in a blanket sitting on the counter.
I headed over and had two in rapid succession.
They were delicious. I found myself near the dining table again, which was the last place I wanted to be.
That’s where Barbara and my grandmother and their friends were sitting.
“I suppose you all heard. The Supreme Court made perversion legal,” Jan said. I think I’d seen something about a Texas case on my Yahoo page. Two guys having sex in their living room, which somehow got them arrested.
Jan continued, “I really can’t believe it. I thought this was a Christian country.”
“Jan, you don’t really want this to be a Christian country,” Bev said.
“Of course, I do,” Jan said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Which kind of Christian?” Bev asked.
“All of them, I guess.”
“If we had a state religion, we’d have civil war within a year.”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
“Some Christians handle snakes, some talk in tongues. Do you want the government telling you that you have to do those things?”
“I do not,” Jan said, offended at the idea.
“Well, what if that’s the state religion?”
“That would never happen.”
“Okay, well, what if the state religion is Catholic?”
“But it wouldn’t be.”
“So, you’d get rid of the Catholics?”
“Of course not. My brother-in-law is Catholic.”
“Then you’d just get rid of the Jews?”
“Bev! What a thing to say.”
“Or the Muslims?”
That brought conversation to a halt. Jan was red-faced, obviously angry. Softly, she said, “I don’t understand this conversation. It doesn’t have anything to do with making perversion legal.”
That’s when I realized Nana Cole was staring a hole in me. Suddenly, a wave of nausea seeming to begin in my toes rose through my body. This happened sometimes with Oxy; any kind of morphine-ish pill, actually. No big deal. I just had to breathe in and out calmly. In and out. In and, oh God—
As I ran to the bathroom, I barely heard Sue Langtree saying, “We really should talk about something more pleasant. Bekah introduced me to this rock band, Newsboys. It’s Christian Rock from Australia—”
And then I was shutting the bathroom door, flipping the seat to the toilet and hurling into the bowl.
I retched a few times and broke into a cold sweat.
In the toilet bowl was a glass of red wine, a couple of chewed up pigs in a blanket and some of what might have been the waffles I’d had for breakfast. It might have been the wine that did it. Or the pigs.
Then I noticed, floating in the middle of the mess were the two Oxys I’d just taken ten minutes before. They looked fuzzy, partly dissolved.
I thought about plucking them out of my puke—but the thought of getting bile and chewed up food all over my fingers was disgusting.
There was a water glass on the sink. I could use it to sort of scoop the pills up, then quickly swallow them—uck!
I’d be swallowing toilet water along with bile and regurgitated food and Oxys.
Well… the toilet was obviously clean. Sue had been expecting guests.
Or at least it was clean until I barfed in it.
I went back to the idea of plucking the pills out with my fingers and then maybe rinsing them under the faucet…
And then I had a horrible thought. Picking a couple of Oxys out of a puke-filled toilet and swallowing them again was something an addict would do. Since I was not, definitely not, an addict, I flushed the toilet.
With great regret.