Chapter 11 #3
“The question is,” Dash said, “did Milton bury it because he was part of it, or because someone with more power told him to?”
I stared at the deposit slips, at those too-perfect signatures, and felt something cold settle in my stomach.
Someone had been embezzling from the church building fund, using Reverend Pickering’s name to cover their tracks.
And when Pickering started asking questions about the missing records, when he threatened to go to the bank for copies, they’d killed him to keep him quiet.
“We need a handwriting expert,” I said. “Someone who can prove these signatures are forged.”
“And we need to go through Pickering’s notebook again,” Dash said. “See if he documented anything about discovering the embezzlement, about who might have had access to forge his signature.”
“Financial records, building fund meetings—anything that connects to this,” Walt added, already making notes with his characteristic precision.
“Or maybe whoever was stealing reported the records as missing themselves,” Bea said quietly. “To cover their tracks when Pickering started asking questions.”
I moved to the table where we’d spread out the church picnic photograph, the one from just two months before the murders. The original print from Michael Bailey’s box had been faded and small, but Walt had worked some kind of technological magic after he’d scanned it into his laptop.
“My grandson showed me this trick,” Walt said with obvious pride.
“You scan the photograph, then use this program to sharpen the pixels and increase the resolution. Makes everything clearer. Brings out details you couldn’t see in the small print.
” Walt adjusted his reading glasses as he studied the enlarged version.
“All right,” he said, pulling out a notepad with the precision of someone about to catalog evidence. “Let’s identify everyone we can. Between all of us, we should know most of these faces.”
Bea leaned forward, her reading glasses catching the light.
“Lord, look how young everyone was. That’s Martha Hendricks in the front row—see the woman with the enormous hat?
She always wore those things to outdoor events.
Died of ovarian cancer, bless her. Her daughter married that awful man from Columbia who ran off with his receptionist.”
“Betty Walters,” Deidre said, pointing to a plump woman holding a paper plate piled high with food. “She made the best deviled eggs on the island. Brought them to every church function for thirty years. Her son is the one who opened that tackle shop on the pier.”
“Roger Hammond.” Walt indicated a man in the middle row with salt-and-pepper hair. “Died in a single-car accident on Highway 17. His widow Linda sold their house within six months and moved to Hilton Head. Never came back, not even for funerals of friends.”
“He was on the finance committee,” I said.
I studied Roger Hammond’s face—pleasant enough, smiling at the camera, one hand resting on the shoulder of the woman beside him.
“That’s Gene Forsythe next to him,” Bea added, tapping a heavyset man with a thick mustache who stood with his arms crossed. “His grandson runs the sporting goods store now, but I heard he’s looking to sell to developers for a bunch of condos.”
“Who’s that?” I pointed to a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses standing at the edge of the group, slightly apart from the others as if he’d been caught trying to leave the frame.
“Craig Baker,” Walt said. “Accountant. We play dominoes together at the senior hall on Friday mornings. I was going to try and corner him there and see what he remembers about that time. He’s sharp as a tack.
And I’ll know if he’s lying to me. We play poker on Monday nights, and he’s a terrible liar. ”
Deidre had moved on to another section of the photograph. “Oh, there’s Patsy Jenkins and her husband James. Patsy made the best peach cobbler. James died of a heart attack about twenty years ago, and Patsy moved to Florida to be near her daughter.”
“Stay focused, Dee,” Walt said. “We don’t need a society column report.”
“I am focused,” she protested. “I’m providing context. These are real people, not just names on a list.”
She was right, of course. Even in the midst of a murder investigation, these were neighbors, fellow church members, people who’d brought deviled eggs and peach cobbler to picnics. People who’d raised children and paid mortgages and lived entire lives on this island.
“There,” I said, pointing to a young man in the back row with dark hair and an earnest expression. “Who’s that? He looks kind of familiar.”
Dottie leaned closer. “That’s Douglas Sutton. He would’ve been—what, early twenties in this picture? He came to Grimm Island right out of seminary in New York. Had no family or anybody down here. Deidre, didn’t your Aunt Phyllis put him up for a time, until he got his feet under him?”
“She did,” Deidre said, nodding. “He stayed in the guesthouse for the first year or so. Helped her around the house with handyman type things. He met Anne Winslow a couple of years after he moved here and married her. They never had any children of their own as I recall.”
I studied Douglas Sutton’s young face in the photograph—earnest, smiling, standing beside his mentor George Pickering with what looked like genuine admiration. Had he known about the embezzlement at that time?
“And there’s Stephanie Chester,” Deidre said, her finger hovering over a blond woman in the second row.
She wore white—a sundress that seemed to glow in the July sunlight—and stood close to a dark-haired young man whose hand rested at the small of her back.
“That would be Matthias Crenshaw Jr. Never liked him.”
“He was a bit of a weasel,” Bea said. “Reminded me of Eddie Haskell. I was friendly with his mother, Martha. At least for a little while. People in my profession usually don’t keep friends long.”
“That happens when you sleep with people’s husbands,” Dottie said, rolling her eyes. “You’ve never been a victim, Bea. Stop laying it on so thick.”
Bea shooed her hand toward Dottie and said, “Hush up, this is my story.” Then she cleared her throat.
“Anyway, Greta used to say Stephanie was the best thing that ever happened to Matt,” Bea said.
“Settled him down, gave him purpose. Before Stephanie, he was directionless—dropped out of college, couldn’t hold a job.
He was an entitled brat, so I don’t think work was something he wanted.
But after they married, he ended up finishing college and went to medical school.
I think Stephanie wasn’t too excited to work while he was going to school.
There were rumors neither of them were faithful.
I guess it was at least partially true because she ended up marrying a surgeon barely a month after the ink on her divorce papers was dry. ”
“Still doesn’t explain why she might have been meeting Pickering the night of the murders,” I said.
The photograph was coming alive as they identified face after face—neighbors, acquaintances, people whose lives had intersected at a church picnic on a summer day.
Some had stayed on the island, their stories continuing in ways both ordinary and extraordinary.
Others had left, carried away by time or tragedy or simply the pull of somewhere else.
“Wait,” I said, leaning closer to a figure partially obscured by shadow in the back row.
The angle of the sun, the position of the trees—something had created a pocket of shade that made his features harder to see.
But the build was familiar. The way he stood, slightly apart from the group. “Who’s that?”
Dottie squinted, then sucked in a breath. “Well, well, well… That’s interesting.”
“What?” Dash moved closer, following her gaze.
“That,” she said, “is Frank Holloway.”
The room went very still.
I studied the figure more carefully now.
Younger by decades, maybe mid-twenties, wearing plaid shorts and a polo shirt, and standing next to a pretty young woman with dark hair.
They were each holding a baby about a year old.
His face was partially in shadow from the oak trees overhead, but the bone structure was unmistakable once you knew to look for it.
“Frank Holloway,” I said quietly.
The name landed like a stone in still water. Frank Holloway, at the church picnic. Part of the congregation. Part of the community. And he’d never mentioned it.
“He positioned himself as an outsider,” I said. “Someone who knew Tommy professionally, who quit the force and moved to Beaufort. Not someone who was there, who knew these people, who sat in those pews every Sunday.”
“Why lie about that?” Deidre asked.
Walt’s expression had gone hard. “Because Frank Holloway knows more than he’s told us. And that makes him either a witness we need to push harder, or something much worse.
I pulled Pickering’s notebook closer—the composition book with the faded marbled cover that Reverend Sutton had given us.
We’d read through it before, but now I was looking for different things.
Not just obvious connections to Ruby or the affair, but names, patterns, anything that might point to other people involved in whatever had gotten Pickering and Ruby killed.
The pages were filled with Pickering’s observations about his congregation—some entries straightforward, others cryptic, all of them revealing the private struggles of people who’d trusted him with their secrets.
I flipped through slowly, reading more carefully this time.
“‘June 1984—Mary Jane G. confessed that her daughter has been seeing a married man. Prayed with her about guiding her daughter back to righteousness.’ Who’s Mary Jane G.?” I asked. “Anyone have an idea?”
“Never heard of her,” Bea said. “She must not have been in my circle.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Deidre said. “Mary Jane Goodall. But I don’t remember her having a daughter. I think she had two boys.”