Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
St. Andrew’s was three blocks from the harbor — white clapboard, clean steeple, side door unlocked the way it always was on a weekday.
Jill pushed it open without knocking and I followed her in.
The nave smelled like candle wax and old wood.
Nobody home except a coffee urn on the side table that had given up the ghost sometime that morning.
Jill went straight to the office door in the back and knocked twice.
“Come in,” said Pruitt.
He was at his desk in the oatmeal sweater, working through a stack of papers with a lamp on even though it was perfectly light outside.
When he saw Jill his face opened up — genuine warmth, the kind you can’t fake.
Then he noticed me and did a small recalibration.
The warmth stayed but he was paying attention now.
“Jill. I didn’t know you were coming by.” He nodded at me. “And —”
“Gina Ferraro,” I said. “Sorry to drop in. I’m not a member of your congregation, I’m afraid.”
“That’s all right.” He waved us toward the two chairs across the desk — the kind that had been in that office since approximately the Eisenhower administration and were not going anywhere. “Can I get you anything? Coffee’s gone cold but —”
“We’re fine,” Jill said, dropping into her chair with the ease of someone who had sat there many times before. “We won’t keep you. We were talking on the way over about the Halverson news. It must have been a shock — with you having worked with him and everything.”
Pruitt’s hands went still on the desk.
“I’m sorry?” he said.
“Edmund Halverson.” Jill’s voice was warm, unhurried. “I know you’d been in contact with him. Terrible thing to hear.”
“How did you hear that?” he said. “That I was — working with him?”
Jill lifted one shoulder. “Small town,” she said. “Did you know him well?”
Pruitt sat back. “Professionally,” he said. “In passing. We’d spoken a few times.” He picked up a pen, put it down, picked it up again. “It was a terrible thing. Yes.”
“Did he seem all right to you when you last spoke?” I asked.
The pen went down again. “Why would you ask that?”
“Oh, no reason, I thought he mentioned something about a meeting with you and was curious.” I tried to sound nonchalant.
“He came to see me. I was looking for a donation for the church restoration fund,” Pruitt said. The words had the slightly over-rehearsed quality of something that had been said to a mirror. “That was all. Very brief. He seemed fine.”
“Of course,” Jill said warmly. “I’m sure it was nothing more than that.”
“Exactly.” The smile he produced was doing its best.
“Any idea whether anyone might have wanted to hurt him?” I asked.
Pruitt narrowed his eyes at me and pulled on his collar. Had I gone too far?
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” The words came out a beat faster than the ones before. “Why would I?” He glanced at the stack of papers on his desk with the body language of a man indicating he had things to get back to. “I wish I could be more helpful.”
He set the pen down. I leaned forward as if to look more closely at the ceramic cup beside it — the handmade kind, clearly a child’s art project that a parent had kept for thirty years, genuinely charming — and caught the pen with the back of my hand. It rolled off the edge of the desk.
“Oh — sorry,” I said, and picked it up before he could. My fingers closed around it for just a moment before I set it back.
Quiet and clear. I didn’t sense violence. Just a lot of worry sitting on top of something that felt like real conviction — a man who believed in something and was frightened he’d put it at risk. A man who might be holding back information to protect something.
Was he the killer? I couldn’t tell.
“Thank you for your time,” I said. “Sorry again for the intrusion.”
He walked us to the side door. In the doorway Jill touched his arm briefly — just a moment, the way she did. “Take care of yourself,” she said. “Come find me if you need anything.”
“I will,” he said. Then, quietly, as if he hadn’t quite meant to say it out loud: “I hope I haven’t made things worse.”
Jill raised an eyebrow. “For whom?”
But he’d already stepped back inside. The door closed.
We stood on the church steps and looked at each other.
“He knows something,” Jill said.
“He knows something,” I agreed. “I got conviction and fear from that pen, not evil. He’s protecting something he believes in.”
“Or someone,” Jill said.
We stood there another moment in the cold harbor wind.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Absolutely coffee,” said Jill.
We walked the two blocks to Tammy’s and I let the fresh air do its work on whatever the church office had left behind.