Chapter 13. Almost Heaven #3
A white man in his fifties stepped up to the end of the pew where I sat.
He wore a dapper black suit with a gray dress shirt and a shiny silk tie in a blue and black zigzag pattern.
On his lapel was a pin similar to the one worn by the man who’d handed me the bulletin, but this man’s pin was a bright, shiny platinum color rather than gold.
In addition to the pin, the man wore a frown.
Behind him hovered a woman with a copper-colored bob and three strands of pearls around her neck.
She, too, wore a platinum pin spelling Redeemed in script.
It was affixed to the collar of her classic coatdress.
“Excuse me,” said the man, “but this is our pew.”
I knew people often had favorite places to sit in their church, but weren’t houses of worship supposed to be friendly and inviting? And wasn’t seating first come, first sit? “I’d be happy to scoot over,” I said, rising from the seat.
“You don’t seem to understand,” he said. “This is our pew.”
He pointed to a brass name plate attached to the wood panel above the book rack.
It read FAMILY OF PENELOPE AND MICHAEL DUBEK.
I’d noticed the name plate as I’d slid into the pew earlier, but I had assumed it meant that the Dubeks had contributed the funds to pay for the pew, not that it was reserved seating for them.
His wife, presumably the Penelope noted on the name plate, gave me a tight smile, but spoke as if I wasn’t there. “This must be her first time visiting the church.”
Before I could respond, Mr. Dubek pointed up to the second-floor balcony. “Visitor seating is up there.”
The woman spoke directly to me now. “You were supposed to check in at the visitors’ table, hon. Someone would have escorted you to a proper pew.”
A raw, edgy emotion overtook me as I stood. This must be what embrittlement feels like. “My apologies. I assumed it was open seating.” I sidestepped to the end of the pew to exit.
The woman said, “I’d be happy to show you to the visitors’ table.
” Before I could tell her I’d find my own way, she’d taken me firmly by the arm, like a police officer taking a suspect on a perp walk or a bouncer escorting an unruly customer out of a bar.
The latter thought took my mind back briefly to Quentin Sanderson, how he’d used his brawn in his work at the nightclub.
He was still in jail and could be the person behind Tyler Yee’s death, but until it was definitively proven that he’d ended Tyler’s life, I would keep investigating.
I owed it to Tyler. If not for the fact that Gail Pittman and I planned to go over my design ideas last Monday, he wouldn’t have even been at the barn.
If Sanderson had arranged to have Tyler killed, it probably would have inevitably happened somewhere else even if we hadn’t all planned to meet up at the barn. Still, the fact that it had happened right under my nose made me feel personally responsible for seeing justice done.
As Penelope Dubek ushered me back down the aisle, we passed a number of people headed in the other direction.
Several wore pins like the ones the Dubeks and the man who handed me the bulletin were wearing.
Some appeared to be made of silver. Others were gold.
A few, like the ones the Dubeks were wearing, were platinum.
I recognized a few faces as she dragged me along.
The suntanned owner of a watercraft dealership who appeared in television commercials for his business, zipping across a lake on a wave runner.
A former mayor of Nashville and his wife.
Though I caught only a glimpse of thick hair in timber wolf tones before the head was lost in the crowd, I was fairly certain it belonged to Thad Gentry.
Gentry was a local real estate magnate who dabbled in all sorts of projects from rehabbing older neighborhoods to remodeling unique commercial properties to building new homes from scratch.
Gentry and I had competed for properties in the past, the first being the stone cottage where Collin and I lived and the other being a defunct roadside motel.
I’d beat him both times, no small feat for someone with limited means and clout.
He’d made no secret of the fact that he considered Buck and me to be only small-time players in the real estate industry.
Posers. Imposters. He was wrong about that.
We might not handle projects on the same scale as he did, but our ventures were nonetheless important and meaningful.
When we reached the visitors’ table Penelope released my arm. “It was nice meeting you, dear.”
Meeting me? She hadn’t introduced herself, nor had she asked my name. It was as if she sensed I could be of no use to her or her husband, so she hadn’t bothered. She turned and headed back into the worship hall, stopping to speak to another fiftyish woman along the way.
“Welcome!” said a cheery voice. “We’re so glad you’ve joined us for the service today.”
I turned back to find a white woman with dark, curly hair, red lipstick, and a wide smile holding up a laminated clip-on badge. It was bright yellow and read VISITOR in all caps. “Attach the badge to your clothing where everyone can see it.”
Once I’d clipped the badge just above the front knot on my scarf, she sat back down and put her fingers on the keyboard of the laptop computer in front of her. “Your name, please?”
“Whitney Flynn.”
“E-mail address?”
I rattled it off.
“Street address?”
I provided that information as well.
“How did you hear about us?” She gazed up at me expectantly.
I couldn’t say I’d heard about the church from Tyler’s podcast and read more in the article online. For all I knew, this woman could be the person hiding behind the Saved&Sanctified username. I decided “the internet” was truthful enough.
She appeared to check a box on her screen before looking up again. “Let me show you to your seat.” She stood and stepped out from behind a table before motioning for me to follow her. “This way, please.”