Chapter 14
Two more people spoke—friends of Josh. I scanned the front row, wondering if his parents or a sibling might bury their emotions enough to speak, but no one else stood. I let my perusal of the front row extend to the rest of the left side of the church. More familiar faces. People from the bread shop. People I recognized from around town. Young football players from the Santa Sofia High School team.
My gaze followed yet another person leaving their pew. I tracked the woman as she retreated, pushing through the door in the back of the church and disappearing. “I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Mrs. Branford.
I started to stand, but her hand came down on my knee like a claw, forcing me back down. “Where are you going?”
“To the bathroom,” I said, my voice still hushed.
She arched a grayed eyebrow at me. “Hmmph.” The sound said it all. She didn’t fully believe me, but she loosened her fingers and patted my leg. “I’ll let you know if there’s any more drama while you’re gone.”
“Thanks.” I whispered apologies and thank-yous as I scooted past the rest of the people in the pew, going out the way I’d come. Once I stood on the red carpet of the aisle, I hurried toward the back of the church. Another tall and thin woman was in front of me—there were plenty of them here. I squinted my eyes to peer at her. Could it be . . . was it Taylor? Her skirt was short. It fell past her fingertips, but barely. As she flew through the door to the vestibule, I suddenly spun around to search the sea of mourners. I searched where Taylor had been sitting, but I couldn’t find her. Or Mae, for that matter. I was too far back to identify anyone in the sea of heads. A few seconds later, I was through the door and—
I pulled up short. A bevy of black-clad women stood huddled together. If I hadn’t known better—and if they weren’t in a church—I would have said they looked like a coven gathering on the winter solstice. The harsh whispers flying between them came to an abrupt halt, as if they were a choir and the conductor had drawn a hand out to the side, pinching fingers together.
Silence.
I stared at them.
They stared at me.
“Another one,” one of them spat.
Then from someone else: “He did it to you, too?”
The question came from the tallest of the women. Her tailored mourning dress hit just above the knees, and her low pumps were traditional and made her look tame and put together. Her mussed, shoulder-length hair told a different story. She crunched a black hat in her hand, clearly recently wrenched from her head. I didn’t know for sure what she was talking about, but given Jeanne, Martina—and what Tracy Prentiss had said at the podium about her husband not being such a great guy—I had my suspicions. I went with it and threw my hands up dramatically. “Can you believe it?”
My theatrics didn’t register as excessive because they occurred in the midst of their own histrionics. One of the women burst into gasping tears. Another spun on her low heel and stormed out the church door and into the sunlight. A third shot daggers at me. “You’re not his type,” she said with a sneer.
Another look at the gaggle of women confirmed what she said. They were all very well-dressed and tearful, but, most importantly, they were all middle-aged or older. My mid-thirty status didn’t fit the bill. Tracy Prentiss’s words rose like a beacon in my head. He wasn’t the perfect man you all think he was. The truth clicked into place. “He was dating all of you,” I asked, then added a disbelieving, “too?”
The woman with the disheveled hair stepped toward me. “Every single one of us,” she said.
The door from the nave opened, and in strode Mrs. Branford. She swung her cane as she walked, but she didn’t use it for support. She saw me and started to say something, but stopped as she took in the lay of the land. I saw the moment it clicked for her, and the very next second, she fell into character. “Do not tell me. My sweet Josh, he . . . he . . .” Her voice faltered. She gave a small shake of her head and closed her eyes for a dramatic beat. She pressed her palm to her chest. “Good grief, tell me it isn’t so.”
I had to bite back the smile that threatened. Mrs. Branford was anything but subtle.
The wailing woman took one look at Mrs. Branford and sank further into misery. She gasped for air and ran the back of her hand under her nose. “You, too?” Then she repeated, this time with unabashed disbelief. “You? Too?”
Mrs. Branford offered a forlorn smile and tsk’d. “One of the many, I see. Tell me, how did you meet him?”
She directed the question to a woman standing in the back of the group. When she realized Mrs. Branford was talking to her, her eyes popped wide, and she took a step backward. “Me?”
Mrs. Branford moved toward her, deciding to up her frailty quotient by using her cane. “Yes, dear,” she said to the woman, who was probably just ten years younger than Mrs. Branford’s eighty-some-odd years. She looked at each of the women—excluding me—in turn, landing back on the wide-eyed woman. “Do you think he used the same ruse on all of us?”
The timid woman blinked. Her lower lip quivered. She stammered. “I m-met him through M-Meet Your M-Mate dot com.”
“I did, too,” one of the other women said.
The wailing woman let out a hearty howl. “Me, too.”
“Same,” said the tall woman.
“Oh my,” said Mrs. Branford. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She let her lower lip quiver as she said, “What gullible old women we are.”
They let that register before they all spun and shot me a collectively expectant look. I felt glacially slow compared to Mrs. Branford, but I managed to move my head in a nod-shake combo. “Right,” I said, hoping that was enough of an affirmation. “Meet Your Mate dot com. Same here.”
The outside door opened, and the woman who’d stormed out a few minutes ago stormed back in. She stopped, took one look at Mrs. Branford and me, and barked, “What in the name of heaven is going on here?”
The tall woman responded. “Two more of Josh’s . . . victims.”
The gray-haired woman stared.
And I stared, because it suddenly hit me. These women—I’d seen them before. They’d been the group who’d been like a flock of birds moving down the sidewalk when I’d been on my break at the bread shop. They’d gone into Yeast of Eden, looked around, and left again.
Had they been looking for Josh?
“Two more . . .” the woman said. She spun around again, and for a second, I thought she was going to charge back outside. Instead, she made a full 360-degree turn and faced us again. “Meet Your Mate dot com?”
Mrs. Branford and I both nodded. I was fully invested in the ruse now. “What are your names?” I asked, wondering if one of the women was Jeanne.
They rattled off their names. The tall one was Sharon. The weepy one was Peggy. Linda had stormed out, then back in. The timid woman was Betsy. And the last one, who’d melted into the woodwork, was Darlene.
“I am Penelope,” Mrs. Branford said. She gestured to me, feigning ignorance. “And you are—”
“Ivy,” I offered.
The women’s eyes were all on me again. “You’re too young,” Sharon said, repeating the general sentiment Linda had expressed.
I shrugged, playing it like there was no accounting for Josh’s taste.
“Do you have money?” Linda demanded, then looked at the others. “She must have money.”
“Ah, you are all wealthy women,” Mrs. Branford said, coming to the same realization I had.
“And widowed,” Sharon said.
“Wealthy and widowed.” Linda scoffed. “How could we be so stupid? He played us all.”
Martina and her seven thousand dollars surfaced in my mind. Josh, it seemed, had a pattern.
Darlene’s gaze skittered toward the nave. “Do you . . . do you think there are more?”
The question made me catch my breath. Peggy’s sobs stopped with a hiccup. “M-more?”
Mrs. Branford blew out an audible breath. “Oh, I imagine so.”
“Undoubtably,” Sharon said dryly. “I suppose it would be rather inappropriate to burst in to the church and ask if other women were duped by the deceased, but if we did, I suspect we’d find a good many shocked women who would join our company.”
“I-I have to g-go,” Betsy said. She wiped a new flurry of tears from her eyes, and three seconds later, she scurried out the door.
I thought timid Peggy might follow suit, but it was the one who’d been nearly invisible, Darlene, who walked out behind her.
“And then there were five,” Sharon said dryly.
“Four,” I said when the door opened again, and Linda melted into the sunlight.
Mrs. Branford, Sharon, Peggy, and I stared at one another, speechless, until, once again, the door from the nave opened. This time, though, instead of another unwitting victim of Josh Prentiss’s, Captain York stepped into the vestibule.