THE Very Reverend was having his photograph taken against the backdrop of a wall of windows that overlooked the carefully tended lawns and low, shingled buildings of the CCU campus. Stars and planets embroidered in shiny gold thread decorated his dazzling white robes. He held his arms aloft, and his sleeves tumbled about his shoulders, revealing white forearms covered with wiry black hairs. He glanced once in our direction then glared at Hyades, who calmly ushered the photographer and her two assistants out of the room. He closed the door behind them and stood with his back to the door, watching me confront his boss.
Al and I had had surprisingly little difficulty convincing the Very Reverend’s aide to arrange an audience for us. I’d called him on my way home from Wasserman’s, and he’d instructed me to be at the campus the next day. When I’d finally reached Al and brought him up to date on the twists and turns of the case, and on our renewed status as paid investigators, he had insisted on joining me for the interview.
“What do you want?” Polaris barked, his thick Brooklyn accent sounding harsh to my ear.
“To ask a few questions about the death of Trudy-Ann Nutt,” Al said in his politely intimidating cop’s voice.
“I was under the impression that Lilly Green told you everything there is to know about that. What more can I possibly tell you?” In his anger, he had stripped his voice of the compelling smoothness that I’d found nearly spellbinding when I’d seen him for the first time.
I said, “You can tell us what you were doing in your wife’s bedroom when the gun went off.”
“What are you talking about? I wasn’t in her room. I didn’t get there until after she was shot.”
“Where were you?”
He paused and looked at me, his eyes mistrustful slits. “In another room.”
“I know that Lilly didn’t kill her mother,” I said.
“What are talking about? Of course she did.”
“No. I have witness statements from individuals who will testify that she was playing in the courtyard and ran to her mother’s room only when she heard the shot.”
“Who? Who are your witnesses?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
A light seemed to dawn in his eyes. “No . . . no. They would never have talked to you.” I was willing to bet every dime I had that the “they” in that sentence were Beverly and Raymond. And whatever his words, there was enough doubt in his voice to reveal that he was not at all sure of their silence.
“Who got there first, Artie?” I said. “Raymond and Beverly, or you?”
“Listen,” he shouted. “I don’t know what those sons of bitches told you, but I was the last person in that room. Lilly was there, and so were Beverly and Raymond.” Suddenly, he spun around and yelped at Hyades. “Get them out of here. Now.”
Hyades stepped away from the door and opened it.
“Right this way,” he said. His face was blank, as though he found Polaris’s rage unremarkable.
Al and I glanced at each other. Al shrugged, almost imperceptibly, and I nodded. We both understood that Polaris wasn’t going to talk to us anymore. We’d gotten something, though—if only the unwitting acknowledgment that there was a secret being kept. We walked through the open door. Hyades followed.
“Let me escort you to your car,” he said pleasantly.
None of us spoke until we were standing out in the parking lot, next to my car.
“So you know that Beverly and Raymond Green were in San Miguel,” he said.
“You knew?” I said.
“Of course.” Right. He’d been there, in the house, when Trudy-Ann was killed.
“Do you know who killed Trudy-Ann, Reverend Hyades?” Al asked.
“Lilly Green killed her mother,” he said, a small smile playing across his lips.
I said, “You don’t believe that.”
“I believed that for many years.”
“But you don’t anymore.”
He shrugged. “Do you know what I would do if I were representing Jupiter Jones?” he asked.
“What would you do?”
“I’d look at the money Polaris Jones spent on his wife.” I noticed that he didn’t use the honorific. Suddenly, Polaris wasn’t the Very Reverend.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’d look at how much money he gave her. And I’d ask the question, why so much more in the months before she died than ever before? What had she done to deserve it?”
“What had she done?” I wasn’t enjoying this game of cat and mouse, but I had no choice but to play.
“Perhaps it’s not what she did, but rather what she knew, that inspired such tangible devotion in her husband.”
I’ve never been one to pussyfoot around. If I want to know something, I ask it. So I did. “Did Polaris Jones kill Trudy-Ann? Did he kill Chloe?”
Once again Hyades replied with a languid shrug instead of an answer to my question. “You know what else I would do?” he said.
“What?”
“I’d review the support Polaris received from a certain well-placed politician. Why, you might wonder, has Beverly Green always been such an ardent champion of the CCU?”
“Why?”
Once again, the shrug.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
He gazed across the parking lot, toward the buildings and gracious lawns. “This is a lovely place, don’t you think?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Suitable for a strong and important religion.”
I didn’t answer.
“One that exists independently of any single leader, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Abraham never reached the Promised Land with the Children of Israel,” Hyades said, looking over my head, into the sky. “New spiritual leaders were needed to guide the chosen people to their homeland.”
“True,” I said. “Look at Brigham Young.”
“Exactly. I think each religion reaches a moment of transition. Polaris Jones is a prophet. But he is also a man. A complicated man, with a complicated past. It’s time now for the CCU to enter into a new future.”
“Guided by you,” Al said.
“Perhaps,” he smiled. “Or perhaps our cosmological arch-ancestors will make themselves known to someone else, and another prophet will emerge. Who can know?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Who indeed.”
He extended a hand, shook mine, and then Al’s. His grip was strong and confident. “Good luck with your investigations,” he said, and with a rustle of robes, walked away across the parking lot.
Al nodded at the reverend’s retreating back. “If we can find evidence of a payoff, that might do it,” he said. If Hyades was telling the truth, and Polaris had paid for his wife’s silence, and if we could prove it, then Wasserman would have the evidence he needed to get the prosecution to continue the case and take a closer look at Chloe’s husband.
I nodded. “There’s the money Chloe gave her mother to buy into the gallery. And the assemblywoman’s support is all part of the public record. Remember, I found it online.”
Al reached in the pocket of his red windbreaker and took out his keys. “Damn it,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m supposed to finish the workers’ comp stakeouts today. Can you get a start sniffing out this money trail on your own?”
“Sure.” I looked at my watch and swore under my breath. “I’ve got to drive carpool, but I’ll get on the phone to Wasserman’s office as soon as I get home. See if there are any bank leads nobody’s followed up on. And I’ll call Chloe’s mother, too.”
Al sighed dramatically. “Carpool,” he muttered, heading off to his car.