Father Jim was still busy chatting with people in front of the church, and that was just fine with Jazz. She jogged over to the back parking lot where there was a garage and a dumpster overflowing with wood and broken windows. Debris from the second-floor redo Father Jim talked about.
The second floor that was supposed to be empty.
From there, it was easy to slip in through the back door of the rectory.
Father Jim was right about the second floor being a mess. At the top of the stairway, Jazz had to maneuver around three missing floorboards and a small mountain of lumber that had been tossed around the landing like pick-up sticks. There were six doorways, three on either side of the hall, but she knew the flash she’d seen could only have come from one of the rooms facing the street, and that was to her right.
The first room she checked was a bathroom. The second was empty. The third room was a little tougher to get to. There was a ladder lying crosswise in the middle of the hallway, and even once she stepped over that she had to move six gallon-sized paint cans from the doorway.
The door wasn’t locked.
Jazz pushed it open.
And caught her breath.
Kim sat in a chair, those beaded earrings of hers winking in and out when her head bobbed from side to side, in and out of the sunshine flowing from the window behind her.
No response when Jazz called Kim’s name. Nothing when she hurried over and stood in front of the chair where Kim was slumped to one side, her eyes closed, her arms dangling. But then, that wasn’t surprising. There were two empty bottles of Old Crow on the floor next to her, another one half-full, and a glass on a small, round table within easy reach. Jazz kicked the empties out of the way, knelt in front of the chair, and took Kim’s hand.
“Kim, it’s me, Jazz. Kim?” She gave Kim’s hand a light smack and was rewarded when Kim’s head snapped up, when her eyes opened.
The unmistakable odor of bourbon was heavy on Kim’s breath. Her eyes were unfocused and her purse, that phony black leather bag with the uncertain designer label, was looped around her shoulders and neck and hung in front of her chest. “What…? Who…?”
“Me. Jazz.” She grabbed her phone and dialed Nick at the same time she looked around the room. Mattress on the floor. One blanket. A tray of empty dirty dishes. Next to it was a bottle of water. She grabbed it just as Nick’s voicemail message kicked in.
“At the sound of the tone…”
“I found her, Nick. We’re at St. Gwendolyn’s. She’s…” Jazz gave Kim a quick once-over. She didn’t appear to be hurt. She didn’t appear to be sick. She was very, very drunk.
“Father Jim must have been the friend she talked about. This is where she’s been staying, though…” Her gaze traveled to the empty booze bottles. “She’s obviously gotten out to the store. I’m sure Father Jim…” At the same time she was ready to offer an excuse, Father Jim has been busy and hasn’t been monitoring Kim’s drinking as carefully as he should have, she brought herself up short.
Not fifteen minutes earlier, Father Jim told her he was keeping an eye out for Kim and hadn’t seen her.
He’d also told Jazz, Stop asking questions.
The same words written on the note she’d found in her pocket after she was run down by the biker in the park.
A chill raced up Jazz’s spine and the reality—and the danger—of the situation slammed her like a punch. Her heart pounded a beat of urgency. Her brain spun with theories.
All of them impossible, she told herself.
Until she looked at the room, the woman, the empty bottles.
Her blood buzzed in her ears. “I’m going to get her out of here,” she told Nick, and ended the call at the same time she patted Kim’s cheek. “Kim, we need to leave. Can you come with me?”
Kim’s cheeks were sunken and there were smudges of black around her eyes. Her hands shook. Her gaze, unfocused, roamed over Jazz’s face, her eyes glazed.
“Kim?” Jazz poured water into her hands and splashed it onto Kim’s face, and when that didn’t work she took the rest of the water and poured it over Kim’s head.
Kim sputtered and spit. But when she looked at Jazz, her eyes were clearer. “You…? Why…?”
“I’ll explain later.” Jazz grabbed Kim’s hand and pulled her out of the chair, and when Kim’s knees buckled and her arms flailed Jazz slipped her own good arm around Kim’s waist. “We’re going to take a walk. And we’re going to go to my house. And Nick is going to be there.”
“Nick.” Kim’s smile was watery. “He’s my son.”
“He is. And you know what? He loves you very much. And he wants to see you. But he can’t see you here, Kim. We have to go to my house.”
“Sure.” Kim tried for a nod, but when her chin bobbed down it didn’t come up again.
“That’s all right,” Jazz told her, tightening her hold. “We’ll just take it nice and slow. Come on.” She took a couple steps, Kim shuffling alongside. “Just a little bit more. We’re almost there, Kim.”
At the doorway, Kim glanced back into the room. “My … bottles?”
“We’ll get more.” A promise Jazz had no intention of keeping.
Fortunately, Jazz had already moved the paint cans outside the door. Getting Kim to step over the ladder was another thing. “You stay.” Just like she would if she were giving Wally the command, Jazz held her hand flat in front of Kim. She hopped over the ladder, then took Kim’s left hand in her right. “Just one little step,” she told Kim. “Careful. Pick up your foot. Yes!”
The pile of lumber at the top of the stairs had been hard enough for stone-cold-sober Jazz to get around. For Kim, it would be impossible. Jazz stood her against the wall, warned her not to move, and dragged the wood aside, clearing a path, mumbling, “It’s like a damned obstacle course. It’s like—”
Jazz listened to her own words and realized just how right she was. The bottles of Old Crow were meant to keep Kim drunk. The debris in the hallways was meant to keep her in her room.
No way those were tears in her eyes, Jazz told herself even as she wiped them away. No way could she let the sting of betrayal, the searing burn of a disappointment so deep, distract her.
They had to get out of there.
“Okay, Kim.” She reached out a hand. “Come on over here now. Just one more thing to get by.”
Three missing floorboards.
She’d just moved the lumber, but Jazz brought a couple of the boards back and built a bridge of sorts. Not steady, but then, Kim was so wobbly to begin with, no way she would notice.
Getting her down the steps was a bit like trying to corral a Slinky. Listening both to the sounds of the crowd out front and for anything that would warn her there was someone in the house, Jazz got Kim out the back door and breathed a sigh of relief.
Outside.
But not safe. Not yet.
Jazz glanced toward the street. The rectory itself was set farther back than the church. There was a narrow walkway between the two buildings, bordered on one side by the stone church and the other by a hedge. Through the slim slice of an opening, she could see people and animals milling around out front. With any luck, Father Jim was still in the thick of it.
“Tired.” Kim leaned her back against the church wall. “Gonna sit down.”
“No, no, no.” Jazz tugged her to her feet. “Just a little bit more. I promise. We’re almost to my car. And Wally’s there. He’s waiting for you.”
Kim smiled. “Wally’s cute.”
“He is.” She urged Kim forward. “He can’t wait to see you and—”
“I’ll just duck in the back of the church and get it for you,” Father Jim’s voice rumbled down the alleyway. “Just give me a minute.”
“Come on.” Jazz hooked an arm around Kim, and either Kim managed to keep up with her or she was acting on so much adrenaline she was able to carry Kim along at her side. They ducked behind the garage just as Father Jim rounded the corner into the parking lot.
Jazz pressed Kim back against the building and dared to peek at what Father Jim was up to. “We’ll be out of here in one minute,” she whispered to Kim. “I promise. We’ll just—”
Kim refused to stand still. She, too, glanced out from behind the garage, and her eyes lit. “It’s that nice Father Jim! Father Jim!” she called, and waved.
Father Jim’s forehead furrowed. His eyes sparked. In a half-dozen steps, he closed the distance between the church and the garage.
“What are you doing out here?” he demanded of Kim.
There was no use hiding anymore. Jazz stepped into the open. “I think a better question might be what was Kim doing inside in the first place.”
His eyes widened, but Father Jim didn’t allow himself more than a moment of surprise. “She was visiting, that’s what she was doing. And you told me, Kim, didn’t you…” He raised his voice nice and loud like Jazz had sometimes heard people do when they were trying to train a dog. “You told me you didn’t want anyone to know you were here.”
“Did she ask for the Old Crow, too?” Jazz wanted to know.
“Jazz, Jazz.” Father Jim shook his head. “You know what alcoholics are like. Their next drink is all they think about. All they care about. I can’t help it if Kim left to pick up a couple of bottles now and again.”
“Oh, no. Don’t even try to fool me with that bullshit.” Jazz glared at him. “There’s no way she got out of that room. Not easily, anyway. Paint cans, a ladder, lumber. What a great way to make sure she stayed put while you went through her house looking for the coin collection.”
He took a step closer and Jazz could have sworn he was going to play dumb. At least until he saw the fire in her eyes, the stiffness in her shoulders, and knew the dumb act wasn’t going to work.
Father Jim’s voice was soft and sweet. “You have been poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“I guess I have, and that’s finally allowed me to see what’s really going on. You visited Dan in prison and he told you about the coins, didn’t he? Of course, you could have no way of knowing where he’d hidden them, so when he got out, you followed him to Kim’s.”
“I”—Kim made a slashing motion with one hand—“chased him away!”
“You did, Kim.” Jazz swung her gaze from Kim to Father Jim. “But Mansfield went back to Kim’s, and so did you, didn’t you, Father? Let me guess, you argued. Then you fought. And Dan was a big guy. But you’re no lightweight yourself.” Her gaze slipped down his brown robe to the white rope belt. “You strangled him with your belt, then took his body to the park and dumped it. Are you that greedy? Were you really willing to exchange a man’s life for a stack of old coins?”
“Wake up, Jazz. Look around!” Father Jim did. At the rectory with its pitted cement steps, at the church with two of its stained-glass windows missing and boarded up, at the houses across the street, small, simple houses like Kim’s, with air-conditioning units sagging from windows and driveways overgrown with weeds. “The people in this neighborhood need every bit of anything I can give them. Dan Mansfield, what would he have done with those coins? Taken them to a pawnshop? Spent the money on a car? Or women? Or booze? I tried to explain it to him, but he wouldn’t listen. I would have used the money for stocking the food pantry. Buying supplies for the school. Do you know how many of the people around here can’t pay their heating bills in the winter? That money, that would have gone a long way toward helping them.”
“Would have.” Jazz considered the words. “You were in Kim’s house. That would have been easy once you took her key out of her pocket. You looked around. That’s why you had to keep her drunk here, so she’d stay out of your way. But you never found the coins, did you?” He didn’t have to answer. She saw the quick flash of disappointment in his eyes. “You know what I think? I think Mansfield lied about ever having a treasure. He played you. And now instead of food and help with their heating bills, what your parishioners are going to get is to see their pastor led out of here in handcuffs.”
“Oh, no.” He lunged forward and snatched Kim, spun her, and put an arm around her neck.
Kim’s eyes popped. Her voice soared. “Jazz, help me!”
Jazz considered her options. Father Jim didn’t need to silence Kim. No matter what Kim told the authorities about where she’d been this past week, no matter how much she ranted and rambled, they wouldn’t believe a word she said.
Jazz was another story. And she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to live to tell it. Besides, if Father Jim was busy chasing her, he’d have to leave Kim behind, safe.
She couldn’t get to the street, not with Father Jim blocking her way, so Jazz raced behind the garage, then, just to throw him off, dodged inside. She was right—he cast Kim aside and he was right behind her.
She wasn’t afraid.
Not until he stopped in the doorway and chuckled.
“There’s only this one door,” he said, and at the same time Jazz looked to the overhead doors, she realized there was no car parked inside the garage.
“Big doors haven’t worked for ages,” Father Jim said. “My car is outside. The garage is just used for storage.”
He was right. There were boxes stacked nearby. A tool bench to Father Jim’s right. A bike—
A green bike leaning against the wall, its front end crumpled.
Of all the betrayals, this one hurt the most, physically, spiritually. Jazz cradled her left wrist. “You! It was you. And it makes sense—” It was not the time to slap her forehead, so she had to settle for a mental swift kick. “A guy who bikes needs to carry a small tool for quick fixes. One shaped like a—”
She pictured the tool she’d found at Kim’s, the twin she’d seen at Gerchek’s.
“It wasn’t an x. It was a cross.”
“A gift from a parishioner. I wondered what happened to it.”
“You dropped it in Kim’s yard. Did you need to find some other tool to replace it that afternoon you went out riding in the park?” She lifted her chin and shot him a look. “That day you tried to kill me?”
“I tried to warn you, stop asking questions! You should have listened.” He reached over to the workbench and picked up a hammer. “Kim’s so drunk, nobody’s going to question it when they find her in here with blood all over her and a hammer in her hands. She’ll say she didn’t know it was you. She’ll say you surprised her and she was afraid.”
“That’s crap and you know it.” Jazz scanned the garage, desperate for a weapon. As long as she was at it, she unhooked the sling from around her left arm. If she was going down, she was going down fighting with both hands. She waited for Father Jim to make his move, and when he raced forward, his eyes bulging and his mouth open and that hammer raised, she kicked the bike into his path.
His feet tangled, but he didn’t go down. It gave Jazz a chance to dance to her right. One step. Then to her right again.
If she could make him come around a little more, she’d have a clear path back to the door.
There was a leaf rake hanging on the wall and she grabbed it just as he rushed her again. It was a lousy shield, but she held on tight, wooden handle toward her attacker, praying for some kind of protection.
It came from the oddest place.
Just three feet in front of her, Father Jim let out an “ouf” of surprise. His eyes rolled back in his head. When he collapsed facedown on the garage floor, Jazz saw that Kim had come up behind him, that fake black leather purse of hers raised just in case she needed to hit him over the head with it again.
Jazz would have liked to gloat. She would have liked to let out a whoop of celebration.
She didn’t dare take the chance.
She grabbed Kim’s hand and together they raced out of the garage.
“You were…” Jazz didn’t realize she was sobbing until they were at the front of the church and she tried to catch her breath. She pressed a hand to her chest. It was that or she was sure her heart was going to pound its way out of her ribs. “You could have been hurt, Kim. You shouldn’t have—”
“Had to, didn’t I?” Kim nodded, the picture of sobriety. “I couldn’t let anything happen to you. That would break my Nick’s heart.”