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“Are you out of your mind?” Bob cried.
“What?” She didn’t know what he meant. Surely he couldn’t be this wound up about her sneaking into her own church?
“You broke into a church!”
“How do you know? Have you been spying on me?”
She might as well have suggested he’d spent the last several hours crocheting doilies. Spying on her was obviously beneath him. “Certainly not. Mannaziah told me to come rebuke you, and he’s acting as though it is my fault that you are behaving like this.”
“Who is Mannaziah?”
He flinched. He’d said too much. “Your church angel,” he muttered. “But that is not important right now. You can’t go breaking into the church.”
“I didn’t break in, Bob. Don’t you think you’re being a touch dramatic? I had a key.”
“Sandra!” He sounded exasperated. “You said you were going to sit this one out.”
“And I have! I mean, I did! Until my seven-year-old found the murder weapon!”
His eyes widened. “What? Tell me what happened!”
She told him, and he hung on her every word. He’d obviously missed this too. “Wow,” he said when she’d finished.
“And there’s more. I wanted to look at the security tapes, only there aren’t any actual tapes, but anyway, I tried to watch the videos, but they weren’t there—”
“You mean someone deleted them?”
I would tell you if you’d stop interrupting. “Yes, I think someone deleted them. Bob, I think someone from our church killed that man! Do you understand how horrible that is? I mean, I don’t know everyone who goes to church there, but I still find it pretty difficult to believe. And whoever did it returned a bloody bat to the bat bag! Who does that? Why not wipe it off first—”
“Unless he was trying to frame someone from your church.”
She gasped. “You’re right! Maybe that is the case!”
“Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.”
She didn’t know, and it was killing her. “So someone took the bat out of the church, walked into the woods with it, clobbered a man, then brought the bat all the way back to the church, put it in the bat bag, and then deleted the video of them doing all this.” She looked at him. “That murderer has a lot of intestinal fortitude!”
He stared straight ahead at the dark road in front of them. “Or they’re just plain evil.”
“Or that.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Bob, I hate to do this, but I have to get home. I promised my husband that I wasn’t sneaking out to meet you.”
Bob chuckled. “All right. I don’t want to get you into trouble, but ...” He didn’t finish.
“Yes?”
“Well, I promised Mannaziah that I would get you to stop the investigating, and I’m not confident I’ve done that. Instead, you’ve managed to get me intrigued.”
“Does this Mannaziah know who killed Phoenix?”
Bob didn’t answer her.
“Oh my goodness, he does, doesn’t he? Well, can’t he just tell you and then you can tell me and then I can tell Chip?” Her voice reached an embarrassingly high pitch by the end of that sentence.
“I don’t know if he knows. He wouldn’t tell me if he did.”
“But he probably does, right?”
“I don’t know. Angels don’t usually meddle in human affairs as much as I do. I’ve been a bad example for you.” He sounded so discouraged, so vulnerable, that she couldn’t stand it.
“Bob, you are the best angel ever.”
He snickered.
“I mean it. Otis would be dead if it weren’t for you.”
He nodded and studied his hands, which were folded in his lap. “Maybe. Or maybe without my meddling, he never would have been in that bog in the first place.” He looked up at her. “I’ll let you go now.”
She opened her mouth to say goodbye, but he was already gone. She took a moment to calm herself down and then drove the rest of the way home, trying to imagine which of her church friends could be a killer. She pictured them in her mind, one by one. Each deacon, each elder, each Sunday school teacher. She pictured the pianist, the base player, and the drummer. She paused on the drummer’s face. He was a maybe—always seemed a bit shady. She pictured her friends and Ethel’s friends and then laughed aloud. She couldn’t picture any of the senior saints swinging a bat—wait. Was she certain that the bats had been in the church when the murderer had picked out his weapon? As she’d told Nate, they hadn’t always been put away. She tried to think back—who had dealt with the bat bag that Tuesday? She’d been so busy watching the police chase Phoenix into the woods that she couldn’t summon up an image of someone picking up after the team.
She pulled into her driveway and hurried inside, suddenly exhausted. She tried to be discreet as she returned the keys to their hook and then she sank into the couch beside her husband, who hadn’t moved since she’d left him.
“I was thinking ...”
He didn’t respond.
“Do you have any idea who put the bats away after that Tuesday game where Phoenix helped us out?”
He scratched his chin and then said, “Yeah.”
“Well? Who was it?”
He turned his head, and because he was slouched down, he was perfectly eye level with her. “It was me.”