I hoped for a busy day at the office. My hook on the Linda issue made me feel like I was getting somewhere, and I had an appointment with Mac from the homeless shelter. Optimism abounded.
When the knock came on the door, I expected my gruff, fatherly friend, but Rafe’s empty-headed face grinned at me through the window instead. I let him in and hoped I could get rid of him fast.
“Maura, I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be.” I waved toward my coffee pot. “Freshly brewed, would you like some?”
He sat backwards in a chair. “I don’t, so I won’t.”
“What do you want, Rafe?”
“I can see how this case is wearing on you. Every time we meet you look older.”
“This is only the fourth time we’ve met.”
“Or is it?”
I drank deep from my coffee. “Have you been following me? If so, I don’t call that meeting.”
He laughed, “Of course not, but maybe we met in a past life, or in a future life. Or in my past and your future—”
“Or vice versa, I get it. I look old. Age does that to a person.”
“You have a young soul under the burdens you carry, and I’d like to see you find her.”
I pulled my chair around my desk and sat on his side of it. If I was forced to have a moment with Rafe Winter, I’d make good use of it. “Did you try and help Adam become more himself?”
“Of course, I did. Until a man is freed from this world he is a slave. It’s what I exist to do.”
“Rafe, you’re a young guy.”
“But with an old soul. I think I am the yang to your yin.”
“But I’m the girl.”
He lowered his eyelids and smiled slowly. “You bring the masculine energy to all of your relationships, I expect.”
“Back to your chronological youth. How long have you been leading the Universal Temple?”
“For five years.” He sighed contentedly. “What a blessing it has been.”
“But you must have been a teenager when you became their leader.”
“I was twenty, actually.”
“How does a twenty-year old take over a big church like that?” I attempted to sound impressed with his kooky little cult.
“I was elected from within. I had been a member for two years, when the prophet died. At that time, the individuals that come together each searched their hearts to detect the right leader. I was it.”
“Was it unanimous?”
He shook his head, a brief shadow of sadness passing over his face. “It was not. The widow of our previous leader did not like it at all, and several of our group left with her.”
“What was her problem with it?”
He pressed his hands together as in prayer and leaned forward. “She longed for power, Maura. I did not. The desire for power makes a slave.”
“Interesting. What’s her name?”
“Boadicea the River.”
“What’s her real name?”
“This is the only name she answers to. The name that she has claimed for herself.”
“Give me a break, Rafe. If I wanted to find this woman, who would I google?”
He laughed again. “Maura, how will I ever reach you, you poor lost soul? If you want Boadicea, ask for Boadicea. Who else would you ask for? A person can be no more or no less than what she owns herself to be.”
A knock on the door interrupted his explanation of the human state of being.
Mac stood on the other side of the window and looked displeased.
I waved him in and shrugged.
“You had something to discuss, Maura?”
“Yes, I do. It’s private though, so Rafe, I need to end our interview now.”
Rafe slowly unwound himself from the chair. “No need to explain it to me. Every man to his own desires. Just meditate on what I told you. It could change everything.”
“I’m sure it could.” I held the door open for Rafe.
“Someday, Maura, each man will do what is right in his own eyes again.”
“Just great.” I shut the door and offered Mac the chair that Rafe had vacated.
He settled in, the right way forward. “You had a little trouble with Ansel.”
“Yes.” I paused. He would want to talk about that, of course. It was a big deal. But I didn’t want to. “Let’s talk about Linda, though. I think we’re onto something.”
“Your call. What did you learn about Linda?”
“I think I might have uncovered her secret, but I wanted to run it past you and see what you had to say.” I gave him the details about Belinda Warren.
“It would be pretty brazen to get back into the public eye while trying to hide something like that.” Mac said.
“True, but could her position with Metro really be considered public eye?”
“Maybe not. She’s not a spokesperson or an elected official.”
“And this hit and run was a long time ago.” I stared at the screen of my laptop, which was open to the story.
“What are you going to do with the information?” Mac cut to the chase on this as everything else.
“That’s why I asked you here. Is this enough to have her in for a chat?”
He scratched his chin and gave it some thought. “What’s the point?”
“I’d want her to know I know. I’d want to point out that she had hired me under false pretenses for her own purpose.”
“So, what if she did? Shouldn’t make a difference to you in the end, should it?”
“I thought you’d be with me on this.” His hesitation bothered me. I needed him on my side. I had no one else.
“I was for you looking into it. For example, if her past was as a brutal murderer who was into recreating death scenes from scripture, we’d like to know that. But what good does knowing this do?”
“What if Adam had found out?”
“If Adam had found out about her past and Linda had decided to kill him for it, she would have chosen a less dramatic way to do it. Something that wouldn’t have gotten on the news.”
“Should I or should I not try and confirm this was her?”
“You’re the detective. If you think you need to, do it, but leave me out.” He stood up. “No offense, but Linda is doing a good job running this committee and helping out my homeless friends. I don’t want to see her go to prison for a bad decision she may have made almost thirty years ago.”
“Belinda Warren ran down her father’s political rival and left him for dead. That’s a level up from bad decision.”
He paused.
“If the hit and run victim was Belinda Warren’s father’s political rival, it was an assassination, Mac. And Adam’s death might have been one, too.”
He sat back down. “My first instinct was wrong. If Belinda Warren is our Linda Smith, you’d better go to the police with it.”
“I just need to get confirmation.”
“That won’t be hard.” He stood again, shook my hand, and left.
No, it wouldn’t be hard. Linda’s fingerprints were a dime a dozen for me. I called her immediately. She answered on the first ring and I dove right in. “Linda, can you come down to my office tomorrow morning? I’d like to touch base with you.”
“Yes, yes. Thank you. It’s about time we talked again. What time do you need me?”
“Nine o’clock would be perfect.”
“I’ll be there. Thank you, Maura. You have no idea how much this means to me.”
I hung up the phone and stared at my wall. It was Linda who had no idea what this meeting meant to her.
I spent the rest of my day studying and updating notes. I googled, I made phone calls. I confirmed that the younger woman Adam dumped Trish for, the journalist named Morgan Melisse had taken a job in Georgia where she was originally from. She was not only not in the state when Adam Demarcus was murdered, she was on TV reading the news.
I was adding Bruce’s discipleship group, Quint, Red, Luke, and Brit to the wall of clues and drawing big fat question marks under their names, when a soft knock on the door made me jump.
My nerves were on edge, but they shouldn’t have been. I had all situations in hand right now. “Come in.”
Christine entered. Her eyes were shadowed, face was pale, and hair was sloppy, but she wasn’t wearing her “I’m a secretary” clothes so she was a step ahead of most days at this hour.
“The girls are going out tonight. I’m here to collect you and bring you to your friends.”
I rolled my neck. “You mean the women from the retreat who didn’t believe a guy like Rick could cheat?”
“A couple of them, and a couple of women who aren’t on staff or staff wives. You might remember them from back when you spent time with friends. They are nice girls who love you.”
I glanced at my computer. “I don’t know…”
“We’re going to Rimsky’s. Have dessert, listen to some live music. It will be quiet and cozy. We could both use quiet and cozy.” Christine dropped to the couch.
“How can I be cozy with them? After the things they said to me?”
This time Christine rolled her neck. Maybe the sound of my voice stressed her out. “You’ll have to refresh my memory. What did they say?”
“They think I am an insane paranoid woman.” They hadn’t said that exactly, but it was the sense of things.
“What did they actually say?” Christine was working to soften her voice. I knew she sometimes struggled not talking to me like I was one of her kids.
“Jessica said I was just insecure and that all my problems would be solved if I put my trust in Jesus.”
Christine tilted her head. “That’s not the same thing as calling you an insane paranoid.”
“Terry said I was too mean to Rick and that’s why he was always seeking approval from other women.”
“That is a horrible thing to say. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah…” I wanted to drive that point home, rest in the knowledge that Terry really had been horrible, but Christine didn’t fight me on it.
“Anything else?”
“In small group time I shared my concerns with the women and…” I closed my eyes and pictured the group. One woman had shifted uncomfortably. Another had kept trying to check her phone without getting caught. A third woman had put her arm on my shoulder even though the last thing I wanted was some stranger to touch me. And the last woman in the group had grinned, like she just wanted good gossip. The jerks.
“What happened?”
“Nothing, I guess. They just didn’t care. I talked to a couple of others—Melinda who is supposed to be an expert in family pastoral care and pastor Bob’s wife, but they had both told me it couldn’t be true. They didn’t believe me at all. They said I needed to be understanding and flexible.”
“I believed you.”
“I know.”
“Even when you didn’t have any evidence.”
“They clearly like Rick better than me.”
Christine sighed. “Before the retreat you really liked these women.”
“I liked them all right. I wouldn’t say really liked them.”
“Don’t let this be like the seminary all over again.”
I stiffened. Christine hadn’t lived with me at the seminary. She didn’t know what it had been like.
“You’ve got to find a way to forgive people. You hang on so tightly to all the wrongs that have come your way. If you hang on to this, like you have with the seminary stuff…”
“I could also just cut them all from my life. I never have to step foot in Grace Community again.”
“That’s true, but you’d be cutting out a lot of good stuff, too, just because one retreat wasn’t great.”
“More like because my cheating ex is beloved there.”
Christine was quiet. “Yeah. That would be hard. You’re right.”
“I don’t want to go out.”
“Then let’s stay in. Want to come to my house?”
I picked up my phone. “Can I just order us some take-out and we can hunker down here?”
“Come home with me. This place smells like mold.”
I couldn’t argue on that point, so I packed up my work life and went home with her.
Once we were settled in her kitchen, she opened up a little. Maybe I had given signs I was ready to be a listener. I hoped I had, anyway. “I know that my work is pretty mild, but what with Rick getting fired, it’s not been easy.” Christine yawned.
The aroma of the lasagna she had pulled from the freezer and put in the oven wrapped me in comfort. I loved Christine’s place. “They didn’t technically fire him though, did they?”
Christine chuckled. “No, you’re right. I mean, he wasn’t on our payroll. He was just renting an office and paying half my salary. Part of our community outreach thing we do…”
“Oh shoot, your salary…”
“It’s okay. They are taking care of me. There are plenty of other people around who are happy to have some admin assistance.”
I had Christine all to myself and I didn’t want to waste the precious time, but when I opened my mouth to offer sympathy all the old complaints about church I had ever had tumbled out. It all summed up in a moan she surely didn’t want to hear again. “It’s the superior attitude I just can’t take anymore. Constantly hearing that it’s okay for them to be jerks because churches are hospitals for sinners and they aren’t perfect, they’re forgiven—they give themselves so much permission to be horrible.”
“You’ve had a lot of bad experiences through the years.” Christine’s clear, straightforward voice cut through the clouds of words spinning in my head—the voices and memories of people correcting my language, coughing at my cigarettes, quoting verses at me when I said I didn’t trust the Bible. Ignoring me when I walked in a room, criticizing my clothes. Everything about me had never been good enough. “You’re thinking about that seminary. You had the crappiest dorm mates ever. I couldn’t have survived that married student living.”
“It was horrible.”
“And I get it,” Christine said. “No one ever believes you because their seminary dorm mates were great, so yours must have been, too. Their friends were good, so your problems must have been your fault. I totally get it.”
“You’re the only one who does.”
“Somewhere out there is another woman, or maybe man, who moved to a place that was supposed to be full of love and support but found hostility instead. I know you’re not alone.”
“At least you don’t ask me to start a support group about it.”
Christine rolled her eyes. “It is a go-to move, isn’t it? Hey, traumatized person, you just experienced some of life's difficulties, why don’t you start a support group? Sure, you haven’t had time to heal from it yet, but it will be good for you.”
I laughed too—it had been a perfect imitation of Rick.
“You know, my parents always said I was expecting too much of those seminary kids. All I was expecting was…” I couldn’t put words to it anymore. I had nursed the feeling too long. The specifics had been consumed by the overwhelming ache of loneliness.
“And you’ve put up with a lot of crap from Rick over the years, too.” Christine echoed my thoughts. Sometimes she did it just to calm me down, but times like this, I was sure she was on my side.
“And now on top of Rick ruining my life, I’m up to my neck in an investigation where the only people I get to talk to are a bunch of crazy religious people. Not even normal religious folk like you, or Pastor Bob. Seriously crazy ones. Like bunheads and cult members.”
“Update me on where you’re at.”
Before I could, her husband stepped into the kitchen and frowned at me.
Christine smiled at him. “I’m not too tired to talk to Maura tonight, and she is going to sleep over, if she wants to. I don’t think she’s decided yet.”
He gave her a loving once over. “If you’re sure, then enjoy.” He patted my back. He didn’t usually hate me; he was just wildly protective of his wife.
I always thought it was strange, how protective of her he was. She had always been the strongest, most confident woman I knew. But then, maybe part of that came from knowing that she had someone at home who had her back all the time.
“It’s a massive mess. I’ve eliminated the obvious suspects, at least the ones who were obvious to me.”
“I thought you were hired to find out something about this guy’s secret life.”
“It’s a bizarre assignment. The man has done nothing wrong. He had nothing to hide.”
“No one has done nothing wrong.”
“Okay, he cheated on his long-time girlfriend and gave pot to homeless people.”
“I’d think you were the last person to call cheating ‘nothing’.”
“It’s not a capital offense.”
Christine smiled. “It’s good to hear you say that.”
“I have an interview with Linda tomorrow. And I’ve been trying to connect with a guy from this weird internship where they like, live like monks for two years and sell newspapers.”
“Yeah, that is weird. Not going to lie. Think he knows something about Adam?”
“He wasn’t talking in the group interview, so he knows something. Hopefully a private face to face will get him to open up.”
“And if he doesn’t know anything, what do you do? Go tell the lady who hired you that the answer is C: None of the above?”
“Someone killed him, for some reason. When I find the person who did it, I will know why.”
“Are you staying tonight?” Christine pulled the glorious meal from the oven.
I inhaled deeply, savoring the best smell in the world. “Just for dinner. I like sleeping in my own bed.”
“You are welcome to stay as long as you want.” She tilted her head in the direction of her husband, who was flipping channels in the family room. “We had a long talk. He repented of kicking you out.”
“I needed it, I guess. I have a mess to sort out and I can’t do that while hiding.” Even as I said it, my brain was stormy again. Angry with Rick, wanting to go home and yell at him and fight with him and punish him, but also hoping that he would take me into his arms and apologize again.
He was the only man I had ever loved.