A Glimpse of Evil (25 page)

Dutch grinned wickedly. “Care to ride my little pony?” he asked, bouncing his eyebrows.

About ten minutes later, Dutch and I had ourselves a little rodeo.

Yee-haw, ladies. Yee- haw.

Candice picked me up bright and early the next morning. “Where’s the new hat?” she asked as I got in.

“It got a little smunched.”

“Smunched?”

“Um . . . ,” I said. “How can I put this delicately?”

Candice held up her hand. “No need,” she said quickly. “I’m pretty sure I can guess.”

I sighed contentedly. “I love that man.”

“Lucky you,” she muttered.

“Hey,” I said, only now noticing she seemed a bit grumpy. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay.”

“Brice slept on the couch again last night.”

“Did you guys have another fight?”

“No. We’re still having the same one.”

“You mean you haven’t talked to him about how you feel yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Candice squared her shoulders. “Because I shouldn’t have to go first. He should be the one to say that he wants to stay with me and work it out.”

“But he does want to stay with you and work it out.”

“Has
he
said that?” Candice practically shouted.

My eyes widened. “Gettin’ a little loud, honey.”

“Sorry.”

I gave her arm a squeeze. “You need to take that leap, my friend. You need to tell him that you are crazy about him, that all of this is just bluster from the both of you so that if someone bails, you can blame the other guy. It’s ridiculous, and you need to get over it because you’re killing any future for your relationship.”

That seemed to get to Candice. “You really think it’s hurting our chances?”

“Yes,” I said bluntly. “You’re destroying this really good thing. Maybe the only chance you’ll have for a very long time to be with someone you could really love, and if either of you lets that happen, then I will be
so
ticked off!”

I’d tried to sound stern, but Candice started laughing. “Oh, Sundance,” she sang. “What would I do without you?”

I made a face at her. “You’d be an old spinster woman with twelve cats.”

We made it back up to Fatina’s grandmother’s house and Mrs. Dixon greeted us at the door with less suspicion this time. “I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember the name of that painter man,” she said after we were seated again in her living room. “I swear it’s right on the edge of my memory, but every time I try to pull it forward, it slips away.”

“Sometimes not thinking about it is the way to get it to surface,” I suggested.

She nodded. “Maybe you’re right.”

Candice waited for Mrs. Dixon to look at her before she asked, “We were wondering if maybe there was another way to figure out who this man was,” she said. “You mentioned that you found this painter’s number at church. Do you think he might have been a member of the congregation?”

Mrs. Dixon’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You know, I never thought of that,” she said. “Maybe.”

“Have you seen him since? Maybe at one of the services?” I asked.

Mrs. Dixon’s eyes shifted to me and there was such sad resignation there. “No, ma’am. I don’t go to church no more. Got no reason to. Any God that would take so much from me ain’t worth prayin’ to.”

My radar was already on when we entered the room, and now I fully understood the profound sense of loss and sadness that permeated the space all around her. Not only had the poor woman lost every person that ever mattered to her, but she’d lost her faith as well, and it was a pain even more acute than all the others in her life.

“Oh, Mrs. Dixon,” I said sadly. “I’m so, so sorry!”

“Why you got to be sorry?” she asked me sharply, taking offense.

“Because it’s causing you so much pain,” I said, ignoring her tone. “I think you miss God just as much as you miss your family.”

Mrs. Dixon’s lower lip trembled and she looked down at her hands. “Some people can have their children taken from them and their faith gets deeper. But I been through too much. And I don’t have the energy to go looking for my faith again.”

I took a deep breath and called out to my crew for help. I had a series of images come to mind and I smiled. “Mrs. Dixon?” I asked.

“Yes?” she replied, not looking up from the hands folded in her lap.

“Where’s your piano?”

Her head snapped up and she let out a tiny gasp. “My what?”

“Your piano.”

I watched her carefully, and sure enough, she looked over her shoulder to a section of her living room near the window that, to my eye, suddenly seemed open and empty. “How’d you know I had a piano?”

I didn’t answer her. Instead I just continued to look at her like I knew her secret.

Finally she said, “It’s in storage.”

“How long has it been since you played it?”

She pursed her lips, clearly displeased that I was asking her about it. “Long enough.”

I made a point of looking around the room, up and down at the walls. “I think that what this house really needs, ma’am, is to hear your music again. I think that what these walls miss the most is the sound of your piano and your voice.”

Again Mrs. Dixon’s lower lip trembled and I knew I’d found that tiny crack in her fortress of self- imposed misery. “How’d you hear about that?”

I tapped my temple. “I’m a person who knows such things, Mrs. Dixon. I see things before they happen, and I can catch glimpses of the past without any prior knowledge. When I look at you, all I see is the rich and good life you had before you stopped living. And it was filled to bursting with music and song and faith. So maybe you don’t need to have the energy to go looking for God again, ma’am. Maybe all you need is just to play a song on that piano every so often, and God will find you.”

 

We left Mrs. Dixon’s a short time later with the name and address of her old church. As we got in the car, Candice let out a heavy sigh. “I swear I could barely keep from grabbing that woman and hugging her until she promised to get her piano back.”

I winked at her. “Trust me, she’s going to have them deliver it out of storage soon.”

“You swear?”

I laughed. Candice had a soft spot for grandmothers. “Cross my heart.”

We got to the church about five minutes later. It was a fairly nondescript structure: gray masonry walls, one large stained-glass window on the side, double doors at the front.

After parking, we walked in quietly, mindful of any afternoon services, but the place was all but vacant save for a woman dusting the pews. “Can I help you?” she asked when she saw us.

Candice strode forward and introduced herself before jumping right to the purpose of our visit. After she’d explained that she was there on behalf of Mrs. Dixon and was looking into her granddaughter’s disappearance, the woman directed us to the office building next door. “You’ll want to see the church secretary, Genevieve. She’s been here for twenty years and knows everyone who’s ever come or gone from this place.”

We found Genevieve in a tiny office suite on the second floor of the building we’d been directed to. I guessed she was about sixty, but she looked much younger with a smooth caramel-colored complexion and beautiful amber eyes.

Candice introduced us and told her why we’d come. “Oh, how is Francine?” she asked when she heard we’d just come from Mrs. Dixon’s.

“I think she could use some company,” I said bluntly. “I believe that poor woman is as sad and lonely as they come.”

Genevieve clenched her fist and placed it over her heart, like it pained her greatly to hear that. “You know, when Fatina went missing, Francine came here every day to pray. But when it became clear that her grandchild wasn’t coming back, she just lost all faith. It was like she felt personally betrayed by God. She stopped comin’ to church, so the reverend and me went to her every Sunday. But soon she stopped answering her door and she refused to take our calls. After a while, I guess we gave up on her like she gave up on us.”

“I think she could use another visit,” I said. “And I think she could use her piano back.”

Genevieve’s mouth fell open. “Where’s her piano?”

“She said it was in storage.”

“Oh, that poor woman!” she exclaimed. “She loved her music more than breathing. She used to play and sing for our choir. Lord, Lord, that woman has a voice!”

“Maybe some members of your congregation can help her get the piano out of storage?”

Genevieve grabbed a pad from her desk and scribbled on it. “I’m makin’ myself a note,” she said. “We’ll get to it right away.”

After making sure that Mrs. Dixon was taken care of, we focused on the painter. Candice explained that a week before Fatina had gone missing, Mrs. Dixon had had her house painted by someone who posted his information on the church’s bulletin board. “Do you currently have anyone in your congregation who might make a living as a painter?” Candice asked.

Genevieve tapped her lip thoughtfully. “We have quite a few men who might fit that description. I’ll have to go through our records to find out, but if Francine got that name off of our bulletin board, then the man would have had to go through me. No one’s allowed to post anything up there without my permission, and I make sure that anyone wantin’ to sell anything or advertise is either a member of the congregation or related to someone who is.”

Candice and I brightened. That was exactly what we’d been hoping for. “He would have posted his ad sometime near the spring of two thousand eight. So you can exclude anyone fitting that description who wasn’t a member before then.”

“Leave it to me,” she assured us. “It might take me a few days, but I’ll get you a list together.”

We left the church buoyed by the fact that we might finally have a solid lead, and Candice drove us over to Antoine’s. This time we got lucky; he was outside in his driveway washing his Jeep.

“Had a feeling I’d see you two again,” he said cordially as we walked up the drive.

“Wonder why,” Candice muttered under her breath.

“Thanks again for saving my life,” I said loudly. I felt a little guilty over the fact that we had to ask Antoine about talking to Loraine Walker.

Antoine scrubbed his car with a sponge. “Part of the job,” he said, and for the first time I saw the hint of a wry grin on his face.

“Part of the job?”

“Protect and serve,” he recited.

Candice and I exchanged a look. “Ah,” she said. “Well, we really do appreciate it, Lieutenant.”

“But you’re not here to talk about that.”

“No.”

Antoine tossed his sponge into a nearby bucket and turned to face us. Placing his hands on his hips, he said, “Did you find Keisha’s killer?”

“Not yet,” Candice said.

“Got any leads?”

I had to marvel at how quickly Antoine took control of things like conversations and drowning women.

“No,” Candice told him bluntly. I was a little disappointed that she didn’t at least share the possible lead we’d just gotten from Genevieve.

“Then what’s this about?” Antoine asked.

Candice kept her voice level, calm, almost friendly. “Did you perhaps investigate your sister’s disappearance on your own?”

“Of course I did,” he said. “She was my baby sister, ma’am.”

I was surprised at his honesty. For once he was being completely forthcoming.

But I could tell that he still wasn’t winning points with Candice. “I see,” she said. “In the course of your own investigation, did you perhaps interview a woman named Loraine Walker?”

“Yes.”

“So you lied to us when we first talked to you. You knew about her daughter, Patrice, before we mentioned her.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked, shocked to discover that Antoine had told me a bold-faced lie and I hadn’t picked up on it.

Antoine regarded me coolly. “When you two showed up on my doorstep, I had no idea what your motives were. I mean, why would you want to dig into a cold case that even the FBI hadn’t been interested in?”

He had a point, but I countered with, “Does it really matter what our motives were as long as we were looking into it?”

Antoine gave me a crooked smile. “I’ve been in a war zone for the past year, ma’am. We learn not to trust strangers pretty quick.”

“Are you willing to be straight with us from now on?” Candice asked him pointedly.

“I will if you will,” he replied, and it was clear he didn’t believe we had nothing new to share with him.

Still, Candice withheld. “The moment we get something solid, Lieutenant, I promise to bring you into the loop.”

Antoine’s eyes studied her for a long moment before he pushed away from his Jeep and went to pick up the sponge again. “Sure you will,” I heard him mutter.

Candice waited a moment to ask her next question. I knew his ability to read her was throwing her off a bit. “Lieutenant, did you discover anything that might be important to our investigation?”