Holy Rollers (38 page)

“Didn’t a man go upstairs with you earlier?”

Constance affected a thoughtful look. “No, I was working alone tonight. No one was with me.”

He didn’t even try to hide his confusion. “But I’m sure…I mean, I think I’m sure…”

She gave him her most sympathetic smile. “It sounds like you’ve had a long day.”

With that, she spun around, and tightly gripping Chase’s bag containing Chase’s shirt, walked out of the building.

$ $ $

“I was afraid of this,” Grant said to the darkness. Somewhere in the room, pitch black since they’d closed the curtains to block out light that might reveal them to the security cameras, were his three companions. “I can barely find a lock, let alone pick one. I need some light.”

“But we can’t,” said Chase.

“Yeah, I know.” He sighed. “The desk has gotta go with us.”

$ $ $

The Mother Abbess had now been Christianized into a preacher’s wife, but she still sang “Climb Every Mountain,” which always threatened to put Dr. Oscar Hurley to sleep. And for this version, Walter Pomeroy had written four additional verses.

Just one more reason tonight would be Walter Pomeroy’s last night at the Cathedral.

If there was one bit of good news, it was that this was the last song in the first act. It would be followed immediately by intermission, which in turn would be followed by the departure of Dr. Oscar Hurley.

$ $ $

The Desk of Christ was heavy, and it had taken everything the four men had in them—as well as every piece of equipment they had with wheels—to move it.

But it was finally, slowly moving.

While Farraday and Leonard pushed, Grant and Chase pulled on straps wrapped around the desk’s legs. With the help of a few well-placed dollies, they soon threw caution aside, opened the curtains and French doors, and had it on the terrace.

Chase looked at the ground below. “Now what?”

Grant sized up the situation. The good news was no one could really see them. The bad news was they were still ten feet above the ground.

“Back the truck up onto the grass,” he told Farraday, and the driver hurriedly climbed over the railing and back down the rope ladder. When the truck was close, he turned to Chase and Leonard.

“And now…we push. And hope that ground’s soft, ’cause otherwise we’re gonna have a hell of a mess on our hands.”

$ $ $

It was almost intermission when her phone buzzed. Lisa read the text message and excused herself from the seat she’d been occupying in the rear of the auditorium.

Constance was waiting outside.

“How’s it going up there?” asked Lisa, nodding toward Cathedral House.

“Good on my end. As far as the rest of it, well…I know they made it as far as the terrace.” She shook her head. “This is a damn crazy job. How are things here?”

“Great!” Lisa opened her handbag and showed off the offerings. “I figure about five grand.”

“Nice. I should work that scam with you.”

“You should.” Lisa eyed Chase’s bag in Constance’s hands. “How about if I empty this into your bag? Mine is getting kind of full.”

“Go ahead.”

Lisa nudged her. “And I haven’t even started working the right side of the room. We can tag-team them. Between intermission and the exit that could be worth ten grand!”

Constance smiled. “I like the way you talk numbers.”

$ $ $

The Rev. Mr. Dennis Merribaugh had not been having a good day. He’d tried to watch the play, but was so distracted by all the things spinning out of control that he couldn’t focus on it. Instead, he spent most of the first act pacing the cathedral’s entrance hall, walking repeatedly from Adam and Eve past the Crucifixion to the Ten Commandments and back again.

He was outside, breathing the cool night air, when the auditorium doors banged open and people began to stream outside. That, he knew, would indicate intermission.

He almost disappeared again into the relative solitude of the cathedral when he saw perhaps the last person he expected to see standing on the edge of the crowd.

Sister Constance Brown.

Or rather, Constance
Price.
The
thief
.

He watched her as she talked to a tall woman with blond hair, and could only imagine what kind of scam she had up her sleeve. Well, she’d ripped them off once. He wouldn’t allow it to happen again.

“Sister Constance!” Merribaugh hissed as he quickly approached. “Or whatever your name is!”

Constance wasn’t used to being caught off guard…but she was. She’d assumed Merribaugh was somewhere in the dark theater with Hurley, not prowling around outside. Still, the FBI had given her their seal of approval. That should be good enough for Merribaugh.

It wasn’t.

He pulled her to the side, unwilling to air dirty laundry in front of the tall, blond woman.

“I believe,” he said, “that you somehow got into the safe and stole offerings to the cathedral before they could be banked.”

“Who, me?”

He wagged a finger in her face. “Don’t play innocent with me. I know your real name. I also know you have a criminal record.” Merribaugh looked down at the bag she held. “What’s in your bag.”

She kept calm. “Just a shirt.”

“I don’t trust you. Open it.”

“It’s just…”

But he had already leaned over and was unzipping the bag, exposing an estimated five thousand dollars in cash. Before she could open her mouth in protest he had ripped the bag out of her hands.

“Shame on you, Ms. Price.” Merribaugh wagged his finger again, and began walking away.

“Where you going with my money?” Constance asked in his wake.

“Somewhere safe. Somewhere you won’t be able to get your hands on it.”

When Merribaugh’s back was turned, Lisa joined Constance and they watched him disappear into the crowd.

Lisa shrugged. “Easy come, easy go, I suppose.”

“That pisses me off. He stole the money you stole fair and square. And Chase’s shirt, too.”

Lisa hiked her now almost-empty handbag. “At least he didn’t get my favorite ashtray. That would have sucked.”

$ $ $

The elderly security guard thought he heard the sound of wood splintering, followed by a thud.

First his mind was playing tricks on him, and now his ears. He wasn’t going to report
this
and become a laughingstock. No sir…

He looked at the newspaper on his desk and went back to trying to solve the Jumble.

Farraday put the panel truck in neutral, and it slowly rolled down the slight slope back to the rear of the auditorium. As the unlit truck neared a Dumpster, he gently applied the brakes—waiting until the last moment because applying the brakes meant illuminating the brake lights—and glided to a stop behind two other trucks parked at the loading dock.

In the back, Grant worked under the dome light on the locks of the Desk of Christ, which had survived the ten-foot drop intact. It seemed to take forever, but finally—about the time Farraday was docking the truck—he heard a gentle click that told him the first one had opened. With a tug, he began to slide out a drawer…

A series of loud blows boomed against the back door.

Grant closed the drawer, threw a moving pad over the Desk of Christ, and told Chase, “Whoever it is, get rid of ’em.”

Chase opened the back door eighteen inches and began to crawl out until he was blinded by a flashlight beam.

“You one of the movers?” asked an agitated voice from the other side of the light.

His eyes almost closed against the brightness, Chase slithered forward a few more feet until he was out of the truck, then stood. Only then did he answer. “Uh…yeah.”

“Got any identification?”

“Depends. You are…?”

“Officer Cason. Cathedral security. You got ID?”

“It’s in the truck,” Chase bluffed, not really sure what he’d do next. “Want me to get it?”

The security guard kept the light fixed on Chase’s eyes and didn’t answer the question. Instead, he asked, “What were you doing up at Cathedral House?”

“You…you mean that building over there?” The flashlight wobbled with the guard’s nod. “Uh…smoke break.” Chase warmed to the idea. “I didn’t want to smoke in the loading dock.” And he warmed a bit more. “You know, because children might come back here. And I’d hate to set a bad example for the children.”

Chase still couldn’t see anything except the blinding light aimed at his eyes, but heard Farraday heave himself out from behind the wheel, step to the ground, and ask, “Is there a problem, Officer?”

The light shifted from Chase to Farraday. Chase blinked a few times and tried to see again, but his eyes were filled with spots.

In the meantime, the guard was interrogating Farraday. “Just checking on how come you took the truck up to Cathedral House. No one’s supposed to have any business up there.”

“We didn’t know that,” said Farraday. “No one said nothin’ about that. This guy wanted a cigarette, is all.”

Now the flashlight bounced back and forth between Chase and Farraday, then across the side of the truck.

“Weren’t you carrying folding chairs?” the guard finally asked.

“Yeah,” said Chase. “Turns out, they needed them.”

Static from the security guard’s radio interrupted him, followed by a tinny voice. “Post Two, come in.”

The flashlight beam dropped to the ground as the security guard unclipped the radio from his belt. “Post Two.”

“What’s the situation with that truck?”

“Chair delivery for the play. Guy here says they drove over to Cathedral House for a cigarette, in order to get away from these premises.”

“And not set a bad example for the children,” Chase reminded him.

“And not set a bad example for the children.”

“All right,” was the response. “Tell ’em that area is strictly off-limits. Workers stay at the loading dock, ’kay?”

“I did, sir.”

“All right.”

There was a long pause as the security officer lowered his radio and began to clip it back on his belt, and Chase felt brief exhilaration that the cover story—flimsy as it was—had passed the test.

Until the tinny voice returned. “Post Two, better check the truck while you’re there. After that, make an inspection of Cathedral House an’ make sure everything’s secure.”

The security officer raised the radio back to his lips. “Roger that.” He turned to Chase and said, “Mind opening it up for me?”

Chase said, “Not at all.” What was going to happen next wasn’t
his
fault. This security guard had asked for it. Hadn’t he ever heard that story about curiosity and the cat?

He hoped that Grant and Leonard had heard every word of their encounter through the door, but—even if they hadn’t—knew he had no choice. He stepped to the back of the truck, grabbed a handle, and lifted…

…and was relieved to see Grant, sitting alone among a jumble of moving pads. Somewhere underneath those pads were Leonard and the Desk of Christ, but you’d never know it from a cursory view.

“See? Just moving pads.”

The flashlight darted across the interior, finally settling on Grant’s eyes.

Grant squinted and frowned. “You mind getting that thing outta my eyes?”

“Just making sure everything’s on the up-and-up, sir.” Still, the guard moved the light from Grant’s face and trained it on the mounds of pads. “Just you three fellas?”

“Yeah,” said Grant. “Just the three of us.”

The light moved around the back of the truck, then stopped. Chase followed it until he saw one exposed corner of the Desk of Christ Grant had missed in his rush to hide it.

“What’s that?”

“Just furniture,” said Chase, talking quickly. “Another job we picked up this afternoon. Delivery’s scheduled for first thing in the morning, so we figured we’d keep it on the truck overnight.”

The beam of light was now focused on the edge of the desk where the finish had worn off. The security guard blinked his eyes a few times, as if trying to reconcile this image with a familiar one from his time as a parishioner of the Virginia Cathedral of Love.

“Is that…?” he started to ask, then stopped.

“Just an old beat-up desk,” said Chase. “It’s nothing.”

But the security guard was already climbing into the back of the truck. No one tried to stop him…until he tripped over Leonard, hidden on the floor under a moving pad, and they knew it was time for action.

Several minutes later, with Officer Chris Cason now bound with packing tape, muted with an old rag, and secreted under a dusty pad in the back of the truck, the radio squawked to life again.

“Post Two, come in.”

“How do you work this thing?” Grant held the radio like it might explode.