The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (9 page)

Her eyes widened. “You beast! If you breathe a word!” Tears flowed fast. “How much do you want?”

“I don't want anything.” I shook my head. “Five people have died in the last two months, your husband included. All of them nasty. Sean Hogan, Amanda Preakness, Percival Kendall Ford, and Dorothy Kent.”

“Dottie? They said it was a botox allergy.”

“It doesn't matter what they said, mother.”

She blinked and quickly made the sign of the cross. “Are you confessing to me, Patrick? Have you done this? Have you come for me?”

“Stop!” I balled my fists and began to mutter. Like most folks, she bought into the Vatican version of the
talented
. She figured I was going sacrifice her to my Satanic Master, or at least turn her into a toad.

Tempting, so tempting.

She paled and then sat hard on a daybed. “I'll do anything you ask, Patrick. You don't want to hurt me, your mother.”

I snorted. If she had enough presence of mind to invoke the maternal bond, she wasn't really shocked, just scheming. “How was Anderson hooked up with the others?”

“Hogan did the trust work, damn him. Everyone else we knew socially. The Club, of course, the Opera Society. Various nonprofit boards.” She paused, her eyes sharpening. “Yes, this is all your fault.”

“My fault?”

“Absolutely. They were all on the board of the Fellowship. All of them.” Her accusing finger quivered. “I never wanted him to have anything to do with that place, but he did, because of you. And now he's dead.”

“The Fellowship never killed anyone.”

“They saved your life, Patrick. I know. He told me.” Her eyes became arctic slits. “If they hadn't, if you were dead, my husband wouldn't be. Dear God, I wish it were so.”

She burst into a series of sobs which were as piteous as they were fake, so I took my leave. It really hadn't been her best effort at emotional torture. Anderson's death had hurt her. Probably was more than having a leash on her spending. I wondered how long it would be until she realized that herself.

From the Heights I descended back into my realm. People in my mother's class acknowledge it exists, but only just barely. It's where they go slumming when cheating at golf has lost its thrill. For the rest of us it's just a waiting room. Prison or death, those are your choices. Sure, you hear stories of someone making good and escaping. Never seems any of us down here knew them when; and they damned sure don't know any of us now.

Reverend Martha Raines could have made it out, but she stayed by choice. She was kind of the “after” picture of Amanda Preakness doing a chocolate diet for a decade or two; but her brown eyes had never narrowed in anger. Not that she couldn't be passionate. She could, and often held forth at City Council meetings or prayer services. She kept her white hair long and wore it in a braid that she tied off with little beaded cords the children in her mission made for her.

She smiled broadly as I stepped through the door and I couldn't help but mirror it. Even before we could speak, she caught me in a hug and held on tight, even when I was ready to let go. She whispered, “You need this, Patrick.”

Maybe I did.

Finally she stepped back. “I'm so sorry for your loss.”

“No loss.”

She gave me a sidelong glance. “I seem to remember things a little bit differently.”

“You always think the best of everyone.”

“It's a skill you could acquire.”

“I don't like being disappointed.”

She slipped an arm around my waist and guided me into the mission. The Fellowship has built out through several warehouses and manufacturing buildings which, save for Martha's fiery oratory, would have long since been converted into lofts. The city wanted this end of town gentrified and envisioned galleries and bistros. Martha thought buildings should house people and proved convincing when she addressed the City Council.

Things had changed a lot since I'd done my time in the mission. The first hall still served as church and dining facility, but the stacks of mattresses that used to be piled in the corner had moved deeper into the complex. The far wall had been decorated with a huge mural that looked like a detail piece of da Vinci's
Last Supper
. Thirteen plates, each with a piece of bread on it; but one was already moldy. The style wasn't quite right for da Vinci—some of that stuff my mother had forced into my head was creeping back.

Martha smiled. “Our artist is very talented.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Talented? Or
talented
?”

“She's a lot like you, Patrick.” Martha just smiled. “You'll like her.”

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“About Bob Anderson?”

“About all of them.”

She studied my face for a moment, then led me over to a table and pulled out two chairs. She sat facing me and took my hands in hers. “They were all lovely people, every one of them. I know many people said bad things about them; but they had seen the work we do here. They wanted to help. They did things for us. Projects. Fund-raisers. What they gave wasn't much for them, but it was everything for us.”

I nodded. “When they died, they left the mission money.”

Martha drew back. “What are you suggesting?”

“There are idiots down here who figure that if you start making money, they want a piece. Criminals aren't bright; and you're a soft touch.”

“True on both counts.” She smiled. “But your stepfather and Sean Hogan were not stupid. Bequests go into a trust with a board of trustees who vote on capital expenses. I can't really touch that money. More to the point, no one has tried to extort money.”

“No rivalries? No animosity on the committee?”

Martha smiled. “The meetings were all very pleasant.”

That didn't surprise me. Martha had
talent
, though I wasn't sure she knew it. Somehow her positive nature was infectious. When she gave a sermon, people listened and her words got inside them. She always exhorted folks to be their best selves. It was like a round of applause accompanied by a boot in the ass that left you wanting more of each.

It was her inclination to think the best of folks that had her believing Anderson's death was a loss. She remembered he'd pulled me out of the Mission and had given me money. She thought I'd been rescued. My mother, having taken to Christianity like a drunk to vodka, had tried to save me a couple times before, especially after my father went away. Martha thought this was another instance of maternal concern.

Truth was Anderson had been fed up. He just wanted me to stop embarrassing my mother. He wanted me gone from the city. By giving me money he hoped I'd crawl into some motel room and die anonymously, pretty much the way he did.

What goes around, comes around.

“Who else was on the committee?”

“No one, per se. They'd lined up a number of people to make donations. Let me get you a list.”

Martha left her chair, then waved a hand at a petite woman with white blonde hair and a pale complexion. She had freckles, but they were barely visible beneath a spattering of paint. “Leah, come here. I want you to meet Patrick Molloy. He used to live here, too.”

Leah smiled at me, all the way up into her blue eyes. I started liking her right then, because a lot of beautiful women would have been mortified to be introduced wearing overalls thick with paint. She wiped her hand on a rag, then offered it to me, bespeckled and smeared. “I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Molloy.”

“Trick.” She had a firm handshake, warm and dry. My flesh tingled as we touched. It was more than attraction. She truly was
talented
, but I was liking what I was seeing normally so much that I didn't look at her through magic. That would have been an invasion of privacy—the last bastion of privacy in the mission.

I nodded toward the mural. “Nice work.”

She smiled and reluctantly released my hand as Martha headed toward her office. “You recognize it as da Vinci, yes?”

“Not his style.”

“True. I interpreted it through
vanitas
.”

“Uh huh.”

Leah laughed delightfully. “Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century painters in Flanders and the Netherlands popularized the style. It's still-life with decay. It's supposed to remind us that everything is fleeting and that we'll die some day. But you knew that.”

It was my turn to laugh. “That's maybe the one bit of art knowledge that stuck. I was in my nihilistic teen phase when I was forcefed.”

“I'm sorry.”

“For?”

“Art is something that everyone should experience because it helps them grow. You got it like you were a veal-calf being fattened up. No wonder you didn't like it.”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“But you don't go to galleries or museums, do you?” She glanced down. “I used to, all the time. I'd sit and sketch. I'd see the work through the artist's eyes and then I'd endure watching boorish people troop through, or school kids rushed through with only enough time to look at the back of the kid in front of them. They were walking through beauty and saw none of it. Yet the teachers and the parents all thought the kids were getting culture.”

“They were, it was just the McRembrant version of it.”

She snorted out a little laugh, but didn't look up. “I kind of lost it. Nervous breakdown. That's how I ended up here. Martha's very good at putting puzzles back together.”

I nodded, reached up and parted my hair. “You can't even see the joints anymore.”

Leah laughed openly, warmly, and looked up again. “She said you could be cold, but I don't get that. And she said you could be trusted.”

“She's right on both counts.”

“I'm right? I guess my work here is done.” Martha handed me a print-out of the recent donors to the mission. “The initials after each name indicates the contact.”

“Thanks.” I wasn't sure what the list would get me, but if the Fellowship was the connection, it was a vector in. “I guess I have to go to work.”

Martha smiled. “You go, but you're going to come back later. We'll be having a big crowd tonight, and I need an extra hand on the soup line.”

Leah nodded. “You soup them, I'll bread them.”

I studied her face, then smiled pretty much against my will. “I think I'd like that.”

Back in the street, my phone rang.

Cate. “4721 Black Oak Road. You want to be here now.”

“Who?”

“E. Theodore Carlson.”

I glanced at the printout. “We have a winner.”

“I'd hate to see what happened to the loser. Hurry, Trick. It's not pretty, and it isn't going to get any better with time.”