The Path of the Crooked (Hope Street Church Mysteries Book 1) (6 page)

Nathan rose from his chair. “Why don’t we bring Fellowship Hour to Wesley?”

Quinton gestured to the cake holder on his desk. “I’ve got this triple chocolate praline layer cake just waiting to be sliced. We can fill a Thermos of coffee for him too.”

“What a wonderful idea.” Savannah smiled. “If someone wouldn’t mind dropping me off at home afterward, I’d love to join you.”

Jake practically leapt from his chair. “I’ll take you! That is, if you don’t mind riding in my work van.”

Savannah reached out and grasped Jake’s hand. “It will make a fine chariot.”

Jake lit up all over at Savannah’s touch.

As the group organized themselves for the trip to the jail, Cooper softly made her excuses and headed for the door. Before she was able to cross the threshold, Nathan blocked her way with an arm.

“Here’s my card,” he said. “Call me if you have any questions about the workbook assignments or anything else. We really hope you come back next week.” He shifted on his feet, clearly searching for the appropriate words. “Sorry about everything. It must have felt pretty uncomfortable.”

Again, Cooper thought about her encounter with Brooke. She should say something about the experience to Nathan. The other members of the group were out of earshot and she could quietly confide in him and then let him handle the information. She knew telling someone was the right thing to do, but she couldn’t seem to get the words out. All she wanted to do was go home. She wanted time to absorb the stunning news inside her greenhouse, where she could run her fingers through some soil while listening to a Bob Dylan CD. She wanted home, where her parents were close at hand—her mother humming hymns and cooking while her father drank coffee and did the puzzles in the Sunday paper.

“Thanks,” she said, accepting Nathan’s card. “I hope the group can bring Mr. Hughes some solace.” She smiled briefly, pivoted awkwardly on her wedge-shaped heels, and hastened down the hall.

As she shoved the doors to the outside open, the sound of the congregation lifting their voices in the opening song of worship seemed to explode straight through the walls of the building. Cooper froze and leaned against the aged bricks. It was not a song she knew, for she was only familiar with traditional hymns, but the melody washed through her. The voices singing “Holy, holy, holy” in beautiful unison restored some steadiness to her step. After absorbing some courage from the repetitive lyrics, she walked slowly away from the jubilant music and toward her truck.

• • •

Sunday suppers around the Lee table were normally boisterous affairs. Ashley and her husband, Lincoln, often joined the family for the large midday meal and Maggie always outdid herself preparing a feast reminiscent in its bounty of a Thanksgiving celebration.

That Sunday, however, Ashley called to say that she and Lincoln had been invited to his father’s golf club for lunch following their church service and she wouldn’t be coming over. Maggie was disappointed by the news, but both Earl and Grammy seemed secretly pleased. Now there would be more helpings of Maggie’s honey-glazed ham for the taking, with plenty of leftovers for biscuits the following morning. In addition, no one would have to worry about whether the Lees’ table manners would be offensive to Ashley or her blue-blooded husband.

After Cooper passed the dishes containing lima beans, onion rolls, and scalloped potatoes smothered in cheese down the table to her father, she stared at the food on her own plate as though she didn’t know what to do with it.

“You’re awful quiet, Cooper,” Maggie said as she slathered butter on an onion roll. “I saw the Hope Street flyer you left in the kitchen. Did you enjoy the service?”

Grammy pointed her ham-laden fork across the table at her granddaughter. “What happened? That rock-and-roll praise music addle your brain? I heard folks dance in the aisles at those modern churches.”

Cooper pushed her pile of limas back and forth on her plate. “I accidentally found myself in a Bible study meeting.”

“Bet you felt like a schoolgirl who hasn’t done her homework.” Grammy cackled and pushed such a large spoonful of potatoes into her mouth that Cooper felt sure bits of the starchy vegetable would come out of Grammy’s ears.

“You liked them Bible stories when you were little,” Earl said in his soft voice. “I remember reading the story of the Flood to you over and over. You always loved the part when the dove came back to the ark with the olive branch.”

Cooper cut into a piece of ham with the side of the fork and then tapped on its pink surface with the tines. “I still love those stories, Daddy. But that’s all I know. The popular stories. The Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Moses parting the sea, and Jesus’s birth and death. Still, the group asked me to come back. I’m going to buy a workbook and a study Bible and stuff, because I like these people. It felt good to be with them.”

Maggie passed the plate of rolls to Grammy, who grabbed one greedily and covered the golden top with a thick layer of butter.

“You’ve always loved reading and learning, Cooper. This sounds like just the thing for you,” Maggie said.

“Yeah, but it’s not just the Bible study that’s preying on my mind,” Cooper began. “Something else happened and it’s weighing on me.” She told her family about Brooke’s murder and Wesley’s arrest. She then explained about her visit to Capital City two Fridays ago.

“So even though I met Mrs. Hughes, I don’t know anything important about her. Nothing worth talking to anyone about,” she added once she had finished. “This is all police business now, I figure. Nothing I can do will change the situation.”

“Then you shouldn’t feel troubled,” Grammy said decisively and pushed her dinner plate forward an inch, signaling that she was ready for someone to clear it away. Settling back in her chair, she shifted her teeth inside her mouth as Cooper wrestled with her conscience. Seemingly satisfied with the result of her statement, Grammy looked at Maggie and grinned. “What’s for dessert?”

• • •

After a lemon yogurt pound cake drizzled with a sweet lemon glaze, Grammy commanded Cooper to lend a hand feeding the animals. Cooper first helped to clean up after their large meal and then left her parents to dry dishes side by side, exactly as they had done for the past thirty-eight years. She grabbed a pair of heavy leather gloves Earl kept hanging next to the fireplace and made her way to her grandmother’s room.

Grammy needed no assistance feeding the stray tomcat she had taken in two summers ago. Her twenty-two-pound bedfellow was given the name Little Boy when he had first appeared, soaking wet with a blood-encrusted stump of a tail, at the Lees’ back door. Having miraculously heard the kitten’s mewling over the pounding rain, Grammy carried the little orange cat inside, carefully dried his matted fur, and cleaned this wound. It was likely that a car had crushed the yearling’s tail.

The next morning, having been fed and doctored, the newly named Little Boy had curled up on Grammy’s pillow and made it clear that he planned to remain there for the rest of his days. Typically, Grammy cared for strays only until homes could be found for them, so she never named them, but Little Boy clawed his way straight into the old woman’s heart. As the months passed, she snuck table scraps to her room and fed Little Boy choice tidbits until his stomach was a centimeter shy of sweeping the ground. Whenever the massive tabby saw her coming, his purrs would echo like a waterfall and he’d wave the stump of his tail back and forth like a dog.

Ever since Cooper had been a child, cats, dogs, birds, opossums, raccoons, and rabbits had made their way to the back door of their house. At first, strays arrived sporadically, but once Grammy came to live with her son and his family, more and more animals sought refuge with the Lee clan. Grammy wasn’t much of a people person, but the animal kingdom was clearly aware that she had a soft spot for any creature with fur or feathers.

At the moment, she was caretaker to an injured turtle, a baby squirrel, and a three-legged dog. Those were temporary residents, however. Over the years, the only permanent additions to the Lee family had been Little Boy and Columbus the hawk.

“Got your gloves?” Grammy asked when Cooper entered her room and handed her lettuce and carrots for the turtle’s supper. “You handle Columbus’s snack and I’ll take care of the other critters.” She turned away and stroked Little Boy. “Mama’s got some juicy ham for you. Why, you’re practically wastin’ away!”

The cat purred and arched his back expectantly. Smiling at the pair, Cooper went out to the backyard, approached a birdcage large enough to house an ostrich, and pulled on her gloves.

“Like to go for a walk, big fellow?” she asked the magnificent red-tailed hawk perched inside. The raptor gazed at her with its piercing yellow eyes and then blinked three times, as though to signal his readiness to be released from captivity. Cooper opened the door to the aviary Earl had custom-built and held out her arm. Columbus shook his head, ruffled his feathers, and uttered a brief squawk as he hopped onto her right forearm.

Columbus had been shot through the wing during his days as a working bird at the county airport. Like a dozen other hawks and falcons, Columbus was encouraged to establish a territory around the runways. The birds of prey feasted on the less intelligent feathered inhabitants living near the airfield. In the past, pigeons and doves had flown right into the engines of planes, so when pesticides and owl decoys failed, birds of prey were used in their place. The hawks, beloved by all the airfield pilots and employees, had successfully prevented an accident since 1972. Columbus was one of the program’s finest hunters and had performed his duty perfectly until someone decided to use him as target practice.

Columbus’s plight was written up in the
Richmond Times-Dispatch
, and within the hour, Grammy was on the phone with the airfield and Earl found himself buying supplies with which to build a home for the winged hero. Even though Grammy fed him rodents caught in traps Earl set out around the perimeter of their property, the mighty hunter preferred to catch his own fare. Due to his injury, he couldn’t fly for long, but Columbus enjoyed his romps in the open air, and Cooper always took pleasure in seeing him soar above the fields.

She walked him to the split-rail fence and then thrust her arm upward, providing him with a little momentum so that he could begin his circled ascent. As she methodically traced a splinter of wood on the top fence rail, Cooper watched Columbus climb higher and higher, his white breast gleaming against the cobalt sky. She held her breath as the sun illuminated his tail feathers and they glowed the russet red of a sunset.

Cooper observed his graceful flight for several minutes and then let her eyes drift to the swaying tips of the pine trees. Looking back toward the earth, she noted the bold and brambly forsythia and a collection of robins rooting around beneath a loose blanket of dried leaves. Spring had arrived and Cooper should have been elated by the new season of growth. Instead, she found that she was weeping.

Swatting the tears away in annoyance, Cooper’s attention was distracted by Columbus as he abruptly dove into the center of the field, his talons curved in preparation to strike. When the hawk rose above the tall grass seconds later, a squirming gray shape wriggling in the prison made by his left talon, Columbus seemed to smile with pleasure. He then alighted on the fence rail and consumed his meal in under a minute.

“That’s one less shrew for the taming,” Cooper said and held out her arm.

Just as she was returning a reluctant Columbus to his cage, Grammy appeared, wearing her Sunday afternoon tracksuit. She must have changed out of her church clothes while Cooper and Columbus were visiting the field. Grammy had a different color tracksuit for every day of the week. Sunday’s was a deep purple, and like all the others was made out of the type of shiny polyester that made
swish-swish
noises with every step.

“You got somethin’ on your mind, girlie. I can smell it.” Grammy stuck a bony finger into Columbus’s cage and stroked the feathers on the top of his dignified head. “What’s eatin’ you?”

Marveling once again over her grandmother’s intuitiveness, Cooper decided to be honest. “That woman who was killed . . . we talked while I was working on her copier. Something was troubling her, but I don’t know if telling anybody what she said to me will matter a lick.” Cooper quickly went on to explain how certain the members of the Sunrise Bible Study Group were that Wesley Hughes hadn’t killed his wife.

Grammy gave Cooper a sharp look. “Those folks are hurtin’ somethin’ fierce. If you can do anything to grant that woman justice and to help an innocent man from being punished for a crime he didn’t commit—and you keep in mind that he might damned well have done it, no matter what those Bible folks say—then you gotta share what you know.” Grammy bent over and pulled up a drooping sock covered with polka-dotted Easter eggs. She never wore any jewelry or makeup, but she loved socks—the more garish the better.

“I know you’ve turned into a bit of a hermit since your man took up with another woman, my girl, but there comes a time”—she wiggled her finger at Cooper—“when you need to dust yourself off and get back to the business of livin’. You gonna spend the rest of your life with your nose stuck in some Time Life fix-it book and your hands buried in dirt when you should be changin’ diapers and makin’ supper for your husband?”

Cooper swept at the dirt with her left foot. Every conversation with Grammy ended with a similar lecture. Before her grandmother could warm up to the subject too much, Cooper placed a hand on the old woman’s twiggy arm. “I’ll call one of the Sunrise members tomorrow and tell them all I know. Maybe figuring out what happened to Brooke is like figuring out what’s wrong with a broken machine. I can probably be of some help to them.”

“That’s my girl.” Grammy seemed satisfied, but as she moved to return inside the house, she hesitated long enough to say, “But make sure you call one of the single men in that group. He could turn out to be the answer to your prayers.”