Twilight (9 page)

“What the heck’s in the files?” Kate asked. “Did he make notes on confessions?”

“Nothing so private, I’m sure. Birth records, marriage records, business stuff, I suppose.” She hesitated. “Now that I think about it, I’m not really sure what he would have filed away. Right now, all I’m looking for is a list of church members as a starting point.”

At the door to Ken’s actual office, Dana halted again. This time before Kate could offer her another excuse for leaving, she forced herself to step across the threshold. She fumbled for the light switch, found it and flipped it on.

“Oh, my,” Kate murmured, mirroring Dana’s own gasp of shock.

The place had been ransacked. It had to have happened very recently, overnight, perhaps. Mrs. Fallon would never have tolerated such chaos for long.

Dana exchanged a look with her friend.

“Do you think Rick could have been right?” Kate asked in a hushed voice. “Was somebody in here trying to cover his tracks?”

Before she could reply, Dana caught sight of a smashed picture frame on the floor. A choked sob welled up in her throat. Being careful of the broken glass, she picked it up. The picture inside was unharmed. It was a family portrait, taken just last Christmas. Ken had kept it on his desk so he could glance up as he worked and catch a glimpse of the family he loved.

Dana clung to the frame so tightly she could feel the silver digging into her palms. Suddenly the room swam and her knees felt weak. She swayed, but Kate caught her and guided her to a chair.

“Sit. Head between your knees,” she instructed briskly. She nodded when Dana complied. “Good. Feel better?”

Dana sat up slowly. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Too much stress. Too little sleep. Not enough food. That’s just for starters,” Kate said. “I think we should get out of here.”

“Not without that list,” Dana said stubbornly. “It’s more important than ever.”

“Okay, you sit. I’ll find the list.”

“We should call the police.”

“Let Mrs. Fallon deal with the police. She’ll be in her element bossing them around.”

Dana glanced around the office. “This will be terribly upsetting for her.”

“No,” Kate corrected. “It will infuriate her. She’ll consider it almost as much of a desecration as if someone had stolen the cross from the altar.”

“True,” Dana agreed eventually. She still felt terrible about leaving the secretary to deal with the ransacking. “I just don’t know—”

“Well, I do,” Kate countered firmly just as she reached into a drawer of the desk and nabbed a stack of pages that had been stapled together. She waved it triumphantly. “The list. Now let’s get the heck out of here.”

Dana reluctantly followed her. They slipped through the parish hall and back outside. Not until they were back in her own yard did she breathe a sigh of relief. The cold air wiped away the last of her queasiness. With that list in hand, she suddenly felt rejuvenated. Okay, it was in Kate’s hand, at the moment, but they had it. Kate was demonstrating a remarkable alacrity for investigating. Driven by loyalty and indignation, the woman had absolutely no fear.

“I should have forced you to get your P.I. license years ago,” she told her as they sat down at the kitchen table with coffee and the rest of the pecan coffee cake Dana had made the day before. “You’re a natural.”

Kate’s eyes sparkled. “I’ve been looking for a new career goal. Maybe I’ve found my niche. That was invigorating. A real adrenaline rush. I haven’t felt this good since the last time I had sex.”

Dana chuckled. “And exactly how long ago was that?”

“Never mind,” Kate said primly.

“That long, huh?”

Kate made a face, then held out the packet of papers. “Okay, now that we have it, what do we do with it?”

Dana stared at the names and addresses blankly for the space of a heartbeat. It was doubtful that there would be an asterisk by any of the names suggesting he or she was a possible murderer. They were just going to have to use their instincts and some good old-fashioned detective work to discover if there was any suspect at all on the list.

“You’ve been a member here ever since we met, right?” she asked Kate.

“Yes. I transferred from my old church as soon as I found out your husband was the minister. I liked Ken the minute you introduced us. So did the girls.”

“And Ken and I have been here for nine years. Between us, surely we know something about most of the people on that list. How many are there?”

Kate flipped through the pages. “Looks like four or five hundred.”

“Holy cow!” she exclaimed, daunted by the unexpectedly high number.

Kate’s spirits never wavered. “I guess we’d better get started,” she said eagerly. “Shall I read the names aloud?”

“Uh-huh,” Dana murmured distractedly. She couldn’t stop thinking about the size of the task. “If there were that many members, how come Sunday services never drew more than a couple of hundred?”

“Lapsed believers,” Kate suggested. “Maybe some of these are dead.”

“Mrs. Fallon updates that list once a month. If they’re on there, they’re alive.”

“Maybe some just drifted away and never said anything. Or showed up once every couple of months or at Christmas. They’d still be considered active members, right?”

“Right. Or maybe they split very recently when they disagreed with Ken about the gang members,” Dana said. “He might have told Mrs. Fallon to leave them on, in the hope they’d be back. We can probably eliminate anyone that neither of us is familiar with. That should narrow the list down to half, anyway, don’t you think?”

“Only one way to find out,” Kate offered briskly. “Ready?”

“I suppose so.”

“First name, Richard Adams.”

It didn’t ring any bells at all for Dana. “Do you know him?” she asked.

Kate shook her head.

“Neither do I. Put a question mark next to his name.”

They were still at it, with only a handful of recognizable parishioners so far, when Dana glanced at the clock and noted that it was past noon. If Rick kept his word, he would be here for her in a couple of hours.

“Let’s get some lunch and call it a day,” she suggested. “We’ve made it through almost half the alphabet, anyway.”

Kate stared at her. “Why not finish the rest? Are you going out?”

“Back into Chicago, as a matter of fact,” she said, forcing a blasé note into her voice.

“Oh, no. Not again. You cannot be thinking of going back to Yo, Amigo.”

“Actually, I am. Rick’s coming for me. I’m going to be teaching a photography class.”

Kate’s mouth dropped open. “You’re not!”

“I am. Care to come help?”

“My, my,” Kate murmured. “He’s even better than I’d imagined.”

Dana stared at her. “Meaning?”

“Just that I thought you’d be a tough sell. I’d given him forty-eight hours to work his magic.”

“I’m not doing this by choice,” Dana protested.

“Yeah, right. He twisted your arm and begged.”

“No,” Dana said. “He made it a condition of my talking to the kids at the center.”

“Then by all means, go, talk.”

“I will, but first I’m going to call Mrs. Fallon and see if the police have been there. I haven’t seen any squad cars cruising by, have you?”

“No,” Kate said. “That seems a little odd, now that I think about it.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Dana said as she dialed the familiar number. At the sound of her voice, Mrs. Fallon immediately began clucking sympathetically.

“Oh, you poor darling. I saw the car in the driveway and guessed you were back. How are you?”

“I’m just fine, thanks. Mrs. Fallon, about Ken’s office.”

“Oh, you saw that, did you? I’m so sorry. I thought I’d have it tidied up before you came over. That’s why I didn’t call earlier.”

“Then the police have been there to investigate.”

“Investigate, my eye,” she said with disgust. “The police are the ones who left it that way.”

9

“D
ana, what on earth? Where are you going?” Kate demanded as Dana hung up the phone and grabbed her jacket.

“Back to the church.”

“Why?”

“That mess we found over there was caused by the cops.”

“You’re kidding.” Kate reached for her own coat and followed Dana out the door, jogging to keep up with her.

Dana had never been so angry in all of her life. It had been one thing to think that the destruction in Ken’s office had been caused by an intruder of some kind. It was quite another to realize that the people responsible for it were supposed to be the good guys.

There was nothing surreptitious about the entry she made this time. She slammed open the door and ran across the parish hall. Mrs. Fallon was waiting for her, her distress plain.

“See, there, I’ve gone and upset you,” she murmured apologetically. “I never meant to do that.”

“You’re not the one who upset me,” Dana reassured the flustered old woman. “Did the police give you a card? Do you know which officers were here? How many were there?”

The barrage of questions only added to Mrs. Fallon’s already visible distress. “Now, wait a minute,” she said. “Let me think. This whole thing has me so rattled I can’t string two words together that make any sense.”

“I’m sorry. Let’s sit down,” Dana suggested.

“No, no, I’ll be okay. There were two of them,” she said eventually, “though now that I think about it, one of them looked as if he were from Chicago. I was so frantic when they came barging in here, I didn’t focus on that at the time. I’m almost certain he wasn’t wearing a local uniform.” She opened her desk drawer and nabbed a card. “Here, this is the card the one from our department gave me. He wasn’t in uniform. I believe he was a detective.”

“Dillon O’Flannery,” Dana read aloud. She glanced at Kate, who’d grown up right here in town. “Have you ever run across him?”

“Not me. I try to stay as far away from cops as I can. They make me nervous, especially when I’m behind the wheel. One more speeding ticket and they’ll take away my keys. What about you? I thought you knew most of those guys.”

“So did I,” Dana said grimly, punching in the number on the card. It looked as if it might be a direct line, rather than the central switchboard.

“O’Flannery.”

His voice was deep, his manner terse. Dana took an immediate dislike to him. Of course, her reaction at this point wouldn’t have been any more positive if he’d sung his greeting like Pavarotti.

“Officer O’Flannery,” she said sweetly, deliberately downgrading his rank.

“It’s Detective O’Flannery.”

“Not if I get my way,” she retorted. “I’d suggest you get your butt over to St. Michael’s pronto, buster, or I’ll have your badge before the day’s out.”

“Now, wait just a minute! Who the hell is this?”

“This is Mrs. Dana Miller. You recently ransacked my husband’s office. I’d like you here with an explanation and a cleanup crew, on the double.”

She slammed the phone in his ear before he could respond, then smiled grimly. “That ought to do it.”

Mrs. Fallon looked stunned. Kate appeared worried.

“Do you think, maybe, you were just a little too abrupt?” Kate asked. “Maybe the situation called for a little diplomacy and friendly persuasion. He is the one with the badge, after all.”

“Men like Detective O’Flannery do not respond to persuasion. You have to match their Gestapo-like tactics to get their attention.” The police station was only blocks away. The sound of a siren’s blare getting closer by the second proved her point. “I believe that would be Detective O’Flannery now.”

Kate and Mrs. Fallon stared toward the door, as if waiting for a vision to appear. Sure enough, a man wearing black slacks and a gray tweed blazer came charging through like a lineman for the Chicago Bears. He was a vision, all right, the epitome of seething male.

He pulled up short at the sight of the three women. He seemed to zero in on Dana at once as the culprit behind the phone call. She wasn’t quite sure what that said about her appearance. Maybe she was the one who looked as if she were about to flip out.

“You would be Mrs. Miller,” he guessed.

“And you’re Detective O’Flannery,” she said, then added pointedly, “For the moment, anyway.”

Blue eyes the color of a very deep lake locked on her. He seemed to be struggling with his temper.

“I know what a strain you’ve been under,” he said eventually.

His tone was so patronizing she wanted to slug him. “You have no idea,” she shot back. “Finding that my husband’s office was leveled by two cops hasn’t improved my mood any.” Hands on hips, she squared off in front of him. “Exactly what did you hope to find in there?”

“Something that might help the Chicago police with their case,” he said. He turned to Kate, as if to appeal to her more reasonable nature. “We like to cooperate with other departments whenever we can.”

“Assuming that a search of my husband’s office was critical to the investigation,” Dana shot back, “do you have any idea why it took them over a month to get around to it?”

“They didn’t share that with me. They sent an officer and I came along for the ride.”

“What a prince,” Dana said sarcastically. Between this man and Rick Sanchez, her normal good nature had taken a serious beating. She was turning into a first-class bitch. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time to worry about correcting that shift in her personality. She had a hunch getting a few straight answers would eventually take care of the problem, anyway.

“Tearing things up around here must have made your day,” she accused.

Mrs. Fallon swallowed hard and sank into the chair behind her desk. She looked as if she feared Dana’s arrest was imminent. After working for a man as even-tempered and gentle as Ken, seeing Dana in action had to be a shock.

Dana glanced at Kate and saw that she looked just the teensiest bit shell-shocked herself, although her state seemed to have more to do with the detective than with Dana’s behavior. She took her own survey of O’Flannery. She supposed that someone with eyes that blue and mussed hair the color of coal might have that sort of effect on some women. It was a pity Kate was one of them.

“Did you find anything?” Kate asked in a breathy voice that Dana had never once heard come out of her mouth before.

Detective O’Flannery was either a sucker for a smitten woman or just plain relieved to have someone address him in a friendlier tone than Dana had. He beamed at her.

“Why don’t we all sit down?” he suggested. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Did you find anything?” Dana snapped.

“Sweetie, I think he was just about to tell us,” Kate soothed. She latched on to Dana’s hand with a warning grip so tight Dana’s wedding ring dug into her finger.

“Fine,” Dana said, but she refused to sit.

Her stubbornness seemed to amuse the detective. He and Kate exchanged commiserating glances. Dana concluded she was going to have to fire her new assistant investigator, since her hormones seemed to be getting in the way of her better judgment.

“Did you find anything in my husband’s office?” she repeated in a more patient tone.

“Nothing conclusive,” he equivocated.

“Meaning that you found nothing or that you found something, but you just haven’t figured out yet what it means?”

He seemed taken aback by the question. Maybe he hadn’t figured she had the intelligence to realize there was a difference.

“Very good, Mrs. Miller,” he praised.

There was that condescending tone again. Dana gritted her teeth and forced herself not to fly off the handle again. “Which is it?” Just in case he couldn’t manage to answer a direct question, she tried another angle. “Did you remove anything from the office?”

“Your husband’s calendar,” he conceded grudgingly.

There was no need to ask why. If Ken had had meetings in the hours or even days immediately preceding his murder, it was entirely possible that one of those might point toward a killer. She should have thought of that herself right after his death, but she’d been too distraught then. She’d been thinking like a grieving widow, not like an investigator.

Given his overall attitude, she gathered there would be little point in asking Detective O’Flannery what names were on the calendar. It wasn’t necessary, anyway. Mrs. Fallon kept a duplicate schedule on her desk. A quick glance in the secretary’s direction drew a subtle nod, indicating that she knew precisely what Dana was thinking and that she was still in possession of the second calendar.

Dana returned her gaze to the detective. “I assume my husband’s calendar was in the middle of his desk, where he always kept it,” she said blandly.

He nodded. “I believe it was.”

“Then would you mind telling me why the hell you had to tear the office up to find it?”

He regarded her blandly. “We didn’t go in specifically looking for a calendar.”

“What, then? What else were you hoping to find? What was on the warrant? I assume you had one.”

“We had one,” he said grimly. “Mrs. Miller, really, why don’t you just leave the investigation to the Chicago police? Let them do their jobs.”

“If one more person suggests that, I’m going to scream. If they were doing their jobs, they’d have the killer behind bars by now. Even a halfway decent cop knows that leads start turning cold after a few days. It’s been weeks now, and the Chicago cops have done diddly-squat, as far as I can tell. Now, are you going to tell me what you were really looking for in my husband’s office, or am I going to have to sue you for violation of his civil rights, trespassing and anything else I can come up with?”

He exchanged another look with Kate, but for once Kate didn’t appear overly sympathetic. He sighed heavily.

“Okay, you asked for it. We were looking for drugs, Mrs. Miller. And, yes, indeed, the search warrant mentioned drugs specifically, in case that was going to be your next question.”

If the idea had not been so totally preposterous, Dana might have grabbed the vase of flowers off Mrs. Fallon’s desk and cracked it over his thick skull. As it was, she laughed.

“You think my husband, a respected minister, had drugs in his office? His
church
office? Are you out of your mind?” she inquired.

“The Chicago police had a tip from a very reliable source that your husband was dealing drugs and that Yo, Amigo was the front for his operation.”

Speechless, Dana sank onto a chair.

“You’re a liar!”

Rick Sanchez’s voice cut through the already charged air like a whip. Dana hadn’t heard his approach. She doubted if any of the others had, either. Grateful for once to see him, grateful to have such a vehement ally, she didn’t flinch when he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. In fact, she found the murderous glint in his eyes rather satisfying. Let these two males go
mano a mano
for a while and see which one came out the winner. She’d put her money on Rick.

“Who are you?” Detective O’Flannery asked in a quiet tone clearly meant to defuse the rapidly escalating situation.

“I’m Rick Sanchez, the coordinator of Yo, Amigo. And this source of yours better have a name, or I’ll start by suing you personally for slander.”

Mrs. Fallon, who hadn’t spoken since they’d been seated, rose unsteadily to her feet and walked over to the detective. She barely came to his shoulder, but that didn’t seem to intimidate her one whit.

“Young man, I will not allow you to come in here and defame the name of a decent, kindhearted man. It was bad enough that you tore the place apart, but saying such things about Reverend Miller puts you in cahoots with the devil, as far as I’m concerned, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Amen, Mrs. Fallon,” Kate said.

Dana observed that Detective O’Flannery was looking considerably less sure of himself than he had been when he’d walked in. He appeared to realize that he’d lost his sole ally.

“I know that all of you admired and respected Reverend Miller,” he said gently. He looked at Dana. “And you loved him. But no one knows everything there is to know about another human being. I’ve talked to parents whose child has just committed murder, and they will give testament that no child of theirs would ever do such a thing. It’s a defense mechanism. We don’t want to see evil in those we love.”

Dana shot out of her chair at that. “My husband was not evil, Detective. If you think we’re biased on the subject, then ask any member of his congregation. Ask the kids in Chicago whose lives were turned around because of him. Ask the patients in the hospital who sat beside their beds when they were ill? Ask some of our elderly parishioners whom they called in the middle of the night when some noise frightened them? It wasn’t the police, dammit. It was my husband. If you think that man could ever,
ever
sell drugs, then you are so delusional you’re a danger to the community.”

“Amen,” Kate said again.

Detective O’Flannery looked more distressed by Kate’s defection than by Dana’s actual tirade.

“I’m just telling you what was in the warrant,” he said defensively.

“Was the source named in the warrant?” Rick asked. “I’ll bet I already know the answer to that. He wasn’t. Because he was too much of a coward to come forward publicly with such ridiculous charges. He would have been laughed out of town. I could give you a list, though. There are half a dozen people in Chicago with the clout to convince a judge that what they’re saying should be taken seriously enough to justify a search warrant in another jurisdiction. We could start with the mayor. Now, there’s a man worthy of a police investigation.”

The detective held up his hands. “Whoa, let’s not start throwing mud around.”

“Excuse me?” Dana protested. “Did I hear you correctly? You come in here slandering my husband, and now you’re worried about a little mud being splattered on some other good citizens?”

“Settle down,” the detective said sharply. “All of you. First of all, I don’t know who the Chicago source was. Second, I didn’t say I bought into the theory. I was just telling you what was in the warrant. That’s one reason I came along. The charge didn’t match anything I’d ever heard about Reverend Miller. I wanted to see that everything was done by the book.”