The Path of the Crooked (Hope Street Church Mysteries Book 1) (3 page)

“Lord,” she began hesitantly and then felt words flow more easily from her mouth. “I hope that Brooke’s husband is all that she says he is. I hope he rides up in his white limo and sweeps that nice woman away in a tide of happiness so powerful that whatever is troubling her will be completely washed away. Amen.”

Not bad,
Cooper thought and felt the tension she’d felt in Brooke’s office ebb away. Chewing on one of her mother’s chocolate pinwheel cookies, she got back to work.

2

“I can’t believe my only sister works as a copier repairman!” Ashley complained to their mother, Magnolia “Maggie” Lee, as Maggie finished up her daily baking that Sunday afternoon. “Do you know how weird I feel telling people what my sister does for a living?”

“Why?” Maggie momentarily paused in rolling out a ball of cookie dough for her Chinese almond cookies and gave her younger child a perplexed look. “What’s wrong with Cooper’s job with Make It Work!? Your sister is very
talented with her hands. She can fix most anything, just like her daddy.”

Ashley tossed a thick lock of glossy, radiant blonde hair over her shoulder. “It would be one thing if she just did administrative stuff, but she actually gets greasy and wears a uniform with an embroidered name tag! What’s next? Coveralls? Steel-tipped boots?”

Mrs. Lee shrugged. “Someone has to keep those complicated machines workin’ smoothly. Folks seem to really depend on them these days. And someone has to be firm enough to tell those stingy business owners when their machines have reached the end of their road and need to be replaced.” She teared up. “Oh, now you’ve got me thinkin’ about what I’m gonna do when Grammy is called by the angels!”

Ashley rolled a pair of captivating cerulean eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with Grammy, Mama. Don’t get all worked up. Besides, I don’t think the angels are going to be able to handle her. She’s going to be with us forever.”

Maggie brightened. “You’re right, dear. Grammy’s plucky as a hen in springtime. Now”—she wiped her hands on the seat of her pants instead of her apron—“I have to get these cookies ready for the folks at the Alzheimer’s home.” She glanced at her watch. “I want them to have a special treat with their Sunday afternoon tea.”

“Why?” Ashley’s perfect lips screwed into a smirk. “They won’t remember eating them.”

“Ashley Elizabeth!” Mrs. Lee shook her rolling pin at her daughter. “Don’t you say ugly things like that in my
kitchen!”

“Sorry, Mama.” Ashley shot a look at her sister, but Cooper wasn’t paying attention. She had a mug of hot coffee in her right hand and was lost in the pages of the Sunday paper.

“Back to Cooper,” Ashley persisted. “How is she ever going to meet a new man when her job is so macho?” She put her manicured hands on her narrow hips. “It’s been six months since he left, ya know. It’s time for her to start living again. She’s pretty in that all-natural kind of way and has a body most girls would kill for, but she just hides out, living in her garage like a nun. Someone will have to drag her out of there or she’s going to turn into an old maid.”

“Help me bag up these pinwheels while you’re carryin’ on, Ashley.”

Ashley obediently stuffed two cookies each into plastic bags decorated with gold stickers reading
Magnolia’s Marvels.
As she tied them using gold ribbon, she occasionally glanced over at Cooper, who was still engrossed in the
Richmond Times-Dispatch
and had refused to respond to any of her sister’s comments. Ashley, who was unaccustomed to being ignored, suddenly claimed the edge of Cooper’s chair.

“I’ve got it!” she exclaimed as Cooper turned a mismatched but fiery gaze upon her sister. “Coop? You should start coming to church with me! There are tons of nice single men at church. And they’re your age too.” Watching her sister warily, Cooper reached out and folded the newspaper so that when her father got home from his weekly shopping trip to Wal-Mart, his paper would look pristine. She pushed back from the worn and scrubbed farm table in her parents’ kitchen, refilled her coffee cup, and helped herself to a cookie.

“Not gonna happen, Ashley,” Cooper said firmly. “Besides, I have plans of my own.” She hadn’t told anyone that she was thinking about attending Brooke’s church the following Sunday. Wanting to reread the flyer on Hope Street alone, Cooper walked out the back door, down a short path, and entered the small greenhouse her father had built for her after the field hockey accident.

She inhaled the scents of her private refuge—a wheelbarrow filled with rich soil, two aisles packed with seed trays bearing the first hints of green, a stack of terra-cotta planters, her bottles of pungent fertilizers, and a tidy pile of gardening books on edible plants that Cooper had picked up from library and yard sales.

“This place is as peaceful as any church,” she said to the air, delighting in the humidity and the dappled spring sunlight glinting off the glass roof. Moving about the cozy space, she touched the plants flanking the center aisle and brushed specks of dirt from the leaves of a seedling. “Grow well, my friend. You’re going to help fill hungry bellies come summertime.”

Cooper spent the next few minutes flipping through a seed catalogue. She soon became so intent on deciding which tomato seeds to order that she didn’t hear Ashley enter her sanctuary.

“I’m trying to look out for you, Coop,” her sister said as Cooper straightened a group of seed trays on the potting table. Ashley held out her hand and wiggled the mammoth diamond of her engagement ring. The light caught the stone and shimmered along the row of smaller diamonds on her wedding band. “I’d like you to find someone as wonderful as my Lincoln.” She sighed happily. “I know I’m just a bubbly newlywed talking, but the day I became Mrs. Lincoln Love was the happiest of my life. I know you thought you and Drew were going to be like Lincoln and me, but it wasn’t meant to be.” Her long lashes fluttered as she surveyed her sister. “You’re pretty, Cooper. You could catch a man and be happy again. I could help you.”

Cooper crossed her arms and frowned. She felt no jealousy over her sister’s ostentatious jewelry or the endless mentions of her extremely wealthy husband, but she didn’t like what she saw in Ashley’s eyes.

“I don’t want to become one of your charity projects,” Cooper snapped. After all, Cooper viewed Ashley’s charitable works as her sister’s vain desire to appear in
Richmond
magazine and
Virginia Living
as often as possible, dressed in fabulous designer clothes, her arm draped around the mayor, the governor’s wife, or another rich suburban do-gooder.

The trouble was, Ashley always distanced herself from the actual people she was purportedly bent on helping. She would organize teams of builders, electricians, and plumbers to work for days constructing a house for Habitat for Humanity, but she never visited the site or met the family. She would collect thousands of winter coats and Christmas presents for the children of area orphanages, but she’d never meet any of the kids during the delivery of these gifts. Even her hospital volunteerism was conducted from a distance. Ashley would host a dinner and raise funds for needed supplies or medical equipment, but she preferred not to be introduced to one of the patients who had benefited from the monetary donation.

Everything Ashley did was self-serving to some degree, and Cooper didn’t want to be a part of any of her sister’s schemes. Suddenly, Cooper recalled Brooke’s kindness and felt guilty over thinking such nasty thoughts about her sister.

“Look,” Cooper told Ashley more gently and busied her hands tidying her pillar of catalogues. “I appreciate your wanting to help, I do, but I don’t want to go to church to meet men. Isn’t that what bars are for?” she quipped.

Ashley frowned. “Well, then go to church to pray. It doesn’t look good that you’re the only one of us that doesn’t attend worship service.”

“Doesn’t look good to who?” Cooper demanded, getting annoyed again. She knew that Ashley wanted to chair some new committee at the large and powerful church she attended on River Road, a wealthy corridor composed of million-dollar homes and churches the size of college campuses. She was also aware of the fact that Ashley was embarrassed of her family.

Their father, Earl Lee, was in charge of maintenance at one of the area’s private schools and their mother got up at five a.m. to bake cookies, which she sold to several Richmond sandwich shops. Except for Ashley, who resided with her husband in a mansion just off River Road, the Lees lived out in the country, a good twenty minutes from Richmond’s West End subdivisions and endless strip malls. Cooper’s parents were humble people who spent their money modestly but gave generously of their time. Their house was small, outdated, and yet incredibly cozy. Cooper lived in a minuscule studio apartment Mr. Lee had erected over the garage with the idea of moving his mother out of the main house, but Grammy Lee refused to budge.

Cooper shook her head, wondering for the millionth time how her parents could have produced such different children. She could only reason that during the one year, one month, one week, and one day that separated their birthdays, the world must have spun in the opposite direction. Looking at her sister as she turned the pages of a gardening magazine with disinterest, Cooper tried to keep her irritation in check. “No one outside of this house cares what I do, Ashley. Why don’t you tell those snobby ladies at your church that your entire family was lost at sea or mauled by bears? Then you won’t have to obsess over how we make you look.”

For a moment, Ashley turned Cooper’s suggestion over in her mind. Suddenly, she scowled. “I can’t say that! It would be an outright lie and
that’s
not going to get me elected.”

Cooper began filling out the order form in the back of the seed catalogue. “Works for politicians all the time,” she joked.

“Fine, Cooper. Rot away in this greenhouse. Live with your parents until you’re old and gray. Go ahead.” Ashley turned to leave. “But you should go to church, even if it’s to suffer through that awful choir at Mama and Daddy’s church.”

“Why?” Cooper paused in her writing to drink some coffee.

“Because it’s where people go to better themselves. A place where those who’ve been hurt can find healing and where lonely people can make friends.” Cooper was surprised to see genuine concern on Ashley’s face. “After all, without me living here anymore, you must not have anyone to talk to. You and Drew spent all your time with each other.”

Cooper had never considered her sister to be a close friend, but she nodded anyway. “I told you, I have plans in the works, okay? Now, just drop the subject. Don’t you have a husband waiting for you at home?”

“I certainly do,” Ashley said with a satisfied nod. She then whipped her lightweight suede coat closed, cinched a crocodile belt around her shapely waist, and strutted away, her hair bouncing in a shiny wave of honey as she walked. Cooper studied her own athletic body and long, straight blonde hair in the greenhouse glass and, satisfied with what she saw, finished completing the order form.

Later that evening, she headed out to the mailbox with a lit cigarette and her order form. She lingered for a moment at the end of the driveway, watching the sun sink into the spindly arms of the trees and listening to the excited chatter of bats as they fluttered above her head. Cooper blew a stream of smoke into the spring air, still tinged with some of winter’s lingering coolness, and wondered if she was truly ready to put the pain of her broken heart behind her and begin living her life again.

She picked a piece of tobacco from the tip of her tongue and flicked it onto the ground. Her eyes became fixated on the glowing end of her cigarette. Bending down, she crushed it out in the gravel and spent several moments crouched there, observing the spent stub. “I really wish I could kick this damn habit.”

Searching in her pocket for a tissue in which to wrap the cigarette butt, Cooper’s fingers closed around the Hope Street brochure. She gazed at the words of welcome printed on the front cover for several moments.

“Should I go?” she whispered to the first evening star. “Could you send me a sign?” When the only response she received was a tickle on the cheek by a momentary breeze, she slowly walked back toward the house.

• • •

The workweek flew by and Cooper nearly forgot about both Brooke Hughes and Hope Street. She and her mother spent most of Saturday preparing the vegetable and herb beds behind the house for planting. Together they weeded, tilled, and mixed compost with the soil, which was still damp from the previous evening’s rain.

Earl Lee also spent the mild spring day outside. He mowed the lawn, replaced rotted posts on the split-rail fence, and tinkered around in the garage, undoubtedly trying to coax his ’71 Chevy Malibu back to life.

When the family reconvened for dinner, Earl spoke a quick blessing before they ate. He’d barely finished before Grammy Lee launched into a tirade over being served soft tacos with refried beans.

“What’s this mush?” she demanded of no one in particular. “I still got my teeth, ya know.” She plucked her dentures from her mouth and waved them around for everyone to see. “How about a nice piece of meat—one you gotta cut with a knife, not slurp up like pig slop?”

“We had rib eyes earlier this week, Grammy,” Maggie said calmly. “You know we can’t have steak all the time. They’re too expensive.”

“At least tomorrow’s Sunday,” Grammy mumbled, glaring at her plate with her cataract-clouded eyes. “That means ham or bacon.” She took a bite of beans and grimaced. “You at least gonna make some cinnamon rolls?” she asked Maggie.

“From scratch,” Maggie replied cheerfully, passing her husband a bowl of shredded cheese. Cooper was amazed by how her mother was able to listen to Grammy’s cantankerous remarks without ever getting ruffled.

“So I see you’re goin’ to church tomorrow, girlie.” Grammy pointed her fork at Cooper. “What brought this on? You got a cravin’ to listen to those tone-deaf songbirds with us, Granddaughter? I don’t think there’s a single member under fifty. You’d best go where the young folks are.” She cackled and then went on to remind them that she had been married for twenty years, a mother for fifteen years, and the owner of her own farm stand for ten years by the time she turned thirty-five.