I Shall Not Want (21 page)

It was almost lunch when her phone rang, and she answered it to hear Jeremiah’s voice on the other end.

“Hey, you got a few minutes?” he asked.

“Are you back at work?”

“Yeah, and Marie is fussing over me like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Sure, I’ve got some time, what is it?”

“Can you meet me in the parking lot? I have a surprise for you.”

“Is this a bring-my-purse-with-me kind of surprise?”

“Yes.”

Three minutes later she walked out to the parking lot. Jeremiah was standing next to his car talking to a woman Cindy’s age.

“Okay, what is the big surprise?” Cindy asked.

Jeremiah turned, and so did the woman with him. “Cindy, I’d like you to meet Rosie Stevens. She’s been searching for her Aunt Bernadette for three years now.”

Cindy reached out and hugged Rosie, surprising the other woman. “I’m so glad to meet you,” Cindy said.

“Have you really found my aunt?”

“Yes.” Cindy broke away and forced herself to smile despite the lump in her throat. “I’ll take you to her right now.”

“We can go in my car,” Jeremiah said.

A few minutes later they were pulling up outside Cindy’s house. Bernadette was outside putting trash in the can. Cindy grabbed Rosie’s arm and half-pulled her forward until she heard Rosie gasp and suddenly surge ahead, pulling Cindy forward.

Bernadette looked up as they stopped next to her. The old woman’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

“Aunt Bernadette?”

“Rosie, is that you?”

A moment later the two women were hugging and crying. They moved into the house and Ginger jumped excitedly around them, barking and trying to be part of it all. Cindy scooped her up in her arms and backed a couple of feet away to give the two women some privacy. She held the dog while she watched and cried herself.

Jeremiah spoke softly from beside her, and she jumped slightly, having not been aware of his presence until that moment. “It turns out that Rosie left her husband just a couple of weeks after the fight with Bernadette. She’s been looking
for her ever since. She’s in graduate school, doing well, but desperately needs help with her two children.”

“A happy ending,” Cindy said, crying even harder.

Jeremiah put an arm around her shoulders. “Well, you know what they say. Anything can happen on a Friday.”

And the phrase that had always seemed so irreverent to her burst from her lips in a whispered prayer. “Thank God it’s Friday.”

Discussion Questions

1. Have you ever been in a situation where you were in need and someone helped you out? How did this make you feel?

2. In the story, Joseph manages to use one of his passions (dogs) in his charity work. Is there a way you can do something charitable with one of your hobbies or interests?

3. When was the last time you prayed for a complete stranger, someone that neither you nor anyone around you knew?

4. Has anything precious ever been taken from you? How did you respond? What do you wish you could have done differently?

5. What can you do this year to make Thanksgiving more meaningful?

6. Is there someone you know in need whom you could help? What can you do for that person? What’s stopping you?

7. In the course of the first two books, Cindy has learned that there are some risks that are worth taking. Is there something you want or need to do that you’ve been afraid to do?

8. The book portrays many strong bonds between people and animals. Have you ever experienced this type of bond with an animal? What do you think made it so special?

9. They say that dogs are man’s best friend. What traits do dogs have that make them such great friends that might be worth imitating? Do you know of someone in need of this kind of friend?

10. In the story, people make erroneous assumptions about other people. For example, reporters see Joseph hugging Cindy and assume that they are dating. When has someone made an erroneous assumption about you, and what damage did it cause? How do you strive not to do this to others?

An Interview with Author Debbie Viguié

What is your favorite Bible verse and why?

Matthew 6:34, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” This verse is both comforting and challenging. It is far easier said than done, yet when we do stop worrying so much, the benefits for our spiritual, physical, and mental health are tremendous.

What inspired the concept for writing the Psalm 23 Mysteries series? How did you choose the setting for your story?

I worked as a secretary in a church for two years. Being there early in the morning when the place is deserted can be a little odd and sometimes downright spooky. A while later when I was thinking of writing a mystery series, this just seemed like a natural choice. The setting of the church pretty much took care of itself as an integral part of the plot.

How closely is
I Shall Not Want
based on your real-life experiences? Is any part of
I Shall Not Want
factual?

No, but although not directly based on my own experiences, it is certainly inspired by them. I like to explore some of the kookiness that is inherent when you work at a church. As far as the more serious aspects of the story, very little is based on my real life. Although when I was in high school, my school did participate in a food drive for needy families where we provided them Thanksgiving dinner.

How long did
I Shall Not Want
take you to complete?

It took me about five months to write it.

What is the symbolism for the title
I Shall Not Want
?

It symbolizes both the plot of the book and the holiday that occurs during the course of the events. Thanksgiving is a time for celebrating the harvest, for giving thanks for what God has given and for His provision. The book addresses some of the problems facing the homeless who, unlike most people, are in want constantly.

Do you have a favorite character in
I Shall Not Want
? Why?

Jeremiah. I love strong, male leads.

What aspects of being a writer do you enjoy the most?

I love coming up with the initial concept of a story. I find it so exciting! It’s the same kind of feeling when I first see the cover. I also really enjoy interacting with fans.

What were your favorite books as a child?

Snow Dog
by Jim Kjelgaard, which I’ve read more than two hundred times, and
The Lone Star Ranger
by Zane Grey, which made me realize I wanted to be a writer.

What is your writing style? Do you outline, write “by the seat of your pants,” or somewhere in between?

It’s usually somewhere in between although I have gone to both extremes before. Usually I have an idea of what action has
to happen in each chapter, just a thumbnail sketch, and then I run with it. Sometimes things change in the actual writing, and that’s always exciting.

Do your characters begin to take on lives of their own as you write?

When things are going well they do. Suddenly they are off doing things I had never intended for them to do but which seem perfectly natural and completely in character when looked at objectively.

What new projects do you have on the horizon?

I’m working on the third book in the Psalm 23 Mysteries series:
Lie Down in Green Pastures
. I’ve got a few other things in the works, but that’s the manuscript I’ve just submitted to my fantastic editor.

Who was the person who influenced your writing the most?

My favorite author, Zane Grey. He was an incredibly prolific Western author who died decades before I was even born. Everything he wrote, though, was very passionate. All his stories were love stories in a way. Sometimes the love was between two people. Other times, it was between a farmer and his land, a pioneer and the forest, even a man and the wild horse that continuously eluded him. And he got inside the heads of both his male and female characters and described feelings and thoughts, replaying scenes from each person’s point of view. His writing not only inspired my own but also helped me understand what I was looking for from life and from what kind of man I wanted to marry. My husband, by the way, would have made a fantastic Zane Grey hero!

What message would you like your readers to take from
I Shall Not Want
?

Judge not lest ye be judged. Avoid making assumptions about other people. It’s easy to do, and we’ve all been guilty of this and all been victims of this. It’s never a good thing, and it can cause a lot of harm and build barriers between people that don’t need to exist.

What is your greatest achievement?

There are so many achievements that I consider to be profound things in my life that it’s hard to choose! Professionally, it’s making the New York Times Bestseller List. Personally, it’s finding and marrying my soul mate. Spiritually, it’s understanding and accepting the work that God has set out for me.

What is your goal or mission as a writer?

To shake people out of their lives and let them escape for a while and feel the strong emotions that aren’t always present in everyday life. I want them to escape their problems and come laugh, cry, be delighted, be entertained, and be terrified by the problems facing my characters. And ultimately I want them to feel that if everything can work out in the end for those characters, it can work out in the end for them.

What do you do to get away from it all?

I go to Disney with my husband and have some serious park time. We are huge theme park fans. We’re also huge movie fans, and so we get out to the theater as often as we can, sometimes even seeing two or three films the same day.

Bonus Chapter for Book Three of the
Psalm 23 Mysteries

Lie Down in Green Pastures

1

R
ABBI
J
EREMIAH
S
ILVERMAN NEVER QUITE KNEW WHAT TO DO WITH HIMSELF
on Thursdays. Thursdays were technically the second day in the week that he had off. Sundays were the first. He hadn’t had two consecutive days off since he became rabbi of a synagogue. He had toyed with trying to take off Mondays, but too much seemed to happen on that day. So he took off Thursdays but usually ended up going into work at some point, anyway. His secretary, Marie, had often accused him of being a workaholic. It wasn’t true, but there was no telling her that.

It was ten in the morning as he drove down the street toward the synagogue. He slid into the left-hand lane, preparing to turn into the driveway just past First Shepherd, the church next door to the synagogue.

There was no oncoming traffic, and he began to make his turn. The hair on the back of his neck rose suddenly, and he twisted his head around just in time to see the other car as it slammed into him from behind.

Jeremiah’s car skidded, sliding in a circle as the sickening crunch of metal filled his ears. He saw the face of the man in the other car, eyes frozen wide, head tilted.
That man is already
dead
, he realized as his car twisted and then flipped up onto the lawn outside the church.

In a moment it was over. Jeremiah undid his seatbelt and eased himself onto the ceiling. He kicked the remaining glass out of his side window and then maneuvered himself out with only a small cut to his left leg. He collapsed onto the grass, felt it tickling his cheek, and took several deep breaths. He straightened slowly, checking each bone and muscle as he did so. Everything seemed to be okay despite the fact that he had been in a terrible position when struck.

A shadow fell over him, and he glanced up, squinting.

Cindy Preston stood there, hair flying around her face, out of breath. Her eyes were wide in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

It seemed like such a ridiculous question to him, like the answer should be self-evident.

“Recovering from an accident.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so. What are
you
doing here?”

She blinked rapidly, and then the corners of her mouth turned up. “I guess I’m here to rescue you.”

He wanted so badly to laugh. The thought was ludicrous, especially given all the times he had saved her. Still, there was a dead man in the other car, and he thought better of expressing himself. “Thank you,” he said instead.

“Ironic, huh?”

“Yes, I guess that is the word,” he answered as he struggled to sit up.

She dropped down next to him and put an arm behind his back to help support it.

“The other driver. He’s dead.”

“Dead?” she said, jerking and turning pale. “How do you know?” She glanced anxiously toward the other car, and for a moment he thought she was going to leave him to go check.

“I saw his face through the windshield right after he hit me. He was dead before it happened, I’m sure of it.”

“A dead man crashed into you?”

“Yes.”

“A dead man was driving that car?”

“That’s what I said.”

He realized that she had a cell phone when she hit a button and raised it to her ear.

“Hi, yeah, it’s Cindy. There’s been an accident in front of the church, and I think the one driver was dead before it happened.”

She listened for a moment and then continued. “No, I don’t know what killed him.”

Another pause. “All right, we’ll be here.”

She hung up.

“You didn’t just call Detective Walters, did you?” Jeremiah asked with a groan.

“I did,” she said, raising her chin defiantly. “And what’s wrong with that?”

“There hasn’t been a murder.”

“You don’t know that.”

“The guy probably had a heart attack while driving. It happens.”

“And what if it didn’t happen today?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Do you want to take the chance that this guy was murdered and the killer wouldn’t be caught because it seemed like an accident?”

Actually he would rather a killer walk free than expose himself or his synagogue any more than he needed to to the scrutiny of the police. He squeezed his eyes closed. There was
no way he could explain that to Cindy. No easy way, at least. No, whether he liked it or not, he was going to have to play the helpless victim this time and hope that it all went away quickly.

“Can you help me stand up?”

“Not until a paramedic looks you over. Mark was calling an ambulance.”

“I’m fine.”

“Let’s leave that decision to the professionals.”

He acquiesced and lay back slowly on the grass, staring up at the blue of the sky. It was March and the weather was starting to get a little warmer. A month before it would have been too cold to lie on the grass waiting. It got colder in Southern California during the winter than it had in Israel.

He heard the sirens of the ambulance, and a moment later he heard Cindy gasp.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I know him,” she said.

“Who was he?”

“Dr. Tanner, he used to be a church member.”

Of course he did, because that’s my luck
, Jeremiah thought. As the siren grew louder, he began to feel some of the aches and pains caused by the accident. The shock was wearing off, and he could already tell he was going to be stiff in the morning.

I’m getting soft, weak.
He closed his eyes.

“You’re slipping,” a voice said suddenly.

He opened his eyes and saw Detective Mark Walters staring down at him.

“You think so?”

“I do, you’re supposed to be the one playing good Samaritan, not her,” he said, nodding toward Cindy.

Actually, she’s a Gentile
, Jeremiah wanted to say, but he was just grateful Mark wasn’t calling him that for once. “I must be getting old,” he said instead.

Mark snorted derisively, then got down on one knee. “Seriously, you okay?”

“I’ll live,” Jeremiah said. “I just won’t be happy about it in the morning.”

He saw a fleeting smile cross the detective’s face before he got up and turned to look at the other car. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Cindy felt strange. She had been so confident that calling Mark was the right thing to do, but now that he was there, she felt a bit foolish. Jeremiah was right. Mel Tanner had probably had a heart attack. The man was in his upper sixties, and it would be the most logical explanation for what had happened. How could a murder victim even be driving in the first place?

Maybe he was poisoned
, a small voice inside her head whispered. She bit her lip and wished that her deck of cards wasn’t inside the office in her purse. She fidgeted with her fingers while she waited for Mark to look over the body.

While she waited, she watched the paramedics as they checked out Jeremiah. They began to insist on taking him to the hospital for X-rays, and he protested strenuously. To her surprise he lost the argument and with a grimace he climbed into the back of the ambulance before lying down on one of the gurneys.

“Do you want me to come to the hospital?” she asked.

“No! I don’t plan on being there more than ten minutes. Besides, with our luck the nurse who thinks we’re married will be on duty.”

Cindy smirked at the memory of how he had lied to be admitted to see her when she had been attacked by a serial killer. The thought of a little payback appealed to her. “That’s precisely why I should come. Otherwise she might be concerned that our marriage is in trouble.”

“I’m glad one of us can laugh,” he said.

The driver closed the door with an apologetic glance at her, then climbed into the front and drove away. She felt oddly reassured that he drove up the street at a reasonable pace without the use of lights or siren. That had to mean Jeremiah was okay.

She turned to find Mark watching her. She gave him a fleeting smile before asking “Did you find anything?”

He shook his head. “I’ll have the coroner examine him, though, nail down actual cause of death.”

“Thank you.”

He shrugged. “Anything you can tell me about him?”

“His name is Dr. Mel Tanner. He used to go here, but now he goes to another church downtown. He’s a retired physician. He’s still active in the community, though.”

“Thanks, I’ll let you know if I need anything else. So you’re not heading to the hospital?”

She shook her head.

He made a tsking sound. “Sounds like divorce court time to me.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes before turning to head back into the church.

As Cindy walked into the office and took her seat, Geanie hopped up out of her chair and walked over. “What happened?” she asked.

Cindy filled her in and watched in satisfaction as the other girl registered the same shock she herself was feeling.

“That’s terrible!”

“I know. At least Jeremiah wasn’t hurt, but poor Dr. Tanner.”

“Going in a car crash, that’s one of my nightmares,” Geanie said with a shiver.

“Jeremiah told the officers that he thought Dr. Tanner was already dead,” Cindy said, more to herself than Geanie.

“That’s just weird.”

“I know, but I guess stuff like that happens. He could have had a heart attack or something.”

The front door opened, and the youth pastor walked in. “Wow, did you guys see that accident out front?” Dave asked.

“Cindy did,” Geanie answered.

“What a nightmare.”

“Dr. Tanner is dead,” Cindy said.

Dave turned pale and sat down in one of the chairs reserved for visitors. “Are you kidding?”

“No, why would I kid about something like that?”

He buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders heaved. Geanie gave her a puzzled look as the implication hit Cindy. “He drove the bus to camp every year,” she realized.

“Summer camps and winter camps. He was a wonderful man,” Dave said. “So good with the kids, so patient. I never knew how he could pay attention to the road with all the noise and chaos around him.”

“He was a very nice man,” Cindy said, moving forward and awkwardly patting him on the shoulder.

“I’m going to call Joseph and let him know,” Geanie said. “I think the two of them sat on a couple of boards together.”

“Why don’t you go tell him in person?” Cindy suggested. Joseph Coulter was the church’s most affluent member. He and Geanie had been dating since Thanksgiving, and she was sure he’d rather hear the news from his girlfriend than from someone else.

“Thanks,” Geanie said, grabbing her purse and heading for the door.

“We’ve almost got a full slate of kids for next weekend,” Cindy said after the door had closed. “I’ll work on finding you another driver.”

“Thanks,” Dave said, dragging himself to his feet. “A couple other churches are having retreats at the same time. I’ll call around and see if any of them have room on their buses. How are we doing on the sandwiches and cookies?”

“Lunch bags for the drive up will have corned beef sandwiches courtesy of O’Connell’s Pub and shamrock cookies courtesy of Safeway.”

“You’re a genius.”

“Hey, the first day of camp is on St. Patrick’s Day. It was a no-brainer.”

He smiled slightly. “You’ve been hanging around the kids too long. You’re starting to sound like them.”

“There are a lot worse things to sound like,” she said.

“Amen.”