Malevolent (9 page)

One more stop before home. It was already too late in the evening—too early in the morning, actually—to avoid the wrath of Patty, so no reason not to postpone the inevitable.

Yellow light glowed dimly through the small window next to the front door. The knob turned easily. His tentative footsteps echoed sharply in the silence. Like churches everywhere, its interior held the smoky spice ambience of incense and the varnished wood scent of solid age.

He stepped through the wide doorway to the left of the vestibule and lowered himself into a hardwood pew that groaned invitingly under his weight.

He’d gone a handful of times to Catholic mass with Patty and her family and had marveled at the medieval humiliation of its kneelers. There were none of those devices in this church, no need to prostrate himself before any god. In fact, Tim found that he could easily immerse himself in the Utica Lane Church of Redemption without a moment’s belief in the ancient religion for which it stood.

He sat inhaling the secure solitude while the minutes ticked like the plumbing.

Chapter Twelve

“What do you mean, you were at church?” she asked him quietly.

He let his clothing drop to a pile in the middle of the floor, as usual. Somehow that pile would magically disappear in the morning. Clad only in boxer shorts, he slipped between the sheets and said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“At church,” she repeated, prodding him with his initial statement. Perhaps he’d care to amend it.

As Tim turned away, she saw a hint of dawn creeping through the window glass beyond him. “What did you really do, Tim?”

She could hear him breathing, could almost hear him contemplating more lies.

“I was at Charlotte’s, of course. Come on, Patty. You know that.”

She waited for more, but got only the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing. If she didn’t press on, he’d soon be asleep. “I won’t have you lying to me again,” she said, voice firm but even. Tough, but fair.

She felt him burrowing in deeper. As if from the bowels of a cave, he said, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s too late to fight.”

Yes, it was rapidly getting too late. The fact screamed at her that there wasn’t a single point where their bodies joined on the mattress. Patty tried to recall the last time they’d made love. Not that she’d been missing it lately. But for the record, it had probably been a week ago Saturday. She’d stopped in at the Beer Belly while he worked and the free beer had induced a little artificial heat in both of them. Or maybe, she thought bitterly, the turn-on had been a result of catching him in a rare act of moneymaking.

“Did you hear me, Tim? I won’t go through it again. I just won’t.”

He bounced an arm off the mattress. “Patty, I’m not seeing anyone. I told you. I went to that little church on Utica Lane after work. I stopped in because I wasn’t sleepy yet and it was about the only place in town still open. I sat there for awhile and dozed off. End of story.”

And an odd story it was.

Patty quietly sniffed the air and came up with beer, perfume and even a trace of smoke, despite the fact that cigarettes were banned in bars. Tim had spent all of the night and too much of the early morning in one, and with an ironclad excuse—he worked there.

She punched her pillow into a tight ball under her head. If he still worked at an ad agency like that first job out of college, he’d be around many attractive female coworkers. So what? It was time to either truly forgive him for the Kayla Cosgrove incident or get on with her life without him. It wasn’t fair, she realized, to hold him as an emotional prisoner for a single misstep.

A single
known
misstep, she corrected herself.

She shut her eyes and tried to keep her mind from wandering into dangerous territory, but couldn’t. Couldn’t ignore the phone call of earlier that evening. What was her name? Dillon. That’s right. Detective Dillon of the Sex Crimes Unit, for Christ’s sake, wondering where Tim might be found. Patty had given her directions to the Beer Belly, but here’s the thing—Tim hadn’t mentioned a visit from the attractive officer. Seems like you’d remember something like that, doesn’t it?

Fighting to let it go, Patty said, “So, did you get paid tonight?”

“Of course,” he mumbled.

The way he said it, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, got her going again. She said, “A few more twenties from the till, I suppose?”

Nothing.

“Another off-the-books wad of cash that might pay for a few groceries and let you show the IRS another six-thousand-dollar year.”

He bounced out of bed with a snort, grabbing his pillow with him, and stalked out of the room.

Patty made a fist and squeezed it. Why’d she always have to come on like that? Always spraying a shotgun-load of vinegar and complaints. Even as they left her mouth, she knew what effect the constant barrage would have. He’d leave. He always left. It was the way he ran his life. Left the ad agency because it was a hassle. Just as he was leaving their relationship. Not in any dramatic way, but quietly slipping out the back door a step at a time.

Alone in her too-big bed, Patty returned to the lie he’d told her about visiting the church on Utica Lane. What church stayed open, unattended, in the middle of the night these days? And even if such a trusting congregation actually existed, how had they drawn even the slightest interest from her agnostic boyfriend?

Only way to even begin answering the questions chipping away at her soul and her sleep would be a visit. Which is exactly what she’d do. She’d drop in at the Utica Lane Church of Redemption and see for herself what the big deal was.

Maybe tomorrow.

Part Two

The Girl Behind the Curtain

Chapter Thirteen

Friday was one of those bright sunshine days that convince you it’s warmer than it really is. Vincent, jammed nose to ass with the rest of Greater Cleveland on the I-77 South exchange near the Snow Road exit, fiddled with the air vents, rolled up the window and rolled down the window every time the sun scuttled back and forth from behind a cloud.

He was a little nervous, truth be told. He’d always gotten butterflies about new members, but tonight was worse. He was introducing William and Candy Tatum to the congregation. He and his congregation, they were family, and it felt a little like bringing an adopted child home to see how the child’s new siblings would react.

He still wasn’t being honest with himself. To put it as delicately as possible, William Tatum had no racial resemblance to his blonde wife. And he happened to be an ex-offender. Vincent was his caseworker from the county social services agency that helped parolees find employment. In William, he’d found a sharp mind and warm personality hampered by a drug dealer’s resume. The man had only been dealing nickel-and-dime stuff to support his own habit, but his priors had earned him a trip to Lucasville for nearly three years.

Candy had married her husband there four months before his release and Vincent had helped him find one of the city’s few remaining factory jobs when he got out. William now considered Vincent a personal hero of sorts, one of the few people in his life who’d ever offered help rather than punishment. He’d found out about Vincent’s part-time ministerial duties and recently asked about joining his small congregation.

Now, as Vincent crawled along Snow Road in rush-hour paralysis, his mind rehearsed how he’d present the happy Tatum couple to his parish family tonight. The special service had been announced for this purpose, but Vincent had left out a few details about race and background, coward that he was. He winced, imagining Germaine and Jenny Marberry’s reaction in particular.

Of course, he hadn’t seen the Marberry women since Tuesday night, a realization that threatened to turn his thoughts even gloomier. So he pushed it to the back of his mind, where he tried to cram every other unpleasantry.

One potentially unpleasant thought that got away—he wondered what Sandy’s mood would be.

She wasn’t, as others had diplomatically pointed out, the traditional minister’s wife. If there wasn’t a God, Vincent would have had trouble explaining how he’d wound up with a woman like Sandy Ransom Applegate. They had been students together at Kent State, the painfully serious social work major and the very beautiful, very vivacious and intelligent prelaw student. Sandy Ransom had apparently seen something in him that hadn’t been obvious to the rest of the world or even to himself.

Their friends wouldn’t have been remotely surprised to hear that she had become a successful corporate lawyer and that he was an underpaid bureaucrat and unaffiliated minister. Yet both were content in their careers and—at least until recently—happy with each other.

Lately, he’d detected an air of preoccupation about her. She performed her part as the minister’s wife, but something was missing. She seemed to stand apart from the congregation, like she really wasn’t among her own kind. Whenever he brought up the subject of the church, she’d steer the conversation to Jason’s hard-fought progress in school or Lisa’s volleyball. Or fade out of the conversation altogether.

It was crazy, but lately he’d started asking himself whether he thought bright and vivacious Sandy Ransom would take that walk down the aisle with him if she could do it over.

If?
He stirred uncomfortably in his seat as he inched forward onto Broadview Road. She
could
do it over—any time she wanted.

Now feeling even more morose, Vincent hung a right on Schaaf, a left on South Hills, and pulled up the driveway of the big Tudor on the hill.

“Oh great,” he muttered at the sight of a man coming out of the side door of his home. If he was a member of the congregation, the man had brought his troubles to the wrong Applegate. All Sandy needed after a tough week at work was to be greeted by someone in dire spiritual need of her husband, but more than willing to lay his woes out to her as well.

But as he got a closer look, he realized the man was a stranger. He was nearly as tall as Vincent, but more muscular. Younger too, maybe in his late twenties. His hair was blond and shaggy, his face fine-featured, but with a strong jaw. His hair, physique and facial features lent him a startling combination of rugged male appeal and almost feminine beauty. He could have been a book-jacket model for a line of Gothic romances. But instead of a ruffled silk shirt ripped over his tree-trunk arms, the stranger wore a white, open-neck dress shirt and charcoal slacks. His rolled-up sleeves offered a generous view of strong, tan forearms.

As he strode casually down the driveway toward Vincent, every step confident, unconcerned, he looked like an athlete about to take the field—not a despondent sinner in need of guidance. Vincent powered down his window as the man came to the bottom of the driveway.

“Hello, can I help—”

The man never turned his head or broke stride. He turned right where sidewalk met driveway and disappeared behind a row of hedges at the front of the next property.

“How rude,” Vincent told no one.

Technically speaking, Jason was doing his homework at the breakfast table. That conclusion could be reached by the fact that his math textbook was open, he had a pencil in hand and his attention was on the PC in front of him. However, Vincent saw as he looked over his son’s shoulder, the computer screen had a video playing and the YouTube logo prominently displayed.

“Hi, Dad,” Jason greeted, cheerful as usual. Somehow, despite acne, girl troubles and an inability to make the baseball team, the fifteen-year-old never lost his good cheer.

“Here, let me get that for you,” said Vincent, hitting the power button on the computer and zapping YouTube to smithereens. “I saved you from major distraction, but you can thank me later.”

The boy sighed before turning his attention to math. “I’ll be sure to do that, Dad.”

Vincent heard his wife rattling around in the kitchen, just beyond the breakfast nook. Sandy called out a greeting as he came through the doorway. He pecked her cheek and inhaled her perfume.

“Mmh,” he said, drawing a chuckle.

She stood at the sink, filling a pot with water. Her hair was up, her slim neck vulnerable to another quick peck. Dressed like she’d just gotten home, she wore a cream blouse and a cinched beige skirt that couldn’t help but draw attention to her narrow waist and great legs. She looked at least five years younger than forty-one, same age as him.

“Sara Lamplighter left a message,” she said. “She and Kent can make it tomorrow night after all, but they might be late.”

Vincent winced. He hoped the subject of tomorrow night wouldn’t put a damper on the beginning of their weekend. He couldn’t tell anything from Sandy’s expression, but, to be on the safe side, he changed the subject and asked about her day while he stuck his head in the refrigerator and fished around for anything snacky that his kids might have missed.

“There’s nothing there,” Sandy assured him as she snapped dry pasta noodles and dumped them in a simmering pot. “My day, let’s see, it looks like that Fenton Industries trademark infringement suit isn’t going to be settled. Charlie and I might have to work over the weekend to put together a last-ditch offer.”

“Charlie. Is he a young stud, long blond hair, muscles, tan?”

She laughed. “Sounds good.” She cut up mushrooms and peppers at the center island, the long knife efficiently whisk-whisking through everything in sight but fingers. “You met Charlie at Christmas. He didn’t match that description even twenty years ago. Help me here, will you?”