Sweet Poison (23 page)

“It would seem pretty callous not to be,” said her dad, trying for both friendliness and seriousness, the kind of weird facial contortion a politician learned to project.

Jane’s gaze traveled across the crowd. “Have you heard anything more from the police?” She didn’t say Corey’s name, but she didn’t need to.

“We finally received the police report.”

Leaning a little closer and lowering her voice, she added, “I’m curious. Was anything written on Charity’s stomach?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “It was apparently a carbon copy of the rape Corey Hodge did years ago. With the exception of the outcome. The first woman didn’t die.”

“They’re asking us to move into the sanctuary and take our seats,” said Ray, slipping his arm through Elizabeth’s.

“Why don’t you sit with us?” asked Elizabeth, giving Jane a suitably sad smile.

Jane was about to say yes when she spotted Melanie come through the front door. She wasn’t sure how long she’d stick around afterward, and she wanted to talk to her, so she said, “Thanks, but I promised to sit with a friend. I’ll see you both later.”

Skirting her way back through the crowd of mourners, Jane waved at Mel and finally got her attention.

“Didn’t know you’d be here,” said Mel, switching her purse from one shoulder to the other. “Although I guess I’m not surprised.”

“Is Cordelia with you?”

“Are you kidding? She’s not a fan of funerals. They remind her she isn’t God.”

Jane suppressed a smile.

“Let’s sit in the back,” said Melanie, glancing around to get her bearings. “That way we get the best view.”

The sanctuary was one of the loveliest Jane had seen in the Twin Cities. While those around them studied the program, Jane and Mel studied the audience. “The Millers are sitting in the front pew on the left side. The mom has gray hair, the grandmother white.”

Just before the service started, Jane noticed a young, dark-haired man enter from the side door. He looked unsteady as he sat down on the front pew opposite the Millers. Mrs. Miller leaned forward to look at him, then turned to the man next to her, visibly upset.

“Who is he?” asked Jane.

“His name is Gabriel Keen. He and Charity were engaged to be married. From what I’ve been able to find out, she broke it off with him several months ago, but he kept hounding her, so she filed a restraining order. I spoke to her parents briefly yesterday morning. They think he’s responsible for her death.”

“Have they talked to the police about their suspicions?”

“Oh, you bet. And from what I’m told, the police have heard the same thing from other people, some of them asking to remain anonymous.”

“Cordelia told me the police had another suspect. Must be him.”

Mel nodded.

“Keen had a motive, I suppose. The jilted lover. Speaking of motive, what do you suppose the police think Corey’s motive was?”

“I’m not sure he needed one,” Mel whispered back. “At least in the way we normally think of a motive. If he’s a serial rapist, what drives him is his anger, the need to control, to dominate, to humiliate. Oh, and get this. Charity’s mother told me that Corey told Charity he was a cop. She had a date with him to go for a ride on his motorcycle the night she died.”

If that didn’t make him sound guilty, nothing did. Jane groaned. “Why would he say that?”

“Because he’s a liar. I met him last week at your father’s campaign
office. The guy is as charming as hell when he wants to be. But he can turn it off just as fast as he turns it on. If I was a bettin’ woman, I’d put my money on Corey Hodge.”

Jane understood that it was impossible to look someone in the eye and have any sense at all who he was or what he was capable of. Mary believed Corey was innocent. What she had was faith. Some might think faith was just a different form of proof, but Jane wasn’t one of them.

“Listen, do you know the address of Charity’s apartment building? I’d like to go over, take a look at where the murder happened.”

Melanie looked it up in a notebook, then wrote it down and handed the page to Jane. “The police report said she’d been taking out the garbage when she got dropped by the taser. They found the sack in the Dumpster. Inside the apartment, the garbage can was empty. She’d set out a clean plastic can liner on the kitchen counter but never came back in to use it. When they entered, they found two cats, one curled up in the sink, the other sitting on the kitchen table.”

“What’s going to happen to the cats?”

“They were Charity’s babies, both rescue cats. Her parents are planning to keep them.” Leaning closer, she whispered, “You think you’re going to find something at her apartment building the police didn’t notice?”

“No. I just want to take a look.” She sat back and tried to get comfortable in the pew. Not an easy proposition for someone who rarely sat in one.

The service was all laid out in the program. Everyone stood for the first hymn, “Abide With Me.” Jane remembered many hymns from her childhood. Her mother was English, high Anglican, in fact. Jane had attended services in a number of Anglican churches around the south of England, where her mother was born and where Jane had lived for the first nine years of her life.

When the hymn was over, the minister, a blond, handsome thirty-something man in a black pulpit robe and green damask broad stole, stood up at the front and looked out over the congregation.

“Let us pray.” He bowed his head. “Oh God, whose mercies cannot be numbered, accept our prayers on behalf of your servant, Charity Ann Miller, and grant her an entrance into the land of light and joy, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”

While everyone sat back down, Charity’s brother got up to read one of Charity’s favorite psalms.

After another song, there were more readings, mostly poetry. Jane only half listened. Her gaze roamed over the crowd and then lifted to the soaring height of the pitched roof. Merriam Park United Methodist was an amazingly beautiful piece of architecture, full of large, colorful stained-glass windows and beautifully carved wood. Jane had concluded long ago that her reaction to Christianity, in fact to religion in general, was essentially aesthetic. She loved the majesty of the architecture, the sense of reverence and quiet that a church like this gave to a world full of shouting voices. She loved the beauty of the old hymns, the choral music, the grand sound of a pipe organ, and of course, she would always be drawn to the King James Bible because of the language, part Shakespeare, part Milton. But when it got down to doctrines, to the nitty-gritty of religious beliefs, all of her appreciative feelings vanished.

After the readings were completed, the minister entered from the right side of the altar, and with the help of a cane, made his way slowly to the pulpit. His eyes were filled with an unsettling stillness as he looked over the crowd.

“I knew Charity well,” he began. He had a gentle, deep, affecting voice, the kind that lent an air of nobility to his words. But the tone was thicker now, full of emotion. “We’d been close friends for several years. She saw me through many hard times, and I trust that she could say the same about me. I never had a sister, but if I had, I would have wanted her to be just like Charity.

“We all suffer in this life, but we make a mistake if we think that suffering is what life is about. Many of you know that when I was attacked”—he stopped for a moment here and gazed around the
audience again, looking this time at specific individuals—”my doctors predicted I would not survive. I’ve always believed that God has a plan for each of us. That belief was sorely tried this past year. But, standing before you now, I realize that I cling to it still.

“We all know that there are many forces at work in this world of ours, so many that it’s hard to see a reason behind everything. Looking for reasons can feel like wandering in the wilderness without a compass. But though it’s sometimes impossible to find an explanation, a rationale to put our hearts at rest, we must finally understand that God’s purpose informs everything.”

He spoke for a few more minutes, quoted several Bible verses, and ended with the words of St. Paul. “ ‘Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ “ He closed his eyes. “Amen.”

Raising his arms this time, he prayed aloud: “Father of all, we pray to you for Charity, and of all those whom we love but see no longer. Grant to them eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon them. May Charity’s soul and the souls of all the departed, through your mercy, rest in peace.”

After a final hymn—”Now the Day Is Over”—sung by the choir, and the dismissal, the minister, followed by the pallbearers carrying the coffin, led the way back through the church to the hearse waiting outside the front door. Once the coffin with its spray of white roses had passed, people began to get up and put on their coats.

“Are you going to the cemetery?” asked Mel.

“I think I will,” said Jane.

“Wish I could, but I was handed another assignment this morning.”

“Boy, that paper really keeps you busy.”

“They need about four more reporters, but the coffers are bare.”

They said their good-byes under a sullen sky in the church’s parking lot.

Jane joined the funeral procession on the way to the cemetery. She stood at the edge of the somewhat thinned-out group as the pastor—she’d learned that his name was Christopher Cornish—said a few words at the graveside on top of the hill. Looking around, she saw that her dad and Elizabeth hadn’t come.

As the final prayer was being offered, two women standing behind Jane began to whisper.

“I can’t believe the bishop let him come back.”

“He took that six-month leave of absence after he was attacked, but that’s probably up by now. There will be a church trial, for sure.” This woman’s whisper held less vitriol.

“You know, Ruthy, it makes my blood boil to see what our church has become. Women pastors. Gay men hiding their sexuality so we don’t see who they really are.”

“Straight people have all the rights. Gay people just want to be included.”

“As if their sins mean nothing? What did you think when he came out in that sermon last April?”

The one named Ruthy didn’t answer right away. “Well, I felt betrayed, I guess. Like he’d been lying to us. But then, after he was attacked, I thought that was even more wrong.”

“But an elder should be held to a higher standard.” The woman was quiet for a few seconds. “Charity was a lovely young woman, didn’t you think? A little headstrong, a little too interested in male attention.”

“A romantic.”

“And perhaps a little too adventurous.”

“She was young.”

“Such a tragedy. I took a hotdish over to the family yesterday.”

“I took one over on Friday.”

“I never could understand why Charity and Cornish were such good friends.”

“You knew she was engaged to Gabriel Keen.”

“I couldn’t believe the police thought Gabriel was the one who
attacked Cornish. He comes from such a good family. But he was never charged, so we shouldn’t judge.”

“You’re right. It’s wrong to judge.”

They moved out of earshot. Jane turned to see who they were. Their reasoning processes had nearly brought her headache back, but they’d revealed a story Jane had never heard before.

Standing next to a tree, a cold, late October wind blowing across the dying cemetery grass, she watched a trickle of people come up to Cornish, shake his hand, clap him on the back.

Spotting Luke Durrant talking to Charity’s mother, she walked across the grass to the other side of the grave site to offer her condolences. But before she reached them, Cornish stepped right into her path.

“Reverend,” she said, extending her hand. “That was a lovely service. My name’s Jane. Jane Lawless. My father—”

“I know who you are,” he said, pulling his cane in front of him.

Up this close, she could see scars on his face. The longest ran from his left cheekbone all the way down his neck, disappearing underneath the collar of his black robe.

“That was very kind of your father to come to the service,” he said, brushing his hair out of his eyes. He was obviously searching for something to say.

“He liked Charity a lot.”

“We all did. Well, if you don’t mind—”

Jane didn’t want him to leave just yet. “I wonder if you’d have just a couple of seconds.”

“Forgive me, but—”

“I’m working, unofficially, on behalf of Mary Glynn, Corey Hodge’s aunt. You probably know the police think Corey may have been the one who murdered Charity.”

“What do you mean by
unofficially?”

“I’m not part of the police investigation, but I am working with a private investigator.” It wasn’t true, but it gave her the legitimacy she needed. And if she asked Nolan to help her, he would.

“Wait a minute. I thought you owned a couple of restaurants in town.”

“I do. But, as I said, I’m looking into Charity’s death for Corey’s aunt. She doesn’t believe her nephew did it.”

“She’s not the only one.”

“Are you saying you think someone else was responsible?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. His name is Gabriel Keen.”

“I just learned that some people think Keen was the one who attacked you last spring.”

“You just learned? Are you kidding me?”

“That surprises you?”

“Nothing surprises me. Now, if you don’t mind—” His eyes darted to a man in the distance who was waving at him.

“Did Charity have any enemies?”

“You mean other than Keen? No, not that I know of.”

“I’m sorry to hear about the attack. It must have been horrible for you.”

The words seemed to stop him.

“Do you plan to continue on as a pastor at the church?”

“I’m about to be stripped of my orders, Ms. Lawless. That’s what happens when you’re a gay minister in a committed relationship in the Methodist church.”

He sounded angry. He had a right to be. “Why do you think Keen attacked you?”