The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (The Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mysteries) (21 page)

“Cozbi.”

Chapter Nineteen

F
ather had given
me till Sunday to think about it. No question, really, but I was nearly
desperate to have some time alone, so I headed back to my room to
“contemplate.” If Priella was there, I would find another quiet place. The
temple, maybe.

My momentary pleasure in discovering an empty room
sputtered out when I realized the bedroom was too empty. All Priella’s
belongings, meager though they were, were missing right down to the linens on
the bed.

This was the Bible and Tylenol incident on a whole
other level. I poked around and pulled open a few of her dresser drawers. The
wood made squeaky sounds in protest. Standing in front of the closet, staring
at the empty space where her dresses had hung, was unnerving. A metal hanger
swayed slightly as if still set in motion from a hand that yanked clothing off
it just moments ago.

My first thought was that she had gotten fed up
and taken off, but then I thought about her gentle teasing in the kitchen less
than three hours ago. She was a private person, and we were just getting to
know each other, but she couldn’t have been hiding a decision of this magnitude
behind that soft playfulness. She had been disturbed by the rumors about her
and Enoch and shocked by his death, but her commitment to the Elect seemed
solid.

With a start, I remembered Maliah’s earlier
comments about sluts and purging evil. She hated Priella, and she had known
something that she hadn’t wanted to share.

I slammed out of the room, pounding down the
stairs to the office on the main floor. Abigail and Rachel both jumped in
surprise at my entrance, Abigail squeaking like a mouse. Maliah, still seated
at Rachel’s desk, gave a slight start, but recovered almost immediately. I
leaned on the desk, crowding her back.

“Where is she?” My voice gritted past my teeth.

Her eyes slitted, but before she could respond,
Rachel broke in.

“Who? Letty, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Ask Maliah. Ask her what they did with Priella.”

“Priella?” Rachel’s voice rose. Behind her,
Abigail gasped, her hand over her mouth.

I kept my eyes locked on Maliah’s. Her face,
angled so that only I could see, allowed a faint, secret smile to dance across
it.

“That’s what you meant this morning, wasn’t it?” I
pitched my voice low, private. “‘Purging the evil.’ You got rid of her, didn’t
you?”

“
I
got rid of her? Father makes those
decisions, not me.” Again, the smile. Flaunting her power, even as she denied
it. “But I can’t say I disagree with it, as you so obviously do. This
community’s first duty is to purify ourselves for the King’s return. We are not
to associate with sexually immoral people. Read First Corinthians, if you don’t
believe me. In fact, I suggest you reflect very carefully on this incident.
Priella isn’t the only female that bears watching.”

“Maliah.” Rachel’s voice cut across our battle
lines. She came to stand next to me. “You are wrong. Letty has done nothing
wrong; she’s just getting used to our ways. And Priella wasn’t…” Her voice
quavered. “I know she wasn’t sexually immoral.”

“Sweet Rachel,” Maliah sneered. “You can’t judge
everyone by yourself. Not everyone has as much control as you. Or maybe my
husband just didn’t want you enough. After all, Enoch sought me out, didn’t
he?”

Rachel’s face went ashen.

“You should have trusted him more,” Rachel whispered.

Rage flooded Maliah’s face, darkening and
tightening her features. “How could I? There was always some fragile, little
maiden trying to rescue him from his evil wife.” Not waiting for a response,
she swept from the office.

“I never understood why Enoch sought her out,”
Abigail said.

“Because he was obedient.” Rachel’s voice sounded
as if coming from a distance. Her eyes, frosted like a winter sky, canted
right, remembering.

“So, it’s true about Maliah’s money?”

“Maliah has no money. Not now, anyway.  She turned
it over to Father before her marriage.”

“You mean, to the Elect.”

Rachel turned her hard eyes to Abigail. “If you
say so.” She left just as abruptly, cutting off Abigail’s response.

“I’d better go talk to her,” Abigail said,
hurrying after the other woman.

Stripped of emotion, the room felt hollow.
Belatedly, my heart kicked in, pounding against my ribs. I slumped into the
office chair, trying to hang on as the wave swept through my body, slicking my
skin with sweat. Damn it. I hated weakness. I was too busy for this crap. As
usual, the more I fought it, the worse it got. I finally gave in, sitting there
panting and sweating like a nervous racehorse. Eventually, it finally passed.

By the time I regained control of my own body, it
was time to don my waitress uniform and head for the bus.

I
t was a crazy
night at the restaurant. Apparently, the local casino was holding a costume
contest, and our restaurant caught the overflow of clowns, sexy nurses, and the
undead. Halloween and the usual crowd for Friday fish fry combined to create a
surreal mix of devilry and down-home comfort. Thankfully, we weren’t required
to dress more creatively than our porno Smurf suits.

Martha ended up covering Priella’s section, calling
Rachel in to hostess and help tend bar. Neither were thrilled with the
arrangement, but Rachel seemed to loosen up as the evening wore on.

Strangely enough, Justus’s attitude worsened.
Instead of his usual flirty charm, he seemed jittery and distracted. After he
screwed up a drink order for the second time and snapped at me for it, I
finally snapped back.

“Listen, sunshine. I’ve got two vampires at table
four waiting for their Bloody Marys and a pirate who keeps sticking his hook up
my skirt. Quit giving me crap over your own mistakes.”

Stunned, he stopped in his tracks. Then a smile
broke through, and he looked as if he were seeing me for the first time that
night.

Rachel buzzed past, a tray held aloft. She
delivered drinks to a couple at the end of the bar. The liquid sloshed over the
edges as she set the glasses down with a plunk.

“Whoopsie,” she trilled. Stunned, I watched her
lick her fingers. And her forearm. Giggling.

Eyebrows furrowed, I turned to Justus. His
expression soured again.

“Is she…?”

“Drunk off her butt,” he answered. “I have no idea
what to do. If Father finds out…” He trailed off, and I didn’t pursue it.

“Wait here,” I said, which was stupid, because
where was he going to go?

I delivered the drinks and corralled Beth and
Martha by the salad cooler. Martha listened briefly, then shot out of the
kitchen for the bar. Beth and I shrugged at each other and I went to pick up an
order of fish.

Five minutes later, Martha was back at my side.

“Oh, goodness. This is awful. If people see us
imbibing alcohol, we’ll send the wrong message altogether. We have to get her
out of here.”

“What should we do?”

“Justus can drive, if you think you can manage
her. She seems to get along with you. Then Justus can come back for us and help
close up. Beth and Jazzy will cover the few tables left, and I can manage the
bar.

“Goodness,” she repeated. “I’d never have expected
this of her. She’s normally so devout.”

“Well, there’s a lot going on these days.”

“You can say that again. And here you’re trying to
make the decision to commit. I hope this doesn’t change your mind. Are you okay
with this?” Martha suddenly looked as if she were having second thoughts.

“I’m fine,” I assured her. “Rachel’s my friend,
and I don’t think any less of her, or of the Elect, for that matter. I’d better
get going before things get out of hand.”

I handed Martha my order slips and filled her in
on the two tables I had left.

By the time I got back to the bar, Justus was
looking positively frazzled. Rachel sat cross-legged atop the ice cooler, skirt
tented between her knees, offering a fine view of pristine white cotton panties
to the locals sitting across from her. Luckily, it was a couple of guys, and
they didn’t seem at all offended at the free show.

Rachel clutched a bottle of peppermint schnapps in
one hand and a shot glass in the other. The glass was apparently for
appearances only, since she was busy sucking straight from the bottle.

“Why don’t you swing around and get the van,” I
suggested to Justus. His snort of acquiescence expressed disgust mingled with
pent-up frustration and relief at turning her over to me. “Better grab a
bucket,” I added as he headed for the door.

I crossed over to my drunken charge. “Hi, honey.”

Rachel’s hair had fallen out of its bun, hanging
down her back in dark waves. I kept a friendly smile in place. Having passed
through the giggling stage, she looked particularly somber as she gazed down at
me. The initial relief of the booze had passed; it was betraying her now,
intensifying her sadness and confusion.

“I’m drunk,” she informed me.

No kidding.

“I see that,” I said. “How about we get you down
from there? I don’t want you to fall.”

She looked away, staring into a distance only she
could see, making no move to get down. I waited. Outside, I heard the van pull
up. Martha stirred in the background, and I hoped she wouldn’t chime in. I
didn’t want Rachel to shift into belligerent mode.

Just as I was going to have to speak up, she
turned back. Leaning into me, she whispered, “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Can’t get down.”

“Why not?” I whispered. Now she had me doing it.

Looking grave, as if imparting a message of dire
import, she confided, “I’m stuck.”

We stared deep into each other’s eyes, pondering
her predicament. Thankfully, she burst out laughing at the same time I did and
promptly fell off the cooler, which solved that particular problem.

After that, Rachel came willingly enough. I
steered her outside and, aside from letting loose a string of exuberant whoops
when we hit the crisp air, she behaved herself.

I got her situated in the back and snapped her
seat belt around her. She held a bucket in her lap and leaned her face against
the cool glass of the window. I sat sideways in the front passenger seat, ready
to help, but hopefully out of barf range if she ignored the bucket. Justus was
still in a mood.

Oblivious to his ire, Rachel spent the twenty-minute
drive punctuating the dark night with drunk sounds. Deep, sucking breaths and
isolated little hoots sounded behind us as Rachel grappled with her whirling
world. When we were treated to a burring chorus of “race-car lips” at the tail
end of a jaw-breaking yawn, I burst out laughing. Justus finally joined in,
shaking his head and wiping a hand across his face.

“Are you done being cranky?” I asked.

Justus tossed me that distinctly male, “I don’t
get cranky,” look that cranky guys always resort to.

“I’m pissed,” he said.

“Can Elect members say ‘pissed?’”

Another disgusted look. “Who do you think is gonna
catch hell for this?” he asked, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at Rachel.

“I would assume she will.”

“Yeah, but she’s not the only one. They’re going
to come down on me like a ton of bricks.”

“Why you? What have you got to do with Rachel?”

“Am I not my sister’s keeper?” He finally cracked
a smile, a dimple flashing on his cheek, before continuing. “You know about the
ranking system. Basically, it’s just another version of a male pissing match.”
He shot a sideways glance, daring me to make another comment. “Since I’m the
only Elect male at the restaurant, I’m supposed to keep you all in line. And if
something goes wrong, it’ll screw things up for me big time.”

My lip curled. “That’s ridiculous. And besides,
Martha does all the…” Too late, I stuttered to a stop.

He even had a cute scowl.

“I guess I thought you were just another pretty face,”
I said, startling a laugh out of him. “Maybe there’s some way of keeping this
quiet?”

“Once we turn her over to Dathan, all bets are
off. He’s so devout he makes Jesus look wishy-washy.”

“Do we have to turn her over to him?”

Muttering rose from the back seat. If I didn’t
know better, I’d have suspected I heard the F word and something about Nazis.

“Well, he is her husband,” Justus said. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Once, when she had the flu, she stayed with
Cozbi. Dathan can’t stand the smell of puke, and they live in one of the
cabins. You get privacy from the rest of the community, but they’re basically
one room, if you don’t count the bathroom. But anyway, it won’t work because,
even if Cozbi would go along with it, Moses would blab.”

“She can stay with me. Priella left, so I have the
room to myself.”

This time, the look he slid over me was laced with
speculation that had little to do with Rachel’s situation. Against my will, I
shivered. Then I reminded myself of a particularly sexy, amber-eyed individual.

The moment was interrupted by the sound of Rachel
retching into the bucket. We spent the rest of the drive with the window down
and my face freezing in the jet stream.

I
had forgotten
how much fun it was trying to rescue a drunk against her will. Rachel was in
the mood to repent and apparently felt that she needed to be naked to do so.
After rolling her out of the van, Justus took one look at her struggling to
unknot the tie of her Smurf skirt and took off so fast the van pelted us with
gravel. By the time I steered her up the sidewalk, she’d begun a stumbling
striptease; her remaining bra, panties, and tennis shoes glowed eerily white in
the dark. She lurched to a stop in front of Father’s statue, staring at it
through lowered brows, trying to regulate her dizziness by breathing heavily.