The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series) (16 page)

“Maybe not, but you will.”

“Yaaay. Soft ball, soft ball! What now, Uncle Jimmy?”

Skip went off in search of Sheila. She found her lying in bed with her shoes on, a book in her hands. Angel, curled up on the floor, got up and started jumping and licking.

“Hi. What are you reading?”

“
Pride and Prejudice
. I hate it.”

“Angel, get down. Great first sentence, you have to admit.”

Sheila flipped back to look at it. She turned up her nose. “Antifeminist.”

“It’s supposed to be funny.”

“It is?”

“The whole book is—you didn’t notice?”

“Uh-uh.” She looked genuinely puzzled.

“Well, no wonder you don’t like it. Rethink it with irony.”

Sheila had put down the book and now began to eye Skip with suspicion. “You don’t usually come back here.”

“You mean I’m not welcome?”

Sheila pointed to a sign on the wall: Adult-Free Zone.

“Oh, sure,” said Skip. “When you see ‘Drug-Free Zone’ on a school, you know they’ve got a little substance problem. Mind if I sit down?”

Sheila moved a finger ever so slightly to signify reluctant assent, but Angel beat her tail on the floor to take up the slack. Skip sat.

“Honey, I want to talk to you about something.”

Deliberately, Sheila turned her head away. “I figured.”

“You sound like you know what it is.”

Sheila said nothing.

Skip patted her shin. “It wasn’t cool the way you talked to Darryl at your birthday party.”

“What?” Sheila sat up, obviously outraged, cheeks flaming. “You’re upset about
that
? Uncle Jimmy must be, too. He sent you in here, right?”

She’s mortified, Skip thought, but now that she’d started it, she had to finish.

“Not upset, exactly. I just thought I’d mention you put Darryl in kind of a bad position.”

“He said something to you?”

Oh. That’s what she really cares about.

“Of course not. Darryl’s your pal. He’d never complain about you. I just thought I’d mention that teenage girls aren’t supposed to flirt with grown men.”

“I wasn’t flirting.”

“Honey, I don’t know what else you’d call it.” She did, though—her own mother would have used the term “throw yourself at”; a bit strong, in Skip’s opinion.

“Why not? Darryl’s my friend. He knows I didn’t mean anything.” Her voice was sulky.

“Darryl happens to be a very hip, very together man who’s had lots of experience with kids your age. They’re not all that way, honey-pie.”

“Well, what are they going to do? Leave their wives and children for me? I really don’t think I’m that powerful, Auntie.”

“Wives and children? Where’s that coming from?”

Sheila was getting red again. “You wouldn’t understand.”

And I don’t want to
, Skip thought.
God, I hope this is bravado.

She stood up. “Auntie the Great has spoken. Henceforth flirting with over-twenty-ones shall be considered rude.”

“Well, that’s just special,” Sheila said, picking up the book. Before Skip could answer, she hid behind it.

Chapter Eleven

ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON Skip headed for Iberia Parish armed with a picture of Jacomine cadged from the
Times-Picayune’s
files. It was about a three-hour drive, and her plan was to stay overnight, get an early start Monday morning, then drive home that night.

Jeanie in Records had called her back the day before. Her search had turned up negative, which didn’t discourage Skip at all, instead persuaded her all the more that Jacomine was using an assumed name.

After finding a Holiday Inn, she checked the phone book for churches. Curiously, though she was in the heart of Cajun country, there were pages of churches, only a few of them Catholic. This was evidently fertile ground for religion.

Her problem was she didn’t know how long ago Jacomine had been here, exactly what town he’d been in, what he called his church, or even what he called himself at the time.

There was a newspaper in St. Martinville. She decided to go there first thing in the morning and see if he’d made any kind of local splash.

* * *

The Teche News (so named for Bayou Teche) had its own building, a small but efficient and prosperous-looking operation with a staff of three currently in evidence. The publisher was out, but the lifestyle editor, Marie LeBlanc, was as friendly as small-town folk are supposed to be.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember him,” she said, as if it were her job to call to mind every stranger who rode into town. “Let me look him up for you.”

She went to her computer and typed. After awhile she said, “Here we are. The Reverend Errol Jacomine, big as you please. I see he’s from the Christian Community.”

“That’s a Protestant denomination, isn’t it?”

Marie nodded. She had sharp features, dark hair, and fabulous ivory skin. “Uh-huh. We’ve got two of their churches here.”

“So he’s a real minister. I’ll be damned.”

“At least he was a few years ago.” She scrolled down quickly through the first clip. “It just says he’s been assigned here to take over one of the churches. Oh, here’s something good—a picture caption. Looks like he had his picture taken with some NAACP honcho on Martin Luther King’s birthday.”

“That makes sense. He’s got a big black following in New Orleans. Is the Community predominantly black?”

Marie shook her head. “I don’t think so. I had an aunt who was a member and, knowing her, it had to have been mostly white.”

Skip said, “What was the name of the man from the NAACP?”

“Ralph Washington.” LeBlanc scrolled on. “I guess that’s all. There’s not even anything saying Jacomine’s leaving town. So I guess we can’t tell when he did leave. He came here in ninety-one, and this picture was in early ninety-two, so he was here at least a few months.”

Without much hope, Skip decided to try Jacomine’s successor at the Christian Community. He probably wouldn’t say anything, but not talking to him was like failing to check the phone book if you wanted a number—it just wasn’t good policy to overlook the obvious.

The Community had a phone number, and the person who answered said he was the minister and if Skip would come on over, he’d be glad to see her. He was a white man, at least in his eighties, Skip thought; a very old man who still had a preacher’s voice.

“Adam Tardiff,” he boomed, lifting one white and overgrown eyebrow. He still had quite a bit of flesh on his bones, most of it sagging, but he was healthy-looking. His eyes were blue and sharp. “Nice weather, ain’t it? Think we’re gon’ get a hurricane this year?”

“Hope not.”

He shook his head. “I think we are. Haven’t had one since I came home. I just have a feelin’.”

He ushered her into a neat but very tiny brick house. “Small, ain’t it?” he said. “We’ve been having services here lately. Not that many of us in the Community anymore. My wife died last January, and a few others died as well. Only five or six left.”

All the shades were down in the house, possibly against the heat, though Skip felt air-conditioning. The furniture was cheap and fussy, undoubtedly chosen by his late wife. It looked as if it could use a good vacuuming.

“I’m from Lafayette originally, so when that other fella left, I said I’d come back. Had more members then, though.” He laughed. “Don’t think I was what they expected.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, I’m just an ol’ boy from around here, and that one could heal the sick. Sent down from Atlanta, I think—you know, our world headquarters? Guess he learned some real slick tricks there. Heard he could raise the dead, too, but maybe that was just a rumor.” He laughed so hard you would have thought he was in a room with Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy.

“Is that part of the Community’s usual program? Faith healing?”

“Noooooo.” He drew the word out so there’d be no mistaking it. “We just preach the Word. Do a little Bible study, that’s about it. That fella was full service.” He laughed again. “Yes, sir, we lost members when I came here. I just haven’t got the knack of raisin’ the dead.”

Skip wondered why he thought it was all such a joke. She said: “That must have been upsetting.”

“Well, I didn’t mean they got sick and died ‘cause I couldn’t heal ‘em. I just meant they liked to think ol’ Errol could. Anyway, it wad’nt specially upsettin’. The Community’s kind of old-fashioned. I b’lieve that fella made ‘em nervous.”

“How did he happen to leave?”

“Well, now, that I wouldn’t know. Just heard there was an openin’ and I was welcome to come if I wanted to. I knew there weren’t many people, but I’m eighty-four, startin’ to slow down a little bit. And I had relatives here—perfect setup for me.”

Skip wanted to get back to Jacomine. “Was Errol Jacomine asked to leave?”

“I wouldn’t know about that. Didn’t ask, didn’t think it was my business. What you want to know for?”

She’d already told him she was a detective. “You know he’s running for mayor of New Orleans?”

“Why, no, I didn’t know that.”

“I’ve got this feeling about him. I don’t think he’s on the up-and-up.”

Tardiff pursed his lips. “What you think about faith healin’?”

Skip laughed. Considering she’d just asked a gang of witches to heal an allergy, she didn’t think she could afford to be judgmental. She said, “Maybe it could work. The Bible talks about miracles. What do you think?”

“I think a man says he can do it’s a charlatan.”

“I see.” She thought she was getting his drift, but she wasn’t sure. “So maybe I should go talk to whoever told you about Jacomine’s special talents.”

“You catch on real fast, young lady. I don’t want to do anything undignified. Fact, when tongues get too loose in front of me, I make ‘em quit waggin’—there’s ways I don’t want to talk about another preacher.”

“Ah. But I have no such scruples.”

“Well, idn’t that fortunate?” His blue eyes crinkled. He might be old, but he was enjoying the hell out of life. “What I think you might ought to do is is talk to some other preachers. Some of ‘em don’t have professional standards like yours truly. Or let me put it another way—they got different ones. I get the feelin’ some folks around here thought he was givin’ the job a bad name—I feel like it ain’t none of my business myself.”

Now we ‘re getting somewhere
. Skip felt her heart pick up speed.
I knew there had to be something. I wish I had Jane with me.

He gave her the name of a Baptist minister he said might shed some light. She found Dr. Theon Cowan at a much more prosperous church than Tardiff’s, one that had its own building, though it was old and wooden, with no air-conditioning.

Dr. Cowan was in his mid-fifties, and thick, thick through the neck and shoulders and belly, as if his mama had once told him to eat everything on his plate and he’d been obeying ever since. He was black, his hair was close-cropped, his glasses looked a little too small for his face, and he was sweating.

Skip thought there was the odor of snake oil about him, something that reminded her of Jacomine. Maybe it takes one to know one, she thought.

She identified herself, said Tardiff sent her, and stated her business. Cowan wiped his face with a white handkerchief, nodding vigorously.

“Yes. Yes. I knew Errol Jacomine. Mr. Tardiff is correct on that point. Exactly how can I help you?”

“I think he’s a dangerous man; I gather Mr. Tardiff thinks you think that, too.”

“I don’t know that I’d say that. It depends what you mean by dangerous.”

Skip waited, wondering why Tardiff had sent her. Finally, she shrugged. “Mr. Tardiff apparently thought you could help. Can you?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

Skip started to stand. “Well, I—”

Cowan surprised her by patting the air with his palm. “Sit down. Sit down. I have decided to tell you what I know.”

Pompous ass
, Skip thought.

“Mr. Jacomine came to my attention when a number of people from my congregation began to attend his church! Naturally I was upset by this.” For the first time, he smiled. “Professional jealousy, perhaps. At any rate, I put out my antennae and I began to hear reports of miraculous healings.”

He said the word “miraculous” as if he were delivering a sermon—singsonging it, with heavy emphasis on the second syllable, irony implied.

“I was skeptical, of course, and I began to ax questions.” It was funny the way he so clearly prided himself on his enunciation, yet he still said “ax.”

“I found that several members of my flock had been cured of dangerous illnesses, in fact that the Reverend Mr. Jacomine had pulled the tumors from their very bodies.” He was singsonging again, as if at the pulpit, seeking to convince with the ironic tone of his voice.

“The problem was that in spite of her miraculous healing, Mrs. Hattie Morgan had the temerity to die! I visited her son Aaron the morning after she passed, and he was in deep mourning, as indeed ws the whole family. Mr. Duplain Morgan, his father, was in his house, holding something in a jar, rocking back and forth, back and forth, in the agony of his widowhood. When I inquired what that something was, he held up the jar. It contained what appeared for all the world to be a chicken liver, preserved in alcohol. ‘It is her tumor,’ he told me, in as bewildered a voice as I have ever heard. ‘It is the malignant tumor that Daddy removed from her blighted body. She has been healed and yet God has struck her down. It must truly have been her time.’ ”

Skip was now quite enjoying the way Cowan declaimed, understanding the honor of a performance for her benefit alone. Every once in awhile he even closed his eyes, squeezing them open only with great effort.

“Naturally, I was deeply concerned. I said to Mr. Morgan, ‘What do you plan to do with that tumor? I wonder if I might have it?’ I had in mind to submit it for laboratory analysis, of course, but Mr. Morgan said, ‘It is all that I have left of my Hattie, and I shall never part with it.’

“Still, I was not satisfied. I asked him the name of Mrs. Morgan’s doctor, and I went so far as to call the man and voice my concerns. I thought perhaps that she had suspended medical treatment in the belief that God had healed her through the hands of Mr. Jacomine.” He steepled his fingers on the desk in front of him. “Now, Miss Langdon, I am a man of God and I believe in God. But he works in mysterious ways, not the least of which is western medicine. The preacher who claims to have healed when he has not healed is a dangerous man!” His voice got louder as the speech continued and at the end of it, he banged his fist on the desk.