The Lord Is My Shepherd (6 page)

“Geanie, what are your plans this evening?” she asked as she walked by her desk.

Geanie looked up from her computer. “My new boyfriend is taking me out to dinner to celebrate our one-week anniversary,” She giggled.

“A week. Wow, what a milestone,” Cindy teased.

Geanie blushed. “He's really romantic.”

“Obviously. Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

Cindy looked at the clock. There was still about fifteen minutes left in the workday, but technically she shouldn't even be there. “I think I'll get out of here early.”

“See you tomorrow,” Geanie said.

Cindy left the office and walked toward the parking lot. A chill raced up her spine as she passed the closed doors to the sanctuary. The yellow police tape looked menacing against the glass and brick of the building. She forced herself to look away. After she passed through the main gate she looked at her car and knew she wasn't ready to go home. She still needed to be with people, but everyone she could think of already had plans for the evening.

She hesitated a moment and then walked through the hedge and headed for the main building of the synagogue. Fortunately, the office was well marked with an overhead sign, and the door was open. Cindy walked in and looked around.

Behind a large desk sat a woman in her late forties. She stared at Cindy with open curiosity. The nameplate on her desk said
Marie Henson
.

“Hi, are you Marie?” Cindy asked.

“Yes, may I help you?”

“I'm Cindy. I work at the church next door. I was just wandering if Rabbi Silverman was in?”

Marie cocked her head to the side and stared at her as though she were sizing up Cindy. “He is, but I'm not sure he's taking visitors at the moment.”

“I can wait while you ask him,” Cindy offered, determined not be intimidated by the whole secretary-restricting-access-to-her-boss thing.

“I'll be back in a minute.” Marie stood up and walked to the back of the office. She knocked on a door and then poked her head in. After a couple of moments she stepped back and opened the door wide. “He'll see you,” she said as she took her seat.

“Thank you.”

Cindy walked around Marie's desk and into Jeremiah's office. She closed the door behind her. He stood up to shake her hand across the desk. “Come in and take a seat.”

She settled into the chair across from him as he sat back down. His formality threw her slightly off.

“I'm surprised to see you again so soon.”

“I decided to drop by and thank you again for all you did for me this morning,” she said, suddenly feeling very foolish. She fidgeted with her hands, wishing she had a deck of cards she could manipulate.

“That's very considerate. Shouldn't you be home resting, though?”

She shrugged. “I came to get my car and got caught up in the Easter crunch.”

He nodded. “It's like that over here for Passover. If I have to answer one more question about Wednesday night's Seder, I'm going to quit.”

She smiled. “That would be a great loss to your congregation.”

“It might be worth it if it taught them to listen the first time. Do you think there's any hope of that?”

“Not a chance.”

“Then I should probably get out of here so I won't have to quit in vain.”

Her eyes fell on the newspaper open on his desk to the crossword puzzle. “You do the crosswords too?” she asked.

“Yes, it helps my vocabulary. Today's is pretty hard, though. I always know I'm in for a rough time when I can't fill in the first one.”

“One across is easy. It's 'knife,' “ she said.

He glanced down. “No, I don't think that's possible.”

“Sure it is. I was working on it at home before I came over. It's 'knife,' I'm certain of it.”

“Not unless I've been misspelling 'knife.' One across is only four letters.”

“What?” she asked.

He handed it to her, and she looked at the puzzle. “This isn't the same puzzle as mine. Is this today's paper?”

“Yes.”

“Then how can that be?”

“They might be different papers. This is the Gazette, which one do you get?”

“The Gazette. Online version, not print. But they use the same crossword for each. They always run the same one.”

“Apparently not today,” he said.

She looked at the small print below the puzzle. “Daily crossword provided by Ink and Paper Games.” She handed the paper back to him. “That's weird. All I can say is welcome to Monday.”

He laughed out loud. “Kind of makes you anxious about Tuesday, doesn't it?”

“I should say so. Although I've never met the Tuesday yet that was as bad as a Monday.”

“You might have a point there, especially this week. Tonight I have to clean my kitchen and throw away anything that has yeast in it before Passover begins,” he said. “I must admit, I never look forward to that. What do you have planned?”

She shrugged. “I'm not sure. I'm not really ready to go back home. It's too quiet there.”

“I understand. You look a lot better than you did earlier, though.”

“I feel better,” she confessed. She leaned closer. “Because now I know, it wasn't random.”

He started. “How do you know?” he asked.

“The police are keeping it out of the papers for now, but they found a dead guy last night, sitting on a donkey on Palm Avenue.”

“Palm Sunday, the 'triumphal entry' of Jesus into Jerusalem a week before his death, riding on a donkey?”

“Exactly,” she said.

“Coincidence?”

“I don't believe that.” She studied his face for a moment. “And neither do you.”

“Well played,” he said, a sly smile slipping across his face. “No, I'm not much of a believer in coincidence.”

“So, what do we do?”

He laughed. “We let the police handle it.”

She flushed. Of course that was what they should do. What had she been thinking to even ask something like that? But something else tugged at her. Something that made her wildly uncomfortable.

“I think you're feeling so involved because you found the body. If it had been one of your coworkers who found it, you'd probably be able to let it go more easily,” he suggested.

“But I
am
the one who found the body. What if that means something, like maybe God wants me to find the killer?” She couldn't believe the words coming out of her mouth. Every fiber of her being screamed that it was too dangerous and that it was best to look away.

“Or maybe since you are the first one to the church everyday, it was not God, but the killer who wanted you to find the body,” he countered.

A shiver ran up her spine, and she felt a sick, twisting sensation in her gut. “But why would somebody want that?”

He shrugged. “No reason that I know of. So, two bodies not a coincidence, but you finding the second one probably is.”

She nodded. “I can buy that. The alternative is too creepy.”

Jeremiah leaned back in his chair, his face blank and his eyes veiled. “So, why are you sharing all of this with me?”

She already knew the answer. It was because somehow she believed that he would understand, whereas her coworkers would not. Out loud she said, “Because you were there.”

Now she could feel him studying her, trying to read her expression. If they had been playing cards she would have done her best to give him nothing. They weren't, though, and she needed him to trust her because she needed someone to talk to about it all. So she let her emotions spill onto her face without trying to censor them.

After a moment he nodded, almost imperceptibly, and she let her relief show.

“In the spirit of avoiding home, can I buy my hero a cup of coffee?” she asked.
Smooth, real smooth. Knowing my luck he'll think I'm hitting on him. Awkward.

He hesitated, and she resisted the urge to crack her knuckles.

“That sounds really good,” he said at last. “But it's going to take me several hours to clean tonight, and I need to get started.”

“Some other time then,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment.

“Of course, if you really feel the need to get away from your house and do something nice for the hero,” he said with a grin, “I could use some help cleaning out my kitchen.”

She started laughing, and after a moment he joined in. “Well, that's the strangest offer I've ever had.”

“Did I mention I hate cleaning out the kitchen? Come on, it'll be fun. I'll even buy us some pizza.”

“Pizza. That's a good Jewish food to start Passover with,” she said still laughing.

“Not at all. Pizza is a tradition. Jewish people can't eat anything with yeast in it during Passover. I always like to celebrate the last day or two before Passover and the first day after Passover with pizza.”

“Okay, if you buy the pizza, I'll help clean your kitchen.”

“Wonderful. Let me just get my coat, and we can leave.”

It was then that she remembered they'd only met a few hours before. She didn't even visit the homes of guys she dated until at least the fifth date, when she was sure they weren't psychos. Still, these were extenuating circumstances. She doubted that Jeremiah would have come to her rescue if he'd been a psycho killer. Another thought occurred to her, though.

“You sure it'll be okay? I mean, you're the rabbi, and I wouldn't want to create some kind of scandal for you.”

“You think we need a chaperone?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Don't tease. I've known some pastors who were really touchy about having women over to their houses when no one else was there.”

He smiled at her. “You don't know my synagogue very well. It's a scandal even when I don't have women over to my home.” He stood up and crossed to a coat rack in the far corner where he retrieved the jacket that he had put around her earlier that morning. As he put it on she was glad to see that it looked no worse for wear.

“After you,” he said, opening the door for her.

She walked out, and he locked his office door before leading her past Marie's desk. “I'm leaving now, Marie. I'll be home this evening if you need to get hold of me.”

Marie stared at Cindy through narrowed eyes, and she couldn't help but feel that the other woman disapproved of her.

Once they reached the parking lot, she commented, “I don't think Marie likes me.”

He laughed. “All of the good Jewish mothers have been trying to set up the rabbi with their single daughters. She
could tell you were single, and she probably didn't like it one bit.”

“That's what I was talking about,” Cindy said, suddenly uncomfortable. She had already been involved in one church scandal, and that was enough for any Monday.

“It's fine. Thanks to this morning everyone has better things to gossip about. Shall we just take my car? I can drop you back here later,” Jeremiah asked.

“Sure.”

Ten minutes later he pulled up outside his house. Once inside he called out for a pizza. Cindy noticed he even had the number memorized. Kind of sad.

“Pizza should be here in about forty minutes,” he told her when he'd hung up. “Would you like the grand tour?”

“Why not.”

“Okay, let's start here in the living room.”

As she turned slowly her eyes almost popped out of her head. “Rabbi,” she said, “I think you've been holding out on me.”

S
TANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF JEREMIAH'S LIVING ROOM, CINDY POINTED to the single bookshelf. “Emily Dickenson, Robert Frost, Shakespeare's Sonnets. I would not have taken you for the poetry type.”

He smiled. “And what type would you have taken me for?”

It was a good question, and it reminded her that she was standing in the house of a man she barely knew. She fought the sudden urge to run for the door. Strangers weren't safe. Still, he wasn't a complete stranger. He was her rescuer, the one who had come running when she screamed.

What if it's because he's the killer
, a voice whispered in her head.

No, that couldn't be. Jeremiah would have had no way to access the church sanctuary. Since the dead man had no connection with the church, it had to have been his killer that unlocked the sanctuary. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. No, it couldn't have been Jeremiah. He just wasn't the killer type. Still, that didn't mean she was even remotely sure what type of person he was.

She forced herself to relax and she shrugged. “Don't know yet.”

“Let me know when you figure it out.”

He gave her a quick tour of the rest of the house. It was spartan, with very little in the way of furniture and decorations. Like her house it had two bedrooms, and like her, Jeremiah used one of them as an office and the other as his bedroom.

She excused herself to the bathroom and took the opportunity to splash cold water on her face in an effort to pull herself together. It had been a long day, and her nerves were shot. She stared at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath.

Pull yourself together, Cindy. Jeremiah is no killer. Besides, there was no way he could have gotten into that sanctuary last night.

Unless someone else left it unlocked.

She gritted her teeth in frustration. Resolutely, she left the bathroom and returned to the kitchen where Jeremiah had flung open the cupboards. “So, is tomorrow the beginning of Passover?”

He shook his head. “Passover starts Wednesday night. Normally, you clean the night before, but the first night's Seder is being held at the synagogue, and I have to help clean there tomorrow night. That means my house has to be cleaned tonight.”

“Okay, what do we do? You have to get rid of everything with yeast in it, right?”

He smiled at her. “Yes, but it doesn't stop there. Anything that swells when placed in water for seven minutes. So, anything that has yeast, rice, beans, and corn has to go.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I never joke about Passover.”

She pulled a box of spaghetti out of the cupboard. “So this just gets tossed?”

“Yes, unless there's something you want it all goes in the trash.”

“There's a homeless shelter that a lot of the local churches support. I'd be happy to box up whatever you don't want and take it over tomorrow.”

“Sounds like an excellent idea.”

He disappeared into his office and came back a minute later with a medium-sized box. She put the spaghetti inside while he reached for a package of leek soup.