The Shadow of Death (Psalm 23 Mysteries Book 9) (3 page)

She made it to the family room just as the doorbell rang. When she opened it she was surprised to see Jeremiah holding a bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers.

“For me?” she asked before she even bothered to greet him.

He smiled but he looked uncomfortable. “I saw them at the store earlier and thought they were too festive to pass up.”

“They certainly are,” she said, taking them from him and then stepping back to let him enter. She hurriedly got a vase out from one of the cabinets and filled it with water. She got out her kitchen scissors and cut the stems on the diagonal before rearranging the flowers in the vase.

She carried the arrangement to the coffee table and put it down in the middle. “It looks beautiful,” she said.

He smiled at her, but didn’t say anything.

“Shall we order a pizza?” Jeremiah asked.

“Sounds like an excellent an idea,” she said. She went to the kitchen and grabbed her phone from her purse. After placing the order she hung up and put the phone down on the counter next to the envelope she had discovered earlier.

“I was wanting to ask you about something I found in my car this afternoon,” she said, picking the envelope up and carrying it back into the family room.

“In your car?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ve never seen it before and I have no idea how it got into the car. What do you make of it?”

She handed it to him, curious as to what the writing on it meant. “Can you read what it says?”

Jeremiah stared intently at the writing on the envelope. A muscle in his jaw twitched for just a moment. “Where did you say you found this?” he asked, his voice definitely strained.

“On the floor of the front passenger seat of my car when I got home tonight.”

“And you’re positive that’s the first time you saw it?”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“Were all your doors locked when you got out to the church parking lot this afternoon?”

“I think so. They should have been. When I came back from lunch I locked all the doors. I assume they were that way when I came back to the car. I know the driver’s side was for sure,” she said. He was making her increasingly nervous and she didn’t like it. “Jeremiah, what is it?”

“Did anything strange happen today, anything even remotely out of the ordinary?”

“Yes, the new pastor gave Wildman permission for the youth group to put on a haunted house event for Halloween. Shocked us all.”

He shook his head. “No, not like that. Were there any people you didn’t know hanging around the church interacting with you in any way?”

Cindy thought back over her day, trying to ignore the fact that the longer Jeremiah went without telling her what he was thinking the harder her heart was beginning to pound.

“The UPS guy who delivered to the office today wasn’t the regular guy. He chatted for a minute, asked me a couple things about the church. Apparently he and his wife are looking for a new one.”

“Did he give you anything or say anything out of the ordinary?”

“He just gave me a package for our business administrator. It was some books she had ordered. There was nothing special about it and I signed for it like I always do. And no, nothing he said seemed strange. It just sounded like he was genuinely interested in knowing a bit more about the church.”

“And he didn’t ask you anything personal?”

“No, nothing. Jeremiah, what’s going on?”

“That was the only interaction you had with a stranger today?”

“Yeah, I ate at the Mexican restaurant down the street that has the giant burritos, and I’ve had that waitress tons of times.”

“There’s nothing else you can think of?”

“Oh,” she said, as another thought hit her. “A bicyclist pulled up beside me when I was driving and told me that my back tire needed air.”

Jeremiah leaned forward, eyes boring through her. “What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. He was wearing a bike helmet so I couldn’t see the color of his hair. He was tan, athletic.”

“Did he have any kind of accent?” Jeremiah asked.

Cindy shook her head. “Not that I could tell.”

“Did he say anything to you besides telling you about your tire?”

“No, and I didn’t even really have a chance to say thank you. The light turned green and he was off before I knew what happened.”

“Did you roll down the window to talk to him?”

“Only a few inches,” she said. “He was on the passenger side of the car.

“Did you take your eyes off of him for even a second?”

“He told me the light had changed and I glanced forward, saw it was true, and when I turned back he was already on his way.”

Jeremiah was looking increasingly pale.

“Please, tell me what it says,” she entreated, pointing to the envelope he was still clutching in his hands.

He looked down at it, then back up at her. “It’s Hebrew. The translation that would capture the meaning of it is ‘Angel of Death’.”

3

Jeremiah stared at the envelope, feeling sick to his stomach. Why had someone thrown it into Cindy’s car? He was convinced it had to be the bicyclist. That moment she looked away from him to see the traffic signal he could have easily dropped it in.

“Was your tire actually flat?” he asked.

“No, just low on air.”

“But not low enough that you noticed when you got in your car?”

“I don’t normally look at my tires before getting in the car. It wasn’t enough to set off the low tire pressure sensor, though.”

“How about your other tires?”

“They were fine. Why?”

He hesitated, trying to decide how much of his suspicions to share with her. The bicyclist could have easily let air out of that one tire while she was at work, giving him the excuse to ride up beside her while she was on the road. Doing it to a tire on the passenger side of the car guaranteed that if she was an average driver she wouldn’t notice it before leaving the parking lot. He could have just told her that her tire was low without going to the trouble, but then when she went to fill it up she would realize he had been lying and would instantly have been suspicious of him and his actions. As it was he had done
his job so well she hadn’t even thought about him being the one to place the envelope in her car.

Had the cyclist broken into the car at the church and put the envelope inside then, there was a good chance she would have noticed when getting in the car and realized that something was wrong, at which point she could have easily called the police. Having the envelope suddenly appear when she got home did the trick of making her think that it had somehow been in her car for a while, perhaps under the seat. So she hadn’t called the police but had instead given him the envelope thinking that since it had Hebrew writing on it that it was probably his.

It was very clever, but it was also a completely round about way to get to him. He felt his chest tighten as he wondered if this was going to signal a new rash of attacks on Cindy by someone linked to the man who had been trying to hurt her months before. When he had killed that man at Geanie and Joseph’s wedding he had warned that others would be coming.

He had a dilemma. He didn’t want to scare her, but he couldn’t leave her completely in the dark and unprotected. She was staring at him intently and he was going to have to tell her something.

“I think it would be a good idea if you stayed with friends for a couple of nights, just to be on the safe side.”

She glanced at the envelope in his hands and she grew noticeably paler. “The people that you said might try to hurt me again, you think this is a message from them?”

“I don’t know what to think at this moment, but I don’t want to take any chances with your safety,” he said.

“I’m sure I could stay with Geanie and Joseph.”

Jeremiah shook his head. “Joseph needs to upgrade his security system. Too many people have managed to sneak onto his property in the last couple of years. I wouldn’t feel okay about that unless you had around the clock police protection, too.”

He had been one of those who had managed to sneak onto Joseph’s property and he’d been grateful at the time that the security system had holes in it. He really should talk to Joseph about upgrading, though. Him being able to sneak into the house was one thing, but it was just too vulnerable right now.

“Okay, if not them then who do you suggest I stay with?”

“Mark and Traci.” It was the best solution. If he was going to trust her to stay with anyone else it would have to be with someone who had a gun and knew how to use it if it came down to that.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “And just what do I tell them about why I need to stay there? I mean, do we tell Mark about the envelope?”

“No,” Jeremiah said emphatically. This was definitely not a matter for the police. “I’ll figure out something to tell them. In the meantime, let’s get you packed.”

When the pizza arrived half an hour later Cindy had just finished getting a suitcase ready. She hated to impose on Mark and Traci, especially with Traci being pregnant. Jeremiah wasn’t one to jump to worst case scenarios, though, and if he said she shouldn’t be by herself then she believed him.

She just wished he would tell her why.

While she had packed he had paced like a caged tiger. He’d finally settled down after borrowing a magnifying glass and had been at the kitchen table perusing the envelope ever since. She wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he didn’t seem to be in the mood to overshare.

It was frustrating, but she also knew that if she pushed for answers at this point he’d close up even more. Patience was her best option.

They ate dinner in relative silence. It drove Cindy crazy, but she managed to keep herself from pushing even then. As soon as he was done eating he pulled his phone out of his pocket and called someone.

“Hello, Mark. It’s Jeremiah.”

Cindy couldn’t hear Mark’s side of the conversation even though she strained. She’d just have to settle for hearing what Jeremiah was going to say.

“No,
noone’s dead,” Jeremiah said, sounding even more serious than usual. “Yes, looking forward to the party tomorrow. Look, I need a favor. Cindy’s place has gotten some pests. There’s an exterminator that’s going to handle things, but she needs somewhere to stay for a couple of nights.”

There was a pause in which she still couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation.

Jeremiah scowled. “That’s not funny. You know that’s not approp-”

Cindy couldn’t help but wonder what on earth Mark had proposed.

“Yes, tonight...No just her...Okay, see you then.”

Jeremiah hung up and turned to her. “It’s fine with them. They just asked that we wait for a couple of hours
before heading over so they’ve got time to prep the guest room.”

“Well, unless you’re ready to talk about what’s going on, then I suggest we watch the movie.”

For a moment she thought he was going to object, but then he nodded and headed over to the couch to sit down. She put the movie in and settled down to watch.

Unfortunately, even though she enjoyed the movie, she realized she was only half-watching. Her brain was far too busy trying to figure out what was up with the envelope. She knew she was going to be obsessing about it until they had some sort of concrete answers about its meaning, and who had thrown it in her car, and why they had done so. She just hoped they could get it all resolved quickly so she could get on with enjoying her weekend instead of stressing out over it.

She could tell Jeremiah was distracted, too. She would have just given up on the movie and told him they’d watch later, but they had to do something to kill time while waiting to go over to Mark and Traci’s.

She did manage to finally focus toward the end of the movie just in time for the president’s speech which always brought tears to her eyes. Jeremiah seemed to appreciate it as well.

At last the movie was over and Jeremiah carried her suitcase out to his car while she turned off lights and locked up. As she did so she thought about the fact that one of these days she was going to need to get a security alarm. She probably should have gotten one years before, but the need had become overwhelmingly obvious.

They spent the drive in silence, each one of them occupied with their own thoughts. It was just a few
minutes, but it seemed much, much longer. At last they arrived. “Well, I guess we’re just going to have to start the party early,” Cindy said, attempting to lighten the mood.

“You can never have too many fireworks,” Jeremiah said.

“Words to live by.”

Mark answered the door. “So, this little pest problem...is it something we should be canceling the party over?” he asked with a smirk.

“Oh no, not at all,” Cindy said fervently.

Jeremiah remained silent. Mark didn’t like the look on his face, though. Something was very, very wrong and it had nothing to do with household pests. He stepped back to let them inside.