“Bekah told me.”
“How does she know?”
“Because she knows what really happened.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t think I should tell you.”
“What do you mean? I’m paying you.”
“Well, you haven’t paid me yet. Besides, it I don’t think it has anything to do with Reverend Hessel’s murder. And it would just hurt people.”
“When did you start caring about other people?”
That was such a mean thing to say it deserved a mean answer, so I said, “Last Tuesday at three twenty-three in the afternoon. You were napping.”
“You’re such an odd child,” she said under her breath.
We drove in silence for a mile or two. Finally, I said, “Why aren’t you in the choir?”
“I can’t sing a note. Where do you think you get it from?”
“This audition was just to humiliate me, wasn’t it?”
“No. We needed to find out what’s going on between Sue and Reverend Wilkie. And apparently, we did. You just won’t tell me.”
“They’re not having an affair. Do you really need to know more than that?”
“But they still have a motive, don’t they?”
And I had to admit they did. A big one.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Yes, I knew it was entirely possible that Reverend Wilkie and Sue Langtree had something to do with Reverend Hessel’s death. Except, right away, I was sure they didn’t. And it wasn’t because they did something kind for a teenage girl. It was because Detective Lehmann thought the murder was the result of a robbery gone wrong. A robbery committed by a meth addict. Not a generic drug addict, a specific drug addict: a meth addict. A tweaker. A cranker. A meth head.
I couldn’t see what that had to do with Reverend Wilkie or Sue Langtree. I didn’t see how two people that old would even know anything about Tina.
Consequently, having reached a dead end, I didn’t do much the next day. Friday. Well, that’s not completely true. I took care of my grandmother, I spent a lot of time calling people trying to get them to volunteer for the plant sale, and I took an Oxy vacay in the afternoon by telling Nana Cole I was desperate for a nap and making her promise to stay out of the kitchen.
Finding volunteers was a nightmare. I got three people to commit to Friday and two for Saturday which meant I was nowhere near finished calling up strangers and asking them to do something for absolutely free. I mean, the people I was callingwere all people who’d volunteered before, so that should have made things easier. Should have, but didn’t.
In fact, I think it made it harder. One woman barely let me finish asking before she said, “No. Absolutely not. Last year you promised I wouldn’t have to move anything. Not a thing. I spent the whole day moving ten-foot trees.”
“This is a seedling sale,” I replied, though for all I knew there were ten-foot seedlings. Some of the trees around here did get very big.
Early Saturday evening, Nana Cole and I were watching9&10 News—Prince William had just turned twenty-one—when there was a knock at the back door.
As I got up, I said to her, “Be nice.”
“What do you mean be nice? Who’s here?”
Ignoring her, I went to the back door and let Bev in. Despite it being summer, she wore a gray cardigan over a flannel shirt. She carried a casserole in her hands.
“It’s sort of a chicken cordon bleu. With noodles.”
“Sounds great. She’s in the living room.”
