This time Reese did get up. His fists were clenched at his sides and the veins in his neck were standing out. “So that’s out in the open, is it? Our Circle meetings are supposed to be confidential, but it’s obvious they aren’t anymore. Well, church membership is off, but only marginally, less than half a percent. And that’s just for the last three-month period, hardly a trend.” He paused for breath, and Carola tugged at his cuff. “Sam, sit down,” she said soothingly. He did, still puffing, and she turned her big green eyes on me.
“Mr. Goodwin, my husband may not choose to say anything negative about a dead man, but I will. Roy Meade could be mean, petty, and—”
“Carola!” Reese yelped. “That’s enough!”
“It’s nowhere near enough, Sam.” Her voice was quiet but steady. “No one has done more to build this church than you have, with the possible exception of Barney, and I do mean the possible exception.” She kept those marvelous eyes fastened on me. “I’ve had to sit in these endless Circle of Faith meetings, listening silently while Royal Meade attacks Sam for one insignificant infraction after another. That is, when he wasn’t attacking somebody else. The man was full of himself, an egomaniac. He couldn’t stand to see anyone else get credit for anything. Mr. Goodwin, in case you’re not aware of this, so much of the vision for what the Silver Spire is today came directly from this man right here.”
“Now, Carola.” Reese put a hand on her arm in a limp attempt to quiet her.
“Darling, he should know this,” she said soothingly, stroking the back of her husband’s fleshy neck. “It was your idea, nobody else’s, to put up those billboards along the expressways and parkways for miles around advertising the church. That was really the beginning of our big growth period. And who came up with the plan to finance shelters for battered women and for the homeless? Certainly not Roy Meade, or even Barney, for that matter. And who pushed Barney to set up the TV network? I’m not sure he would have done it, at least not on the scale we have today, if you hadn’t been so aggressive.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Reese muttered. He had kept his face down during his wife’s little speech, but he had to be enjoying the lavish praise.
“Of course it’s true,” she insisted, giving me the wide-eyed bit again. “Mr. Goodwin, you asked if we liked Roy Meade. Well, maybe Sam did, but he’s a far better Christian than I am — he always will be, and I love him dearly because of it. God may condemn me, but I honestly loathed Roy. He was—”
“Carola, please, I don’t think you should go on,” Reese told her sharply.
A tear rolled down one rouged cheek as she squeezed her husband’s arm. “Maybe not, but I can’t help it. This has been building up inside me for... I don’t know, years, I guess. When Roy was killed, I was stunned — just as shocked as everyone else here. In a way, though, I was also... relieved, I guess. I know that sounds awful, but I can’t help it. Believe me, I’m not proud of myself, but that’s the truth.”
“Who do you think killed Meade?” I asked her.
“We all know who did it!” Reese put in angrily. “Your man, that’s who.”
“Why would Fred Durkin want to kill him? They barely knew each other.”
“I assume you’re aware of that meeting we had the night Roy was killed, the one Durkin was at,” Reese said. His face went crimson again. “The vitriol he displayed toward Roy—”
“Roy wasn’t exactly pleasant himself,” Carola interrupted. “He said some mean things, some really cruel things, about private detectives in general and Mr. Durkin in particular. I was really embarrassed by it.”
Reese nodded. “I was surprised myself about how strong Roy came on. We all knew from the very start of this business that he was against having a detective brought in, of course. For that matter, so was I, although I wasn’t as outspoken about it. Anyway, when Durkin made his ridiculous claim that those vile things were written by a staff member, I guess Roy simply had all he could stand. He really blew sky-high and said some pretty rough things to Durkin, who then sort of lost control himself and started using language that, well... shouldn’t be used in a house of God. Or anyplace else, for that matter.”
“That’s when Bay said a prayer and had you all go off and meditate, right?”
“Yes,” Reese said. “I came back here, and Carola went to one of the empty offices down closer to the conference room, right?”
“It’s Edna Wayne’s office — she’s one of our membership secretaries. She isn’t here at night,” Carola told me. “And of course I don’t have an office.”
“Uh-huh. Did either of you hear any shots?”
They shook their heads in unison. “Mr. Goodwin, Barney didn’t cut any corners when he built this place,” Reese said. “Thick walls, thick doors. He didn’t want anyone to be bothered by outside noises or distractions. To quote him, ‘To do the Lord’s work properly takes concentration, reflection, and prayer — all of which require peaceful surroundings.’ We hear almost nothing from outside when we’re in here with the door closed. And you know, Roy’s office is right across the hall from mine.”
“How did you learn about the shooting?”
“Marley Wilkenson came in all wild-eyed,” Reese answered. “After the fifteen minutes were up, he left his office. There was no one in the hall, so he started back toward the conference room, and Roy’s door was the first one he passed. He knocked, to tell Roy it was time to reconvene, and when there was no answer, he went in, and... well...”
“Elise ran in and told me,” Carola said. “She was in an empty office across the hall from mine. She found out from one of the others, I don’t know who.”
“Back to those notes. Who do you think wrote them?” I asked.
“Lord only knows. Oh, those miserable, miserable little things — the start of all the trouble,” Reese moaned, throwing his hands up and then letting them drop onto his knees with a slap. “Considering the thousands who come to church here every week, we’re bound to get a few strange ones. And we do, from time to time. About two years ago, there was this woman who started showing up at our first service, the one at eight o’clock. Always sat on the main floor. She had to be at least seventy, poor thing, and to call her clothes ragged would be a gross understatement. Anyway, at the same time in the service every week, just before the offering was taken, she would stand up and shout ‘Hallelujah!’ three times. And I do mean shout. Believe me, she had a voice that would wake the dead in that cemetery a half-mile down the road. This went on for at least four or five Sundays.”
“What did you do?”
“Turned out she was homeless,” Reese answered. “Had been in a mental institution for years, but, like so many others these days, she’d been let out; apparently, there were no funds to keep her in there anymore. And she didn’t have any family that we could find. Eventually, the church paid to have her admitted to another facility here on the island, a good one. She’s still there; one of our ministers-to-the-homebound calls on her every week.”
“But at least she was harmless, Sam,” Carola insisted. “The sheets of paper are just plain evil.”
“If taken literally,” he conceded. “But I still think they have to be the work of some crank.”
“Does Bay have any enemies that you’re aware of?”
“Mr. Goodwin, if so, they’ve done a good job of hiding themselves. Now, it’s true Barney will occasionally get a letter from someone, usually a TV viewer, saying he’s not interpreting the Bible correctly, or that he is too liberal, whatever that means — they don’t usually say. We probably receive, oh, twenty or thirty negative letters a year.”