“There is an answer to this question, my friends,” the preacher said in a rising voice. “And, of course, it is here.” He held a Bible aloft and let it fall open on his palm. “Please take your own Bibles and come with me now to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter eight. I am reading as usual from the New International Version.”
The sound of turning pages filled the hall. Cal and Darlene Warren each opened their Bibles, and Cal held his so I could read along. “Starting with verse thirty-five: ‘Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’”
Bay closed the Bible loudly and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the lectern. “Brothers and sisters,” he said gravely, spacing his words for effect, “God has a plan for each one of us, and whatever that plan may be, nothing — repeat, nothing — can separate us from His love through Jesus Christ. You may be assured that God has a role for our beloved friend and colleague Roy, and it is not given to us to comprehend that role; it is all part of our Lord’s grand plan.”
Bay then launched into a sermon on death and salvation, and although much of it I either didn’t agree with or didn’t understand, I had to concede that the guy was one high-octane speaker. He talked for twenty-five minutes, again using his southern-tinged voice like a musical instrument — now loud, now soft, almost a whisper — and there weren’t more than a couple of coughs the entire time from the three thousand plus in the audience.
After the sermon, we sang a hymn, the collection got taken — I put a finif in the offering plate to be sociable — and we sang another hymn. Wilkenson’s choir got to perform once more, too, and in between all this, Bay led us in prayer. We closed with a singing version of the Lord’s Prayer, and as I rose to leave, Cal Warren stopped me. “Pardon me, Mr. Goodman,” he said with a wide smile, “but have you got a card?”
“I... left mine at the hotel. Forgetful of me, sorry.”
“Well, how’s about writing your name and address down for me? I’d be happy to send you some material on the Spire.” I told him I’d already taken a brochure, which I proudly produced from my breast pocket, but the boy was insistent. I tore a sheet of blank paper from my pocket secretary and wrote “Alan Goodman, Route 1, Chillicothe, Ohio” on it, feeling slightly guilty.
“How ’bout the zip code?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” I took the paper back and scribbled the five numbers I had long ago memorized from sending cards and letters west. Never mind that anything Cal mailed would either be returned or end up in the Chillicothe Post Office’s dead-letter department. We shook hands, and Darlene Warren smiled with her dancing eyes, saying she hoped I’d come back. I answered that I would try, not wanting to total up the number of fibs I had told in the last hour. And in a church, no less.
The cars moved out of the huge parking lot remarkably well, probably because of all those young men in the white shirts plus several of New York’s Finest who were waving traffic through intersections in a radius of several blocks around the tabernacle. A half-hour after I turned the key in the ignition, I had the Mercedes back in the garage on Tenth Avenue.
My watch told me it was twelve-fifty-six. I contemplated going back to the brownstone, but the thought of being under the same roof as Mr. Relapse was more than I could handle at the moment, so I went for a walk.
New York takes plenty of knocks both from within and without, most of them well-deserved. The city, at least Manhattan, is overpriced, overcrowded, and dirty, and everything from bridges to subways seems to be wearing out and falling apart faster than the funds can be found to patch them up. To say nothing of miseries like random violence, drugs, and homelessness. But despite its appalling and maybe insurmountable problems, the place still possesses a fascination for me, although I can’t always tell you why. That early afternoon, with spring showing its best, I felt that old pull once again.
Part of it had to be the weather: sunny, seventy, and slightly breezy. I ambled east to an almost traffic-free Fifth Avenue and turned north, eventually finding myself at Rockefeller Center, where I looked down into the sunken plaza. Brunch was being served at umbrella-sheltered tables on the very spot where ice skaters — Lily Rowan and I among them — had cavorted only two months earlier. I briefly considered hiking another half-mile or so to Lily’s penthouse, but I nixed the idea faster than you can say Renoir, one of whose paintings hangs on her living-room wall. Lily loves to sleep late — very late — on Sundays, and far be it from me to disturb other people’s routines. Besides, in my present state, I hardly qualified as good company.
I headed back south, this time taking Park Avenue for variety and slipping a sawbuck into the paw of a grizzled panhandler at Forty-eighth who gave me a toothless smile and a hoarse “God bless you, sir.” I almost asked if he had ever been to one of Bay’s homeless shelters.
Picking up my pace, I chewed over the situation one more time. Fred sat at home in Queens sweating and moping, not that I blamed him. Wolfe also sat at home, with his brain on strike — and I did blame him. I tried him and found him guilty of terminal laziness in the first degree. One of six people — seven, counting Bay — had to have been Meade’s killer. But what was the motive? True, the guy hadn’t exactly been Mr. Popularity at the church, but if healthy dislike for a fellow employee were stimulus enough for murder, most of the New York work force would either wind up in jail or pushing up posies.
I was still on the fence about Carola Reese. I had told Wolfe I’d give slightly more than even money that she had something going on the side with Wilkenson, and I wasn’t ready to change my mind. Even if she and Wilkenson were playing games, though, what did Meade have to gain from harassing her? And if he blew the whistle on them, what was in it for him, other than seeing them both tossed out of the Circle of Faith and maybe out of the church as well? Was fear of being exposed great enough to spur one of them to commit murder? And was this the “situation” that Meade had mentioned to his wife? And what about the fact that Meade had known of Carola’s child? How much did she fear that would get out? Enough to silence him?
Then there were Gillis and Reese. Meade hadn’t endeared himself to either of them with his carping about their job performance, and he apparently held a low opinion of Morgan as well. Was one of them so terrified of losing his job that he got rid of his primary critic? I gave each of those possibilities long odds — particularly Morgan.
And I still couldn’t generate much enthusiasm for either of the Bays as the culprit. Religion and I have barely a nodding acquaintance, but nonetheless, the thought of the head man at a church — any church — being a murderer struck me as implausible to the point of absurdity. And although I knew now that Elise Bay had a deep-seated dislike for Meade, I couldn’t conceive of a circumstance in which she would feel compelled to kill him. Wolfe might scoff at that conclusion, claiming as he has before that beauty often blinds me to reality. Maybe he’s right, but unless Meade was doing something to threaten Bay’s life or his ministry, Elise was clean.
So there I was, with a boss who refused to work, a friend who was one quick trial away from prison, and a bunch of religious types, none of whom liked Meade much, but none of whom seemed to have a strong motive for dispatching him. And now we had two sets of Bible verses — the ones threatening Bay and the ones I found on Meade’s desk. What, if anything, was the connection between them?