ON MY DRIVE HOME I wondered at the sequence of recent events. Etheline broke up with Reverend Winters the same Sunday that she heard from me. If she had read my note first, then it could have been the reason she was getting ready to leave. She wrote to Winters, she called me—maybe she got in touch with somebody else. And if my note was the reason she was burning her bridges, then it could have also been the cause of her death.
That is, if the minister was telling the truth. There was no way for me to know what Medgar Winters really felt or knew. The only thing that I was sure of was that if I had caused that girl’s death, I would make sure that the killer didn’t have a happy ending either.
JESUS HAD MADE DINNER and eaten with Feather by the time I’d gotten home. He made hamburger patties with tomato soup and baked potatoes. She was asleep and he was in the backyard, under electric light, working on his small boat.
Moths of all shapes and sizes flitted around in the halo of light. Jesus was working a plane across a plank of wood that he intended for one of the benches of his boat. I came up to him, took the other plank, and began work on it. After forty-five minutes we’d finished leveling the seats. Then we stained and sealed them. No more than a dozen words passed between us in two and a half hours. We had the kind of kinship that didn’t need many words.
THE NEXT MORNING I made Feather’s lunchbox and drove her to school. She was happy to spend the time with me, and it was joy in my heart to talk to her. She was missing Bonnie, and so was I.
“How come you miss Bonnie, Daddy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Lots of reasons, I guess. Mostly I just like seeing her in the morning. Why do you miss her?”
“Because,” she said, “because when Bonnie’s home it’s two boys and two girls.”
* * *
I CALLED LENA MCCOY from the custodians’ bungalow on the lower campus of Sojourner Truth junior high.
“Hello,” a man’s voice answered.
“Lena McCoy, please,” I said.
“Who is this?”
“Mr. Rawlins.”
“What do you want with my wife, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I had a meeting with Reverend Winters yesterday. I asked him some questions that he couldn’t answer, and he suggested I ask Lena.”
“Do you know what time it is?” Mr. McCoy asked.
“Yes sir, I do,” I said. “Eight o’clock in the morning, workin’ man’s time. Time to get up and out of the bed. Time to go out and earn that daily bread.”
“What questions do you have for my wife?”
“It has to do with church activities, Mr. McCoy. This isn’t any scam. I’m not tryin’ to put somethin’ over on you. I don’t want any money or anything. Just a little information about the church.”
“Why can’t you—”
Mr. McCoy cut off what he was saying and mumbled something to someone in the room with him. At one point he raised his voice, but I couldn’t make out the words. I could hear the phone jostling around, and then a woman came on the line.
“Yes? Who is this?” the woman asked.
“Lena McCoy?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Easy Rawlins. Reverend Winters—”
“Oh, oh yes, Mr. Rawlins. Deacon Latrell told me about you. I’d be happy to talk to you, but I’m late for work as it is. Could you meet me at the church later today?”
“Sure. What time?”
“How about four? That would be good for me. I have to go with the minister to an interfaith dinner at six.”
“Four’ll be fine.”
WHEN I ENTERED the church that afternoon, I ran into a small, elderly man wearing overalls and pushing a broom.
“Afternoon, brother,” the older custodian hailed.
“Afternoon,” I replied. “I’m supposed to be meetin’ a Lena McCoy.”
“You wanna go all the way to the pulpit and turn right. You’ll see a green door, it opens onto a stairwell. Take the stairs two flights up. Go in that do’ and you’ll see a woman.”
“Mrs. McCoy?”
“Naw. That’s Mrs. Daniels. She’ll show you to Lena.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Nuthin’ to it.”
As I walked toward the pulpit, I could hear the swish of the janitor’s broom on the concrete floor. It was a comforting sound, reminding me of my job at Truth. It felt like a long-ago fond memory, even though I had just come from work.
I needed Bonnie even more than I let on.
“MR. RAWLINS?” Mrs. Daniels said, repeating my name. “I don’t have no Rawlins on the minister’s schedule today.”
“I’m here to speak to Mrs. McCoy,” I said.
The church receptionist was round and pleasant-looking, but she didn’t like me much. “Is this church business?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
She stared at me a moment too long.
“Listen, lady. I have important business with your minister’s assistant. If I walk outta here, it will be you who has to answer for it.”
I’d lost another opportunity at making a friend. The receptionist waved her hand toward a door behind her.
I knocked, and woman’s voice said, “Come in.”
I entered, coming upon a medium-sized black woman who was sitting behind an oak desk in the middle of a large, sunny room.
“Mr. Rawlins?”
The room had a plain pine floor with bookcases against the wall behind the desk. There was a baby avocado tree in a terra cotta pot next to one window.
“Mrs. McCoy?”
The woman got from behind the desk and went to a door between the bookcases. She opened this door and turned back to me.
“Come with me, please,” she said.
That half-turn told me a lot about Mrs. McCoy—the woman. She was around thirty-five, but still had the bloom of youth to her face and figure. It was a nice figure, but her deep green dress played it down. The color of the dress also blunted the richness of her dark skin. She wore makeup like an older woman might have, with little color or accentuation. But the sinuous motion of her turn revealed the sensual woman that lived underneath her clamped-down style. She was at home in her body, dancing with just that little turn.
We came into a room that was even simpler than the assistant’s office. The minister’s office had a plain floor with no bookcases at all. There was a podium holding a large Bible next to the window, and a simple painting of the face of a white Christ hung on the far wall. He didn’t even have a desk, just a table with two chairs pulled up to it. The only means of comfort in the room was a wide-bed couch pressed into the corner.
“This is Reverend Winters’s office,” she said. “No one will bother us in here.”
She took one of the chairs at the table, and I sat in the other.
“What can I do to help you, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Your husband was unhappy to hear me on the phone this morning,” I said. I decided to find out a little bit more about the woman before hearing what she had to say about Etheline.
Lena looked down and then back again. “Foster is old-fashioned,” she said. “He doesn’t like gentlemen unknown to him calling me on the telephone.”
“You’d think Reverend Winters would have known that and had me call you at the office.”
“He has so much on his mind,” Lena said. Her face took on a soft glow when talking about her boss. Even the severe makeup couldn’t hide the feeling she had for him.
“Did he tell you why I was here?”
“Yes. It’s about that poor young girl.”
“Dead girl,” I said.
Tears appeared in the luscious woman’s eyes. She nodded and looked down again. Lena McCoy was so full of love and compassion that any man would be drawn to her. It’s not that she was beautiful, not even pretty, really. But there was something physical there, and caring. If there was music in a room and I saw Lena McCoy, I would have asked her to dance, even though I didn’t like dancing.
“I have some hard questions to ask you about Etheline, Lena. And I want you to answer them.”