They were beliefs he no longer held to, much less believed much in anyway. When you were a teenager, the last thing you wanted to be told was that your favorite rock band—in Vince’s case, Iron Maiden—were comprised of devil-worshippers.
When he woke up this morning after a fitful sleep, resolved to drive out to Lillian Withers’s place and face the music, he told himself that he was going to stay strong in his beliefs. He was an atheist now. He may have been a believer a long time ago, when he was a child, but he no longer held to those beliefs. Thanks to the group’s paranoid delusions, he saw no credence in them. He saw no reason to let their beliefs sway him now. Besides, he was hoping that Lillian Withers hadn’t changed much in the last fifteen years since he’d last seen her. Of the dozen or so church members that his mother fellowshipped with, Lillian Withers was the one he’d liked the most. She’d been the most down-to-earth.
All his worries of talking to Lillian Withers turned out to be in vain. In short, Lillian hadn’t changed at all.
She recognized him the instant she opened the door to her small home on Meadow Lane. Her light blue eyes lit up in surprise and happiness when she saw him. “Vincent! How good to see you!” She opened the screen door. “My God, just look at you! Come in! Come in!”
Vince grinned sheepishly and stepped into Lillian’s home. Lillian was wearing a red plaid dress, her auburn hair tied behind her head in a bun. Unlike many of the old order Amish and Mennonite people who lived in the area, the women in Reverend Powell’s sect did not wear prayer caps, but they did dress modestly, mostly in dresses and occasionally jeans. Lillian had aged gracefully; Vince had always pegged Lillian to be close to his mother’s age, give or take a few years. The last time he saw his mother, she’d looked at least ten years older than her forty-one years. Fourteen years later Lillian, who was probably in her early fifties now, didn’t look older than forty. She was positively radiant.
She swept Vince up in a hug. “Oh, it’s so good to see you, Vincent!”
“It’s good to see you too,” Vince murmured.
“I’m so sorry about Maggie.” Lillian’s voice cracked slightly and Vince held her. She sniffled once. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”
What exactly did happen? He almost asked. Lillian looked up at him, her eyes misty with tears. “Well,” she said. “Why don’t you come in? I’ve got some tea if you want.”
“Thanks,” Vince said. Lillian disappeared into the kitchen and Vince took a quick glance around the house. A small living room leading to an even smaller kitchen, a hallway at the far end of the living room led to the two bedrooms and the one bathroom. The living room was furnished nicely and modestly with a couch, two easy chairs, and an oak coffee table. An entertainment center contained a small receiver, a tape deck, and a twenty-five inch television. There was a framed picture of Jesus Christ over the sofa, His gaze cast to the heavens. Another framed picture hung on the wall near the kitchen, this one a work of embroidery with a religious slogan from the Book of Mark.
“How long have you been in town?” Lillian asked from the kitchen.
“I got in yesterday,” Vince said. He sat down on the couch and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. The coffee table was positioned in front of the couch. There was a TV Guide on one side of it. On the other side was a King James Bible and a prayer book. “I talked to Chief Hoffman and a couple of detectives from Lancaster.”
“Michaelson and Harvey?” Lillian came out of the kitchen bearing two tall glasses of iced tea. She handed Vince one, who took it gratefully.
“Yes,” he said, sipping the iced tea. It was delicious.
“They talked to everybody here, too,” Lillian said. “Well, everybody in the group. They were all pretty upset.”
“About talking to the detectives?” Vince asked.
“No,” Lillian said. She sat down in the easy chair closest to the couch, on Vince’s right. The curtains were open, basking the room in light. “About what happened. How somebody could… do something so horrible to Maggie.”
“I know what you mean,” Vince said. He took another sip of the iced tea. “I’ve been wondering that myself.”
“It’s just so shocking,” Lillian said, clutching her glass. “The press has been hounding us, too. What’s happened has become the talk of all of Lancaster County. More so than the Lambert case from seven years or so back. You think things like that only happen in places like this once in a lifetime, but to have another happen within the space of a decade…” She shook her head and took a sip of tea. “I saw Maggie the afternoon she died. We’d done some shopping on Main Street and had been talking about going to the Green Dragon. We went there every Friday, you know.” Vince nodded. The Green Dragon was an open-air flea market that was held every Friday in nearby Reamstown. “We were both planning on making dishes for the pot luck at the church, and there was a recipe book your mother saw there the week before. Anyway, I dropped your mother off at the house and she told me she was going to spend the rest of the day and evening making her stew. We planned on meeting at the church. John Van Zant was going to pick her up in the morning and bring her to church, so I didn’t think I’d see her until the next day.” Her features became stony as she remembered. “I got to church that day with my casserole, Mary Rossington baked one of her apple cobblers that she’s famous for. Reverend Powell baked some of that honey wheat bread that he loves. We were planning on just breaking bread together and fellowshipping, real down home talking and sharing in the Lord. We were all sitting in the den of Reverend Powell’s home when Tom Hoffman came. He…” Her voice faltered. “He didn’t look so good. John was with him and he looked pale. We went out to meet them on the porch, and the minute John saw us he just burst into tears.”
Vince listened quietly, nodding every now and then. Lillian looked at him and tried to muster a smile. “Poor Tom. I don’t think that man was ever used to delivering bad news, especially in these parts. But he was just beside himself that day. He almost cried himself when he told us.”
“Did Tom come out right then and tell you exactly what happened?” Vince asked.
“No,” Lillian said. “Not right then. He just told us that Maggie had been found dead, and that he didn’t want us to jump to any conclusions. John cut right in and said ‘Jesus, Tom, come off it! I found her! You can’t tell me some deranged pervert killed her after what we found.’ Well, that piqued my interest, and when Tom left John told us everything. He’d been the one to find her that way. He’d gone into the house when she failed to come to the door when he stopped by to pick her up and he went in and found her.”
Vincent nodded. “Tom told me yesterday.”
“He told you about… what they did to her?” Lillian asked, breathlessly.
“Yes.” Vince took another sip of iced tea. “But how do you know it’s ‘they’? Suppose it’s just one killer?”
Lillian looked toward the closed front door of the house, then her eyes darted toward the windows, as if checking to see if unwanted ears were eavesdropping on their conversation. She looked back at Vince almost fearfully. “Did I say ‘they’? I guess that was just a slip of the tongue. It could be ‘they,’ or ‘he,’ or ‘she.’ Anybody, I guess.”
Vince opened his mouth to pursue the matter, but decided better. Lillian drained the rest of her iced tea and rose, heading toward the kitchen. “I need a refill,” she said. “Can I get you anything?”