“Do you think any of our neighbors would do your parents harm?” said the woman in the blue dress and pearls. “Truthfully, Violet.” She looked as though she couldn’t hold her thoughts in any longer.
“Truthfully, Maud,” Violet said, “yes. When you describe your neighbor as conversing with the devil, then it’s easy to go the next step and decide they are evil and dangerous, an abomination to God, and it’s all right to kill them.”
The woman in blue shook her head sadly. Diane could see she had friends in the other church and couldn’t imagine any of them as murderers.
“It’s mostly the sheriff, the reverend, and the deacons,” said the young man. “Don’t you tell me it’s not, Miss Maud. They hated the Barres and the Watsons, and you know it.”
“No, son,” said the woman’s husband. “This is wrong. They don’t carry hate in their hearts, and we shouldn’t either.”
“What about the calls they made to my parents?” said Violet. “Mom was real upset about them. What is that, if not hate?”
“Let’s not fight among ourselves,” said the minister. “Please. We have guests, and all they want is information, not judgments.” He cast a glance at the woman in the blue dress named Maud. He apparently didn’t think they needed to be disagreeing with the Watsons at a time like this.
After that, Diane tried to keep the conversation low-key. Violet and Lillian did their best to remember who exactly might have called their parents with threats.
“You can get your parents’ phone records,” Diane told the two sisters. “You might tell the sheriff to do that, as it is his case.”
Violet shook her head. “The sheriff is going to sweep this under the rug.”
“Tell him anyway,” said Diane. “How about the Barres?” Diane turned to Christine and Spence. “Did they get calls too?”
“I don’t really know,” Christine said. “I’m not sure they would have mentioned it. Frankly, Daddy thought so little of those people, he would have considered threats from them to be normal.”
“How about anyone else?” said Diane. “Can you think of anyone besides the Golgotha Church members who may have posed a threat to your parents? Had they mentioned speaking with any strangers about anything?”
Christine and Spence sat in silence for a moment. Diane could almost see them thinking as they chewed their food.
“There was a young couple,” said Spence. “Daddy didn’t say much about them, except that they were interested in the history of the area. But he said they were pretty young and naive. I didn’t get the idea they were any kind of a threat.”
“When was this?” said Diane. She was thinking this was probably Liam’s client’s daughter and her boyfriend.
“Oh, about three weeks ago, maybe,” said Spence. “Daddy just mentioned it in passing.”
“What was it about the history they were asking?” said Diane.
He shook his head and shrugged. “Gold mining, maybe. Something like that. You know, some people here still pan for gold.”
A young teenager at the end of the table lifted his hand and grinned. “I paid for my computer with what I got panning,” he said.
“Tyler, that’s not true,” a man said, smiling broadly. “You paid for a computer by panning? I don’t believe it.”
A man who looked like he might be the kid’s father nodded his head. “It was a used computer, and it took him over a year. But, yeah, he did it.”
“Well, I’ll be,” said the man. “You think maybe I could find anything in the creek out back?” he said to the woman next to him.
“You got to be someone like a teenager with nothing else to do,” the father said, and everyone laughed.
“I got the idea that this couple were interested in panning for gold,” said Spence.
Diane asked as many questions as she could think of, and Frank asked a few of his own. She wondered if Liam and Izzy were having any luck. What Diane had mainly discovered was that the animosity between the two churches was worse than Travis Conrad had indicated. And that most of the congregation of this church didn’t even want to speculate on who might have done this terrible thing. It was outside their experience and outside of anything they believed anyone they knew would do. Diane asked them to call her if they remembered anything, no matter how small. She also said they should tell the sheriff of anything they saw or remembered. That got a few harrumphs from several members.
“Thank all of you for your kind hospitality to us,” said Diane.
“You come back,” said a woman. “You might consider joining.” She looked at Frank. “We could use your voice in the Christmas pageant.”
Diane got up and started to take her plate when a woman stopped her, smiling.
“We’ll take care of this,” she said.
Diane went to the restroom before leaving. Andie went with her. She met the woman in the blue dress in the hallway.
“You’re just stirring up trouble,” Maud said. “Do you even go to church?”
“Yes, she does,” said a little girl who looked about eight, coming into the hall to wait for the restroom. She grinned when the woman frowned at her. “I saw her. She always knew what to do during the whole service. She never had to look and see what other people were doing.”
“You would do well to listen, and not watch other people,” said Maud.
“I can do both,” she said. “Besides, you were looking at her too.”
“Seen and not heard, child. Seen and not heard,” Maud said.
Diane winked at the little girl.
Diane and Andie went back to meet up with the others in her party. She was anxious to find out what they had discovered. She thought she would tell Liam what Korey’s analysis of the note had revealed. They all walked out to the parking lot together, along with the Barres and the Watsons.
In the parking lot, leaning against his vehicle, was Sheriff Leland Conrad.
“I thought I told you not to come into my county,” he said.
Chapter 41
Diane was wrong: Sheriff Conrad was going to arrest her on church property. She was more than surprised. She was stunned-but not sure why. She had supposed he would not enter another church’s grounds and arrest a guest for no other reason than that she crossed the county line. Though he had disagreements with the church here, she thought he respected it out of general principle. There was a meanness about what he was doing, and she hadn’t gotten the impression he was mean for its own sake. Stubborn, parochial, authoritarian, a believer in corporal punishment, but not mean.
The sheriff wore a suit. He had probably come from church. It was an old suit. Brown, shiny in places, slightly snug over the front and in the shoulders. He wore a brown striped tie that looked several years out-of-date.
“You’re going to come with me,” he said to Diane.
Frank put his arm around Diane’s shoulder.
“On what grounds?” said Frank.
“I told you not to set foot in my county,” Conrad said to Diane, ignoring Frank.
“You did this?” said Violet. “And I suppose you are going to spit on my parents’ graves too.”
The anger in Violet’s voice startled Diane. For a moment she thought Violet was talking to her; then Diane caught a glimpse of Maud, the woman in blue, and her husband. They were startled too.
“Violet, we are just doing what’s right,” began Maud.
“After all my dad did for that no-good son of yours? Dad kept Keith in a job just because he was your friend- even though Keith stole from the store,” said Lillian, “and this is how you repay his memory.”
Diane watched Maud and her husband flinch as if they had been slapped.
