lost in some sort of reverie. Tony waited for him to continue.
“All churches seek the truth. Few find the whole truth. Others have tried to pinpoint the Day of Judgment. They have failed, resulting in great embarrassment and financial loss. It is only now, with the advent of powerful computers and the Internet, that I have been able to do what others failed to do.”
“The Day of Judgment?” Tony had been raised in a Protestant church-going family, but it had been years since he had been inside a church, except for weddings and his grandfather’s funeral.
“The day when Christ shall return to earth and clasp the faithful to his bosom. The day when the believers shall rise triumphantly into heaven. The day when we will no longer need the worldly goods that keep us fettered. The day when the chains of greed and ambition shall be cast off.”
The Reverend’s voice grew louder as he talked, filling the small church auditorium. He was no longer seeing or speaking to Tony. He went on in the same vein, while Tony wondered whether he was going to preach a whole sermon. He apparently came back to reality, because he stopped after a couple of minutes.
Tony said, “Reverend, when is this Day of Judgment?”
Reverend Hodgkins looked at him. When he spoke, it was back in his normal voice, which was loud enough. “It is for the believers to know when the great day will occur. Our parishioners will be ready. Ready to be swept up to glory.”
“In other words, I have to join your Church in order to receive this information?”
“In one word-yes.”
Tony remembered hearing stories about people who thought they had pinpointed the Day of Judgment. “So all your followers are selling or giving away all their possessions and meeting on a hilltop on this glorious day?”
Reverend Hodgkins fixed Tony with a disconcerting stare. Perhaps a suspicious stare. He stood up. Tony stood up. The Reverend walked to the entrance and said, “Brother, I have things to do, and I’m sure you do too. I hope that God goes with you on your journey.”
The interview was over. Tony had enough presence of mind to shake hands with the Reverend as he went out the door and say, “Thank you for a most enlightening conversation. God be with you, Reverend.”
The Reverend stood in the doorway and watched Tony as he climbed into his Porsche. Or perhaps he was looking at the car. There was a gleam in the Reverend’s eye that Tony didn’t think he had seen before in a man of the cloth.
CHAPTER 15
When Tony reached home, he wanted nothing more than to drink a beer, eat a frozen dinner heated in the microwave, collapse in front of the television set for a couple of hours, and then retire to bed for some much- needed sleep. As he pulled into his carport, he saw that Josh’s car wasn’t in the space next to his and that buoyed his spirits. He wasn’t up to facing Josh at the moment, especially after their fight last night.
The temporary uplift was dashed when he opened the refrigerator and discovered that all the beer was gone. Josh and his buddies had drunk it all. Unless there was some left in the cooler. He fruitlessly looked for that container in the living room and finally went out onto the patio and discovered it upside down, where it had been left to drain. Beerless.
He settled for a glass of white wine from a half-empty bottle in the refrigerator. It was the cheap stuff from Trader Joe’s, but it wasn’t bad. He found a dinner in the freezer that he knew would be the consistency of wood chips and dirt, with a taste to match, but he didn’t care. He placed the container in the microwave and turned it on.
Tony sipped his wine and checked the messages on his answering machine. Two for Josh, both from males. None for him. While he waited for the dinner to heat up, he thought about his roommate. He remembered for the first time in his busy day that he had wondered last night whether Josh was Joy’s killer. Now, after a day had elapsed, he couldn’t picture Josh as a murderer, but he knew the thought would nag him unless he made sure. He had to find out what Josh had been doing the night of the murder.
Josh was probably at work at the television station, but he might be coming home any time. Tony raced upstairs and into Josh’s room. He turned on the light and then remembered that since Josh’s room faced the carport area, if Josh drove in right now, he would see the light on in his room and become suspicious.
Damn. Tony turned off the light, went down the hall to his own room, and retrieved a small flashlight. This was going to make the job harder. Returning to Josh’s room, he wondered whether Josh had left his calendar there. Tony knew that Josh had recently started using an electronic calendar at work, but he was suspicious of automation and had loudly proclaimed that he was still going to maintain his manual calendar.
Josh was messier than Tony. The bed was unmade. Dirty clothes were piled on the only chair. A distinct locker-room odor emanated from them. Tony was thankful he didn’t ordinarily have to look inside this room. It was a better situation than college, when they had shared a single room. Josh did have a table, which he used as a desk. Papers were piled on it in seemingly random fashion.
Tony quickly leafed through them, using his flashlight to see, looking for a calendar. He heard the sound of an engine in the carport area. It was either Josh or a neighbor. He went to the window and peeked out between slats of the blinds. He saw Josh’s car pulling into his carport. Tony figured he had thirty seconds.
He riffled quickly through another pile of papers. In the middle he found the calendar, one page per month, not exactly state-of-the-art. It was open to September. He went back one page and checked the square of August 29. Nothing was written in the square. It was completely blank. Other days had notices of appointments or social engagements, so Josh was still using the calendar.
Tony could hear Josh coming in through the unlocked door from the patio. He quickly shoved the calendar back into the stack-too hard. The whole stack of papers fell onto the floor. Frantically, Tony scooped them up with both arms and plunked them on the table. Then he took two giant steps out of the room and closed the door. At the last instant he remembered to close it softly. As he was going down the stairs, Josh started up them.
“Hey, Tony,” Josh said as they passed each other. “How was your day?”
“Tiring,” Tony said warily. “And yours?” At least he hadn’t called him Noodles.
“Swinging. We got a scoop on network news in the case of the kidnapped little girl.”
“Wonderful,” Tony responded, but he was already down the stairs and headed back into the kitchen. Josh didn’t seem to be in a bad mood. Now if only he didn’t notice that his papers were messed up. And if he didn’t bring up last night, Tony wouldn’t. Tony retrieved his TV dinner from the microwave, poured himself another glass of wine, and sat down at the table in the family room, which doubled as a dining room.
Josh came downstairs five minutes later, looking comfortable in baggy shorts and a T-shirt. He opened the refrigerator. After a few seconds of searching, he said, “Looks like I blew it. Drank up all the beer. Sorry about that. You want me to make a beer run?”
“Don’t do it for me,” Tony said. “I’m going to bed early tonight.”
“I’ll get some tomorrow.”
The area between the family room and the kitchen was mostly open, so Tony watched as Josh poured himself a glass of wine from the bottle on the counter and then took a package of wieners out of the refrigerator. He stabbed one with a fork and held it over the flame of a burner on the gas stove, as if he were at a wiener roast. He whistled as the wiener started to sizzle. Tony cringed as he watched the grease drip onto the burner, but he was determined not to say a word, especially one that might upset Josh.
“I haven’t heard anything new about the Hotline murder for several days,” Josh said. “Have you got any inside information for me that I can put on the air?”
“Nothing new.”
Josh ate this wiener right off the fork and then stabbed a second wiener and held it over the flame.
Tony saw his chance. “Detective Croyden has been checking the alibis of everybody who was connected to Joy in any way. When he asked me about my alibi, I realized that I didn’t have anybody to vouch for me that night.” He forced a smile. “I went to a movie all alone. I don’t remember where the hell you were. Where were you, anyway?” He said this in what he hoped was a jocular tone.
Josh turned his wiener over to sear the other side. With his free hand he scratched his head. “Where was I the night of the murder? I’ll have to think about that.”
