I knelt down in front of her, shooting for the compassionate deity. “You’re not a bad person. Please, tell me what my mother said.”
She blew her nose. “Mark was arrested at the Reverend’s house about an hour ago. A neighbor saw the arrest and called your father’s cell phone.”
“Where are my parents, do you know?”
“At the Justice Center. Protesting. Reporters have been calling left, right, and front. I’m sure they’ll be mobbing me here any moment.”
“Is that all she said?”
“I should have asked more questions. I’m horrible. I should’ve asked.”
I was losing her again. “Ann, listen to me, I’ll have Saul drive you home. You can have the rest of the day off.”
“But the Reverend!”
“I promise you, my mother won’t mind. You’ve had a rough day. Will your daughter be home?”
“I think so.”
I stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
I found Saul Mellon, janitor, in the sanctuary dusting the pew seats. With headphones on his ears, he jived down the aisle.
Before Ann and Saul left, I called Ann’s daughter to make sure someone was there to monitor Ann and administer the correct dosage of antidepressants.
Running on adrenaline, I double-checked the church’s locks, then ran three blocks in my sandaled feet to the Justice Center, figuring it would take me longer to find a parking place than to get there under my own steam. As I trotted that last half block to the building, I could hear my parents’ faithful troop. “Hark! Hark! Bring back Mark!”
I skidded to a stop when I had the building in sight; the soles of my sandals slapped my heels. A crowd of forty or so townspeople had gathered outside Stripling’s municipal building, grandiosely named the Justice Center. It held the police department and the mayor’s office.
The demonstration blocked the walk and spilled over into the public library’s parking lot next door. Gathering my courage to enter the fray, I elbowed through the spectators, until I had a full view of the scene. Carmen was at the top of the stone steps that led to the large white doors of the police station, getting into Mains’s face. He looked pained. The commotion swallowed her words that she punctuated with sharp finger jabs into the detective’s chest. Having been on the receiving end of one of Carmen’s rants more often than I could count, I felt a twinge of sympathy for the detective.
Below on the crowded sidewalk, my parents and cohorts decried injustice and waved their placards at the bottom of the steps. The placards’ sayings were the same as those I’d seen at Martin that morning. The troops, abuzz with the excitement of the arrest, stood erect in their orthopedic shoes and grasped their signs proudly. A half dozen uniformed officers stood between the protestors and the spectators. A TV van procured a corner of the Justice Center’s lawn, the same crew I had seen that morning at Martin. It appeared they had
“Dia!” a tiny voice called in the crowd behind me. My brother-in-law Chip carried Nicholas through the mob to stand beside me.
“Where’s Mark?” I asked without preamble.
“Uncle Mark got arrested like Saint Paul,” Nicholas said.
Chip shook his head, his eyes on Carmen the entire time. “I promised the midwife that I wouldn’t let her get overexcited and look at her.”
“You should know by now you can’t make Carmen do anything,” I said. “Tell me what happened. I want to know everything,”
Chip gnawed on his lower lip. “Carmen and I just got here. Your mom left a message on my voicemail that we were to pick Nicholas up at the Justice Center. No further explanation. We rushed here. I found Nicholas, and Carmen went berserk when she saw that guy she’s talking to now.”
Talking was a euphemism.
“And?” I prompted.
“That’s all I know, I swear.”
Nicholas copied his father. “That’s all I know, I swear.”
“Who is that guy anyway?” Chip asked.
“That’s the detective on the case. Rick Mains.” I didn’t add that he was also Carmen’s ex-boyfriend. Chip didn’t need the extra anxiety that that bit of information would bring. The guy was a saint for voluntarily marrying into our family as it was.
“I’m going to try to talk to Mom and Dad.”
“Good luck,” Chip said. The worried look was still plastered on his face as he watched Carmen rip Mains limb from limb.
During our short conversation, the crowd had grown around us. Again, I elbowed through the crush. At the picket line, I had a clear view of my parents. Both were flushed with chivalry and the cause. I glanced around for any windmills.
“Can’t let you through, Miss. Orders of the detective,” the burly officer explained. His nameplate read, Officer Knute.
I pointed at my parents. “They’re my parents. I’m Mark Hayes’s sister.”
Officer Knute looked doubtful and shook his head. “Sorry.”
“I have ID.” I rifled through my oversized shoulder bag. Like a faithful pet, it rested on my hip.
He looked at my driver’s license, but shook his head. He did that a lot. “The detective said, no one gets through.”
I pointed to Carmen who had given up skewering Mains with her index finger and was now waving both her hands erratically in his face as she continued to lecture him. “How did she get through?”
Officer Knute grimaced. My sister was not one to take no for an answer.
“Couldn’t pistol whip a pregnant lady, could you?”
He turned pink. “Watch your mouth.”
In my peripheral vision, Kirk strained to break through the police line ten feet to my left, and was stopped by a female officer who was a few years younger than me and had an impossibly straight nose and beautiful, thick, curly black hair. He roared at her. She roared back, towering over Kirk by half a head. His body pulled taut. His biceps and shoulder muscles bulged against the thin cotton of his blue T-shirt. When the officer rebuffed him for a third time, he clenched his jaw.
I stopped pushing against the barricade. “Thank you for following your superior’s orders so thoroughly.”
Officer Knute gave me a look I suspected that he reserved for funny farm pickups.
I allowed myself to be swallowed into the crowd as I moved closer to Kirk. When I got within five feet, I saw a face behind him. Bree.
Bree placed her hand on Kirk’s shoulder. “Please let me take you back to the inn.”
He rounded on her. My heart jumped into my throat when I saw his face contorted by anger and driven by grief. He glared at Bree. “You can leave if you want, run off with that pansy librarian. Do you even remember Olivia? I’ll stay here and make sure that bastard gets what he deserves.”
Bree recoiled, but the crowd trapped her beside Kirk. Furious tears poured down his face. Seeing Kirk like that I could believe that he was capable of pushing Olivia into the fountain hard enough to kill her. I looked away.
To get the image of Kirk’s expression out of my mind, I focused on an elderly protestor marching in his own circle, and maybe to the beat of his own private drummer. The gentleman’s bifocals bounced on his nose with the rhythm of his steps, and a sprinkling of resilient hairs blew in the light updraft he created with his swaying placard. Of the contingent, he marched the closest to the police line. He proudly carried his banner by Kirk and the female officer.
At that moment, with reflexes honed by countless hours of heart-pumping aerobics, Kirk threw out a fist.
