So before we reached the gates to Mount Olivet, I peeled off onto a side street. Most of the cars in the procession followed the hearse on into the cemetery and stopped close to a canopy-covered grave site. The Honda, on the other hand, stopped just inside the gate.
The woman who exited the vehicle was sturdily built. She was black, in her mid-thirties, and wore her shoulder-length hair in a cascade of tiny braids. She was dressed in boots and a long denim skirt. She went over to the grassy edge of the road, far enough to see the people clustering around the grave site. The woman watched the funeral attendees, but none of them noticed her, and she wasn’t seeing me, either. I stepped out of the Mercedes and walked up behind her.
“Ms. Manning?” I asked.
Startled, she jumped and then spun around to face me. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“My name’s Beaumont,” I told her. “J. P. Beaumont. I’m an investigator with the Washington State Attorney General’s Office.” I held out my ID, but she kept her eyes on my face rather than on my identification or my badge.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said simply.
“From what I’ve been told, you and LaShawn Tompkins were an item,” I returned. “Why wouldn’t you come to his funeral?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to anybody.” She dodged away from me and headed back toward the Honda, but I managed to beat her to the driver’s door.
“We’re trying to figure out what happened to him,” I said. “Don’t you want to help us?”
“Somebody shot him.” She was crying now. Tears streamed down her cheeks, leaving glistening tracks on her skin.
“Do you know who killed him or why?” I asked.
She shook her head. “All I know for sure is that LaShawn is dead.”
“Why did you leave King Street Mission, Ms. Manning?” I pressed. “And why are you staying in a domestic- violence shelter? What are you afraid of? Who are you afraid of?”
Without answering she tried to reach around me to grasp the door handle, but I was in the way. When the attempt failed, instead of falling back she leaned into me, weeping uncontrollably on my shoulder. For a moment I didn’t quite know what to do. Eventually, with no other choice, I wrapped my arms around her and held her close.
“Shhhh,” I said, patting her. “It’s going to be all right.”
Finally she drew back, wiping fiercely at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was stupid of me.”
“Grieving isn’t stupid,” I said. “But not talking to me about this would be. Please, Ms. Manning, that’s all I’m asking you to do-just talk to me. Tell me what you know or even what you think you know. Don’t you owe LaShawn that much?”
“Yes, but not here,” she said, turning back toward the group clustered around LaShawn Tompkins’s open grave. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
“My car or yours?” I asked.
“It’s not mine,” Elaine answered. “It belongs to a friend of mine-from the shelter. But I can’t leave it here. I saw a Burger King on the way here, down by 405. What if I meet you there?”
“That’ll be fine,” I said. “You lead the way.”
CHAPTER 12
I thought Elaine might try to skip out on me, but she didn’t. We drove straight to the Burger King and parked side by side. Inside she went to one of the window booths while I placed our order-coffee for me, Diet Coke for her.
By the time I got to the booth she was putting away a com-pact, having repaired the damage her tears had done to her makeup, and she seemed to have her emotions well in hand.
“I didn’t see Pastor Mark get out of any of the buses at the cemetery,” she said.
“That’s because he didn’t go there,” I told her. “He was at the funeral, but I think he was annoyed because he didn’t get to run that show. He left the church and drove off in the opposite direction with Mr. Ramsey.”
“Oh,” Elaine said.
“Is Pastor Mark the one you’re afraid of?” I asked.
She nodded. “Is it that obvious?”
“I’m a detective, remember? But what isn’t obvious is why.”
“Pastor Mark has a temper,” Elaine said.
“I already figured that out,” I interjected.
“And he didn’t approve.”
“Of you and LaShawn?”
She nodded. “Pastor Mark claimed we were setting a bad example for the other people at the mission, and he made it pretty clear that if LaShawn and I insisted on being a couple we’d have to leave King Street.”
“Would that have been a problem?” I asked.
“More to Pastor Mark than for us,” Elaine returned.
“Why’s that?”
“Because we were his best worker bees. LaShawn did a lot of the physical labor around the place, in addition to much of the active counseling. He was the one who made sure people were doing the work they needed to be doing.”
“You mean work as in jobs-as in the duty roster I saw?”
“I ran the household end of it-made up the duty roster and ordered supplies,” she said. “And I handled client intake. Yes, Pastor Mark is the one with the degree in divinity, but LaShawn was way better than Pastor Mark at doing the kind of spiritual work it takes to turn lives around. After all, LaShawn had actually
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I insisted.
“About why I’m afraid of Pastor Mark?”
I nodded. She sipped her Diet Coke for several thoughtful seconds. “I think he was jealous of LaShawn,” she said finally. “And I think he did it.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re saying you think Pastor Mark is responsible for LaShawn’s death?”
It was Elaine’s turn to nod.
“But he has a foolproof alibi,” I returned. “At least he claims to have one. He says he was teaching a Bible study class at the mission at the time LaShawn was shot and he says he has a list of participants to prove it.”
“Pastor Mark knows a lot of people,” Elaine said. “Not very nice people,” she added. “Ones who may have come to the mission at one time or another but who, for one reason or another, have gone back to their old ways.”
“So he knew people and could put out a hit. But would he have done that over you? Would he gave gone that far?”
“I think he was afraid LaShawn and I would go out on our own and start a new mission somewhere else.”
“In competition with Pastor Mark?”
“He’s not good at competition of any kind,” she answered. “Yes, he was jealous of LaShawn and me, but I think he was even more jealous of the relationship LaShawn had with some of the clients. Thought it was undermining his authority somehow.”
“Was it?” I asked.
“Yes,” Elaine said simply.
“What happened Saturday morning?” I asked. “I heard you and the good pastor did a few rounds in his office.”
“The cops had come to talk to him the night before, but he never said a word to me about it until Saturday
