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  “Did you hear me, Tim? I won’t go through it again. I just won’t.”

  He bounced an arm off the mattress. “Patty, I’m not seeing anyone. I told you. I went to that little church on Utica Lane after work. I stopped in because I wasn’t sleepy yet and it was about the only place in town still open. I sat there for awhile and dozed off. End of story.”

  And an odd story it was.

  Patty quietly sniffed the air and came up with beer, perfume and even a trace of smoke, despite the fact that cigarettes were banned in bars. Tim had spent all of the night and too much of the early morning in one, and with an ironclad excuse—he worked there.

  She punched her pillow into a tight ball under her head. If he still worked at an ad agency like that first job out of college, he’d be around many attractive female coworkers. So what? It was time to either truly forgive him for the Kayla Cosgrove incident or get on with her life without him. It wasn’t fair, she realized, to hold him as an emotional prisoner for a single misstep.

  A single known misstep, she corrected herself.

  She shut her eyes and tried to keep her mind from wandering into dangerous territory, but couldn’t. Couldn’t ignore the phone call of earlier that evening. What was her name? Dillon. That’s right. Detective Dillon of the Sex Crimes Unit, for Christ’s sake, wondering where Tim might be found. Patty had given her directions to the Beer Belly, but here’s the thing—Tim hadn’t mentioned a visit from the attractive officer. Seems like you’d remember something like that, doesn’t it?

  Fighting to let it go, Patty said, “So, did you get paid tonight?”

  “Of course,” he mumbled.

  The way he said it, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, got her going again. She said, “A few more twenties from the till, I suppose?”

  Nothing.

  “Another off-the-books wad of cash that might pay for a few groceries and let you show the IRS another six-thousand-dollar year.”

  He bounced out of bed with a snort, grabbing his pillow with him, and stalked out of the room.

  Patty made a fist and squeezed it. Why’d she always have to come on like that? Always spraying a shotgun-load of vinegar and complaints. Even as they left her mouth, she knew what effect the constant barrage would have. He’d leave. He always left. It was the way he ran his life. Left the ad agency because it was a hassle. Just as he was leaving their relationship. Not in any dramatic way, but quietly slipping out the back door a step at a time.

  Alone in her too-big bed, Patty returned to the lie he’d told her about visiting the church on Utica Lane. What church stayed open, unattended, in the middle of the night these days? And even if such a trusting congregation actually existed, how had they drawn even the slightest interest from her agnostic boyfriend?

  Only way to even begin answering the questions chipping away at her soul and her sleep would be a visit. Which is exactly what she’d do. She’d drop in at the Utica Lane Church of Redemption and see for herself what the big deal was.

  Maybe tomorrow.

  Part Two

  The Girl Behind the Curtain

  Chapter Thirteen

  Friday was one of those bright sunshine days that convince you it’s warmer than it really is. Vincent, jammed nose to ass with the rest of Greater Cleveland on the I-77 South exchange near the Snow Road exit, fiddled with the air vents, rolled up the window and rolled down the window every time the sun scuttled back and forth from behind a cloud.

  He was a little nervous, truth be told. He’d always gotten butterflies about new members, but tonight was worse. He was introducing William and Candy Tatum to the congregation. He and his congregation, they were family, and it felt a little like bringing an adopted child home to see how the child’s new siblings would react.

  He still wasn’t being honest with himself. To put it as delicately as possible, William Tatum had no racial resemblance to his blonde wife. And he happened to be an ex-offender. Vincent was his caseworker from the county social services agency that helped parolees find employment. In William, he’d found a sharp mind and warm personality hampered by a drug dealer’s resume. The man had only been dealing nickel-and-dime stuff to support his own habit, but his priors had earned him a trip to Lucasville for nearly three years.

  Candy had married her husband there four months before his release and Vincent had helped him find one of the city’s few remaining factory jobs when he got out. William now considered Vincent a personal hero of sorts, one of the few people in his life who’d ever offered help rather than punishment. He’d found out about Vincent’s part-time ministerial duties and recently asked about joining his small congregation.

  Now, as Vincent crawled along Snow Road in rush-hour paralysis, his mind rehearsed how he’d present the happy Tatum couple to his parish family tonight. The special service had been announced for this purpose, but Vincent had left out a few details about race and background, coward that he was. He winced, imagining Germaine and Jenny Marberry’s reaction in particular.

  Of course, he hadn’t seen the Marberry women since Tuesday night, a realization that threatened to turn his thoughts even gloomier. So he pushed it to the back of his mind, where he tried to cram every other unpleasantry.

  One potentially unpleasant thought that got away—he wondered what Sandy’s mood would be.

  She wasn’t, as others had diplomatically pointed out, the traditional minister’s wife. If there wasn’t a God, Vincent would have had trouble explaining how he’d wound up with a woman like Sandy Ransom Applegate. They had been students together at Kent State, the painfully serious social work major and the very beautiful, very vivacious and intelligent prelaw student. Sandy Ransom had apparently seen something in him that hadn’t been obvious to the rest of the world or even to himself.

  Their friends wouldn’t have been remotely surprised to hear that she had become a successful corporate lawyer and that he was an underpaid bureaucrat and unaffiliated minister. Yet both were content in their careers and—at least until recently—happy with each other.

  Lately, he’d detected an air of preoccupation about her. She performed her part as the minister’s wife, but something was missing. She seemed to stand apart from the congregation, like she really wasn’t among her own kind. Whenever he brought up the subject of the church, she’d steer the conversation to Jason’s hard-fought progress in school or Lisa’s volleyball. Or fade out of the conversation altogether.

  It was crazy, but lately he’d started asking himself whether he thought bright and vivacious Sandy Ransom would take that walk down the aisle with him if she could do it over.

  If? He stirred uncomfortably in his seat as he inched forward onto Broadview Road. She could do it over—any time she wanted.

  Now feeling even more morose, Vincent hung a right on Schaaf, a left on South Hills, and pulled up the driveway of the big Tudor on the hill.

  “Oh great,” he muttered at the sight of a man coming out of the side door of his home. If he was a member of the congregation, the man had brought his troubles to the wrong Applegate. All Sandy needed after a tough week at work was to be greeted by someone in dire spiritual need of her husband, but more than willing to lay his woes out to her as well.

  But as he got a closer look, he realized the man was a stranger. He was nearly as tall as Vincent, but more muscular. Younger too, maybe in his late twenties. His hair was blond and shaggy, his face fine-featured, but with a strong jaw. His hair, physique and facial features lent him a startling combination of rugged male appeal and almost feminine beauty. He could have been a book-jacket model for a line of Gothic romances. But instead of a ruffled silk shirt ripped over his tree-trunk arms, the stranger wore a white, open-neck dress shirt and charcoal slacks. His rolled-up sleeves offered a generous view of strong, tan forearms.

  As he strode casually down the driveway toward Vincent, every step confident, unconcerned, he looked like an athlete about to take the field—not a despondent sinner in need of guidance. Vi
ncent powered down his window as the man came to the bottom of the driveway.

  “Hello, can I help—”

  The man never turned his head or broke stride. He turned right where sidewalk met driveway and disappeared behind a row of hedges at the front of the next property.

  “How rude,” Vincent told no one.

  Technically speaking, Jason was doing his homework at the breakfast table. That conclusion could be reached by the fact that his math textbook was open, he had a pencil in hand and his attention was on the PC in front of him. However, Vincent saw as he looked over his son’s shoulder, the computer screen had a video playing and the YouTube logo prominently displayed.

  “Hi, Dad,” Jason greeted, cheerful as usual. Somehow, despite acne, girl troubles and an inability to make the baseball team, the fifteen-year-old never lost his good cheer.

  “Here, let me get that for you,” said Vincent, hitting the power button on the computer and zapping YouTube to smithereens. “I saved you from major distraction, but you can thank me later.”

  The boy sighed before turning his attention to math. “I’ll be sure to do that, Dad.”

  Vincent heard his wife rattling around in the kitchen, just beyond the breakfast nook. Sandy called out a greeting as he came through the doorway. He pecked her cheek and inhaled her perfume.

  “Mmh,” he said, drawing a chuckle.

  She stood at the sink, filling a pot with water. Her hair was up, her slim neck vulnerable to another quick peck. Dressed like she’d just gotten home, she wore a cream blouse and a cinched beige skirt that couldn’t help but draw attention to her narrow waist and great legs. She looked at least five years younger than forty-one, same age as him.

  “Sara Lamplighter left a message,” she said. “She and Kent can make it tomorrow night after all, but they might be late.”

  Vincent winced. He hoped the subject of tomorrow night wouldn’t put a damper on the beginning of their weekend. He couldn’t tell anything from Sandy’s expression, but, to be on the safe side, he changed the subject and asked about her day while he stuck his head in the refrigerator and fished around for anything snacky that his kids might have missed.

  “There’s nothing there,” Sandy assured him as she snapped dry pasta noodles and dumped them in a simmering pot. “My day, let’s see, it looks like that Fenton Industries trademark infringement suit isn’t going to be settled. Charlie and I might have to work over the weekend to put together a last-ditch offer.”

  “Charlie. Is he a young stud, long blond hair, muscles, tan?”

  She laughed. “Sounds good.” She cut up mushrooms and peppers at the center island, the long knife efficiently whisk-whisking through everything in sight but fingers. “You met Charlie at Christmas. He didn’t match that description even twenty years ago. Help me here, will you?”

  Vincent opened a jar of sauce and plopped it in a pan. “All right, I give up. Who was it?”

  “Step aside,” she said, dropping a double fistful of chopped-up produce and parsley into the sauce pan. “I forget…who are we talking about?”

  “The young guy coming out of the house as I got here. Blinding white shirt, cruise-ship tan? Anything ring a bell here?”

  She turned and stared into his face, tantalizing him with her perfume. He couldn’t remember Sandy wearing this much of the stuff to work in the past. “I haven’t the faintest,” she said.

  He stepped away, watching for the knowing smile that would give away the joke.

  It didn’t happen.

  He stepped out of the kitchen and returned to his son in the breakfast nook. He sat, glumly staring at his open textbook.

  “Jason, how long have you been home?”

  He looked up and shrugged. “Hour or so. Why?”

  “Tell me about the man who left here as I pulled up. He came out the side door.”

  The blank look he’d seen on his wife’s face matched that of the boy.

  Vincent didn’t await an answer. He walked briskly to the short flight of stairs off of the kitchen that ended at the side door. What was he thinking—that a man could have entered and left the premises through this door without his wife and son knowing?

  He heard Sandy and Jason filing down the half flight behind him.

  “Vincent, what is it?”

  “Is Lisa home?” he asked quietly, not turning.

  She wasn’t. She was out with friends.

  “What’s going on, Dad?”

  “What is it?” Sandy again. An edge of concern or…what?…in her voice. Tension? Her scent tugged at him, tried to pry his attention from the side door. He had very definitely seen a strange man leaving his home. In the broad daylight. He wasn’t crazy.

  Vincent stared at the door. It had a dead bolt, and right now it was in the locked position.

  So someone inside had to have let the man out and locked up after him.

  Sandy placed her hand on his shoulder. Dangling from her delicate wrist was a scarlet bracelet he’d never noticed before.

  Chapter Fourteen

  If he hadn’t mispronounced Emily Koontz’s last name, Tim’s gig might not have sunk as far or as fast as it did. But after the tittering had died down following his presentation of the maid of honor, the crimson-faced girl’s mother—also the mother of the bride, naturally—had gotten in his face like she thought he’d done it on purpose.

  From there, the whole night went to shit. It was like everyone could smell blood in the air. The uninvited children—a staple of virtually every wedding he’d ever worked—got louder and more obnoxious as the evening wore on. Free liquor seemed to bring out the worst in everyone and the best man became an insufferable bore who just didn’t want his fascinating toast to the new couple to ever end. It felt like it didn’t.

  Tim hated working wedding receptions. On what other occasions would he be forced to bring along renditions of the “Chicken Dance,” “The Macarena” and the “Hokey Pokey”? He sure wouldn’t be wasting his Saturday afternoon and most of the evening here if Patty hadn’t all but demanded he take the gig.

  “They’ll pay you three, maybe four, times what you’d get from Charlotte,” she’d told him when he hadn’t jumped at the chance to work a coworker’s wedding. “How could you even consider turning this down?”

  So here he was, spinning a scratchy vinyl version of the “Beer Barrel Polka,” presumably because it was the Sturvinski-Koontz nuptials. Polacks, get it?

  Roll out them barrels, folks. We’re having some fun now.

  “Excuse me.” She was back, the wide-shouldered mother. “This music is unbelievably loud,” she screamed at him. “There are elderly people here, and to them this music is just annoying.”

  God, he hated weddings.

  He twisted volume controls. At times he imagined his console to resemble a jet dashboard with all of its buttons and switches and knobs, its meters and blinking lights. Now it just looked tacky. “Yes, ma’am. How’s this? There might have been fewer complaints if the older folks had been seated farther from the speakers than the younger ones.”

  He forced himself to smile pleasantly, but it didn’t dissolve the sour look on her big face. Mrs. Cunts, indeed. “Maybe next time you’ll remember not to set up your speakers so close to the old folks.”

  He almost suggested an ideal location for his speakers, but she huffed away before he got it out. Good thing.

  Sensing that the exchange hadn’t gone exceptionally well, Tim decided on a token peace offering. He found an MP3 file with a medley of nostalgia he’d put together for just such an occasion. Tony Newley, Vic Damone and the Andrews Sisters. How could he go wrong with that?

  “Hey, Chief. Got a flame?”

  Tim shook his head and the thin man patted down his tight tux jacket one more time and said, “Ah! Never mind. Got one right here.”

  It was the groom’s best man, he of the endless toast. He was in his early thirties, very slender with dark bags under dark eyes, pale skin, black hair thinning at the forehead.
He was leaning against one of Tim’s speakers, braced with an elbow propped high.

  “If you ask me,” he said, “you got it just right. Emily Cunts. As if you know her.”

  Tim felt his face flush all over again. “I guess it’s a name I wasn’t too familiar with.”

  The thin guy—Tim couldn’t for the life of him remember his name—waved him off. “Who cares? But what we have to talk about is this music, Chief.” He made a face.

  Some best men have to be shoved to their feet to mumble a modest couple of lines, but Tim had nearly been forced to pry the microphone from this jackass.

  “This set is about as decrepit as the crowd,” the best man was saying. “You want to place bets on who gets the first coronary out there.” Smirking, he nodded toward the dance floor, filling up fast with senior citizens. Though his mockery pretty much reflected Tim’s thoughts of moments before, it sounded harsher spoken out loud.

  “I think we have to bring people back into the music,” the guy said. “Keep the young folks from slipping into comas.” He looked like he was rapidly nearing the point of too much party.

  “I’m trying to please everyone,” Tim said. The effect he’d been going for was seething indignation, but it sounded petulant even to him. “The bride’s mother,” he added, not sure where he was going with it.

  “What a whore,” said the best man, smirking again. “But I wasn’t implying you’d play this yawner medley by choice. I can tell you got hipper tastes than that, Chief.”

  Every time he called him Chief, the asshole gave Tim a lazy smile, like he knew exactly how well it was going over.

  Tim leaned in to close what little distance remained between them. “Here’s the thing, Bub. The mother of the bride’s going to hand me a check sometime before the end of this evening. So if she wants to hear Slim Whitman doing ‘Purple Haze,’ I’ll check to see if I’ve got it.”

  The other man laughed easily. “Good point.”