Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 04 - With This Ring (22 page)

Wyatt’s words meant a lot to me. It’s the first time he’d complimented me on my efforts in the investigation into Steiner’s death. He’d shown little appreciation for my assistance up to this point. It was certainly a step in the right direction.

I was also pleased to know that Betty had admitted to the embezzlement and that any future theft of the church’s money would be thwarted. However, I was shocked and dismayed to hear about the pastor’s part in it. I would have never pictured him as either a gambler, or even worse, a thief. I doubt anyone else could have imagined the pastor’s secret lifestyle either. Probably the only person who’d be happier than me about this turn of events would be Perry Coleman. Now maybe the church would be able to afford a new youth group at Rockdale Baptist Church.

Chapter 12

“What’s on your schedule for today?” Stone asked me the next morning when he joined me on the back porch for a cup of coffee. I was reading the
Rockdale Gazette
and momentarily wishing I’d opted to postpone the wedding. Saturday was looming, now only several days away, and our first guests would be arriving in the afternoon.

Sheila and Randy were from Fairway, Kansas, but had planned to spend several days at the Alexandria Inn, visiting, attending the wedding, and generally just taking a vacation from the usual grind of their busy lives. Fairway was only about an hour and a half from Rockdale, but they wanted a change of scenery for a few days. Sheila had been my best friend since seventh grade, but we seldom had the opportunity these days to get together and rehash old times and catch up on what was currently going on in our lives. I was really looking forward to her spending time with us, and I hoped the wedding would go on as planned so my friends wouldn’t feel they’d taken this vacation in vain.

Sheila had always been as impulsive and adventuresome as I, which was one of the things that drew us together. I knew she’d be intrigued with this current murder mystery and I was hoping I could get her insight on the situation. A fresh pair of eyes might prove useful in the investigation. I could hardly wait for her to arrive.

She and her husband were due at the inn just after lunch, which would give me time to freshen up their room and do some light housekeeping around the inn. They’d never been here before, and I was anxious to see what their impressions were of both the Alexandria Inn and my new husband-to-be. Sheila and Randy had always gotten along well with Chester in years past, and I felt confident they’d be just as fond of Stone, whom they’d yet to meet.

While Stone and I discussed our plans for the day, we drank several cups of coffee and sifted through the paper looking for any news on the Steiner homicide case. At the bottom of page twelve, we found a short article about an investigation into the financial records at the Rockdale Baptist Church. The article was vague, and without much substance. It didn’t mention either Betty Largo or the pastor by name. It didn’t say anything about the pastor’s gambling debts, or, thankfully, how the financial indiscretions had come to be found out. Basically the article only indicated the church’s treasurer had been charged with embezzlement and fraud.

“We did good, didn’t we?” Stone asked. “Since the financial status of the church is involved, and we are members of the congregation, this investigation affects us, as well as all of the other churchgoers. As much as I hate to, I have to admit your prying and snooping paid off in this instance.”

“Yes, I agree.” I wasn’t sure I liked the way Stone referred to my efforts as “prying” and “snooping,” but I was pleased to hear him say that those efforts had been successful and beneficial to all the members of the church. I did hate, though, that my discovery implicated the pastor we had held in such high regard. Apparently, not all of our admiration for Thurman Steiner had been totally justified. But, like it or not, those implications were well founded, and we’d have to put the good of the church before all else.

“The Davidsons are due here in a few hours,” Stone said. “I don’t know whether to use the next few hours weed-eating, and sprucing up the grounds, or resting up on the hammock.”

“You just got out of bed, dear. Why would you need to take a nap this early in the morning?”

“Well, I know how exhausting it can be just trying to keep a handle on you when there’s a murder investigation going on. I can only imagine the chore it will be when you have your sidekick here to encourage and spur you on. I wonder if Randy knows what he’s getting in to. More importantly, I wonder if I do.”

* * *

“Lexie has been impulsive and unpredictable for as long as I’ve known her,” Randy told Wyatt, as the four of us sat around the kitchen table, visiting and drinking coffee laced with Kahlua. “Sheila isn’t much better, particularly when she’s in Lexie’s company.”

“I figured as much,” Stone replied. “Lexie has a knack for dragging unsuspecting individuals into her strategic plots and schemes.”

Randy gave me an apologetic look as he continued. “Yeah, I know. And I don’t mean to say there’s anything wrong with having traits like impulsiveness and unpredictable behavior, but it can, and has, led to some sticky situations.”

Wyatt nodded, with a wry grin on his face. “So I’ve noticed.”

“Hey—” I interjected, but was quickly cut off by Randy.

“Stone, as much as I’d like to tell you these impulses will fade away with time, I’m afraid I can’t. Where Sheila and Lexie are concerned, they never have and undoubtfully never will. But, don’t worry. You’ll soon get use to having to bail Lexie out of… unfortunate mishaps, I’ll call them, but you will never rest easy again, for as long as you both shall live. God knows I haven’t!”

Randy was being dramatic and chuckled at his reference to our upcoming wedding. He had a tendency to exaggerate when he was on a roll, but he soon had us all laughing as he related some of the stories he’d heard involving Sheila’s and my past shenanigans. Even I had to laugh at most of them, like the time we got booted out of Girl Scouts for starting a food fight at camp, or the incident where I fell through the ice while we were skating on a small farm pond. Sheila had gingerly walked over and helped me get out of the icy cold water. Then when she asked me what had happened, I showed her how I had stomped my foot down to check the depth of the ice, and this demonstration caused me to fall through the thin layer again. This time I was on my own, for Sheila was laughing too hard to even help me out.

Sheila went on to tell Stone about the time we’d moved her trampoline to her front yard so we could see how high we could bounce by jumping down on it off the roof of her house. Naturally, I was the guinea pig who got to attempt it first. The trajectory of my jump sent me flying through the upper limbs of a tree, crashing down in the middle of the street that ran in front of her childhood home.

“Do you remember what you said to me after ensuring I was okay?” I asked my friend.

“No,” she said between giggles. “What did I say?”

“You said, ‘This time when you jump off the roof try to come down straight on the trampoline instead of at an angle so you’ll bounce up and not out.’”

“Oh yeah, now I remember,” Sheila said. “I was very interested in seeing how successful the stunt would be, but there was no way I was going to try such an idiotic trick after seeing what happened to you.”

“I realize that now,” I said. “And do you know what, guys? I really was stupid enough to do it again! Obviously, I was a very slow learner, and Sheila was very persuasive. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say, the second jump involved one of my many trips to the emergency room.”

“And I got grounded for a week,” Sheila lamented.

“And with good reason. See this scar?” I asked, as I pulled up my right pant leg. “It has ‘Sheila’ written all over it!”

Stone nodded at Randy, and said, “Just since I’ve been with Lexie there have been numerous trips to the emergency room. Believe me, I know all about the E.R. and all the people who work there by name.”

After several cups of coffee, and a lot of shared laughter, Sheila helped me peel potatoes and carrots for supper to go with the seven-bone roast I had in the oven. The men retired to the den to watch a baseball game on television while I explained the current situation with the death of our pastor to my dearest friend. As expected, she agreed that carrying on my own low-key investigation into the murder was reasonable. “I can’t get off work again next week, and I can’t miss your wedding for anything in the world. I’ll help you do whatever is needed to solve this crime as soon as possible so the wedding can go on as planned, without causing you any feelings of guilt or discomfort.”

“Thanks pal, but we’ve only got a couple of days until Stone and I are scheduled to tie the knot.”

“Between us, we’ve accomplished more than that in less time. If we put our two heads together we can surely come up with a plan. A fresh set of eyes never hurts, you know,” Sheila said.

“No, I don’t know about that,” I said. “Remember when we climbed a ladder and fell off the roof trying to capture a June bug to win the 4-H scavenger hunt? Remember when the people who owned the house we fell off came outside to find us lying in a pool of blood in their driveway, and we had to explain what we were doing up on their roof? It’s no small wonder we didn’t both end up in a home for juvenile delinquents.”

“Yeah, it was hard to convince them it was a June bug we were after, wasn’t it? But we’re older now. What possible harm can we come to just doing a little investigating?”

Wasn’t that the same question I’d asked myself several times before? Hadn’t I nearly come to great harm on each of those other occasions? What were the chances this time would be any different—especially with Sheila as my accomplice?

“Exactly what I thought,” I agreed. “What harm could possibly come from the two of us working together to solve a crime?”

Sheila laughed, but I wondered if this might end up being fodder for another story of our disastrous impulsive decisions in the future. A decision we might both end up regretting.

* * *

“Randy and I are going to watch an old western on TV,” Stone said as Sheila and I cleared off the dinner table. The Davidsons were our only guests at the time, but more guests would be arriving the next morning, the Friday before our Saturday wedding.

After loading the dishwasher and retiring to the back porch with our ever-present cups of coffee, Sheila turned serious and she gently said to me, “Lexie, you do realize, I’m certain, that it is really too late to call off the wedding, whether a murder suspect is apprehended or not?”

Sheila leaned over and patted the cast on my left wrist, and continued, “I know how much you hate to risk offending anyone at your church, or even in the town of Rockdale, but you can’t disappoint and inconvenience all the many people who would be affected by postponing your wedding at the last moment. I’m sure members of your congregation will understand this terrible tragedy occurred at too late a date for you to reschedule everything. And if some old biddy is upset with you, well, so be it. She’ll just have to get over it.”

I nodded and looked her squarely in the eyes, “I know you’re right, but I so hoped this could all be settled before we exchanged vows in front of a substitute pastor. I just don’t feel right brushing off Thurman’s murder as if it was inconsequential. But I also know there’s very little I can do about it.”

“That’s right, Lexie, if you could do something about it, you would, and you are trying to, but you also have to be reasonable when it comes to all the arrangements that have already been made by you and also by those guests planning to attend.”

“I know I do,” I agreed. “I don’t think I really seriously let myself consider postponing the wedding because I knew the ramifications of such a decision. I believe in the back of my mind, I always planned on going ahead with the wedding this Saturday, no matter what happened with the murder case. I tried to convince myself the wedding would have to be canceled if a suspect weren’t apprehended, even though I knew it wasn’t feasible. I just hoped and prayed the killer could be caught quickly and make it all a moot point.”

I’m not sure if I was admitting this to my friend or to myself, but I realized it was true. Stone had told me the decision of whether or not to cancel the wedding was up to me, and that he’d back me no matter what I decided. In the back of my mind I wouldn’t even let myself dwell on the idea of postponement from that moment on.