Light From Heaven (57 page)

“Lily’s doin’ th’ mayor’s party; she does it ever’ year an’ they all love it! Course, if it was at night, like it used t’ be, I’d sing, but they quit havin’ it at night; said a little hanky panky got t’ goin’ on.”

“Uh-oh.” Violet was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt; he hardly recognized her. “Well! We didn’t know anybody at all was coming today.”

“Oh, yes, if one don’t come, another’n does. When Lily said she was doin’ th’ mayor’s party, I reckon she thought you
knowed
you’d git a replacement. We always give a replacement.”

“Wonderful. Well! Do you bake,Violet?”

“Bake.” She pondered this. “In what way?”

“Cakes.”

“Lily bakes. I clean.”

“Couldn’t you bake
and
clean?”

“I wouldn’t want to, t’ tell th’ truth. But what did you have in mind?”

“I baked a cake yesterday ...”

“Git outta here! No way did y’ do that!”

He saw Lloyd stick his head through the opening in the blue tent, and smoke over their house help.

“... and then, last night,” said the vicar, “we had a sort of... celebration and Cynthia and Sammy ate most of it. So I need another one for Sunday.” She seemed unmoved. “For the
children
!” he said, trying to close the deal.

She gave forth a moan. “OK, I’ll do it f’r you an’ Miss Cynthia. But jis’ this once.”

“Preheat the oven to three seventy-five,” he said. “You can’t just pop it in there, you have to wait ’til the oven heats.”

“I ain’t as dumb as a rock. I
have
baked a cake or two in my life; I jis’ ain’t made a
callin’
of it.”

He remembered his life as a bachelor and how simple it had been.

Taking the red leash from the coatrack, he had a thought. When Sissie, Rooter, Sammy, Roy Dale, Gladys, and seven Millwrights got hold of that cake, it would be history. Sunday was a very special Sabbath, indeed, and wouldn’t the adults be thrilled to find their own chocolate cake on the table at the end of the service?

He cleared his throat. “Violet?” he said.

He zoomed along the state road with Barnabas sitting stoically in the passenger seat, looking straight ahead. He had to get the papers notarized, pick up provisions at The Local, zip over to see Harley and Lew, then head back to the sticks, ASAP. His sermon was sitting in the library on the back burner and needed to be moved to the front.

He wanted to get it under wraps before Dooley arrived on Saturday night, probably a little worse for wear after driving an antediluvian Jeep all the way from Georgia.

He took a left on Lilac Road so he could run up to Church Hill and get a glimpse of the new paint color on Fernbank, now home to Andrew and Anna Gregory’s three-star restaurant, Lucera.

He could barely glimpse the late Victorian Fernbank through the trees, but saw that it sparkled. The new paint appeared to be a pale yellow, which he hoped the former owner might view with approval from her post on high.

He swooped right onto Old Church Lane and, realizing that his good dog might need a pit stop, pulled alongside the curb at Baxter Park. “Just a quick one,” he said, putting on the leash.

It was good being back in the park; it seemed years since he’d entered the leafy glade where he courted his wife and she courted him back.

He noted the patrol car parked beneath the walnut tree. On occasion, an officer pulled into the park to check it out, though the worst, and possibly only, crime that ever occurred here was an attempted assault years ago on a Wesley college student.

Aha! The car was Adele Hogan’s. Yes, indeed, brand spanking new and looking good. As he walked Barnabas to the bushes, he noticed that the heads of the two people in the front seat were very close together. In truth, they appeared to be ...

... kissing.

He felt his blood turn to ice. He looked away and then looked again.

Yes! Kissing! Clear as day.

He gave the leash a yank and bolted from the park, his heart sick within him.

“Is it something you could do ... gently?”

“I could take it down, but who’d put it back ag‘in?” asked Harley. “An’ come t’ think of it, how could Miss Sadie have took down part of th’ head liner and got it back t’ look right? I don’t b’lieve that’s th’ place t’ go messin’ around.”

He hadn’t yet checked with Andrew for permission to give the Plymouth a more thorough going-over. He wanted to see what Harley had to say first.

“Maybe she used a tool of some kind to hide this ... thing.”

“Wonder if she could of hid it under th’ hood? Y’ know that ol’ car’s got a Golden Commando V8 engine in it. Man, that thing was a stroker; it’d run like a scalded dog! Had y’r dual four-barrel carbs, had y’r special dual exhaust system ...”

Father Tim checked his watch. “My hunch is, it’s not under the hood. Miss Sadie wasn’t an under-the-hood type.”

“What’re you lookin’ f’r ... exactly?”

“Something about this high, this wide, and this long.” He made a series of gestures.

Harley appeared perplexed.

“Think about it, if you would. I’ll check back. And Harley ...”

“Yessir?”

“Don’t mention this to anybody, please. Not a soul.”

Harley nodded, sober. “You can bank on it, Rev’ren’.”

He stepped inside where Lew was counting bills from the register.

“Hey, buddyroe,” said the vicar.

“Hey, how’s it goin’?”

“Good. Who do you think the character was who came looking for me?”

“Don’t have a clue. Asked ’im ’is name; he didn’t say nothin’. Just said he’d find you.”

“Old? Young? Tall? Short?”

“Prob’ly late forties. Hard livin’ on ’is face, so couldn’t say for sure. Medium.”

“Walking? Riding?”

“Walkin’.”

“There but for the grace of God go us,” he said.

The truckload from Meadowgate arrived early, trailed by the Jeep.

Last Sunday, Dooley had wrangled permission to sleep in, having pulled into Meadowgate at one a.m., “fried,” as he said, from a week of exams and the long haul home.

This Sunday, Dooley wanted to see what his brother was up to at Holy Trinity. Though Sammy felt humiliated when Dooley learned of his involvement in Sunday School, Dooley’s approval and interest had changed everything.

Toting his vestments in a dry-cleaning bag, Father Tim hurried into the church with Sammy, while Cynthia and Dooley lingered at the wall, admiring the swoop and glide of hawks above the gorge.

He was happy, instead, to admire their spinet piano, and the burgundy runner along the center aisle, and the four chairs folded and leaning against the rear wall in case of an overflow, and the card table in the narthex where the pew bulletins would greet one and all each Sunday. Sammy thumped several full egg cartons onto the table, along with a homemade tent card:
first come, first served,
and headed for the sacristy with the cake box.

Who needed a full choir and stained glass with riches such as these?

“You look divine,” said his wife, who was helping him vest. “In a manner of speaking, of course!”

He noted that his scarlet chasuble and gold-embroidered stole made him feel splendid—yes, that was the word!—and full of hope. Indeed, their resident male cardinal was also vested for this glorious Whitsunday.

“Oh, and Timothy ...”

“Yes?”

“John the Baptist.”

“Already? I just had it cut.”

“That was Lent. This is Pentecost.”

If it wasn’t one thing, it was two, as his grandmother had been fond of saying.

He was checking the altar that Agnes had prepared when someone trotted down the aisle. “Hey-y, Father!”

“Violet! My goodness, this is a pleasant surprise. Hey, yourself!” Violet was decked, to say the least.

“Lloyd said he’d give a dollar if I’d go t’ church with ’im, so here I am! An’ here’s th’ dollar.” She waved it around for his inspection.

The vicar grinned. “I guess a dollar goes a long way, after all.”

She gazed at the altar, the carved pulpit, the kneelers. “I ain’t never been in a church like this, so y’all’ll have t’ s’cuse me if I step in it.”

He laughed. “Not to worry. When the heart’s right, it’s impossible to do anything wrong.”

“My gosh,” she said, looking pleased, “that’s a sermon right there.”