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church widow. If I were a golf widow, I could learn to play the game, but what can I do about the church?”
I understood. The rector of a small church has to do practically everything himself and works from dawn to midnight. His wife is always onstage. As for Mrs. Harris, I knew the type. I’d dealt with a few overbearing ladies in my years at the church. I remembered, with a distinct lack of charity, Jolene Baker, who never thought anyone could iron the linens as well as she and didn’t mind saying so.
Kathleen looked forlorn. “Bayroo’s busy as can be. That’s what I want for her, but the house is empty now most of the time. She’s in the choir and she plays tennis and soccer and half the time she’s having dinner with Lucinda, then going to the Baptist church because they have the biggest youth group in town. Friday night they’re having a Halloween skating party at the roller rink in their gym and tonight Bayroo’s at Lucinda’s helping plan our Spook Bash. It’s on Saturday from four to eight. Last night she went to the youth meeting with Lucinda. There are some on the vestry who don’t like the idea of the rector’s daughter going to the Baptist youth group on Wednesday nights.
“Bill stood up to them and said he was glad Bayroo wanted to go and learn Scripture verses, and if they played games in the Baptist youth group and had fun, too, so much the better. He pointed out how he’d proposed building a youth center and the vestry hadn’t agreed. Daryl Murdoch was the main obstacle, insisting the church couldn’t afford that kind of expenditure even if the Goddard family was willing to put up the major portion of the cost.” The Goddards. That was an old name in Adelaide dating back to the time when the first oil field was discovered. How nice that some of the family still lived here and still served as patrons of the church. But we were getting rather far afield from Daryl and Raoul.
Or Raoul and Daryl. “You were fed up. What did you do?”
“I decided to take Spanish at the college—” 48
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One of Adelaide’s charms is Goddard, the four-year college es-tablished shortly after the city was founded, the land donated by the Goddard family. The campus is in the historic part of town not far from the rectory. Adelaide is hilly and Goddard’s ivy-twined, red-brick buildings spread over three hills.
“—and Raoul Chavez was my teacher. He seemed to like me and I was one of the best students and we got into the habit of having coffee in the union.”
“Handsome?” I pictured the young Anthony Quinn I’d seen in Turner Classic Movie reruns.
She nodded. “He has a wonderful laugh.”
“Single?” Did I need to ask?
Another nod. “He told me he’d never met the right woman.” She bit her lip. “Until he met me.”
I wished I could place my hands on each shoulder and give Kathleen a gentle shake. Or maybe I should get her a primer: Single Men Who Flirt with Married Women Are Up to No Good. “All of the fun and none of the bother.”
She looked at me blankly.
Kathleen was definitely naive for a girl who grew up in Chicago.
“Of course he liked you. You were married and obviously at loose ends or why else take Spanish, and you probably had long soulful conversations over coffee about life, love, meaning, the universe, and his hand brushed yours and there were looks.” She was genuinely impressed. “Were you there?” I was startled when I realized she was serious. “No. I’ve just now been dispatched here. Had I been there, I would have spoken to you about the primrose path.”
She blinked.
The allusion didn’t register. I said gently, “Beware a stranger bearing gifts.”
Her face crinkled in thought.
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I put it baldly. “He had designs on your virtue from the moment you walked into class. Flattering, of course.” She gasped. “But I thought—he was so reluctant—he said he knew we had no future—”
Except, of course, for idyllic sweet-sorrow assignations at his apartment and no danger of entanglement.
“—and he knew he’d always love me and we might have just a brief moment together—”
“He invited you to his apartment one rainy afternoon, and when you came . . .”
Her cheeks turned rosy red. ”I walked in and looked at him and all I saw was Bill and Bayroo and I turned around and walked out.”
“You felt cruel, leaving his wounded heart behind you, and you didn’t go back to class and dropped the course. But somehow Daryl Murdoch found out.”
She was astonished. “How do you know this?” It wasn’t the moment to explain that I, too, had once been young and naive. I still had interesting memories and I’d learned to dance a dramatic tango. Ah, Latin men. I settled for a dictum: “A married woman must never trust a single man.” Or married ones, for that matter, but we couldn’t cover all the bases tonight.
“I never will again. Oh, damn, I don’t know how I got into so much trouble.”
The buzzer sounded on the oven. “The cornbread’s done.” She looked at the clock and abruptly jumped up, “I’ve got to eat something. The Bible study class will be here in about twenty minutes.
The stew’s ready. But there’s nobody here to care.”
“Not so.” To me, the succulent stew was a matter of great interest. “I’d love to have a bowl.” I thought under the circumstances I wasn’t being too forward to invite myself to dinner, though Mama had always been strict with us: “Don’t let me ever catch you kids asking for food at someone’s house. Wait till it’s offered.” 50
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Kathleen looked surprised. “Do you eat?”
“When invited.” I grinned at her.
She managed a smile. “I’ll move Bill’s plate—” She stopped, her face suddenly stricken, one hand holding the lid from the pot, as she stared at the table.
I stared, too. All I saw were the place settings and, of course, that cunning small telephone.
Emotions rippled over her face, recollection, shock, panic. “Daryl’s cell!”
I was bewildered. Cell? Did he have monastic interests? Surely she’d not visited him in a cell. Was she confusing the mausoleum with a cell?
She banged the lid back on the pot, whirled, and started for the back door. “I’ve got to get it. He took pictures of me when I was at the cabin, and if they find it and see, I’ll be in a terrible mess.” I plunged after her, grabbed her arm as she tugged at the door handle. “Cell? He isn’t in a cell.”
She tried to wriggle free. “His cell phone. His cell takes pictures.” I made the connection. I’d heard the ring and even picked it up.
How amazing. A little phone could take pictures? But it must be so. Nothing but the hideous reality of images captured in the phone would explain her panic.
“Let go.” She yanked her arm free. “I have to get that phone or I’m ruined.”
As the door banged open, I grabbed her hand. “The police are there.”
She stumbled to a stop, her face despairing. “The police are there?
Already? They’ve found him?”
I explained about Marvin and Buzzy’s good citizenship. I glanced at the clock. “The police have been there a good twenty minutes now.
The chief had just arrived when I left. They were expecting someone else.” I couldn’t remember. “Something about a laboratory.” 51
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She leaned against the wall, unable to move.
“Daryl’s phone has pictures of you?” I wanted to be sure I understood.
“He laughed, asked me if I wanted him to put them on the church Web site. I knew he wouldn’t because of his wife. But there they are, in his phone. The police—oh, what am I going to tell them? What am I going to tell Bill? He knows I loathed Daryl and wouldn’t have gone to his cabin unless I had to.”