Hotline to Murder

CHAPTER 25

“There’s something else I haven’t told you,” Tony said as he and Shahla drove to the church. Actually, there were several things he hadn’t told her, but he figured it was better to spring one at a time.

“How can I ever trust you again?” Shahla asked, but in a way that told Tony she wasn’t serious-or at least not completely serious.

Shahla was wearing a fairly modest dress, which was her version of what to wear to church, along with a light jacket against the chill of the evening. She wore her hair in a bun. She looked good, but then she was one of those disgusting women who looked good wearing anything.

“I have been doing some more investigating on my own,” Tony said, stalling a little. If he opened Pandora’s box, he wouldn’t be able to close it again. “I had some reasons, which I won’t go into right now, to take a look at…my roommate.”

“Your roommate? I haven’t met your roommate. In fact, the only friend of yours that I have met is that woman-what’s her name?”

“You mean Carol?”

“The one who said snotty things about me. Have you seen her recently?”

Had he seen her recently? How could he answer that with a straight face? “Yeah. I ran into her. She’s living with that man who was with her.”

“I guess you won’t be dating her anymore.”

“I guess not. Anyway, as I said, I was taking a look at my roommate, and I happened to search his room. And I found something.”

“What did you find?”

“I found…well, I found a pair of panties.”

“Panties?” Shahla almost screamed. “What did you do with them?”

“Nothing yet. I just found them. I have them with me. They’re in the attache case on the seat behind me.”

Shahla unbuckled her seat belt, turned around and retrieved the case, which she brought to the front seat. She reached in and, after searching briefly, pulled out the white panties. She held them up and looked at them by the light of the streetlights they passed.

“Do you think they could be Joy’s?” Tony asked.

“I don’t know. The size is okay. But they’re a little…”

“Conservative?”

“Yeah. I mean, not all girls wear thongs all the time, but these are, like, for an older woman, or perhaps a style of a few years ago.”

“So you think they might be too old-fashioned for Joy.” Tony was willing to grasp at any feather of hope that would clear Josh, to paraphrase an Emily Dickinson poem that Shahla had recited to him.

“Maybe. I need to see them in a better light.”

“I’ll bring them to the Hotline tomorrow. We can study them there.” Anything to delay taking them to Detective Croyden.

“You didn’t find a bra with them?”

“No.”

“It’s easier to tell whether a bra belongs to someone.”

Tony was immensely relieved about Shahla’s uncertainty. For a few minutes he had been second-guessing his decision to show the panties to her. He made sure that she put them back into his case. He wanted to keep them in his possession.

Parking was at a premium near the Church of the Risen Lord. Tony pulled into the small parking lot, but there was not a space to be had.

“It doesn’t look like a church,” Shahla said. Some of her enthusiasm for the project seemed to have dissipated.

Tony wasn’t willing to double-park and block another car because he wanted to keep a low profile. He carefully backed out of the lot into the street and finally found a space a block away that he could ease the Toyota into. He parallel-parked and then hesitated.

He said, “Do we really want to do this?”

Shahla was also hesitating. Perhaps the reality of walking at night on a dark street in a strange part of town was giving her pause.

“Can you walk that far on your crutches?” she asked.

“Of course.”

Tony didn’t want his infirmities to be the excuse for their failure. He opened the door and carefully stood in the street, with the help of the crutches. He navigated to the narrow sidewalk and laboriously started along it. Shahla walked two steps behind him, staying out of his way. He watched in the dark for cracks in the concrete that might upset him and felt empathy for disabled people who faced these problems every day of their lives.

They passed small, older houses with small but tidy front yards, perhaps built right after World War II. Lights shone in some of the windows, but there was nobody else on the street.

As they neared the church, Shahla said, “I hear singing.”

“The service must have started already,” Tony said.

It was after 7. The singing grew louder as they came to the front of the church and started up the walk to the door. A wheezy organ backed the vocal. Tony thought he recognized a hymn from his youth, but this version of it was livelier and more melodic than he remembered. They must have paid their electric bill. Lights were on inside the church.

When Shahla opened the door, he could pick out distinct voices, from bass to soprano, with some singing harmony to the melody of the others. The notes reverberated off the walls and ceiling and filled every corner of the room. Their religious practices might be suspect, but their music was top-notch.

Tony went through the doorway first. He saw that most of the pews were filled. The congregation was standing. The men and women and a few children swayed to the music, adding the impact of their bodies to that of their voices. The Reverend Luther Hodgkins stood in front leading the singing, and Tony could clearly hear his booming bass voice over those of everybody else. The voices of the robed members of the choir also penetrated to the back of the room. Shahla came in behind Tony and stood beside him, looking awed.

Tony felt a presence on the other side of him. He turned his head and saw a man smiling and holding out a program toward him. Tony nodded his thanks-there was no point in trying to talk over the singing-and took it, being careful not to lose control of his crutch. He led Shahla to the back row of the pews, which, fortunately, was empty on one side. She went past him, and he stayed on the aisle.

They didn’t try to join in the singing. They did find themselves joining the congregation in moving their bodies as the music engulfed them. Tony surveyed the other parishioners. His guess was that the majority of them were of African descent, with a sprinkling of Europeans and at least one woman he could see who looked Asian. He did not see Nathan.

The singing went on for another five minutes. Just when Tony wondered whether it was ever going to end, it came to a conclusion with a final amen. Reverend Hodgkins motioned for the congregation to sit. In order for Tony to have enough room to stretch out his left leg, he had to sit somewhat sideways. He sat facing toward Shahla so he wouldn’t lose contact with her. What to do with his crutches was another problem. He finally laid them on the floor.

Reverend Hodgkins was giving announcements of the kind made in many churches. News of congregation members who were sick and one who had died. He said of the deceased, “He has preceded us into Glory, where we will be joining him soon.” Tony wondered how soon “soon” was.

He heard the Reverend saying, “We have two guests with us tonight. It is customary for our guests to give their names and tell what prompted them to come to our church. Would you please stand and be recognized?”

The Reverend had sharp eyes. So much for trying to stay incognito. Shahla clearly wasn’t going to stand unless Tony did, and for Tony to stand again after he had just sat down would have taken a major effort. Everybody had turned around and was looking at them. Tony felt growing embarrassment.

He said, in what he hoped was a voice loud enough for everybody to hear, “It is difficult for me to stand because of a recent injury, but I want to thank you for welcoming us here tonight. My name is Tony and this is Shahla. We are friends of Nathan Watson, whose talk about your church has made us curious.” Realizing that “curious” wasn’t a good word, Tony said, “We are on a spiritual quest, and we have been led to your door.”

“Nathan,” Reverend Hodgkins said, focusing his eyes near the front of the congregation, “Do you acknowledge these guests?”

Nathan stood up from the third row and looked back toward Tony and Shahla. “They are my friends, and I take full responsibility for them.”

Tony detected a certain lack of conviction in Nathan’s voice and suspected that his presence, rather than Shahla’s, caused it. But Nathan couldn’t admit that he had screwed up in front of the congregation. Apparently, not just anybody could wander in off the street and attend a service.

Reverend Hodgkins had them bow their heads in prayer. Tony was thankful that the spotlight was off them. He glanced at Shahla, whose return look showed doubts about what they were doing here. Perhaps they would leave during the singing of the next hymn, when the attention of the parishioners would be focused elsewhere. Tony was plotting their escape when the words of the Reverend’s prayer caught his attention.

“It is written that the Day of Judgment is coming,” Reverend Hodgkins said. “Others have tried to pinpoint this day and have failed. With your divine guidance, oh Lord, we, your humble servants, have been privileged to discover the correct date. Let our hearts be light as we divest ourselves of our material possessions and use them for the greater glory of your Church.”

Then he started to talk about the wonders of heaven. To hear the Reverend tell it, heaven was indeed paradise, with amenities to suit every fantasy. If you liked tropical beaches, you would be on a heavenly Bora Bora. If you liked mountains, you would be surrounded by them. If you had been unhappy in love in this life, wait until the next one. Reverend Hodgkins made the possibilities sound better than the seventy-odd virgins promised to every Muslim suicide bomber.

Then he came back to this world. It sounded to Tony as if the Reverend was telling them to turn their possessions, or the proceeds from selling their possessions, over to the Church. He looked around and wondered whether these people were really buying into this. He wondered whether Nathan was buying into this.

When the length of the prayer threatened to put Tony to sleep, he remembered he had a printed program and looked at it for the first time. If he was correct about where they were in the service, the offering came next. And then the sermon. Who knew how long the sermon would go? Reverend Hodgkins was a strong-looking man who could probably talk for hours. Tony’s attention was also called to the fact that he had not had a chance to pee since leaving Shahla’s house, where he had drunk a bottle of beer with dinner. How long could he hold on?

The prayer finally ended, and Reverend Hodgkins asked the men and women who were going to collect the offering to come to the front. He presented them with bowl-like containers, larger than the offering plates Tony was used to seeing in churches. He wondered why. He soon found out. People were dumping in large envelopes, presumably containing cash, as well as checks. This was evidence that the members of the congregation were taking the Reverend seriously about divesting their assets. Tony almost felt guilty about putting in only ten dollars. But why? What was going on here was a sophisticated form of robbery.

And when the sermon started, Tony discovered that it wasn’t an ordinary sermon, building on a quotation from scripture or something similar. It was more of a planning session. Planning for the big day. Except that the Reverend didn’t say when the big day was. He went through the congregation, person-by-person, family-by-family, having them stand and tell how they were progressing concerning divestiture of their possessions. If they owned a house, had they sold it? Was it in escrow? Did they have a place to live, temporarily, after the sale closed? He wasn’t satisfied with the money they had already contributed. He wanted more.

After their interrogation, some people remained in their seats, but others stood up and wandered around, talking to fellow members of the congregation. A few left the building, staring at Tony and Shahla on their way out. Tony had a whispered consultation with Shahla and they decided to leave after they heard Nathan speak.

Nathan’s turn came about thirty minutes into this phase of the program. His only significant possession appeared to be a car. He stated that he thought he could sell his car, but that he needed it as long as he was working. The Reverend suggested that he stop working because the Great Day was at hand. Nathan seemed hesitant. Reverend Hodgkins admonished him saying that only true believers would be admitted to heaven. And they had to demonstrate their belief with actions.

“Let’s get out of here,” Tony whispered to Shahla. He laboriously turned his body around to face the aisle and just as laboriously rose to his feet. They attracted more attention as they walked out of the church. The man who had given Tony the program on their way in smiled at them and said, “Have a glorious evening.”

They went down the church walk to the street and were turning onto the sidewalk when a voice behind them called, “Wait.”

They turned around and saw Nathan running after them. When he caught them, he stood panting for a moment, looking at the ground. When they didn’t say anything, he said, “Isn’t he wonderful?”

Was Nathan serious? Tony was speechless. He began walking toward the car. Shahla and Nathan followed him. He hoped Nathan would get lost. He didn’t want this weirdo around Shahla.

When they had gone a few feet and had separated themselves from other people who were leaving, Shahla said, “Nathan, don’t you realize that this is a scam to get all your money?”

At least she had her head screwed on straight. Tony listened for Nathan to respond.

After a few seconds, Nathan said, “No. No. You don’t understand. You don’t understand.”

He seemed incapable of saying more. Tony said, “The Reverend never said when this big day was going to take place. When is it?” When Nathan was silent, he continued, “You don’t know, do you? He’s going to announce it after he has all your money. And then, while the faithful flock gathers on the hillside and waits for the chariots to come for you, he takes off to Bora Bora or one of the other paradises listed in his prayer.”

They were at the car. Tony unlocked it with the remote and opened the passenger door for Shahla. As she got into the car, Nathan fell on his knees beside it and actually raised his head and looked her in the eyes.

“It’s not true,” he said. “You believe me, don’t you? You want to go to heaven, don’t you?”

“I want to go home,” Shahla said. “I’ve got school tomorrow.”

She shut the door in Nathan’s face. Tony limped around to the driver’s side, stowed his crutches in the backseat, and slid behind the steering wheel. As he maneuvered out of the parking place, he saw Nathan standing there, looking at Shahla, with a strange expression.

“He’s as crazy as some of our callers,” Shahla said as they pulled away.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Tony said. “I’m almost as relieved as your mom will be that you’re not getting mixed up with Nathan. But in addition, I don’t think I could have any part in a religion where you have to be a member of the elite to get into heaven. I guess I’d call that the religion of the smug.”

Shahla laughed. “You know, you’re a pretty smart guy.”

“Thanks.” Maybe he was smarter than he thought he was.