Silver Spire

Eight

The next morning at ten, I was back at the Silver Spire tabernacle after another ferry ride and another uphill walk that made my calves grumble. “Hi, you were here yesterday, weren’t you?” my favorite red-haired and dimpled church receptionist bubbled with sunshine in her voice when I ambled into the lobby.

Pleading guilty, I asked for Bay. At the end of his visit to the brownstone, he had told me to see him before I started my round of interviews. “It’s better if I prepare everybody first,” he had said. “They’re all pretty rattled by what’s happened, which I’m sure you can understand. And when you come, I can tell you first what kind of reaction to expect.”

I would have preferred a less structured and less publicized agenda, but since Wolfe had chosen to bow out of the discussion and poke around in the kitchen instead, I went along with Bay’s suggestion. The receptionist punched a button on her phone, whispered something, then cradled the receiver with a smile that was as sunny as her voice. “Dr. Bay is expecting you. It’s straight down that long hall,” she cooed, pointing with a well-tended index finger. “Past the stairway and the elevator, and then on to the first door on your left. You can’t miss it, or I should say them. They’re actually double doors. They’re beautiful — solid oak.”

I thanked her, hoping she thought my smile was sunny, too. She was right about the doors; they looked like something out of a King Arthur book I used to read when I was a kid. The only things missing were the drawbridge and the moat. I pulled one of the doors open, stepping back into the present: a fluorescent-lit, gray-carpeted reception room peopled with two women at desks, both of them typing with a passion. “Mr. Goodwin?” the younger of the two said, giving me her own version of a sunny smile. “Dr. Bay is waiting for you. Please go right on in.”

I opened another oak door, this one not quite as elaborate as its brothers, and found myself in a room about as big as Wolfe’s office, with thick burgundy carpeting, bookshelves reaching to the high ceiling on two walls, and cream-colored draperies framing both windows. Bay looked up from behind a mahogany desk and nodded me to one of three upholstered burgundy chairs in front of it. His smile was partly cloudy.

“Mr. Goodwin, you’re right on time,” he said approvingly, leaning across the desk to shake hands. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie loosened. “I’m just tinkering with a sermon.” He gestured to the computer on a table at his right hand. “Do you use one of these?”

I told him I did, and he favored me with a second approving nod. “Wonderful things, aren’t they? Well, you’re not here to discuss personal computers. I’ve talked to everybody in the Circle, and they are... willing to speak to you today.”

“But not enthusiastic, right?”

Bay shrugged. “Given the circumstances, one can hardly expect enthusiasm. I had thought it would make the most sense for you to see Lloyd first. You already know him, and despite his attitude toward you yesterday, he seems pretty well reconciled to your being here now. For that matter, so do the others. But Lloyd’s tied up in a meeting with our Finance Committee and won’t be available until close to noon, so you’re set to see Roger Gillis first — he’s our Christian Education Director. I told each of them that you needed no more than a half-hour with them. Actually, I hope you can keep your sessions even shorter than that.”

I said I’d do my best, and Bay picked up his phone, rapidly punching buttons. “Roger, Mr. Goodwin is here. Can you talk to him now? Good, he’ll be right there.”

Bay escorted me out of his study, and we walked a dozen paces down the hall. He knocked on another oak door, and we entered an office a third the size of Bay’s. Fred had described Gillis as young-looking, but I was surprised anyway. The guy could easily pass for an Ivy League undergraduate, which is how he was dressed — herringbone sport coat, tan crew-neck sweater, checked shirt, khaki pants, deck shoes.

He popped up from behind his desk when we entered, coming around it to shake my hand. “Mr. Goodwin, I’m Roger Gillis,” he said somberly before Bay could make introductions. The director of education was maybe two inches taller than I, and probably fifteen pounds lighter, which made him downright lanky. His long, thin face went with the rest of him, and it was topped by a mop of carrot-colored hair that looked like too big a challenge for any comb, brush, spray, or mousse.

“I’ll leave the two of you alone,” Bay said, closing the door behind him as I took the chair in front of the desk that Gillis offered, while he sprawled in its twin. “I never like to have the desk between me and a visitor,” he said earnestly. “It’s like a wall.”

I agreed and then started in slowly, asking Gillis about how long he’d been at Silver Spire and the scope of his job. I got brief answers, such as “nine years” and “I oversee all the education programs here, both adult and children’s.”

After five minutes of me asking questions and him giving clipped, curt responses, I held up a hand. “Look, you said your desk acts as a wall between you and visitors. Well, the desk isn’t between us, but there is a wall, and you’ve built it. I know you’re probably tired of answering questions. First it was Fred Durkin, then the police, and maybe some of the media, too—”

“Blessedly, Barney handled all the media contacts.” Gillis sniffed.

“All right. You’ve still had to put up with a lot, and now there’s me. I promised your boss I wouldn’t take any more time than necessary, but you’re not helping much.”

“I’ve been answering your questions,” he said defensively, running a bony hand through his hair.

“Barely. The faster I’m satisfied, the faster I’ll be out of here.”

Gillis cupped his narrow chin in his hand and frowned. “Mr. Goodwin, I’m talking to you only because Barney asked me to. Frankly, I see no reason for any of this. It’s clear to everyone that Fred Durkin shot Roy. Now you come around trying to find a way to get your man off, presumably by implicating one of us.”

“You’re sure one of your number didn’t shoot Meade?”

“Of course I’m sure!” His eyebrows shot up toward his hairline, and his jaw went in the opposite direction.

“Then what’s to worry about?”

He frowned some more. “Well, I’d hate to see anybody try to fix things so that the blame somehow got shifted.”

“The ‘anybody’ in this instance meaning Nero Wolfe and me. Mr. Gillis, unless one of you really is guilty, you hardly need worry. The police and the District Attorney think they already have their man. It would take overwhelming evidence to the contrary to get them to change their minds.”

“And you’re going to try to find that evidence,” he said accusingly.

“If it exists. I’m sure that you as a church leader would not want to see an innocent person sent to prison for life.”

Gillis’s narrow face softened, and he nodded. “All right, Mr. Goodwin, you’ve made your point. I will try to answer you as fully as I can.”

“Thanks. How would you describe the attitudes of the members of the Circle of Faith toward Meade?”

He shrugged. “I can’t really speak for any of them.”

“Come on, you must have at least a general idea of their feelings. After all, you’ve been meeting as a group for years now.”

It was clear from his tension that the guy was struggling with himself. After waiting several heartbeats, he made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan.

“Roy was... not a popular person, you know. He could be pretty hard on others. Heck, I’m sure he was doing it because he wanted to see the church function to its full potential, but...”

“Yes?”

“Well, he had a way of getting people pretty riled up.”

“Including you?”

The color rose in Gillis’s face. “Maybe sometimes,” he muttered.

“Care to give me a specific example?”

He studied his fingernails, then the palm of his hand. If he was looking for something, he didn’t find it. “Well... it was at a Circle of Faith meeting a few weeks ago,” he said in a drawl that was less pronounced than Bay’s. I guessed he was from Tennessee or North Carolina, but I’m hardly an expert on southern speech patterns. “Roy had these figures on attendance at adult-education classes over the last several months, you know? The numbers were down, and he suggested that maybe the job had gotten too big for me, that perhaps it was time to get somebody in to ‘give poor Roger here a hand,’ as he put it so... well, so patronizingly. To tell the truth, he’d been bringing up this falling-attendance stuff for several months, but this was the first time he’d really gone after me.”

“And the numbers were down?”

“Well, they were — are — but only fractionally. And over the last several years, they’d increased by double digits annually. It was inevitable that they’d level off at some point. For that matter, membership has leveled off, too. As a congregation, the Silver Spire has grown like Jack’s beanstalk for ten years. You can’t keep that up forever, and the same is true of church programs.”

“But apparently Meade thought differently.”

“Mr. Goodwin, Roy knew doggone well that it was unrealistic to expect unending growth in our education programs. We already had well over seventy percent of our adult members actively involved in one or more courses. I’ll stack that up against any large church of any denomination in the country.”

“Did he specifically single you out for criticism?”

“Not hardly. Sam — that’s Sam Reese — took a lot of zingers from Roy, because like I said, overall church membership had leveled off, too.”

“So what did Meade expect to accomplish by the criticism?”

Gillis nervously brushed his hair back from his eyes and leaned forward. “I’ll tell you. He was trying to undercut everybody. Roy Meade was power hungry; he couldn’t stand to see others get a lot of credit. He was number two on the staff, behind Barney, but he always wanted more. He—” Gillis stopped short. “I’ve said enough.”

I waited until he wound down. “What did you think about those notes that Bay had been getting in the Sunday collection?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t like them, not one bit. Some of the others in the Circle figure they are harmless — you know, the work of some crank. But they worry me; there’s a lot of mighty crazy folks running around nowadays. That’s why I was glad when Lloyd talked Barney into getting a real investigator in here. Of course, look how that turned out. Why are you so interested in the notes, anyway?”

I countered a question with a question. “Don’t you think the notes and Meade’s death are somehow connected?”

Gillis shook his head vigorously. “No way, not at all. It’s bad enough that Roy’s dead — and I really do mean that fervently, regardless of what I said about him a minute ago. But there is still somebody else out there making threats to Barney. And believe me, Mr. Goodwin, I see them as very real threats. The evil’s all around us.”

“So it seems. How would you describe the meeting the night Meade was killed?”

“Nasty,” he said, making a face. “Your Mr. Durkin said he was sure those threats were written by somebody here, which was bad enough. But then Roy started, well... insulting him, and then Durkin lashed back and said some awful things, really awful things. Barney led us all in prayer at that point, and then we had to go to our offices to meditate for fifteen minutes.”

“And you came back here?”

He nodded.

“Where’s Meade’s office?”

“Across the hall and two doors down.”

“Did you hear any shots?”

“No, but that’s not too surprising, I guess. These are plaster walls, and I never hear any noises from the offices on either side of me. And you can see how thick the doors are, too.”

“When did you first know Meade had been shot?”

“Sam Reese came in and told me.”

“How do the others in the Circle of Faith feel about Meade?”

Gillis wrinkled his long nose. “Mr. Goodwin, I apologize if this sounds abrupt or rude, but I just don’t want to talk about Roy anymore. Like I told you before, I’ve said enough, and I really must get back to work. I think Barney knows who you’re supposed to see next.”

I was getting the old heave-ho, but it didn’t bother me, because I figured I’d gotten all I was going to out of Gillis, at least for the present. I went back to Bay’s office, where the younger of the two secretaries was waiting for me.

“Mr. Goodwin, Dr. Bay asked me to take you down to Mr. Reese’s office,” she said brightly. “He’s expecting you.” I thanked her and learned her name was Diane as we went to the door right next to the executive office, which she rapped on. The muffled response sounded like “Come in,” and I swung open the door. That’s when I learned that my next interview would be with not one person but two.