Silver Spire

Nine

They sat together on a beige sofa along the wall on the left side of the office, under a large framed color photograph of the church, sunlight gleaming off the spire. He looked pretty much like Fred had described him: paunchy, balding, generally unimpressive. And “borderline flashy” was a good description for her; she clearly was younger than her husband, although by no means a kid. I assumed her platinum hair — and there was plenty of it — had been artificially enhanced, but whatever the case, the end result was just fine with me.

A grim-faced Sam Reese made the introductions for both of them, while Carola dipped her head and gave me an almost-smile. “I know Barney said you preferred to see each of us individually,” Reese told me after I took a chair at right angles to the sofa, “but we come as a team. That’s the way it is.”

His tone made it clear that there wasn’t room for argument, so I nodded and forced a grin. “Fair enough; both of you know why I’m here, so there’s no reason to beat around the proverbial bush. How did each of you feel about Royal Meade?”

“I don’t know what that question’s supposed to mean,” Reese snapped. “How do you think we felt about him? We had all served together here for more than ten years. We were a close-knit group.” Carola nodded what I presumed was her assent, although her face effectively masked any feelings she had toward Meade.

“All right, I’ll phrase it more directly: Did you like him?”

Reese started to get up, but his wife eased him back with a hand on his arm. “Look, Mr. Goodwin,” he said through clenched teeth, “the only reason we’re putting up with this nonsense is because Barney requested it. Frankly, I find the whole business tasteless and objectionable.”

“That seems to be the consensus hereabouts,” I responded, “and I can sympathize with that position. But so that you know where I’m coming from, I find it tasteless and objectionable when someone gets falsely charged with murder.”

“And you truly think your Mr. Durkin is innocent?” It was Carola Reese, her green eyes wide and her expression open and trusting.

“Yes, or I wouldn’t be here.”

Reese snorted. “Hah! You work for Nero Wolfe, which means you do what he tells you, regardless of what you happen to think yourself.”

“Not so. It is true that I am employed by Mr. Wolfe, but I am my own man and always have been. I will be happy to supply references who are willing to attest to this, Mr. Wolfe among them.”

“All right, let’s get on with it,” Reese said sourly. “You wanted to know if we liked Roy. Of course we did.”

“Both of you?”

Carola opened her mouth, but before anything came out, her husband replied. “Yes, both of us, and — if I can be so presumptuous as to speak for others — the rest of the Circle of Faith as well.”

“That’s interesting. I had the impression Meade could be hard to get along with.”

“I suppose almost everyone is, from time to time.”

“And I also understand that he was on your case because of falling membership.”

This time Reese did get up. His fists were clenched at his sides and the veins in his neck were standing out. “So that’s out in the open, is it? Our Circle meetings are supposed to be confidential, but it’s obvious they aren’t anymore. Well, church membership is off, but only marginally, less than half a percent. And that’s just for the last three-month period, hardly a trend.” He paused for breath, and Carola tugged at his cuff. “Sam, sit down,” she said soothingly. He did, still puffing, and she turned her big green eyes on me.

“Mr. Goodwin, my husband may not choose to say anything negative about a dead man, but I will. Roy Meade could be mean, petty, and—”

“Carola!” Reese yelped. “That’s enough!”

“It’s nowhere near enough, Sam.” Her voice was quiet but steady. “No one has done more to build this church than you have, with the possible exception of Barney, and I do mean the possible exception.” She kept those marvelous eyes fastened on me. “I’ve had to sit in these endless Circle of Faith meetings, listening silently while Royal Meade attacks Sam for one insignificant infraction after another. That is, when he wasn’t attacking somebody else. The man was full of himself, an egomaniac. He couldn’t stand to see anyone else get credit for anything. Mr. Goodwin, in case you’re not aware of this, so much of the vision for what the Silver Spire is today came directly from this man right here.”

“Now, Carola.” Reese put a hand on her arm in a limp attempt to quiet her.

“Darling, he should know this,” she said soothingly, stroking the back of her husband’s fleshy neck. “It was your idea, nobody else’s, to put up those billboards along the expressways and parkways for miles around advertising the church. That was really the beginning of our big growth period. And who came up with the plan to finance shelters for battered women and for the homeless? Certainly not Roy Meade, or even Barney, for that matter. And who pushed Barney to set up the TV network? I’m not sure he would have done it, at least not on the scale we have today, if you hadn’t been so aggressive.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Reese muttered. He had kept his face down during his wife’s little speech, but he had to be enjoying the lavish praise.

“Of course it’s true,” she insisted, giving me the wide-eyed bit again. “Mr. Goodwin, you asked if we liked Roy Meade. Well, maybe Sam did, but he’s a far better Christian than I am — he always will be, and I love him dearly because of it. God may condemn me, but I honestly loathed Roy. He was—”

“Carola, please, I don’t think you should go on,” Reese told her sharply.

A tear rolled down one rouged cheek as she squeezed her husband’s arm. “Maybe not, but I can’t help it. This has been building up inside me for... I don’t know, years, I guess. When Roy was killed, I was stunned — just as shocked as everyone else here. In a way, though, I was also... relieved, I guess. I know that sounds awful, but I can’t help it. Believe me, I’m not proud of myself, but that’s the truth.”

“Who do you think killed Meade?” I asked her.

“We all know who did it!” Reese put in angrily. “Your man, that’s who.”

“Why would Fred Durkin want to kill him? They barely knew each other.”

“I assume you’re aware of that meeting we had the night Roy was killed, the one Durkin was at,” Reese said. His face went crimson again. “The vitriol he displayed toward Roy—”

“Roy wasn’t exactly pleasant himself,” Carola interrupted. “He said some mean things, some really cruel things, about private detectives in general and Mr. Durkin in particular. I was really embarrassed by it.”

Reese nodded. “I was surprised myself about how strong Roy came on. We all knew from the very start of this business that he was against having a detective brought in, of course. For that matter, so was I, although I wasn’t as outspoken about it. Anyway, when Durkin made his ridiculous claim that those vile things were written by a staff member, I guess Roy simply had all he could stand. He really blew sky-high and said some pretty rough things to Durkin, who then sort of lost control himself and started using language that, well... shouldn’t be used in a house of God. Or anyplace else, for that matter.”

“That’s when Bay said a prayer and had you all go off and meditate, right?”

“Yes,” Reese said. “I came back here, and Carola went to one of the empty offices down closer to the conference room, right?”

“It’s Edna Wayne’s office — she’s one of our membership secretaries. She isn’t here at night,” Carola told me. “And of course I don’t have an office.”

“Uh-huh. Did either of you hear any shots?”

They shook their heads in unison. “Mr. Goodwin, Barney didn’t cut any corners when he built this place,” Reese said. “Thick walls, thick doors. He didn’t want anyone to be bothered by outside noises or distractions. To quote him, ‘To do the Lord’s work properly takes concentration, reflection, and prayer — all of which require peaceful surroundings.’ We hear almost nothing from outside when we’re in here with the door closed. And you know, Roy’s office is right across the hall from mine.”

“How did you learn about the shooting?”

“Marley Wilkenson came in all wild-eyed,” Reese answered. “After the fifteen minutes were up, he left his office. There was no one in the hall, so he started back toward the conference room, and Roy’s door was the first one he passed. He knocked, to tell Roy it was time to reconvene, and when there was no answer, he went in, and... well...”

“Elise ran in and told me,” Carola said. “She was in an empty office across the hall from mine. She found out from one of the others, I don’t know who.”

“Back to those notes. Who do you think wrote them?” I asked.

“Lord only knows. Oh, those miserable, miserable little things — the start of all the trouble,” Reese moaned, throwing his hands up and then letting them drop onto his knees with a slap. “Considering the thousands who come to church here every week, we’re bound to get a few strange ones. And we do, from time to time. About two years ago, there was this woman who started showing up at our first service, the one at eight o’clock. Always sat on the main floor. She had to be at least seventy, poor thing, and to call her clothes ragged would be a gross understatement. Anyway, at the same time in the service every week, just before the offering was taken, she would stand up and shout ‘Hallelujah!’ three times. And I do mean shout. Believe me, she had a voice that would wake the dead in that cemetery a half-mile down the road. This went on for at least four or five Sundays.”

“What did you do?”

“Turned out she was homeless,” Reese answered. “Had been in a mental institution for years, but, like so many others these days, she’d been let out; apparently, there were no funds to keep her in there anymore. And she didn’t have any family that we could find. Eventually, the church paid to have her admitted to another facility here on the island, a good one. She’s still there; one of our ministers-to-the-homebound calls on her every week.”

“But at least she was harmless, Sam,” Carola insisted. “The sheets of paper are just plain evil.”

“If taken literally,” he conceded. “But I still think they have to be the work of some crank.”

“Does Bay have any enemies that you’re aware of?”

“Mr. Goodwin, if so, they’ve done a good job of hiding themselves. Now, it’s true Barney will occasionally get a letter from someone, usually a TV viewer, saying he’s not interpreting the Bible correctly, or that he is too liberal, whatever that means — they don’t usually say. We probably receive, oh, twenty or thirty negative letters a year.”

“But never anything like the six notes?”

“Nothing close. I think the strongest attack on Barney before this came from a woman in California who wrote him a number of years back saying that he was destined to go to hell because of his lack of a belief in the infallibility of the Bible. We never did figure that one out, because nobody holds the Bible in higher esteem than Barney does.”

“Back to the notes. Neither of you has any idea who might have written them?” I asked.

Carola shook her head, while Sam raised his shoulders and dropped them, sticking his lower lip out. “Nope,” he said. “I told you before that they must be the work of some crank. Why are you so interested in them, anyway?”

“Must be my natural curiosity,” I said with a smile as I got up to leave. “Well, I appreciate the time you’ve both taken to see me. I’ll continue my rounds now.”

“I’m afraid that we haven’t been all that much help,” Sam Reese said, getting to his feet too. He didn’t sound the least bit sorry.

“Quite the contrary. You’ve been extremely helpful,” I replied to confound him, stepping into the hall and pulling the heavy door closed. As I pivoted toward the church office, I saw Lloyd Morgan striding toward me.

“Ah, Mr. Goodwin, this is good timing. I just finished a long session with several of the members of our Finance Committee. Grueling business, church finances. Most parishioners have no idea. Sorry I couldn’t be here to greet you earlier.” Was this the same guy I’d been stiffed by forty-eight hours ago? I started to comment on Morgan’s about-face when he saved me the effort.

“You know, I was awfully rude to you day before yesterday, and I want to apologize. Chalk it up to tension, although that’s no excuse, I know. Barney and I talked this morning, and we agreed that you and Mr. Wolfe are entitled to our full cooperation. After all, we... I... did come to you originally. And now, at least as an indirect result of that, one of your colleagues is in terrible trouble. Before we go on, have you been able to spend the time you’ve needed with others on the staff?”

I told him I had, and Morgan led me to his office, which was next to Reese’s and was hardly shabby itself. He steered me to a brown wing chair that shared a cozy colonial corner with a lamp table and a slightly smaller yellow chair, which he fell into with a sigh. “It’s good to be back in my own blessed little sanctuary. These money meetings always give me a migraine. Now, how can I help you, Mr. Goodwin?”

“To be honest, you probably can’t,” I told him, sinking into the brown chair. “But I’ll do some asking anyway. How did you get along with Meade?”

“You are direct, aren’t you?”

“My mother often lectured me on the merits of being straightforward in my dealings. She never liked what she called ‘shilly-shallying.’”

He forced a chuckle, but the rest of his face didn’t match the sound effects. “Yes. Well, I’m sure by now you know enough about Roy to realize that he was, well... something less than saintly at times.”

“I did get the impression that he could stir the caldron of discontent.”

“What a quaint phrase. Well, without for an instant questioning his dedication, I will say that he did his share of caldron-stirring around here over the years. Roy knew what he wanted, and more often than not he got it.”

“Such as power?”

Morgan’s flat black eyes studied me, then his onyx cuff link. “Power, yes, and also... visibility. Roy loved it when Barney was out of town — which was fairly often — and he could preach. He was a first-rate preacher, Mr. Goodwin. In some ways, he was almost as good as Barney.”

“But not quite?”

He gave his cuff a tug, then exhaled. “No. His sermons were structurally sound and biblically based, the message was always clear, and his delivery was impressive, even riveting, more so sometimes than Barney’s. But he lacked, well, warmth. Mr. Goodwin, he just plain didn’t have warmth.”

“And Bay does?”

“Oh my, yes. You are an extremely perceptive man, and if you’d ever heard the two of them in the pulpit, you’d sense the difference instantly. Barney has a gift few people are given.”

“Getting back to you and Meade, how did you get along?”

Morgan leaned back and rubbed an earlobe. “Passably. It was clear years ago that we’d never be the best of friends, but we were always civil to each other.”

“Was Meade critical of the way you did your job?”

I got a raised eyebrow and then a smile in response. “Oh, I get your drift,” he said, nodding. “Let’s see, who’ve you talked to this morning? Roger Gillis? Sam Reese?” I nodded.

He smiled again. “And it will be the same when you sit down with Marley Wilkenson, at least if he’s candid with you. All three of them — Roger, Sam, and Marley — posed grave threats to Roy. Each one has a great deal of power within his own domain — education, outreach, and music. And Roy was jealous of anybody who had power.”

“But don’t you have power, too? After all, you’re the money man around this place, right?”

That drew an honest-to-goodness laugh, close to a guffaw, from the stuffed shirt, and it sounded like something he should indulge in more often. “Mr. Goodwin, I may have some fiscal responsibility here, but in the first place, I am not an ordained minister like the other three, so I posed absolutely no threat to Roy’s ultimate goal of running the Silver Spire — if indeed any of them did. Second, although you may think otherwise, given these beautiful facilities, money is not the engine that drives this church — faith and love are. I know that may sound hokey to someone whose life is immersed in crime, but it’s a fact. Sometimes in Circle of Faith sessions and other staff meetings, when I raise concerns about funds, I feel almost like one of the money changers that Christ drove from the temple.”

“Is the church in financial trouble?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “Not at all! Not for one minute. We have extremely generous givers, and the cash flow is strong. But I still have these concerns from time to time about whether funds are being used properly. Nobody ever wants to hear what I have to say, though. They all seem to find any talk whatever about finances distasteful — and that includes Roy.”

“But he didn’t criticize your work?”

“I don’t think he found it worthy of criticism. Basically, he was disdainful of my role here,” Morgan said quietly. “To him, I was simply a pencil-pushing functionary.”

“Who would want to kill him?” I asked.

He spread his hands, palms up. “Who indeed? Nobody that I can suggest. I’m afraid you’re going to have to face up to the fact that Mr. Durkin is not only the prime candidate, he is the only candidate. He just flared up in that meeting and lost control of himself.”

“About that meeting. I gather it was pretty ugly.”

He cleared his throat. “I can’t quarrel with that assessment. I’m sure you know the essence of it: Durkin said those notes came from inside the church, Roy lashed out at him, and Durkin lashed back. Durkin’s language, by the way, is better suited to an army barracks.”

“I can’t count the number of times I’ve scolded him about it,” I agreed. “Then Bay led a prayer and you all dispersed to offices.”

Morgan nodded. “I came back here and honestly used the time in prayer and meditation. I had my head down on the desk, and the next thing I knew, Sam Reese came barreling in, telling me something terrible had happened.”

“Let’s go back to those notes to Bay — they were what got you worked up in the first place. How do you feel about them now?”

Morgan rubbed his cheek. “To be honest, I haven’t thought about them at all since Roy was murdered.”

“You said they were the work of a psychopath, somebody truly dangerous. Do you have any reason to change that opinion?”

“I don’t know anymore, I really don’t. Maybe Barney and some of the others were right. Maybe it was just some deranged individual.” He coughed noisily and shook his head. “If so, Roy paid the ultimate price for my anxieties.”

“Other churches in the area have been resentful of your success. Might somebody from one of them have written the notes, as harassment?”

That struck a nerve. “Mr. Goodwin, you’re talking about fellow Christians!” he fumed. “I can’t believe that any churchman would degrade himself that way. Besides, whatever anger there was about our success came in the first few years. Once we were established, the resentment — which was really exaggerated by the press anyway — died down, partly because we draw so many people from Manhattan and even farther away. We haven’t eaten into the attendance at nearby congregations all that much. I think it’s been seven years, maybe even longer, since another church complained about the Silver Spire luring members away. In any case, the note problem seems to have gone away; there haven’t been any for the last two Sundays.”

“Might Meade have written them?”

He looked aghast. “That’s really... absurd. What in the world would Roy have had to gain by doing such a thing?”

I shrugged. “After all, he wanted to run this place, didn’t he? Maybe he figured he could scare Bay into an early retirement.”

“I’m sorry,” Morgan huffed as he got up, “but this conversation has taken an unpleasant turn. I wasn’t close to Roy, but I don’t wish to continue this discussion. It demeans him, and the Silver Spire as well. Besides, there isn’t any more I can contribute to your investigation — if there ever was — and you’ve got others to see. Marley, right?”

“And Elise Bay.”

“Oh yes, and Elise. I don’t believe she’ll be in till noon today, but Marley should be in his office right now. I’ll point the way.”

I couldn’t think of anything else Morgan could contribute either, so I went out the door behind him, ready to face the man who makes the music.