The sweet golden parachute

CHAPTER 23

The snug little package from Vero Beach, Florida, was waiting for him at the post office, tightly bound in a manner reminiscent of the wrap job on Boris Karloff in The Mummy. It was the only way Mitch’s mom knew how to wrap packages. While he was at the post office, Mitch express-mailed Justine’s manuscript to his literary agent. The note he attached read simply: Am I crazy or is this great?

From there, Mitch picked up a load of nonperishables at the A amp;P and frozen day-old bread from The Works. Then he too-dled his way through the exquisite calm of the Historic District to the Congo church. It was not yet eleven o’clock, but two dozen or so people were already lined up outside the door to the Fellowship Center. He parked around the back. Lem the custodian had unlocked the Bilco cellar doors for him. Mitch raised them open and stashed the loaves of bread in the freezers down in the old coal cellar. Then he lowered the doors and toted the rest of the load into the kitchen, where a pigtailed Danielle was at the stove heating up a vat of soup.

“Morning, Danielle. How are you today?”

“A bit ashamed,” she confessed, blushing. “I was feeling sorry for myself last night, and I needed to unload on someone.” She stirred the soup pot, chewing on her lower lip. “Thanks for being such a good listener.”

“No need to thank me. Friends talk to each other. It’s what they do. Not a big deal.”

“Yes, it was,” Danielle insisted, her eyes avoiding his. “And I’m grateful. I want you to know that, okay?”

“Okay,” Mitch responded, glancing around. The long dining tables were set up for the soup kitchen regulars, but they were shy at least a dozen folding chairs. “Where are all of the chairs?”

“I’ve sent Eric off to find them. You could give him a hand.”

Mitch tried the parish offices but found no sign of the chairs there. Or Eric. But he did hear sounds coming from inside the meetinghouse itself. The connecting door was propped open. And the missing chairs were arrayed up on the horseshoe-shaped dais behind Reverend Sweet’s pulpit. Eric was folding them up.

Mitch had to pause there in the doorway to gather himself. He hadn’t set foot inside a church since Maisie’s funeral.

The Congo Church was not nearly as grand inside as he’d expected from its towering profile out on Dorset Street. Its ceiling was barely high enough to accommodate the wraparound balcony. And the decor was spare and unadorned. Bare, polished wooden pews. Whitewashed walls. Wide-planked oak floors. There were windows everywhere. Two stories of windows. The low March sun flooded the sanctuary with sunlight.

“Ah, an extra pair of arms,” Eric remarked, spotting him there.

“That’s me.” Mitch started toward the dais. “How goes it?”

Eric snapped the folding chairs shut and leaned them against the wall. “Just had to do a sucky family thing this morning,” he replied a bit edgily. “Mother’s all freaked out because her ‘friend’ is dead. Like we’re supposed to care about some old fairy who was sponging off of her. Hey, if Tolly made her happy, I was all for it. But now that he’s dead I’m supposed to care? Sorry, that’s something I’ve always had trouble with.”

“What is, Eric?”

“Being a phony. Can you grab half of these?”

“Absolutely. I just have a quick question. Did you pay the Ker-shaw brothers to kill Pete and Tolly or did you actually kill them yourself? I still can’t figure that part out.”

Eric froze, his eyes widening at Mitch. “What?…”

Mitch’s powerful microcassette tape recorder was stuffed in the pocket of his wool jacket. He flicked it on, convinced tha he was not breaking his promise to Des. He’d told her he wouldn’t do anything crazy, and he wasn’t. What he was doing was very sane. And necessary. “You offered Stevie and Donnie work on the farm when they got out of prison. You had them start the same morning that Pete would be pedaling past Four Chimneys on his rounds. They were still around the place when Tolly was killed. Did you arrange it that way because you’d hired them to do the killings or because you wanted people to think they had?”

Eric continued to gape at Mitch, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Are you hallucinating? This is me.”

“And you’re the single most amazing scam artist I’ve ever come across,” Mitch said. “I’ve been schmoozed by big-time Hollywood studio bosses, producers, agents. I’m talking world-class talent. But they can’t even touch you, Eric. You present yourself as the ultimate American hero-the small farmer, an idealist who wants to grow things honestly. You perform good works in the community. You’re a loving husband. To know you is to look up to you. Except no one knows you, do they?”

“Mitch, they need these chairs in the fellowship room,” Eric said tightly. “And I re-eally don’t think this is funny.”

“Who actually did the killings, Eric? Who kept bashing Pete in the head with that pipe until he was dead? Who poured that lye down Tolly’s throat? I’d re-eally like to know.”

Eric blinked at Mitch rapidly, saying nothing. He’d grown extremely pale.

“Give it up, Eric. Just admit what you did. I can help you.”

“Guys, what’s taking so long?” Danielle called to them from out in the hall. She appeared in the doorway, looking harried. “Come on, will you? People will have to eat standing up.”

“Lock that door behind you, hon,” Eric blurted out.

Danielle stared at him, bewildered. “But why?”

“Mitch knows everything, that’s why.”

“Well, not everything,” Mitch pointed out. “A whole lot of blanks still-”

“Danielle, lock that damned door!” Eric barked. “Do what I tell you!”

“Don’t do it, Danielle,” Mitch cautioned her. “That would be really stupid, and we both know you’re not stupid.”

Danielle seemed frozen, so paralyzed by fright that she could hardly breathe. Mitch could actually hear her gasp for air. And then he heard something much closer to him.

He heard Eric whip open his Leatherman knife.

Before Mitch could react, the gangly farmer had a strong left forearm wrapped around his throat and the three-inch razor sharp blade held to his jugular vein, its tip pricking his skin.

“Don’t move a muscle,” Eric warned Mitch, hugging him tightly against his own body. “Lock it, Danielle. And go make sure the front doors are locked, too. Hurry!”

She flew into action. Locked the hallway door behind her, then dashed up the aisle and pushed open one of the foyer doors. Mitch could hear her throwing the bolts on the church’s three big double doors out front.

“Don’t do this, Eric,” he said hoarsely, feeling the man’s hot breath on the back of his neck. “It will end badly, believe me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Mitch,” he growled in response. “But I will. So just shut the hell up.”

“Eric, what are you doing?” Danielle protested as she scurried back down the aisle toward them.

“Tie his hands with my belt,” he ordered her. “Now, Danielle.”

She obeyed, yanking Eric’s worn leather belt from the loops of his pants, her eyes goggly with fear as she bound Mitch’s hands tightly behind him. As soon as she’d finished, Eric shoved Mitch roughly to the floor. The microcassette recorder tumbled from his jacket pocket. Eric promptly stomped on it hard with his work shoe, then removed the tape and stuffed it in his pocket.

Mitch lay there with his hands bound awkwardly behind him, his shoulders screaming in pain. “You’ll be so much better off if you just turn yourselves in,” he said, squinting up at them in the sunlight that streamed through the church’s windows. “You can’t get away.”

“Yeah, we can,” Eric assured him. “We have a bargaining chip. We have you.” He rummaged in Mitch’s pockets for his cell phone. “What’s Des’s number?”

“Just hit redial.”

Eric did, then held the phone to Mitch’s ear.

Mitch heard her say, “Still kind of busy here.”

To which he said: “I know, I know, and I’m sorry to bother you again. But something slightly urgent has come up…”