Читать книгу Final Justice - Marta Perry - Страница 13

Jennifer checked the supplies in the art room for the after-school program in the church education wing, trying to focus on something other than the news about Penny and the child who might be Josie’s. And on Mason’s reaction to that news.

It was no use. She’d just counted the stacks of construction paper four times, and the amount still hadn’t registered. She may as well give in to the temptation to speculate on the news like everyone else.

They’d all been upset. After all, their little group had known Penny and Josie better than most people. Despite the police’s attempt at discretion, rumors were all over town, most of them garbled versions of what they’d heard at the pizzeria.

Everyone was upset. So why did Mason’s reaction bother her?

The classroom door opened, and Pastor Rogers poked his head in. “Am I disturbing you?”

She smiled. “Not unless counting construction paper is more important than I think it is. Come in.”

“I won’t be a minute. Is everything going all right?” Robert Rogers gave her the warm, interested smile that drew people to Magnolia Christian Church and kept them coming back again and again. Showing Christ’s love wasn’t just a credo to Rob Rogers; it was an all-encompassing way of life.

“I’m doing fine, thanks to your willingness to give me a chance.”

Affection for the big, burly minister warmed her heart. He hadn’t changed much in ten years—maybe another gray hair or two, maybe an extra pound or so around the middle, that was all.

He shook his head. “You’re an asset to the staff, Jennifer. I knew you would be. You don’t have to keep thanking me for doing something that was good for all of us.”

She flushed slightly. The praise was welcome, but they both knew that he’d taken a chance in hiring her. Other people might not be as quick to accept her innocence as he had been.

“Well, I just wanted to see—” He started to turn away, then turned back, slapping his head. “Honestly, I’ll have to start putting sticky notes on my sleeve. I came down here to tell you that Mason Grant called. He’s on his way over with some equipment he said he’s donating to the after-school program.”

“That’s great.” She’d see Mason, and she’d realize that there was nothing unusual about his reaction.

“I told him you’d meet him at the gym door. I hope that’s okay.” He beamed. “I’m sure we have you to thank for this donation. Mason hasn’t shown any interest in the program in the past.”

She shrugged. “I asked him, that was all. I’m sure he’d have responded the same way to anyone else from the church.”

Or was she? Mason’s faith, or lack of it, was a mystery to her, like so much else about his life.

“Must go.” Pastor Rob raised his hand in a gesture vaguely reminiscent of a benediction. “I have a worship committee meeting and I’m probably late already.” He hurried out, perpetually late but always forgiven because people knew that when he was there, they had his undivided love and attention.

She gave the room another glance. It wasn’t easy to make the switch from the preschoolers who occupied it in the morning’s nursery school to the elementary and middle school kids who swarmed in for the after-school program, but she and her volunteers had it down to an art by this time.

She hurried out into the hallway, passing the colorful murals she’d added to the cement block walls. Fanciful animals, two by two, marched all the way down one wall, headed for the ark at the end where Noah waited for them. On the opposite side, images of Jesus’s miracles filled in the walls between the classroom doors.

The gym was in the basement of the old education building, which had been replaced in the fifties by the cement block building in which the nursery school was housed. The link between the two, on this level, involved pushing open a heavy fire door, passing through the low-ceilinged janitor’s room with its doors into a maze of even older sections of the church’s underpinnings, and spurting out into the teen lounge and then into the gym.

Mason would come to the door closest to the driveway, no doubt. She went to unlock it, her footfalls echoing hollowly on the bare wooden floor.

Funny. She was usually alone on this basement floor from the time the nursery school ended until the after-school crew came charging in. She’d never before felt this urge to look behind her.

She shrugged, trying to shake off the tension that prickled along the nape of her neck. She’d been thinking too much about Josie, lying in a makeshift grave all those years when people thought she was living happily in Europe.

And about Penny. Kate thought Penny might come after her, the way she had everyone else who’d been involved with the class website. She shrugged that off. Once Josie’s body had been found, everything was bound to come out. Her connecting the dots through the website was a minor part in solving the mystery.

Mason probably felt that empathy for poor Josie, too. That was why he’d reacted with such tension to Kate’s news the previous night. There was nothing else to it.

She stood by the door, staring out the small window at the driveway. The gray stone walls of the sanctuary and the old education wing loomed over the drive on either side, turning it into a shadowed tunnel with the afternoon sunshine a gentle glow at the far end. Somewhere a door fell with a soft thud, and then the silence took over again.

She’d been back in Magnolia Falls for nearly a year now. The job was going well, and she had a sense of accomplishment with what the Lord had allowed her to do here. She’d renewed cherished friendships with people she cared about, including Mason.

Especially Mason if she were being honest with herself. But she still wasn’t sure what he felt, if anything, for her. He seemed to enjoy spending time with her, but she had yet to see behind the pleasant facade he presented to the world.

A white panel truck with the Grant’s Sporting Goods logo on its side pulled into the driveway, turning almost gray in the deep shadows. Mason drew up, made a neat three-point turn and backed up to the gymnasium door. He slid out, walking with easy, athletic grace to the rear of the van.

She pushed open the heavy door and propped it with the wooden wedge that was always left handy. “Hi! I thought you’d come in this way.” She scurried up the four steps to ground level. “I’ll help you carry things in. This is so nice of you.”

He passed her a cardboard carton and then pulled out two more to carry himself, giving her the slightly crooked smile that had a way of melting her heart. “As if I had a choice about it,” he said.

“You did,” she protested, remembering what Pastor Rob had said about it. “All I did was ask if you had any sports equipment you could donate. You could have said no.”

He followed her back down the stairs and into the gym. “Like you’d have taken no for an answer.” His voice was light and teasing, the tension of the previous night vanished. “You’d have pestered me to death if I hadn’t agreed.”

“Well, you belong to the church. Naturally I assume you want to support it.”

“Naturally.” There was a dry note to his voice that she didn’t miss. “As it happens, my check to the church arrives promptly every week.”

“You might bring it instead of mailing it,” she ventured.

“I might,” he said, his tone noncommittal.

What happened to him, Father? He was so devoted back in college, when we were in Campus Christian Fellowship together. Something has gone very wrong for him, and I don’t know what. If I can help him, please show me the way.

She put the carton down on the gym floor and hesitated, longing to rip it open. “Can I see what’s in here?”

Mason’s eyebrows lifted. “There are more in the van. Don’t you want to bring them all in first?”

“I want to see.” She suspected she sounded like one of her four-year-olds.

He planted his hands on his hips, smiling at her. A shaft of sunlight, piercing through one of the high windows, turned his hair to burnished gold. “You were one of those kids who ripped open the birthday present before you looked to see who it was from, weren’t you?”

“Guilty,” she confessed. “Please?”

He shrugged. “Knock yourself out. It’s just some basketballs, that’s all. I have new baskets in one of the boxes, too. Those old things are so bent it’s a wonder a ball can get through them.” He nodded toward the existing baskets, which drooped dispiritedly from their worn backboards.

“They’ve probably been up there for thirty or forty years,” she commented, eagerly ripping the box open. “This is so great. The kids will be thrilled.”

The box held half a dozen basketballs, brand-new. She took one out and tossed it to him.

He caught it automatically, but then threw it back into the box with a quick thrust of his hands.

“Come on,” she said invitingly, picking up the ball again. “Show me that hook shot of yours.”

“Sorry. I don’t play anymore.” He turned and walked toward the door.

She paused, watching his lithe figure. No, she didn’t understand what was going on with Mason. Maybe she never would.

She went to the van after him, helping to carry in another load of boxes, which proved to contain a couple of table-tennis sets.

“I can’t thank you enough for this.” She knew that sounded stilted, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She sat down on the floor beside the boxes. “If you have work to do, I can unpack everything myself.”

He stood for a moment, looking down at her, and then squatted next to her. “Don’t be so polite, Miss Jennifer. Isn’t that what the children call you?”

“It is. How did you know?” Don’t let me make a mistake and drive him away again.

“I have my sources.” He opened a box containing a wooden hockey game and started to put it together, his hands deft. “Look—about the basketball. I’m sorry if I was rude. I just don’t like reminders of my failures, that’s all.”

She’d tell him he was overreacting, but she’d already tried that, and it hadn’t worked. “It must be tough to avoid an entire sport, in your line of work.”

“Yeah, well, when you inherit the family business, you don’t exactly have a lot of choices.”

“I guess not. I just—” She looked at him, troubled.

“You want to make it better.” He gave her a wry smile that twisted her heart. “You always want to make things better, don’t you, Jennifer? Some things about people don’t change.”

“Some things do.” She shivered a little. “Everything that’s been coming out, about Josie, I mean, has me feeling as if the college days I thought I remembered might not have been real.”

His face went still, and she couldn’t tell what lay behind that stillness. “Maybe all our memories are a little skewed,” he said finally. “We see what happened through our own perspective.”

“Some things are simply true,” she protested. “Our viewpoint doesn’t change that. Josie’s pregnancy—”

She stopped. She hadn’t intended to bring that up.

“What about it?” His voice was even, his face bent over his work, a strand of blond hair falling onto his forehead.

“Well, she must have been pregnant in the spring of our senior year. She must have been upset, worried, trying to figure out what to do. I saw her every day. Why didn’t I realize something was wrong?”

“She didn’t want you to,” he said. “You can’t help everyone, Jennifer. Some people won’t let you.” It sounded very final. He lifted the hockey game and propped it against the wall. “There you are, all finished. Anything else I can do for you?”

He rose as he spoke, holding out his hand. She grasped it, and he pulled her effortlessly to her feet. For an instant she felt dizzy. Her eyes met his—met and held. Her breath stopped. Mason didn’t move. Even the dust motes floating in the shaft of sunlight seemed still.

“You—What did you say?” Her voice sounded unnatural to her.

He blinked, as if trying to refocus. “I asked if I could do anything else for you.”

You could open up to me. You could explain what just happened.

“Nothing, unless you’d like to come in and show the children how to use all this equipment. We’re always looking for volunteers.” That was better. Her voice sounded almost normal.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to keep looking. I’m no good with kids.” His face seemed to tense on the words.

“You never know until you try,” she said. Open up to me, Mason. Talk to me.

“I don’t think so. I’ll see you, Jennifer.” He walked out quickly, as if to deny that anything at all had just happened between them.

Mason sat at his desk a couple of days later, trying to concentrate on the latest sales reports from the Macon store. Concentrating was never easy with the massive oil painting of his father mounted on the wall above, staring down at him. It seemed to be reminding him that it was Gerald Grant II who was supposed to be sitting in that chair, not Mason.

Small wonder he preferred to work anywhere but here. He could move the portrait, of course. He toyed with that thought for a moment, even knowing it was impossible. Think how scandalized Eva Morrissey would be if he did such a thing.

He’d inherited Eva, his father’s secretary, when he inherited the business, and their working relationship had been set at a time when he’d been too young and too insecure to take a firm line with her. As a result, she felt free to criticize everything he did, including that donation to the after-school program.

Suspicious, that had been the only word for her attitude. Why would he want to do something like that? He never had before. His father never had.

That was the gold standard for Eva. What would his father have done?

Maybe that was all the more reason to make the donation. He shoved his chair back from the computer, stretching. But that wasn’t why he’d given the equipment. He knew perfectly well why. Because Jennifer had asked him to do it.

Well, so what? It was natural enough. Friends supported each other’s interests.

That sentiment was something that wouldn’t have occurred to him before the reunion. Then, he’d preferred not to move too deeply into friendships or romantic relationships. He’d kept his personal life on the surface. It was much safer that way.

Getting back in touch with the gang from college had begun to change his attitude. It had forced him to remember that guy he used to be. That kid had been naive, maybe. Guilty of a lot of mistakes. But at least he’d had some humanity.

Not entirely comfortable with the direction his thoughts were taking, he shoved his chair back and moved to one of the wide windows that looked down on Main Street. This had been his father’s office, and his father had liked overlooking what he considered his domain.

The warm spring day had brought the college students downtown in force. They sauntered along the sidewalks in groups and couples, underneath the banners mounted on light standards in navy and gold, Magnolia College colors. Where would their downtown be without the college to give it life, to say nothing of business?

He could remember being one of those kids, headed for a quick slice of Burt’s pizza or a serious talk about the nature of the universe over a cup of coffee at the Half Joe. Even now, Burt stood in the doorway of the pizza shop, his white apron pristine, surveying the downtown scene as he’d been doing for years.

A couple walked past Burt, arms linked, heads together, so absorbed in each other that the rest of the world might not exist. Burt watched them tolerantly. He’d seen young love plenty of times before.

Mason drew back from the window slightly, remembering those moments with Jennifer in the church gym. The attraction had been strong. He couldn’t deny that. Jennifer had recognized it, too. He’d seen it in the way her brown eyes widened, the way her generous mouth softened.

It was no good, of course. Jennifer wasn’t remotely like the women he usually dated. She’d want something real in a relationship, and he didn’t have anything real to give.

The door opened behind him, and he swung around, frowning. That was one of Eva’s more annoying traits, bursting in on him as if she hoped she might catch him napping or playing solitaire on the computer instead of working.

Now her eyes, sharp behind her old-fashioned half-glasses, swept the office before coming to rest on him. “Miss Pappas is here to see you. I told her you were working.” She made the words sound accusing.

Ignoring her, he strode across the office and pulled the door wide. Jennifer stood there, looking a little hesitant after hearing Eva’s greeting. Her glossy black hair was pulled back into a single braid, and she wore the khakis and cotton top that seemed to be her working uniform.

“Jennifer, please come in.” He gave Eva a pointed stare. “Thank you, Eva.”

She had no choice but to retreat, but she shot Jennifer a suspicious glance as she closed the door behind her.

“Don’t mind Eva. She’s universally rude.” He guided her to the leather visitor’s chair and perched on the desk. “It’s nice to see you.”

The conventional words were truer than he wanted to admit. He reminded himself of all the reasons why anything other than friendship wouldn’t work between them.

“I hope you don’t mind my stopping by. I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”

“Believe it or not, and I sometimes have trouble believing it myself, I’m the boss here. I get to take a break whenever I want. How are the kids enjoying the sports gear?”

A smile blossomed on her face. “They’re delighted. Actually, that’s why I came. They sent you something.” She reached into the oversized bag she carried and pulled out a sheet of newsprint. “This is for you.”

He unfolded it to find colorful crayoned images of kids shooting hoops and playing with the hockey set. Slightly crooked cursive letters proclaimed their thanks for his generosity.

The childlike simplicity of the picture touched him more than he’d liked to admit, even though he realized that Jennifer had probably engineered their thanks.

“It’s great. Thanks for bringing it.” She could have mailed it, of course, but she hadn’t.

“I had to come downtown to the print shop anyway.” She seemed to read his thoughts. “And there was something else that belongs to you.” She handed him a business-sized envelope.

“If this is a thank-you from Pastor Rob, you can tell everyone to stop thanking me.” He ripped the envelope open. “It makes me feel as if the world is surprised that I could be generous.”

“No, it’s not that. I mean—”

He flipped open the single page. His obviously shocked expression cut off her words.

It took a couple of seconds to comprehend what he was looking at. The sheet was a copy of one of the store’s print ads—the one with a photo of him that the advertising director had talked him into. An exact duplicate, except that someone had changed the text.

Instead of the usual invitation to visit the store’s semiannual sale, the ad had another message. Come in and meet Josie Skerritt’s secret lover.

The taunt seared his soul. He crumpled the page with an involuntary spasm of his fingers.

“Where did you get this?” His voice was so harsh it didn’t sound like his.

Jennifer drew back at the accusation in his tone, her eyes wide, her hands braced on the arms of the chair as if she wanted to flee. “Mason, what’s wrong? What is it?”

He took a breath, forcing himself back under control. “This letter. Where did it come from?”

“It came to the church office. Look at it. You’ll see.” She nodded toward the envelope, which had fluttered to lie facedown, a white rectangle against the dark blue carpet.

He bent, scooping it up, and flipped it over.

“You see.” Jennifer leaned toward him. “It came in this morning’s mail. It has your name on it, but the church address. We couldn’t imagine why anyone would send it that way, but I said I’d drop it off, since I was coming by anyway.”

He frowned at the envelope. It was addressed exactly as she’d said, in block letters printed in black ink. There was no return address. The postmark read Savannah, Georgia. Nothing to indicate who had sent it, and so many people had undoubtedly handled it that fingerprints would be useless.

Who could it be but the person who’d made that call to his cell phone, taunting him? Penny? That seemed the obvious choice.

But to what end? If she had sent it, what could she possibly hope to gain?

He looked at Jennifer, assessing her. She couldn’t have read the note, but she obviously knew he was upset. He could see nothing in her face but concern.

Still, why had the letter gone to the church? And was the fact that it ended up in Jennifer’s hands merely a coincidence?