8 A Wedding and a Killing Read online

  “I wish Edna was here,” Deborah said with a sigh. “She works so much more closely with the members on a daily basis … some more closely than makes her feel comfortable sometimes. A couple members, especially the lonely men, have become quite attached to her.”

  Recalling his interview with Eugene’s wife, David sat up in his seat. “Marilyn said something similar to that. She told us that one of Eugene’s jobs was to run interference for you and Edna when certain people became pests.”

  Deborah nodded her head with a weak smile. “Yes, Eugene was good about that. He’d come over and say that he needed to talk to us about some church business and then lead us away.”

  “Marilyn also mentioned something about certain older men occupying too much of Edna’s time to the point of becoming nuisances.”

  The pastor’s eyes glazed over. Taking in a deep breath, she covered her mouth with her hand.

  “What are you thinking, Deborah?” Archie moved to the edge of her seat.

  Gnarly inched in to lay his head on the pastor’s hand.

  “But he’s harmless,” Deborah said in a low voice.

  “Is it Sirrus Thorpe?” David asked. “Was he the elderly church member who Eugene had to protect Edna from because he had become a pest?”

  Abruptly, the glare in Sirrus’ eyes when he had stepped into Edna’s office the day before flashed in David’s mind. What was it he said? Something about my officers sniffing around their women?

  David’s heart began to race.

  “Eugene considered it his duty as chief trustee to protect Edna and me,” Deborah said slowly, while piecing it together in her mind. “Sirrus Thorpe had never been to church a day in his life until Helga dragged him in after he had a major heart attack last year. He was here one Sunday and dove right in. He became a member and started making donations and coming in everyday—”

  “To see Edna,” Bogie said.

  Archie said, “Sounds to me like it wasn’t spiritual enlightening he was seeking.”

  “If Sirrus is hanging around every day, then he knows how things work around here,” Mac said. “Like when Ruth comes in to clean and how she leaves the back door unlocked.”

  “Yesterday, he walked in when Brewster was helping Edna in her office,” David recalled. “He said something about my officers sniffing around the women working at the church. I thought he was angry because we were taking so long to solve the case.”

  “Oh, he’s become very attached to Edna,” Deborah said with a quick nod of her head.

  “Attached or obsessed?” Mac asked.

  “Sirrus would bend Edna’s ear all afternoon if we let him,” Deborah said. “So Eugene, if he was around, would call her into a meeting or ask her to do something for him, and make an excuse for why Sirrus had to go.”

  “Then Helga Thorpe started rumors that Eugene and Edna were having an affair,” David said. “Could Sirrus have believed them?”

  “He’s not very bright.” Deborah said with a sob.

  Mac rose to his feet. “On Wednesday, when the police were searching the Thorpe home, Sirrus came here to the church—”

  Deborah stood up. “To fix a leaky toilet in the ladies’ restroom.”

  Mac turned to David. “They didn’t find the gun in Helga’s car. He must have decided to hang onto it.”

  Bogie had already thrown open the front door and was running down the steps and along the path leading to the church building. With his long legs, he was far ahead of the group when he reached the back door of the church. Gnarly caught up to rush in ahead of him when he yanked open the door.

  “What’s going on?” Ruth came out of the ladies’ bathroom with a brush in her hand encased in a cleaning glove.

  “Which toilet was leaking?” Mac asked her.

  She pointed with the brush. “The one in the second stall. Sirrus was supposed to fix it.”

  Mac pushed his way through the door and lifted the lid from tank on the back.

  David squeezed into the stall with him to peer inside. “No gun,” he reported to the crowd who filled the restroom.

  “But there was something.” Mac ripped a piece of duct tape from where it had been stuck to the top and back of the tank. “He brought it here to hide until the coast was clear and then he came back for it.”

  “Do you mean Sirrus?” Ruth asked. “He was here about a half hour ago to get some measurements on the toilet for some parts.”

  “Thirty minutes ago?” Deborah asked.

  Ruth nodded her head.

  “Oh, dear Lord!” the pastor cried out. “Edna! Nate!”

  “What about Brewster?” Bogie grabbed Deborah by the elbow.

  “He’s going to Edna’s house today to fix some stuff,” Deborah said. “I saw Sirrus watching them at the celebration last night. He brought Edna a plate of food but she turned it down because Nate had already brought her some. I could tell that it broke his heart, so I took the food and led him away and tried to cheer him up, but it just didn’t work. He kept watching them. I thought for sure he’d get over it. Now, we’re talking about a gun—I really thought he was harmless!”

  At a dead run, Bogie was on the radio while running out of the bathroom.

  Mac grabbed the pastor by both arms. “Call Edna now! Tell her to make sure her whole family is inside and to lock all of her doors. Don’t let anyone in until the police get there.”

  David was already calling Nate Brewster on his cell phone. “There’s no answer. It went straight to voice mail.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Wow, you’re one serious handyman.” Edna picked up the nail gun that Brewster was using to tighten the railing on the old deck. “I use a brown, high-heeled pump to drive nails.”

  “Careful with that.” Brewster eased the gun down onto the table on the deck. “It can be dangerous.” But then, he thought while observing the railing, the nail gun was not much more perilous than a fall through the loose railing to the rocks below. It was like a rocky cliff going into the lake.

  Edna Parker’s little ranch-style home consisted of two bedrooms, a country kitchen, living room, and one bathroom. The front yard was almost non-existent with a patch of grass and a hedge in front of the porch, and the back was mostly deck and a minimal yard with an old privacy fence for the three little dogs: Rack, Shack, and Benny. Two sisters and a brother. Their upright ears were almost as big as their heads.

  Brother Benny had to be the runt of the litter. For what he lacked in size, he made up for with spunkiness. The little pipsqueak immediately bonded with Brewster, probably the only male he had ever met. While his sisters followed Allison and Kiersten in the kitchen where they helped their mother make a special lunch for their visitor, Benny hung around Brewster like a long lost friend.

  Brewster didn’t mind one bit. It was much nicer than the little condo he had in Oakland that provided a view of a courtyard that no one used.

  Even the noise of the two sisters quarreling was music to his ears. It made him think of the family that he expected him and his ex-wife to have. She had insisted that there was never a right time for children.

  Maybe there’s hope after all.

  “The girls are making cookies for you for dessert,” Edna confided. “They couldn’t agree on whether to use chocolate or peanut butter chips, so they did both.”

  “Peanut butter chocolate cookies.” Brewster shot two nails into the railing. “My favorite.” He tested the rail. It was tight.

  Edna cleared her throat. “More like candy,” she said. “They love the chips more than anything else. It will be extremely rich.”

  “I love rich.” He smiled over his shoulder at her.

  They could feel the electricity passing between them while they grinned at each other. The ringing of the phone in the house made Edna cringe. “Oh, I hope that’s not Deb. She prepares her sermon
s on Fridays when I’m off, and always, without fail, she can’t find something in the office that she needs.”

  “Mom,” Kiersten called from the kitchen, “It’s Pastor Deb.”

  “See.” Edna reached down to pat Benny on the head. “I see you’ve got a new best bud.”

  “Watch it,” Brewster said. “The way to a man’s heart may be through his stomach, but the way to a woman’s heart is through her dog. You may find you can’t get rid of me.” From where he knelt on the deck to work on the next rail, Brewster admired Edna’s shapely legs making their way into the kitchen.

  Abruptly, Benny exploded into a series of high-pitched barks, scurried across the deck, and leapt from the top step into the yard.

  Must have spotted a squirrel. Brewster stood up to set the nail gun down on the table when he saw that he had three missed calls from “Chief David.” Must not have heard it ring over the nail gun.

  “Rats!” He reached for the phone when he became aware of a movement behind him. He turned in time to see the board swung toward his head. He threw up his arm to block the blow and heard his arm break an instant before he felt the pain that went straight to his shoulder and his hand.

  “She’s mine!” Brewster heard echoing in his ears as he went down.

  Beyond Sirrus’ cursing, he could hear sirens in the distance. Oh, God, please protect Edna and her girls.

  “Sirrus answered the phone in his wife’s office,” David yelled over the sirens while following Bogie’s cruiser around the lake to Edna Parker’s home. “He found out that Eugene was at the church and assumed Edna was there, too. His jealousy made him go to the church to kill Eugene.”

  After securing Gnarly in his protective vest, Mac fastened his bullet-proof vest in place. He wasn’t taking a chance of wasting time to put on their vests when they reached Edna’s house. He doubted if there was time. Sirrus Thorpe had an hour jump on them in going after Edna, her family, and most likely Officer Nate Brewster, his romantic rival.

  The sound of the police sirens had Gnarly on edge. Next to Mac in the back seat, the German shepherd was panting and pacing.

  Mac said, “Sirrus must have seen Eugene as intruding on his imagined relationship with Edna and decided to get rid of the competition. Then he killed his own wife to clear the way for him to pursue her.”

  “Only now Brewster is in the way.” David spun the wheel to follow Bogie down a small, side street. Two other Spencer police cruisers fell in behind them. “Please let Brewster have his weapon.”

  “There are the girls!” Mac pointed to the yard where Edna Parker’s two girls, both carrying their little dogs, were running up to Bogie, who had screeched to a halt. His siren was still going when he jumped out of the front seat and took both of them into his arms. He lifted them, dogs and all, from the ground.

  “Where’s your mother?” Bogie was asking them when he put them down.

  Their weapons drawn, officers raced up to the porch.

  “She’s going after the bad man,” Kiersten said. “Mommy was on the phone with Pastor Deb and we heard Officer Brewster yell, and then Benny was barking and he yelped—”

  Before any of them could move, several shots rang out simultaneously from behind the house.

  Allison screamed, “Mommy!”

  With Brewster down, Sirrus tossed down the board and yanked the gun out from the waist of his pants. “I’ll teach you to go sniffing around another man’s woman.”

  “Edna! Run!” Brewster fought to raise up and move close enough to kick Sirrus in the knee before he had a chance to cock the gun and pull the trigger.

  Click!

  Sirrus had cocked the gun.

  Benny’s high-pitched bark drew closer. The little dog had come running back up onto the deck and was making a bee-line to the intruder.

  “Benny!” Brewster gasped out through his pain. “No!”

  Brewster rolled over onto his good side to duck behind the table for cover. Swallowing down the pain from his broken arm, he yanked down the table to use as a shield.

  Behind the clatter of the falling table, he heard Sirrus scream out in pain before cursing. His outburst was followed by a yelp. “Mutt!”

  Way to go, Benny!

  “Sirrus!” Brewster heard Edna scream at what had to be the top of her lungs.

  “Run, Edna!” With his one good arm, Brewster fought through the pain to rise up onto his knees to see Edna storming across the deck toward Sirrus, who was focused on the officer behind the impromptu barricade. “Get out of here!”

  She was too enraged to hear him. “You killed Eugene!”

  With the gun raised, Sirrus whirled around and aimed it at her. “You’re like all of them.” He pulled the trigger.

  Brewster screamed while he watched the woman who had only just entered his life a few days before run toward the gun aimed at her. As the shots rang out, she dove toward the deck floor. Behind her, the deck doors shattered when the bullets blasted through them. The glass poured down to the floor like a waterfall.

  Sirrus was still pulling the trigger when Edna came back up firing the nail gun at point-blank range. Marching toward him, she kept pulling the trigger while Sirrus stumbled back with each nail that struck its target. She didn’t stop shooting until he fell back against the railing, which gave way. Her last shot propelled him off the deck and down to the rocks below.

  With wide eyes, Brewster stared at her and the spot where the man determined to kill them had stood. Benny’s whine broke him out of his stare. At some point the tiny dog had sought refuge between the officer’s legs. He patted the trembling dog on the head. “You’re okay, Ben.”

  Nail gun still in her hand, Edna knelt next to him. “Nate, are you okay?”

  Weapons drawn, David, Mac, and Brewster’s fellow officers charged through the broken deck doors without slowing down to open the empty doorframes.

  His nose twitching, Gnarly zigzagged across the deck in search of a suspect to contain for his human teammates.

  “Is everybody all right?” David asked once he saw that both Edna and Brewster had apparently survived the shooting—though he was concerned about the bloody arm Brewster was clutching to his chest.

  Before anyone could respond, Benny shot out from where he had been cowering between Brewster’s legs and made contact with the hundred pound shepherd’s back leg.

  With a howl, Gnarly whirled around. He seemed to still be in search of whatever was after him when the tiny dog, who was less than a tenth Gnarly’s size, went after his front legs. The dog fight that ensued resembled a comical dance between the Chihuahua who was out for blood and the German shepherd trying to defend himself against his opponent’s tiny needle-like teeth nipping at his ankles.

  In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Mac and some of the other officers, especially Officer Fletcher, couldn’t stop laughing at the mismatch and Gnarly’s inability to squelch the attack. Benny moved like an annoying gnat that refused to be squashed.

  “Mac, stop laughing and help your partner.” David reinforced his order with a slight punch to Mac’s arm.

  “It’s good for Gnarly’s ego to be on the losing end of a fight for once,” Fletcher replied.

  “Benny!” Edna snapped in a low forceful tone. “Stop it!”

  At the sound of his master’s voice, Benny froze. He ceased both barking and growling. He hung motionless by his teeth from the scruff of Gnarly’s neck. The tiny dog’s eyes rotated as far as they could in the direction of his master.

  “Benny, I’m talking to you.” Edna’s command was not uttered in a loud volume. Rather, the firmness of her order came across in her low, serious tone that made both dogs afraid to move. “Release that police dog and come here.”

  Benny turned his gaze back at Gnarly’s face. He looked almost pleading as if to say it was the first time he had captured such a big dog by himse
lf. How could Edna make him throw him back?

  “Now.” Her tone was low and commanding.

  With a whimper, Benny released Gnarly, dropped to the deck that was a good three inches below where he was hanging, and scurried back to sit in the precise spot where his master had pointed.

  His tail between his legs, Gnarly sought refuge behind Mac. The glare in his eyes betrayed his demanded for a rematch. It was simply a matter of when and where. No one humiliated this alpha male German shepherd without payback.

  “Now that we’ve identified ourselves as good guys,” David said, “is everyone okay and where’s Sirrus Thorpe?”

  “We’ve got one injured.” Brewster clutched his bleeding arm to his chest. “That psychopath broke my arm!”

  Into his radio, Officer Fletcher reported that they needed one ambulance—possibly two.

  “Where’s Thorpe?” Mac demanded to know.

  “He went through the railing.” Brewster nodded in the direction of the broken deck rail. “He had to have landed on the rocks below. He should be dead.”

  Cautious not to fall themselves, Mac and David peered off the deck to the broken body below. Careful not to slip off the wet rocks into the lake, Bogie and two officers were examining the damage.

  “That had to hurt,” Fletcher said.

  From down below, Bogie caught David’s attention and communicated with a shake of his head that Sirrus Thorpe was indeed dead. Fletcher called in on his radio for the medical examiner.

  “Look at what he did to my doors!” Noticing that her deck doors were now void of glass, Edna stood up.

  “We’re lucky that’s all he shot,” Brewster said to her.

  Her bedroom eyes were wide with fury while she surveyed the damage. “Look at all this broken glass! Think of all the bugs that’ll get in the house—not to mention snakes! I hate snakes!”

  “That maniac tried to kill you! Three shots! I counted.” Brewster tried to sit up, but his injured arm wouldn’t let him.

  “And she didn’t get hit?” David was doubtful. “From how far away did he shoot?”