A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) (20 page)

“I wouldn’t do that, of course,” Rob said firmly.

“Good.”

Rob paused thoughtfully, as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him. “Unless you were completely okay with it. I mean, I’ve always really, really wanted to stand up in a wedding, but I would never do that to you,” Rob said.

“You’re not trying to guilt-trip me into agreeing to let you be in the wedding, are you?” Lindsay asked.

“Absolutely not,” Rob said. “Like I said, my friendship with you comes first.”

“Good.”

“I mean, Anna probably thought I’d say yes because she knows that I’ve always really,
really
wanted to do that. You know, hold the flowers, and get to be one of the people who walks down the aisle while they’re playing the music, and then stand up in front of everybody during the ceremony. She’s probably heard me say to John, like,
a million times
, how much I love weddings. But she underestimated my loyalty to you.”

This was the kind of behavior that Warren always cited when he accused Rob of manipulation. For Lindsay and Rob, however, it was just part of the well-worn playbook of their friendship. This was Play No. 437—Rob whines like a toddler trying to break down Lindsay’s resolve.

“So, will you think about it?” Rob asked.

“Sure. Let me ponder….no!” Lindsay said.

“But,” Rob began.

“No. And if you don’t drop it, I’m divorcing you,” Lindsay said. She could see Mrs. Lin walking towards them. “We’ll discuss this later.”

Mrs. Lin moved slowly and seemed slightly unsteady on her feet. When she reached them, she said something to Rob.

“She wants me to go and get the car,” Rob explained. “She’s feeling a little dizzy.”

Lindsay led Mrs. Lin over to a bench, and the two women sat down to wait while Rob retrieved the car. The moment they were alone, Mrs. Lin turned to her. Although she maintained the same benevolent demeanor as before, her gaze was harder, sharper.

“I know you no marry to Obadiah,” she said. “He think I don’t speak English, but what else I doing this last ten year while my husband so sick? I watch American TV program. I take English lesson at old people center. I learn. As surprise for Obadiah. I learn.”

“Oh,” Lindsay said. A lump formed in her throat, and her stomach felt like it was in free fall. She hadn’t lied so blatantly or so elaborately since her rebellious teenage years. Now she was a grown woman and a minister. To be caught out this way by this sweet old woman was a feeling beyond embarrassment. She was deeply ashamed of herself.

“I know he have boyfriend,” Mrs. Lin nodded. “I know.”

“Why haven’t you told him that you know?” Lindsay asked.

“He maybe still change his mind. When he say he marry you, I believed this. I think he change his mind. But then I see you. You make lizard face when he try to kiss you. Your face turn pink and happy when this crazy man in lighthouse talk to about how he kisses you. I see that man is your real boyfriend.”

Lindsay blushed deeply. She hadn’t realized that her face had turned “pink and happy” when she was talking to Mike. “I don’t think Rob’s going to change, Mrs. Lin. He and John love each other,” Lindsay said. “They are the most stable couple I know. They’re very happy.”

“Two men cannot be this way. I pray Obadiah to meet a nice lady. Taiwanese lady or maybe Chinese lady who can change his mind. Make him come back with God.”

“I’m so sorry we lied to you,” Lindsay said. “That was very wrong. But Rob hasn’t turned away from God. He only lied because he loves you.”

Mrs. Lin’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Good Chinese Christian lady to make him not going to Hell.”

“I know I don’t have any right to say this. I haven’t shown myself to be a good Christian or even a good person. But I hope you’ll believe me when I say that I’m sure God never turns people away. God’s love and hope are always there for us.
People
are the ones who shut people out.
We
are the ones who turn each other away.”

Mrs. Lin shook her head and clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Lady chaplain. Chaplain who go around with boys. How are these things permission?”

“Rob and I are good at our jobs, Mrs. Lin. As chaplains, we make sure that if anyone reaches out for comfort or connection, they know someone is there for them. Maybe because we know even more than most people what it feels like to be turned away. If people are hurt or scared, we let them know that they can’t fall too far to be away from God. We make sure they never feel like they’re all alone, without love or hope.”

Rob’s car approached, and Mrs. Lin stood up and straightened her jacket. “You don’t say to Obadiah about this. You try to be a good wife for him. Maybe he still change. You are not Chinese, but at least you are better than some man.”

Chapter 21

As Lindsay pulled up in front of Simmy’s house later that afternoon, a wave of emotion swept over her. When she had driven into this driveway only a few days before, she’d been dreading the trip to her aunt’s, but for what turned out to be entirely the wrong reasons. Then, she’d worried about how she’d keep herself in check if Aunt Harding started up with her usual pattern of complaints followed by long silences. She had dreaded the lack of creature comforts that the old house afforded. She’d feared that, without work to occupy her, away from the familiar distractions of her friends and Warren, she would have too much open space in her mind. It had never occurred to her that the most dreadful things of all would come from without as well as within. She had lost her great aunt, her boyfriend, and one of her best friends. She had gained a stolen Doberman and the ability to start her car with a screwdriver.

She knocked on the door, and Simmy opened the door for her and Kipper.

“What brings you by?” Simmy asked. “I thought we were gonna try to lay low until Swoopes gets nabbed.”

“I wanted to see if you were okay, and I have some things I want to talk to you about.”

Simmy sat down at a kitchen chair and gestured for Lindsay to join her.

“I hope you understand why we had to turn Sarabelle in,” Lindsay said.

“I do, honey. I hated to do it, but you were right. I called and they told me they’d be transferring her today. They denied her attorney’s request for bail.”

“But I still don’t get why you were so adamant that we help her. I feel like there’s something that you’re not telling me.”

Simmy wore a flowing, gypsy-style dress that was cinched around her slim waist with a bright silk scarf. On her feet were elaborately embroidered slippers with turned-up toes. Her delicate little body had an ageless, androgynous quality that had always reminded Lindsay of Peter Pan. Simmy lifted up a tea cozy from the kitchen table to reveal a small collection of travel-sized miniature liquor bottles and a small container of jelly beans. She twisted the tops off two tiny Wild Turkey bottles and pushed one towards Lindsay.

“You’ve got to see it from Sarabelle’s perspective,” Simmy said, downing a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels. “She’s spent her whole life hitching herself to whoever seemed to be the toughest alpha dog in the pack, anybody who could take care of her. She really hasn’t had a lot of freedom to think for herself and make her own choices. But in the end, she did the right thing.”

“I used to pride myself on my intuition,” Lindsay said. “I always felt like that’s what made me good at being a chaplain—being able to read people. But lately I’ve been wondering if I’m completely blind when it comes to the people closest to me.”

“What makes you say that, honey?” Simmy asked.

“I just feel like nobody is what they seem. Even you’ve been lying to me.” Lindsay took a slow, deliberate sip of bourbon. “Like why didn’t anyone ever tell me about Aunt Harding and the German soldier? Surely you must’ve known. You were her best friend.”

The color drained from Simmy’s face. Even her brightly-lipsticked mouth seemed to go white. She lifted the second bottle of bourbon with a shaking hand, but then set it down again. “Who told you about that?”

“Wynn Butterworth.”

Simmy clicked her tongue in disgust. “That old know-nothing troll is a worse gossip than any housewife I ever met. I bet he acted like he knew all about it, didn’t he? What did he tell you, exactly?”

“That Aunt Harding found a German soldier on the beach. She fell in love with him and risked herself to save him. She nursed him back to health, but then the solider was betrayed and sent to die in a POW camp.”

“What a crock of codswallop! Love?!” Simmy laughed bitterly.

“I looked into it, Simmy. I found the records, and I know the story is true,” Lindsay said firmly.

Simmy looked her for a long moment. “I didn’t say that it wasn’t true that she found the soldier and hid him. But Patty didn’t love him. She was the one who told the patrols where to find him. She led them right to him.”

“Why would she do that?”

Through clenched teeth, Simmy said, “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead.”

“Simmy, what happened?” Lindsay asked, taking hold of the older woman’s hand. “If you know something you need to tell me. It’s too big of a coincidence that the gun that was found with her body was the old German service revolver. That was her favorite gun. And she kept a piece of cloth from a German uniform. It’s got to be connected.”

              Simmy peered intently into Lindsay’s face. She leaned closer, her eyes locked on Lindsay’s as if she were gazing into a crystal ball. “I’d hoped to wait and let things settle down before we talked, but I guess it’s time you knew the truth.” She sighed deeply. “Like you said, Patty and I were best friends. We’d been inseparable since we were knee-high to a rattlesnake,” Simmy said. “Well, one day in 1942, during that spring and summer when all the ships were getting picked off by the U-boats, she knocked on my window. It was early in the morning and you could still see the stars in the sky. She told me to come quick, but she wouldn’t tell me what for. She led me out to this old shack that we used to use as a clubhouse. We didn’t really have a club, mind you, it was just a place where we could read magazines and smoke. Anyway, we ran the whole way, holding hands and giggling like kids on Christmas morning. She unlocked the padlock on the door and told me to close my eyes. When she told me to open them, I couldn’t believe what I saw—this young man, a teenager, not too much older than me and Patty, laid out asleep on the floor, all red and sweaty. Patty had dressed him in some of her dad’s old clothes. He was covered in blankets even though it was June, and you could see that he was practically roasting alive with fever.

“I really don’t know what I thought. To be honest, it crossed my mind that he was some drifter or criminal that Patty had somehow gotten mixed up with, like the old convict in
Great Expectations
. She was funny that way, always on the lookout for strays that nobody else wanted. But then I noticed his German uniform lying off in the corner. I’d seen enough newsreel and pictures in the paper to know it straight off. I screamed blue murder. It’s probably hard to understand now, but with the way we all felt about the Nazis back then, that young man might as well have been the devil himself laid out on the floor.

“When she saw my reaction, Patty panicked a little bit. I don’t think she’d realized what she’d done until that moment. She’d never had much success with men. She thought it was because she wasn’t pretty enough, but really it was because she was so standoffish and always tried to be better than the boys at everything. When she found this handsome soldier, she thought of him as a prize that she’d won. She started to cry and said that she’d get sent to jail if anybody found out, and begged me to help her. What else could I do? It was such a strange time that the normal rules of the world didn’t seem to apply anymore. I told her to run home and get a bucket of cold water and vinegar. I whipped the blankets off of him and, and when she got back, we sponged him down with the vinegar and water until his fever broke. For weeks after that, we took turns looking after him, and gradually, he got better.

“His name was Peter and he was 18 years old. He spoke pretty good English, and he was so interesting to talk to. He’d been all over—to Berlin, Paris, London, Rome—and he looked like a young Errol Flynn. Virginia Beach was the biggest city I’d ever seen, so Peter really knocked my socks off. I felt like everything I’d been told about the Germans was a lie. He wasn’t a monster. He didn’t even like Hitler—called his mustache ‘the nostril doormat’—and he didn’t care about politics. When the war started, he felt like he had to join up. He had three little brothers and he wanted to set a good example for them. At the beginning, he’d bought into all that stuff about patriotism and serving your country that the warmongering muckety-mucks always sell to their young men. But really, he was just a boy from a little town on the North Sea. He loved Charlie Chaplin and Judy Garland and Coca-Cola, just like me.

“I’d bring him movie star magazines to look at, and we played checkers. I hardly ate for weeks so I could smuggle my food to him. Since Patty and I took shifts keeping him company, she and I hardly saw each other. We’d just leave each other notes reporting on the condition of our ‘patient’. Never once did we stop to think what we were going to do with him.”

“So you helped her hide him?”

“Yes. We were so young, and so stupid. It was like a game between us.” Before she could utter another word, a forceful knocking came from the front door. Both women jumped in their chairs.

“Be quiet,” Simmy whispered. “Maybe they’ll go away.”

Being quiet was not an option, however, for no sooner had the words left Simmy’s mouth than Kipper tore towards the front of the house barking maniacally. Lindsay rushed to the door to get control of him with Simmy following along behind her.

“Kipper, hush,” Lindsay commanded. The dog let out a few more harsh “woofs,” but backed away from the door.

“Lindsay? Is that you?” a voice on the other side called.

Lindsay opened the door slowly. She kept a restraining hand on Kipper’s collar, in case he suddenly decided to stop obeying her. “What are you doing here?”

Rob stood on the front porch looking warily at Kipper as he adjusted his glasses nervously. “Is he going to eat me?” he asked.

“He’s okay now. I think you just scared him,” Lindsay said. “Simmy, this is my friend Rob,” she said. “Rob, Simmy Bennett.” The two shook hands.

“Can I talk to you, Lins?” Rob asked.

Lindsay looked back at Simmy. She could feel that the older woman had been revealing something of great consequence. “We’re kind of in the middle of something,” she said.

“It’s important,” Rob insisted. “I’ve been calling you. I sent a thousand texts.”

“Go ahead, honey,” Simmy said, shooing her out the door. “I’m sure this young man didn’t come all the way up here just to annoy Kipper.”

Lindsay ordered Kipper to stay inside and stepped onto the front porch with Rob. “What’s going on? How did you even find me?”

“Well, you’ve described this house before, and there aren’t a huge number of bright pink houses named Sailor Girl in Corolla. And your car is parked out front.”

Lindsay cast a glance at her battered mint-green Honda Civic sitting in front of the salmon-hued house. She had to admit that it was a pretty unmistakable set up. In fact, it probably could’ve been spotted from space.

“Is everything okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Rob said.

“Simmy was telling me about my great aunt when she was younger. Apparently they concealed a handsome German soldier during World War Two.”

“Wow. How did your aunt go from being so daring to being…” he searched his mind for the right word.

“Ebenezer Scrooge?” Lindsay filled in.

“Yeah. The way you’ve always described her, I can’t imagine it.”

“Me, either. So why did you come racing out here to find me?”

“You’ve got to come back to the hotel with me,” Rob said.

Lindsay eyed him suspiciously. “Why? Is it feeding time in Big Lindsey’s cage?”

“Anna broke up with Drew and called off the wedding,” Rob said. “She was packing to leave when I came to get you. We have to stop her from making a mistake.”

The revelation momentarily knocked the wind out of Lindsay. It was one thing for Anna to ruin their friendship, but it was another thing altogether for Anna to trash the future she’d seemed so excited about. Lindsay wrapped her cardigan more tightly around herself. “What she decides to do about her wedding is her business. She made that very clear. Why do you think I’d be able to help anyway? She doesn’t even want me there.”

“Maybe she doesn’t. But she
needs
you there.”
 

###

Lindsay and Rob arrived at the Sandpiper just as Anna was making her way down the lobby’s wide staircase. Over one arm was draped the suit carrier that contained her wedding dress; in the opposite hand she hefted her oversized suitcase. They caught up to her at the bottom of the stairs.

“Oh. It’s you,” Anna said to Lindsay.

“Yep,” Lindsay agreed.

They confronted each other like two Old West gunslingers, each watching the other for the slightest flinch.

“Let me just help you with this stuff,” Rob said. He took the dress carrier from Anna and flung it over his shoulder, then grabbed hold of the suitcase’s handle. Before either woman knew what was happening, he was disappearing out of sight in the direction of the hotel bar. “I’ll just leave you two alone to talk,” he called back over his shoulder.

“So,” Lindsay began, turning to face Anna. “You called off the wedding?”

Anna suddenly couldn’t meet her gaze. “Yeah. It turns out that I’m not marriage material after all. Better to put the brakes on it now before I end up chalking up another divorce.”

“What makes you think that you and Drew would get a divorce?” Lindsay asked.

“You’re perfect for each other.”

              “
He’s
perfect. I’m a jackass,” Anna replied, still staring at the ground.