“ Alvin, tell me what you know!”

“No. Let me pass.”

“No!”

“I have friends in here!”

Loving gazed at the man’s stony face. This was a loser situation, of course. He had no way to make the man talk, especially not in a public place. He could only come out of a confrontation looking stupid. Like it or not, he would have to back down.

He reluctantly lowered his arm.

“Thank you,” Alvin said. He began to walk away.

“I still can’t believe it,” Loving muttered, to himself as much as anyone. “I can’t believe a church could have some secret so big no one will talk about it. Even after two people have been murdered.”

Alvin paused. He stared down at the floor. And just before he plunged into the smoke and far away from Loving, he whispered: “You wouldn’t believe what’s going on in this church. You wouldn’t believe it.”

Christina liked to think of herself as a paragon of feminine grace, but as she approached the front porch of Apartment 10B at 2952 South Peoria, she had a near-collision of a distinctly ungraceful nature. Just as she neared the front door, a tall woman wearing sunglasses and a hoodlike scarf came barreling out at about three times Christina’s speed. A last-minute sidestep avoided a collision, but the woman was thrown off balance. She teetered sideways onto the steps, turned her ankle, and tumbled.

Christina knelt beside the woman, who was sprawled across the concrete walkway. To her credit, the woman had not cried out in pain, but the expression on her face suggested that her landing hadn’t been all pillows and marshmallows, either. The fall had knocked off her sunglasses, and her face was familiar, but Christina couldn’t quite place her. She was someone Christina had seen at St. Benedict’s, though-someone she’d seen the day Kate McGuire was killed.

“Are you all right?”

The woman ran a quick inspection of her immediately accessible body parts. “Nothing broken, anyway.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so clumsy sometimes.”

The woman shook her head. “Not your fault. I was moving too fast.”

Which was true, Christina was forced to admit. And which also raised a question: Why was the woman leaving the apartment of George Finley-the vestry member who supposedly lived alone-in such a hurry, her face hidden behind shades and scarf? At eight o’clock in the morning.

The woman struggled to push herself up.

“Let me help you,” Christina said.

“No, no. I can manage,” she replied, but Christina helped her just the same. “I need to be moving along.”

At eight A.M.? On a Saturday? “Are you sure you shouldn’t come inside and sit for a moment? Just until you’ve collected yourself?”

“No, really, I must be-”

“Susan?”

George Finley was standing in the open doorway. “Are you all right, Susan?”

Susan. That was it. Christina remembered now. This was Susan Marino, the new senior warden, now that Kate McGuire was dead.

“I’m fine, George.”

“You don’t look fine.” He took her arm and steered her back toward the door.

“I’m okay. Really,” she insisted, but George kept a firm hand on her arm. He turned and, for the first time, his eyes drank in the fact that there was a third person on the sidewalk.

“I’m Christina McCall,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m the legal-the lawyer who called yesterday.” It still required a conscious effort to keep from calling herself a legal assistant. Of course, she’d been a legal assistant for almost a decade and a lawyer for less than a year. “You said I could talk to you.”

“Right,” George said slowly. “I guess I wasn’t expecting you quite so early.”

No doubt, but Christina had learned it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to catch people when they weren’t expecting you, as this morning was proving, big time. “Sorry. I have a lot of people to talk to, and only a little time till the trial begins.”

George frowned, but accepted her story. “Very well. Come inside.” He maintained his grip on Susan’s arm and led both women into his apartment.

George’s place was nice enough, for what it was-basically a modest-size midtown two-roomer. The furniture was adequate, if not extraordinary. Christina suspected he had probably taken the apartment prefurnished. The room was tidy-no underwear on the floor or thick layers of dust. Surprising, really, for a man his age who lived alone. If he did in fact live alone.

“How can I help you?” George asked Christina as he led Susan to the couch.

“As I told you on the phone,” Christina said, seating herself in a nearby chair, “I’m working on Father Beale’s defense. My associates and I are talking to all the prominent members of the church, trying to learn anything we can about what happened.”

“I see,” George said quietly.

“What can you tell me about the murdered women?”

George almost shrugged. “I think Father Beale killed them.”

“But why?”

“Kate McGuire was his fiercest opponent in the church,” Susan explained. “And she was the leader of the vestry. What’s more, she was a strong, very effective, capable businesswoman. He knew she would eventually boot him out of the church.”

“She hadn’t had much luck so far.”

“But she would. She hadn’t been senior warden long, remember. She was a forceful woman who knew how to get what she wanted. It was just a matter of time.”

“So you’re saying he killed her-just to keep his job?”

“I’m not saying it was planned or anything,” George explained. “The man has a temper like the wrath of God. He was seen fighting with her at the wedding, you know. I think his temper got out of hand. He lost control and grabbed the paperweight and killed her.”

“What kind of person was Kate?”

Susan answered first. “Serious. Hardworking. Efficient. She was an accountant for Helmerich and Payne. Had been for years. She was doing well.”

“What about her social life?”

“I think she spent most of her time at work, which probably cost her her marriage.”

“Was she engaged in church politics?”

“Obviously. She was senior warden.”

“What about church social activities?”

George and Susan exchanged a look. It was brief, but not so brief that Christina couldn’t catch it. “She did… some of that,” George answered.

“Bake sales, Lenten dinners, prayer meetings, that sort of thing?”

“Yes. That sort of thing.”

Christina paused. Something was going on here-something they weren’t telling her. Ben often rattled on about what keen instincts Christina had, but instinct could only take you so far. Right now her instincts were telling her something was up, something hidden that she needed to uncover. But how to do it?

She tried a shot in the dark. “Wasn’t Kate on some committees? Other than the vestry?”

“I think so,” George muttered. He looked to Susan for help. “Didn’t she head up the Stewardship committee?”

“No,” Susan said. She had been staring at the door. She didn’t like being here, Christina was certain of that. But why? Did she really have somewhere else she needed to be? Or was there something more? “Ernestine headed Stewardship, then and now. But Kate was on the committee. She and Ernestine worked together. On many things.”

Christina frowned. This interview was nowheresville. She wasn’t going to get anything out of these two-at least not until she had enough information to force them to tell the truth. “Anything else you can tell me about Kate? Or Helen? Or Father Beale?”

“The man’s a menace,” George said emphatically. “He’s devastated our little church. Despite what Beale says, this is not a dispute over politics. It was always more than that. Beale has been…” Again he looked at Susan. “… a-a moral disaster. He’s hurt this church in-in more ways than you can imagine. We’ve lost half our members in the past year-did you know that? People are sick of the controversy, sick of him. Afraid that if they hang around, they’ll be his next victim. Is it any wonder our church is a shadow of its former self?”