A Corpse in the Chapel: The First Ladies Club Mysteries, #3

Prologue

A shiny new 1965 Thunderbird convertible sped north on Oregon’s Coast Highway, its driver hunched forward over the wheel, squirming uncomfortably, as though the luxurious tuck-and-roll upholstery was a bed of gravel, muttering to himself as he drove.

He reached his destination and, bringing the car to a squealing stop across two parking slots, he leapt from the vehicle and stumbled inside his building, not stopping to raise the car’s top.

Once in his room, the young man began rummaging in his bureau drawers, pushing clothes onto the floor, while uttering in a shaky voice, So much blood, so much blood.

He pulled a fifth of whiskey from beneath the tube socks and jockey shorts, fumbled with the cap, and clamped his lips onto the neck of the bottle like a starving infant suckling at its mother’s breast.

Coughing, he sank to his bed and began to moan and mutter between pulls on the bottle.

Oh, man! What am I gonna do? It wasn’t my fault! I did everything right, I know I did. Only there was so much blood. I couldn’t make it stop. How could there be so much blood? So much blood...

The empty bottle fell from his grasp, clattering to the floor unnoticed, as the young man sank gratefully into the cold comfort of drunken oblivion.

Chapter 1

Deep within the shadowy forest overlooking rocky Ramparts Beach, a thicket of brambles trembled and began to shake wildly, emitting a series of snorts and squawks.

Get off me! a disheveled woman growled as, twisting and turning, she struggled to disentangle herself from the clinging brambles. Squinting through her shaggy mane of dark blond hair, she crouched, glaring angrily at the thorny blackberry vines. Her impressive bosom strained the fabric of her peasant blouse as she breathed deeply from her exertions.

Surveying her situation, she grabbed a handful of her many-layered gypsy skirt and tugged hard. Judy Falls, forty-something wife of the local Presbyterian minister, pulled free from the thorns and collapsed backward onto a cushion of twigs and pine needles. Herbs and fungi spilled from the hand-woven basket she carried.

Drat! she exclaimed, sitting up, dusting herself off and plucking twigs from her hair.

Ken told me to dress for a hike and not as if I were going shopping. Maybe I should have listened to him...this time, she said with a rueful grimace.

She hated to admit it, but not listening to her husband was just one of the many little rebellions Judy allowed herself in order to cope with his controlling ways. Ken meant well. He was a dear, really, but being so much older, he naturally felt he always knew best. He called it this time, she thought with a chuckle, wiggling her fingers through the fabric of her torn skirt.

Judy righted her basket and scrambled around on hands and knees reclaiming her pickings before standing up and brushing away the dirt and leaves still clinging to her clothes. One puffy sleeve of her embroidered blouse was stained near the smocking detail and her skirt was torn, but a little strategic decorative stitching would soon cover the damage.

Taking in her surroundings, Judy was surprised to see she had climbed well beyond any familiar landmarks.

That morning, browsing through the latest issue of Vegan Life magazine, she’d come across an intriguing recipe calling for mushrooms and a variety of fresh herbs. Thinking she might find these growing wild in the nearby woods, Judy set out as soon as she’d cleared away her family’s breakfast dishes.

She’d collected everything, except the wild sorrel which was the main ingredient of the soup.

Her eyes lit up as she spied a large clump of this herb growing beside a pile of rotting logs beneath a nearby tangle of blackberries. Carefully pulling away the prickly stems to get to the sorrel leaves, she discovered the logs were remnants of a hand-hewn door frame.

Judy pushed through an opening behind the ancient beams and found herself in the vine embowered remnants of a small building. Sections of three walls remained more or less upright, framing the dimensions of a room about the size of her bedroom back at the Presbyterian manse. A warped and weathered wooden table leaned against the far wall under a diamond-shaped window opening.

Judy tiptoed across the decaying floor, avoiding broken boards and branches, to see if the table might possibly be salvageable. On closer inspection the wood was too pitted and rotten for reuse. She poked through the ruins in search of anything worthy of restoration or re-purposing.

Pinned under what might have been the top of a steeple, with its rustic cross still clinging tenuously to the point, a long wooden box or trunk caught her eye. An abandoned trunk was a treasure chest of possibilities for a recycler of Judy’s caliber.

Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the sagging remnants of the roof as Judy lifted splintered boards off the chest. Before trying to open it, she paused to imagine what treasures might be inside. Like a child on Christmas morning, she wanted to savor all the delicious possibilities.

Finally, nearly trembling with excitement, she lifted the lid from the chest and exposed what lay within.

***

On this rare sunny April morning, the fogbank a mere smudge on the western horizon, tourists and commuters sped along Oregon’s Coast Highway. They paid little attention to the faded blue ten-year-old Subaru parked on a gravel turnout near a narrow path meandering up the rocky hillside to the high meadows and shadowy forest above, where Judy crouched beside her treasure chest. Birds chirped and twittered in the treetops, and squirrels chattered, ignored by the nocturnal creatures in their cozy dens and burrows, all blissfully unaware of the drama about to unfold.

The occupants of a beige SUV passed their friend’s car and suspected she was clamoring about in the woods, again.

I wonder what Judy’s foraging after today? Olivette Vernon, Judy’s friend and a fellow member of the Bannoch First Ladies Club, remarked to Elizabeth Gilbert, who was driving.

Whatever it is will probably turn up on the refreshments tray the next time she hosts our meeting, Elizabeth replied. Why do her vegan dishes all have to taste like grass and dirt...organic dirt, of course.

Now, Elizabeth, that isn’t fair. Some of Judy’s recipes are really quite tasty, and not nearly as nasty as they look.

Elizabeth, co-pastor with her husband of the Bannoch Methodist Church, chuckled at Olivette’s unwittingly snide remark. She knew her friend hadn’t a snarky bone in her body and would be mortified to think she’d said anything unkind.

Of course, you are right, dear. I’m sure Judy has grown accustomed to her unusual ingredients and finds them as yummy as all get out. She means well, I know that, Elizabeth said.

I believe Eskaletha is hosting the next meeting in the AME social hall, so anything Judy gathers today will be used up before her turn comes around. She only uses the freshest ingredients in her unusual dishes, Olivette said.

Eskaletha will have some elegant refreshments for us, I’m sure, she always does, Elizabeth added.

Eskaletha does everything with such elegance and style. I wish I had her flare.

You and me both! Elizabeth agreed.

The two friends continued on their way to the Tillamook shopping mall, chatting as they went.

***

Judy’s husband, Ken, was sitting in the Pastor’s Study at the Presbyterian Church, working on his sermon for the following Sunday.

Ken adhered to the liturgical calendar of the Revised Common Lectionary for his Scripture texts. This sermon would be covering the Ascension of Christ following the Resurrection. The topic usually called for a retelling of the historical events. Following as it does on the heels of the glorious celebration of Easter, Ken often struggled to breathe life into this text with its more prosaic recounting of history. Although these facts were inspiring in themselves, he was having trouble finding a new, exciting way of conveying them to his congregation to underscore the reality of the resurrection.

After nearly forty years of sermons, Ken’s well of creativity was drying up. Slogging away at this week’s sermon, Ken worried that coming up with a compelling message for Pentecost, in only another month, would be even more daunting. Pentecost was all about the gift, and the gifts, of the Holy Spirit. With miracles, speaking in unknown languages and tongues of fire, it called for a message of excitement and power. He wasn’t certain he was still up to the task and was toying with the frightening idea of retirement.

Excuse me, Reverend Falls, your wife is calling. Shall I put her through? Jane Wilson, his secretary, stood in the doorway.

I’m in the middle of something here, Jane. Please take a message and I’ll call her back later.

***

Oh, bother! Judy said, her voice shaky. Now, what am I going to do?

She looked down at the old chest and its contents with growing nausea.

Only moments before, she had been so eager to see what wonders she might find in this old box. Now, she wished she’d never wandered so far into the woods.

When she’d lifted the lid, she saw a long bundle wrapped in a rotting rug. Gently peeling the covering back on one end revealed a moldy once-red sneaker. The shoe’s mate was nestled beside it and Judy thought she had discovered a discarded sack of old clothes. She tried to pick up one of the shoes, but it was attached to a bundle of sticks.

Folding back a little more of the tapestry revealed those sticks were the foot and leg bones of what had once been a human being.

Judy was crouching beside the box. Upon seeing the mummified figure inside, her legs gave out and she sat down with a thump.

Pulling herself to her knees and looking again to be sure she wasn’t mistaken, she took the phone from her skirt pocket and called her husband. Ken would know what to do. She didn’t want to leave a message with gossipy Mrs. Wilson, so she’d agreed to call back later.

She wanted to run away from this chapel of decay, but she couldn’t just go off and leave her discovery. The mummified remains in the box had once been a living, breathing person and shouldn’t be left to rot in the woods like so much trash.

Judy supposed the body had been brought to this tiny chapel for a funeral, but she couldn’t imagine what chain of events had resulted in its abandonment.  It seemed to have been here for many years, but sneakers were a fairly modern style of footwear. They obviously belonged to an era with laws against DIY funerals.

Standing in the ruined chapel with the phone in her hand, her mind whirled with conjecture until a clear thought popped out of the confusion. She needed to call the police. This wasn’t exactly an emergency, but the authorities needed to take charge of the body and give it a proper burial.

A member of her church, Lyle Williams, was a deputy working out of the Bannoch Sheriff’s substation. She had his number in her phone’s contacts list.

When Lyle answered Judy’s call she relayed her story and gave him her GPS coordinates from the map app on her phone. He advised her to remain on site until he arrived.

It looks like you are on private property, you know, Mrs. Falls, he said. Those woods are part of the old Haleby Estate. I’ll bet you stumbled onto the family chapel.

Oh, dear, I didn’t mean to break the law! I didn’t see any signs, Judy responded.

That’s okay. As long as you weren’t doing any hunting, you should be okay. That land’s a nature preserve, now. Just take it easy and I’ll be there right away. I think I can drive up the old road almost to where you are. Oh, and don’t touch anything.

I already did, I’m afraid. But I’ll keep my hands to myself until you get here, Judy said.

It seemed a little silly for Lyle to act as though this was a crime scene. Nevertheless, she obeyed his wishes and remained at the site, keeping her hands in her pockets, as promised.

***

The harsh clangor of an electronic bell echoed and the wide hallways of Bannoch High School were soon clogged with an outpouring of equally noisy students.

Judy’s daughters, identical twins, Paisley and Astilbe, walked toward their next class.

When they were younger, the two girls were practically indistinguishable, with carbon-copy red-gold curls and rosy cheeks, but now the pair of high school seniors had developed individual styles more in keeping with their very different personalities. Astilbe’s bohemian tastes and impulsive personality closely mirrored their mother, while Paisley reflected their father’s more sedate style.

How do you think you did on that English test, Patsy? Astilbe, whose curls still rioted around her usually-smiling face, asked, using her private nickname for her sister.

Good. It was pretty easy, after all, Paisley replied.

Paisley chose to tame her locks into loose waves every morning and tucked them behind her ears to reveal her features.

Easy for you, maybe, but I can never get my head around all the grammar rules and tenses, Astilbe said.

The girls stopped beside their shared locker to drop off books before heading to the gym for an assembly presentation.

What’s this one about, Tilly? Paisley asked her sister as they jostled through the mass of their classmates.

I think it’s another anti-bullying lecture. At least that’s what it sounded like on the loudspeaker at morning announcements, but it’s always so hard to understand what the speaker is saying, Astilbe replied.

Oh, joy, Paisley moaned. These things always turn into anti-Christian tirades. Remember that last one? We were warned about being bigoted, close-minded homophobes if we didn’t agree with every crazy QUILTBAG idea and PC concept. I wanted to get up and leave, but I knew I’d get in trouble.

Me too. Is that why you wouldn’t let me say anything during the question and answer time? Astilbe asked.

Yeah. You are just like Mom and I never know what you’ll say next. I didn’t want you to get detention again.

Thanks, I guess, but I was only going to ask why it’s always okay to bully Christians, but not anyone else. 

When the girls joined their friends in the bleachers, conversation turned to who had dates for the up-coming Junior/Senior prom. Hairstyles, fashions, and, of course, boys, were discussed until the assembly was called to attention.

Chapter 2

While waiting for Deputy Williams to make his way to the chapel, Judy called Ken, again.

This time he answered.

First Presbyterian Church, this is Reverend Falls.

Oh, good! Judy said. Where’s the dragon lady?

Judy, please...what if someone were to hear you call Jane that? Ken chastised, before adding with a grin, She had an appointment to get her hair done, so she’s taking an early lunch.

I don’t know how she keeps her sculptured coif in place between appointments, Judy said. She must sleep sitting up. All that fluffy white hair piled atop her head reminds me of swirly soft-serve ice cream.

Me too, Ken chuckled. But you didn’t call to discuss Jane’s hair. She told me you rang earlier. What’s up?

Oh, yeah. I’m stuck up in the woods, so I won’t be home to fix your lunch today.

Stuck? You mean your car has broken down again?

No, the car’s fine. I have to hang around until Lyle gets here to take care of the mummy before I can leave, she said.

Mummy? Did your mother go with you, today? When did she fly in? Why didn’t you tell me she was coming? I could have planned to go on sabbatical.

Not my mother, silly! I found a mummified body in an old chest. It was pretty decrepit, though.

You found an actual mummy in the woods? I thought you were picking mushrooms and herbs today, not going on an archaeological dig, Ken said.

I was. That’s how I found it. A lovely clump of sorrel was growing in the doorway of this old abandoned chapel. Lyle said it was probably the Haleby’s family chapel from the olden days.

"You hiked clear into the nature preserve? I’m surprised you climbed all