Jeff Abbott - Do Unto Others

It was going to be a nondenominational, fundamentalist church. She didn’t need to be ordained for that; she just needed money, time, and some real estate.” Shannon shook her head. “She’d told me all about it. She’d saved up a bunch of money, and she was going to go to Houston and find her some office space she could convert. No pun intended.” She laughed, any grief over her aunt forgotten. “She was supposed to come out to Houston next month and sign a lease. She was going to drag me into this whole mess. I work as a music promoter for several bands in Houston. She kept going on about how I could be the music director for her church. God, I wanted to avoid that, if possible.” Enough to kill her? I wondered. “If she’d saved all this money, how come she made it in one big deposit? Why not let it grow in the account and accrue some interest?” “I don’t know. She was goofy.”

“But she wasn’t stupid. If she was saving up to start a church, she’d want as much money as possible.” I shook my head. “I’m not calling you a liar, Shannon, but I don’t believe she had that money stuffed into a mattress all these years and just decided to put it in her account.”

Shannon’s eyes steeled. “Then it must have been donations from supporters. You know, like the TV evangelists get. It doesn’t matter anyhow; that money is mine now.” “Not if it came from illegal means,”

I said simply. “You already know she had a list of people on her when we found her. I’ve been talking with all those folks and they’re each as skittish as a waterbug during a drought. Maybe there’s a connection between her list, these books, and that money.” “Maybe she was researching her first sermons,” Sister volunteered and I shot her a black look. She shrugged. “She was religious,” Shannon argued.

“Religious people don’t break the law.” “She was in a library after hours, ready to torch it,” I retorted. “I bet you if we look in the Texas Penal Code we’ll find arson mentioned.” “So what do you want from me?” Shannon demanded. Her eyes flashed, and I guess the thought of losing that money was the spark. “I want you to save yourself a lot of grief later on,” I answered. “If the money is genuinely your aunt’s, then it’s yours and the matter’s settled. But if she got it through blackmail, we need to know now. That way you won’t have to worry about the police coming and asking you for it down the line.”

Shannon weighed her choices. The lovely skin tightened across her high cheekbones as she thought. She was a smart woman. “Fine,” she finally said. “I’ll cooperate. What do you want?” “I want us-meaning you, me, and Chief Moncrief-to search your aunt’s house for any evidence that she was blackmailing someone.” She shook her head, but not in disagreement. “The police already went through the house when she was killed. They didn’t find anything.” “Then we go through it again.

Junebug’s fellas probably wait for something to announce itself before they notice it. If we don’t find anything there, your aunt is probably innocent of extortion and I’ll apologize to her at her grave. But if she was, we might find who killed her.” “I want that,” Shannon said bluntly. “I want to know who killed her and I want them to pay for it.

I won’t pretend that she was my favorite person in the world, but she helped me when I needed it. It’s not right that she died that way.” “I want that, too,” I said, but for an entirely different reason. It wasn’t right that Beta was murdered, but in my humble opinion it was less right that I be arrested for it. She glanced at her watch. “I have an appointment with Reverend Hufnagel. He’s conducting the funeral service. How about around three this afternoon?” “I’ll call the chief,” I said, sure that he would not be pleased about me inviting myself along for the ride. She stood, eager to be gone. She said her goodbyes again to Mark and Sister. I walked Shannon to her car, noticing that two doors down Janice Schneider was pulling into her driveway. Time to pay my kinfolk a visit. I went back into the house. Mark was still moon-eyed over our visitor, but that wasn’t keeping him from toying around with expensive hardware. He pulled wires and cords from the TV and the VCR. “Wow, she’s real pretty, huh, Uncle Jordy?” he said, yanking on a cord that looked costly to replace. “Yes, she’s very attractive. And too old for you and too young for me.” I watched as he broke the bonds that hooked together TV and recorder. “What exactly are you doing, Mark?” He began lugging the VCR up the stairs. “You said we all had to make our adjustments with Mamaw’s illness. Well, my adjustment for today is watching a Schwarzenegger tape on the TV in your room, so I can blare the volume and not freak out Mamaw.” He vanished up the stairs and into my private sanctuary. Great, I thought. That room always had been a magnet for teenage male mischief. Ever go into someone’s house and feel more like you’ve stepped into a catalog than a place where people actually live? I felt that way everytime I went into Janice Schneider’s house. Note that I said house, not home. I swear to God there was no way this woman had three males actually living in this house. It was as pristine as new crystal and as tasteful as money could make it. There had been enough money, all right. Janice’s living room wasn’t much bigger than ours, but it was as white as a snowy field. The carpet, the upholstery, the throw pillows were all various shades of ivory. The furniture that wasn’t white seemed to be all glass and chrome, so you could see through it to the white or have the white reflected back at you. I thought the TV might only pick up static, just to fit in. If I’d been a speck of dirt in that room, I would have died of loneliness. Janice bravely served me coffee in that expanse of snowy home furnishings. I say bravely because if I were her, I wouldn’t allow anything that could make a stain in that room.

Janice seemed to have total confidence in my ability to not spill, however. She was still as pretty as she’d been in school, with brown hair and pert features. She looked strained, though, around her eyes and mouth. I think it was all that perkiness. She was always the happiest, smilingest person you ever saw. God, she was annoying.

Civilization could be falling around your head and Janice’d just giggle and say we could have a bake sale to help the survivors. Where Beta had been dour about folks’ relationships to their Maker, Janice was sure that God really did love everybody and that he’d give those extra bad sinners a pat on the head and forgive them right away, so they wouldn’t even get their toes warm before they strapped on their angel’s wings. She sided with me against Beta in the censorship fight, to my surprise. But I felt that Janice had stuck by me because her God liked Mark Twain and Maya Angelou and Jay McInerney and all those other folks Beta objected to. Her God liked everyone, even me. “I just can’t tell you how devastated we all are,” Janice sniffed as she dumped a chunk of sugar in her coffee. I didn’t think she could get any sweeter, but I refrained from comment. “I saw Hally the other day.

He said that Beta baby-sat for y’all sometimes.” Janice nodded, looking desolate. She caught herself, though, and perked right up.

“Yes, Miz Harcher was real sweet to our Josh. I know that might be hard for you to believe, Jordy, but she truly was fond of Josh. I think she sometimes wished she had children of her own.” “I must’ve missed her maternal streak.” “Oh, it was there,” Janice assured me.

“But, you know, living alone in that old house, with no real involvement in her life but church-” Janice faded off, shaking her head. “We all make our choices,” I answered. “Yes,” Janice agreed.