“Okay.”
The rain came down and we listened to it. I made dinner, and things swung around almost back to normal.
As I was placing the last of the silverware in the dishwasher, Dad’s landline rang.
It would be Rachel. She’d been found and the boys were okay. She was calling to tell me, to hear my voice and so I could hear hers. I’d go to wherever she was, and I’d hug her, kiss her. Note be damned.
I was so convinced of this when I picked up and heard a voice on the other end, I nearly said her name.
It was Jill.
“Andy, is that you?”
Gears freewheeling. Engaged. “Uh . . . yeah, yeah. Sorry.”
“Hey, apologies to bother you at your dad’s, but I don’t have your cell number. Your dad’s is still listed.”
“Sure, no problem. What’s up?”
“Well, it’s funny. I got thinking after you left, what you said about Mary being concerned with finances and whatnot?”
My posture straightened, senses sharpening to points. “Sure, right.”
“There was something, actually. When I came back from maternity leave, there was this spreadsheet in the printer. I think Mary must’ve printed it out and then forgot it. I filed it away in case it was something she needed, and then it slipped my mind. Then she was gone, and I didn’t remember until you came by.”
“What was it?”
“It looked like she was tracking some of our collection plate donations. We have a master data sheet for that, but she’d made her own, kind of.”
“You still have it?”
“Yeah, like I said, I just set it aside and never got around to giving it back or asking her about it.”
“Could I see it?”
“Oh, Andy, I don’t know. That’s parish information. I’d have to check with Father Thomas first. I mean, what does it matter now?”
I turned and looked out the window. My gauzy reflection stared back. “I’m not sure. But I’m trying to find out.”
25
Dad fell asleep in his chair before the ten o’clock news. It was okay; I might as well have been on another planet for as much company as I was.
There’s a deep place in the center of everyone where suspicion lives. It’s a rabbit hole going down and down without an end. One passage leads to another, and after a time you realize you don’t remember how you got there or what the sun looks like. You want to turn around, but the hole won’t let you. It’s go forward or stay there stuck in the dark of your own thoughts.
I’d gone down the hole after getting off the phone with Jill. Just dug right in and dove deep, and the tunnels led me to this:
David had been skimming money from the church.
He was the chair of the board not only for Sandford’s parish but for Brighton’s as well, since they shared a lot of resources. He had access to the money. I knew this because I’d asked Jill how the collection plate and monthly donations were handled. After being collected, cash and checks were counted, usually by someone like Jill or Mary with one of the fathers or another member of the board present, and then the cash went into a safe until a deposit could be made at the bank. She told me that a lot of donations were going digital, but the parishes still hadn’t fully embraced the online options, and around 90 percent of their funds came through physically.
The chair of the board had access to the money.
So Ryan Vallance gets himself in over his head, and David starts bailing him out with the only resource he has available, because he can’t go to Mommy and Daddy for another loan. Rachel had told me more than once how upset they’d been about David taking Ryan on as a business partner. If he went crawling back to them for money, he’d never live it down, and them denying him was a definite possibility as well.
So David skims from the collection cash—maybe before it’s counted or prior to a bank deposit. A little here, a little there. At first maybe no one notices; months go by, then Mary starts to catch on. She sees cash donations gradually declining over a period of time and begins to suspect something. She maps it out, sees a pattern, and finally confronts David.
That’s what Mrs. Tross saw the day of her spying—Mary finally having it out with David. What had he told her? A sob story? Something kind-hearted Mary would accept for the time being? Maybe even that he would pay everything back with interest if he could have a little time?
I thought of her holding my hand at the police station. How forgiving she was. How trusting.
And it had gotten her killed.