Deadly Appearances by Gail Bowen

Author:Gail Bowen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2011-05-16T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

13

I had told Soren Eames I’d see him early in the afternoon. When I left Eve, it was 10:15 and the morning yawned emptily ahead of me – not enough time to drive to the city, but too much to waste hanging around the Charlie Appleby Prayer Centre.

I decided I’d drive over to Wolf River Bible College and see if I could find Lori and Mark Evanson. Eve had worried me. The meditation or whatever it was had helped temporarily, but no relaxation technique in the world was a match for Eve’s demons. Lori and Mark would, I knew, keep an eye on Eve if I asked them. They were limited kids, but they were decent and reliable. Most important, because of Mark’s connection with Carey Boychuk, they saw Eve regularly. She would not feel violated by their concern.

When I drove through the main gate of the college, I felt like I’d driven into an old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical. The students were back. They were everywhere and, by some people’s criteria, they were an appealing bunch: boys with razor-cut hair and button-down shirts and vivid corduroy pants, girls with shining hair and careful makeup and skirts and sweaters the colours of autumn. Perfect … and yet on this sultry October day, their perfection was jarring. They had the bright, unreal look of a casting director’s idea of students. There was, I remembered, a dress code at Wolf River, but this studied perfection went beyond that. I thought of my own students in their jeans or cutoffs or cords or dashikis, and of their hair, spiked or crewcut or frizzed or bleached or removed entirely, but all of them fumbling, however awkwardly, with an identity. Peter has a phrase that is both final and withering. “He looks as if his mother dressed him.” The kids at the Bible college looked as if their mothers dressed them. It was kind of sad.

Lori Evanson wasn’t hard to track down. I asked one of the perfect boys to direct me and, with a flash of flawless teeth, he did. Lori, he told me, had a new job. She was helping people “get orientated,” and she was working out of the CAP Centre. I looked blank. He smiled and said carefully, “The Charlie Appleby Prayer Centre.” Poor Charlie – all that endowment money and he ended up as the first two-thirds of an acronym.

She was in the central reception area, sitting at a table piled high with student handbooks. On her desk was a sign, “Please Disturb Me,” and there was a picture of a cartoon turtle with a grin on his face and a happy-face button on his shell.

When she saw me, her face lit up with pleasure. “Oh, Mrs. Kilbourn, you are just the person I was supposed to see, and now here you are. God always hears us.” She stopped for breath and looked at me confidingly. I’d forgotten how compelling that lilting singsong voice could be.

Lori Evanson was a compelling young woman. If the other college students looked like extras in a movie musical, Lori was the homecoming queen.

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