Duck the Halls by Donna Andrews

Author:Donna Andrews [Andrews, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781250028785
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

“A body?” I flinched at the thought. “Who?”

He looked for a moment as if he were about to tell me to mind my own business, then his face fell.

“It’ll get out soon enough. That old gentleman who used to run the First Farmers Bank of Caerphilly before it got bought up by that out-of-state bank.”

“Barliman Vess?”

“That’s him.” Over Vern’s shoulder I could see the chief had spotted us talking and was heading our way. I braced myself to be kicked out.

“I gather Mr. Vess works here or something?” Vern asked.

“He’s a vestryman.”

I could tell from Vern’s face that he didn’t know the word.

“The vestry is very similar to what you Presbyterians would call the session,” I said. “Group of people elected from the congregation to help govern the church.”

“So he’s what we’d call an elder?” Vern asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Hello, Chief,” I added.

“Any idea what Mr. Vess was doing in the furnace room at three in the morning?” Chief Burke asked.

“None whatsoever,” I said. “We had a night watch staying here in the church—those people who were warming up in my car. They were keeping a lookout in case the prankster came back. But they were all in the social hall, as they told you, playing Parcheesi between patrols. You can ask them if Mr. Vess was with them—though I think they’d have mentioned it if one of their number never made it out of the church.”

The chief nodded.

“The only thing I can think of—” I began. And then I stopped myself, because what I had been about to say suddenly seemed foolish.

“Go on,” the chief said after a moment.

“Mr. Vess was kind of a gadfly,” I explained. “Particularly on church financial issues.”

“Useful to have a retired banker for that,” the chief said.

“Except he drove everyone crazy,” I said. “He was always going on about overspending, and trying to catch people being wasteful—or worse, dishonest. Mother said last year he was putting marked bills in the collection plate to see if the people adding up the offering were honest.”

“What could he have been trying to find out in the basement?”

“No idea,” I said. “Robyn—Reverend Smith—might know. Or my mother. She’s on the vestry with Mr. Vess.”

The chief turned to Vern.

“It would help if we knew whether Mr. Vess was killed in the furnace room or whether his body was moved there later,” he said.

“I’ll ask Dr. Langslow.” Vern headed down the stairs.

“So you think he hid in the church after the concert and then came out to do—whatever he came to do,” the chief said.

“No, he couldn’t possibly have been hiding in the church after the concert,” I said. “I locked up for Robyn while she was seeing people out, and I’d have found him.”

“He could have been hiding in a closet,” the chief said. “Or the men’s room.”

“The bathrooms are one-person and unisex,” I said. “And I checked them all. And all the closets. I remember one time Mr. Vess hid in the broom closet for hours so he could find out who was constantly leaving the lights on after choir practice.

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