Painting With Fire: An Artistic Murder Mystery by K.B. Jensen

Author:K.B. Jensen [Jensen, K.B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crimson Cloud Media LLC.
Published: 2014-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20: Divine Love

One of the benefits of unemployment was Claudia had plenty of time to attempt jogging. She wondered how long it would take her to run a mile these days.

One of her tennis shoes squeaked in a slow steady rhythm as she loped through the neighborhood. She lost track of the blocks as she passed rows of houses and humming lawn mowers. It was 83 degrees and the wisps of hair frothed around her face. She stopped and wiped the sweat and hair back, leaned down to touch her toes and took deep slow breaths. Maybe this was a bad idea.

She started to walk, feeling the side stitch climb up her gut. Up ahead, she spotted the four giant Roman pillars of an old, abandoned church and wondered if it was the church Alice was working on. It looked like the picture on the brochure but in worse shape. She sat down on the crumbling steps.

Claudia had had enough of her talk of divine love and yet she couldn’t seem to escape it. The walls were covered with tendrils of half-dead ivy snaking across the stone and yet she could still make out the inscription. “Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need” – Mary Eddy Baker.

Who was she and what would she think of these ruins? Claudia wondered. What would she think of the crumbling stairs leading to chains on weathered wooden doors, the rusted railing, and the broken panes of glass? Vacant homes littered the block.

The house of God was all boarded up with a no trespassing sign hanging on its doors. Above the doorway, pigeon spikes adorned decorative baskets of stone fruit, like old Christmas lights left up long after the season was over.

Vacant lots formed a small urban prairie around the building with tall grass and wildflowers bowing with the wind. Many of the posts holding up the chain link fence had toppled, leaving slouching metal borders in between.

After a slow walk home and a shaky ascent up the stairs to their apartment, Claudia swung open the door.

Tom immediately sniffed the air. He was sitting on the couch with a remote in each hand.

“You stink,” he said playfully with a smirk and turned off the TV. “I can smell you all the way from here. What were you doing out there?”

“You should be proud of me. I got my lazy ass off the couch and ran all the way to the old church, the one Alice’s always talking about.”

“I’d like to see the inside of that building,” he said. “I think I dream about it. Do you think it’s really the way I dream it?”

She sighed. “Who would believe you if it were?” she said.

“I’ve already started painting it. I think I have anyway, you never know for sure. It could always be a different old church somewhere else,” he said. “We could go over there and take a look. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks.”

“You know I don’t have that kind of money,” she said.

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