Preacher Finds a Corpse by Gerald Everett Jones

Author:Gerald Everett Jones [Jones, Gerald Everett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LaPuerta Books and Media

19

Saturday Breakfast

C’mon Inn

Evan wanted to press on with the priorities Edie had warned him off of. He hadn’t agreed to stop asking questions. But if he got the arrangements for the memorial service set, maybe she’d stop worrying what else he might be doing. He didn’t have to go running proudly to her every time he was gifted with another dead duck. Especially when he didn’t yet know how to interpret those clues.

He disliked the image of a dead animal as a portent. Those ducks were nothing more than fantasy images. But now real dead people were piling up. Angus Clapper. Evan had been actually looking forward to winning a chess game off the old coot. And then there was the lawyer’s theory about the third complication, whatever that was. But theories aren’t proof of anything.

If Evan had been a minister in the truest sense of the word, he wouldn’t have left Clapper without asking after his spiritual welfare, without talking about the endearing fellow’s preparedness for what would come next, sooner than both of them expected.

Evan knew, as an agent of the divine order, he was supposed to be inspiring the workers in the field with hope and zeal for their earthly tasks. Comforting the sick. Reassuring the dying. Instead, he was asking after dead people, who, of all the humans needing his care, undoubtedly needed it the least, if at all. (Praying them out of Purgatory was not in his belief system.)

We have so many close-knit families in this part of the world. Arthur Redwine is younger brother of Jake, Molly’s deceased husband. Molly and her sister Adelaide were Baileys. Adelaide’s daughter, Abigail, was Bob’s deceased mother. Angus Clapper was Molly’s suitor as well as her advisor. Was he also somehow related to the Baileys — Ezra and Henrietta of St. Louis? What kin are they to Abigail’s side? Are they husband and wife or brother and sister? Henrietta was listed as Angus’s next of kin. Maybe she was born Henrietta Clapper?

The first step after breakfast would be to sit down with Reverend Thurston, pastor of First Baptist and Evan’s spiritual mentor since he was a boy.

Breakfast was two heaping stacks of buckwheat pancakes at the C’mon. Drowning in butter and pure maple syrup. Sugar and alcohol were Evan’s vices, at least the two he recognized. He spooned just one teaspoonful of sugar into his coffee and told himself the scales were balanced, at least for today.

Evan asked Cora if she knew Angus Clapper. “I knew of him,” she said. “Bob Taggart complained about him.”

“Bob discussed Clapper with you?”

“Bob would sit here and go on and on. I’d think he was talking to me, you know, letting off steam. But he didn’t do any explaining, like you’d do if you wanted a friend to understand. It was more like he was talking to himself — but he knew I was listening if he needed something.”

“What did he complain about?”

“Mr. Clapper was supposed to get to the bottom of something and he didn’t.

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