All things, p.20
All Things, page 20
part #1 of Reverend Alma Lee Mystery Series
He chuckled. “As are you for giving them credit. Now, why is the paper calling you the high priestess of Mission Street?”
I groaned and rested my forehead in my hands. “It's just a joke. It started when I worked to help a medical marijuana clinic keep its lease. But I promise I never touch the stuff. I’ll take a drug test, if you’d like.”
He wagged his finger. “No need for that. Marijuana is legal now. It does wonders for my mothers’ arthritis.”
“Um… That’s great. I’m glad to hear it.”
“Nonetheless, I’d rather not see your nickname on the front page of the Chronicle again. Not the image we’re going for as a church.” He scratched his chin.
“I’m not planning to make the front page again soon, Bishop.”
“Still… I’ll call Connie Hall and ask her to exercise a little more editorial restraint.”
Wow. Bishop Vasquez was well connected—the Editor and Chief of the Chronicle, Captain Tang. Was he buddies with the mayor and Dianne Feinstein too? Had he admired Jenny Wong as much as I did?
“Speaking of pastoral care, I have to admit, I’m reeling. A person I trusted, who I prayed with almost every day, who stood up for the poor, the oppressed—she killed my friend and planned to kill me.”
He inhaled deeply and nodded. "I wish I had an easy answer for you. It's one of the hardest things I've faced in ministry—how good people can abuse trust and hide terrible secrets. Our job is to keep proclaiming God's love and help bring healing. I trust you can do it. In fact, Alma, I couldn’t be more pleased with your work at St. Giles’.”
"Thank you, sir."
"And from what I hear, your parishioners love you. Call my secretary, and let’s set up a meeting with your committee so they can offer you a letter of agreement to be their rector.”
Mrs. Cohen flew in from New Jersey that afternoon. Naomi and David took her to dinner. They definitely needed family time, and I didn't mind not being invited.
Naomi came to my place straight from the restaurant. At the door, she kissed my cheek, a hint of sweet red wine on her breath.
She dropped onto my couch and rested her feet on the coffee table. “So, my mom loves Christina.”
“Wow.” I hadn't expected that.
“I know. I think she understood how unhappy David and Melissa were together better than I had. She saw how much Christina adores him, and every mother of a son wants her little boy to be some woman’s prince.”
It was a sweeping statement, but Mrs. Garza, for one, had felt the same way.
Then her words sank in. Christina has been invited to dinner, and I hadn’t. Well, obviously they were far more serious than me and Naomi. If we were anything, we were just getting started. Maybe Mrs. Cohen accepting one gentile into the family boded well for our prospects.
Naomi leaned forward to kiss me, unbuttoning my clerical shirt and sliding one hand inside my bra. All thoughts of her mother flew from my mind, and I let her lower me onto the couch.
Lynn scheduled Cindy's funeral for Wednesday. She wanted to keep it small. Every patron or customer of The Carlos Club did not need to be a part of her grief.
A group of close family and friends attended the service, along with a few of the old timers at St. Giles'. The Morning Prayer crowd who’d prayed alongside Jenny Wong for years were struggling to make sense of her actions. Their good friend and rising political star had been the one who brought death to their doorstep.
Like the bishop, I had no easy answers for them—ambition, anger, the powerful instinct to preserve her life at any cost. Those things had led Jenny to evil, and I pitied her for it.
A few parishioners lowered their voices and whispered, “How can I trust anyone?”
“Do not let Jenny’s actions steal your faith in others,” I insisted over and over again. “That is letting her sin continue to harm us.”
People like Lois and Tish seemed to take my words to heart although they grieved for the friend they’d known and trusted. If I was hired as rector of St. Giles’, we’d have a lot of work to do to heal from Jenny’s betrayals.
For a week, Naomi slept at my place, so her mom could have David’s spare bed. If Mrs. Cohen inquired where she was spending her nights, Naomi didn't mention the conversation. I avoided asking if they'd discussed me for fear of hearing nothing had changed, and these sweet, contented days were just a blip soon to be over.
Mrs. Cohen left, satisfied that her children were safe, settled, and that Christina would take care of David. Naomi went back to officially sleeping at her brother’s, but she stayed at my place every other night. On those evenings, I cooked, she cleaned, and we scoured apartment listings to help her find a place. She relied on my knowledge of the city to hone her search. Neither of us brought up the Cohen family rule, which had bent for Christina and David.
The night she signed a lease, she brought takeout to my house, setting a reusable tote filled with a tower of cardboard boxes on my coffee table.
“It's time we talked.”
Her tone told me all I needed to know. I flung myself back on the couch and barely resisted crossing my arms. “If that's the way it is, there's nothing to talk about.”
She frowned, lip trembling. “That's the way it is.”
“What about Christina?”
“Mom is making peace with her because she wants David to be happy. But the Cohen family rule is important to me, too. If I give up now, I’ll never know if that woman is out there, wanting the life I’ve always wanted.”
“You know I would never ask you to give up your traditions, your faith.”
“I know. But you have your own, and I respect them. I want to raise a big family like the one I grew up with, not one trying to practice two religions.”
Mutt that I am, I could rail against her ideal of homogeneity, but it wasn’t about sameness for her. It was about being thoroughly immersed in her culture so she could preserve it. I found it impossible not to respect that longing.
Plus, there was the whole wanting a big family hitch. The motherhood gene had skipped me, or maybe I just poured out all my maternal instincts on the people of St. Giles’ and our neighborhood.
Turns out, I wasn’t a big enough person to admit that I also failed to meet her requirements in this way, so I kept my mouth shut on the subject. She was perfect for me, but I was not right for her—an all-too-familiar feeling.
The lump swelled in my throat.
“I understand.” I scooted to the edge of the cushion and unpacked the food from her bag. “Thanks for dinner. I’ll get plates and forks.”
When I returned with them, she hadn’t taken a seat.
I bent and re-stacked the boxes in her bag.
She waved her arms in protest. “Keep the food.”
“I’ve lost my appetite.” It sounded a smidge passive aggressive, I know, but truly, I couldn’t imagine getting food past the emotion goiter in my throat. I would uncork a bottle of something and drink a liquid dinner.
She left, and the sudden, stark emptiness of house pressed in on me. I’d had breakups before, if you could even call this ending by the term. Only one had ever hurt so badly—the time Caesar left, walking away from our good thing because I couldn't be what he wanted.
I’d only known Naomi a few weeks, but this pain felt years in the making.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Three weeks later, I was walking back to the office from a task force meeting at the hospital when a truck barreled down the street and pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of St. Giles’, stopping mere feet from me. A stream of expletives queued up in my mouth before I recognize the man behind the steering wheel.
He hopped out, wearing jeans and a sweater. “Get in.”
My heart leapt into my throat. Did he want my help on a case again? Solving another murder would be a perfect distraction from Naomi’s absence, especially if I didn’t know the victim and the culprit personally.
“What happened?” The excitement lifted the pitch of my voice.
He blinked. “Nothing. I just need to talk to you.”
“Oh.” Something inside me resisted, pressing my sternum back and away from him. Was that my friend the Holy Spirit warning me off? “It's the middle of the workday. I have tons to do in the office.”
“Since when does that matter? You're never in your office.”
He had a point. I complied, texting Kayla that I was meeting with Detective Garza and wasn't sure when I’d return. Then I climbed into the passenger seat.
He rounded the block and headed west. “Where are we going?”
“Beach.”
Tingles cascaded over my scalp. The beach was our spot. Particularly an isolated little cove north of Fort Funston. You could only reach it at low tide, and only then if you scrambled down a cliff and up again before the tide came in.
I hadn’t been there since we split up, partly because it was our special place, partly because I’d only descend that slope if Cesar were at the bottom to catch me. Although, come to think of it, I'd trust Naomi, the Krav Maga master, too.
“Why the beach?” I asked.
“Like I said, I need to talk to you."
We'd always done our best talking there, but there was nothing more to say. We made the trip in silence. In the parking lot, we left our shoes in his truck. The sight of his bare feet seemed strange, intimate, like seeing him naked again. We trekked north, past the well-worn paths where dog-owners let their pets run off leash.
The trail to our cove seemed narrower than I remembered. The cliff had eroded since the last time we’d come, making the drop even more steep and treacherous.
If we climbed down, how the hell would we get back up? Even in July, the water was too damn cold, the waves too strong to swim.
He must have sensed my reservation.
“Come on.” His gaze held answers to all the arguments I might make. We didn’t need to speak them.
I crammed my toes in the footholds until, halfway, the trail turned into a ramp of loose soil. I slid down fast onto the wet, compact sand at the bottom.
He spread out a towel, and we sat, watching the surf roar ten feet beyond our toes. After several long minutes, I felt him shift toward me.
“I missed you.”
“It’s only been few weeks.”
“I missed you for a whole year before that. Every damn day. And I’m so goddamn sorry.”
He didn’t owe me an apology. It had been abrupt, felt harsh at the time, the way he’d slammed the door on our history together. But soon I’d seen it was necessary—going cold tofurkey was the only way for us to make a break. All our patterns and habits would have sucked us back together as they had so many times before.
“I missed you, too. But I understood, and you were right.”
“No, I wasn't right. Seeing you again, your help with the case, it showed me I was dead wrong.”
“Cesar, you know yourself and what you want. I'm not it. Seeing each other stirred stuff up again, but it will settle down. Let's be friends.”
“No. I made a mistake. We need to try again.”
I breathed in his words. They tingled through me, but they didn't settle in my stomach.
“Was I right about the girl?”
I blew out the breath. “I don't think she was using me to get to you. We were great together, but she wants a nice Jewish girl to settle down with. So yeah, I guess you were.”
He flung himself back on the sand, his laughter echoing off the cliff behind us.
I punched his upper arm. “What?”
He couldn't stop laughing long enough to answer.
My throat tensed. “Knock it off.”
“I’m sorry.” He was still laughing and clearly not at all sorry.
“What is so funny?”
“Alma, you have to see. You're always trying to be everything to everyone, but one thing you can't be is Jewish. It's an object lesson in accepting your limitations.”
I laid next to him on my side, pouting. “I don't like limitations.”
His laughing gentled, and his eyes softened. “I know, baby. I know.”
The words melted some place inside me, and I needed to protect the soft mushy spot fast.
“Cesar, it's the same between us. You want something from me that I can't be.”
He shook his head. “I did. But since Cindy’s murder, I realized no one can compare to you. I've revised my ideal. Now it’s you.”
“Oh.”
Worst possible time to have this conversation. I was still hurting from Naomi's rejection, and his words were such a sweet salve. With our history, it would be so easy to tilt my face toward him, to let him kiss me. He would know I wasn't making any promises, wouldn’t he?
He moved toward me, his broad shoulders so strong and comforting. I held up my palm and pressed it against his chest.
“Don’t say no.” He covered my hand. “Promise you’ll think about giving us another try.”
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
The next day, David Cohen left an invitation with Kayla when I was out of the office. Upon returning, I opened the envelope. Naomi’s Place, Grand Opening, Friday 8:00 p.m. He’d written, Would love to see you. We're so grateful, please come to the opening night.
Beneath his message was a single word in a different handwriting. Please! -N.
I didn't want to go.
The renovation had moved fast, but I’d peered in through the window several times and it looked a thousand times better than The Carlos Club.
Words showed through the paper, printed on the reverse side of the invitation. I flipped it over and discovered a cocktail menu. The first drink listed was called The Cindy. Zaya rum, Mexican Coke, Meyer lemon bitters, lime peel garnish. Served on the rocks.
I hadn't felt the lump in my throat for weeks, but now it returned, swelling with sadness and bittersweet love for my friend.
“Are you going to go?” Kayla appeared at my side, reading the invitation.
“Maybe.” I wanted to see Naomi, and she wanted to see me. But I’d spent the night lying awake, thinking about Cesar’s request that I give us another try. If I had to face her again, I might need him at my side to help me resist her pull.
The phone rang.
Kayla answered. “St. Giles’.”
She frowned. “Yes, she’s right here.” She passed me the phone. “It’s the bishop.”
Uh oh. What had I done now? “Hello, Bishop.”
“Alma, thank God.” He blew out a breath. “I need your help. There’s been a murder at the cathedral.”
THE END
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