Lethal Lineage (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

I had never met the office manager at the Diocesan headquarters but she recognized my name.

“Yes, Miss Albright, I imagine you’re calling about scheduling St. Helena’s consecration ceremony.”

She hadn’t heard! “Actually, no…”

“Rest assured that it’s on the top of Bishop Rice’s list. Now let me see what we can work out.”

When I could get a word in edgewise, I told her the very bad news.

Silence. Then, “Where can you be reached?”

I gave her my number.

“I’ll call you right back.”

But the return call came immediately from the bishop, the Right Reverend James P. Rice. He didn’t bother with so much as a “Hello, how are you.”

“Miss Albright, is this your idea of a joke?”

Why would I be joking? I was so rattled I hardly knew what to say. “I can assure you, sir, that this death is no joke.”

“I’m not disputing the fact of a death,” he said, softening his tone.

“I’m simply trying to find her family, sir, and I knew the Diocesan office would have a record. Perhaps you haven’t heard all of the details? She died in our little church during my niece’s confirmation service.”

A long pause before Bishop Rice replied, then he spoke carefully. “The church we’re trying to schedule for consecration later this year? A young woman’s confirmation without my permission?”

I froze, overcome with a feeling that something was going on that made no sense.

Even though I had never met this bishop I had heard wonderful things about him. As a lapsed Episcopalian I knew there had been a lot of changes in the church, and my opinion about religion had changed dramatically since I was young and rebellious. I wanted to go back to the church. If I could have even a fraction of what Keith had through Catholicism, I would be happy.

The Bishop and I were both speechless.

“Let me make sure you understand why I asked if this was some kind of a joke,” he persisted. “Your niece was supposedly confirmed in an unconsecrated church by a bishop I’ve never heard of? Assisted by a female priest I’ve never met?”

Edna Mavery was right. It was possible for a heart to stop beating. Just from hearing words.

“I don’t know what to say,” I finally managed as mine restarted.

“Needless to say, I don’t either.”

“I’ll come there. Right away. Do you have time this afternoon?” I glanced at the clock. “Around four?”

“Yes.”

His “yes” sounded more like a command than assent.

***

I usually spent Monday afternoons at the courthouse putting together family stories for the county history book. I called Margaret Atkinson, the office manager, and asked her to see if William Webster could man the office. Both persons had just barely approved of me before I took the deputy sheriff job. It’s hard telling what they thought of my becoming an undersheriff.

“Sam, I’m heading to Salina,” I said breezing past his door. “Gotta hurry to make it there by four. The Bishop wants to talk to me about Mary Farnsworth. And a number of other things. I’ll call Keith on the way.” He was on the phone and wiggled his fingers at me to indicate he’d heard.

Salina was generally considered the historical division between Eastern and Western Kansas although I consider Hays to be the philosophical place where we ripped the sheet. Nevertheless, the split has been stark since the 1880s with jokes like “There’s no Sunday west of Junction City and no God west of Salina.”

There was some basis for truth to that. I’ve never studied a region so grounded in self-reliance. Although most of the settlers who rushed to Western Kansas when the Homestead Act opened up free lands were from the Midwest, it was the New Englanders who most often stayed. Proud stubborn S.O.Bs. Or Volga Germans like my husband’s ancestors who rejoiced in hardship and proving how tough they were.

I would like to have a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone say “God helps them that helps themselves” out here.

***

Bishop Rice was a tall thin man with a regal air and a reputation for having a wicked sense of humor. There wasn’t a trace of that present when he came to the reception room after the secretary announced my arrival.

“Bishop Rice,” I murmured, my mouth dry.

“Miss Albright, come in. I’m sorry we’re not meeting under different circumstances. I’ve read several of your publications with a great deal of interest.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised. Sometimes I think journal articles are the dullest reading material in the world.”

“Well, yours aren’t,” he said kindly.

I looked at the wide range of titles in his ceiling to floor bookcases. The usual predicable tomes by theologians. Plenty of philosophy and classical fiction and much to my surprise, a large number of contemporary mysteries. Some were hard-boiled police procedurals. I smiled at the shelf of old-time westerns. He was not a squeamish man and certainly not a snob.

His lips lifted in an amused smile as he followed my gaze. “Well, do you approve?”

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to be that obvious. I’m always interested in what people read.”

There was a quick flash in his unwavering green eyes. He’d caught me in a lie. I was sizing him up and he knew it. But through his reaction, he’d cleared up my first question. I could trust this man. He wouldn’t tolerate the slightest bit of dishonesty.

“I hardly know where to start,” I said.

“That makes two of us.” He gestured toward a chair opposite his desk, and sat in the large wine leather one behind it. He templed his fingers under his chin and prepared to listen. “Why don’t you begin by telling me all the steps that led up to this tragedy, then your involvement both as an Episcopalian and as a law enforcement officer.”

“All right.” It took a while and he interrupted me often and took notes on a legal pad. I included the account of Josie’s and my night in the jail, and ended with the information that Mary had not died of a heart attack.

When I finished, he swiveled his chair toward the window and looked at a squirrel leaping along the branches of a greening elm. Then he turned back toward me.

“Needless to say, I’ve simply never come across anything like this before. But you should understand that as far as the Diocese is concerned, there’s no Mary Farnsworth, your niece has not been confirmed, your church has not been consecrated, and furthermore, I’ve never heard of the Right Reverend Ignatius P. Talesbury.”

I swallowed and tried to take it all in.

“So let’s start with what we do know, if anything. Your little group of four counties had approval to build St. Helena. And you obviously understood that permission depended on every last bit of it being donated. That was one of the conditions.” He looked at me closely to see if I acknowledged the importance of not depending on the Diocese to fund anything in this economy.

“Yes. And it was on donated land with donated materials. The inside is nothing to brag about, but we’ll take care of that in no time with silent auctions. Bake sales, the usual.”

“Here’s the second condition. Before I can consecrate a church I must make sure the land on which it is erected has been secured for ownership. That was the reason for delay. I wasn’t fully satisfied about land ownership.”

“Well…those forty acres were a problem, but the alleged owners…”

“Alleged, Miss Albright?”

“It was the best we could do, sir.”

“Being satisfied with paperwork is part of my job description.”

“Sir, I’ll give you all the abstract information. Ownership of all the land around is clear and easily traceable. It’s only these forty acres that seem to have risen up from Middle Earth. It’s funny, but one of the land owners of an adjacent field said it has always been a family tradition not to farm those particular ten acres on the edge of his property. He didn’t know why.”

“And the other owners or alleged owners?”

I smiled. “When we pointed out the legal mess, that’s all it took. Two of the other land donors, used their acres for pasture and one of them doesn’t run cattle anymore. The Carlton County donor was a widow, Edna Mavery, who thought all her land had been sold when she moved to town. They were all glad to sign over their acres for our little church.”

He sighed. “I come from Dallas. It’s hard for me to get used to these little churches out in the middle of nowhere. They’re all over. And all denominations. When I first came here, I thought they were abandoned buildings. They are, but parishioners won’t let them die.”

“We made a terrible mistake having St. Helena straddle four counties. From every angle. It’s a legal nightmare because no one knows which county has jurisdiction.” I gave him more details about Josie and my encounter with Sheriff Deal and our wild night in the Copeland County jail.

“Can Sheriff Deal do that?” He was clearly amazed.

“Technically, yes. So he did.”

“You a coffee drinker?”

“Sir, I am. Black.”

He nodded, walked over to a little inset sink and mini-bar, and flipped up a louvered cover anchored to an upper cabinet. Filling cheery mugs sporting the Episcopal church symbol, he handed one to me before he sat back down.

“All right, let’s move to what you do have some answers to and work our way up to this fake Bishop. To begin with, why did your niece want to be confirmed in St. Helena? Isn’t she from Junction City?”

“She is. And of course, there’s an Episcopal Church there. It’s where she received all her preparation for confirmation. My uncle, Frank Clements, my mother’s brother, used to go on the wheat harvest in Western Kansas when he was in high school and he just fell in love with the High Plains.”

He held up his palm to stop me while he made a few notes. “Go on.”

“Uncle Frank heard about this church and called me, asking if Keith and I would host a family reunion if Tammy could be confirmed out here. We’re overdue for one. A lot of my folks have never met Keith, my husband. So naturally we said yes and we thought it would get our little church off to a great beginning if we included the whole congregation.”

“My next question has to do with Mary Farnsworth,” he said. “I don’t know who she is.”

“Apparently, I don’t know either. That’s one of the reasons I came in person. I have too many questions myself for you to handle with a phone call.”

“Our office doesn’t have one iota of information about this woman.”

“I thought I knew Mary well. She’s been in the area a long time.” I explained her unselfish service as a social worker. Her long days. “But it turns out we didn’t know a thing about her.”

He thrummed his pencil on his desk, then laced it back and forth between his fingers like he was handling a baton. “Are you sure she’s a priest?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. I have no proof, but yes, I’m sure. Different persons have mentioned her being at little house churches in Northwest Kansas. No big deal. Not unusual out here. Several families just want to receive communion. A coffee table substitutes for an altar.”

“There’s no reason I can think of why someone would want to fake being a priest,” he said flatly.

“None,” I agreed. “No money or prestige out here. Back East, maybe, but not here.”

“There’s no record of this woman in the Diocese records. She had to have been ordained somewhere else and if she came here nineteen years ago, it would have been in a firestorm of controversy. A lot of people left the church over the ordination of women.”

“Could she have used a different name?”

“Not if she were ordained in this Diocese. I’ve traced every woman processed here. They are all either alive and well or dead and buried.”

“So she entered the priesthood before she came here.”

“Yes. And I’m inclined to agree with you. I believe she was a bona fide priest. Especially if she was involved with house churches. Parishioners who are devout enough to organize one usually know ritual backwards and forwards. I’ll see what I can find out. Which brings us to…”

“Which brings us to the Grand Poo-Pah himself,” I said. “Why would anyone try to impersonate a Bishop?”

“Can’t come up with an answer for that one either. I know for a fact Mary Farnsworth wasn’t ordained in this Diocese. And I believe she either changed her name or was simply using an assumed one. But this bishop fellow…” His voice trailed off.

“I know this sounds like a cliché, but you’d really have to have been there.” I launched into all the gory details of the savage sermon, the people’s reaction and the awful finale of the man cutting a circle out of the carpet.

“He’s not an Episcopal priest,” Rice instantly put his hands on his desk, shoved to his feet and began pacing. “He’s Catholic. An old, old-line Catholic. Haven’t heard of anyone doing that for years. He’s ultra conservative. They did that back in the 1800s.”

I was relieved to know my own denomination didn’t cut out carpet for burning.

“Who invited this man into my Diocese to begin with? Visiting clergy have to be cleared by me.”

“A Mrs. Mabel Sidwell. She said it would be just fine and I didn’t know any better.”

“Maybe not, but something’s rotten in Denmark, all right, Miss Albright.”

“Worst of all, we’re not one bit closer to finding this poor woman’s family.” Actually, there was something worse. The mystery man’s comments that caused Mary to drop the chalice. But until I checked with Sam, I thought it prudent to withhold that detail.

My cell phone rang. I flipped up the carrier on my purse and looked at the display. Sam.

“Excuse me, but it’s Sheriff Sam Abbot. I have to take this.” Bishop Rice rose and gestured toward a door. “If you need privacy.”

“Hello Sam. One moment. It’s not necessary for you to leave, sir.”

Then blood thrummed in my ears as I listened. Bishop Rice watched and grew very still. I have the kind of complexion that visibly loses color. I could feel it happening now.

“My god, Sam. I’m telling you that’s impossible. No, nothing here. Nothing at all. Bishop Rice checked the files. Is there anything else I should do while I’m here in his office? Or should I head back home?”

Sam told me to take my time. I hung up the phone and squared my shoulders.

“Bishop Rice. Sir, it is my sad duty to inform you that Reverend Mary Farnsworth was murdered.”