The Blue Bottle Club (4 page)

"Hold it," he interrupted. "Are you telling me that you're following that red herring when you're due at the Parkway mudslide in fifteen minutes? Buck's already on his way with a camera crew, and if you're not there to interview the Parkway official, you'll be writing your own obituary—you can entitle it 'Death of a Promising Career.'"

Brendan glanced at her watch and let out a gasp. "Ron, I'm sorry. I forgot all about it. Call Buck and tell him to stall for me. I'm on my way now."

"You'd better be, or—"

Brendan snapped the phone shut before Ron could get off another threat. This was so unlike her, so unprofessional. She never forgot an assignment, never arrived late for a shoot. The mudslide that had closed the Blue Ridge Parkway was all the way up past Craggy Gardens, a good twenty minutes north. It would take her another ten minutes just to get down 240 and onto the Parkway.

Randolph Cameron and Pastor Archer would just have to wait. If she wanted to keep her job, that is.

She started the 4Runner, slammed it into gear, and sped out of the parking lot toward the 240 loop.

All the way through town and north along the Parkway, Brendan seethed—not so much at Ron, who was just doing his job, but at herself, for not doing hers. And at circumstances, which seemed to be conspiring against her to keep her from pursuing the one story she really wanted to investigate.

The day after the Cameron House demolition piece, she had sat down with Ron and told him of her discoveries—the blue bottle, for one, and the potential for a human-interest series that resided there. And her own passion, for another. Something she thought she had lost years ago in the accumulated blur of miles of videotape—stories brainstormed, researched, taped, and edited, then forgotten as soon as they were aired.

But
this
story—that haunting image of four elderly women looking back on their dreams—had gripped her imagination and would not let go. She had felt her pulse accelerate as she told Ron about it, sensed the adrenaline surge that rose with her excitement.

Ron, the consummate pragmatist, had heard her out with a mixture of amusement and intrigue. When she finished, he nodded and waved one hand—a gesture not quite condescending, but just this side of patronizing. "All right," he said with a long-suffering sigh, "go on and track down your old ladies, if any of them are still alive. But don't overspend your expense account. And promise me—promise—that you won't let your other work slide while you're doing the Jessica Fletcher bit."

Brendan had promised. Now here she was, not two days after that vow, late for a taping and careening wildly around the curves of the Blue Ridge Parkway in a frantic attempt to save herself from professional suicide. In TV news, nobody gave you much room for error. If you did your assignments well enough to get your tape on the air, you got the accolades, the promotions, the viewer shares, the opportunities. An Emmy nomination, maybe—or even a Pulitzer. But the show went on at six and eleven, whether you were ready or not. No matter how well you did yesterday if you fouled up today, your job was on the line.

At this moment, however, Brendan Delaney couldn't have cared less. Her foot was on the accelerator and her camera crew was waiting at the top of the mountain, but her mind was sixty-five years in the past, crouched with four teenage girls in the drafty attic of a big old house on Montford Avenue.

The house was gone now, but its story still lived—in the carefully-photocopied dreams of those four young girls, and in the hearts of the old women who waited to tell her whether those dreams had ever been fulfilled.

3

MANY MANSIONS

A
t three in the afternoon, Downtown Presbyterian was dim and quiet. Brendan stood at the end of the center aisle and looked down the long nave toward the altar, elevated on a three-foot dais. Behind the altar, an enormous stained-glass window depicted the Crucifixion, and with the afternoon sun slanting through the glass, the dark sky behind Jesus' head took on the same hue as the cobalt bottle that had brought her here.

Clearly, the building had originally belonged to the Catholics, not the Presbyterians. All along the sides of the nave, curved alcoves lined the stone walls—alcoves obviously intended for statues of saints. But when God had vanished, the saints had vacated the premises along with him. The alcoves sat empty now, like the hollowed-out eyes of a skull.

Brendan turned again and considered the crucifixion scene. The crown of thorns, the spikes through the hands and feet, the wound in the side, the deeply recessed, shadowed eyelids, closed against the pain. The corpus mocked her with its silent suffering. No matter what Gram had tried to teach her, she found no grace here, no hope, no purpose. What purpose could there be in such a brutal act of God?

All the old hostility came flooding back, rage she thought had long since been whipped into silence. She could feel her heart beating against her rib cage, hear her pulse pounding in her ears. And above the din, the whispered words, "May I help you?"

For all her anger and disappointment with God, Brendan never thought twice about the source of the question. She shook her head in fury. "It's too late for that. Long ago I needed your help, and where were you? You missed your chance."

"I beg your pardon?"

This time Brendan realized that the voice was coming from behind her, in the doorway to the narthex. All the blood rushed from her face and she turned to find herself facing a tall, rangy man with graying hair and watery hazel eyes.

"I'm sorry—I was—" Brendan stopped. "What did you say?"

"I asked if I might help you."

Brendan looked at him, then glanced over her shoulder at the empty cross. She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath.

"It's all right," he said. "People often come in here to pray. If I'm disturbing you, I'll just go back to my office."

"I wasn't—" What could she say? That she wasn't praying? But she had been talking to God, hadn't she? Or at least to the shadow of the God who had made his exit from her life years ago. "Are you the pastor here?"

The man stepped forward. "Yes. I'm Ralph Stinson." He extended a hand, narrowing his eyes at her. "And you're Brendan Delaney, the TV reporter."

"I am. Thank you for recognizing me." Brendan relaxed a little. She was moving back into familiar territory now—the interview, where her natural composure and people skills served her well. "Actually, I came to speak to you."

"To me?" His eyebrows arched upward. "Well, I am flattered. Do come into my office."

He led the way down the hall into a spacious, book-lined room dominated by a large antique desk. Behind his leather chair, in an alcove of the bookcase, a computer screen saver scrolled a Bible verse in neon green across a darkened background:
Ask, and you shall receive.

Brendan took the seat across from him and tried to position herself so that she couldn't see the computer screen.
Holy e-mail,
she mused.
Wonder
if God ever gets snarled in cyber-traffic on the information highway?

She collected her notes and looked at him. "Pastor Stinson—"

"Call me Ralph."

"All right then, Ralph. I'm doing a follow-up story on the demolition of Cameron House in Montford—"

"Yes, I saw that spot the other night. It was very good," he said. "I espe- daily liked the part where you compared the destruction of the house with the inevitability of death."

"Well, that wasn't exactly me," she hedged. "It was the neighbor. But that's not why I'm here. In doing follow-up research, I discovered that Randolph Cameron's funeral was held at this church, under the direction of a Pastor Charles Archer."

He frowned. "And this was when?"

"Early 1930. January."

"Well, of course, I wasn't the pastor then." He grinned and winked at her, as if Brendan should think this funny She smiled politely.
He must be a riot
in the pulpit.

"And to tell the truth, I haven't lived in this area all that long—only about three years. There was a Pastor Archer here in the thirties, I know that much, but I'm not much of an expert on this church's history"

For someone who "wasn't an expert," Pastor Ralph Stinson had plenty to say. He droned on about church growth and development, the new building program for the educational wing, and the rising costs of everything. He even asked if Brendan had a church home, gave her a fistful of literature, and invited her to worship with them.
Not likely,
Brendan thought,
especially if his sermons are this long-winded.
She had been here over an hour and gotten absolutely nothing she could use. This was a waste of time. She had no choice but to go back to the archives and try again. If she could ever get away from the loquacious Pastor Stinson, that is.

At last she interrupted as politely as she could. "I appreciate your valuable time, Ralph, but I should be going."

He rose from his chair and shook her hand. "Thanks for coming by. If I can ever be of further help, just let me know. Maybe you'd like to do a piece on the Asheville religious community? I could—"

"I'll keep that in mind." Brendan gathered her things and backed toward the door.

"Oh, by the way," Pastor Stinson said just as she was making good her escape. "I did think of one person who might be helpful to you."

Brendan turned.

"Our oldest member, Dorothy Foster. She's in her nineties and in a nursing home over in Chunn's Cove, but she's still sharp as a tack." He scribbled something on a Post-it note and extended it in Brendan's direction. "Here's the address. Dorothy loves visitors."

Brendan shuddered when she saw the name of the nursing home,
Many
Mansions Presbyterian Retirement Community.
The place was a complex of condominiums, assisted-living apartments, and common areas, with a nursing home wing attached to the back—and not a single street of gold. If this place was a reflection of the many mansions of heaven, Brendan believed she'd better look for other accommodations. It reminded her more of a rabbit warren, although she supposed that "in my Father's house are many cubicles" lacked something in charm and elegance.

In one of the central common areas, Dorothy Foster sat in a wheelchair at a window overlooking an autumn-hued mountain. Her white hair was so thin on top that, from the back, the pink scalp showed through. When the old woman turned, Brendan saw a face seamed like folded parchment, with just a touch of pink rouge—the old kind that came in a tin, no doubt—applied in precise little circles on her cheeks. Dorothy smiled and extended a frail, spotted hand.

"Hello, dear," she said in a whispery voice. "Do sit down."

Brendan lowered herself into a creaky vinyl chair while Dorothy, still holding her hand, patted her fingers and smiled. "My name is Brendan Delaney, Mrs. Foster, and I've come to talk to you."

"That's nice, dear. I do so love to have a little company of an afternoon." She smiled broadly, and her teeth slipped a little. "You're a friend of my pastor?"

"Just an acquaintance, actually," Brendan corrected. "May I call you Dorothy?"

"Of course, dear."

The old woman went on patting Brendan's hand, and for a moment Brendan was twelve again, standing at her parents' graveside in the rain, feeling Gram stroke her fingers in a vain effort at consolation. She shook off the memory and squeezed the fragile hand gently. "Pastor Stinson suggested I come to see you. I'm doing research for a story about the Cameron family, who used to attend Downtown Presbyterian. Your pastor said you might remember them."

"I remember everybody," Dorothy whispered. "It's all I have left, my memories. Everything else—everyone else—is gone." Tears filled her rheumy blue eyes and she shook her head. "It's not natural, outliving your own children, you know. I'll be ninety-four my next birthday. Don't know why the Lord just doesn't go on and take me."

"So you were a member of Downtown Presbyterian during the thirties?"

Dorothy nodded. "Grew up there. Got married there. Baptized my babies there." She paused and swallowed hard. "Buried my husband and those same babies there too—although they weren't babies by the time they died."