Tresspasses Read online

  Opera House Ops

  Episode 10 – Trespasses

  A Morelville Cozies Serial Mystery

  Anne Hagan

  To Mrs. Rotunno for words of praise that sparked a lifelong passion for writing

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Jug Run Press, USA

  Copyright © 2016

  https://annehaganauthor.com/

  All rights reserved: No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without prior written consent of the author or the publisher except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages for review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are actual places used in an entirely fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1 – Wayward Son

  Sunday Evening, October 18th

  Crane Family Farm

  “Jesse,” Faye called out from the kitchen, “do you want another slice of rhubarb pie?”

  He patted his full belly as his daughters looked on and laughed. “Better not,” he answered.

  Beth rolled her eyes at him. “Papa, you’re the only one that likes that stuff. You best eat it now while it’s still fresh, like grandma always tells you.”

  “Hush child,” he told her. “It’ll get eaten. And, I ain’t the only one.” He looked down the table and waggled a finger toward Marco who was seated at the opposite end. “He about licked his plate down there, he liked it so much.”

  “Well then,” came the voice from the kitchen again, “Marco, would you like another piece?”

  “You people are going to be the death of me with these big Sunday dinners,” he said.

  “Take that as a yes, Faye,” his wife called out from the seat adjacent to him.

  “Half; just half,” Marco pleaded.

  Jesse grinned. “I’ll take the other half.”

  Everyone had a good laughed but Jesse and Marco when Faye came back to the table carrying the coffee pot in one hand and two nearly full sized pieces on small plates in her other hand.

  When the laughter died down, Cole asked to be excused as he looked first to his mother across the large dining table and then at both of his grandparents.

  Faye, who was busy topping off coffee cups, said, “You and Beth can both go – right into the kitchen and scrape the plates.”

  The boy’s face fell but he uttered “Yes ma’am,” and stood up, jostling his sister’s shoulder with his own as he did. “You heard her, let’s go.”

  From outside, the old farm dog started barking.

  “Hold up Cole,” Jesse told him. “Get the door first.”

  “Nobody knocked, Papa.” He looked around the table and waved a hand. “We’re all here.”

  “Bear’s barking. Someone’s coming up the drive,” Mel said.

  The teenager wasn’t swayed. “She probably cornered a possum or something.”

  “No,” Mel said, “that’s the ‘Someone’s here’ bark. I’ll bet you a dollar.”

  “Don’t take the bet, dummy,” his sister told him.

  “Be nice!” Faye, Chloe and Kris all called out in near unison.

  Cole stepped around his chair and went to the door to look out. He couldn’t see the top of the driveway from the viewpoint he had but he could see the dust churned up by a vehicle that was still lingering in the air on the lower part of it. He stepped out onto the old wrap around porch and walked far enough up toward the bend in it to see the car that stopped behind all of the others that were already parked.

  In the dimming light, he couldn’t make the driver out right away but as the man got out of the car and approached the house, the look of curiosity on his face turned to shock. “Pastor Scott? Is that you?”

  “Hi there Cole. Yes, it’s me,” the normally clean shaven man with a two week growth of beard, answered.

  ###

  “I apologize for the intrusion,” Seth said to the adults now assembled in the front room. He drew in a deep breath. “I suppose a lot of people are looking for me?”

  Several heads nodded in confirmation.

  “I figured as much. I debated what to do as I was driving back this way. As I got closer, I remembered that you all do big Sunday gatherings out here from time to time and I hoped this was one of those Sundays.” He looked up and accepted a cup of coffee from Faye as she entered the room with it and then waited while she took a seat beside Chloe before he went on.

  “Thank you,” Seth said to her. “I’m glad especially that you’re here because you’ve always provided good counsel and,” his gaze turned to Mel, “I’m also happy that you’re here because I’m sure we’ve got some things to work out.”

  Mel dipped her head in acknowledgement but didn’t speak.

  “Tell us what’s going on Reverend,” Faye prodded gently.

  He shook his head. “Seth, please. I’m hardly deserving of using the title ‘Reverend’ after the things I’ve done.”

  Looks darted around the room and the atmosphere got a little tenser but, still, no one spoke.

  He drew in another breath and then began. “Most people around here know that I was married previous to my marriage to Lauren. Amanda, my…ex-wife, that’s her name, and I were married…er, briefly, several years ago.”

  “This is hard.” He shuddered visibly but pressed on. “Actually, our marriage didn’t last very long at all because, as it turned out, we wanted different things. Amanda asked me for a divorce. I was young and in love and prayed that she’d eventually come around. I…we never actually divorced.”

  No one said anything.

  “By the lack of shock on anyone’s face, I can tell that, that part of the story beat me back here?”

  Faye took the lead. “Kara was in town this week Reverend…you’ll always be a Reverend to me. She told the whole church board her version of what you’re telling us.”

  Seth set his coffee cup down on the end table beside him, bent forward and clasped his hands between his knees. He closed his eyes and sat that way quietly for a few seconds. When he opened them, he said, “It’s just as well. I was going to ask you, Faye, how you thought I should approach the board but now it’s a moot point.”

  “Anyway,” he took a short breath and let it out in a sigh, “to make a long story short, Amanda has met someone and she wants to re-marry. She tracked me down four months or so ago seeking a divorce. When she found out during a legal search in an attempt to find me that I’d remarried without ever divorcing her, she threatened to expose me to Lauren and to the church.”

  “I was a coward.” He shook his head slowly. “I plead with her to just take care of things quietly and I told her I’d send along what money I could to pay for the legal paperwork and so forth.” He hung his head and mumbled, “I just wasn’t thinking right and I tried to push it completely out of my mind.”

  “And then Gregory Sellers turned up in town?” Mel asked.

  “Yeah,” Seth said looking up and nodding. “I almost succeeded in writing it all off as a nightmare that could maybe, somehow, be fixed quietly until I was coming out of your store one day after giving you my charge card information for Doris,” he pointed at Chloe and Marco, “and I saw him drive down the street toward the opera house.”

  “I was in shock. I’d completely lost touch with him five years or more ago when he and Kara divorced and he moved from New York to Florida and got busy with a charter boat business, but I just knew it was him and…and, I thought, Amanda had sent him here to look for me…to confront me.”

  “I watched as he kept dr
iving and then he stopped at the opera house. I figured he’d gone the wrong way looking for the church and he’d turn around and come back but he didn’t. He got out of the car down there and he stood there looking at that building. I wasn’t sure what to do but then my curiosity got the better of me so I got in my car and followed him down there.”

  “It was him. I knew it for sure, as soon as I pulled up. He looked shocked to see me at first but then pleased. He told me right off that they were there checking on an inheritance. I assumed then that he had a new wife by the ‘they’ but, I was deep in my own head and I let it go at the time that he was obviously alone. I went inside with him and we spent several minutes, maybe ten or more, catching up as he glanced around the place.”

  Seth blew out a heavy breath. “Once I opened up and was honest about why I thought Gregory was there, he repeated his reason for being there, that he wasn’t sent by his sister at all, but that she was about to marry a very good and decent man. He told me she’d brought him down to Florida just to meet him, he really liked him and that I had to make it right by her no matter what damage it did to me or to my reputation…his words.”

  “I’m ashamed to admit that I argued with him. I remember telling him, without even thinking about my wife and my family now, that she left me; that I wanted to do the right thing back then but that she wouldn’t cooperate. She just wanted to go off to live in the city and live the high life, partying and having a good time.”

  “I was in the wrong and Gregory pointed that out to me. I promised him I’d pray on it and take care of it. He shook my hand, even gave me a quick hug and I left. I went straight home because I knew Lauren and the kids were out. It would be quiet and I had some thinking to do.”

  Mel leaned slightly forward in the armchair she was sitting in and raised both hands about chest high. “Let’s back up a little bit. So, when you left, who else was in the building?”

  “No one; just Gregory.”

  “How many cars were outside?”

  “In front of the building? Just mine and his…er, his rental, I guess. He did tell me he flew up from Florida.”

  “Were there any vehicles parked anywhere else?”

  “Not that I saw. There’s not much parking there.”

  “What was Gregory doing when you left?” Mel’s tone had a hint of skepticism over Seth’s story but she tried to keep her face as passive as possible.

  “He had a flashlight. He was headed up the stairs to one side of the stage with it, I assume to check that out and the areas behind it.”

  His answer sounded a little too pat for Mel’s liking.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I was as shocked as anyone when he turned up dead. I went through grief and panic all at the same time and, I know I was wrong, but I was already in such a mess, when I heard he probably fell, I tried to stay aloof about the whole thing, feeling sure no one even saw me even go down there that afternoon. It was so quiet in town that day…” He trailed off then and got a faraway look in his eyes.

  Chapter 2 – Coming Together

  “I believe you Reverend,” Faye said unequivocally.

  “Thank you, Faye. I appreciate your support.”

  “You have mine too,” Chloe quickly offered. Marco nodded his head, echoing his wife’s sentiment.

  Mel still looked skeptical but she knew that, if anything Calvin Howe had said to her was true, the Pastor might well be telling the truth. She started on a different tack, instead. “You do realize that there are a whole host of legal ramifications to what you’ve done with regards to your concurrent marriages, don’t you?”

  Seth nodded. “Yes; and personal ones. The divorce from Amanda is finalized and I’ve consulted with lawyers about the legal and tax issues involved given my years of marriage to Lauren.” He sighed. “Now I just have to talk to Lauren and that’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. I’ve really made a mess of things.”

  While Mel walked the Pastor out to his car to talk with him a bit more privately, Faye and Chloe adjourned to the kitchen to start the washing up.

  “I really do believe him,” Faye told her friend as she worked on filling up the sink with sudsy water.

  Chloe nodded, “As do I. I certainly don’t envy him the task of sitting down for a heart to heart with his wife. I mean, I love Marco to death, but if it were him and I in that position…”

  “I’d of killed Jesse,” Faye said, “slowly and painfully.”

  Chloe grimaced and changed the subject. “You don’t suppose Mel has grounds to arrest him, do you?”

  “Well I wouldn’t think so but who knows. A man still died under suspicious circumstances and Seth knew him and had motive and…”

  Chloe waved her drying towel in the air. “I surrender! Stop, please.”

  “In my gut, I know he didn’t do anything, at least not to that Sellers fellow, but it just looks so bad for him. I wish there was a way we could help. You know my daughter though. She’d be hopping mad if we got any more involved in this than we have been. When she went down to check out the opera house the other night after Hannah came home and you left, she was gone a long time but when she came back, she said Kent wasn’t down there anymore by the time she got there. She wouldn’t tell me what else she got herself into but I bet I know.”

  “What?” Chloe asked.

  “I’m thinking she went to see Calvin Howe that owns that half acre or so lot between his house and the opera house.”

  “Why him?”

  “Oh, I might have said something to him a couple or three months back about keeping an eye out over there. He’s just nosy enough to have been doing it. Maybe he told her some things that have got her thinking there’s more to the whole mess than just the doings of Reverend Scott. Otherwise, don’t you think she would have arrested him or at least be running him into the station for questioning right now?”

  “You have a point there. Do you think this Howe guy would tell us anything?”

  “I don’t know that I’d want to go and stir that hornet’s nest,” Faye said. “He’s a nervous Nellie and he’s out in the open to boot. Anybody is liable to see either one of us going over there. We’re just going to have to puzzle this one out some other…” She trailed off, lost in thought.

  “I can almost see the wheels turning in your head,” Chloe said. “What did you think of?”

  “I’m thinking that there’s one common thread running through everything and I’ll bet with just a little bit of organization and a few phone calls, we can prove it. That’s what I’m thinking!”

  “Organization?”

  “Reverend Scott wants to have a board meeting as soon as possible and, preferably, before he has to face the regional head. We can have most of the key players in place, if we call a council meeting for tomorrow night.”

  “But, I’m not on the council,” Chloe said. “How can I help?”

  “Trust me, there’s plenty to do. Let’s get these dishes done and then we need corner Mel and make sure we can get her there too.”

  ###

  “I think we can prove everything,” Faye told her daughter, “and without doing anything more than making a single phone call…as long as she answers, that is.”

  “Call who? Maybe you should just let me handle this.”

  “It would take longer to explain it Melissa than we have. You’re going to have to trust me on this one. I promise, I’m not going to be in harm’s way at all. I won’t even leave the house until the meeting tomorrow night.”

  “What meeting?” Mel asked. “Not another community free for all, I hope?”

  “No, just the church council, is all.”

  “When?”

  “Say, tomorrow evening?”

  Mel looked skeptical but she gave in. “All right look, I’ll be there tomorrow night but we’re going to make it look like I’m there to keep an eye on Seth Scott or something along those lines. If there’s any inkling once he addresses the council with hi
s story, that whatever you’re thinking isn’t going to play out, don’t even go there, mom. I won’t be made to look a fool or have my department look foolish.”

  “Don’t you worry about a thing. Chloe and me have it all under control. Now, you shoe. Take Dana and go on home. I have to call Aiden and get him started setting up a board meeting.”

  “That’s the one call you have to make?”

  “Well, not exactly. There’s one other.”

  “And to whom might that be?”

  “You’ll see tomorrow night.”

  Mel stopped Dana’s car in their driveway. Dana started to get out, but Mel stayed put.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Dana asked.

  “Go ahead in and take Hannah’s food. It looks like she’s home. I’ve got to run over to a neighbor’s place and run a question by him that popped to mind. I should only be a few minutes.”

  Once Dana had retrieved the feast that had been sent home for Hannah who had been off working on a baking assignment with a classmate, Mel pulled out and headed over to Calvin Howe’s place.

  ‘I never asked him if the pastor left the opera house before either of the two women arrived,’ she thought.

  Chapter 3 – The Truth

  Monday Evening, October 19th

  Morelville Christian Church

  “I’ve made some terrible mistakes and I’m working on rectifying those. I realize that I’ve done wrong in the Lord’s eyes and that I’ve caused considerable pain and suffering for those near and dear to me. There’s a long road ahead of me with Lauren and with my children and serious legal ramifications of my own making, on top of all of that.”

  Seth paused and blew out a heavy breath then he moved from the position where he’d been standing behind the chair he usually sat in when they met to pace the floor a little. Clean-shaven again, he rubbed first one cheek and then switched to the other absently as he worked on putting his thoughts into words.