Everybody Called Her a Saint Read online

  Everybody’s Suspect in Georgia: Book Three

  Everybody Called Her a Saint

  By

  Cecil Murphey

  Other Books by Cecil Murphey

  The Everybody’s Suspect in Georgia Series:

  Everybody Loved Roger Harden

  Everybody Wanted Room 623

  Everybody Called Her a Saint

  The Inspired Living Devotional Series:

  Devotions for Couples

  Devotions for Dieters

  Devotions for Runners

  Revitalize Your Prayer Life: Inspired Living Series Companion

  Table of Contents

  EVERYBODY CALLED HER A SAINT

  Other Books by Cecil Murphey

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from EVERYBODY LOVED ROGER HARDEN

  The Inspired Living Devotional Series

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Dedication

  For the real Twila Belk, whom I would kill only in fiction.

  One

  If it hadn’t been for Twila Belk, I wouldn’t have taken the Antarctic cruise, and I wouldn’t have seen Burton again. If I hadn’t gone on the cruise, I wouldn’t have been there when someone murdered Twila.

  Twila was a special friend—unquestionably my closest friend. Even now, tears fill my eyes whenever I think about her death. “It can’t be,” I tell myself. “It just can’t be.” If she had died of natural causes, I would have mourned, but grief and shock mingled together still overpower me at times.

  “Why would anyone murder Twila Belk?” I asked shortly after we learned of her death. So did the others on the cruise.

  In the year or so I had known Twila, not once had I ever heard anyone say a negative word about her. If anything, almost everybody called her a saint. And she was exactly that. Even now that it’s all over, she is as revered in death as she was in life.

  Burton and I had broken up. That’s the reason I almost didn’t go on the cruise—oh yes, Burton. You won’t understand all the things that happened unless I start with him. His name is James Burton the Third, but he likes everyone to call him just Burton. He’s the pastor of a church in Riverdale, a small town about twenty miles south of Atlanta and about a ten-minute drive from the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

  Our relationship was growing, and we began to talk about marriage. Almost a year earlier I had become a believer—largely through the influence of Burton, but God had also sent a few other surprises into my life. They were individuals who talked about God, as do a lot of people. But these folks lived the life they talked about. I had seen few others do that.

  I’ll say it straight. I loved Burton, even before I became a Christian. I had been married before, but my drug-user husband died in an accident. Burton knew about my past. I think I began to fall in love with him the evening we met on the Georgia coast when we solved the murder of Roger Harden. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself again. I’ll try to make this a linear story.

  I’m a half inch taller and three years older than he is. He’s never been married—lucky me. I have red hair that I call titian, and he has gorgeous black, curly hair; deep, deep blue eyes; and the kind of smile that melts me whenever I look at him.

  Six weeks before the murder of Twila, I was sure we would get married. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on the role of a pastor’s wife, but, hey, I could fake that portion. I’m a professional—the head of Clayton County Special Services, so I worked past that part. Everything seemed so wonderful for about six weeks.

  That’s when I found out about his problem.

  It was his problem—or at least he was the cause of the problem.

  Weeks earlier we had one of those beautiful candlelight dinners. In one of those special places—you know, the kind of place where you don’t read the right side of the menu or care about prices. I sat as demurely as it’s possible for me to sit. He ordered the same meal for both of us: chicken in aspic and asparagus. The presentation on the plate was probably as good as the meal itself.

  I knew he would propose, and I thought of at least twelve ways to sound extremely surprised. In the end, I thought a simple yes would be enough.

  But I never said yes.

  I knew he had bought a ring for me. I learned that from his secretary, who thought I already knew.

  He didn’t have some kind of wacky presentation by the server, such as sticking the ring inside my Coeur de crème over wild strawberries. I hadn’t expected anything like that from Burton.

  After dinner we drove toward my apartment. He switched on the CD player and we listened to those old, old Tony Bennett songs like “Because of You” and “A Stranger in Paradise.” He had done that for atmosphere, and I didn’t want to spoil anything. He parked in front of my building, shut off the engine, but kept the music going. It was on the second playing of “Because of You.” We listened in silence until that song finished.

  “I have something to tell you,” he said.

  I held back from saying, “At last.” To enhance the softness of the moment, I said nothing but clasped his hand.

  “I love you, Julie. I don’t know if it’s your smart mouth or your quick thinking, but I love you. I love everything about you.”

  I kissed his cheek. I wasn’t going to say yes until he asked. But I had practiced the word a thousand times.

  “I want to marry you—”

  Something wasn’t right about the way he said that. Was there a but at the end of that sentence?

  “I—I have a secret. It’s something I’ve never told anyone else—”

  “Funny. That’s what all my clients say.”

  “But this is different.”

  “Would you believe I hear that statement about once a week in my practice?”

  “This is—this is something—something important—”

  I had three or four smart-mouthed answers fighting to pop out of my mouth, but once again, I shut up.

  For a long time, Burton said nothing. I reached over and turned off the CD. It didn’t seem right to hear that soft, romantic music right now.

  I don’t think it was my flip remarks; I think he was quiet because it was so difficult for him to speak about his dark past. I couldn’t see his features clearly in the semidarkness, and after a few more seconds of silence, I wondered if I had said the wrong thing. He said he loved my smart mouth, didn’t he? Yet I knew it was better to keep quiet and let him work through whatever conflict he had.

  After two or three more minutes of silence, he said, “You remember when we me
t at Palm Island?”

  “Do you think I have amnesia?” was what I wanted to say. Instead, I nodded. “Every person there had a secret—”

  “Which was the reason we were there.”

  “Roger Harden knew all the secrets, and—”

  Burton held up a hand. “Everybody’s secret came out.”

  “I remember.”

  “Everybody’s secret except mine.”

  “That’s right!” I had forgotten. From across the room in Roger’s house, I had formed the question, “You too?” with my lips and he’d nodded. “You never told me what it was.”

  “I was too ashamed.”

  “All of us on that island were ashamed. That’s why we all had secrets.” I realized that he hadn’t been as self-revealing as I had assumed. That hurt, and I’m sure he caught the sadness in my voice.

  “I want to tell you now.”

  He melted me again. And I did love him, so I took his hand and whispered, “I love you. I doubt that anything—”

  “You haven’t heard yet.”

  I decided to listen to him bare his soul. I loved him and was sure nothing would change my attitude toward him.

  “I did tell one person—Roger Harden. But you must have assumed that. Roger’s dead, so no one else in the world knows.”

  I rubbed his cheek softly. I didn’t want to spoil the intimacy of the moment with any words, no matter how tender they sounded.

  That night Burton told me his long-held secret. His words horrified me. I couldn’t believe I loved a man who would commit such a harsh, cruel, and selfish act. He admitted that it had been sinful and self-centered, and he had never been able to tell the truth about it.

  “You have to make this right,” I said. “You’re a Christian and a preacher. You’re supposed to tell me to do things like that.”

  “I can’t. Don’t you see I can’t do this to them?”

  “I hate what you did!” My words surprised me. Part of it was the shock, but more than that, the confession came from a man I loved—the man I planned to marry. Okay, the confession came from a man I thought was only two short steps away from perfection.

  “Besides—besides, it’s too late!”

  “It is never too late to right a wrong. I’ve even heard you say that. I can’t believe—” I broke off, and tears filled my eyes. How could he have done such a horrible thing? Worse, how could he have lived with himself since then?

  “You don’t understand,” he said, but without much force in his words. I think he knew he had lost not only my respect but my love.

  “You’re right, I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand.” I reached for the door handle. “Don’t call me again,” I said.

  “Please—”

  “Maybe you can salve your conscience by confessing to me, but that’s—that’s not good enough! I can’t marry you. I feel—” I was so angry and so horrified I couldn’t finish my sentence. I slammed the door and ran to my apartment. I was such an emotional mess that it took me four tries before I could get my key into the lock.

  I didn’t stop loving him, but I tried. I decided that the only way to get past my feelings was to get away from him.

  That was the last time I saw Burton until the cruise.

  Two

  Less than a week after I broke up with Burton, I moved out of my apartment in Riverdale and rented one in Jonesboro. It was only ten minutes away from him but far enough so I wouldn’t run into him at a supermarket or gas station. I didn’t go back to that church—I couldn’t sit in a pew and listen to him speak. I visited several other churches a few times, but I wasn’t ready to join any of them. Besides, when Burton preached, his words had a way of making me examine my heart. No other minister had been able to make me feel that way.

  I felt I needed to focus on one thing—getting on with my life—and that meant getting Burton out of it. But such goals aren’t always that easy to reach. It certainly wasn’t for me.

  In time I might have been able to get away from Burton if it hadn’t been for Twila Belk and the Antarctic cruise. For nearly three months, she had focused her energies on that once-in-a-lifetime trip. She had spent an immense amount of money for a fourteen-day excursion. It wasn’t typical of her to be obsessed with something like that, but whenever she phoned me (at least once every day), the cruise was the top subject of conversation, and when she emailed me (almost every day), she expressed new anxieties about the trip.

  Although the cruise seemed unlike the things she normally did, I loved her enough that I decided to put up with her strange behavior. She had reserved all forty-eight places on a ship named the Vaschenko, which had once been some kind of Russian deep-sea research vessel. After the end of the cold war, it had been refitted as a tourist ship. Most of the cabins contained two bunk beds; a few handled four. She took one cabin to be totally alone—which I didn’t understand at the time. But it was her money to do with as she chose.

  I didn’t know every person on the list, but she assured me that wasn’t going to be a problem. We’d be together for fourteen days aboard a small ship. I’d get to know them all before we returned.

  Two weeks before the cruise, I drove by Twila’s office to tell her that I had decided not to go. She was already aware that I had broken up with Burton, and I assumed she would understand. I hadn’t given her any details except the usual catch-up phrases about incompatible temperaments. I called her and said I wanted to talk to her, and it was important. She said her last client would be gone by five, so I arrived five minutes after that.

  She probably anticipated why I had come to see her. At least she didn’t seem surprised when I said, “Twila, I love you, but I can’t go on the cruise. I’ve thought about this quite a bit. It would be too painful for me to be on the same cruise with Burton.”

  “Don’t waste any words working up to the topic, my dear.” She laughed with that wonderfully deep, hearty laugh. “That’s one quality I like about you, Julie. You say it straight.”

  “So now you know why I can’t go on the trip.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “I refuse to let you back out.”

  “You refuse?” Then I laughed. “That’s one quality I dislike about you. You won’t let the topic drop.”

  “All but a few of you on the cruise are special. I feel close to you and want to be with you,” she said. “Some are former or present clients. About a dozen are close friends. You’re number one on the list.”

  Her directness disconcerted me. To stall until I could figure out a good retort, I asked, “What about the others?”

  “You know how it is when you have a party, don’t you? You end up inviting a few people out of obligation, or because they beg for an invitation.”

  “So you’ll have some of them on the cruise?”

  “A few,” Twila said and sighed. “I’m thankful there are only a few.”

  Twila was a short, older woman and still trim. I don’t think she had ever been beautiful, but her even features made her attractive. Time had been kind to her, and she had let it do its own work. Twila’s once-blond hair had turned a silvery gray. The lines on her face weren’t the etched strokes of sadness; rather, they formed patterns of contentment as if she were always happy. Her honey-brown eyes made me feel that a woman of twenty hid inside a body of someone forty years older. That day she wore a cream silk blouse, black silk slacks, and low-heeled shoes. She tied her hair back with a ribbon of black moiré silk.

  Excitedly she told me (probably for the fiftieth time during the past month) that she had planned the cruise around the people who were truly special in her life. “So except for those obligatory individuals, my guests are people I love or individuals who have been of deep spiritual influence in my life.”

  “And that list of special people includes Burton?”

  “You were first on my list. Burton was second.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to delete my name.” I said those words to her in the strongest, no-nonsense voice I coul
d muster. “I’m sure you’ll have no problem getting someone to fill my half cabin.”

  “It’s not a matter of getting someone to sleep in your bunk,” she said. “I want you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. I refuse to accept your declining the invitation,” she said. I can’t explain the timbre of her voice, but once in a while—and quite rarely—Twila said something with a gravity in her voice that Moses probably would have loved to emulate on Mount Sinai. “You will go.”

  “I can’t. Please don’t ask me again. I love you, but I can’t.” My passion over Burton was stronger than obeying an all-but-divine command. In a rush of painful words, I reminded her that Burton and I had broken up. I said I couldn’t divulge the reason because that was for him to tell her. Twila, my friend, was also a professional, and I knew she would never probe once I set the boundary.

  After I finished the torrent of words, Twila stared at me for several seconds. She shifted her gaze into space, and I sensed she was trying to decide what to say to me.

  “I’m not going. It’s that simple,” I said.

  “I’ve never asked anything of you in the months we’ve known each other.” Before I could come up with a flippant response, she said, “This is one thing I ask of you. Please. You have become—I suppose I’d have to say like my own daughter. I’ve planned every detail of this trip, and it’s extremely important.”

  “Important?” I asked. “What makes it important? Antarctica would be wonderful, but I would hardly call it important.”

  “It is important. To me.”

  “This is so untypical of you.”

  “That’s correct,” she said. Her lips trembled ever so slightly before she said, “Julie, my dear one, this is the last, most important thing I shall do in my life.”

  That may sound like the tone of a martyr as I tell it, but it came across as a declaration—much like someone who says, “This is the last project I’ll take on before I quit this job.”

  Although I heard the intensity, I wasn’t ready to capitulate. “But don’t you see? Burton will be on the ship as well. I—I can’t face him. I don’t want to be around him—”