Her alarm had gone off seemingly way too early, and while her gram hadn’t had any more confused episodes, her concern and worry over that had also been keeping her up.
Still, she was looking forward to working with the children, especially since the previous day’s rehearsal had been cancelled because of a school practice that many of the children were involved in. They had a few new faces and were almost sure to have guests who had never been in church before attending the program.
Anything that Nelly could do to help spread the gospel was always a blessing, and she wanted to put her very best in.
She was a few minutes early, and the kids were playing in the downstairs rec room as she walked in.
Pastor Connelly looked up as she walked in, his face grave.
He started to walk over toward her, and Nelly felt a ball formingin her stomach. What in the world could he want? He didn’t look happy.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked as he stood in front of her, forgoing any kind of pleasant greeting.
“Of course,” she said, adjusting her bag over her shoulder and following him to the stairwell, closing the door behind them.
The stairs led up to the sanctuary, but he stood at the landing at the bottom.
“Do you remember how we had discussed how we weren’t getting as many donations as we normally do?”
“Yes?”
“Yeah. Well, the church is never locked, and I thought that maybe someone could be taking it, so I decided that in the morning when I came to my office, I would count the money in the box and then count it again in the evening just to see if anyone was actually taking money. Well, Monday nothing happened, but Tuesday… We lost almost one hundred dollars out of the box.”
“You’re kidding!” Nelly said, unable to believe that someone would take that much. It was one thing to maybe swipe a dollar, but wow.
Again, the pastor’s face held no sign of humor, or even a smile, as he shook his head. His mouth flattened as he glanced around before lowering his voice. “I think that it might be Roland who is stealing it.”
“What?” she said, unable to believe her ears. The idea that anyone would think that Roland McBride would steal—it was crazy. Of course, he hadn’t been her favorite person in her life, but she had never thought he was actually a thief.
“He was here bringing the tree that the church is going to decorate. He was the only one I saw on the camera. It had to have been him.” The pastor’s voice was low, his tone dead serious.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t believe for one second that Roland McBride—I know we’ve had our differences over the years, but there is absolutely no way that he would ever touch the church’s money. Infact, he was trying to tell you that it was there and vulnerable. Why would he have done that if he was the one stealing it?”
“Because he was just getting that idea in his head, and then…he decided to act on it. I don’t know why people do the things that they do. But I’m telling you, it had to have been him.”
“And I’m telling you, I’ve known Roland McBride since before we were both in school. We were in the church nursery together, for goodness’ sake. That man would never steal anything.”
The pastor looked at her for a moment and then lifted his shoulder. “Well, I am going to file a police report, and in my opinion, Roland is the top suspect. I thought that you might corroborate that story.”
“Absolutely not. There’s no way that I could ever implicate him in that. I know—I am absolutely sure down to my soul that it was not him.” She knew her voice was loud, and she tried to modulate it some, but even though she and Roland had never considered themselves friends, she absolutely was sure that he would never do anything like that. For a moment, she stopped to question herself. How was she so sure? Why did she have this really strong feeling that it absolutely could not be Roland?
She thought about the misconceptions that she had about him, how she thought for years that he was just not a good person. And she realized that, even though she thought that, deep down, she knew that he was upright and honest. And when challenged by it, she could say with certainty that he just wasn’t that type of man.
“I don’t think that you ought to—I think it’s perfectly okay to file a report, but I wouldn’t implicate him. I’m telling you, he might be the only person on the video, but he is absolutely innocent.”
“I’m going to have to tell them what I think. And then it’ll be up to them to make a decision. I’m not the police. I’m just the person who saw Roland on the video.”
“He was delivering a tree. He was donating it. Giving something to the church.”
“Maybe he took that hundred dollars as payment.”
“Roland would never do that. I’m sure of it.” She felt like she was fighting a losing battle. She had no evidence that Roland didn’t do it, but he had absolutely no evidence, other than Roland donating a tree to the church, that he would have. It frustrated her to think that just because he was on camera, he was guilty. After all, how could he donate a tree without actually coming to the church and giving it to them?
“Thanks for your time,” Pastor Connelly said.
Nelly gritted her teeth, but she knew she needed to get back out there. Roland was probably there right now and wondering why she wasn’t.
She turned to go and looked up at the stairs. Roland stood at the top.
