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The house loomed over her. She turned off her flashlight as she approached the back door. It led into a laundry room, and from there into the kitchen. She hoped Cal Bonner and his wife hadn't installed a security system. When she and Dwayne had lived here, their only problems had been with overly zealous fans, and the electronically controlled gates at the bottom of the drive had kept them at a distance.
She also hoped they hadn't changed the locks. Slipping her hand into the pocket of her sweatshirt, she pulled out a house key attached to a loop of coiled purple plastic that she used to slip over her wrist when she went on her walks up the mountain. This had been her spare key, the only one the police hadn't taken. She'd found it several weeks after she'd been evicted tucked into the pocket of this very same sweatshirt. If the key no longer worked, she would have to break one of the windows in the back.
But the key did work. The lock caught in the same stubborn place, then gave way when she pulled on it. A sense of unreality encompassed her as she stepped inside the mudroom. It smelled damp and unused, and the darkness was so thick she had to feel her way along the wall to the door. She pushed it open and stepped into the kitchen.
She'd always hated this room with its black marble floors, granite counters, and a crystal chandelier more suited to an opera hall than a kitchen hanging over the center work island. Dwayne's well-groomed appearance and polished manners camouflaged a man who'd been born poor and needed opulence surrounding him so he could feel important. He'd loved the house's garishness.
Even though it was dark, she knew the kitchen well enough that she could ease her way along the counters until she arrived at the entryway to the family room that stretched across the back. Even though the house was deserted, she moved as quietly as her heavy shoes allowed. Enough weak moonlight came through the sliding-glass doors for her to see that nothing had changed. The pit sofa and matching chairs still conjured up memories of an eighties bachelor pad. In the oppressive silence of the empty house, she crossed the room toward a back hallway and, with the aid of the flashlight, approached Dwayne's study.
The lofty room with its Gothic furnishings and heavy draperies had been Dwayne's idea of something that might be used by a member of the British royal family
. A quick sweep of the flashlight revealed that the animal trophy heads were gone. So was the Kennedy chest.
Now what? She decided to risk turning on the green-shaded desk lamp and saw that the desk had been cleared of papers. There was a new telephone, a computer, and a silent fax machine. She gazed at the shelf where the Kennedy chest had been positioned in the photograph and saw only a pile of books.
Her heart sank. She began to search the room, but it didn't take her long to discover that the chest had disappeared.
She turned off the desk lamp, then slumped down on the couch where Cal Bonner and his wife had been photographed. Had she really thought this would be easy when nothing else had gone her way? Now she would have to search the rest of the house and hope that they'd simply moved the chest, not taken it away.
Using the flashlight to see, she made quick work of the living and dining rooms, then moved through the foyer and past the night-club fountain, which was mercifully unlit. The foyer rose two stories above her. The upstairs bedrooms opened onto a balcony surrounded by gilded wrought iron. As she mounted the curving staircase, she began to feel strangely disoriented, as if three years hadn't passed and Dwayne were still alive.
She'd met him when he was on his first crusade through the midwest. He'd been appearing in Indianapolis as part of an eighteen-city televised tour to expand his cable audience. Most of the members of her little church had agreed to be volunteer workers, and Rachel had been assigned to act as one of the backstage gofers, a task, she later learned, that was always given to the more attractive of the young female volunteers.
She was twenty at the time, and she hadn't been able to believe her luck when one of the crusade's staff members had assigned her to deliver a pile of preselected prayer cards to Dwayne. She was actually going to see the famous evangelist up close! Her hand had shaken as she'd knocked on the door of his dressing room.
"Come in."
She'd opened the door tentatively, just far enough to see G. Dwayne Snopes standing at the lighted mirror and running a silver-backed hairbrush through his thick blond hair, so attractively graying at the temples. He smiled at her reflection, and she felt the full jolt of Snopes's charisma.
"Come on in, darlin'."
Her pulses pounded, and her palms went damp. She was giddy and overwhelmed. He turned, his smile grew wider, and she forgot to breathe.
She'd known the facts about Dwayne Snopes. He'd been a North Carolina tobacco broker when he'd gotten the call ten years ago and gone on the road as a traveling evangelist. Now he was thirty-seven, and, thanks to cable television, the fastest-rising evangelist in the country.
His magnetic speaking voice, bold good looks, winning smile, and charismatic personality were tailor-made for television. Women fell in love with him; men considered him one of the guys. The poor and the elderly, who made up the majority of his audience, believed him when he promised health, wealth, and happiness. And unlike the fallen televangelists of the eighties, everyone thought they could trust him.
How could you not trust a man who was so open about his own shortcomings? With a boyish earnestness, he confessed a weakness for alcohol, which he'd overcome ten years earlier when he'd gotten the call, and an attraction toward pretty women, which remained a struggle. By his own admission, his first marriage had ended because of his philandering, and he asked his television congregation to pray that he could continue putting his womanizing behind him. He combined Jimmy Swaggart's hellfire-and-damnation preaching with Jim Bakker's cozy God of love, abundance, and prosperity. In the world of Christian broadcasting, it was an unbeatable combination.
"Come on in, honey," he repeated. "I won't eat you. At least not till after we pray about it." His boyish mischievousness immediately won her over.
She handed him the prayer cards. "I—I'm supposed to give you these."
He paid no attention to the prayer cards, only to her. "What's your name, darlin'?"
"Rachel. Rachel Stone."
He smiled. "God surely has blessed me today."
That was the beginning.
She didn't board the bus with the other members of her congregation that night. Instead, one of Dwayne's aides approached her grandmother with the news that the televangelist had received a message from God that Rachel was to accompany him as a helper on the rest of his tour.
Rachel's grandmother had been in frail health for some time, and because Rachel knew how much she needed her help, Rachel had refused a scholarship to Indiana University to stay home and take care of her. It had been difficult to satisfy her deep intellectual curiosity by taking only a few courses each semester at the local community college, but her grandmother meant everything to her, and she'd never resented the choice she'd made.
She'd told Dwayne's aide she couldn't travel with the crusade, not even for a short period of time, but her grandmother had overruled her. God's call could not be ignored.
During the next few weeks, Dwayne lavished attention on her, and she soaked up every drop. Each morning and evening, she knelt at his side as he prayed, so she was able to witness his unfaltering dedication to the business of saving souls. It would be years before she understood how complex the demons were that lurked beneath his faith.
