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Now it was her turn for disbelief.
“I wonder where you were that night.”
“What?”
“The night I was attacked.”
“Oh, this is unreal,” he said, throwing up a hand, his temper flaring. “You never give up. Wasn’t it enough that you lied about me before? That you threw my life in turmoil and then, just when things had died down, published your damned book and profited from it, once more putting me through hell. And now . . . and now it’s all in my face again. That pathetic, fake, twisted TV movie is being aired again.” He threw up a hand, looked up at the sky, and let out a deep breath. As if to calm himself, he closed his eyes as his big hands clenched and opened, clenched and opened. Finally he turned back to her. But he hadn’t been able to calm himself. His eyes were slits—malevolent, angry slits. “When will it end, huh? When?” he demanded, his lips barely moving. “How dare you come here, to my place of worship?” The reverend was so angry that he was jabbing at the sidewalk with a finger. “So you just leave me alone. You hear me? Leave me the hell alone and stay away from my family!”
“Your family?” she repeated.
“You heard me! Stay away.”
“Or?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Are you threatening me?” she asked, her own anger rising.
“You’re on my turf now,” he warned, his eyes glittering in the dark.
“God’s turf, I think,” she reminded him.
“Watch yourself, girl,” he warned. He was starting to walk away in an easy, straight-back stride, but turned to face her, and though his eyes sparked hatred, he flung out, “Have a blessed night.”
“Yeah, you too!” Sarcasm dripped from her words.
As she unlocked her car, she reminded herself to be careful, not taunt him or bait him into an attack.
In her mind’s eye she saw the scene in the alley at St. Louis Cathedral again. The rain. The dripping poncho. The glinting steel of a knife. Her stomach curdled at the thought. “Dear God,” she whispered as she slid into the driver’s seat, started the car, and pulled away from the curb. In her rearview she caught a glimpse of the church, the doors flying open, light spreading onto the steps, people flooding through the doors. Good, solid believers flowing into the parking lot, laughing and talking, and all filled with the love of Jesus.
Because of Mandel Jarvis and his family.
For a second she felt not only foolish, but shamed that she would even consider him a suspect.
Then she remembered his first wife.
Filipa had been shot.
Mandel Jarvis could appear to be a man of faith, a family man, a pillar of the community, but he still was, in Kristi’s mind, a cold-blooded killer.
* * *
“A baby?” Olivia said, a small smile curving her lips as she sat down on the couch, on the opposite end, her legs over Bentz’s. He’d come home for dinner and to see Ginny, who was now off to bed, the smell of grilled chicken from dinner still lingering. “Kristi’s going to have a baby. Wow. And that makes you—?”
“A grandfather, I know.”
“And Ginny?”
“Don’t even go there.” He couldn’t think that his daughter, about to turn one, would be an aunt in the spring. It was mind boggling.
“I was going to say they could be great friends, more like cousins.”
There was a twinkle in her eyes that he usually found irresistible, but not tonight. No, this night he was bothered and he didn’t want to think how unconventional his family was, all the bloodlines tangled, nothing quite as it seemed. Kristi wasn’t even his biological daughter, not that it mattered. He’d raised her as if she was. And now she was pregnant with her dead husband’s child.
“Wait. You’re not happy about this?”
“Of course I am.”
