Bright & Beautiful, page 17
“Damn, I missed this place,” he said, his mouth full of carne asada.
“Of course you did.” I polished off my ginormous rice, bean, and guacamole burrito in four bites. It was nearly three p.m. The meal we were sharing was my lunch after that single vegan blueberry muffin I devoured at 9 a.m. “Wait, don’t tell me you only want me back because you missed the La Cumbre deluxe.”
He looked at the ceiling conspicuously. “Of course not. It has nothing to do with that.”
I threw a tortilla chip at him, then studied his reaction. I couldn’t get a read on him. For me, the joking around was grasping at normalcy, an attempt to fill the airspace so he couldn’t drop a big question like—so does that hook-up mean we’re back together for good? The ploy worked. We ate, gave each other a goodbye peck, and went our respective ways.
I’d done little St. Giles’ work that day, so I cranked out nearly six hours of sermon prep, emails, budget review, and planning for our parish programs at my desk. Alone in a dark office with only a reading lamp on, I missed Kayla more than ever.
While I worked, I kept a notepad at my side. At the top of the page it said, Ways to find the father of Dara Chey-Walker’s unborn child. Beneath the heading, I had written exactly zero bright ideas.
I drummed my fingers on my desk. To solve Cindy’s murder, I’d come up with an ingenious—if I do say so myself—plan to find the murder weapon. I recruited all the people who collected bottles to redeem at the recycling center for the deposit and offered them a dollar a bottle for ones that matched the type used to bludgeon my friend. Cesar had refused to help, but it worked, and turned up the incriminating prints.
There had to be an equally surprising solution to Dara’s murder. I just hadn’t found it yet. Maybe I never would. What if solving Cindy’s case had been a fluke, and I had no knack for being an amateur sleuth? I didn’t have Naomi, I wasn’t sure I wanted Cesar, and now it seemed like maybe I didn’t even have this special gift that the Bishop had trusted me to employ. What, exactly, did I have?
I looked around my dark, empty office and yawned. It had been a roller coaster of a day, and tomorrow after morning prayer I had to hustle to Berkeley for the Coach Taylor torture session—I mean, organizational workshop.
At least I could report to her I was ahead of schedule on my sermon for Sunday. Maybe, if she got me more organized, I’d see something in my life that I wasn't failing.
Cesar texted me at 9:45 p.m. Thinking of you.
Thank God for vague clichés. It didn’t feel dishonest to reply, Me too.
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE NEXT DAY, AL CAME to morning and prayer while his daughter Sydney sat with Diane. He told us she was hanging on by a thread, but always stubborn, she held that thread hard and fast.
“Call me anytime, and I’ll be there, Al. Truly, nothing is more important than supporting your family.”
“Don’t say that. Today is your workshop with Coach Taylor. She emailed to remind me.”
“Great,” I said through clenched teeth. Since the church was paying for my coaching, Taylor communicated with Al like he was my father at a parent-teacher conference. I tried not to resent them keeping tabs on me, reframing it as accountability and transparency. I was eighty percent successful at viewing it this way, and I blamed the remaining resentment at being micromanaged on Taylor, considering Al is my biggest fan.
“I know, and I’m so excited to go. But Diane’s well-being is very important to me and everyone at St. Giles’.”
“Thank you.” He wiped his shimmering eyes and squeezed my shoulder. “But don’t worry. I suspect she’ll hang on until you get back.” Then, he winked one weepy eye at me. The man had an astonishing spirit, and bless him, I think he knew that while I wanted out of the workshop, I also meant what I said about my care for his family.
My mom, commiserating that I had to go all the way to the East Bay, had brought me a few boxes of power bars just past their best-by date for the trip. I passed them out to the homeless folks inside the Mission Street BART Station, then took the train to Berkeley. The car noisily whooshed through the Transbay tunnel. I handed out the rest of the protein bars to the homeless people at my destination. Then I hoofed it up the hill to my seminary.
I’d only graduated thirty months ago, so the sidewalks on the Cal campus felt both familiar and strange, like Cesar. The students looked the same; the bushes were overgrown on different parts of the path. The facade of my favorite coffee shop had been painted a charming, glossy red. I ordered my usual green tea, the bag drawn from the same old glass jar with the label taped to its front. A moment of déjà vu flitted through me. I remembered running into my church music professor Jorgé Waters there and discovering he also drank green tea.
He’d quipped, “I know they say coffee is good for you, but I think they’re lying,” and winked. At the thought of Damien’s ex, a torrent of questions flooded my mind. Had he known Dara? Did he agree with Damien that Kat was unstable? Did he trust Brent? Since I was in Berkeley, I could pop in, say hi and subtly interrogate him.
“Actually, can I get another cup of green tea?” I asked the barista.
“Coming right up.”
Although I had a paper cup of steaming hot tea in each hand, I skipped across the street at the thought of seeing Jorgé. I’d liked his flamboyant teaching style, his thought-provoking sermons when he preached in chapel, and his sense of humor when I was chatting with him over a glass of wine at the community social hour before our weekly Thursday evening Eucharists. He’d been married to Damien then, though, and I’d avoided the couple when the shiny very reverend had joined his husband at the seminary dinners. With his family money and good looks, Damien had seemed so entitled, and superficial, and uninterested in getting to know the “little people” who would soon be his colleagues.
The Episcopal seminary sits on a block with institutions from many denominations affectionately called Holy Hill. I entered the building that housed faculty offices and climbed the stairs to Jorgé’s. His door was ajar, and a man stood next to his desk chair stuffing books into a briefcase. I took pause. It was definitely Dr. Waters, but he’d gone majorly gray in the two-plus years since I last saw him.
According to the rumor mill—AKA Suze and Lily—either Damien had left him or Jorgé had kicked him out. Okay, so this particular clergy grapevine was woefully under-informed. Just seeing my former professor brought a smile to my face. Did that make me disloyal to my newfound friend Damien, or maybe that friendship was a betrayal of my previously warm acquaintance with Jorgé?
“Professor Waters?” I said.
He looked up from his feet to see me, his smooth face cracking into a broad grin. Only his hair appeared older, not his skin, which was a relief to see. I hated to think divorcing Damien had aged him. In an ideal world, everyone should be able to part ways as amicably as Naomi and I had, with minimal hurt feelings.
“Alma Lee! Come in, come in. How wonderful to see you.”
“I was in the neighborhood, so I brought you a cup of tea.” I set it on his desk.
“You’re an angel and looking so official in your clerical collar. Let me take a picture of you. I love to put photos of former students in their collars on Instagram. It will get a lot of likes, you’ll see!”
I smiled sheepishly. It was silly to wear it to a workshop for clergy where everyone was a priest, but snapping it in place around my neck every morning was a daily habit. “You know, I think it keeps people from assuming that I'm a twelve-year-old girl.”
He swatted the air, then stroked the gray streaks at his temples. “Never complain about looking young. It vanishes in an instant.”
It was a great way to segue. “How are you? I hear you’ve had a lot of changes in your life.”
“Yes, it’s true.” He pressed his lips together into a tight smile, nodding. “Damien and I split up, and everyone knows because there's no privacy in this tiny denomination of ours.”
“I’m so sorry to hear it.” Which I was. Whatever the reason for their divorce, I regretted they hadn’t made it. I believe in love, and monogamy even, and when two men have the courage to enter an institution that has barred them forever, it’s especially sad when their relationship doesn’t thrive.
“Well, it’s for the best. I’m healing, moving on, not quite ready to date again, but I’ll get there, eventually. And Damien, well... he’s Damien. You know.”
I tilted my head. “Do I?” I’d come to ask about Dara, Kat, Brent, but Jorgé was steering the conversation in a different direction.
He shrugged. “Maybe not. I guess I always sensed you didn’t like him.”
I could have brushed it off, redirected, inquired about the rest of the Gough family. Yet, in the marrow of my bones, in the place where I crave caffeine and genuine intimacy, I felt the need to know what had driven them apart. And I hated myself for it. Wasn’t it just gossip? Couldn’t I stay blissfully ignorant, a neutral party?
No, replied this marrow-deep urge. You have to ask. You have a license to meddle.
Perhaps it wasn’t just a petty human impulse to be in the know. Perhaps this was the Holy Spirit guiding me somewhere important. Maybe, by listening, I could help Jorgé, or be a better friend to Damien. Yes, these what-ifs sounded like rationalizations, but I’d just have to trust myself with whatever he told me and not let it affect my interactions with either man or tempt me to tell my besties. And once his story was out, I could voice the questions I came to ask.
While I deliberated, he glanced at his watch. “My class is starting soon. Do you have time to walk with me?”
“Sure.” My workshop was also about to begin. So much for Jorgé providing me an excuse to skip. I followed him out of his office, speaking quietly in case my other former professors were listening on the other side of their closed doors. “It’s fair to say I didn’t like Damien much. I thought he had a charmed life, and there wasn’t a lot to him besides always getting what he wanted and thinking he deserved it.” Now that I’d seen how much he loved Kat and his brother, just saying the words felt like a betrayal. They revealed my own envy to me. Didn’t I also have a charmed life—family, friends, a job, those vigorous roots Damien had mentioned?
“Oh, yes. He could certainly be like that.”
“Is that why you broke up?”
He chuckled, a hollow and wry sound that echoed off the walls as we descended into the building lobby. “No, no. Not that. I always found that endearing, honestly, the way he just trusted God and the world to be a good place. It was the cheating that did us in.”
And... there it was. The awful fact I didn’t really want to know. But still, I could be empathetic. “Monogamy can be tricky for gay men, if you don’t want the same things.” I sometimes wondered what made homosexual men more likely to have open relationships. Was it alienation from the institution of marriage or simple biology? It was a nature/nurture question that may never be answered. We emerged from the back side of the building into the open air, and the cool breeze was welcome on my face.
“Yeah. But I could have handled it if Damien was fucking other men, pardon my language, but I can’t seem to use nicer words for my husband’s infidelity. It still makes me feel so dirty.” He shuddered, steering me to the next set of stairs, which led to the lower courtyard. The grounds were empty, as if classes had already begun and we were the stragglers. I was grateful for the sake of his privacy.
“No apology necessary,” I told Jorgé. “But I’m confused. Are you saying he’s bisexual?” Shouldn’t I, of all people, have recognized that?
“I’m saying he’s a liar, and a cheater. And he will pretend to be whatever people prefer him to be, if it gets him what he wants.”
Well, damn. He’d said it to me himself as we walked along the Embarcadero yesterday. To me, being a chameleon sounds like one way to get through life.
“Well, if that isn’t Alma Lee,” called a voice to my right. I turned to see a statuesque blond woman—Oh, sweet Jesus, was Coach Taylor really six feet tall? “You get your adorable self over here right now. It’s time to begin.”
Damn. Coach Taylor had the natural projection of a bull horn. I bet her voice could carry a mile down the hill to the BART Station if she tried, like the emergency sirens that sounded every Tuesday at noon throughout Berkeley.
“Are you going to the time-management seminar?” he asked.
“Yes. My warden thinks I need to work on my organization.” I rolled my eyes.
He laughed like we were in on the same joke. “That’s wonderful. You were such a sharp student when you were in class, but a bit flaky, always skipping to go to marches or visit the homeless. Good for you, finally getting more organized.” He checked his watch. “Well, off to Intro to Liturgical Music!” He finger-waved, turned and entered the doorway leading to a hall of classrooms, leaving me to wonder whether Lily or Suze had ratted me out as truant during seminary. Not that it mattered. Apparently, everyone thought I was a scatterbrain.
With my former professor holding up that unsolicited reflection of me, I entered the door Coach Taylor had propped open. Inside, everyone clapped as if I’d introduced myself at an AA meeting. Hi, my name is Alma, and I’m a flake.
“Now, that everyone’s here, y’all open your binder to the first tab, and we can begin.”
Distractedly, I complied, but I was wondering, if Damien had been hiding his sexuality from me, what else had I missed? There was so much to rethink.
“Earth to Alma, are you with us?” sounded the bullhorn. A day in this small space with Coach Taylor might cause permanent hearing loss. She laughed. To me it was a maniacal cackle, but no one else seemed to mind.
I cupped my palms to the sides of my head. “Yes! I’m here.” For the sake of my eardrums, I had to pause analyzing the strange facts Jorgé had revealed about Damien and save them for later contemplation. It worked. For the rest of the day, Coach Taylor was so overwhelmingly bright that she didn’t leave a single neuron in my brain free to contemplate.
Chapter Twenty-Five
HONESTLY, THE WORKSHOP wasn’t so bad. It was a mega dose of her sermon planning wisdom and advice for meeting other people’s expectations while practicing good boundaries. And unlike Jorgé, she was flattering toward me when—with my permission—she shared anecdotes about organizational skills I’d implemented well, mostly thanks to Kayla. As I descended Holy Hill to downtown Berkeley, I had to admit that I probably hadn’t been very fair about Coach Taylor.
In a stroke of good luck, I scored one of the plastic seats on the busy BART train. Slouched in the chair, I unlocked the part of my brain where I’d jammed my thoughts about Damien. Jorgé had agreed with my impressions of his ex in seminary, yet since this case started, Damien had been nothing but loving to his family and warm and grateful toward me. I chuckled, remembering the time I’d offered to buy him a cappuccino, and he’d offered me his priestly blessing along with the confession that he’d prefer something stronger, like a Zombie Bowl at the Tonga Room a block from the cathedral.
The Tonga Room... It was an odd place to mention, more of a tourist destination than a local’s spot, unless you worked nearby. I’d only been inside once. I pictured the interior—its dark drop ceiling, the cheesy grass huts and thick bamboo railings. It resembled the Enchanted Tiki Room in Disneyland, only instead of that delicious vegan Dole Whip, there were highly alcoholic cocktails. And right in the middle of it all lay a swimming pool disguised as a lagoon.
I’d have bet a dozen Uber fares across the Bay Bridge that none of the police officers had thought to check it. I’d walked right by it with Damien the morning of the murder.
Instead of going to the Mission, I debarked the BART train at the Powell Street station, skirted Union Square and climbed up toward Nob Hill. The one time I’d been to the Tonga Room—playing hooky from a session of pointless resolutions at the annual diocesan convention—a band played on a boat in the lagoon. Someone had told me it was originally the Fairmont’s indoor pool. It still smelled like chlorine, but it wasn't a public swimming pool anymore, so it wouldn’t turn up in the list Sokolov was using to investigate.
Should I call her and tell her my theory?
Nah. I was almost there, and after wallowing in my loneliness lately, I wanted this win for myself. It would prove I deserved my license to meddle because sleuthing was one of my spiritual gifts, along with church growth and infuriating type-A personalities.
The hotel stood across the street from the Mark Hopkins where Dara Chey-Walker was staying, and a block from Grace Cathedral where her body was discovered. It was possibly the absolute closest pool of water to the labyrinth. Take that, Occam’s razor!
A flashing red hand sign forced me to stop at a crosswalk so I buffed my fingernails on my lapel, then blew them off. I was back on my game, my deep city roots and the Holy Spirit leading me in the right direction again.
It was a little after five p.m. and the bar had just opened. The scent of chlorine mingled with the odor of cooking oil in the air. I asked for a manager and, with a frown and a glance at my clerical collar, the hostess took me to a back office.
“Hi, I’m the Reverend Alma Lee, SFPD Chaplain.” The title was a stretch, as there were several pastors who volunteered in this role, and although I’d filled out the paperwork after solving Cindy’s murder, the police department had not yet called on me to offer spiritual care to an officer, victim, or perp.
“Uh, what’s a police chaplain?” The pretty, middle-aged woman frowned at me. She was Asian, though probably not Chinese—possibly Thai or... I glanced at her name tag, Mai Tran—Vietnamese.
“I’m part of the Dara Chey-Walker murder investigation. Can you tell me who was working last Thursday night?”
“Is this official, or do you just want to know?” It was a legitimate question considering I’d shown her no credentials. Even if I had laminated my license to meddle, I doubted it would impress her.
