Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction by Grif Stockley

to.”
    Despite her tone, her face looks sad, as if she has failed someone besides herself. I feel slightly more confident now.
    “Who do you think could have murdered him?” I ask, relishing the last sip of coffee. I’ll take more of everything if I get the chance.
    Leigh folds her arms across her breasts.
    “I have no idea,” she says coolly.
    “I’ve already been over this with Mr. Bracken.”
    I don’t believe her. I may be wrong, but she sounds too defensive.
    “Just so I’m clear,” I say quickly, “my understanding is that you told the police you had been at the church all morning that day you brought a friend home for lunch and found your husband’s body.”
    Her cake is forgotten now. Rigid in her chair, she says, “That’s absolutely correct.” There is not a jury in the world who would fail to read guilt into her body language.
    I hurry, afraid she won’t let me continue.
    “According to Chet,” I say, making him the bad-news messenger, “there is some dispute about this.”
    Leaning into the table between us, she answers, “Which is easily explained. The two women whom I saw and spoke with at Christian Life that morning are in their eighties. They often get their times confused, for obvious reasons. I myself was in error when I told the police I spoke with Nancy Lyons. I probably saw her the day before.”
    Like a hungry dog licking his dish, I scrape at the crumbs on my plate. This is weak even if you blow off the neighbor who remembers her driving past on her way home at nine-thirty. Several members confirm seeing her again at eleven-thirty, but nobody remembers her there between nine and eleven as she says. Since it was undisputed that Wallace died about an hour before an ambulance reached him (a fact confirmed by his autopsy), the police did not suspect Leigh initially, because they thought, with good reason, she had been at the church all morning. Mrs. Sims, the old woman Leigh invited to lunch, had told the cops Leigh had been with her at the auditorium listening to a missionary But after Leigh had become the only suspect, the old woman admitted that she had not seen her since a little before nine, when the meeting began, until it was over at eleven-thirty. The police hypothesize that Leigh set it up to look as if she had been at the church for almost three hours.
    “Is it possible,” I ask, avoiding her eyes so as not to challenge her, “that for a perfectly good reason you wanted to play hooky and stay home with your husband that morning and just didn’t think it was the cops’ business that you were home instead of at the church all morning?”
    She stands and takes my dish and coffee cup to the sink. I should have stayed on the subject of religion until I had gotten my fill.
    “I’m sorry if you think I’m not telling the truth,” she says, turning on the water.
    “Maybe what happened that morning,” I persist, “is that your husband wanted you to stay home, and you went to the church and put in an appearance and turned around and came home and then went back to show your face, and in the interval someone your husband knew came to the house and shot him.”
    Leigh does not speak. She seems to be looking through me. I feel as if I were a vacuum cleaner salesman who lost his customer during the demonstration of the third attachment. Damn. It is not as if I have suggested that she went home to worship a golden calf.
    “I
    think my mother is home,” my hostess announces. She races into the living room as if we were adolescents who had been surprised necking when we were supposed to be doing our homework. I stand up. Since this conversation isn’t going anywhere, I might as well meet the family. As I follow Leigh into the living room, I hear a buzz of angry words. Apparently, her mother had agreed to be out of the house and has returned home sooner than expected.
    As it develops, Mrs. Norman is a friendlier, more vulnerable version of her daughter. Granted, she could lose