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His only reaction to his wife’s verbal attack had been a tight-lipped smile and an expression that said, Aren’t I the silly one, forgetting to fix the door of the car? “Anybody hear from her nephew yet?” he asked.
    â€œNot a word.” Parker Leedale stood next to his wife. “Guess he couldn’t make it. Or didn’t get the message.”
    â€œOr didn’t give a shit,” Ellie Stevenson said, and grinned. With mischief? With satisfaction? Parker Leedale could never tell. “You sure Cora wanted us here?” Ellie asked June Leedale. “You think maybe wishy-washy Willoughby might have screwed things up? Hell, the old broad never invited us into her house all the time we’ve been married.”
    â€œReverend Willoughby said you were both on the list,” June Leedale replied. “He seemed pretty certain about it.”
    Ellie glanced up at St. Luke’s steeple clock, its brass hands shining against the black matte face and Roman numerals. “Well, we might as well go in, get this over with. You guys got some food ready when we’re finished here?” she asked, looking back at June Leedale.
    â€œI made a few things.”
    The three couples began walking along the flagstone path to the church steps, the Stevensons in the lead, the Leedales behind them, the Gilroys taking up the rear, Bunny seizing her husband’s hand and squeezing it with affection.
    â€œGood,” Ellie Stevenson said with a laugh. “Funerals always make me hungry. And now I won’t have to cook lunch for chubby cheeks here.” She nudged her husband, who turned his round face back to the others, raised his eyebrows high enough to crease his forehead and smiled in embarrassment.
    Reaching the summit of the stairs, Parker Leedale paused at the open door to take a final look toward Main Street, staring past the Compton Town Lodge, the Lobster Trap restaurant, Maitland’s Toggery Shop, the Greenery Groceteria and other midtown Compton businesses, all the buildings faithful reflections of Cape Cod architecture and social values: elegant, restrained, subdued and conforming.
    â€œHe’s not coming,” June Leedale assured her husband, tugging gently at his sleeve as Mike and Bunny Gilroy slipped past to enter the darkened church. “Let’s go.”
    Just as the Leedales stepped inside, a large blue sedan pulled into the parking lot. The driver switched off the engine and sat staring at the church distractedly, the gentle features of his face creased with concern.
    Dr. Ivan Hayward made no effort to leave the car.
    He was waiting for someone to arrive. Someone with whom he could share his suspicions about Cora Godwin’s death.

Chapter Five
    The Reverend James Willoughby pulled at an errant thread on his Episcopalian gown while discussing carpentry with Jerome Harper, the pimply-faced organist from Harwich.
    â€œNotching it, there’s the challenge,” Reverend Willoughby muttered, staring at the thread as he yanked it from the seam like a fisherman testing the strength of his line. His head was down, his chin almost on his chest, causing the skin of his neck to fold and wrinkle like free-hanging fabric. “You ever notch a drawer front like that? Don’t have a pair of scissors, do you?”
    â€œIn my car.” Jerome Harper’s hands meandered along the keyboard, his fingers silently confirming the notes of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Minor. “Want me to get them, Reverend?”
    The outer door of the church swung open and the sounds of footsteps and hushed whispers drifted in from the lower alcove.
    â€œNever mind.” Willoughby smoothed the front of his vestments with pink-skinned and blue-veined hands, and drew his shoulders back. “I believe we may be having a service after all.”
    Beneath its soaring white spire, St. Luke’s had ministered to the spiritual needs of Compton-area Episcopalians for