Read Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series) for Free Online Page B

was hard to believe this strong man talking to us was Luther’s senior. I had placed Albert Jones in his early sixties and Luther in his eighties. Now I realized I was at least a decade short. It also occurred to me the good pastor was someone who probably knew everything worth knowing about Oak Grove and its people. Whether he would choose to share this knowledge with us was another question. I decided to take the lead.
    “I would like to know more about that accident, pastor,” I told him. I saw shutters go down behind his eyes. “I wouldn’t ask you to violate any professional confidence, but it would help to know anything you can tell us.”
    I could see the man was torn. Nor was it fear that troubled him. Looking back, I think he was considering the lesser of evils. Talking to us might open up areas of the past he would rather stay closed. Yet, not doing so might prompt us to probe into other areas even more unpleasant. I think he decided that in talking to us he could steer the conversation along the least unpleasant line.
    He pulled out a pocket watch. Like the suit, it was very old and very elegant. “I have a prayer service in a half hour and I need to get ready for that. Perhaps some other time.”
    “We’ll be here tomorrow morning,” I told him. “Would that do?”
    Albert Jones nodded. “Meet me here at the church at eleven.” Not waiting confirmation, he turned and walked over to Luther. When he said something, the old man got up and followed. Together they disappeared into the church.
    Dee sighed. “He knows something. I can smell it.”
    I nodded. “Finding out what it is may be a problem.” Later, as we drove out of Oak Grove and the church caught my eye, something fluttered around the threshold of awareness in my mind. There was a critical question I needed to ask the pastor. Yet, for the life of me I couldn’t figure what it was.
     
     
     
    2. The Village Smithy
     
    When Dee picked me up early the next morning, I had a better sense of the case. The motel was an easy walk from the jail and I spent a couple of hours going over the file. Then I went for a walk, something people don’t seem to do very much in Nashville. I only saw one other soul out walking, a young woman in a sweat suit leading an old German shepherd that was having trouble keeping up with her pace. She passed me like I was standing still, and I had a moment of sympathy for the old dog. I walk at a good pace, clocking in at three miles in an hour, but she was going half again as fast.
    As she passed, I wondered, as I always do, what her hurry was, how she might use the time she may have saved. For me, walking is not exercise so much as a time to get away, a time to set aside the concerns of the day and simply be still for awhile. So I don’t wear headphones or listen to whatever it is people listen to as they walk or run. I listen to the sounds of the night, which is the time of day I prefer to be out, or to the music of the spheres. As I listen, I wait for whatever insights the universe may have to offer. The interesting thing is that answers to many of the hardest questions that develop in a case come to me while I walk. Moving my legs seems to get the gray matter going, too, and I read somewhere that this is true for most people.    
    Late October weather can go either way in this part of the world, but that night it was cool and clear, and there was a hint of winter ahead in the air. Like many small, rural towns, Nashville is one of those places where they roll up the sidewalks at dusk. The only night life I could see as I walked the town was at the drive-in burger barn.
    Even there business was slow. Wednesday night is church night in rural Arkansas and I wondered why there were so few cars at the half dozen or so churches I passed. The tune from an old song drifted through my mind, but the times were not changing. They had changed a long time ago.
    Other than that, no blinding insights into this minor mystery came