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definite pause. “Eight or nine years, I suppose,” Brodie replied.
     
    “You’ve known her since before Angel was born?”
     
    Brodie nodded, and Peters continued. “What became of her husband?”
     
    Brodie shook his head sadly. “Andrew slipped away from our flock of True Believers.”
     
    “That’s why Suzanne divorced him?” I asked.
     
    “Yes.” Again there was an almost imperceptible pause. “There can be no marriage with someone outside the Faith.”
     
    “Do you have any idea where he is?”
     
    “No, I don’t. When someone leaves us, we believe they have died and gone to perdition. No contact with any one of the True Believers is allowed.”
     
    “Will anyone try to let him know about Angel? After all, he is her father. He would probably want to be here,” Peters suggested.
     
    Brodie looked at Peters as though the detective was a little dense and hadn’t quite grasped the finer points of the conversation. “It would be very difficult for someone who is already dead to attend someone else’s Thanksgiving Service.”
     
    “I see what you mean,” I said. Peters’ temper was on an upswing again. Maybe control comes with age. I fervently wished Peters could age ten years in about as many minutes.
     
    “How’d you get the scratch on the back of your hand?” Peters asked.
     
    Brodie looked at it. “We’ve been doing a lot of yard work around the church,” he said. “It happened the other day when we were pruning.”
     
    A car pulled up just then. A man and three women got out. They walked past us, nodding to Brodie as they picked their way into the house. “We’re having a prayer session right now,” Brodie explained, backing away from Peters and me. “We’re praying for the murderer’s immortal soul. It’s our way of turning the other cheek.”
     
    “Is the whole congregation coming?” Peters asked.
     
    “The ones who aren’t working.”
     
    “Speaking of working,” I said, “what about Benjamin Mason. Does he work?”
     
    Brodie’s face went slightly brittle. “He does yard work.”
     
    “You know where he is now?”
     
    The pastor shook his head and I handed him a card. “You have him call me when you see him.” Brodie took the card without looking at it, then excused himself to go deal with his flock. The purpose of the prayer meeting stuck in my craw. I would have preferred the prayers be for Angel Barstogi or even Suzanne. I didn’t think the scumbag who murdered Angela deserved any prayers. I didn’t then, and I don’t now.
     

Chapter 4
 
    W e were standing with the doors open, ready to climb into the car when a voice hailed us. “Yoo-hoo,” a woman called. “Over here.”
     
    Gay Avenue looks as though it started out to be an alley for another set of streets. Everyone, except the builder of 4543, seemed to understand that. Suzanne Barstogi’s house was the only one that fronted on Gay Avenue. All the rest showed reasonably well-kept back doors and backyards. It was one of those backyards, across the street and down one house, to which we were summoned.
     
    A five-foot cedar fence provided an incongruous foundation for a massive wild blackberry bramble. The bush and the fence were like two drunks holding one another up, the resulting wall totally impenetrable. “Over here.” It was a quavery, old woman’s voice. At the far corner of the fence, the bramble had been cut back enough to allow a wooden gate to open ever so slightly “You are the cops, aren’t you?” she asked.
     
    “Yes ma’am,” Peters answered. The gate opened a little further, wide enough for us to ease into the opening, but not without picking up a couple of thorny jabs in the process.
     
    Inside, we found ourselves in a weedy yard, facing a diminutive old lady with bright red hair and a spry way about her. She wore old-fashioned glasses with white harlequin frames and narrow lenses. She gave the heavy wooden gate a surprisingly swift shove and padlocked it in