Salvation in death

“I’ll use my own.”

“I’ve got the run started on mine.”

He sighed, took hers, tapped a couple buttons. “Now it’s on mine, too. Anything in particular you’d like me to find?”

“It’d be really keen if you found Jimmy Jay Jenkins had ties to some guy named Lino from Spanish Harlem. Otherwise…” She looked around the arena. “God’s a big business, right?”

“Biblical.”

“Ha. Find out how much in Jimmy Jay’s pockets, and who gets what. Thanks. Officer?”

They exited the stage, moved through the wings. “Where’s the vic’s dressing room?” she asked.

“Other side.” The cop jerked a thumb.

“Really?”

He shrugged. “Mrs. Dead Guy got the hysterics. Had to carry her off, call the MTs in for her. We got a female officer in with her. MT gave her a mild soother, but…”

He trailed off as wailing and sobs echoed off the walls.

“Didn’t help much,” he added.

“Great.” Eve stepped to the door where the wails and sobs battered the metal. She rolled her shoulders, opened it.

She might have staggered, not just from the sounds, but from all the pink. It was like a truckload of cotton candy exploded, and it immediately gave her a phantom toothache.

The woman herself wore a pink dress with an enormous skirt that poofed up as she sprawled on a chaise like a candy mountain. Her hair, a bright, eye-dazzling gold, tumbled in disarray around a face where several pounds of enhancers had melted and washed down in black, red, pink, and blue streaks.

For a moment, Eve thought Jolene had torn some of her hair out in her mad grief, then realized the hunks of it scattered on the floor and chaise were extensions and enhancers.

The cop on the door gave Eve a look that managed to be weary, cynical, relieved, and amused all at once. “Sir? Officer McKlinton. I’ve been standing with Mrs. Jenkins.”

Pleasewas the underlying message. Please set me free.

“Take a break, Officer. I’ll speak with Mrs. Jenkins now.”

“Yes, sir.” McKlinton moved to the door, and mumbled, “Good luck,” under her breath.

“Mrs. Jenkins,” Eve began, and in response Jolene shrieked and threw her arm over her eyes. And not for the first time, Eve decided, as the arm was covered with smears of the facial enhancers like a kind of weird wound.

“I’m Lieutenant Dallas,” Eve said over the shrieks and sobs. “I know this is a difficult time, and I’m very sorry for your loss, but-”

“Where is my Jimmy Jay! Where is my husband? Where are my babies? Where are our girls?”

“I need you to stop.” Eve walked over, leaned down, took Jolene by the quaking shoulders. “I need you to stop this, or I’m walking out. If you want me to help you, help your family, then you’ll stop. Now.”

“How can you help? My husband is dead. Only God can help now.” Her voice, thick with tears and the South, shrill with hysteria, sawed through the top of Eve’s head. “Oh why, why did God take him from me? I don’t have enough faith to understand. I don’t have the strength to go on!”

“Fine. Sit here and wallow then.”

She turned away, and got halfway across the room when Jolene called out, “Wait! Wait! Don’t leave me alone. My husband, my partner in life and in the light eternal, has been taken from me. Have pity.”

“I’ve got plenty of pity, but I also have a job to do. Do you want me to find out how, why, and who took him from you?”

Jolene covered her face with her hands, smearing enhancements like fingerpaint. “I want you to make it not happen.”

“I can’t. Do you want to help me find out who did this?”

“Only God can take a life, or give one.”

“Tell that to all the people, just in this city, who are murdered by another human being every week. You believe what you want, Mrs. Jenkins, but it wasn’t God who put poison in that bottle of water.”

“Poison. Poison.” Jolene slapped a hand to her heart, held the other up.

“We need the medical examiner to confirm, but yes, I believe your husband was poisoned. Do you want me to find out who did that, or just pray about it?”

“Don’t be sacrilegious, not at such a time.” Shud-dering, shuddering, Jolene squeezed her eyes shut. “I want you to find out. If someone hurt my Jimmy, I want to know. Are you a Christian, miss?”

“Lieutenant. I’m a cop, and that’s what matters here. Now tell me what happened, what you saw.”

Between hiccups and quavers, Jolene relayed what was essentially Attkins’s statement of events. “I ran onstage. I thought: ‘Oh sweet Jesus, help my Jimmy,’ and I saw, when I looked down, I saw… His eyes-he didn’t see me, they were staring, but he didn’t see me, and there was blood on his throat. They said I fainted, but I don’t remember. I remember being sick or dizzy, and someone was trying to pick me up, and I guess I went a little crazy. They-it was one of the police and, Billy, I think, who brought me in here, and someone came and gave me something to calm me down. But it didn’t help. What would?”

“Did your husband have any enemies?”

“Any powerful man does. And a man like Jimmy Jay, one who speaks the word of God-not everyone wants to hear it. He has a bodyguard, he has Clyde.”

“Any particular enemies?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“A man in his position accumulates considerable wealth.”

“He built the church, and ministers to it. He gives back more, so much more than he ever gathered for himself. Yes,” she said, stiffly now, “we have a comfortable life.”

“What happens to the church and its assets now?”

“I… I-” She pressed a hand to her lips. “He took steps to be sure the church would continue after his passing. That if he met God first, I would be taken care of, and our children, our grandchildren. I don’t know all the particulars. I try not to think about it.”

“Who set the water out for him tonight?”

“One of the girls, I suppose.” Her ravaged eyes closed. Eve calculated the tranq had finally cut through the hysteria. “Or Billy. Maybe Clyde.”

“Were you aware your husband routinely had vodka added to his water?”

Her ravaged eyes popped open. Then she huffed out a matronly breath and shook her head. “Oh, Jimmy Jay! He knew I disapproved. An occasional glass of wine, that’s all right. But did our Lord and Savior have vodka at the Last Supper? Did He change water into vodka at Cana?”

“I’m guessing no.”

Jolene smiled a little. “He had a taste for it, my Jimmy. Didn’t overdo. I wouldn’t have stood for it. But I didn’t know he was still having the girls tip a little into his stage water. It’s a small indulgence, isn’t it? A small thing.” Fresh tears spilled as she plucked at the voluminous poofs of her skirt. “I wish I hadn’t scolded him about it now.”

“How about his other indulgences?”

“His daughters, his grandbabies. He spoiled them to bits and pieces. And me.” She sighed, her voice slurring now with the drug. “He spoiled me, too, and I let him. Children. He had a soft spot for children. That’s why he built the school back down home. He believed in feeding a child’s mind, body, soul, and their imagination. Officer-I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten.”

“Lieutenant Dallas.”

“Lieutenant Dallas. My husband was a good man. He wasn’t perfect, but he was a good man. Maybe even great. He was a loving husband and father, and a devoted shepherd to his flock. He served the Lord, every day. Please, I want my children now. I want my daughters. Can’t I have my daughters now?”

“I’ll check on that.”

With the oldest daughter’s statement on record, Eve cleared putting the two women together. And she moved on to the manager.

Billy Crocker sat in a smaller dressing room on what Eve thought of as Jimmy Jay’s side of the stage. His eyes were raw and red, his face gray.

“He’s really dead.”

“Yes, he is.” Eve chose to start at a different point. “When’s the last time you spoke with Mr. Jenkins?”