of fashion this year.” He escorted her toward the steps. “Are you here on or off the Record ?”
“You’re just full of puns tonight, aren’t you? I’m here for the champagne and crab quiche. And you.”
“Me?”
“Not to pat your pretty butt—though I’ll manage it sometime this evening, I’m sure. No, I figured out a little something about those church fires. It’s not much—”
He drew her away from the front door and around the corner of the verandah. “I’ll take whatever I can get.”
“The Methodist one doesn’t show up on any of the Look-see spells.”
“You mean there’s magic involved in the others, but not the Methodists?”
“Not a breath of it. I got to thinking about what Holly and I dug out of the files back in November—the articles we found using the spider crush. Now, I know damned good and well the barn fire over at Silver Rock in nineteen-and-twenty-four wasn’t dry lightning the way it got written up in the paper, and I know this because my daddy started it while he was practicing a coupla spells. Grandma whopped him for it, too. Same with the article on the fire here at Westmoreland, back when Jesse and Lulah cleaned the place out. If Old Man Hartford hadn’t called in to the Sheriff’s Office to report it, we would never have mentioned it in the paper a-tall. But those articles and a few others were about fires I knew for a fact had magic in ’em somehow. So I checked all the ones since last September.”
“And all of them except for the Methodists . . .” Evan mulled this over. “Copycat? Nah, couldn’t be—there’s nothing to copy. Denominations, points of origin, accelerants—or not—there’s no pattern at all.”
She lowered herself into an ornate white wicker chair. “Lord and Lady, it’s hot. That rain can’t come fast enough tonight.”
Lachlan regarded her in silence for a moment. “Louvena, do you know something I should know?”
“Many, many things,” she replied with a deep chuckle. “Where’d y’all like to start?”
“I’ll let you pat my ass all night if you just give me a clue here,” he grinned back.
“ Let me?” she snorted. “Now, where’s the fun in that? It’s when they don’t know it’s comin’ that they jump the best. Timing, Evan. Life is all in the timing.”
Because he had long ago acknowledged this as a Truth of the Universe, he applied it to the topic at hand. Seeing his frown, Louvena helped him out.
“Here’s how I see it. It’s August of last year, and Cousin Poppy Bellew figures out three days ahead of the National Weather Service that Katrina is gonna be worse than the Battle of New Orleans and the New Madrid earthquake rolled into one. She and some of her Calvary Baptist ladies head down there to help, because that’s what Poppy’s always done. A couple of friends from Gospel Baptist join them. The Old Believers send down two pickups full of supplies the next day.”
“But every church in the county sent stuff—”
“Hush up and listen,” she snapped. “Katrina hits. Everybody from PoCo gets separated, nobody knows what anybody else is doin’—and the Feds couldn’t find their own asses with both hands and a road map. It’s more than a week after the hurricanes before our folks start limping back to home, bringing three New Orleans families who end up liking it here and decide to stay.”
“The Westlees, the Dumaines, and the Thomsons,” he supplied. Latisha Dumaine had, in fact, become his secretary at the Sheriff’s Office. “Wait—they’re all Baptists?”
“They surely are, and all at Gospel. But I’m not done yet. Everybody makes it back home eventually—except for Poppy.”
Evan mulled this over, too. The last time anyone had heard from Poppy Bellew, she was at a rest stop in Mississippi on her way back to Virginia with three teenaged girls and a thirteen-year-old boy. Her brief conversation with Pastor Deutschman of Calvary Baptist had included no information about
“You’re just full of puns tonight, aren’t you? I’m here for the champagne and crab quiche. And you.”
“Me?”
“Not to pat your pretty butt—though I’ll manage it sometime this evening, I’m sure. No, I figured out a little something about those church fires. It’s not much—”
He drew her away from the front door and around the corner of the verandah. “I’ll take whatever I can get.”
“The Methodist one doesn’t show up on any of the Look-see spells.”
“You mean there’s magic involved in the others, but not the Methodists?”
“Not a breath of it. I got to thinking about what Holly and I dug out of the files back in November—the articles we found using the spider crush. Now, I know damned good and well the barn fire over at Silver Rock in nineteen-and-twenty-four wasn’t dry lightning the way it got written up in the paper, and I know this because my daddy started it while he was practicing a coupla spells. Grandma whopped him for it, too. Same with the article on the fire here at Westmoreland, back when Jesse and Lulah cleaned the place out. If Old Man Hartford hadn’t called in to the Sheriff’s Office to report it, we would never have mentioned it in the paper a-tall. But those articles and a few others were about fires I knew for a fact had magic in ’em somehow. So I checked all the ones since last September.”
“And all of them except for the Methodists . . .” Evan mulled this over. “Copycat? Nah, couldn’t be—there’s nothing to copy. Denominations, points of origin, accelerants—or not—there’s no pattern at all.”
She lowered herself into an ornate white wicker chair. “Lord and Lady, it’s hot. That rain can’t come fast enough tonight.”
Lachlan regarded her in silence for a moment. “Louvena, do you know something I should know?”
“Many, many things,” she replied with a deep chuckle. “Where’d y’all like to start?”
“I’ll let you pat my ass all night if you just give me a clue here,” he grinned back.
“ Let me?” she snorted. “Now, where’s the fun in that? It’s when they don’t know it’s comin’ that they jump the best. Timing, Evan. Life is all in the timing.”
Because he had long ago acknowledged this as a Truth of the Universe, he applied it to the topic at hand. Seeing his frown, Louvena helped him out.
“Here’s how I see it. It’s August of last year, and Cousin Poppy Bellew figures out three days ahead of the National Weather Service that Katrina is gonna be worse than the Battle of New Orleans and the New Madrid earthquake rolled into one. She and some of her Calvary Baptist ladies head down there to help, because that’s what Poppy’s always done. A couple of friends from Gospel Baptist join them. The Old Believers send down two pickups full of supplies the next day.”
“But every church in the county sent stuff—”
“Hush up and listen,” she snapped. “Katrina hits. Everybody from PoCo gets separated, nobody knows what anybody else is doin’—and the Feds couldn’t find their own asses with both hands and a road map. It’s more than a week after the hurricanes before our folks start limping back to home, bringing three New Orleans families who end up liking it here and decide to stay.”
“The Westlees, the Dumaines, and the Thomsons,” he supplied. Latisha Dumaine had, in fact, become his secretary at the Sheriff’s Office. “Wait—they’re all Baptists?”
“They surely are, and all at Gospel. But I’m not done yet. Everybody makes it back home eventually—except for Poppy.”
Evan mulled this over, too. The last time anyone had heard from Poppy Bellew, she was at a rest stop in Mississippi on her way back to Virginia with three teenaged girls and a thirteen-year-old boy. Her brief conversation with Pastor Deutschman of Calvary Baptist had included no information about
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