When I looked up the story online, it didn’t mention her family, just that she had been on her way home from her job as a nurse’s aide in a neighboring suburb, that the road was badly lit, so a driver going too fast could well have swerved onto the sidewalk, and that services would be held at the Open Tabernacle Church in Tampier Lake Township, where Netta had worshipped for many years. The Net couldn’t tell me anything else about her; people like Netta Glover don’t leave a trail behind, not even on the World Wide Web.
Leydon had thought Netta’s death was important enough that she’d cut out the story. I suppressed the thought that she’d also clipped stories about the goji berry. Maybe a trip to the Open Tabernacle Church was in order. I combed my hair and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of my cargo pants.
For once, I hit the tollways and expressways when everyone else was at work or the beach or something: the fifty miles out to Tampier Lake Township took just an hour. The Open Tabernacle Church, on Slough Road, also proved easy to find. Even a tired, bewildered detective is lucky every now and then.
The message in the sign box in front of the modern brick building surprised me: “Wherever you are on life’s journey, the Open Tabernacle community welcomes you. We learn from your journey as we hope you learn from ours.”
My prejudices constantly catch me up: from the church’s name, and Netta Glover’s occupation, I’d assumed that this would be a storefront, fundamentalist church. Instead, as a list of principles posted inside the narthex door stated, they were an open and affirming community, embracing anyone, regardless of race, creed, sex, or sexual orientation. Beneath that earnest welcome was a staff listing: the pastor, Al Ordonez, a Christian ed director, a secretary, Doris Kaitano, and a music director.
The pastor wasn’t in the building but a woman in her sixties, presumably Doris Kaitano, was in the parish office, creating the bulletins for Sunday’s service. She wasn’t happy at being interrupted—“I’m here on my own. Can you come back?”—but when I introduced myself, and explained that I was hoping to learn something about Netta Glover, her expression softened. Slightly.
“If you could wait for Pastor Ordonez it would be better. Her death was a sad one, but I don’t really—”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “Can you answer one question for me? Is she related to anyone named Tommy?”
“Tommy? You honestly don’t know? That’s her son. Goodness! And what he will do—Al—Pastor Ordonez—has explained to Tommy that his mother is with Jesus, but we’re not sure he understands.”
“He’s at Ruhetal, right?”
“Yes. It was all long before my time. People say he killed that poor girl, but he’s mentally deficient and they finally decided he wasn’t competent to plead and put him in the mental hospital. Netta says—used to say—it’s why she joined our church—her old church, they told her it was God’s will, that she should accept the burdens that He was placing on her and not fight against them so hard. She always said Tommy couldn’t have killed the girl, and even though the evidence was against him, of course a mother should stand up for her son.”
“She tried to get a tribunal hearing for him?” I asked, trying to figure out the narrative.
Ms. Kaitano was so caught up in her story that she’d forgotten how harassed she was, there on her own and all. “Netta did hire a lawyer, but the law fees just about ate her alive, she’s still paying that old bill. She worked two jobs, bad jobs, nurse’s aide and clerking at Buy-Smart, because she had to keep paying the damn—darned—lawyers, even though they never did anything for her. She even had to sell her car to pay those bills! Which is how she got killed, poor soul. Getting up to Downers Grove to see Tommy, that was a public-transportation nightmare. We have people who volunteered to drive her once a month, but they didn’t always come through for her. It might have been easier if she’d sold her place and moved up near to the hospital, but it’s a little bit of a house that she wouldn’t get anything for, and even one bedroom up in Downers Grove would’ve cost her a fortune.”
“Did Netta talk to you about any of the other patients she met up at the hospital?” I ventured. “A woman in the regular part of the complex, for instance, who was a lawyer.”
Ms. Kaitano nodded slowly. “I forgot about that, but Netta did say there was a lady who offered to talk to Tommy, maybe put together a defense for him. A lawyer who offered to do it for nothing. I told Netta not to trust her, because in the first place, what lawyer works for nothing, and in the second, if the lady was a patient, it could all be a delusion. But Netta was so glad to find someone interested after all this time that she went ahead with it, at least, I think she did, but maybe nothing came of it, because she never mentioned it afterwards.”
“Leydon Ashford, was that the lawyer’s name?”
Ms. Kaitano threw up her hands. “I sit here all day long listening to a million stories. If Al—Pastor Ordonez—is out people think I’m ordained or something, with the time to let them chew my ear off. If Netta said the name, I wouldn’t remember anymore.”