Dance of the Bones

Grover gave me another lopsided grin. “Not really. God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes you have to be hit smack over the head for Him to get your attention. At least, that’s how it was for me. Once He did, I could see only one way forward. I decided to ride my wheelchair into the ministry. That’s where Callie and I met. She’d had her own personal struggles—-including losing Kenny, the guy she had thought was the love of her life. In a way, we met when we were both starting over from square one.”


Glancing around the spacious room, I thought that together they’d done a remarkable job of starting over.

“Callie’s calling was to minister to the homeless,” he resumed. “Since we were teaming up, I decided to make her mission my mission. Fortunately, I had a sizable malpractice settlement from both the hospital and anesthesiologist. That gave us a bit of a nest egg. We still have a fair amount of it. That’s important, since most of our parishioners are dead broke. When it comes to tithing, ten percent of nothing is still nothing. We got into this place during an economic downturn and were able to combine two units into one so we’d have some separation from work and home. Cuts way down on the commute.”

I had already done a quick calculation on the size of that nest egg. Knowing it had been large enough to allow them to purchase and remodel two units rather than one, I revised my estimate upward.

A pocket door opened at the far end of the combination living room/dining room. A woman stepped through and carefully closed the door behind her. Before my talk with Dale Grover, I had formed a mental image of Calliope Horn--Grover that turned out to be completely wrong. She was a short but formidable--looking woman dressed in a severe black pantsuit topped by a white clerical collar. Her no--nonsense square--toed oxfords looked as though they had been made to kick butt. Her plain face, devoid of makeup, was framed by a wild mane of naturally graying hair. She struck me as a fifty--something woman comfortably at ease with her life, her looks, and her circumstances.

Like her husband, Reverend Horn--Grover greeted me with a genuine smile and a warm handshake.

“I’m Callie,” she said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Then, turning her attention on her husband, she asked, “Did you offer our guest any refreshments?”

“I did,” Dale said. “He turned me down.”

“Very well then, Mr. Beaumont,” she said, taking a seat on the far end of my sofa. “What can I do for you?”

“I just finished reading through the transcripts of the interview you did with Detective Sue Danielson.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yes, it was,” I agreed. “But when I mentioned John Lassiter’s name on the phone earlier, you recognized it immediately.”

“Yes, I did. Kenny considered John Lassiter to be a good friend. He felt Lassiter’s imprisonment was a complete miscarriage of justice.”

“But you never reached out to Mr. Lassiter?”

Callie sighed and shook her head. “No, I didn’t. At first when I thought Kenny had just gone back to Arizona and forgotten about me, I refused to even think about his friends, much less have anything to do with them. Once I learned he was dead—-had been dead right here in Seattle for years rather than taking off for -Arizona—-I was too ashamed. And then . . .”

Shrugging, she broke off.

“And then what?” I prodded.

“Big Bad John was Kenny’s friend, not mine. When I learned Kenny had lied to me about everything—-including his last name—-it seemed likely to me that he might have lied to me about John Lassiter as well. For all I know, Kenny might have been involved in whatever it was that put Lassiter in prison in the first place. Dale and I talked it over and decided the best thing to do was let sleeping dogs lie. And that’s what we did. I’m sorry to hear that the man has been seriously injured, though. We’ll certainly pray for him.”

“You could just as well go ahead and tell him the rest of it,” Dale Grover said.

“The rest of what?” I asked.

Calliope took a deep breath. “Dale and I have had twenty--plus years to think about this and talk about it, too,” she said. “He came up with a theory that I’d never considered.”