A Touch of Grace

“The residents of the mission who knew her and a few street people.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged. “Come to Isaiah House and ask them yourself.”

Gretchen smiled grimly. She should have seen that one coming.

“Maybe I will.” But not for the reasons he had in mind.

“We have chapel mornings and evenings at seven. Bible studies are pretty much ongoing, some formal, some informal.”

“Or I could come for the soup.” The silliness slipped out and she laughed. Then guilt rushed in. How could she laugh on the day of her sister’s funeral?

“Laughter is the best medicine, and it’s a lot less expensive.”

The preacher was uncannily intuitive. She’d better be more careful. “But my sister was buried today.”

He grew quiet for a minute, as if he drew inside. Gretchen wondered if he was praying. Elbows to knees, hands clasped together in front of his face, he bounced thumb knuckles against his chin.

“I won’t pretend to understand Maddy’s death, because I don’t. If I was God, she’d still be alive today.”

His intense honesty surprised her. He didn’t sound like any preacher she’d ever heard before. She had expected platitudes.

“Aren’t you going to tell me that Maddy’s suffering is over now? Or that she’s in a far better place?” Trite little sayings that infuriated her.

He shook his head. A small scar gleamed white through the brown hair above his ear.

“All I know for sure is this, Gretchen. God cared about Maddy. He loved her. And Maddy wanted to love Him in return.”

Yes, Maddy had always longed for God, tormented that she’d left the faith but too wise and too scared to go back. She could almost hear her sister’s frequent worry. “What if Brother Gordon was right? What if we’ve lost our only chance at Heaven?”

Gretchen jabbed the straw up and down in her lemonade cup, rattling ice. The noise seemed out of place here among the quiet tombs. “Do you think my sister went to Heaven?”

“I don’t know.” Again he answered honestly and she was grateful. “No one but Maddy and the Lord knows what transpired between them in those last hours of her life. But she was on her way back to the mission. Don’t you think that means something?”

Sincerity oozed from the man like whipped cream between the layers of a sweet cake. She wanted to believe he was the “real deal” as Maddy had claimed. But she always came back to the same thing. Maddy was dead. Where was Ian Carpenter and Isaiah House when her sister needed them most?

“Why did she leave there in the first place?”

He drew in a deep breath and leaned forward, shoulders hunched. His gaze grew distant. “At some point in her counseling Maddy hit a wall. She was afraid to face something from her past.”

Gretchen knew Maddy held secrets. She also suspected what some of them were. “Did she give you any indication?”

Ian shook his head. “More than once she talked about needing to find her higher purpose. And then she’d clam up.”

Gretchen froze. Higher purpose? A vision of Brother Gordon’s gentle face reared up before her, urging her and Maddy to do things in order to attain their higher purpose. In the end, the higher purpose had been Brother Gordon’s bank account and his desire to control others.

The memory had no place at her sister’s funeral. She stood. The movement, coupled with the heat and fatigue, made her wobble. Ian reached out to steady her, his strong hand oddly comforting. She slid away from his touch, not wanting her reporter’s objectivity to be hindered by the fact that the preacher was an attractive man and outwardly kind. The inner Ian was the one she needed to know about.

What was his part in Maddy’s death? Was he as innocent and kind as he seemed? Or did he make false promises and give false hope to the vulnerable? She’d once reported on a ministry that had tragically convinced a suicidal teen to stop taking his antidepressants and spend more time in prayer. The boy had shot himself.

Did Isaiah House also indulge in unethical and dangerous practices?

A headache pushed at the inside of her temples.

It wasn’t that Gretchen disliked preachers or religious groups. Not at all. Some were excellent, but the public had a right to know. Her job was to find out what the general public couldn’t, to force charities, especially religious groups, out into the open. To make them stop hiding behind the cross.

An idea for a new investigative series popped into her head. After the hurricane, she’d worked day and night for weeks investigating distributions to the relief effort, uncovering any number of discrepancies, misappropriations and downright theft of public monies. She wasn’t too popular with the local authorities but a couple of her stories had been picked up by the networks, and since then the station allowed her free rein.

She was a watchdog, a guardian for the people. Her viewers depended on her to shoot square. To help them choose the best groups to support and those to avoid. Gretchen took this responsibility very seriously. She and her family had once been duped. She didn’t want such a thing to happen to anyone else.

The hair rose on the back of her neck. Had it already happened to Maddy?

“Would you mind if I visited Isaiah House?”

Blue eyes blinked at her. “Everyone is welcome at Isaiah House.”

“I meant in an official capacity.” She watched him closely, eager to see if the suggestion rattled him. It didn’t.

Serene as a blue sky, he said, “We’re an open book.”

Satisfaction curled through Gretchen’s mind. If Ian Carpenter and his mission had anything to hide, she and everyone else in Louisiana would soon know.

Chapter Three

“Ian, I think you’d better come outside.”

Ian looked up from his desk at the heavyset young woman standing in the door of his ground-floor office. Tabitha was one of the day counselors who worked with the female residents. He thought her name was appropriate since the Biblical Tabitha had also been a servant to those in need.

“What’s up?”

“The newswoman’s here again. Channel Eleven.”

“Already?”

When Barracuda Barker said she was coming to the mission, Ian hadn’t expected her quite so soon. The funeral was only yesterday.

He pushed up from the cluttered desk where he’d been praying about the runaway he’d taken in last night. After two hours of negotiation and countless calls to other agencies for social services Isaiah House couldn’t provide, he’d gotten the girl and her parents to agree to one more try. He only hoped things worked out this time.

As he came around the desk, Tabitha glanced down at his feet. “Another new pair of shoes?”

Ian held out the pristine white runners for inspection. “Like ’em?”

“Cool. How many pairs does this make?”

That was a question Ian would rather not answer. He gave away his shoes to the needy on a regular basis, but every time he passed a shoe store he came home with a new pair. All his friends teased him about his one vice, but try as he would, he couldn’t seem to stop buying shoes.

“Don’t start about the shoes.”