Downfall by J. A. Jance Page B

in?”
    Reverend Nelson glanced back over his shoulder as though looking for a reason to say no. A moment later, though, he stepped back and opened the door wider, allowing them entrance, eyeing each of them suspiciously as they walked past. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he grumbled. “What’s this all about?”
    â€œYou may want to take a seat, Reverend Nelson,” Joanna began. “I’m afraid we have some very bad news.”
    â€œShe’s dead, then?” he asked.
    Joanna nodded. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said.
    Joanna remembered all too clearly exactly what had happened to her when Jaime Carbajal had shown up at her house a little more than a week ago to deliver the terrible news that George Winfield was dead and her mother gravely wounded. That news had come completely out of the blue, and it had hit her so hard that it had been all she could do to remain upright. Since Susan Nelson had been missing for several days, news that she was dead might not come as a total shock. Nonetheless, Joanna expected some kind of emotional outburst from the bereaved husband. That wasn’t what she got.
    â€œAll right,” Reverend Nelson said, nodding. “All right, then.” He stepped farther into the room, lowered himself into a nearby rocking chair, and gestured for his visitors to take seats themselves in a tiny room stuffed with too many pieces of oversized furniture.
    â€œAll right?” a dismayed Joanna asked, settling in the easy chair closest to his rocker. “What do you mean by ‘all right’?”
    â€œâ€˜Let no man put asunder,’” he intoned.
    â€œYou mean you and Susan were married ‘until death do you part’?”
    â€œExactly,” he responded, without the slightest trace of grief. “Susan was out there doing all kinds of ungodly things and wouldn’t consider atoning for her sins. She refused to go even so far as to pray for forgiveness. Our Lord may be able to forgive Susan her sins, and maybe eventually I will be able to as well. Right now, though, there’s no forgiveness in my heart. None. She betrayed me, and what I’m feeling is something close to relief, now that I know she’s dead. I suppose I could have divorced her, you see. In fact, I probably should have divorced her—but then I wouldn’t have been practicing what I preach, now would I. And all those people sitting there in the pews listening to my sermons would have been able to call me a hypocrite, and rightly so.”
    Reverend Nelson leaned back in his chair and studied Joanna expectantly while she studied him in return. He was a paunchy man, with a balding pate and sagging features. From the looks of him, Joanna placed him as being somewhere in his early fifties, which would have made him a good fifteen years older than his late wife.
    â€œWell?” he demanded impatiently. “Are you going to tell me what happened or are we just going to sit around the rest of the night looking at one another? I suppose Susan must have totaled her car someplace, hopefully not with one of her lovers right there in the car with her. That wouldn’t surprise me, though, not a bit. What can you expect from such a shameless hussy?”
    This was unlike any next-of-kin notification Joanna had everdone. The anger and bitterness in the air were almost palpable. Even family members who eventually turned out to be killers usually had the good sense to at least pretend to be grief stricken. There was no such charade going on here. Reverend Drexel Nelson was pissed. He wasn’t going to take it anymore, and he was obviously happy to have been spared the shameful necessity of publicly divorcing an erring spouse.
    Was that enough to turn him into a suspect? Joanna wondered. Absolutely, especially since the man had already admitted to someone else that he had no alibi for the time when the murders were thought