The Night Killer

the other church and couldn’t imagine any of them as murderers.
    “It’s mostly the sheriff, the reverend, and the deacons,” said the young man. “Don’t you tell me it’s not, Miss Maud. They hated the Barres and the Watsons, and you know it.”
    “No, son,” said the woman’s husband. “This is wrong. They don’t carry hate in their hearts, and we shouldn’t either.”
    “What about the calls they made to my parents?” said Violet. “Mom was real upset about them. What is that, if not hate?”
    “Let’s not fight among ourselves,” said the minister. “Please. We have guests, and all they want is information, not judgments.” He cast a glance at the woman in the blue dress named Maud. He apparently didn’t think they needed to be disagreeing with the Watsons at a time like this.
    After that, Diane tried to keep the conversation low-key. Violet and Lillian did their best to remember who exactly might have called their parents with threats.
    “You can get your parents’ phone records,” Diane told the two sisters. “You might tell the sheriff to do that, as it is his case.”
    Violet shook her head. “The sheriff is going to sweep this under the rug.”
    “Tell him anyway,” said Diane. “How about the Barres?” Diane turned to Christine and Spence. “Did they get calls too?”
    “I don’t really know,” Christine said. “I’m not sure they would have mentioned it. Frankly, Daddy thought so little of those people, he would have considered threats from them to be normal.”
    “How about anyone else?” said Diane. “Can you think of anyone besides the Golgotha Church members who may have posed a threat to your parents? Had they mentioned speaking with any strangers about anything?”
    Christine and Spence sat in silence for a moment. Diane could almost see them thinking as they chewed their food.
    “There was a young couple,” said Spence. “Daddy didn’t say much about them, except that they were interested in the history of the area. But he said they were pretty young and naive. I didn’t get the idea they were any kind of a threat.”
    “When was this?” said Diane. She was thinking this was probably Liam’s client’s daughter and her boyfriend.
    “Oh, about three weeks ago, maybe,” said Spence. “Daddy just mentioned it in passing.”
    “What was it about the history they were asking?” said Diane.
    He shook his head and shrugged. “Gold mining, maybe. Something like that. You know, some people here still pan for gold.”
    A young teenager at the end of the table lifted his hand and grinned. “I paid for my computer with what I got panning,” he said.
    “Tyler, that’s not true,” a man said, smiling broadly. “You paid for a computer by panning? I don’t believe it.”
    A man who looked like he might be the kid’s father nodded his head. “It was a used computer, and it took him over a year. But, yeah, he did it.”
    “Well, I’ll be,” said the man. “You think maybe I could find anything in the creek out back?” he said to the woman next to him.
    “You got to be someone like a teenager with nothing else to do,” the father said, and everyone laughed.
    “I got the idea that this couple were interested in panning for gold,” said Spence.
    Diane asked as many questions as she could think of, and Frank asked a few of his own. She wondered if Liam and Izzy were having any luck. What Diane had mainly discovered was that the animosity between the two churches was worse than Travis Conrad had indicated. And that most of the congregation of this church didn’t even want to speculate on who might have done this terrible thing. It was outside their experience and outside of anything they believed anyone they knew would do. Diane asked them to call her if they remembered anything, no matter how small. She also said they should tell the sheriff of anything they saw or remembered. That got a few harrumphs from several members.
    “Thank all of you for your kind hospitality to us,” said Diane.
    “You come back,” said a woman. “You might consider joining.” She looked at Frank. “We could use your voice in the Christmas pageant.”
    Diane got up and started to take her plate when a woman stopped her, smiling.
    “We’ll take care of this,” she said.
    Diane went to the restroom before leaving. Andie went with her. She met the woman in the blue dress in the hallway.
    “You’re just stirring up trouble,” Maud said. “Do you even go to