He met my gaze as reality settled in, and for the first time I noticed that Charlotte had gone to the other man—who happened to be the priest, Todd Anderson. She was helping him to his feet, brushing the ice off of his coat, and shooting daggers at Charlie.
Charlotte was carrying the pink bag with the mini arsenal inside, and my throat tightened at the idea that she could pull a weapon from it if she so chose. “We’ll get you inside and warm you up,” she said, as Todd stood and then slanted sideways before sinking into the brick wall.
“Looks like your priest can’t hold his liquor,” I said.
“And the police presence around here is obviously confused as to their real job.” Charlotte spat out the last sentence at Charlie, even though she didn’t make eye contact with him, and I once again wondered how she knew that my boyfriend was the “police presence” around here.
Charlie’s truck was still running in the middle of the road, the passenger door open, as if the priest had fled without stopping to even shut the door.
Charlie shook his head at the priest, a look of disgust on his face. I’d never seen this side of him. I didn’t even know he was capable of this kind of violent behavior, especially with a near-perfect stranger.
“Both of you, come inside,” I said, trying to sound authoritativeas I opened the door to Sugar & Spice. Jemma’s, Savilla’s, and Lacy’s eyes were wide as they watched the scene unfold from the doorway, while Myrtis and Bella stood on the other side of the store, as if they didn’t want to get involved.
“Do you have some ice? For the priest’s jaw?” I asked the owner of the store, whose name I’d completely forgotten.
The woman simply nodded and gestured for me and the sheriff to follow her to a tiny back room, where she opened a fridge and took out an ice pack that usually went inside kids’ lunchboxes. It would have to do.
I grabbed a couple of napkins and wrapped them around the pack before handing it over to Charlotte, who placed it against Todd’s jaw. Then I grabbed Charlie by the shirt, pulling him into what looked to be a back office. The owner tactfully closed the door behind us.
“This is not you,” I started, not knowing how to say everything I wanted to say to Charlie. Maybe that he was supposed to be my mild-mannered, ever-steady, measured anchor. Maybe that I’d never seen him overreact. Maybe that he never got into his head so much that he did something unhinged. The unexpected, the nonsensical, the righteous anger—that was occasionally my territory, but not his.
“Todd was saying threatening things about Valerie and the baby,” Charlie said, his tone weary as the adrenaline started to wear off. He sat in the office chair and spun it around to face me.
“Threatening?” I repeated after a few seconds, making sure I’d heard him correctly.
Charlie breathed out a long sigh and hung his head, letting it fall into his hands. “I mean… I think so.”
I could tell that he too was struggling to wrap his mind around what had just happened. He took a steadying breath.
“We played poker, we drank, we had a good time. The evening was winding down when Todd said he was going to drive into town for a nightcap. I told him that since we’re a dry county, nightcaps don’t really exist in Aubergine, but he insisted, gotreally fidgety, then started acting almost manic.” Charlie shrugged. “He’d been drinking alcohol, so when he took his keys and headed outside, I took them from him. He was insistent, talking about how he had ‘things to do’ in town. When he started walking down the lane in the freezing cold, I got in my truck and told him to get inside.” Charlie sighed and looked up at me. “I was planning to either show him how dead our town is at night or drive him around until he passed out, then bring him back to The Rose to sleep it off—whichever came first.”
Charlie paused as if to consider how to explain the next part of the story, his brows darkening as he replayed the last few minutes. “But then Todd started shouting about how he needed to go to the bank.”
“The bank?” I repeated.
“Yes—and saying he was going to kill Will if he didn’t come through.”
“Come through with what?”
“He wouldn’t say. Then he totally changed course and started saying all of these awful things about what he was going to do to Valerie and the baby if Will messed things up. I stopped the car and told him to shut his mouth, but instead he saw you all in the store window, flung open the door while I was still driving, and ran out of the car. I assumed he was coming to find Valerie, so that’s when I went after him and did the only thing I knew would get him to stop.”
“Punch him in the face?”
Charlie shook his hand as if he could still feel the force of it against Reverend Todd’s face. He stared at me. “I’ve never punched anyone. Ever.”
This sounded more like my boyfriend, the one who didn’t act without thinking—unless someone was a danger to himself or others.
“Todd could press charges against me,” Charlie thought aloud.
“For what?”
“Assault.”
I let out a huff of air. “I’ll be impressed if the man remembers tonight, and if he does, I don’t think he’ll want to admit that he was running around threatening a woman and her baby.”
Charlie let his head sink back against the chair and closed his eyes, as if he was trying to think clearly. “How is this man a priest? And what on earth does Patty see in him?”
An idea came to me, and I pulled out my phone.
