Apple of My Eye (Tiger's Eye Mystery #7) - Alyssa Day Page 0,14

the weather too, and Bonnie Jo is off her feed, so I told him to stay home and take care of himself and her. He'll be glad to see you. You always had a way with that horse."

I loved Bonnie Jo. I'd told her all my secrets when I was a child missing my mother and not understanding why my father wouldn't come home. It hurt to think she might be failing. She was a very old horse, after all.

She dug out her keys. "Should we drive together? No, on second thought, I'll meet you there, because I need to stop at the office for a minute or two after church," Aunt Ruby said, bustling out to her car.

Oh, boy.

I really needed to tell her about the box.

Not now, though. After church. Maybe I'd follow her to City Hall and tell her in the privacy of her new office, so her shrieks wouldn't terrify the kids in Sunday school.

I sighed. The Big Book of Southern Manners held no chapters on ways to tell your aunt that somebody had left a human finger on your doorstep.

I climbed in my new Mustang (early birthday gift from my grandmother the banshee) and drove the five miles to church, hoping God had some answers for this dilemma, because I was fresh out.

I loved our little church. It had been built in 1844 by a family of Domovoi—Slavic house spirits—who'd been escaping persecution in New England. For some reason, even though Domovoi were generally about three feet in height, one of their nephews or grandsons or something had almost been six feet tall, so it was a normal-sized building. The family had moved back to Russia sometime in the 1920s, after a dispute with a police officer about whether or not Prohibition applied in Dead End, according to a plaque on the front of the church. The plaque had a bullet hole in it, which lent it a certain credibility.

The church itself was one-story, painted white, with stained glass windows and a tiny bell tower, whose bells were ringing to call us to services now.

Pastor Nash, who was in his early forties and reminded me of a shy chipmunk with his inquisitive stares and slightly pronounced overbite, stood on the front porch, chatting and shaking hands and welcoming people. I was almost positive I caught him flinching when he saw me, but he was a man of God, so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Hello, Pastor."

"Welcome, Tess. Mayor Ruby is already inside."

I put my hands behind my back to avoid touching him and leaned in to whisper a few words.

"Psalm 100, Pastor. Joyful noise."

His eyes widened, and then he burst out into a true belly laugh. He was still laughing and wiping his eyes when I moved past, my spirits already lifted. I really needed to make it a priority to attend church more often.

Aunt Ruby was in the front, chatting with friends, or so I thought until I got closer.

"Mayor Callahan, you need to do something about that stop sign on the corner of Daffodil Drive and Tulip Lane. Those Peterson boys keep shooting at it," Mr. Haraldsson demanded.

Aunt Ruby put her hands on her hips. "Olav, I've known you for fifty years. If you call me Mayor Callahan again, I'm going to tell your mama."

He winced. "I'm sorry, Ruby. Don’t do that. She's still mad about the goldfish I put in the water glasses at her fancy dinner party back in 1973. Swears Odin himself will punish me for that one."

It was incredibly hard for me to imagine the serious and slightly pompous president of Dead End First National Bank being afraid of his mama, but I enjoyed the visual my imagination painted for me. Especially when I remembered the ordeal he'd put me through when I bought my house. I'd spent a solid week compiling those documents.

Everyone milling around settled into the pews, and I noticed that Aunt Ruby put a protective hand on our hymnals when Mrs. Nash came scurrying by.

"Keep walking, Henrietta," Aunt Ruby told her. "Just keep walking."

The pastor's wife pasted a not-very-sincere smile on her face and continued up to her place at the front of the church, casting a slightly despairing glance back at me as she went.

I sighed. "Does everybody hate my singing that much? I can just not sing. I'll stand here silently when everybody else sings."

"No, you will not," Aunt Ruby said sternly. "The Lord gave you that voice, and