I take the photos the way church ladies fold napkins—slow, careful, trying to look like courtesy and not evidence. The donor wall runs the length of the vestibule like a brag turned prayer: brass ovals, oak plaques, tiny screws the color of old buttons. My breath ghosts in the cool, and I smell incense settling on percolated-coffee residue from the parish hall. When I lean close, the lacquer warms under my phone’s light; the wood reflects my face in a rippled way that reminds me not to trust mirrors in holy places.
“Date first, wording second,” I whisper into my recorder, the mic hidden in my sleeve. “Cluster reads: ‘Tower Stabilization,’ ‘Access Modernization,’ ‘Rope Safety,’ all 2008.” I lift my wrist for another angle. “Primary underwriter: Crane Family Foundation; secondary: Whitcomb Marine; assorted small plates: ‘Anonymous’ five times, all that summer.”
Ruth stands back with the posture of a person waiting to be told no so she can write down who said it. Her eyes skim each column like case law. “Get the sub-plaques,” she says softly. “The little ones tell the big story.”
I crouch for a bottom row and feel the cold seep through my jeans. “Here,” I narrate. “June: ‘Emergency brace, bell platform.’ July: ‘Door reinforcement, tower stair.’ August: ‘Clock-face sealant.’ September: ‘Key management update—sponsored by Crane House Marina Club.’” I let the last one hang, a brass weight in the air.
The lake’s sound squeezes through the stained glass in slippery pieces. A seiche must be working today; the ropes at the docks will be pinging like thumb harps, and here the nave swallows that rhythm and turns it into a breath against the wall. The building listens while I do.
The edge of my phone warms my palm. I snap the largest plaque: an oval with engraved leaves. “In gratitude for the Crane family’s stewardship of our tower, 2008—,” I say into the sleeve. “Stewardship is a strong word.”
“Fluency in euphemism,” Ruth murmurs. “Takes years to learn; one scandal to forget.”
Footsteps pad on the stone behind us, soft, pastoral, practiced. Father Mikhail slides into the vestibule like the building breathed him out. His cassock pockets sign with the weight of keys. He smiles in the way I recognize from funerals—pastoral warmth with a thermostat knob.
“Mara,” he says, forming my first name like a benediction. “Ruth.” He hides his surprise badly at seeing us together. “You’re welcome here, of course. Are you admiring our wall?”
“I’m cataloging,” I say, voice set on polite. “Plaques, dates, for my research notes. I won’t use names without permission, Father.”
“Names are public,” he says quickly, then softens. “But context is pastoral.”
I ease my phone down. “Speaking of context,” I say, keeping my tone friendly, “I was hoping to confirm something mundane. Theo Marsh mentioned a key-logging ledger—sign-outs for tower access. I’d like to see it, or a copy.”
Father Mikhail’s smile moves one inch toward sorrow. “Ah.” He rubs his hands as if to warm them and warms nothing. “That old ledger. We had a cleanup in the basement last year—black mold after the flood, you remember—and several non-sacramental logs were, regrettably, discarded. We are not a museum.”
Ruth leans against the wall as if the oak needs her spine. “Discarded? Or misplaced?” She isn’t looking at him. She’s looking at his keys.
The priest tips his chin. “Misplaced, perhaps, in the sense that the Lord sometimes asks us to let go of certain records to hold more tightly to living souls.” His eyes land on my recorder hand, and he doesn’t bother to hide that he sees it. “We take privacy seriously.”
I hold a breath in the polite way. “You take donors seriously,” I say, softer than I feel. “The wall is beautiful.”
His gaze flicks to the Crane oval and back. “Those gifts allowed us to shore up a hazard. There was, as you may recall, a concern about youthful exuberance in the tower that year.”
“Keys?” I ask, still friendly. “Who held them then?”
He switches to pastoral Latin, a language without verbs. “We entrusted access to responsible men.”
I let the phrase sit, humid. I think of Theo’s dot in the ledger margin, the red that bled through. “Did any of those responsible men sign a log?” I ask. “Or did they inherit access like a family watch?”
Father Mikhail’s hands fold over themselves. “Mara,” he says, gently, “we pastor a small town. Trust is our currency. Records help, but goodwill repairs more roofs than paper does.”
“Paper preserves facts,” I answer just as gently. “Goodwill does not testify under oath.”
Ruth cuts the air before it grows holy. “Let me borrow a question,” she says. “Who paid for the ‘key management update’?” She nods toward the lower plaque like a judge nodding toward an exhibit everyone can already read.
“A community partnership,” Father says. “The marina club coordinated volunteers.”
“Underwritten by the Crane foundation,” I say, tapping the plate with a knuckle I pretend is reverent. The metal remembers touch; it warms under my skin, then cools like a closed throat. “So a funder helped modernize access to the tower in 2008.”
“We updated locks,” he concedes, and the words land neatly, pastoral-compulsive. “New cylinders. Better stewardship.”
“Who carried a copy?” Ruth asks.
Father’s smile recovers. “Keys were handled prudently.” He shifts to the nave. “Would you like to light a candle?”
Micro-hook: A draft draws down the stairwell. The lock on the tower door clicks once, but nobody is there.
“In a minute,” I say, looking past his shoulder. The tower door sits off the vestibule, iron-banded cedar, swollen with seasons. The lock cylinder sits in a slightly lighter rectangle where the plate should age; the screws here shine newer than their neighbors. Tiny scratches fan out in a halo around the keyway, bright, fresh—not the straight scratches a fumbling sacristan makes. These look like someone swapped a thing and cleaned the story.
“May I?” I ask.
Father nods before he can retract the permission. “Of course. From here.”
I step closer and lower the phone, pretending to frame a stained glass panel while actually capturing the door in peripheral. Ruth drifts sideways and kneels with a patience that belongs to arthritic saints and retired cops. Her fingertip hovers over the strike plate, tracing air. The wood along the jamb tells two ages: sunburnt oak and baby brass.
“New plate in an old door,” she says conversationally to the saint in the nearest window. “Different screw head profile. Phillips, not slotted. No paint bloom under the flange.” She glances up at me and gives the tiny nod that once meant we have probable cause and now means don’t relax just because it’s quiet.
Father Mikhail hears all of this and clasps his hands tighter. “We’ve had thefts,” he offers. “Purses, votive money. We improved security.”
“On the tower door,” I say.
“On several doors,” he corrects, pastoral sand smoothing a grit.
I turn back to the donor wall and snap the last row. The Crane oval catches my lens again and refuses to be accidental. “Father, one more housekeeping detail,” I say. “When a donor funds a lock upgrade, does their representative get issued a spare? Temporarily? For oversight?”
His pause is a woman’s hair width. “Not as a rule,” he says. “Exceptions can occur during installations. Supervision is appreciated, of course.”
“Who supervised in July of 2008?”
“Vendors,” he says, quicker. “Contracted professionals.”
“From Whitcomb Marine?” I ask. “They’re listed on the wall.”
“They assisted with scaffolding around the face,” he says, now formally calm. “External work.”
“And internal access during external work?”
He looks toward the nave like the candles back there can answer. “I was a deacon then,” he says finally. “Others handled construction. I’m sure records existed.”
“Existed,” Ruth repeats. “Past tense.”
He uncrosses his hands, recrosses them. “We had a flood,” he says again. “A seiche pushed lake water up the storm drains. We lost Christmas pageant costumes. We lost a box of Men’s Club minutes from 1992. We lost…paper.” He meets my eyes and lets the weight of pastoral grief sit between us. “We did not lose souls.”
The incense releases a note like cloves from a winter coat. Diesel from a delivery truck ghosts in under the door, the two smells colliding the way our town always does—devotion argued in parking lots. I record the details because scent is a witness nobody cross-examines.
“Father,” I say, soft again, “did Everett Crane or his associates have keys during the repair?”
“Everett is a benefactor,” he says, selecting the safest noun. “He cares about our safety.”
“Safety that hides harm isn’t safety,” I answer. “It’s staging.”
Ruth stands, slow, and brushes her knees with two practical swipes. “We’ll file a polite request for any surviving logs,” she says. “And we’ll note the hardware updates. If you do find the ledger, please do not attempt to curate which pages we see.”
The priest’s mouth quirks in a shape older than him. “I curate souls, Ms. Calder. Paper curates itself.”
Before anyone blesses or arrests anyone else, the bell overhead speaks once—flat, off-schedule. The sound slides down the stairwell and presses against our teeth. Father Mikhail startles a fraction and then smooths the feeling out of his face.
“Wind,” he says.
“No wind,” Ruth says, already checking her watch. “That was a manual flirt.”
I don’t argue with either. I walk back to the donor wall and snap one final photo that frames the Crane oval, the “Key management update” plaque, and a slice of tower door with its new brass smile. The composition looks accidental. It’s not.
“We’ll be in touch,” I tell Father. “I won’t broadcast your voice without consent.”
“I appreciate your ethics,” he says, and the words behave like a benediction while feeling like a warning. “This parish survives on goodwill.”
“Goodwill shouldn’t need slotted or Phillips,” I say.
He holds my gaze for three seconds, then gently moves us toward the nave, the way a shepherd uses a crook with hidden felt. “Light a candle,” he suggests. “For Lydia.”
I do. The wick takes on the second touch, and the smell of wax wakes an old memory of my mother’s hospital room—a battery candle, a hissing IV. I say nothing out loud, but my chest contracts around an old prayer with new uses: let me do this right.
Outside, the air feels like wet rope. The lake is leveling, seiche trading moods with the gulls. I tuck my phone into the felt bag with the locket and log the time: 12:19 p.m., single off-time strike noted; Father present; hardware inconsistent with age; donor plaques confirm Crane underwriting in 2008 for access. I say the words in my sleeve because what’s recorded gets to live twice.
“He’s spooked,” Ruth says, low.
“He’s paid up,” I answer. “Different verbs.”
She glances back at the door. “See the hairline line where the cylinder meets the escutcheon? Quarter millimeter proud. Somebody swapped it without a carpenter’s patience.”
“Numbers,” I say, thinking of Theo’s nicknames, the way E liked to pull on three. “Or someone who acts like him.”
Ruth nods. “We won’t get the ledger,” she says, matter-of-fact. “We’ll find where it went.”
Micro-hook: From the rectory path, a man in a navy blazer slips into the side door, his hand dragging a ring of something that clinks like small bells.
We descend the steps and stand where the lake can hold voices without names. I lift the recorder again for a final note. “Cranes funded the year the door changed,” I say. “Father says logs are gone. Lock says they’re lying. Next stop: harbor master, in case access extended to boats.”
Ruth grins without joy. “Boat men love notebooks.”
The church bell stays silent now, obedient as a plaque. Across the street, a Facebook swap group moderator waves to someone from behind a consignment window, the little gatekeeper smile that decides who’s a “good family” and who buys their furniture with cash. I tuck my evidence against my ribs and head toward the car with my politeness folded up and my suspicion pressed flat under it like a template.
At the curb, a gust moves the chime on the rectory porch. The sound is bright and wrong for February. I look back at the tower door and picture two kinds of scratches—old ones that announce use, new ones that erase it.
“What did they buy with the key?” I ask, not to Ruth, not to the priest, but to the brass that still remembers pressure. The lake throws one more flat note at the spire, and I make my next move with my jaw set: I’m going to ask the harbor for a registry that dislikes erasers.