LITMIR.BIZ

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on.” Emma thought back to earlier that evening. At a quarter to seven she’d been on the same road, but had been farther away from town.

      “All at once I saw a huge grill in my rearview mirror. The truck actually tapped me—you can see the dent in the back bumper. I tromped on the gas and got out of there. I didn’t see the truck after that.”

      “Do you think the driver hit you on purpose?”

      “My first thought was that a prankster was trying to frighten me. But it may have been nothing more than an exuberant teenager who got careless while driving his father’s pickup truck.”

      “Did you tell the police?”

      “I intended to talk to Rafe after choir practice. But now I don’t dare bother him—not after the contretemps at church this evening.”

      Emma needed a moment to remember that contretemps meant quarrel. “A quarrel in the choir is one thing. But if someone tried to harm you…I think you should talk to Rafe. He seems reasonable.”

      “Most women in Glory find him more than reasonable,” Lily smiled. “We don’t have an abundance of thirty-eight-year-old, good-looking single men in Glory.” She shook her head. “No. This time I won’t talk to Rafe. A dent in my back bumper doesn’t prove anything. And since the pranks are essentially harmless, Rafe is likely to conclude I’m a hysterical older woman who suffers from a touch of paranoia.”

      Emma chewed on a piece of popper and made a mental note to talk to Dave about providing poppers—and other appetizers—to the Scottish Captain. She also wondered what she should do about the fear she heard in Lily’s voice.

      FOUR

      Daniel Hartman peered into the church’s refrigerator and allowed himself to sigh. “No real cream, and no milk,” he said. “All I can offer you is powdered creamer.”

      “That will do me fine,” Sara Knoll replied. “After twenty-five years as an international journalist, I’m used to tight rations and impromptu meeting places.”

      “In that event, let’s talk right here. What could be more impromptu than our kitchen?” He handed her a ceramic mug full of coffee and gestured toward a pair of wooden stools next to a stainless-steel food preparation table. “I don’t want to keep you long tonight, but I do want to review the progress your committee is making.”

      Daniel sipped his own coffee. The church’s Elder Board had appointed a committee to recommend how to spend the Caruthers bequest. Sara was its chair—an excellent choice, given her background and experience. Daniel considered Sara a no-nonsense, get-the-job-done professional. She would have made a fine army officer had she chosen a different career path.

      “What progress?” She shrugged. “We’re deadlocked.”

      “How can you be? You have five members. That means no tie votes.”

      She smiled wryly. “We agreed from the start to require a minimum of four votes to make a final recommendation. Alas, our committee consists of two inflexible Contemporaries, two unyielding Traditionalists, and me. I abstain whenever we vote because that’s the only way I know to stay friendly with both sides.”

      “Has it worked?

      “So far.” Sara added a nod. “I’m perceived as neutral—which has helped both sides to remain civil to each other during our meetings.” A frown spread across her face. “But our civility hasn’t translated into progress. I can summarize what the committee has done with a single word—nothing.”

      Daniel paused to gather his thoughts. “I fear for the future of Glory Community Church. Our highly polarized rift is the kind of conflict that can wreck a church fellowship. What bothers me most is that I don’t know how to get our people to back down from their sincerely held positions.” He added, “The elders rightly expect me to get everyone working toward a solution that will make the whole congregation happy.”

      “Isn’t that a trick that pastors learn on the job?” she said with another smile.

      He grinned back. “I spent twenty-one years in the U.S. Army and rose through the ranks to become a colonel, commanding a cadre of other chaplains. My experience taught me leadership, not conflict resolution.”

      “I presume that shouting ‘Attention!’ has a greater effect in the army than in a church.”

      “Oh, I can yell loud enough to stop a fight in the choir loft, but what do I do next? I wish that your ‘Martha’ books included a volume on compromise and forgiveness.” He toasted Sara with his coffee mug. “Your new book on working with stained glass will come in handy should we have to replace broken panels in the sanctuary.”

      “Sorry, but Stained Glass Made Simple is the next book in the series. The one I have to deliver the day before Thanksgiving is called Finding Undiscovered Treasures in Your Attic.”

      He chuckled. “That’s bound to be a bestseller in Glory. The older houses in town have upward of a hundred fifty years of accumulated junk in their attics.”

      “All of which someone wants to buy. Thanks to the auction sites on the Internet, ‘junk’ is an obsolete concept. The trick is to locate the one person somewhere in the world who actually covets the trinket or doodad or knickknack your great-great grandmother stuffed into a cardboard box all those decades ago.”

      “Getting back to our problem…” Daniel began.

      Sara interrupted. “I think you’re being too hard on yourself. After all, fights about music in church are a recent phenomenon, a challenge that’s caught pastors by surprise.”

      “Actually…” He spoke softly to avoid sounding like a schoolteacher giving a lecture. “Traditional music versus contemporary music has been a battleground for two thousand years. During the first century some Christians argued that the use of musical instruments of any kind during worship was either too much like the old Hebrew ceremonies or too pagan. Fifteen hundred years later the fight centered on whether secular music, harmony and folk melody should be banned from church, and whether all musical instruments except the organ should be eliminated.”

      Sara made a face. “I stand corrected. Our fight is clearly part of a long tradition, but I can’t help feeling that the battle is unnecessary. We have two services, one traditional and one contemporary. The Caruthers bequest provides more than enough money to keep both sides happy.”

      “True. We have plenty of cash but only one sanctuary, which both groups want to redesign. That’s really the crux of the disagreement.”

      She threw up her hands. “Exactly! The Traditionalists want it to look like a European cathedral. The Contemporaries want to give it the feel of a modern megachurch.” She added, “The Traditionalists and the Contemporaries have both lost focus. We worship to please God, not ourselves.”

      “Both groups think they have that angle covered, too. Lily told me that God enjoys hymns and could not possibly be pleased with an insipid rock song that repeats the same simple words ten times over. Debbie Akers insists that God must be ‘bored off his gourd,’ as she put it, with a thousand years of dull hymn music and even duller words. Consequently, she says contemporary services have become wildly popular thanks to divine intervention.”

      Sara laughed. “I’m sorry, Daniel, but the battle at Glory Community does have a humorous side.”

      “I might have agreed with you a few months ago, but the truth is I don’t find our fight funny anymore. I’m too worried that someone will get hurt.”

      Emma deftly carried a tray laden with an insulated carafe, two mugs and a plate of shortbread cookies as she led Simon Rogers to the gazebo in The Scottish Captain’s back garden. The old wooden octagon was a pretty spot for a chat after breakfast, and also far enough away from the main house that it afforded a measure of privacy. The sun felt delightfully warm that Thursday morning. The weather forecast called for the temperature to

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