“Well,” she cut in, “Jenny moved here, I guess it was early September. And I’ve never been able to figure it out The steeple light. You watch when you’re driving home. Of course…” She paused, her face disappointed. “Maybe it won’t do it anymore.”
“Do what?” Marino asked.
“Go out and then come back on. The strangest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s lit up one minute, and then you look out your window again and it’s dark like the church isn’t there. Then next thing you know, you look out again and the steeple’s lit up just like it’s always been. I’ve timed it. On for a minute, then off for two, on again for three. Sometimes it will burn for an hour. No pattern to it at all.”
“What does this have to do with Jennifer Deighton?” I asked.
“I remember it was not long after she moved in, just weeks before Jimmy had hi stroke. It was a cool night so he was building a fire. I was in the kitchen doing dishes and could see the steeple out the window lit up like it always was. And he came in to get himself a drink, and I said, ‘You know what the Bible says about being drunk with the Spirit and not with wine. ‘And he said, ‘I’m not drinking wine. I’m drinking bourbon. The Bible’s never said a word about bourbon.’ Then, right while he was standing there the steeple went dark. It was like the church vanished into thin air. I said, ‘There you have it. The Word of the Lord. That’s his opinion about you and your bourbon.’ “He laughed like I was the craziest thing, but he never touched another drop. Every night he’d stand in front of the window over the kitchen sink watching. One minute the steeple would be lit up, then it would be dark. I let Jimmy think it was God’s doing – anything to keep him off the bottle. The church never behaved like that before Miss Deighton moved across the street.”
“Has the light been going on and off lately?” I asked.
“Was still doing it last night. I don’t know about now. To tell you the truth, I haven’t looked.”
“So you’re saying that she somehow had an effect on the lights in the church steeple,” Marino said mildly.
“I’m saying that more than one person on this street decided about her some time ago.”
“Decided what?”
“About her being a witch,” Mrs. Clary said.
Her husband had started snoring, making hideous strangling noises that his wee did not seem to notice.
“Sounds to me like your husband there started doing poorly about the time Miss Deighton moved here and the lights staffed acting funny,” Marino said She looked startled: “Well, that’s so. He had his stroke the end of September.”
“You ever think there might be a connection? That maybe Jennifer Deighton had something to do with it, just like you’re thinking she had something to do with the church lights?”
“Jimmy didn’t take to her.” Mrs. Clary was talking faster by the minute.
“You’re saying the two of them didn’t get along,” Marino said.
“Right after she moved in, she came over a couple of times to ask him to help out with a few things around the house, man’s work. I remember one time her doorbell was making a terrible buzzing sound inside the house and she appeared on the doorstep, scared she was about to have an electrical fire. So Jimmy went over there. I think her dishwasher flooded once, too, back then. Jimmy’s always been real handy.”
She glanced furtively at her snoring husband.
“You still haven’t made it clear why he didn’t get along with her,” Marino reminded her.
“He said he didn’t like going over there,” she said. “Didn’t like the inside of her house, with all these crystals everywhere. And the phone would ring all the time. But what really gave him the willies was when she told him she read people’s fortunes and would do it for him for nothing if he’d keep fixing things around her house. He said, and I remember this like it was yesterday, ‘No, thank you, Miss Deighton. Myra’s in charge of my future, plans every minute of it.’“