A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

One of the few buildings never completely abandoned, even during Port Hancock’s darkest days, the church had been built in 1872 and carefully preserved into its third century.  With all but two of its original stained glass windows still intact, the graceful stone building was considered, especially by the Presbyterians, to be the crowning symbol of the city’s perseverance.  Its single spire boasted a bell that had been faithfully ringing every hour, without fail, for over a hundred and forty years.

Inside the church, the choir sang a selection of Dale Scott’s favorite hymns, revealed by his widow, several of his fellow officers got up and spoke -- the most poignant eulogy coming from the dead detective’s partner for the past three years, Randy Hitchens -- and the minister waxed eloquently about a good life cut tragically short.  The Chief of Police, Kent McAllister, announced that, by declaration of the mayor, city flags would be flown at half-mast for the next week.

In the first pew, Lauren Scott sat with an arm around each of her two daughters.  She was dressed in black, from neck to toe, and a thick black veil covered her head and shoulders.  From her position in the fifth pew, Lily eyed the veil.  Lauren had the face of an angel, and this was the first time Lily could ever remember seeing it completely covered.

“She must not want anyone to see her with her eyes all red and puffy,” Amanda Jansen murmured from her seat beside Lily.

Amanda and Lily had been friends since kindergarten.  Lily had been the maid of honor at Amanda’s wedding that had ended in divorce only two years after it began.  And Amanda had been the first person Lily told when she lost her virginity her senior year in high school.  There was little about either of their lives that the other didn’t know.

“She’d be gorgeous even with puffy eyes,” Lily whispered back.

Lauren, who had been Harvest Ball Queen and Senior Prom Queen and voted Most Beautiful in the school two years running, could have been a top model or even a Hollywood actress.  Everyone said so.  But though she had been an active member of the drama club in high school, she had never had any serious interest in doing anything professional.  She claimed she was born to be a wife and a mother and nothing else.

Lily Burns and Lauren Purcell had grown up right next door to each other on Morgan Hill, one of the nicest residential areas in Port Hancock, with lovely homes, winding streets, well-tended lawns, and spectacular views of the Olympic Mountains.  Lauren’s father, Dr. Maynard Purcell, was the Burns’ family physician.  And Lily had been one of six bridesmaids to march down the aisle at Lauren’s extravagant wedding, in this very church, thirteen years ago.

Over time, the two girls drifted apart.  Lauren hadn’t lived on Morgan Hill since her marriage, and Lily had opted for the professional life that Lauren had eschewed.  They saw each other occasionally, and still traveled in more or less the same social circle, but they were no longer what either of them would call close friends.

It was at least an hour before the ceremony ended and the procession made its way slowly up the main aisle and out of the church, the pallbearers with the coffin, followed by the minister, Lauren and the two girls, her family, Dale’s family, and then an assortment of friends and coworkers who had been excused from their jobs to pay their last respects.  Once outside, the sea of umbrellas reappeared as people scurried to their vehicles for the half-mile drive out to the Holy Family Cemetery where Dale Scott would be laid to rest in the Purcell family plot.

Dale was not Port Hancock born and bred.  He came from a small town near Yakima, and his parents had wanted their son to be buried in their church cemetery.  But Dr. Purcell had convinced them that it was bad enough for Dale’s children to have to grow up without their father, it would be unconscionable for them to have to grow up without ready access to his grave.  The Scotts were simple people, who had loved their son and now loved their granddaughters, and they were no match for the impressive, persuasive physician.

For Maynard Purcell, it was little more than a practical matter.  The detective had not been his choice of a son-in-law.  Good-looking though he may have been, and smooth, in a cocky sort of way, there was something about him -- a bravado, a roughness, an edge -- that might have been well suited to the police force, but bothered the doctor.  Still, Lauren was his only child, and he had never been able to deny her anything.

From the moment the two of them had met, in church, as a matter of fact, it was clear that the thirty-year-old police officer had swept his twenty-one-year-old daughter off her feet.  As a result, she resisted every effort her father made to discourage the relationship.  And after all these years, he had more or less resigned himself to the situation.  But he had no intention of making matters worse by pretending to support what he knew were sure to become all-day family pilgrimages to some remote little cemetery in the middle of nowhere.  Let the man be buried where he had lived, Purcell had decided -- whether he deserved to be or not.

The mourners reassembled at the cemetery, beside the freshly dug grave at the Purcell plot.  The rain had let up, and by the time this second ceremony was over, the umbrellas were closed.  People filed slowly out of the area, pausing for a word or an embrace as they went.

“I’m so sorry,” Lily murmured when it came to her turn, bending down to kiss each of Dale’s girls on the cheek, and then reaching over to give Lauren a hug.

But Lauren stiffened and backed away from the embrace.  “I