Another Excerpt from my WIP; The Case of the Good Priest (Cont’d)
The following is another excerpt from my work in progress, Jen McDowell—Private Eye; Business is Booming, a Jen McDowell Series. I think this will be the last chapter. If you want to catch up, order the novella The Throuple Private Eye—Hate Crimes, on Amazon ($2.99). The link is https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084LTTHGN. Enjoy.
The Case of the Good Priest
“Let’s put a GPS tracker on his car just the same.”
“Sounds good,” Jen answered.
Thursday the next week…
Jen and Molly were having breakfast at the hotel breakfast buffet. “So, we followed Fr. Traylor around for one week, and so far, he has attended three comedy clubs, two magic shows and one head liner show,” Molly said, “We haven’t seen him do anything inappropriate. I don’t think he will.”
“I know,” answered Jen. “I don’t like this case one bit.”
“What should we do?”
Jen thought for a minute. “Let go back to the room and see what we can find out about our client. Mr. Lamont. Let’s see if we can figure out why he wants to find dirt on Fr. Traylor.”
While Jen researched Clive Lamont, Molly began a deep background search on Fr. Traylor.
After a few minutes, Jen said. “Well, this is interesting. Clive Lamont has a nephew by the named of Beery Elliston Lamont and he’s a priest too.?He spells his first name B-E-R-R-Y.’
“I’m not finding much on Fr. Traylor, so I’ll check out the nephew,” Molly replied. “Let’s compare notes in two hours.”
After two hours, Jen and Molly made coffee inside their room and then sat down to compare notes. Molly went first, “Turns out that Berry Lamont was ordained the year after Fr. Traylor and Fr. Garry. None of these priests are very active on social media.”
Well, I checked more in deal into our client Mr. Lamont. He also isn’t very active on social media but his wife, Dorothy, is very active. She has made it very clear that she’d like the nephew, Berry, assigned to their church in Atlanta. Currently, he is working for a diocese in Florida. She said it should happen one day because her husband is close friends with the bishop. So, I looked at that connection. Turns out, Clive Lamont and Bishop Stanford are classmates from high school. They played football together.”
Molly set back in her chair. “Let me guess, the bishop makes all the priest assignments?”
“Yes and no. Atlanta isn’t part of his diocese, but his recommendation would carry a lot of weight,” Jen answered.
“So, if Lamont can find a reason to fire Fr. Traylor, then that would create an opening for nephew Berry to be assigned to Atlanta.”
“I think so. But what Clive is doing isn’t illegal. He has every right to check into his priests.”
“Yeah,” Molly agreed. “But hiring a couple of PIs to follow the priest around isn’t a very Christian thing to do.”
“So, what do we do now?” Molly asked.
“I think it’s time to have a little talk with Fr. Traylor.”
?
The next Monday…
Fr. Traylor agreed to meet with Jen and Molly at the rectory. Jen explained what they had discovered and then said, “We think Mr. Lamont is trying to find an excuse to fire you and replace you with his nephew.”
“Wait. Do you mean Berry Lamont?”
“You know him?” Molly asked somewhat surprised.
“Of course. We concelebrate every time he comes to Atlanta for a visit. Seems like a very nice guy. I seriously doubt he knows anything about this.”