A judge! Was fate playing games with him, putting him on his honor? If Kendra Rutherford presided in Queenstown, chances were fair that she would hear his case against Brown and Worley, provided he managed to bring it to trial. She hadn’t been reluctant to give him good advice, and he meant to follow it, but the less he saw of her, the better it would be for both of them. He’d spent six long years on Philip Dickerson’s estate, during which time he hadn’t wanted a woman and hadn’t touched one. Before Myrna walked out of his life, he hadn’t been celibate or even considered it since he was thirteen, but his disappointment in Myrna had so embittered him that he couldn’t have made love with a woman if his life had depended on it. Yet, the minute he saw Kendra sprawled out on the ice, relaxed and yielding to her inability to get up, much like a dying man submitting to the inevitable, his libido had returned with a vengeance.

It wouldn’t have concerned him too much—after all, a man wanted to know that he could cut the mustard if he wanted to, but she knew he was there, and she knew it the minute she looked at him. That made the nagging desire that afflicted him when he saw her more difficult to ignore. But he had a long way to go before he could consider tying up with a woman; he meant to clear his name and reestablish himself, both of which could take years. By that time, Kendra Rutherford would have long forgotten that Reid Maguire existed.

He walked into his bedroom, pulled off his jacket and hung it up. He wouldn’t mind having some more of that wonderful coffee she’d made. “Oh, damn. I left my drawing pad in her house. Too bad. It’ll just stay there. I’m not going to give her the impression that I left it as an excuse to go back there. I’ll use some plain bond paper.” He remembered that a former classmate had settled in Caution Point and telephoned him.

“Marcus, this is Reid Maguire.”

“Great guns! How are you, Reid? It’s been years. Are you in town?”

He explained where he was, where he’d been and the reason for his call. “I can’t even begin work, because I know nothing about Caution Point. What kind of place is it?”

“We’re right at the edge of the Albemarle Sound, a sleepy town that looks old. You wouldn’t want to put anything like the Sydney Opera House here. New buildings are usually dark-red brick or cement, and almost none are glass-fronted. Trees everywhere, park benches and wide streets. The tallest building is around eight stories, and we have only a few of those. I’m glad to know you’re back in business, man. When you come here, I’d like you to meet my family.”

“I’ll let you know. Thanks for your help, Marcus.”

He hung up, satisfied that he could acquit himself well. The structure shouldn’t be ultramodern, but neither should it be standard. He decided to produce a design that resembled a huge multi-level private house with a glass-and-cement exterior. Trees would surround its front and sides, and every long walkway would have two-way moving walks with comfortable, built-in seating at strategic stops. He warmed up to the idea, and was still hard at work at two o’clock the following morning.

On Sunday morning, Kendra went to one of the churches nearest to Albemarle Gates, a big, white-brick Baptist church on the corner of Albemarle Heights and Atlantic Avenue. African-Americans made up the bulk of the worshipers, and the smaller fraction consisted of Latinos, Native Americans and a sprinkling of whites. She sat in an aisle seat about midway, and it stunned her that when the collection was taken, the usher moved the basket past her so quickly that she did not have a chance to put in the twenty-dollar bill she held in her hand. When he retrieved the basket, he lifted it above her head, so that she knew his action was deliberate, that he did not want her to contribute. Whoever heard of a Baptist church turning down money?

Still shocked by the usher’s deliberate snub, at the end of the service she attended the coffee hour in the hope of meeting some of the parishioners. However, to her chagrin, no one spoke to her. She left and trudged up the hill, hunched over against the wind that whipped in from the Albemarle, blowing her breath upward to warm her face. Finally, she ran the last few steps to her house.

The phone rang shortly after she entered her house. “This is Kendra Rutherford,” she answered and remembered that she’d better stop identifying herself when she answered the phone, for she was sure to encounter local hostility in the course of her work.

“Hi. This is Claudine. Where were you? I rang you a dozen times.”

“I went to church.”

“See any nice guys?”

“Don’t make jokes. If I had, I doubt they would have spoken to me.” She told her sister about her experience at church. “I won’t be going back there.”

“Maybe they take seriously that biblical passage that reads, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’”

“I wish I thought it. I’ll have to find out what’s behind this. It’s not normal.”

“Sure isn’t normal for a church to reject money. Why don’t you ask one of your neighbors about it?”