CELEBRITY STATUS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #4) by Kassandra Lamb Page B

going to take a lot more than jewelry.”
                Elise blanched. She dug a ball of heavy twine out of her junk drawer and brought it to Skip, then picked up her kitchen phone to dial 911.
                At eleven, Skip called Kate from his truck, on the way to the police station. He told her the case had gotten a bit more complicated than expected, but all was under control and she shouldn’t wait up.
                At a little before one in the morning, after signing yet another official statement, he was about to part company with the detective handling the case. “Would you make sure my name stays out of this as much as possible,” he said. “My wife’s a worry wart. If she finds out I go around tackling knife-wielding rapists, I’ll be flippin’ hamburgers for a living.”
                The detective nodded. “Been there, done that. Now I’m divorced.”
                “Not an option,” Skip muttered under his breath, as he headed out the door of the police station, sketching a little wave in the detective’s direction.
                At home, Skip once again slipped into the bedroom, sat down gently on the side of the bed and nudged his shoes off. Putting his cell phone, set on vibrate, on the nightstand, he reached over and set his alarm clock for eight to go to church with his family. Skip sat for a moment, debating whether to just lie down or to get undressed first.
                He decided he really didn’t want to sleep in his clothes another night. Getting up to quietly undress, he thought about the night’s work. He was dog tired, but it was a good tired. This case had been a lot more satisfying than all the mess lately with Cherise, even though they would bill Elise Thomas for a fraction of what they were making on the Martin account.
                Easing between the sheets, Skip let out a small sigh and drifted off.
                His wife waited until his breathing had slowed into the rhythm of sound sleep, then she padded quietly around the bed and turned off his alarm.
    * * *
                Kate was late for church. The kids had been particularly cranky and resistant to going, but she wasn’t about to have them running around the house, disturbing their father. If anyone had earned the right to sleep in this morning, it was her husband.
                She hastily parked the minivan, then hustled the kids to their Sunday school rooms. She just barely noticed the people who were climbing out of several cars and vans, assuming they were other latecomers, as she raced across the breezeway to the church itself.
                She slipped into the sanctuary from the vestibule just as the processional hymn was ending. Kate found a spot at the end of a pew, Mary Peters smiling at her and sliding over to make room.
                “The Lord be with you,” Elaine Jackson’s powerful voice echoed off the walls of the sanctuary.
                “And also with you,” the congregation dutifully responded.
                Elaine, the fifty-something, black rector, looked quite imposing in her white robe and bright green chasuble. “Let us pray,” she said.
                Kate had trouble staying awake as the prayers and the readings droned on. She hadn’t slept well the last two nights, waiting for Skip to come home. But when it came time for the Prayers of the People, she perked up. She offered her own silent prayer of thanksgiving that her husband was safe.
                She was drifting off again when Mary nudged her. Sym Peters, Mary’s husband and the head usher, was standing beside Kate indicating it was time for her row to go up to the altar for communion.
                She knelt at the altar rail. Elaine firmly pressed a paper-thin host into her outstretched hands. “Kate, the body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” the