Double Woods: A Bucks County Mystery

By Wilson Roberts

In the early spring of 1944, three nine year old boys bicycle to Double Woods, a patch of second and third growth woodland just beyond the borough limits of Newtown, Pennsylvania. While playing there, they find the body of a young woman, Penny Ringle, buried under a mattress in a make shift dump. The town’s new police chief, Stan Burns, back from the war after being wounded in Italy, investigates the murder. He is faced with a small list of suspects and the fact that Penny, a war time worker in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, was also involved in the management of a prostitution ring in the city. Tom Watson, the head of the Newtown’s Borough Council, and acounty commissioner, who pushed Stan’s appointment as chief through the Council, pressures him and the Bucks County District Attorney to make a quick arrest, based on disturbing circumstantial evidence. At the subsequent trial the suspect is convicted and sentenced to be executed by electrocution.

In 1987, forty three years after the trial and execution, Stan Burns is ill and living in a nursing home. He tells Will Davis, the police chief he mentored, and who succeeded him, that he was never comfortable with the conviction and has come to believe the individual executed to be innocent. Will, who was one three boys who found Penny’s body, starts a second investigation into her murder. With no more evidence to go on than Stan Burns had during the first investigation, Will is faced with uncertainty. Was Stan right? Did the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania execute an innocent person? Is there any way to discover the two truths he is charged with seeking: the possible innocence of the person convicted and executed for Penny’s murder and, if so, the identity and motive of the true killer?

In the course of his investigation, Will Razor has to follow Stan Burns’ already trod path. The suspects of forty three years before are again investigated. Will is faced with acknowledging the difficulty of truly knowing anything, including whether or not his former wife murdered their unwanted and sickly child.

A mystery in the true sense, 'Double Woods' is an exciting story of a murder and its investigations as well as a vivid recreation of times past in Newtown, a small Bucks County farming community near Philadelphia, just as the town and county’s semi rural past is disappearing, replaced by the cities and suburbs that now dominate the coasts of the central and northeast United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781515443223

Book preview

Part One

The Situation

One

Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania / December 12, 1944

WOODEN SLATS of the folding chair creaked as Stan Burns shifted from one uncomfortable position to another. Impatient, waiting for the meeting in the room beyond to end, he studied the portrait of William Penn hanging on the wall of the small anteroom to the Newtown Borough Chambers meeting hall, wondering if the Quaker founder of the town really did look like the face on the cereal box. It was a brief distraction from fixating on what was happening in the meeting room, where the five members of the Borough Council were discussing Tom Watson’s proposal to name Stan as Newtown’s first police officer and chief of what would start out as a one-man department. Hearing the muffled hum of Council members’ voices from the Chamber, some louder than others, none of them clear enough to understand, Stan tapped his feet and patted the back of the chair in rhythm with the pounding of his heart.

Over six and a half feet tall, with heavily muscled arms extending from his broad shoulders, Stan walked with a limp, a result of battle injuries he suffered in Italy during the third day of the Battle of Anzio, a fury of fire and death that took place from January 22 to June 5, 1944, and ended with the capture of Rome. Carried from the field by two Italian medics who worked with the Americans, he was initially treated at a field hospital in Italy where he developed an infection. Stabilized, he was transferred to an English hospital until he regained strength and balance, but was considered unfit to return to battle and sent to a veteran's hospital near Philadelphia. The military physician in charge of his case at the VA recommended his release from the Army. He was 26 when he returned to Bucks County, a week before Halloween, long before he would arrest a suspect for Penny Ringle’s murder.

In spite of the limp, Stan knew he could handle the job Tom had promised him would be his after the council meeting ended. The doctors at the VA had assured him that his leg would continue to heal and that the limp would lessen, although it would never completely disappear. He had already begun to rebuild his strength, at times walking with such smoothness and ease that most people would not be able to discern the pain he carefully masked.

When Tom Watson had first proposed to Stan that he planned to ask the Borough Council—which as Burgess he led—to appoint him chief of police, he asked Stan if the leg would hamper him on the job. Stan told him he’d be willing to prove his fitness by racing him from the post office in the middle of the downtown up to the top of Reservoir Hill. Tom declined the challenge.

Stan’s the right man for the job, Watson told his fellow councilors and his growling voice filled the small Council Chamber, his comment the only one Stan heard clearly as he sat in the anteroom. He’s big, tough, strong enough to handle whatever anyone tries to pull on him.

Determined to keep the promise he made to Stan two days before he nominated him at the Council meeting, Watson did not expect opposition. At fifty-seven Tom Watson was tall and still slender, with thick white brows that fell over eyes so dark that in some light conditions they looked almost black. From the time he was in elementary school, he would stand in front of mirrors and practice making intimidating expressions. Owner of Newtown’s sole appliance store, Watson considered himself a Bucks County powerhouse. He had been Newtown’s Burgess, or president of the Borough Council, for three terms, and was a ten-year member of the County Commission.

Bring him in and we’ll interview him, Ben Pearson, a member of the Council said after Watson nominated Stan and spoke in support of the idea.

Watson opened the door to the anteroom and gestured at Stan, who rose and moved quickly into the council chambers. Nodding at the men seated around the table, Stan sat in another slatted wooden chair, as uncomfortable as the one he had just left. Watson rested a hand on his shoulder and looked at each of his fellow councilors, deepening his voice as he spoke.

You all know Stan, or know of him, about his successes on Newtown’s football and baseball teams, about his sacrifices in the war. Now I want you to recognize him as Newtown’s first police chief.

Elvin Rutherford held up a hand. He’s not chief yet, Tom. We haven’t voted him in.

We will, Watson said.

What about your wife? Ben Pearson asked. What does she think about you taking this job, you just back from the war and still recovering from your injuries?

Stan scratched the back of his neck. Maureen’s okay with it, and I’m recovered well enough to take any job on. Spreading his arms, fingers extended and open, he added, I’m ready and able to take on any job you fellows want to throw at me.

Maureen’s just okay with you being a cop? Ben asked.

She thinks I should do it, if you decide to give me the job.

I thought you had planned to study law, Ben said.

Stan gave him a pensive smile. That was before the war. I was young. We were young, Maureen and me. We thought if we got married, she could work in Musser’s Drug Store and support me through college and law school.

She still could, Elvin said.

 Stan looked at each Council member before answering. Like I said, that was before the war. Now she’s driving a truck for the Army and we don’t know when the war will be over. Sometimes it feels like it’ll never end. Driving for the Army like she is, she doesn’t get much pay, and we’ve got to make a living and we want to have kids. There’s no time for me to go to college and law school. I need a good job, and from what Tom says, chief of police here will be a job with a future.

Gerry Forsythe clicked his tongue and smiled at the other Councilors. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be a crook and have to go up against Stan. He was the best football player Newtown High School ever fielded.

I’m not sure being the best football player means someone will be a good police chief. Elvin Rutherford looked from Gerry to Tom, his eyes stopping at Stan.

Watson ignored him and said, Remember that game against Doylestown?

The riot after the referee called a first down when Doylestown was two yards short? Gerry said.

Tom nodded. Burnsy took on seven guys and not one of them ever laid a hand on him.

They looked pretty sad after Stan finished with them.

Him winning a fight at a football game isn’t something that gives me confidence in making Stan our chief of police, Elvin said.

There were a lot of black eyes and bruises in Doylestown for a few days after that game. Tom gave Elvin a light tap on the shoulder. Stan’s what Newtown needs.

I was a kid then. Stan said. It’s nothing I’m proud of today.

What about Hattie? Elvin Rutherford glared at Watson and drew his lips into a thin line. Harriet Lefferts, Elvin’s sister-in-law, had been elected town constable in 1937. Hattie’s done a good job keeping the peace in Newtown for years, all through the war, and she’s still doing it. If you think we need a police chief, I say we should give her the job.

Shrugging, Jamison Bothwell looked from Rutherford to Watson. Elvin’s got a point. Besides, Stan’s a gimp. Give me a good reason why we shouldn’t make Hattie the chief.

Ben Pearson, the oldest of the councilors and a pharmacist who had lost the lower part of his right leg in the First World War, shouted. Jesus H. Christ, El, what in the hell are you thinking? Look at me. I’m a whole lot fucking worse off than Stan. Do I seem any the less of a man to you than I did when we were young and marched off to war?

You’re not up for police chief, Bothwell said.

Gerry Forsythe glanced toward a corner of the room at Len Heston, the reporter from the local weekly newspaper, the Newtown Enterprise.

Ignore what Ben said.

Len rolled his eyes and nodded. Ignored. Besides, it’s unprintable. If I watered it down, it would lose its impact.

I meant every word, Ben Pearson said.

Len Heston laughed. Maybe, but I’m the one who’d be censored, censured and maybe fired for quoting your language in my report.

 Tom Watson focused his attention on Bothwell. Jamey, you’re a smart man so use your smarts. Think about how Stan compares to Hattie. Like we said, Stan was the best football player Newtown High ever had. He’s tall, strong, and now he’s been tempered by war. Hattie’s done all right, but she’s a woman. That’s good enough for a constable, but a police chief should be a man.

Elvin Rutherford shook his head. Why?

Tom drummed his fingers on the table and looked carefully at each of the four other councilors. After a few long, carefully drawn out moments, he spoke. When the war ends and the boys come home, Newtown won’t be like it was before they were sent off. The boys will be changing it. They’ll have changed. They’ve seen terrible things. There’s no telling how they’ll act when their wives nag them, or a boss tells them to do things they don’t want to do, and they go off to the Brick or the White Hall and have a few too many drinks. And it won’t just be the town boys. Think of the farm kids who’ll be coming back, big strong guys looking for a little fun in town after working long days on their fathers’ farms, heaving bales of hay above their heads onto wagons, and from the wagons up into the lofts of barns. Think how they’ll be feeling after shoveling cow shit out of those barns, loading it into wagons and spreading it over their fields with pitchforks. They’ll be wrestling hogs and bulls into trucks and taking them off to the slaughterhouse and working their asses off doing what their fathers tell them to do and they’ll be tugging at the reins to let loose when they come to town. We’ll need a good strong man as our cop to keep things in line. Stan’s the man.

He paused, grinned, and looked at each of the councilors, then at Stan Burns. That’s it, boys. Stan’s the man. Stan is the man.

Elvin waved his hands in the air. Husbands and wives have been nagging each other since Adam took a bite of that damned apple and farmers’ sons have been coming to town as long as there’s been a town. Jesus, Tom, the town’s here because of the farms. The farms are what supports Newtown.

Things will change, Watson said.

Jesus, I hope they change. The Depression nearly killed this town. We need more industry and businesses here that’ll spark things up, or we’ll all end up in the poor house.

They’ll change and we’ll need a police force. Stan will be the start of it.

 Hattie can handle anything this town can throw at her.

Watson said, Maybe she can, maybe she can’t, but I’m goddamn sure Stan Burns can. I don’t want to take chances.

Jamison Bothwell tilted his head and looked from Elvin to Ben Pearson, finally settling his eyes on Elvin. Sighing, he spoke with a slow, almost hesitant, deliberateness. Boys, there’s something to what Tom’s saying. When my father came back from the last war my mother said he wasn’t the same man she married. He drank too much, got into fights at the Brick, yelled at her and us kids for the slightest thing. She said he was sweet and kind before he went. I remember him as a tyrant. When he wasn’t yelling at me and Billy, or whipping us with his belt, he sat silently in the living room staring at the walls. I know for a fact that he hit Ma at least twice. By the time I was eighteen, I was bigger than him and said that if he ever hit her again, I’d beat the crap out of him.

There was a long silence after Bothwell spoke. Finally, Elvin Rutherford said, Hattie’d be a fine chief of police.

Tom slapped his hand on the table. She won’t be able to handle a bunch of drunks who fought the Japs and Krauts for four years, got drunk and raised hell when they weren’t shooting at the enemy and don’t know what to do with themselves now that it’s all over. You can’t show me a woman who’d be able to do any of that.

I think Tom’s right. Jamison looked at Elvin, his expression apologetic.

Ignoring Bothwell’s expression, Elvin leaned forward on his elbows and pushed his face as close as possible to Tom Watson’s and told him in a loud, angry voice that Harriet Lefferts had his vote. Then he turned around and pointed at Len Heston. And I want the gist of what Tom just said about Hattie not being up to the job printed in your goddamn fish wrapper.

It will be, Heston said.

After another twenty minutes of arguing, Tom called for a decision. Stan Burns was selected as Chief and only member of Newtown Borough’s first police force. Tom Watson, Jamison Bothwell, Ben Pearson and Gerry Forsythe voted for him. Elvin Rutherford voted no in a loud voice, his eyes fixed on Len Heston, who was writing on a thin notebook that rested on his right knee.

FOR MOST OF its history Newtown had been a relatively peaceful place. With a population of a little over two thousand, two blocks of its main street made up the commercial and social center for both Newtown Borough and Newtown Township, a region surrounding the Borough and dotted with large farms with rich dark agricultural soil, their houses and barns solidly built of stone and brick. Life was ruled by the seasons and farm people worked long and hard days. Merchants in town opened for business early on weekday mornings and stayed open late on Fridays to accommodate the needs of the farm people. The war disrupted everything. Many young people in Newtown Borough and Newtown Township, men and women alike, were caught up in the war effort; those most directly involved were fighting, and some dying, in Europe and the Pacific. Of those left behind, a large number worked in defense industries or volunteered time and energy to support the defense in various ways. As late as the end of 1945, the town was largely quiet, except for anxious questions around Penny Ringle’s murder, which was estimated to have happened in late January or early February 1945, although her body was not found until April.

At the war’s end, many who returned from years of battle in Europe, Asia, northern Africa and the brutal battles in the South Pacific found the town strangely quiet, almost alien after the rigors and horrors of war and the lure of exotic places visited while on leave. Eager to find comfort in resuming their pre-war lives, they faced difficult challenges: spouses who may have strayed; children who had grown and changed in unexpected ways; jobs with demands that often seemed petty in comparison to their military experiences; tensions and fears that surfaced in ways they never imagined and showed themselves not only in nightmares, but in their reactions to the normal sights and sounds of civilian life.

Those who had worked in defense industries were suddenly unemployed, often unemployable, especially women whose jobs were necessary as the war raged and were displaced by the returning veterans. Defense plants were shuttered or converted to peacetime production and staffed with men fresh from the battlefields. Women who had worked hard and successfully during the war were suddenly expected to stay at home, service their husbands and occupy themselves with children and housework. After December 7, 1941 the world changed abruptly. In 1945, following V-E Day and V-J Day, the world changed again. It was jarring. Joys of reunion with long missing loved ones were mixed with feelings of displacement and resentment.

Returning soldiers and sailors, as well as defense workers and volunteers often sought excitement to ease the tensions arising from having to struggle to survive the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific and the monotony of long hours working in the defense factories supporting the war. With the small population of the Borough, Newtown did not offer much to get excited about. There were two lawyers, two drug stores, five small local grocery stores and two chains groceries, the American Store or, Acme, and the A&P, neither of them much larger than the home-owned groceries. Only the Acme was self-service. In all the others, once in the door, you walked up to a long counter and told the owner or manager what you wanted. It would be taken from shelves lined along the walls behind the counters, the price of each item written on a piece of paper and the total tallied up, either by hand in pencil or with a crank handle cash register.

During the war, townspeople not in the military or working in defense plants in Philadelphia, Bristol and Trenton, New Jersey, worked in shops like Morris and Clarence Savidge’s clothing store, or in the town’s small factory, Lavalle Aircraft, which did not make airplanes, only a few parts for them. Some were employed at the Bobbin Works or the tile factory on the south end of State Street. Some worked in local stores, stacking shelves with the few groceries wartime rationing provided for, or working the two drug stores’ soda fountains. Others got by doing odd jobs. A few did government work, such as helping the draft board and the ration board. Volunteers spotted for enemy planes from a three-story wooden tower at the reservoir, set on the highest hill in town. There were two elderly house painters, Bill Fallon and Stubby Armstrong. Both often spent their days at the Brick. Most skilled workers—among them the electricians, plumbers and mechanics—had been drafted and were fighting in Europe or the Pacific. Theaters, they called them, the European Theater, the Pacific Theater, although no one seemed to enjoy the drama.

PENNY RINGLE, the murder victim, had lived a complicated life since 1942 when she graduated from Newtown High School and immediately got a job in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, at first painting the interiors of ships, later working as a welder. She moved to Philadelphia, where she shared an apartment with two other women from the Naval Yard. Within eight months of her arrival in the city, she had agreed to help Larry Evans run his string of prostitutes.

A bartender at the small café/bar in Reading Terminal, a single room in a large hall separating the train shed from the ticket lobby and waiting room, Larry was tall and thin, with an angular face that set off his blue eyes and often broke into an easy smile. His sleeves were always rolled up above the elbow to show off the tattoos on his muscular arms. Larry had graduated from Newtown High School two years before Penny and moved to Philadelphia. After Pearl Harbor the city was filled with sailors and soldiers and Larry soon found that pimping for five young women was going to be his contribution to the war effort.

Penny had recognized him when she stopped in the Terminal Café for a light lunch on her way to catch a train back to Newtown on one of her rare Saturday visits home.

I know you, she said when Larry handed her a menu. You went to Newtown High.

He had leered at her. I’d like to know you. You’re from Newtown too, right?

Ignoring his leer, she said, I’m Eli and Shirley Ringle’s daughter.

The lady from the circus, right?

She nodded. You’re Mrs. Evan’s son, Larry. She was my fourth-grade teacher.

Good old mom. Larry had spoken with a curled lip. The old bat drove me crazy.

I liked her.

I didn’t. Her and her church crap and her hairbrush on my butt every Sunday morning. She walloped me with it before making me go to Sunday school, telling me it was for the sins I’d committed during the week, saying that she might not know what they were, but she was sure I’d done bad things because I was a boy and she believed boys were naturally evil little shits.

Why would she believe that?

My old man. He died from syphilis but not before giving it to her.

I heard she was sick.

Sick? The old bitch is rotting from the inside out, her mind so screwed up that she forgets to wipe her ass.

Penny’s frown had covered her entire face when she sighed and said, That’s terrible.

Like I give a shit. She broke three hairbrushes beating on me with them. No better than the old man, her. Just a different kind of rotten.

Over the next several months, whenever Penny passed through Reading Terminal, she and Larry would talk as she waited for her sandwich and soft drink. The fifth time, he said he needed her help.

What kind of help?

Larry had rested his elbows on the cigarette scarred bar top and spoke softly. I’ve got some friends, girls that need looking after by another girl. A smart girl. These girls aren’t so sharp.

I don’t understand.

 I think they’re in trouble. If you could just make sure they keep themselves clean and eat right, I think you could be good for them. He smiled and raised his eyebrows.

How do you know them?

You’d be surprised what and who you get to know when you’re tending bar.

And you really think I could help them?

Honey babe, I do. And you could help me a lot.

How?

Come to my place tonight instead of going back to Phewtown.

Penny laughed. I’ll help your friends, but I won’t give you the other kind of help.

When Penny met the five women, all living in a two-bedroom apartment in North Philadelphia, she had quickly realized that Larry intended for her to become his manager for a bunch of hookers. The idea appealed to her. Growing up hearing her parents’ tales of the their life in the circus before settling in Newtown, of con men and crooked gambling wheels and exotic dancers who made extra money servicing local men each night after the circus closed down, she suspected that whatever deal Larry would offer her would be less than he could afford to pay.

Stomping into the Terminal Café as if angry and offended, she had snarled at him.

Bastard.

Bastard?

Bastard, right down to the center of your black heart.

He laughed. You figured it out.

Do you think I’m an idiot?

I’ll give you eighty bucks a week to take care of my girls.

She shook her head. A hundred.

Ninety.

That you can offer me ninety dollars a week means you’re making a lot of money on these girls’ backs.

Larry snickered. They’re the ones making money on their backs. I’m the one profiting from their backs. You will too. There’s shitloads of money to be made on whores in a military city, and right now Philadelphia’s got the naval yard close to the downtown. Fort Dix is in Jersey, but the boys from there come to Philly when they’re on leave. That, and there’s troop trains coming and going all the time. A lot of poor saps want to get laid before being shipped out to get killed for old Glory.

Give me a hundred, or I’ll tell the police and your mother what you’re doing.

He held up his arms. A hundred it is. And you come to my place and we’ll have a nice little fuck.

Like hell. She spat the words. I’ll do business with you, but no monkey business.

And why would you work the girls for me?

Sliding onto a stool, she put her fists upright on the bar. I don’t suppose you’ve got any roast beef. I am surely sick of peanut butter and jelly.

He smiled and wagged a scolding finger under her nose. Roast beef? Rationing, girl, rationing. Where’s a kitchen in a joint like this going to get roast beef?

You got ways, Lar, she said.

His smile broadened and he puffed his chest. It so happens there’s a butcher in the Terminal Market who slips me some roast beef in return for me letting him slip his pecker into one of my girls from time to time.

I figured. She ordered her a roast beef sandwich, fries and a vanilla Coke and rapped her knuckles on the bar. It’s the money. I’ll do your dirty work for the money. The war won’t last forever. When it’s over things will change, and not for the best for girls like me working at what were men’s jobs before the war and I’m betting they’ll be men’s jobs again. I’ll end up back in Newtown and marrying some guy who got wounded or suffers from shell shock after what happened to him in the fucking war. I’ll pump out a bunch of kids and die a frustrated old grandmother. That, or I’ll stay in Philly and work in the ladies’ underwear department at Strawbridge and Clothier, Wanamaker’s or Gimbels and turn into one of those gray haired little old ladies with bad perfume and bad breath where I’ll have to smile and tell rich bitches that their tits look just fine in the sweaters they try on.

The good life, Larry said.

The dead life, Penny muttered. I like the idea of an extra hundred dollars a week on top of what I’m getting paid for sweating in the shipyard. I can bank it and maybe by the time the war’s over, I’ll be able to buy some rental properties and live off the income and not end up some dead-eyed housewife or shop girl.

Larry held out his hand. Deal.

Penny had stared at his face. And no hanky-panky. This will be strictly a business arrangement with us. If I want sex, I’ll have it on my own terms.

Larry grinned and nodded. It’s still a deal.

She took his hand and they shook.

Of course, he said. I think you’ll decide to fuck me, on your own terms, obviously.

Don’t hold your breath, Lar.

PENNY’S FATHER, ELI, was in the Army, somewhere in the Pacific, as he put it in the few letters he sent to his wife, Shirley. Every five or six weeks Penny would head home on the Newtown local from Reading Terminal, spend Saturday night and Sunday morning with her mother in Newtown and take an early afternoon train back to Philadelphia, insisting to her mother that she had promised to have dinner with her roommates, or had a date to go out to a movie with one of the boys from the Naval Yard. Going straight to the hookers’ apartment, she would pick up the take from Saturday night, count out her pile of a hundred dollars, and put the rest in an envelope for Larry. On weeks when the take was unusually high, she would slip an extra twenty or thirty dollars onto her pile.

On those weekends, after finishing work on Saturday and before boarding the Newtown local, she would stop at the Reading Terminal Market and buy whatever fresh fruits and vegetables she could find. However meager the supply during those years of rationing, the produce in the Market was superior to what her mother could find in Newtown’s small groceries.

She would carry her purchases in a canvas bag to Reading Terminal’s cavernous train shed, which, when it was built, was the one of the largest single-span arched-roof structures in the world. The air inside the shed was always heavy with the smoke and stench of burning coal pouring from the stacks of boilers powering the huge steam engines lining the tracks before her. Arriving back in Newtown, she would walk to the temporary boarding house her mother, Shirley, had made of their home in order to make ends meet until Eli came home.

 A star field hockey player in her own Newtown High School days, Shirley was tall and physically strong and after finishing school went to work for Charlie Sparks’ Circus, where she met Eli, who was a roustabout. They married in 1926 when she became pregnant. In 1930, she convinced Eli to move back to Newtown with her, telling him life in the circus was no way to raise children. They rented a place in the Hungry Ten, a row of brick homes a few feet from the railroad line, across the tracks and just a few yards south of the train station. Eli found a job working for the Borough, plowing snow-covered streets in the winters and patching potholes each spring. He kept gutters clean and storm drains clear of refuse and vegetation. In five years they saved enough to buy a small house on Chancellor Street.

When Eli went to war, Shirley took care of all the maintenance at the house, from fixing broken plumbing to replacing slates on the roof. She always tried to assure Penny that things would get back to normal, as Shirley always put it, once Eli returned.

You’ll be able to move back to town and find someone to marry, her mother often said.

Penny would pat the back of her mother’s hand and say nothing.

WHEN ELI’S LETTERS stopped coming, Shirley never lost faith. She joined the local Methodist church and made Penny go with her on