All Mortal Flesh (33 page)

“I’m useless here. A lame duck.” He waved a hand at himself: no badge, no gun, no uniform. “I don’t get out and do
something
, I’ll go nuts.”

She shook her head. “Take care of yourself. Don’t make more work for us by wrapping your truck around a tree.”

He twitched a smile at her.

Walking down the hallway felt oddly final, as if he were going and not coming back. He paused in the foyer to zip his scarf inside his jacket and heard footsteps behind him. He turned. It was Lyle.

“Where are you going?”

“To find my wife.”

Lyle jammed his hands into his pockets. “We got that BOLO out on ’er. Coast to coast. Describes her as a cop’s wife, so everyone’ll be looking that much harder for her.”

Except, of course, the ones who would assume she was running away from the domestic violence that sometimes erupts in police families. He pulled his gloves from his pocket and tugged them on.

“Russ,” Lyle began.

He held up his hand. “Don’t.”

“Come on. You gotta hear me out.”

“No, I don’t. The only thing I’ve got to do is keep from smashing your face in.” Empty talk. Posturing. He didn’t feel like taking Lyle apart. He just felt sick and tired and dirty. And it was only eight o’clock in the morning.

“She’s alive. That means you’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later.”

“Her, I forgive. You can take a flying fuck.” He turned toward the marble stairs. Lyle grabbed his arm.

Russ spun around. He had a good five inches and forty pounds on MacAuley, but his deputy chief didn’t give an inch.

“I didn’t know you then,” Lyle said, his voice tight. “She was unhappy and lonely, and the only reason—”

“I don’t want to hear this!”

“The only reason we got together was because she was so pissed off at you for bringing her to Millers Kill.” Lyle glanced away. “I figured that out later.”

“Surprisingly, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Russ, get your head out of your ass. You’ve been so busy telling yourself you’re happily married you never opened up your eyes to see what was really going on. And I don’t mean Linda using me to flip you the bird seven years ago. Okay, I’m a son of a whore and you got the right to rearrange my face. I slept with your wife and then I got to know you and respect you and to like you, and I never had the guts to come clean. I’m sorry. Jesus. I can’t say it any more’n that. I’m sorry. But you gotta face the fact that there’s something wrong with the marriage when a husband and wife act like you two have.”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Russ said between clenched teeth, “but I know there’s something wrong with my marriage. And I’m going to fix it as soon as I find my wife.”

Lyle released his arm. He sighed, a flat, defeated sigh. “Right.”

Russ turned. Took the top two steps. Turned back. “The thing I don’t get,” he said, “is why? Even if you didn’t know me, you knew I was heading up the department. Why make trouble in your own backyard? Why
my
wife?”

Lyle smiled without humor. “I’da thought you of all people would’ve figured that out.” His eyes slid away from Russ’s and looked at some point seven years in the past. “I was in love with her,” he said. “I was in love with her, too.”

Clare refused to look at the paper Thursday morning. She cracked open the front door of the rectory and saw it lying on her porch in its bright yellow plastic bag to protect it from the promised storm, and wondered why she had never seen how much it resembled an unexploded pipe bomb. Or a large, malignant yellow jacket, waiting for her to reach out an unwary hand and be stung. She closed the door. Whatever was in it, she’d find out soon enough.

She dressed quickly, trying not to notice the jumbled disarray in her sweater drawer or the way her skirt hangers had been shoved to one side of her closet. In the kitchen, she opened the pantry door to get out the oatmeal and was so dismayed by the mess she shut the door again, her appetite gone. What had they thought she was hiding behind the canned tomatoes and boxes of rigatoni?

She poured coffee from the coffeemaker into her Thermos. She pulled on her boots and parka. Next to her coat tree, the phone on the wall blinked its red message light over and over and over again. She hesitated, her hand over the play button. Maybe Russ had called?

Then she thought of his face in the station, the distrustful cop mask falling over his features, and anger burst behind her eyes, bitter and salty in her mouth. No. Russ had not called. She left the phone flashing monotonously behind the kitchen door and crunched her way down her unplowed drive toward the church.

She let herself in by the back door, walking through the still-darkened parish hall toward her office. She was surprised, as she drew closer, to hear a voice from the main office. She was always the first one in. Lois didn’t show up until nine. She slowed her steps, drawing close to the doorway without entering.

The voice was talking, then pausing. A phone conversation. “I don’t know enough to make a recommendation.” Elizabeth de Groot. Goodness, she was quite the woman of Proverbs, wasn’t she?
She riseth also while it is yet night
. “I thought you should hear it from me first,” Elizabeth went on. Clare leaned forward, and the Thermos thumped against her leg. She froze. “No,” Elizabeth said. Another long pause. “Well, that’s for the police to decide, isn’t it?”

Clare suddenly saw herself as she was, lurking in the darkness outside her church’s office, eavesdropping on a private conversation. It was not a pretty picture. She retreated a couple of steps, cleared her throat, and called out, “Hello?”

There was a second’s pause before de Groot answered, “Hi, Clare! It’s me, Elizabeth.” Then something quiet into the phone. By the time Clare came through the door, she was setting the receiver into the cradle. “I decided to get in early today,” Elizabeth said. “There’s so much I have to absorb just to get up to speed.”

“Mmm.” Clare rested her Thermos on Lois’s desk.

“I really think I can make a contribution to the ongoing capital campaign,” Elizabeth went on. “Not to mention with the stewardship committee. And I’ve been thinking more about outreach. I think we can expand it way beyond simply getting people who are already congregants back into the pews.”

Clare let the deacon rattle on while she debated asking Elizabeth what her
real
agenda was at St. Alban’s. Would the information she got be worth tipping her hand?
When reconnoitering enemy territory
, Master Sergeant Ashley “Hardball” Wright drawled,
the first, second, and last rule is: Don’t get caught
. Her old SERE instructor would’ve flunked her if she blabbed about hearing the phone call or wondered aloud what de Groot was doing for the bishop.

Elizabeth ran out of conversational steam and looked up at Clare with a mixture of sunshine and wariness.

“You’d better think about gathering up what you need and taking it home,” Clare said. “They’re predicting this storm is going to be one for the record books. You don’t want to be trapped on the Northway.”

The fine lines around Elizabeth’s eyes relaxed almost imperceptibly. “Are you going to close the office?”

Clare shook her head. “Not yet. I’ve got a couple of counseling sessions this morning. If it’s looking bad after that, I’ll send Lois and Mr. Hadley home.”

“What about Evening Prayer?”

“Let’s take a listen to what the rest of the world’s doing.” Clare switched on Lois’s radio. The Storm Center First Response Team was reading off an alphabetical list of area schools that were closed, followed by businesses shutting early and manufacturers canceling shifts. Sounded like the world and his wife were going to stay at home and sit this one out. “Okay,” Clare said. “I’ll call the snow-closing hotline later this morning and let them know there’s no Evening Prayer.” Two and a half years ago, she hadn’t even known what a snow-closing hotline was. Now she had it on her speed dial.

She left her new deacon to either pull together more information on donor programs or plot her downfall and went into her office. Mr. Hadley had left her wood and kindling in a big iron basket next to the hearth, and she laid a fire in the grate, thankful for the soothing manual task, thankful, once the kindling had caught and flames were crackling up in the strong draft, that she spent her days in a beautiful old building with real working fireplaces. And uneven floors. And drafty windows. And a yearly oil bill that probably paid for the president of Exxon’s yacht.

Her first appointment arrived promptly at eight. Chris Ellis, father of three, husband to Dr. Anne Vining-Ellis, had had a panic attack two months ago in his office. His doctor prescribed Valium and counseling. It had taken two sessions for Clare to figure out Chris Ellis’s problem: He hated his job. He hated the work, civil engineering; he hated his younger, more ambitious colleagues; he hated the management, which was bent on taking the firm national; and he hated his two-hour daily commute to Albany. In one more session, he admitted he wanted to pursue his true passion, fine furniture making, currently relegated to a basement hobby. Since then, he had been working toward either taking the leap or living with what he had. Clare privately thought he ought to go for it, but with his eldest son at Brown and the second due to start college next year, she could see why he was reluctant to abandon the regular paycheck and benefits.

She was delighted when he told her he’d accepted a paying commission. “It’s for four classic Adirondack antler chairs and a matching table. Just like the ones I did for my friend David’s restaurant. Get this—the owner of the Algonquin Waters was having lunch at David’s, saw my pieces, and asked about them. He wants a set for the hotel!”

“The owner of the Algonquin resort? Was lunching in Saratoga?”

“Yep. Name’s Oppenheimer.”

“Opperman,” Clare said. “John Opperman.”

“I didn’t actually meet him. He left word with the general manager before he left town, and she contacted me. Apparently, they’re very committed to using local craftsmen and material in the hotel.”

She blinked. First Linda Van Alstyne, then Chris Ellis. Before they knew it, half the town was going to be employed by Opperman’s company. It probably wouldn’t do any good to mention her belief that the owner of the Algonquin Spa and Resort had manipulated his two business partners to their deaths. The only other person who shared her opinion was Russ Van Alstyne, and he wasn’t about to be propping up her arguments any time soon. It was a moot point, anyway. Businesses killed people every day in some part of the world or another. Though she suspected they did it with less personal involvement than Opperman.

She said something encouraging, and Chris talked for a while about seeing if he could structure a part-time position at his firm, or maybe independently consult for them, and when they wrapped up, she was guiltily aware that she’d only given him half her attention. Encountering the same people, businesses, gossip—that was life in a small town. She thought of Ben Beagle, and his big hog-killing story. It was not a conspiracy to make her see the Algonquin Waters at every turn. It was just where she lived.

The Garrettsons were next. Clare took a large slug of coffee and threw another log on the fire. Tim and Liz were always a bit of an ordeal. They entered either bickering or in a stony silence, which was worse. This morning it was silence.

“So,” Clare said. “How are you?”

Liz gazed at her husband with Laser Beam Death Ray eyes.

“She’s hacked off about her mother,” Tim said. “Again.”

Clare picked up her coffee mug. Wished she had thought to pour some whiskey into it first. “Last week we agreed we were going to stay off the subject of—”

“I brought her back from the hospital and her cats were dead!”

“You can’t blame me for her dead cats, Liz.”

“I’m confused,” Clare said. “I thought there was a neighbor who looks after your mother’s house when she’s away.”

“A very responsible neighbor who brings in the mail and the paper and leaves the check for the snowplow and feeds the damn cats,” Tim said. “We slip her thank-you money in a card every few months.”

“We wouldn’t need someone else to help Mom if she were living with us.”

“We wouldn’t have to worry about any of her needs if she was in the Infirmary!”

“What happened to the cats?” Clare asked.

“The cats are a side issue,” Tim said. “There’s always something that’s going wrong. It’ll always be something going wrong until we put her in a home, where she belongs.”

“They were killed,” Liz said, ignoring her husband. “It was horrible. I went into the barn to get the rock salt to scatter on her walk and steps”—her angry glance at Tim led Clare to guess that was supposed to be his job—“and there they were. Sliced to pieces.”

“It was probably a fisher,” Tim said.

“A fisher would’ve eaten them,” Liz said. “Not left their little frozen carcasses behind.”

Clare frowned. “When I saw her in the hospital, your mother said something about someone trying to kill her cats.”

“It’s not about the cats,” Tim repeated. “It’s about the fact that Liz’s mom isn’t competent to manage her own household anymore.” He turned to his wife. “It’s going to be one disaster after another until you realize putting her in the Infirmary isn’t setting her out on a goddamn ice floe.”

Liz gasped. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

“Oh, for chrissake, of course I didn’t kill your mother’s cats!”

“Did you report it to the police?”

Both Garrettsons looked at Clare as if she were crazy. “They were cats,” Liz said. “It was awful, but it’s not like, you know, Quinn Tracey’s mother discovering the police chief’s wife’s body.”

Clare’s first thought was,
Oh, good, they haven’t read the
Post-Star
yet today
. Then Liz Garrettson’s phrasing struck her. “Quinn Tracey’s mother?”

The Garrettsons looked at each other again. “We figured… you probably had heard about that,” Tim said tactfully.

“No, I mean, why call her Quinn Tracey’s mother? Instead of Meg Tracey?”