Immoral (12 page)

“You mean you counseled Rachel?” Stride asked.

“Briefly. A long time ago. I’ve worked with Emily much more. She and I have tried to work through the problems with Rachel for many years. Without a great deal of success, I’m afraid.”

“Anything you can tell us would help,” Maggie assured him.

“In fact, I did talk about your visit with Emily,” Tenby said. “I had a suspicion this kind of topic might come up, you see. Emily was gracious and gave her permission for me to talk about our conversations freely. Naturally, I don’t have Rachel’s permission, but perhaps, under the circumstances, I would be doing a disservice to keep things hidden. Of course, I have to say that Rachel told me very little that shed much light on her soul.”

“Maybe if you started at the beginning,” Stride suggested.

“Yes, indeed. Well, you know that many of the problems between Emily and Rachel date back to her first marriage to Tommy Deese. He drove a wedge between Rachel and Emily, and the gap only widened after Tommy’s death. Of course, I only learned about most of this in retrospect. I knew both of them from church, but neither one made an effort to confide in me.”

“They lived near here?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, yes. Right down the street, in fact.”

“Did Rachel have many friends?” Stride asked.

Tenby drummed his fingers on the end table. “She was never really close to anyone. Except, perhaps, for Kevin. He always had quite the crush on her, but it was a one-way thing.”

“This is the same Kevin who was with her in Canal Park on that last night? Kevin Lowry?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, yes. Kevin and his family still live here. I expect he’ll be a lawyer or vice president someday, a real success story. I’m afraid his one weakness is Rachel. He always seemed to want to save her, but Rachel didn’t have much interest in being saved. Well, that’s all right, he’s better off with that girl Sally he’s dating now. I’m sorry, that sounds rather cold, doesn’t it? It’s not that I have any ill feelings toward Rachel, but she would never have been right for Kevin.”

Maggie nodded. “I take it you don’t believe Kevin could have had anything to do with Rachel’s disappearance.”

Tenby’s face revealed real shock. “Kevin? Oh, no, no. Impossible.”

“Let’s talk about Emily and Graeme,” Stride said. “Did Rachel resent Graeme? Did she resent Emily bringing a new man into their lives?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Tenby said. “But it didn’t seem that way. They seemed to get along, at least for a while. I think Rachel thought she could use Graeme as a wedge against Emily, just the way Tommy did with her. Turn Graeme and Emily against each other, you see. And maybe it worked. It hasn’t been a very happy marriage.”

“How so?” Maggie asked. “Fights? Infidelity?”

Tenby held up one hand. “I’m afraid I’m getting thirsty. I need a glass of water. I can’t afford to have a sore throat before my sermon! Can I get the two of you anything?”

Stride and Maggie both shook their heads. Tenby smiled and excused himself, disappearing into another room. They heard his footsteps tapping on a hard floor, then the bang of pipes as he turned on the water. He returned a few seconds later, sipping from a red plastic cup.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting down again. He looked more relaxed. “Where were we?”

“Emily and Graeme,” Maggie said.

“Yes, yes. Well, I don’t think there’s been any violence in the marriage. I think it’s the opposite problem. No passion. There just doesn’t seem to be much love between them.”

“Then why did they get married in the first place?” Stride asked.

Tenby frowned. “Graeme is very successful. I think Emily may have been a little blinded by all those dollar signs on his paycheck. When you’ve struggled to make ends meet your whole life, it can be very tempting to imagine a world in which you’ve got considerably more leisure. She may have allowed some of her dreams to get in the way of reality.”

“And Graeme?” Maggie asked. “No offense, but Emily doesn’t seem to be much of a catch for a bank honcho.”

Tenby studied Maggie with an unusual smile, as if he found the question very amusing. “Well, who knows why anyone is attracted to anyone else? Emily is a lovely woman. Rachel didn’t get her good looks exclusively from Tommy, despite what Emily might say. Plus, there are a lot of men who are attracted to women who need to be taken care of. That may have been the case with Graeme.”

Stride didn’t think that sounded like Graeme at all. “How did they meet?” he asked.

“Oh, it was rather sweet, as Emily tells it,” Tenby said. His voice was suddenly louder, almost boisterous. It sounded forced. “Graeme had been at the bank for about a year, and I gather that most of the female staff considered him to be a very eligible bachelor. Good looks, a lot of self-confidence, and a high-paying position in the bank. What’s not to like? But he didn’t seem to take an interest in anyone. Emily mentioned him to me a couple of times, but she never dreamed he would look her way. She never even bothered trying to approach him. She was one of the few who didn’t try. Maybe that worked in her favor. He may have seen her as the only one who was immune to his charms. In any event, one day, Graeme approached her in the parking lot after work. He asked if she’d like to have a drink. It seems he had been attracted to her for some time and hadn’t had the courage to ask her out. Funny, isn’t it? But you never know.”

“I guess not,” Stride said. He glanced at Maggie, who frowned.

“And not long after, they were married,” Tenby continued. “It was a whirlwind romance.”

Maggie shook her head. “And a few years later, there’s no passion left?”

“It happens,” Tenby said. “I see it all too often.”

Stride nodded. “Forgive me, Reverend, but I’m still having trouble here. Even if Graeme asked Emily out, I find it hard to believe they found so much in common that he was ready to dive into marriage. This may sound callous, but did Emily lay a trap for him?”

Tenby bit his lip and looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Maggie smiled. “A trap. You know, women are awfully good at manipulating men to make them do whatever they want. Why, Stride here will do anything I tell him to do. It’s an art.”

Tenby smiled nervously. “Well, I don’t think Emily had any kind of strategy. She was too dazzled. As I say, the money may have caused her to overlook the fact that she really didn’t feel much passion, but I don’t believe she intentionally deceived him.”

“Reverend, we really need to know the truth,” Stride told him. “There’s obviously something more.”

Tenby nodded. “Yes, I know. It doesn’t have anything to do with Rachel, though, so I don’t see why anyone needs to bring up this kind of dirty laundry.”

“If we don’t have all the pieces, we can’t solve the puzzle,” Maggie said. “It’s that simple.”

“I suppose so.” Tenby wiped his face, which was moist. “Well, you see, after they had been dating a few weeks, Emily found out she was pregnant. That was what really led to the marriage.”

“I’m sure Graeme was thrilled,” Stride murmured.

“Hardly,” Tenby said. “He wanted her to have an abortion. She refused. I think he would have liked the whole thing to go away, but in a town like Duluth, in a position like his, you can’t have a scandal coming out in public. So he married her.”

“And the baby?” Maggie asked.

“Miscarriage at six months. Emily nearly died.”

“Graeme didn’t try to work out an amicable divorce?” Stride asked.

“No, he didn’t,” Tenby said. “He seemed to have resigned himself to the marriage. And I suppose he thought a divorce would have been extremely expensive. So he held up his end. But make no mistake, he didn’t pretend to have his heart in it. It was simply a convenience to be married. For a while, that was okay for Emily, too. Love doesn’t seem so important when you’ve struggled for years just to get by.”

“For a while?” Maggie asked.

“Well, money is no cure for loneliness,” Tenby said.

“So how do they deal with it now?” Stride asked.

“I think you’d better talk to each of them about that, Detective.”

“Meanwhile, Rachel was in the middle of this happy scene?” Maggie asked.

Tenby sighed. “All three of them in that house,” he said. “And not very much happiness among them. It’s a terrible thing. That’s why I was so convinced that Rachel ran away. She had a lot to run away from.”

“Did she ever talk to you about running away?” Stride asked.

“No, she never confided in me. I think she saw me as being on Emily’s side, so that made me the enemy.”

“And there’s nothing else you can think of that might shed light on her disappearance? Anything you observed or overheard?”

“I’m afraid not,” Tenby said. “I wish there was.”

They all stood up. They shook hands awkwardly, and Stride felt that the minister was now anxious for them to be gone. He guided them back down the corridor into the cold lobby of the church. When the door closed behind them, Stride and Maggie paused on the porch, buttoning their coats and swinging scarves across their faces. The wind had blown away their footprints in the snow.

“What do you think?” Maggie said.

Stride squinted at the cold sun. “I think we could use a break.”

Heather took a sip of tea from a chipped china cup and replaced it on the end table at a safe distance, where a spill would not be disastrous. Then she gingerly picked up the prints she had developed in the cold basement a few hours earlier.

First snowfall always made for beautiful work. She had found a giant, perfect spiderweb stretched between two trees in the woods behind the cottage. The snow crystals coated each diaphanous strand, just enough to make a patchwork, like lace. She had caught the image quickly, and even as she snapped the pictures, a puff of wind splintered the ice and sent the web fluttering away. One of the prints showed the web just as it separated, the snow gently tearing it apart.

Heather took off her half-glasses and laid them beside her. A Brahms concerto was in its final notes on the stereo. She closed her eyes, enjoying the lilt of the piano. As it faded away into silence, she realized how tired she was. She had spent most of the day tramping about in the cold and snow with her camera, until her feet were wet and her fingers were numb. Lissa had been with her the whole time, but the cold didn’t bother the girl at all. Heather kept telling her to wrap her face up in her scarf, and Lissa kept pulling it off when Heather wasn’t looking. They had taken a hot bath together when they got home, but Heather could still feel some of the coldness of the day inside her. She was ready to tuck her body into a long flannel nightgown and bury herself in a mound of blankets.

She clicked the lamp off and eased out of the recliner. She turned the overhead light off, and the house was dark, but the living room kept a reflected glow from the moon shining on a fresh white bed of snow outside. Heather tip-toed down the hallway, not wanting to awaken Lissa. As was her custom, she edged the girl’s door open and peeked inside. Lissa always slept with a night-light. The room was filled with shadows. Her daughter was sleeping soundly on her stomach, her face lost in the pillow. She had thrashed out of the blankets, leaving half her body exposed.

Heather approached her, wanting to pull the blankets up around her again. The night was going to get even colder. She lingered at Lissa’s bedside, studying the girl’s tranquil face and smiling at the occasional murmurs she made in her sleep. Heather bent over and brushed her lips against her daughter’s forehead.

She tugged the blanket up and fitted it around Lissa’s shoulders. As she did, something tumbled out of bed and landed softly on the carpet. Heather looked down, seeing something glint in the shadows. She bent over, confused, and picked it up. It was a gold bracelet.

Heather hadn’t purchased it for Lissa and didn’t remember seeing it before. She wrinkled her brow, wondering where Lissa had found it and surprised that her daughter hadn’t mentioned it. Knowing Lissa, that probably meant it had come from some illicit source.

She left the girl’s room, taking the bracelet with her.

Heather continued to her own bedroom. She put the bracelet on top of a rickety five-drawer bureau and studied it thoughtfully for a moment. Then she shrugged and turned away. She unbuttoned her red plaid shirt and tossed it in the laundry basket. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She yanked off her jeans, left her panties and socks on, and quickly pulled a nightgown over her head.

She tugged her six blankets down and crawled under them. She clicked on the radio, looking for music. Instead, the hourly headlines were winding down. She paid little attention to the stories, which were too depressing. A farm house south of town had burned, killing an elderly woman. The girl from Duluth, Rachel, was still missing. The Trojans had lost a big game.

Heather reviewed the wall of framed photographs beside her bed. She had just added one of the prints from her photo shoot at the barn. The waning sun that had lingered behind her on the edge of the treetops cast shadows in the barn’s sagging crevices. Dead leaves scattered over the earth like a carpet. The sky on the horizon was steel gray. She had been aiming for an image filled with decay, and she had achieved it.

As Heather stared at the photograph, she finally remembered.

In her mind, she saw Lissa running around the corner of the barn toward her, shouting about something she had found. Heather had been distracted, concentrating on her camera, but she remembered Lissa showing her a gold bracelet, and she remembered telling the girl to put it right back where she found it. Now a few weeks later, here was Lissa with a secret gold bracelet hidden in her bed.

“That little sneak,” Heather said aloud, peeved.

She got out of bed with a sigh and retrieved the bracelet from the bureau. It was not particularly heavy or expensive. She guessed that a high school girl had lost it in the middle of a tryst behind the barn.

Heather looked at the bracelet and saw letters inside.

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