Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (6 page)

She sighed and headed to the undercroft to see if she could lend a hand with the the Young Mothers program. At three o’clock, the teens and their children would have just arrived. The young moms would be doing their homework or talking with one of the mentors about job hunting or child rearing, while their kids were cared for next door.

The nursery in St. Alban’s undercroft was as cheery as two windowless rooms could be, with lemon yellow walls and puffy white painted clouds forever floating over a blue painted sky. Sundays, the space sheltered the youngest members of her congregation. The rest of the week, it served as day care, homework spot, and employment center for teen mothers.

Clare opened the playroom door, bumping into a toddler and sending him staggering forward. Another two-year-old, taking advantage of his loss of balance, rammed into him and grabbed the doll he’d been holding. The little boy screeched, the thief laughed, and another child at the play kitchen started banging pots together. “Oh, Lord.” Clare didn’t know which one to deal with first. “I’m sorry.”

“Clare! What are you doing here?” Karen Burns, one of the volunteers, laid an infant in a playpen and expertly scooped up the red-faced little boy. “Here you go, Braeden, here’s a baby for you.” She wiggled a doll in Braeden’s face. He snatched the substitute. When Karen let him down, the avaricious little girl came at him again. “Uh-uh, Jazmin.” Karen performed a knee block that would have done the New York Rangers proud. She steered Jazmin toward the low table at the other end of the room. “You and I can change our babies together.” Karen lifted the infant back out of the playpen, then handed the pots-and-pans musician a basket of fake food. “Kiefer, can you make us all a yummy meal?” The boy accepted the container and began laying plastic pork chops and burgers on wooden skillets. Karen did a sort of shift-and-flip and the baby on her arm was lying on the changing table with its feet waving in the air.

“Oh my God, Karen.” Clare shook her head. “I’m never going to be able to do this. I mean it. I am so unprepared for motherhood, it’s not funny.”

Karen’s hands flew as she unsnapped, ripped, folded, and tossed. “You’ll learn. We all do.”

“I don’t even know how to change a diaper.”

Karen held out a box of wipes. “Want to learn?”

Clare wrinkled her nose. “Not really.”

Karen laughed. “Trust me, I felt the same way the first time we brought a foster child home. Utterly incompetent in the face of a six-month-old. But I figured if I could make it through law school and pass the New York bar, I could learn how to mash bananas and give baths in the sink.”

“You bathe them in the sink?”

Karen gave her an amused look. “I have some books I can pass on to you.” She hoisted the now-fresh baby into the air, kissed her terry-covered tummy, and handed her to Clare. “Here.”

Clare reflexively accepted the bundle.

“So what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be off for seven glorious days and six fun-filled nights in an ice-fishing shack?” Karen moved to the sink and turned on the faucet. “For which, by the way, you earn the saintly wife award. If Geoff had suggested something like that for our honeymoon, our marriage would’ve ended after the reception.”

“It’s a beautiful vacation cabin with eight hundred feet of shoreline. It’s the ideal year-round getaway.” At least that’s what the Realtor had said. Russ’s description had been more succinct.
No phone, no neighbors, and too far for your parishioners to just drop in.
“This is our chance to try it before we buy it.”

“In January. In the Adirondacks.” Karen scrubbed her hands. “No wonder you’re hiding out down here.”

“Russ had some last-minute work to do. I figured I could help out.” The infant in her arms began to squirm and fuss.

“With your black-belt child care skills?” Karen took the baby from her.

“I was thinking more along the lines of their mothers.”

“Mae Bristol is in the other room helping with homework, if you want to lend her a hand.”

“How much of a hand does she need? She taught for thirty years before she retired.” Besides—and Clare would never admit this—Mae Bristol intimidated her a little. It was the way she looked at you, like she had caught you without a hall pass.

“Okay, then, Gail’s in the other room with the job search and life skills kids. Pop in and see if she needs an assistant.” Karen grinned at her. “Just don’t try to tell them that all-black is an appropriate interview outfit.”

“It worked for me,” Clare said. As she exited the nursery, her smile fell away. Chances were good
she’d
be job hunting with an infant in tow.

Across the hall, in the room they used for the Rite 13 youth group on Sundays, Clare found Gail Jones bent over a table, helping a young woman of eighteen or nineteen decipher a document. Another girl was working on a laptop, while a third frustratedly jabbed buttons on her phone. She wasn’t going to get any less frustrated—it was almost impossible to get a signal down here.

“Hey, Clare.” Gail straightened, smiling. “Here to check out the work in progress?” She turned to the girl on the laptop. “Reverend Fergusson is
my
supervisor.” The girl stared at Clare. Clearly, there was a work-related backstory Clare was missing.

“Nope. Just dropping by to see if there’s anything I can do before I leave.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’re going out to Lake Inverary! How romantic!” Gail wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “A rustic cabin, a bear rug in front of the fire…”

The girl with the laptop looked skeptical, though whether that was because of Clare’s advanced age or her condition, Clare couldn’t tell.

“You’re going to Lake Inverary?” The third girl shoved her phone in her pocket. She stuck her hand out. Clare took it automatically. “I’m Amber Willis. I’m desperate to get to my family’s cabin on Lake Inverary. Could I catch a ride with you?” Amber Willis looked like a cheerleader; her hair pulled to the top of her head as if any other style would take too long; her skinny frame jittery with energy.

“Oh,” Clare said. “Um…”

“It’s just, my boyfriend came down from Lake Placid, and I was supposed to go up and meet him at the lake, because it was sort of a halfway point, but my mom’s taken my car and disappeared with it, and Elijah—that’s my boyfriend—he left a message for me that his truck died in Canterville and he got a ride from the tow guy out to the lake, but now I can’t reach him because, you know how it is out there, you can never get a signal, which is why this was supposed to be the perfect getaway weekend for us—he’s been saving up lots of money from his winter job and I think he might have popped for a ring.”

Amber ran out of air at that point. Or perhaps the ring was the culmination of her saga.

“Ah … your father? Can’t he give you a ride?”

“No, he’s downstate this weekend. That’s why I invited Elijah to the cabin.” She looked at Clare like a puppy in its last hours at a kill shelter. “I’ve been calling around to see if one of my friends could take me, but I’m not having any luck. Oh, please? I’ll pay for gas. I’ll be quiet. Or I’ll talk, if you want the company.”

“No, it’s—my husband is coming with me.” Clare seized on that fact. “We’re going in his pickup truck. I’m afraid there won’t be room for you.”

“I’ll ride outside in the back.”

In January. For an hour. “What? No, that’s not what I meant. We have a little backseat space.”

“Perfect! I don’t take up much room at all.”

“I don’t think—”

“I love Jesus!”

Clare blinked. Good Lord. The kid thought she needed to make a profession of belief before she’d get help. Had someone taught her she couldn’t rely on Christians unless she parroted bumper-sticker theology and prayed the Sinner’s Prayer? That made up Clare’s mind for her. “I love Jesus, too, but you don’t need to pass a religious test in order to get help at St. Alban’s.” She shoved her hands in her skirt pockets and crossed her fingers, knowing she was telling at least half a lie. “My husband and I will be happy to take you with us to Lake Inverary.”

10.

Russ’s glasses steamed opaque as soon as he entered the overheated foyer of the town hall. He snatched them off and shucked his parka as he headed down the hall to the session room, Lyle close behind him.

Russ shoved the door open with way more force that he’d intended. It creaked and slammed against the wall, silencing all conversation, jerking everyone’s attention to his dramatic entrance. Russ couldn’t make out individual faces from this far away, but he could tell everyone was looking at him.
Crap.
Probably waiting for him to go postal on them.

“Hi, all.” Lyle’s voice, warm and genial, promised shelter from Russ’s storm. “The chief and I heard you were discussing the department, and we wanted to be on hand to help out with any questions you might have.”

“Everyone? You know Deputy Chief Lyle MacAuley.” Jim Cameron’s voice was dry. “And, of course, our chief of police.” Russ put his glasses back on. The room snapped into focus. Five of the six aldermen sat at the long, Formica-covered session table, with the mayor in the moderator’s seat at the center. The town secretary’s shorthand machine had just fallen still, echoing the awkward silence in the room. Merva had been right—there weren’t any members of the public taking up space in the folding chairs. However, the town’s attorney was on hand. And there, at the speaker’s podium, stood a tall drink of water in a state trooper’s uniform. His ol’ pal Bob Mongue.
Oh, wonderful.

“This is a budget meeting,” the mayor went on. “We have your annual report. We didn’t feel we needed any extra information at this time.”

“Then what’s Sergeant Mongue doing here?” Like the door, Russ’s voice was louder and harsher than he intended.

Cameron hesitated for a second. “Since we fall within his troop’s area, we’ve asked
Lieutenant
Mongue to give us his thoughts on how the state police might be more … of a presence in Millers Kill.”

“And Cossayuharie and Fort Henry,” Harold Collins said. “Let’s face it, they already help out with some of the patrolling and investigating you people do. Duplicatin’ resources!” He banged his fist on the table, setting his water glass aquiver. “That’s what we joined up the towns to get away from.”

“Back in the fifties,” Garry Greuling said. “Times change. Our needs change. Our economy is based on tourism now. I don’t think handing local law enforcement over to the state police is the best way to serve our visitors.”

“So we hire seasonal officers to patrol the town in the summer.” Bob Miles leaned forward. “Straight salary, no benefits. We’ll have the coverage we need and still save upwards of a hundred thousand a year.”

Bob Mongue showed no sign of giving up the speaker’s podium, so Russ strode forward and took a stand directly in front of the aldermen. “Let me get this straight. You’re considering closing down the Millers Kill Police Department? Thinking that the staties—the state police—will be able to replace us?”

“Town’s broke,” Collins said.

“It’s not broke,” Cameron said. “And you’re out of order, Russ.”

“I’m out of
order
? My people are out there twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, keeping your kids and your homes and your businesses safe. Do you have any idea how many domestics we stopped last year? How many teens we picked up and returned to their parents before they could get into trouble? How many assaults we shut down because we’re right there, in the community, every night and day?”

“And you do a great job. But this economy is squeezing us at both ends. Revenue is down and expenses are way up. Do
you
have any idea how much we spend just on gas for your cruisers? For their insurance and maintenance and upkeep? How much it costs to keep the heat and lights and water on at the station? Forget the personnel costs—the infrastructure alone is killing us.”

“We’ve applied for a Department of Homeland Security grant,” Lyle said. “If we get that—”

“You haven’t gotten any money from them the past two years you’ve applied.” Cameron sounded tired. “I don’t like the idea any more than you do. But our buy-in for state police coverage will be half what we’re spending to keep our own police force running.”

“This is not a done deal.” Garry Greuling was looking at Russ, but his voice was pitched toward the mayor. “This is one option that we’re weighing.”

“Do we have a voice in this? Or are you just going to hand down your decision from on high?” Russ knew he sounded angry and bitter, but he couldn’t help it.

“Your annual report is your voice.” Jim Cameron squared the stack of document folders in front of him. “We have a written proposal from Lieutenant Mongue and accounts from five other municipalities in the state who’ve taken the step we’re considering. The aldermen and I are going to carefully read and digest this information, and at our meeting next Friday, we’ll vote on whether to put it on the ballot or not.”

Russ opened his mouth.

“Thank you,” Lyle said. “We’ll see you then.” His tone closed off any further discussion. “Chief?” He gestured toward the door.

Russ let himself be frog-marched out of the sessions room. In the hall, he turned to Lyle.

“Not here.” Lyle pointed toward the exterior door. Outside, standing on the concrete steps with cold biting at them, he said, “Okay.”

“Why the hell did you go belly-up in there?
Thank you?
God.” Russ struggled into his parka. “‘Read and digest this information.’ I’ll give him something to digest.”

“I shut you down because you were two minutes away from alienating every single friend we might have on the board.” Lyle tugged his watch cap low over his ears. “We’re not gonna make our case in there, in front of the whole pack of ’em. We’re going to make it one on one. With tact. And finesse.”

Russ grunted. “You sound like a goddamn politician.”

Lyle started down the stairs. “That’s why you keep me around. That, and my natural charm and good looks.”

“I keep you around so I’m not the only old guy on the force.” They fell into step. The sun had already set behind the mountains, and above the bare-branched trees lining Main, the sky was streaked with ice pink and rose and orange. The street and the shops were shaded in blue, their windows warm golden squares of light. Russ felt a squeeze in his chest, the same desperate possessiveness he sometimes felt watching Clare sleeping or cooking or lost in a book.
My wife. My town.
The inevitable echo:
My child.
Jesus. How was he going to take care of a kid when he couldn’t even take care of his own officers? “I’ve got to cancel the honeymoon.”