Lois looked at her oddly. Clare could tell she was wondering why the sudden eagerness to let the new deacon into every aspect of their business.
“You said you worked successfully in both those areas at St. Stephen’s, right? I’d like you to write up any recommendations you have for us to improve our ingathering during the upcoming year. I know the members of the stewardship committee will want to benefit from your experience.”
“Certainly,” Elizabeth said, her face reflecting a calm gratification.
Lois, on the other hand, was a study in skepticism. The stewardship committee had a hard time benefiting from each other’s experience, let alone that of a woman who had been at St. Alban’s for all of two days.
“You’ll see that Elizabeth gets that, won’t you?” Clare asked, hoping her bright tone masked her desperation.
“Mmm.”
Clare chose to take that as agreement. “I’ll leave you to it, then!” She escaped down the hall, fishing her keys out of her pocket as she went.
She unlocked the door quietly. It swung open easily. She stared. The lamp was lit and the computer was on, but her desk chair sat unoccupied. As did the sagging love seat and the two admiral’s chairs in front of the fire. A sharp cut of emotion slashed through her, low. Disappointment.
She pressed her lips together, determined not to feel like an abandoned child, and shut the door.
And would have screamed if Russ hadn’t clamped his hand over her mouth.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Sorry,” Russ whispered. “I didn’t know if it was you. Or if you were alone.” He released her.
“Good God.” She clutched at her breastbone. “You scared the sh—sheep out of me.”
The edges of his mouth curled. “Scared the sheep?”
She shot him a dirty look. “Don’t start with me.”
He held one finger up to his lips. “Unless you’re in the habit of talking to yourself, you’d better keep it down.”
She had a small cache of CDs she kept on the bookcase for office ambience, a sort of Anglican top ten, heavy on Purcell and Elgar. She dropped one of them into the small Bose player her parents had given her for Christmas. She tilted it, directing its speakers toward the door, and switched it on. The rigorously romantic music of Ralph Vaughan Williams filled the air.
“Have you found anything?” She pulled one of the admiral’s chairs toward the desk.
“Yeah. There are some e-mails from a guy named Oliver Grogan. Owns some sort of fabric shop in Saratoga. Looks like they met at a trade show in New York and she’s bought some stuff from him. There’s a lot of flirting back and forth in the e-mails, from both of them.”
“Do you think he might be the man she was seeing?” She caught herself. “Possibly seeing?”
He gave her a look of weary thanks. “I’m certainly going to check him out. The trouble is, it’s all spelled out there in the file, with his name and address and everything. I find it hard to believe that if she was seriously thinking about . . . someone in a romantic way, she’d leave an electronic trail. I mean, she referred to the man by a code name, for chrissakes, like she was Agent 99 or something.”
Clare chose her words with care. “That doesn’t mean she was skilled at covering her tracks.”
“Oh, she was skilled all right. Seven years, and I never suspected a thing. Not a damn thing.”
“Do you really think . . . is it possible Lyle could be involved?”
He gestured toward a pad of paper he had covered with notes. “In the e-mails to her sister, she never reveals who Mr. Ooo, Sweep Me off My Feet is. But I’ve developed a time line for the dates she mentions seeing him.” He looked at Clare full on, now. “It could—the times correspond to—it could be Lyle.”
“You can’t believe that.”
“I don’t know what to believe. Seven years MacAuley’s been my right-hand guy. The closest thing I had to a friend until you came along. I went to the mat with the aldermen to get him promoted to deputy chief. Now I find out the bastard was nailing my wife.”
“You only have Debbie’s word for that. Has it occurred to you she might have told you that deliberately? To hurt you?”
“As in, she made it up to get back at me?”
“Yes.”
“You heard her. She wasn’t lashing out at me, she was defending her sister. Besides, I don’t think she had any idea who Lyle was. Other than the guy Linda was—” He shook his head, his throat working. “I just can’t believe it,” he said finally. “I can’t believe she had an affair and I never knew. She always seemed so”—he spread his fingers flat against the air, miming a pane of glass—“transparent to me.”
Clare opened her mouth to deliver a consoling word but snapped it shut again. She imagined she could see his pain, spiky and fragile, spreading through him like frost lines along the frozen surface of a lake. Right now, he needs clarity instead of comfort, she reminded herself.
“Did you find anything else?”
He sat still for another moment, then gave himself a shake and turned toward the monitor.
“More e-mails to and from her sister. She was pretty mad at me.”
“That can’t have been a surprise.”
He sighed. “It wasn’t.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing that twigged me. I looked at her Internet history, the stuff she had bookmarked. Lots of fabric sites, lots of other drapery business sites. The only thing that might be related to Mr. Sandboy is a sort of regional craigslist—you know, lots of personals and help-wanted ads. Vacation housing swaps and things for sale. Pet sitting and snow shoveling.”
“Did she have a profile in there?”
“Not that I could find.”
“Maybe she was using it to find more seamstresses for her business.”
He shook his head. “She always hired her workers locally before. By word of mouth.”
“Had she taken on a job that was bigger than usual? Something that might have caused her to turn to other ways of finding seamstresses?”
“Her last big job was doing the draperies and whatnots for the Algonquin Waters resort.”
“Is she replacing them in the sections they’re rebuilding?”
“She will.” He winced. “I mean, she would have. From what I understand, they’re still doing the finish work in the parts of the hotel that were destroyed in the fire.”
Clare nodded. She had been there, at the resort, the night an explosion and fire wrecked the grand ballroom and a sizable portion of the ground floor. She’d be surprised if it was ready to reopen by the spring.
“If there’s anything else pertinent in her computer files, I’m not seeing it.” Russ tapped the notepad again. “That leaves me with three leads to follow up on. Oliver Grogan, which is probably the weakest of the bunch. Aaron MacEntyre, the kid who was with Quinn Tracey when he allegedly drove his snowplow past my house and saw a car parked in the drive. Another one that’s not likely to get me anywhere. And finally, the mystery car itself.”
“What do you know about it?”
He fished his cell phone from his pocket. “You’re going to tell me that.” He tossed the phone to her.
“Me?”
“I got three calls from the station while you were away. One of ’em’s going to be”—his lips tightened whitely around the words—“Lyle. With whatever he dug up on the car.”
“You . . . don’t want to hear his voice?”
He gave her a look that could only be described as dry.
“Ah.” She put the pieces together. “You don’t want to hear anything from the state investigator.”
He tapped his nose. “Smart girl.”
She hit the menu button and selected “listen to messages.” The phone connected to his voicemail. “What’s your PIN?” she asked.
“Eleven fourteen.”
His birthday. She keyed it in. The first message was from Harlene. She was asking him to call in and report his whereabouts. She sounded odd. Far too formal
and respectful. The next one—“Chief? It’s Lyle,” the recording said. She gestured for Russ to pass the paper and pen. “The license you gave me belongs to a 1990 Buick LeSabre registered to Audrey Keane. Her address is 840 Bain-bridge Road, Cossayuharie. She’s got a clean record and no priors.” He paused. Clare could hear the hiss of the recording. “Things are pretty hectic here. I’m going to sit on this until you let me know what you want to do. Call me if you need anything.”
Clare jotted the information down and tilted the pad toward Russ as the next message played. “Chief Van Alstyne?” It was a woman’s voice, crisp and sharp as a winesap apple. “This is Emiley Jensen. I need to talk to you about the ongoing investigation as soon as possible. Please call me when you get this message.”
Next was the familiar sound of Margy Van Alstyne, her usual matter-of-fact tone sharp with worry. “Russell? It’s your mother. What in the Sam Hill is going on? I’ve had two calls from Harlene, trying to find you. That’s not like you. I know you’re feeling bad, sweetie, but I promise things will get better. If you don’t want to deal with work, come on home and I’ll bar the door and take the phone off the hook so no one can bother you. Please don’t . . . do anything foolish. I love you. Call me back.”
“Your mom is worried about you,” Clare said, closing the voicemail.
“I’ll call her.” He studied the paper. “Anything else from the station?”
“Lyle’s not going to tell anyone about the license of the car until you contact him.”
Russ grunted.
“Is the state investigator named Jensen?”
“Emiley Jensen. Emiley-with-an-extra-e, my contact said. The extra e stands for expedite, as in, seeing this case to a quick close by pinning Linda’s murder on the most expedient—there’s another e—suspect.”
“You.”
“Uh-huh.”
She handed him his cell phone. “What can I do?”
He looked at her a long moment, then snorted a half-smothered laugh. “You’re something else, you know that? If I get hauled in and charged—which, by the way, I fully expect will happen—you’d be an accessory.”
She shrugged. “I’m not if I didn’t know you were wanted for questioning.” An image of Willard Aberforth sprang up before her, all baggy eyes and inconveniently pointed moral questions. Straight talking is what you need at this point. “I take that back,” she said. “I won’t lie. But it’s not like I’m protecting you. I’m offering to help find out who did this terrible thing.”
“What if I did it?” He sounded distant, as if he were talking about someone else.
“You couldn’t have.”
“What if I did?”
“You’re not capable—”
“Clare, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in twenty-five years of law enforcement, it’s that anyone is capable of anything if pushed hard enough. What if I did it and I’m just racing around trying to cover my ass at this point?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
He rocked forward in the chair suddenly, snapping it on its springs and leaning into her space. “I want to know what you wouldn’t do for me.”
She stared into his eyes, crackle-glazed blue. They hadn’t been this close since . . . she cut off that thought. For whatever reason, this was a deadly serious question for Russ. Not what would she do for him, but what wouldn’t she do?
“I wouldn’t deny God for you,” she said slowly. “I wouldn’t betray my country for you. I wouldn’t break a parishioner’s trust for you.” Without conscious intent, her hand started to curl over his. She yanked it back into her lap. “I wouldn’t let you get away with it if I found out you were doing something wrong.”
“I am doing something wrong. I’m evading questioning by a New York State Police investigator.”
She made a face. “That’s rule-breaking. I mean wrong. Sinful. Wounding others. Wounding your own soul.”
He creaked back in his chair. His eyes went flat. “Too late for that.”
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s never too late for redemption.”
“I’m never going to be able to make this up to Linda. She’s gone. It doesn’t matter what I do, what I say, how sorry I am. She’s gone.”
“I don’t believe that. Even if I did, even if the death of the body was the end of everything, you’re still alive. And while we live, it’s not too late to ask for forgiveness. To mourn the lost chances and the bad choices and to do better going forward.”
“Who do I ask forgiveness from, Clare? Who? You? Linda? Your God?”
“Try asking yourself.”
“Christ.” He closed his eyes, shook his head. His lashes were wet. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Oh, Russ.” She felt a stinging behind her eyes. “We none of us get what we deserve, thank God. We get what we’re given. Love. Compassion. A second chance. And then a third, and a fourth.”
He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “How the hell can you be so damn certain? How can you sit there and be so goddamn serene?”
She laughed, a sound that came out as a harsh rasp. “Serene? Me? You don’t think I’m carrying around a guilt overcoat for what I did to your marriage? I can barely look at myself in the mirror.”
He sat up straighter. “You? You didn’t do anything. I was the one who was married. I was supposed to, I don’t know, keep my guard up.”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Do you forgive me, then?”
“For what? Being the sort of person I couldn’t help falling in love with?” His laugh didn’t sound any better than hers. “Yeah. For what it’s worth, I forgive you.”
A kind of power filled her at his words, a moment of rare certainty that the Divine was right there, with her, in her, moving through her. She stood up. “What gives you the right to forgive me for the sins I committed against Linda?” She ducked her head close to his.
Whispered. “Love?”
She laid her hands on his head, not lightly, as if she were giving a blessing, but hard, molding his hair and skull beneath her fingers and palms. “Who here condemns you?” she quoted.
His chest moved with shallow breaths. “No one,” he said, finally.
“Then Love does not condemn you, either.” She was close to him, close enough for her forehead to touch his, close enough to smell the faint pine and wool scent of him. “Go, dear heart, and sin no more.”
TWENTY-FIVE
He could not have moved if his life depended on it. The pressure of her hands, her breath on his face—it should have been sexual, if it was anything, but it wasn’t. It was a current, there and gone again in an instant, leaving him trembling. Except he wasn’t. His hands, resting against the wooden arms of the chair, were steady. It was a blow. Or a sound. That he hadn’t felt, didn’t hear.
What the hell?
She released him, and he thought his head might float away. Or his heart. He cleared his throat. “I . . .” he began.
She not-quite-touched a finger to his lips. “Let’s think about what you need to do. And what I can do to help.”
He nodded. Yeah. That would be good.
“Maybe we could split up your leads. I could check out this Oliver guy in Saratoga, and you could follow up on the car they saw in your driveway.” She glanced at her battered Seiko. “High school will be getting out in an hour and a half. Maybe we could catch Quinn Tracey’s friend then.”
He nodded.
She frowned. “Are you all right?”
He cleared his throat again. “Yeah,” he said. And he was surprised to find, as he said it, that he was all right. Not great, not happy—he wasn’t sure if he would ever be happy again—but . . . all right. “Yeah.” His voice was stronger. He stood up, his back cracking along with the old desk chair. “That’s a good plan.” He bent over the desk and scribbled Oliver Grogan’s address and phone number on a scrap pad. “Here.” He handed the paper to her. “Call me after you’ve checked him out. If anything seems off, if any
thing at all trips your wire, get out first and call me later.”
She nodded. “Are you going to be okay driving around? What with being a wanted man and all?”
“I switched vehicles when I was at home. I left my truck in the barn and took the station wagon.”
“Won’t they be looking for that, too?”
“If whoever Jensen sent to check my house reports seeing tracks going in and out of the barn, yeah. I’m gambling it was someone inclined to cut me a break.” His mouth twisted. “Gamble being the operative term. Somebody from the department complained to the staties about the investigation.”
“Ah,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“So’m I.” He folded up his notes and stuffed them into his inside pocket. “We’d better get going.”
“Where are you parked?”
“Up the street, tucked in tight in the Balfours’ driveway.” He flashed a grin. “They’re in Florida for the season.”
“That’s very sneaky of you,” she said. “I admire that in a man.”
Coat over her arm, she poked her head out of the door first. She nodded to him. He followed her, not toward the parish hall, where he had come in that morning, but toward the church. She heaved the inner door open, and they entered the dim space of the sanctuary. She led him down one of the side aisles, all the way to the rear of the church. “Wait in the narthex for me. I’ll be right back.”
“The what?”
She pulled open a pair of double doors, revealing a square, towerlike space fronted by the great doors of the church, palisade-high wooden structures faced with enough ironwork to repel the Norman invasion. “The foyer. The vestibule. The narthex,” she said, then disappeared back into the church.
The doors swung silently shut behind him. Four arrow-slit windows let in what light there was, through their narrow, stained glass depictions of a lion, an eagle, a man, and an ox. Cold radiated from the stone walls. He shivered. What the hell had possessed the architect of this place? Even back in the 1850s, they had known there was more effective insulation than a square foot of dressed stone. But they went ahead and erected the cutting edge of eleventh-century technology. He shuddered to think how they heated this anachronism in the decades before the radiators were installed.