In the Bleak Midwinter

  “Hello,” Clare said quietly. “Can I help you?”

  “I—I don’t know,” the woman said. She looked about her. “I don’t know where . . .”

  Clare held her hand out. “Are you lost? Let me help you find out where your room is.” She tucked the woman’s arm under her own and craned her neck, looking for a nurse or aide.

  “Do you know my husband? I’m looking for my husband.” She held tightly to Clare’s arm.

  “I don’t work here, I’m just visiting. Let’s find someone who can help us.”

  “I’m all runny,” the woman said, touching her eyes. “I need a . . . a . . .”

  Clare tugged a tissue out of its box at the nurses’ station. Behind a partial wall, she spotted a door marked DIRECTOR OF NURSING. “Let’s try over here. Can you walk this way with me? That’s great.” She knocked at the door.

  Nothing. Clare was about to try the nurses’ station on the next floor when the door opened. “Yes?” a deep voice rumbled. The doorway was filled with an enormous bear of a man, tall, broad, well-padded, luxuriously bearded. His gaze immediately fell onto the woman clinging to Clare. “Oh, Mrs. Ausberger. Did you get lost again, dear?” He draped a massive arm around the frail lady’s shoulders and guided her back to the nurses’ station. He picked up a handset and punched in a number. “Staci? Can you come to three, please? Mrs. Ausberger is here.” There was a pause. “Yes, probably.”

  Mrs. Ausberger patted the man’s tweed jacket, visibly calmed by his presence. “Oh, you smell just like my husband. Just like my husband.”

  The man grinned sheepishly at Clare. “You two caught me smoking a pipe in my office. I know I’m not supposed to, but I hate going outside to puff away on these cold days. Takes all the pleasure out of it, reminds me that it’s really just a filthy addiction.” He reached out with his right hand. “I’m Paul Foubert. Director of Nursing.”

  “Clare Fergusson. I’m the new priest at St. Alban’s.”

  “Yep, the collar kind of gives you away. Thanks for rescuing Mrs. Ausberger. She’s been known to wander pretty far afield. Hey, Staci, great.”

  A cute young woman barely out of her teens clattered down the corridor. “Sorry, Paul. I was fixing Mrs. Meerkill’s hair in the bathroom and didn’t realize she had slipped out.” She took Mrs. Augsberger’s hand. “C’mon, Mrs. A. How ’bout we get you washed up and I’ll make your hair pretty.”

  “My husband likes my hair down.”

  “You’re not going to be seeing your husband today, Mrs. A. But your grandson Nicholas will be visiting with his family. Won’t that be nice?” The girl’s cheerful voice faded as the pair turned the corner.

  Clare looked up at Paul Foubert. “Her husband?”

  “Dead ten years.” They both looked down the empty corridor. Foubert idly slapped his hands against his coat pockets. “Damn. Left my lighter in the office. Why don’t you come in for a minute or two?”

  The director of nursing’s office was appropriately den-like in brick and wood. Tall shelves crammed with books and memorabilia lined one wall, facing a collection of obviously amateur artwork, undoubtedly done by residents of the Infirmary. Foubert gestured to one of the comfortable chairs facing his generously cluttered desk before settling himself into a well-sprung leather armchair.

  “So, how long have you been at St. Alban’s?”

  Clare propped her leg on the opposite knee. “A little over a month. It’s been . . . hectic. I’m still trying to get to the point where I don’t have to have a directory to remember my parishioners’ names and a map spread over my legs when I go out for a drive.”

  Foubert picked up a pipe from a lumpy, half-glazed ashtray. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  He tamped in fresh tobacco. “What do you think of our Infirmary?”

  “It seems like a good facility. The staff members I’ve met have all been pleasant and helpful. Caring. I imagine the small size helps. I did some work at a nursing home in Virginia while I was at seminary. It was huge. Well-run, but impersonal.”

  “Mmmm. I’ve been fortunate to be able to get good people, both staff and volunteers. You’re right, being small does help. Makes it more like family. Before we moved here, I was at a large facility in New York City, and Lord, sometimes it felt like a body warehouse.”

  “You’re not from here?”

  He lit the pipe. The rich tobacco tang filled the room. “I am, originally. My dad worked in the mill. I escaped to the big city like a lot of kids and didn’t return until I was a burnout case, with nowhere else to go. I’ve been here eight years now.”

  Clare glanced at the multiple diplomas hanging on the wall opposite the windows. “Some people would say running a nursing home is a burnout job.”

  “Oh, no. Caring for men struck down in the prime of their lives, watching a dozen of your best friends die, that’s burnout.” He waved his pipe toward the rest of the Infirmary. “This is much more peaceful. It’s—you’ll pardon the slightly facist sound of this—the natural order. It’s a privilege to help our oldest through the ends of their lives. I try to impress that on everyone who works here, because I’ve found folks who don’t feel that way tend to get depressed and impatient with our residents.”

  Clare nodded. “I’ll consider myself impressed upon.” The diploma wall also held a photo collage that stretched a good three feet square. She could pick out shots of parties and Christmas celebrations, elderly residents surrounded by three and four generations of family, doctors in white lab coats and nurses in cheerful-print smocks. A very large Easter Bunny in one picture turned out to be Foubert himself. She laughed.

  “My Hall of Fame. Or Shame, as the case may be.”

  “We have a similar one hanging outside our parish hall. But your pictures are definitely more fun than ours.” She opened her mouth soundlessly, struck by a sudden thought. “Are there pictures of all your volunteers here?”

  “There sure are. We couldn’t run this place without them. I can’t afford to hire LPNs to do what they’re willing to do for free.”

  “You must have a photo of Katie McWhorter, then.”

  Foubert’s pleasant expression tightened under his bushy eyebrows. “I read about her in the paper.” He looked down at the pipe in his hand. The tobacco smouldered fragrantly. “She was such a wonderful kid. A little too much on the serious side for her age, but a damn hard worker. And smart.” He shook his head. “What a waste.” He looked up. “You leave the city to get away from that sort of thing, but it’s everywhere nowadays, isn’t it? There isn’t any safe spot anymore.” He rose from behind his desk and hunkered down in front of the collage. “Here she is. This was taken last year, at the Christmas party. She was prettier than she photographed. It was her expression, I think.”

  Clare got out of her chair for a better view.

  “The residents loved her. She never got antsy around them, the way some of our teenage volunteers do. She liked being here.”

  “Who’s the boy with his arm around her? He looks sort of . . . have I seen him here during one of my visits?”

  “No, he’s off to college as well. That’s her sweetheart, Wes Fowler. He was another volunteer.” Foubert laughed softly. “They used to take breaks together, go out to his car. Later I’d see them come in all pinked up and grinning. Kids.” His smile faded. “What a waste. What a terrible waste. I remember once when—”

  Clare sat back in her chair. Foubert’s voice seemed to come from far away, as if he were on the radio in another room. Her ears buzzed.

  Wes Fowler.

  What had Doctor Anne’s son said about the boy? Serious, studious, hard working. Just like Katie.

  Golden boy. From a family that had everything the McWhorter’s didn’t. The Fowlers three-thousand-square-foot dream home was maybe ten miles from the apartment on Depot Street, but it could just as well have been on the other side of the planet.

  A boy who had everything going for him, including an appointment to West Poi
nt and a beautiful girlfriend from a family as well-respected as his own. What would a boy like that do to hide a screwup? A really big, life-altering, won’t-go-away-for-the-next-eighteen-years screwup?

  Wes Fowler.

  The boy Katie didn’t want her family to know about. He evidently felt the same way about keeping it secret.

  She was going to have to tell Vaughn Fowler and his wife about this. Oh, God.

  “—you’d think, wouldn’t you? Reverend Fergusson?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you okay? You look odd.”

  “I feel odd. I mean—yes, I’m okay.”

  She stood up. Foubert rose with her, clasping one huge paw around her arm. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She smiled at him, a kind of social grimace. “I do need to be going, though. I just remembered something important.”

  “Alright, then.” He cradled his pipe in the ashtray. “I wish I knew who to send my condolences to about Katie. She never talked about her family.”

  “She has a sister, Kristen. She’s asked me to perform the burial service, as it happens. If you’d like, I’ll let you know when and where. She has to wait until the police, um . . .”

  “Yeah. I do. I’d like that, please.” Foubert plucked a business card off his desk and handed it to her.

  Hand halfway to her pocket, Clare stopped. “Paul, could I borrow the photograph of Katie? I’ll return it.”

  He squatted and peeled the picture off the board, balling up sticky gum between his fingers before giving it to Clare.

  “Thank you.”

  He opened the office door and ushered her out. “I’ll be hearing from you, then. Stop by the next time you’re visiting, will you?”

  “I sure will do that, yes.” She took off with indecent haste. The photograph of the young couple, projections for the cost of the church roof, Karen Burns’s angry face, all jostled for space at the front of her consciousness.

  Wes Fowler! My God!

  There was a Pathfinder parked next to the Fowler’s Explorer at the top of their long, well-plowed drive. Clare pulled in close behind them and killed her engine. The two hulking SUVs could probably four-wheel-drive straight over her windshield and down the back of her car without noticing more than a little bump. She rested her head on the steering wheel for a moment, reaching for the sense of someone outside her and within her, looking for strength, looking for courage. Asking for the right words to come when she needed them.

  Gravel and snow crunched underfoot as she walked up to the side porch. The Fowler’s home was a modern interpretation of a Georgian house, a sweep of white clapboard frequently broken by double-glazed windows with Palladian arches. At some point, the rolling acreage upon which the house sat must have been a farm, but it was all pleasure land now, the pastures used only for cross-country skiing and snowmobiling. Idyllic spot to be a retired gentleman. Pressing on the bell, Clare felt like the angel with the flaming sword, sent to roust the inhabitants out of their Eden.

  “Reverend Fergusson! What brings you out here?”

  Edith Fowler was a horsy-looking woman whose extreme slenderness was beginning to look bony with age. Her short brown hair was clipped to a sporty, no-nonsense length and she wore pearls and a shetland sweater over a monogrammed turtleneck. Clare pulled her hat off. If someone had been strangled with a shetland sweater from Talbots, she had said to Russ, laughing at the idea of one of her congregants commiting murder.

  “Honey? Who is it?” Vaughn Fowler crowded around his wife’s shoulder as she was standing back to let Clare in the door. “Clare. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

  Clare stuffed her gloves into the pockets of her oversized parka and pulled it off. “I apologize for intruding, but I needed to speak with you.” Edith Fowler took the coat and hung it in the hall closet. “Both of you.”

  The couple looked at each other. “We’re entertaining right now . . .” Edith said hesitantly.

  “It shouldn’t take long. It is important.”

  Vaughn gestured her through the kitchen door. “Of course.” Inside the kitchen, preparations for a brunch were obviously in progress. Bowls of batter, a carton of eggs, cutting boards of chopped vegetables. And, sipping what looked like mimosas, were the Shatthams. Clare smiled feebly. Great. They were probably getting ready to toast Wes and Alyson’s engagement or something.

  The Shatthams greeted her warmly, which made her feel even guiltier for what she was about to lay on the Fowlers. “Clare needs to speak with me and Edith for a few minutes,” Vaughn said. “I know you two can entertain yourselves.”

  “Barb, give a quick poke to the sausages, will you?” Edith asked.

  “In here’s my study. Right next to the kitchen in case I get a snack attack while working.” Vaughn let Clare and his wife enter the room, then shut the door behind them. The study was a monument to Fowler’s family and military career. Photos and maps and trophies and a few threadbare battalion flags.

  “Working?” Clare asked, temporizing the moment of truth.

  “On a history of Washington county.” He waved toward a pigeonholed desk, where an electric Remington typewriter sat next to several hardbound books. “It’s going to fill in the gaps other histories leave out.” Clare bent down to examine a black-and-white photograph of a lean young man in fatigues standing next to a general with a whole salad of ribbons on his chest. Both men were squinting into the sun, smiling stiffly.

  “Sir. Is that you?”

  “With my father. 1965. Day before I shipped to Vietnam.”

  “You look just like him.” Clare straightened. Edith Fowler looked at her husband, who cocked his head toward Clare.

  “You needed to speak with us about . . .”

  She took a deep breath. “Sir . . . Vaughn . . . you recall when Chief Van Alstyne was showing the photographs of the dead girl in the parish hall? You said you’d never seen her before.”

  “Of course I remember. That’s not the sort of everyday Sunday you’re likely to forget.”

  “We know the girl’s identity now.”

  “Yes, I know. Mitch and Barb told us all about it. Alyson identified her as one of her classmates.”

  “Yes, sir. Her name was Katie McWhorter.” Clare clasped her hands behind her back. “Did your son ever mention that name?”

  Fowler looked at his wife. “No,” she said. “What on earth does this have to do with Wes?”

  “Today I discovered your son was seeing Katie McWhorter secretly. They were volunteers at the Infirmary together, as well as being in the same class at the high school. The director of nursing told me he used to see them sneaking off to neck. Whatever it was, it probably started in the fall, when Katie broke up with her boyfriend. It was certainly going on at Christmastime last year.”

  “Wait a minute,” Fowler said, turning toward his wife again. “Wasn’t he going out with Alyson last year?”

  “Of course he was.” Edith Fowler frowned at Clare. “If you had to speak with us about our son cheating on his girlfriend, Reverend Fergusson, I’m afraid I don’t see the point. Nor do I see that it’s any business of yours.”

  Clare bit the tip of her tongue. “Katie McWhorter had a baby just a week or so before she was killed. So far, the police haven’t been able to identify the baby’s father.”

  “So far? Are you suggesting—”

  “Calm down, Edie. Clare, you don’t know our son. If anything, he’s overly responsible. And devoted to Alyson. Maybe he did have a little romance with this girl, but there’s no way he’d be so thoughtless as to risk a pregnancy.”

  “This is ridiculous. How do you know it’s not some other boy anyway?”

  “I have a photograph of them taken at the Infirmary Christmas party last year. It’s—” she reached into her pants pockets, coming up with nothing more than a fistful of change and a wadded tissue. “I left it in my coat pocket.” She let her hands drop. “I’m not saying that your son is involved in Katie McWhorter’s murder. I’m s
uggesting that he may have fathered her child. We know she had a boyfriend that she didn’t want her family to know about. Somebody accompanied her to a local motel around Thanksgiving and stayed with her while she had the baby. She named him Cody, wrote a note asking that he be adopted by Geoff and Karen Burns, and left him on the kitchen steps at St. Alban’s, despite having no connection to the church.” She flipped her hands open. “Don’t you see? Wes had a reason to want to stay anonymous. He was home around Thanksgiving, right?”

  Vaughn Fowler nodded.

  “And he’s a member of the church. He would have known about the Burnses looking for a child.”

  Edith Fowler covered her mouth for a moment. “Oh, dear God. Vaughn, do you think . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a long chain of supposition from just one link.” He looked at the floor, frowning. “Have you been to the police with this, yet?”

  “No. Chief Van Alstyne is . . .” she paused, reining in the anger she still felt from yesterday. “. . . anxious to find the killer. He’s been frustrated so far, and he’s pouncing on possibilities without giving them much thought.” Had Geoff Burns been arrested yet? Not that Karen would call and tell her. “I’m afraid that if he hears about the connection between Wes and Katie, he’ll leap straight to the conclusion that Wes murdered her. And probably Darrell McWhorter as well.” Darrell had looked at the parish bulletin board before changing his mind about giving Cody to the Burnses. He had seen Wes’s picture there, with his family. And made a phone call that afternoon. “Does Wes have access to any money?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Certainly. He has an account with a bank in West Point.”

  “Sorry, I was just thinking.” A scared kid with his own cash made an easy target for blackmail. She glanced at Mrs. Fowler, leaning against her husband. Maybe their son was a murderer. One way or another, though, she was going to make damn sure she had gathered some evidence before handing the boy over to Russ’s tender mercies. “Let me check this out some before we involve the police,” she said.