In the Bleak Midwinter (9 page)

He tried the wrought-iron door handles. They turned easily. After what she had seen, she still wasn’t locking her door. He sighed, rang the bell. From inside, he could hear a muffled lumping, then a faint “Coming!”

The left door opened wide, framing Clare in a swirl of smoke. She coughed. “Russ!” she said. “I didn’t expect you. Do you know anything about fires?” He followed her into a roomy foyer, wiping his boots on a worse-for-wear rag rug stretched out in front of the door. The air was acrid, making his eyes sting.

“Holy cow, Clare. What’re you doing, burning wet leaves?”

She reached for his coat. “I tried to get a fire going in the fireplace in the living room. But something went wrong.” He shrugged out of the bulky nylon parka and she hung it on an old coatrack.

On either side of the door were broad archways. From the size of the brass chandelier hanging in the room to his left, Russ guessed it was meant to be a dining room, although it looked more like a warehouse at the moment, with boxes and mismatched wooden chairs taking up most of the space. He bit back a smile. Evidently even the prospect of living out of cardboard hadn’t made the Reverend any more receptive to the idea of the church ladies swarming through her things, doing up the house for her.

Through the right arch, he could see the source of the problem. The Colonial-style brick fireplace in the center of the wall held a pile of overly-large logs that were sputtering flames. Smoke curled under the mantel and filled the room. Since he didn’t hear anything, he guessed the quaint rectory had never been fitted out with anything as modern and useful as smoke alarms. “Let me see what I can do,” he said. “You open a few windows.”

The first thing he saw once he was on his knees on the flagstone hearth was that the flue was closed. He pulled its handle forward, opening it. The air rushed up the chimney with a sucking sound, drawing the smoke with it. There was an iron woodbox to the left of the fireplace and a wrought iron carrier holding kindling. “You got a newspaper handy?” he asked. She scooped yesterday’s
Post-Star
off a pine coffee table. He knocked the slightly singed logs to one side and replaced them with crumpled wads of paper, then laid on several small pieces of kindling and a quarter-split log. She had one of those silly brass canisters with foot-long match sticks on the mantelpiece.

“You’re supposed to use newspaper?” she asked, as the fire caught cleanly and began to burn. “I didn’t know that.”

“Where did you learn to make a fire?” Russ asked.

“Survival training,” she admitted. “You know, using pine needles, branches, a gum wrapper…”

“Do yourself a favor,” he said, grinning. “Use paper instead. And start small. Don’t pile on the big logs until you’ve got a roaring fire going.”

“I did have a roaring fire going!” she said. “For a minute or two.”

“What, when the pinecones caught on fire?” Russ laughed.

“The smoke’s cleared out,” she said with dignity. “I’ll close the windows.”

Russ took in the room while Clare cranked the casement windows shut. There was an overstuffed sofa and a few fat chairs with faded chintz covers grouped in front of the fireplace, and a needlepoint rug over the floorboards. The low built-in bookcases on either side of the fireplace were piled with haphazardly arranged books, pictures, and plants, and topped by two narrow clerestory windows.

“So what brings you here? Besides saving my bacon from getting smoked.”

“Wanted to talk about the case.”

“Ah,” she said. “Then why don’t I get us some coffee first? Make yourself at home.”

“Coffee would be great. This is quite a place you have here. Do you know when it was built?”

She disappeared through a swinging door in the back of the room, but her voice floated out to him. “Nineteen-twelve. It’s very Arts-and-Crafts, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah.” He walked back to the foyer and pulled off his wet boots. “Linda and I have an eighteenth-century farmhouse out near Fort Henry. No closets, eleven rooms and not a level wall or floor in any of them.”

“Must take a lot of work,” Clare shouted from the kitchen.

“Yeah, but I like it. Pretending I’m Bob Vila is a hobby of mine.”

She had set up a square chest on legs under the big front window and put it to work as the bar. Nice decanters. Russ uncorked one and took a sniff of Scotch. The smell was enough to make his mouth water. Sighing, he replaced the top. The little cane-seat chairs on either side didn’t look as if they could hold his weight, but he liked the plain, bare window, showing off the small panes of glass that ran along the edges. That was the one thing that drove him nuts about his wife’s custom curtain business—every window in his house was swagged and draped and ruffled with about fifty-seven yards of fabric.

Two standing lamps flanked a folded gateleg table behind the sofa. There was an assortment of family pictures, some in fancy silver frames, others in good-quality wood. He picked up the largest photo, taken on a beach somewhere. An older couple who must be Clare’s parents sitting on a driftwood log. A younger Clare in shorts and cotton sweater, her arm around a similarly-dressed blond girl of eye-catching good looks. Two blond guys flanking them, not much taller than the girls but broad-shouldered and big. Which would explain the two separate photos of men in UVA football uniforms.

A smaller picture in an elaborate frame caught his eye. Mom and Dad dressed like one of those rich couples in a Cadillac ad, and Clare, who was decked out in a heavily-embroidered robe, smiling and teary-eyed. Inside a church somewhere, from the looks of it. The two beefy brothers were accompanied by two cheerleader types, one of whom held a baby.

“Here you go,” Clare announced, backing through the door at the rear of the room. She lowered a tray containing two plain crockery mugs and a sugar bowl onto the coffee table. The smell was incredible.

“Damn, that is one good-smelling coffee. ’Scuse my French.”

She sat in one of the plump chairs and picked up a mug. “Why thank you. I grind my own mix. Jamaican Blue roast, Colombian… I put in a little ground hazelnut and cinnamon…” She smiled, the smile of a really good cook attempting without success to look modest. “The secret is to use fresh-roasted beans and fresh spices, and to grind ’em yourself. Don’t bother with the stuff in the supermarket that’s been sitting around in a bag for who knows how long.”

Russ took the other chair. “I’ll keep that in mind. Next time I have a spare half hour to make a cup of coffee.”

She laughed. “I didn’t know how you take it, so…” she said, waving a hand over the sugar bowl, packets of artificial sweetener, and creamer.

“I should probably be a macho guy and say I drink it black, but the truth is, I like it real sweet.”

“Oh, yeah. I drink mine sweet, too, but I’m always a little embarrassed by it. I used to stash sugar in my pockets and slip it in on the sly at briefings. Hey. Do you think how people drink their coffee reveals their personality?”

Russ stirred sugar into his mug and took a sip. He closed his eyes. “This is good. I needed this.” He opened his eyes and looked at Clare. “No. How you drink your coffee while you’re eating donuts, that reveals your personality.” She was wearing a woolly turtleneck tucked into a pair of khakis and what looked like some New York designer’s idea of army boots. She was curvier than he had thought when he had seen her in baggy sweats and thick outdoors clothes. “You run today?” he asked.

She nodded. “Six miles. I needed it, too, after last night.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen my share of dead bodies, and I’ve never gotten used to it. To tell you the truth, I hope I never do. Seeing someone who’s been murdered… that should make you lose sleep at night.”

Clare sat up a little straighter. “She was definitely murdered? It wasn’t a suicide?”

“Oh, no, it was murder, all right.” He told her Dr. Dvorak’s findings. When he got to the part about giving birth recently, her eyes went wide.

“Cody’s mother,” she said. “Good Lord. I have to admit, when you said it was too much of a coincidence last night, I chalked it down to, um… paranoia.”

“Thanks a lot. If I were a woman, you’d have called it intuition.” She made a face at him. He continued, “Dvorak is going to send DNA samples to Albany, along with some of Cody’s, to make sure. Of course, that will take up to four months.”

“That poor girl. I can’t imagine…” Clare looked into the fire. “I wish she could have known Cody was settled with the couple she had picked out for him. Before she died. Was killed.”

He got up and laid another two logs on the fire. “Don’t be wishing that so quick. As far as I’m concerned, Geoff Burns is my number one suspect. With Karen Burns following close behind.”

“You must be joking! The Burnses? You’re just saying that because you don’t like Geoff.”

“I admit that. I don’t like Geoff Burns. He’s an arrogant, self-important, humorless pain in the butt.” He sat down on the edge of his chair, leaning across the table. “But think about it, Clare. Who else has a better motive? The father of the baby? He’s gonna kill to avoid a few bucks child support a month? Or the Burnses, who have been trying for years to get a child, and are running out of resources and time and have no friends at DHS?”

She crossed her feet under her, tailor style. “You know nothing about this girl. What if Cody’s father was a married man, with a family, and she was going to blackmail him? Or what if her boyfriend killed her because Cody wasn’t his? Or… or…”

“Or what if she was a hit-woman for the Mafia and they rubbed her out before she could testify to the Feds?”

“Don’t be smart. You see what I’m saying, here. You can’t pin a murder on the Burnses without doing a lot more legwork. Just because they’re convenient.”

“Legwork?”

“Well… that’s what they say on TV.”

“I’m not going to cut the investigation short, no. In fact, I want you to help us with something.”

She shifted forward in her chair. “Yeah?”

“The one thing we do know about the girl is that she knew the Burnses were looking for a baby, and that she left Cody at the church.”

“Or she agreed to let someone leave him at the church.”

“Right. Somewhere, there’s a connection. She was either a member of your congregation, or she worked there, or the father of the baby did, or she had friends there.”

“You think someone in my parish will be able to identify her?”

“Yeah.” He leaned back into his chair. “How would you feel about arranging for people to take a look at some photos tomorrow?”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bit her lip. In the warm light, her hair was the color of honey and molasses. Russ looked into his coffee.

“What do you mean by ‘arranging’ for people to look at the photographs? Flash them in front of every member of the congregation as they leave the church?”

“Well… yeah.”

“I can’t do that, Russ. Even if I were inclined to try to order them to do something, I’m their priest, not their commanding officer. Besides, you ever hear of a little thing called ‘separation of church and state’?”

“Oh, c’mon, Clare, I’m not asking you to march ’em all past a lineup at gunpoint. There are how many members of St. Alban’s?”

“Around two hundred families. We’ll get maybe a hundred folks at the ten o’clock service, and thirty or so at seven-thirty.”

“I’ve got an eight-man force that has to cover three towns as well as investigate this murder. Can you imagine what going door-to-door with every member of St. Alban’s will cost us in lost hours? I can’t spare the time this case will take me as it is. You know domestics, drunk driving, and shoplifting all increase around Christmas. Gimme a break. Help me out.” She crossed her arms and worried her lower lip. He pressed his point. “Neither of us wants to see something preventable happen because my officers were canvassing your congregation.”

She rolled her eyes. “Spare me. Next you’ll be trotting out a poor orphan boy and his sick dog. Just because I wear a collar doesn’t mean I’m a soft touch.”

“Okay, okay, scratch the last. Please. I’ll go by your rules, Clare, whatever you say. I need your help.”

She crossed her ankle over her knee, like a guy, and rested her mug on her leg. “This is what I can do. I’ll explain that your Jane Doe may have had some connection to the church. I’ll offer anyone who’s willing to help the chance to look at the photographs.” She looked into the fire. “I’ll remind them that somewhere she’s got parents, or brothers and sisters, who don’t know where she is or what’s happened to her.” She paused for a moment, then looked back at him. “You can take down the names of anyone who views the pictures, and I’ll have Lois give you a copy of our membership directory.” She smiled a one-sided smile. “The rest, I’m afraid, will have to be legwork.”

“You really like that word, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay. Thank you. I know this is a lot to throw on you, this being your, what, third week? Thank you. For everything.”

“Oh, lord. My sermon was going to be on Cody, and then the announcement about the Burnses’ attempt to have him fostered with them. Do I have to tell everyone we think this girl is his mother? Not that I want to sweep it under the rug, far from it, but it will make things sound awfully odd. ‘Here’s the baby, here are the adoptive parents, and, oh, by the way, will you all look at pictures of the dead mother?’ ”

“No. As a matter of fact, I’d rather play that piece of information close to my vest. Let’s just say I have reason to believe the dead girl had some connection to St. Alban’s and leave it at that.”

Clare leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I’m still going ahead with my announcement after the sermon, asking the congregation to write letters in support of the Burnses. I cannot believe they had anything to do with that girl’s death.” She shook her head. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I hope you can find out her name soon. It sounds so callous to keep calling her ‘that girl.’ ”

He nodded. “I know. I want you to ask yourself if you can’t believe the Burnses might have done it because they really haven’t ever given you any cause to think they might be capable of such a thing, or if you can’t believe it because you’ve met them, they belong to your church, and they’re ‘nice people.’ ”