Clare held the heavily embroidered floor-length cope—a literal mantle of priestly authority—out with one arm so she could turn without tangling. She drew a deep breath, letting the words come from a place deep inside herself. “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord,” she said, projecting her voice so that it echoed back enthusiastically from the stone walls. “Alleluia, alleluia!”
“Thanks be to God,” the congregation responded, “Alleluia, alleluia!” It was an immensely satisfying moment, even if all hell was about to break loose. A polite, Episcopalian sort of hell, of course. She grinned.
The choir members headed back up the aisles in groups of two or three. Parishioners were rising from their seats, drifting toward the parish hall, putting on coats, collecting squirming children. The din of voices made it hard to hear, so she nearly jumped when Russ spoke quietly in her ear.
“Nice sermon. In fact, the whole thing was pretty cool. Very ritualistic.”
“Isn’t it? Come for one of the big feast days. You’ll get to see me cense the altar.”
“Uh huh. Sounds interesting.”
“Colorful natives practicing their quaint rituals in their natural habitat.”
“Speaking of colorful natives, where should I . . . ?”
“I have to stay here and greet everyone leaving now. You head back to the parish hall, right through those doors there,” she pointed to the front of the church, “down the hall to the right.” The officer Russ had brought with him slipped through the inner doorway into the vestibule. He carried a plain manila folder. “Do me a favor,” she said to Russ, “give people a chance to grab a cup of coffee and have a cookie before you start flashing the photos, okay?”
“Okay.” He tapped his own folder and pushed his way through the crowded center aisle, apparently not noticing the round-eyed glances directed at him. It must be hard, being a cop, she thought. Always either a hero or a bad guy to the public, never just another human being.
“Reverend Fergusson!” Mr. Sumner’s preemptory tone jerked her away from her thoughts. “Don’t you think asking the congregation to view pictures of murdered women in the sanctity of their own church is the height of poor taste?”
Clare’s spine stiffened. It was going to be a long Sunday.
“No, I don’t think we’ll be called upon to help the investigation again, Mr. Fitzpatrick. That would mean the Millers Kill police couldn’t find the killer, and I’m sure that won’t happen.”
“Wouldn’t count on that. When I was an alderman, I told ’em we needed another trained investigator. Too many people coming up from the cities these days! It’s getting so you can’t walk down Main Street without tripping over some newcomer from New York or Albany.” The octogenarian wheezed indignantly. Clare laid a steadying hand on his arm, and he responded by seizing her hand and pumping it in time to his words. “Told ’em we’d be needing more investigators, but they wanted to save money, so what do they do? Hire a detective as chief and send one of the boys off to the state troopers for the summer. I blame Harold Collins, that cheapskate. You haven’t met Harold Collins, yet, have you? You know how he voted when we had that water treatment problem?”
“I really have to get back to the parish hall, Mr. Fitzpatrick. It’s been great talking with you, and I hope that bursitis calms down soon. How about I plan on making a visit later this week? I’ll give you a call Monday. Take care!” Clare deftly pried her hand from the former alderman’s clutches and trotted down the aisle as fast as her dignity and her flapping alb would allow. She made it to the sacristy without having to speak to anyone else. She unknotted the cincture around her waist, a rope-like belt symbolizing her vows, and removed her stole, kissing the embroidered cross at its center with a hasty reverence. During the four years she had served the church as a deacon, she had worn the rectangular scarf across her chest, and it still thrilled her to feel it in the ordained priest’s position, hanging squarely around her neck, falling over both shoulders. She yanked the alb over her head in a billow of white linen, shook it with a snap she hoped would take out most of the wrinkles, and hung it. On a wire hanger. Her conscience pricked her. It didn’t make much of a symbol of purity with one sleeve inside out, ready to slip to the floor at any moment. She pulled it off and rehung it on its own wooden hanger.
In one of her less-mottled mirrors, she was amazed to see herself so collected. Not a hair was out of place in her French twist. After listening to complaints and denials and gasps of horror and agreeing over and over and over again that yes, it was a terrible shame, and no, the police didn’t suspect anyone in their congregation, and what was the world coming to, she felt her hair should be standing away from her scalp in a frizzled heap, the ends smoking.
There was a knock on the door. Clare sighed. Not another round of questions, please. The door cracked open, admitting a hand holding a very full, very enticing sherry glass.
Lois sidled into the room. “I asked the refreshment ladies to bring up the sherry from the kitchen. I thought you might need it.”
Clare held the glass to her nose and sniffed deeply. “Ahhhh . . .” She took a larger-than-recommended swallow. “God bless you, Lois.”
“Is that official?”
“You bet. How’s it going in there?”
“I heard a few comments about priests overstepping the bounds, but so far no one’s used the phrase ‘meddling woman.’ ”
“Oh. Great.”
“Chief Van Alstyne is being quite charming. He hasn’t started waving eight-by-ten glossies of murder victims around, so people are feeling a tad more relaxed.”
“Encouraged by the sherry?”
“I brought up the second bottle myself. I thought the chief might like some as well, but he turned me down. No drinking on duty, I suppose.” Clare finished off her glass and sighed again, this time with contentment. The secretary went on. “He’s really quite attractive, don’t you think?”
“Who?”
“Chief Van Alstyne. All that tousled hair and those sexy lines at the corners of his eyes. He has that rugged, all-American look, like the kind Ralph Lauren puts in his ads, except his models always have this slightly gay edge to them. The chief is very . . . heterosexual.”
Clare laughed. “The chief is also very married, Lois. Just how much of the sherry have you had?”
“Don’t worry,” Lois said, floating back into the hall. Clare followed her. “I’m sure there’s enough left to rustle up another glass for you.”
In the large, sunlit parish hall, things did seem almost normal. Clare worked her way back to the white-draped refreshment table, greeting the people she knew by name and smiling at those she didn’t know yet. Mae Bristol, as plump and pale as an over-risen bun, was serving up coffee and tea from the church’s silver service. She always wore a printed silk dress with a matching hat—this Sunday it was cabbages in shades of blue. The sherry bottles were between the creamer and the coffee cups. They looked seriously depleted.
“This is stupid, Miss Bristol. My parents let me drink wine at home!” A slim girl in a fashionably skinny velvet-and-patchwork dress leaned across the white tablecloth. Her hair was perfectly retro-seventies, straight and shining and parted in the middle. She reminded Clare of the girls at her old high school whose outfits always looked like they were straight off the pages of Seventeen magazine and whose hair was always blown dry to frothy perfection. She could still remember feeling angular and underdeveloped and unfeminine next to them, a jock whose clothes never looked right off the basketball court or the track, a girl whose fingernails were always lined with grease because she’d been helping her dad with airplane maintenance. It had been—what?—seventeen or eighteen years since she graduated? Funny how the individuals changed, but the type remained. There would always be girls who had been blessed by the gods of adolescence, and girls like Clare. She reached around the latest version of the homecoming queen and snagged one of the sherry bottles. Age, thank heavens, most definitely hath its privileges. The girl flashed her a well-polished look of teenage disdain.