He draped his arm over the back of the seat. “Will I embarrass you if I tell you I admire you? The way you listen to people, the way you want to help?”
She smiled more emphatically. “Yes, you will. But thanks. For everything. You’re right, you know. I do need a friend.” She looked at him seriously. “Thanks. For letting me be just Clare. Instead of the Reverend Fergusson. It’s been a long time since I—it’s a rare thing to have someone you can just be yourself with, you know. Your whole self.”
He was going to make a crack about hanging out with heathens more, but he couldn’t, not with her looking at him that way. He shifted his gaze to the dashboard, unable to meet her eyes. “Good night, Clare.”
“Good night, Russ.” She opened the door and slipped from the cab.
“Clare—” he said. She paused, her hand on the door, the snow swirling around her and into the passenger seat. Her hair stirred in the wind, already hung with feathery snowflakes.
“Nothing,” he said. “Talk to you tomorrow.” He waited until he had seen her inside the kitchen before he shifted the truck into gear. She waved at him from the window. He pulled out of her snow-drifted driveway and drove away from the rectory at a much faster speed than was safe.
CHAPTER 17
Clare paused in front of the parish bulletin board, a packing box of Christmas banners propped against one hip. Still woolly-headed from the late night and high emotion, she had tackled the messy, mindless task of digging the church’s Christmas decorations out of the undercroft this morning. The Sunday-best of her parishioners’ photographs contrasted with her rumpled, sweaty, dusty state and reminded her that she would have to wash and change in order to be presentable. The picture of Karen and Geoffrey Burns caught her eye. They looked so happy and relaxed in the photo, with the kind of sleek contentment that more than enough money brings.
For all of Geoff’s raging and Karen’s desperation, Clare still couldn’t believe that their desire for a child could lead them into murder. She had seen them with that baby in the hospital, seen the instant love and tenderness that was ordinarily lost in the brassy blare of their personalities. Within their small universe of two, they were gentle, caring people. It struck her that perhaps they needed a child most of all so they could show that vulnerable side to another human being.
“Reverend Clare?” Lois’s voice broke her concentration. She hoisted the box higher and walked into the secretary’s office.
“A few messages for you,” Lois said. “Karen Burns called, and Mr. Felton’s daughter, to reschedule your visit. He’s going in for some tests and he won’t be back to the Infirmary until tomorrow.”
“Anything serious?”
“She didn’t sound too concerned. The last one was Kristen McWhorter. Is she related to the—”
“Her sister. What did she say?”
“She’s going to see her mother, and wondered if you’d come along.” Lois pushed the pink message memos across her desk. “Her number’s there.”
“Thanks.” Clare dropped the box against the wall and took the paper slips. “Say, Lois, you don’t know anyone who could get the mold spots out of these felt banners, do you?”
The church secretary sniffed a few times. “That’s what that smell is.” She tilted her head so that her perfectly cut bob swung sideways. “You’ve come to the right person. Not that I ever have to deal with mold, you understand, but I do know the best dry cleaner in the three-county area.”
“Somehow, I knew you would.”
In her office, Clare flung herself into her chair with a creak and a snap. She picked up two of the pink papers and held them up, one in each hand, as if weighing Karen Burns against Kristen McWhorter. She looked out the window at the diamond-pieced sky, longing for a four-hour nap. Steam off the smell of moldy old boxes, burrow under her grandmother’s quilt, turn her Thelonious Monk CD on low and forget about the world for awhile.
Too bad the inward voice that gently and relentlessly urged her on could find her, even under a Baltimore quilt. And make itself heard even over jazz from the ’68 Monmartre session. Heck, God was probably playing at that session. She picked up the phone and dialed.
“Kristen? It’s Clare Fergusson. You left a message for me?”
“Yeah. I was hoping . . . I have to go see my mom today to start sorting things out. I was wondering . . . would you come with me?”
“Are you sure you don’t want some privacy with your mother? I mean, if you want to do more than go over the funeral plans with her. You two have some very intense issues to discuss.”
Kristen groaned over the phone. “Yeah. The thing is, I think if you were there I’d, you know, be more likely to get to the tough stuff. I know it’s asking a lot . . .”
“No, I’d be more than happy to come if I can be helpful, Kristen. It’s not asking a lot. I’m glad you thought to call me.”
There was a pause. “About last night? I’m sorry I got all weird on you. I was just . . . it was all too much, you know?”
“I know. Believe me, I understand.” Clare pulled her oversized agenda toward her. “I’ve got a counseling session at three, but I’m free until then. Give me the directions to your mother’s apartment, and I’ll meet you there.” She scribbled the address on a piece of scrap paper and wrote KRISTEN: NOON in the agenda. “Okay. See you in about half an hour.”
Someone had hung a pair of plastic wreaths on the front doors of 162 South Street. The peeling apartment facades must have been workingman’s flats a hundred years ago. Utilitarian and cheap back then, and not improved by the last thirty years of unemployment and neglect. Still, Clare could see evidence of the coming Christmas as she fishtailed slowly down the street. Crayon-colored reindeer taped in windows, strings of fairy lights wrapped around the posts of one battered and sagging porch.
She parked as close to the curb as she could. No sign of Kristen’s black Civic. She kept her engine running to ward off the cold and turned up the Top Forty station on her radio. Everything was calm in the afternoon’s watery sunlight, but she couldn’t be far from where Russ had answered a domestic disturbance call last Friday when she had gone on patrol with him.
A girl with a toddler balanced on her hip trudged past Clare, ignoring the unusual sports car, intent on keeping her cigarette ash from blowing into the child’s face. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and Clare wondered if it was choice or a lack of them that kept her out of school. This was the sort of young woman and child her proposed program could help, if she could only get the vestry behind her. She blew out her breath in frustration.
A slamming door jerked her back to the here and now. Kristen had arrived. Clare killed the engine and slid out of her car. Kristen walked around the MG, her eyes wide, nodding. “This is your car?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Way cool. I didn’t think priests had enough money for this sort of thing.”
Clare laughed. “I don’t. I’ve had it for seven years and if something big goes, I’ll be in deep pockets. I really ought to sell it and get something more practical.”
“Must be lousy in the snow.” Kristen opened the passenger-side door and peered in at the leather interior. “But, oh, man, it sure has some style.”
Clare caressed the curve of the hood. “It sure does, doesn’t it?”
Kristen clicked the lock and slammed the door shut. She pointed to Clare’s side. “You oughtta lock up around here.” She glanced up at the third story windows while Clare complied.
“Are you ready for this, Kristen?” Clare asked, picking her way over the sidewalk snowbank to keep her boots dry.