“Ebony!” Emily squealed.
Clare smiled crookedly. “Let’s just say that diversity is not their strong suit.”
“No lie. Hey, Em. Isn’t this that girl who came to see Katie at the beginning of the year?”
“What? Who?” Clare leaned over the coffee table to see.
“This blonde copping an attitude. Remember her, Em?”
On a page of candid photographs, Ebony had one finger squarely on a Seventeen magazine blonde with perfect skin and a form-fitting tie-dyed dress.
“Alyson Shattham was here visiting Katie?” Clare blinked in disbelief.
“It wasn’t like, a social call.” Emily said. “She was a bitch on wheels.”
“She had some sort of problem with Katie. Actually, she had a problem with all of us. Acted like her shit didn’t smell.” Ebony looked at Clare, biting her lip. “Oh. Sorry, Reverend. I forgot.”
“That’s okay. Tell me what you remember about Alyson’s visit.”
“She wanted to speak with Katie. She was, like, very rude. They went into the kitchen to talk and shut the door.”
“She was definitely riding Katie. But Katie, she could hold her own. I don’t know what they went on about while they were in the kitchen, but blondie flounced out of here like somebody had caught her tail in a crack.”
“Did Katie ever tell you what they talked about?”
“No. She was, like, very private with stuff bothering her. She would smile and change the subject if you asked if she was okay. Like, she didn’t want to burden anybody.”
Ebony nodded in agreement.
“Did either of you ever see Alyson here again? Or did Katie mention she saw her again?”
Ebony and Emily looked at each other.
“You ever see her after that time?”
“Nope.”
“Me, neither.”
Clare stood up straight and rubbed her forefinger across her lips. Alyson Shattham. Now that was interesting.
Clare picked up the yearbook. “I think I’ll show this around at the computer center where Katie worked. Maybe someone there overheard her or saw her with either Wes or Alyson.” She glanced out the window. “Then I’d better head back home. I don’t want to get caught in any more of this upstate weather. I have a friend who doesn’t trust my car in the snow.”
Clare checked her rearview mirror, changed lanes, and wedged her soda between her thighs. She adjusted the radio tuner as an eighteen-wheeler passed her. Traffic was light on the Northway this Saturday afternoon.
“WNCR’s accu-weather update!” the speakers blared. She turned the volume down. “A low pressure system continues to move in fast from the northeast,” the announcer said portentously. “I’m looking for snow to start mid-afternoon, with temperatures falling into the single digits by nightfall and increasing storm intensity. Accumulations from four to six inches along the Hudson Valley areas, higher in the mountains. Get out those skis if you haven’t already, because it’s prime time at the peaks!” The weather report broke for an ad extolling snowboarding at Hidden Valley Ski Area.
“Wonderful,” Clare muttered. She ate a few more french fries. She was a long way from being able to “smell snow” as Russ claimed he could do, but even she could tell the lead-gray clouds darkening the sky to the north meant another snowstorm. Didn’t it ever stop snowing up here?
“Is it my imagination, or is this a really snowy December?” the DJ asked.
“It’s not your imagination, Lisa, this is the third snowiest December since 1957,” the smooth-voiced weatherman said. “And with the storms now forming over the Rockies and the Canadian plains, we may set a new record before the month is over.”
Clare groaned.
“So get out and get that Christmas shopping done before you’re stuck indoors waiting for the plows, right, Dave?”
“That’s right, Lisa!”
“Let’s have something seasonal, then!”
Harry Connick, Jr.’s voice filled the car. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas . . .” Clare picked her bacon burger off the yearbook cover. She might as well have left Albany right after talking with Emily and Ebony, instead of waiting until the afternoon, risking driving into the storm. No one at the university’s computer center could recall seeing Katie with Wes or Alyson.
She chewed her rapidly cooling burger thoughtfully. Alyson had lied straight out to her, Russ, and her parents. Maybe Wes had thrown her over for Katie. Could she have murdered in a fit of jealousy? What could she have said to have lured Katie back to Millers Kill? Had she found out about the baby, somehow?
Keeping her eyes on the highway, Clare groped for a napkin and wiped her mouth. She found it easy to think the worst of Alyson. Something about that girl got under her skin. Who would have guessed she still had unresolved issues from her high-school days as an ugly duckling? She frowned. Maybe Alyson and Wes both did it, like that high-school couple out in Texas, who had murdered a girl who threatened their romance.
She sighed. She was going to have to call Russ and tell him everything she’d found out. The convoluted strands of this case twisted around like bad wiring, an offense to her pilot’s sense of order. Maybe he had been right to jump on the Burnses. Not because they had been guilty, but because trying to put together the events of the crime with only pieces of motivation and insight into the human heart was hopeless. Real, physical evidence, that’s what pointed the finger at the guilty. Besides, how was she going to get Alyson to talk to her? Russ was . . . was . . . not entirely right. But he was a little right when he told her to leave it to the professionals. Although if he thought she was going to admit that over the phone, he had another think coming.
She pulled into the tiny parking area behind St. Alban’s an hour or so before sunset, grateful to have beaten out the storm. She had no illusions about her winter driving skills. She unlocked the back door and made her way up to her office, pausing to plug in the coffeemaker. Lois must have turned down the thermostat when she left at noon, since the parish hall was even colder than usual. Clare could up the setting by a few degrees, but her first good look at the yearly oil bills a few days ago had shown her exactly why the church was rarely warmer than 62 degrees, even in the coldest weather. She sighed. Mr. Hadley would be in at 5:30 tomorrow morning to turn the heat up before the services. She could tough it out for a few hours this afternoon.
She carried her coffee into her office. As if in answer to her virtuous intentions, there was an iron carrier overflowing with split logs and a basket of kindling next to the fireplace. “Mr. Hadley!” she said. “You dear, sweet man!”
She had once read that a fire actually takes warm air out of a room, but you couldn’t prove it by her. With flames popping the logs and the iron fire-back radiating heat, she finally felt warm enough to take off her parka. Reaching for the phone, she shook her head in bemusement. Computers and cell phones and nuclear power and space shuttles, and here she was, heating herself like a curate in a Dickens novel.
“Millers Kill Police. May I help you?”
“Harlene? It’s Clare Fergusson. Is the chief in?”
“He sure isn’t, Clare. But I know he’s been trying to get ahold of you. I expect him back within an hour or so. Want to leave a message?”
“He’s been trying to reach me? Okay. Yes . . . tell him I called, and that I’ll be here at my office for a couple of hours. I need to speak with him about Katie McWhorter’s case.”
“I’ll do that. Have a good one.”
“Thanks, Harlene. You, too.”
She clunked down the receiver. Tapped a pencil against her lips. May as well get the messages and start returning calls. Maybe the Fowlers had spoken to Wes and persuaded him to tell the truth about his relationship with Katie. And there was Alyson to consider. It was probably a bad idea to talk with the Shatthams before she heard back from Russ.