McKellan shook his head. “Not without gutting our already-modest endowment.”
“Ah.” Burns sank back into his seat. Clare considered the leather-and-oak chair, one of twelve in the room. Maybe they wouldn’t have to send anything out to auction. They could do it all on eBay. Mrs. DeWitt, St. Alban’s seventy-something volunteer webmaster, had her own e-store.
“There is the possibility…” Mrs. Marshall’s voice faded away. Clare sat up straighter. The elderly woman tended to be one of the quieter members at their meetings, but when she spoke up, she always did so strongly. Clare had never heard her sound uncertain before.
Mrs. Marshall looked down at the financial statement in front of her. “I suppose I could liquidate the Ketchem Trust.”
Norm Madsen shook his head. “No, no, no no no. Out of the question.”
Such clear-cut decisiveness was out of character for Mr. Madsen, the vestry’s Great Equivocator. “What’s the Ketchem Trust?” Clare asked. “I don’t recall seeing that name in our financial statement.”
“That’s because it doesn’t belong to St. Alban’s,” Mr. Madsen replied.
“But it could,” Mrs. Marshall said.
“Isn’t this the money-,” Sterling Sumner began.
Mr. Madsen cut him off. “There’s been no qualifying event to disburse the trust.”
“I’m the one who decides what qualifies.” Mrs. Marshall was sounding more like herself now, but Clare had never seen the elderly lawyer so worked up. She glanced around the table. Terry McKellan and Robert Corlew were following the exchange with baffled expressions. Geoff Burns jotted notes in his Palm Pilot, evidently keeping busy until someone filled him in. So it wasn’t one of those pieces of information that everyone on the vestry knew and had forgotten to tell her.
Sterling was advising Mrs. Marshall to think of herself, and Mr. Madsen was saying something incomprehensible about “devolving” and “beneficiaries.” Robert Corlew had leaned over and was whispering to Terry McKellan.
“Excuse me,” Clare said. “Folks?” She might as well have been talking to herself. Geoff Burns rolled his eyes in her direction. She leaned forward. “Excuse. Me,” she said, in a voice pitched to carry across the noise of helicopter rotors.
The room fell silent. “Thank you. Mrs. Marshall, some of us here need an explanation. What’s the Ketchem Trust?”
Norm Madsen opened his mouth, but Mrs. Marshall said, “Let me tell it, Norm.” She turned toward Clare. “It’s a trust left by my mother at her death. I’m the sole trustee, and I have the power to decide if the trust ought to be ended and the principal handed over to the beneficiary.”
“Who is…?” Clare had a feeling where this was going.
“If-when-the trust is broken, the money goes to me, to be used entirely at my discretion. I must say, I never thought the trust would last forever, but it feels very strange now, contemplating ending it. I always thought I would leave it to St. Alban’s in my will. Under the circumstances, I believe I’d better push my timetable forward.” She wore coral lipstick that matched the coral scarf around her throat, and when she smiled, she looked like a banner flying in the face of defeat. “After all, I’ve already invested in the window. I may as well pay for the roof and the wall.”
“The window? You donated that?”
“As a memorial to my mother.” She frowned. “Oh, heavens. I do hope the work they did back then isn’t a factor in our present problem.”
Sterling shook his head. “The artisans only replaced the existing color-block window. There wasn’t any structural work done.”
“Kind of a grim verse there,” Burns said from his chair at the far end of the table. “I thought people usually went for more uplifting resurrection theology in memorials.”
“Do they?” Mrs. Marshall’s polite tone implied Geoff Burns’s idea of a suitable memorial would contain big-eyed children and puppy dogs frolicking about a blond-haired Jesus. “I thought Lamentations most suitable.”
“Getting back on point,” Clare said, “I’d like to understand more about the Ketchem Trust. What is it used for? Why haven’t you broken it up to now?”
“How much money are we talking about?” Robert Corlew leaned forward on the table.
“It varies with the state of the stock market, of course,” Mrs. Marshall replied, just as Norm Madsen said, “You don’t have to answer that, Lacey,” and Sterling Sumner chimed in, “Oh, sure, with somebody else’s money you’re interested.”
There was a pause.
“Between one hundred and thirty and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” Mrs. Marshall gave her defenders a quelling glance. “Roughly.”
Geoff Burns whistled. “In that case, I like it rough.”
Clare coughed, and McKellan and Corlew snorted, but evidently that particular phrase didn’t mean anything to Mrs. Marshall. “Has it all been accumulating in there, like a savings account?” Clare asked. “Or is there money being paid out currently?” A thought struck her, and her cheeks pinked. “It’s not-do you need-is it helping you out?”
“No, dear. The trust does generate a modest income, and since 1973, it’s been used to help defray the expenses of the free clinic.”
Clare should have been surprised, but after living over a year in a town of eight thousand, she was beginning to realize that sooner or later, everything and everybody was connected. In one way or another.
“When we were foster parents, Karen and I went to the free clinic a few times,” Geoff Burns said. “Two of the moms we dealt with got treated there. Dr. Rouse does good work.”
Clare noticed that when Geoff spoke of foster parenting, the veins in his neck didn’t bulge out like they used to. Becoming a father-finally-had mellowed him. Of course, he was branching his practice out into criminal defense, so she supposed he hadn’t softened up all that much.
“My mother founded the clinic. That is, she donated the building and money to support it. She was a deeply Christian woman. The most charitable I’ve ever known.”
There was an expression on Norm Madsen’s face that made Clare think that he, perhaps, had a different view of Mrs. Marshall’s mother. “Mr. Madsen,” she said, “how do you fit into all this?”
“I was the late Mrs. Ketchem’s attorney. I handled the property transfers that established the clinic. I also drew up the trust documents.”
“Mother wanted to make sure the clinic would be able to keep running, but she also wanted to leave a legacy to me. We discussed it before she died. Up till now, there was never any need more compelling than the clinic’s. But”-she tossed up her hands-“that leak! We have to get the roof fixed and we have to do it now, before the entire north aisle becomes unusable and the rot spreads into the main roof.”
“Hear, hear,” Sterling Sumner said. “But I’m confident we could do the repairs with half the sum you named, Lacey. You keep the other for yourself.”
She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t. Besides, if I gave the whole amount, we might be able to avoid a capital campaign altogether.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Robert Corlew said.
“There are other reasons for running a capital campaign,” Geoff Burns said. “In addition to making repairs and building the endowment, it gives donors an investment in St. Alban’s. They have a stake in its future, a vested interest. It’s the difference between renting an apartment and buying your own house.”
“I happen to agree with Geoff,” Clare said, “but it’s a moot point. I don’t think, in good conscience, we can use the Ketchem Trust money when the clinic is struggling financially.”
“Says who?” Corlew tapped his nose. “They get a fat check from the town every year. Courtesy of us, the taxpayers. Plus, they do that annual fund-raiser. Believe me, you won’t be seeing sick people staggering around in the street.”