“What about her?”
“Remember what you said to Mrs. Marshall, about how the police would treat a suspected spouse nowadays? How come you haven’t grilled Mrs. Rouse?”
“Because she can account for her whereabouts. She was already making phone calls all over town, trying to track down her husband, while he was alive and well at Stewart’s Pond with Debba Clow. We’ve interviewed people who spoke with her, and her phone records confirm those calls were made from her home phone. Lyle suggested she and Debba might have been in cahoots, but I find that hard to believe.”
She flipped over pages until she started seeing “1929.” She began working her way forward from the last of the Adirondack Land Development Partnership’s documents in that year. “If they were, it’d certainly put a different complexion on Mrs. Rouse’s visit to the Clows, wouldn’t it?”
He laughed. “You make a great conspiracy theorist. Have you figured out who killed JFK yet?” She heard someone calling out a good-bye in the background.
“I ought to let you go,” she said.
“I’m fixing to head out right now. Tell you what, give me a minute to hobble downstairs and find my hands free and I’ll call you from my car.”
“You drove yourself in to work? How can you manage the clutch?”
“I swapped with my mom. She has a Toyota Camry. Plenty of room for my leg, and no shifting.”
“I thought Linda was taking you in.”
“That wasn’t working out as well.”
As well as what? she thought, but kept her mouth shut. “Okay, give me a call when you get settled.”
She glanced out the window again after he hung up. The threatening rain clouds had closed off the sky, darkening the soggy back garden and the tree-shrouded alley beyond. She could see her own face in the glass, its lines soft, her eyes dreamy. She looked as if she ought to be singing the chorus of “Hello Young Lovers.” She rolled her eyes and went back to the partnership’s accounts.
McThis and McThat, with the occasional MacWhosit and Someonesson thrown in for light relief. The location of the land, the structures there on-she supposed that was so they would know what would have to go before the flooding started-the agent who handled the purchase. Date of transaction and price. Date of possession, which she guessed meant when the prior owners beat it. She had an uneducated eye, but it seemed as if most of the farmers were getting a raw deal. Even in the 1920s, $7,000 couldn’t have been much for forty acres, a house, and a barn.
And there they were, in the 1928s. Jonathon and Jane Ketchem. Fifty-five riverfront acres: $7,455. Date of possession, October 16, 1928. They hadn’t held on to the bitter end, but they had gotten close. Maybe they had brought in one last crop.
They didn’t get any more money than anyone else. Yet with it they had bought a house in town, and Jane Ketchem went through the depression without having to work. Admittedly, it was a modest house and a frugal life. But she had still managed to send her daughter to college, start a clinic, and leave an endowment of over one hundred thousand dollars. Could the Ketchem farm have generated so much income that they had had a goodly chunk of change put away? Clare doubted it. All the farmers she knew around here wound up sinking too much into their operations to build up any significant reserve. It might have been easier for the family farmer in the 1920s, but she’d bet it wasn’t that much different from now. And anyway, if they had had money in the bank or the stock market, what happened in 1929 when the market crashed and the banks went bust?
Her phone began playing the first notes of a Bach fugue. “Hello,” she answered.
“It’s me.”
“Hi, you. Let me know if driving with a broken leg and talking get too complicated, okay?”
“You bet,” he said. “Headed down the highway,” he sang in a passable baritone, “in my mother’s Camry, lookin’ for adventure…”
“I’ve just realized that if you’re in Margy’s Camry, she must have your pickup. That’s a scary thought.”
“After the way she lectured me on its wasteful consumption of fossil fuels, I’ll be surprised if she ever gets into it.”
“Remember those land-sale records I was researching? I found the Ketchems’ farm. Listen to this.” She read him the information off the paper. It had been a large ledger sheet, reduced when the copies were made, and she had to squint at it, even with the desk lamp on. Time to turn on the overhead light. “Now, does that sound to you like enough to buy a new house, send your kid to college, live on for forty years, and endow a trust fund?”
“Maybe she used S & H green stamps.”
“Seriously.”
“I dunno. Her in-laws were pretty well set up. Maybe they supported her. Thinking their son had run out on her and all. Little did they know. Why is this such a big deal with you, anyway?”
She propped her chin in her hand and stared through her reflection into the gathering night. “It’s this money. It’s in my hands now, and I want to know where it came from. It certainly didn’t make anyone else associated with it very happy, did it? I’m beginning to think it’s like the Hope diamond or something.”
“Your Mrs. Marshall’s had it for years, and it doesn’t seem to have doomed her to a life of woe. In fact, she seems to have done pretty darn well for herself.”
“Except that for her whole life she thought her father had walked out on her. And she never gave herself the chance to be a mother. Although, to be fair, she told me that was because of what happened to her siblings. Which is a completely different issue.” A gust of wind splattered the window with a handful of rain. It was dim enough now that the shadows were blurring into the pavement, and the winter-dead grass and the carriage house and the alley pavement beyond were all shades of gray and grayer.
In the carriage house behind the clinic, a light went on.
She bolted up in her seat. “Russ,” she said. “There’s somebody in the clinic. In the old garage out back.” She stood to get a better view, realized she would be outlined to anyone emerging into the alley, and snapped off her lamp. The old nursery sprang to life in shadows.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing yet. A light just came on. There’s a window on the side, just the same as the historical society’s carriage house. I don’t see anyone moving or anything.”
“The clinic attaches to the carriage house in the back, doesn’t it?” he said. “Could be somebody’s trying to break in, thinks he can rip them off for some prescription drugs. Hang tight, I’m turning the car around.”
“I don’t see any other lights on at the clinic. What should I do?”
“You shouldn’t do anything. Stay put. I’m on my way. We’ve had this discussion before, remember? Me cop, you priest.”
“Holy crow.”
“What?”
“The light’s gone off.” She searched for some sign of movement through the rain-streaked window. She had good eyes. Pilot’s eyes. She could see this. “Somebody’s coming out.”
“Where? The front? The back?”
“The back. Out of the carriage house.”
“How many? Male or female?”
“One. Looks sort of like a man, but it’s hard to tell. Whoever it is, he’s pushing a bike.” She watched the figure pause at the corner of the carriage house. It seemed to be oddly proportioned, bulky, long and flapping, a huge hat tied down around its head.
“Rouse kept his bike in the carriage house,” Russ said.
“I think he or she’s a street person. Oh Lord, I hope it’s not someone who comes to our soup kitchen.” Another possibility struck her and she sucked in her breath. “Russ, maybe this is your missing link to Dr. Rouse.”
“The thought had occurred to me.” His voice was dry.
“Uh-oh.”