All Mortal Flesh

TWENTY-TWO

Clare showed Debbie Wolecski the way out. Or, to be more precise, the two of them stalked to the church door like cats refusing to yield territory, rigidly apart, unhappily together.

“This isn’t over,” Debbie said at the door.

“I didn’t think it was.” Clare had plumbed the depths of her priestly goodwill and discovered the bottom of it. She sounded like a bitch, and she didn’t care. She wished she could slam the narthex door on Debbie’s behind instead of watching it hiss gently and hydraulically into place.

Russ. Oh, God.

He was still standing in the corridor where she had left him, like a glaciated creature given the appearance of life because the ice all around was keeping him upright. Like the five-thousand-year-old Bronze Age man, found with flowers still fresh in his pouch. He, she had read recently, had been murdered. Betrayed, then left to the cold.

She had a flash of understanding, seeing Russ frozen there. If she let herself soften, if she held him and wept and sympathized as she wanted to, he would shatter. He would shatter, and she did not have the ability to put him back together again. She didn’t know if anyone did.

She swept her arm toward the door. “My office,” she said.

He stared, then lurched into life. She shut the door behind them, glancing at her watch. Nine o’clock. Lois would be arriving at any minute. She pointed to the sagging love seat. “Sit.” He did.

She crossed to her desk and unscrewed her Thermos of coffee. She poured him a mug and stirred in three spoonfuls of sugar from her private stash. “Why did you really come here?”

He accepted the coffee without batting an eyelash at the mug’s DEATH FROM THE SKY! logo. “I…” He patted one-handed at his pockets. “I need someplace to look at these.” He pulled out a handful of jewel cases and dropped them disinterestedly onto the sofa.

She picked one up. An unmarked CD. “What are they?”

“The contents of Linda’s computer. Most of it.”

“Why can’t you just take these to your office?”

He shook his head. It was the first unsolicited movement he had made since Debbie’s hateful revelation. “I can’t. The state police have sent in an investigator to take over the case. Right now, she wants to ‘talk to me.’ In the best-case scenario, that’ll mean pulling me off the case due to conflict of interest. In the worst-case scenario, she could detain me.”

She didn’t have to ask what he’d be detained for. “How can the state police just come in and take over? Isn’t there something about jurisdiction?”

“They have jurisdiction. When the cops running the show are dirty.”

Stupid, stupid! She held her tongue. “What can I do to help?”

He waved a hand over the CDs. “Find me a quiet place with a computer.” He looked into his coffee cup. “I’m expecting a phone call from-a call about the vehicle the Tracey kid says he saw in the driveway. I’m going to try to follow up on that.”

“Use my office.”

He started to stand. “No, I can’t-”

“Yes, you can.” She pressed her hand against his shoulder and pushed him back onto the love seat. “I don’t have any counseling sessions today.” She swept her Day-Timer off the desk and pocketed her keys. “This room locks from the inside. The only people with keys are me and Mr. Hadley, the sexton.” She lifted her coat off the rack. “I’ll tell Lois I’ve turned off the heat and closed the door to save on oil.” She made a face. “Unfortunately, that’s all too believable.”

“Won’t somebody wonder why the door’s locked?”

She shrugged. “If anyone’s nosy enough to try it, they’ll think I’m worried about nosy people.” She felt a smile trying to tug at the side of her mouth. “Honi soit qui mal y pense.”

“Huh?” He sat up straighter.

“Shame to him who thinks evil.” The thought of what he had found out this morning wiped the incipient good humor off her face. “That’s not a bad philosophy to keep in mind, Russ. People don’t always know what they think they know.”

Lois was just taking her coat off in the main office. “Good lord, did you see the clouds out there?” The secretary followed the Weather Channel religiously. “We’re set for a big one. The National Weather Service is predicting it’ll start up this afternoon. Two to four inches.”

“That’s not bad.” No greater proof that Clare was becoming acclimatized to the Adirondacks. Two years ago, a forecast of two to four inches of snow would have paralyzed her.

“That’s just to start.” Lois dropped into her chair and switched on an all-talk AM station that gave detailed forecasts every twenty minutes.

Clare surprised herself by saying, “I’m going to make my home visits this morning.”

“Home visits! But it’s Wednesday.”

“So?”

“You always work on your sermon Wednesday morning.”

“I do?”

Lois gave her a look that said, You put the less in hopeless. “Yes, Clare. You do.”

A reason. She needed a reason that wasn’t I’m clearing out so Russ Van Alstyne can use my computer while laying low from the state police. “Well… I want to beat the weather.” The rationality of this caused her to smile proudly. “If we are due for a dump, I might not be able to make it around to the shut-ins for a few days. Better get them now.”

“What about your sermon?”

“Oh, I’ll wing it.”

“You’ll wing it?”

Clare grinned. “Jes’ joking. I’ll-” The sound of footsteps in the hall jerked her around.

Elizabeth de Groot entered, in an impeccably cut red wool coat with fur collar and cuffs. “Good morning, Lois,” she said. “Good morning, Reverend Fergusson.” Her alert and helpful look didn’t quite cover up the wariness left over from last night.

Clare stared at her as the idea dropped like the last ripe pear of the season into her palm. “I’ll ask Elizabeth.”

“Ask me what?”

“To deliver the sermon this Sunday.”

The deacon wrinkled her brow. “Me? This Sunday? Why?”

“Can you think of a better way to introduce yourself to the congregation?”

“Well-”

“You don’t have to preach on the readings, if you don’t want to. Make it something personal, something that will let us all get to know you.”

“That’s an idea.” Lois’s voice was carefully neutral.

“You think so?” Elizabeth brightened. “Okay. I’ll do it.” She shrugged out of her coat. “Lois, do we have another computer I can use?” She turned toward Clare. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday, but Lois is putting me up in the copy room.” The copy room was a smudge of a space off the main office, originally intended to house the bulky files and mimeograph machine that were standard office equipment when the parish hall was modernized. The file cabinets had long since been replaced by Lois’s hard drive, and the smelly mimeograph drum by a tabletop Canon.

“I’m moving the copier in here,” Lois said to Clare. “It’s not a lot of space, but we can fit a desk and a couple of chairs in there.” She narrowed her eyes at de Groot. “You’re going to need a computer.” Her long, thin fingers drummed in calculation. “Maybe I can work somebody for a donation. In the meantime, why don’t you use Clare’s? She’s going out on home visits.”

“No!”

Lois and Elizabeth stared. Clare had flung one hand forward, as if she were about to forcibly prevent the new deacon from leaving. She dropped her arm. “I mean, I want Elizabeth to accompany me on the home visits. It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

“Really?” Elizabeth beamed. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

Oh, God, she was such a dissembler. She was going straight to hell, no passing Go, no two hundred bucks. “Okay, I’ll get the traveling kit from the sacristy. I’ll drive, and you can get a sense of where people live. Lois, maybe you can rustle up a map and one of the parish directories-”

“I gave her one yesterday.” Lois said.

Of course. “Great,” Clare said. “Um, I’ve turned off the heat in my office and shut the door.”

Lois nodded. They were so used to penny-pinching, Clare’s statement was unremarkable. “See you later,” the secretary said. She was already turning up the latest weather news.

Clare had to pass her closed door twice, to retrieve the traveling kit-did she hear the sound of a computer booting up?-and to leave by the back way to collect her car.

She and Elizabeth paused on the parish hall steps. The clouds piling up along the edge of the mountains looked like a fleet of battleships, menacing their small town from an arctic sea. Lois was right. Of course, Lois was usually right. Something caught at the corner of her eye-a movement behind the diamond-paned windows of her office. “We’d better get going,” she said, steering Elizabeth toward the new Subaru. She was careful to keep herself between the deacon and the building. “I want to make sure we beat the snow.”

“It sure looks like a storm’s coming, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” Clare said. “It sure does.”