All Mortal Flesh

THIRTY-EIGHT

Clare refused to look at the paper Thursday morning. She cracked open the front door of the rectory and saw it lying on her porch in its bright yellow plastic bag to protect it from the promised storm, and wondered why she had never seen how much it resembled an unexploded pipe bomb. Or a large, malignant yellow jacket, waiting for her to reach out an unwary hand and be stung. She closed the door. Whatever was in it, she’d find out soon enough.

She dressed quickly, trying not to notice the jumbled disarray in her sweater drawer or the way her skirt hangers had been shoved to one side of her closet. In the kitchen, she opened the pantry door to get out the oatmeal and was so dismayed by the mess she shut the door again, her appetite gone. What had they thought she was hiding behind the canned tomatoes and boxes of rigatoni?

She poured coffee from the coffeemaker into her Thermos. She pulled on her boots and parka. Next to her coat tree, the phone on the wall blinked its red message light over and over and over again. She hesitated, her hand over the play button. Maybe Russ had called?

Then she thought of his face in the station, the distrustful cop mask falling over his features, and anger burst behind her eyes, bitter and salty in her mouth. No. Russ had not called. She left the phone flashing monotonously behind the kitchen door and crunched her way down her unplowed drive toward the church.

She let herself in by the back door, walking through the still-darkened parish hall toward her office. She was surprised, as she drew closer, to hear a voice from the main office. She was always the first one in. Lois didn’t show up until nine. She slowed her steps, drawing close to the doorway without entering.

The voice was talking, then pausing. A phone conversation. “I don’t know enough to make a recommendation.” Elizabeth de Groot. Goodness, she was quite the woman of Proverbs, wasn’t she? She riseth also while it is yet night. “I thought you should hear it from me first,” Elizabeth went on. Clare leaned forward, and the Thermos thumped against her leg. She froze. “No,” Elizabeth said. Another long pause. “Well, that’s for the police to decide, isn’t it?”

Clare suddenly saw herself as she was, lurking in the darkness outside her church’s office, eavesdropping on a private conversation. It was not a pretty picture. She retreated a couple of steps, cleared her throat, and called out, “Hello?”

There was a second’s pause before de Groot answered, “Hi, Clare! It’s me, Elizabeth.” Then something quiet into the phone. By the time Clare came through the door, she was setting the receiver into the cradle. “I decided to get in early today,” Elizabeth said. “There’s so much I have to absorb just to get up to speed.”

“Mmm.” Clare rested her Thermos on Lois’s desk.

“I really think I can make a contribution to the ongoing capital campaign,” Elizabeth went on. “Not to mention with the stewardship committee. And I’ve been thinking more about outreach. I think we can expand it way beyond simply getting people who are already congregants back into the pews.”

Clare let the deacon rattle on while she debated asking Elizabeth what her real agenda was at St. Alban’s. Would the information she got be worth tipping her hand? When reconnoitering enemy territory, Master Sergeant Ashley “Hardball” Wright drawled, the first, second, and last rule is: Don’t get caught. Her old SERE instructor would’ve flunked her if she blabbed about hearing the phone call or wondered aloud what de Groot was doing for the bishop.

Elizabeth ran out of conversational steam and looked up at Clare with a mixture of sunshine and wariness.

“You’d better think about gathering up what you need and taking it home,” Clare said. “They’re predicting this storm is going to be one for the record books. You don’t want to be trapped on the Northway.”

The fine lines around Elizabeth’s eyes relaxed almost imperceptibly. “Are you going to close the office?”

Clare shook her head. “Not yet. I’ve got a couple of counseling sessions this morning. If it’s looking bad after that, I’ll send Lois and Mr. Hadley home.”

“What about Evening Prayer?”

“Let’s take a listen to what the rest of the world’s doing.” Clare switched on Lois’s radio. The Storm Center First Response Team was reading off an alphabetical list of area schools that were closed, followed by businesses shutting early and manufacturers canceling shifts. Sounded like the world and his wife were going to stay at home and sit this one out. “Okay,” Clare said. “I’ll call the snow-closing hotline later this morning and let them know there’s no Evening Prayer.” Two and a half years ago, she hadn’t even known what a snow-closing hotline was. Now she had it on her speed dial.

She left her new deacon to either pull together more information on donor programs or plot her downfall and went into her office. Mr. Hadley had left her wood and kindling in a big iron basket next to the hearth, and she laid a fire in the grate, thankful for the soothing manual task, thankful, once the kindling had caught and flames were crackling up in the strong draft, that she spent her days in a beautiful old building with real working fireplaces. And uneven floors. And drafty windows. And a yearly oil bill that probably paid for the president of Exxon’s yacht.

Her first appointment arrived promptly at eight. Chris Ellis, father of three, husband to Dr. Anne Vining-Ellis, had had a panic attack two months ago in his office. His doctor prescribed Valium and counseling. It had taken two sessions for Clare to figure out Chris Ellis’s problem: He hated his job. He hated the work, civil engineering; he hated his younger, more ambitious colleagues; he hated the management, which was bent on taking the firm national; and he hated his two-hour daily commute to Albany. In one more session, he admitted he wanted to pursue his true passion, fine furniture making, currently relegated to a basement hobby. Since then, he had been working toward either taking the leap or living with what he had. Clare privately thought he ought to go for it, but with his eldest son at Brown and the second due to start college next year, she could see why he was reluctant to abandon the regular paycheck and benefits.

She was delighted when he told her he’d accepted a paying commission. “It’s for four classic Adirondack antler chairs and a matching table. Just like the ones I did for my friend David’s restaurant. Get this-the owner of the Algonquin Waters was having lunch at David’s, saw my pieces, and asked about them. He wants a set for the hotel!”

“The owner of the Algonquin resort? Was lunching in Saratoga?”

“Yep. Name’s Oppenheimer.”

“Opperman,” Clare said. “John Opperman.”

“I didn’t actually meet him. He left word with the general manager before he left town, and she contacted me. Apparently, they’re very committed to using local craftsmen and material in the hotel.”

She blinked. First Linda Van Alstyne, then Chris Ellis. Before they knew it, half the town was going to be employed by Opperman’s company. It probably wouldn’t do any good to mention her belief that the owner of the Algonquin Spa and Resort had manipulated his two business partners to their deaths. The only other person who shared her opinion was Russ Van Alstyne, and he wasn’t about to be propping up her arguments any time soon. It was a moot point, anyway. Businesses killed people every day in some part of the world or another. Though she suspected they did it with less personal involvement than Opperman.

She said something encouraging, and Chris talked for a while about seeing if he could structure a part-time position at his firm, or maybe independently consult for them, and when they wrapped up, she was guiltily aware that she’d only given him half her attention. Encountering the same people, businesses, gossip-that was life in a small town. She thought of Ben Beagle, and his big hog-killing story. It was not a conspiracy to make her see the Algonquin Waters at every turn. It was just where she lived.

The Garrettsons were next. Clare took a large slug of coffee and threw another log on the fire. Tim and Liz were always a bit of an ordeal. They entered either bickering or in a stony silence, which was worse. This morning it was silence.

“So,” Clare said. “How are you?”

Liz gazed at her husband with Laser Beam Death Ray eyes.

“She’s hacked off about her mother,” Tim said. “Again.”

Clare picked up her coffee mug. Wished she had thought to pour some whiskey into it first. “Last week we agreed we were going to stay off the subject of-”

“I brought her back from the hospital and her cats were dead!”

“You can’t blame me for her dead cats, Liz.”

“I’m confused,” Clare said. “I thought there was a neighbor who looks after your mother’s house when she’s away.”

“A very responsible neighbor who brings in the mail and the paper and leaves the check for the snowplow and feeds the damn cats,” Tim said. “We slip her thank-you money in a card every few months.”

“We wouldn’t need someone else to help Mom if she were living with us.”

“We wouldn’t have to worry about any of her needs if she was in the Infirmary!”

“What happened to the cats?” Clare asked.

“The cats are a side issue,” Tim said. “There’s always something that’s going wrong. It’ll always be something going wrong until we put her in a home, where she belongs.”

“They were killed,” Liz said, ignoring her husband. “It was horrible. I went into the barn to get the rock salt to scatter on her walk and steps”-her angry glance at Tim led Clare to guess that was supposed to be his job-“and there they were. Sliced to pieces.”

“It was probably a fisher,” Tim said.

“A fisher would’ve eaten them,” Liz said. “Not left their little frozen carcasses behind.”

Clare frowned. “When I saw her in the hospital, your mother said something about someone trying to kill her cats.”

“It’s not about the cats,” Tim repeated. “It’s about the fact that Liz’s mom isn’t competent to manage her own household anymore.” He turned to his wife. “It’s going to be one disaster after another until you realize putting her in the Infirmary isn’t setting her out on a goddamn ice floe.”

Liz gasped. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

“Oh, for chrissake, of course I didn’t kill your mother’s cats!”

“Did you report it to the police?”

Both Garrettsons looked at Clare as if she were crazy. “They were cats,” Liz said. “It was awful, but it’s not like, you know, Quinn Tracey’s mother discovering the police chief’s wife’s body.”

Clare’s first thought was, Oh, good, they haven’t read the Post-Star yet today. Then Liz Garrettson’s phrasing struck her. “Quinn Tracey’s mother?”

The Garrettsons looked at each other again. “We figured… you probably had heard about that,” Tim said tactfully.

“No, I mean, why call her Quinn Tracey’s mother? Instead of Meg Tracey?”

“Oh.” Liz’s face cleared. “I guess I thought of her that way because we know Quinn. He’s the one who does Mom’s plowing for us.”

____________________

Clare normally walked the Garrettsons to the church door to bid them goodbye. This morning, she shook their hands, abandoned them where they sat, and was in Lois’s office before they had gotten their coats on.

“Lois, what was the name of the family that wanted me to pray for their lamb?”

Lois was never flustered by Clare’s more unusual outbursts. “The Campbells. Abigail Campbell is the mom.”

“Can you get me their number? Is she likely to be at home?”

Lois was already flipping through her personal copy of the parish directory, hand-annotated with all sorts of facts not readily available to the general public. “She works at Sheehan Realty in Glens Falls.”

Clare grabbed the Glens Falls phone book off the shelf.

Elizabeth de Groot was by now standing in the doorway of her minuscule office. “What’s going on? Did I hear you say someone wanted prayers for a lamb?”

“A memorial service, really,” Lois said.

The new deacon’s winged eyebrows knitted together in a delicate frown. “Is this metaphorical?”

“I assure you, it’s quite flesh-and-blood.” Clare trapped the number beneath a finger and gestured to Lois for the phone.

“I have to point out it’s probably chops and stew meat by now,” the secretary said. “Maybe a couple of little legs for roasting.”

A bland voice answered the phone. “Sheehan Realty.”

“Could I speak to Abigail Campbell, please?”

“May I say who’s calling?”

“Her priest.”

There was a pause. Then: “Oh! Of course. Please hold.”

Clare looked up to see de Groot nervously glancing back and forth between her and Lois. Then the Muzak cut off and she was live.

“Hello?”

“Hi. Abigail? Clare Fergusson here.”

“Oh, Reverend Fergusson.” The woman on the other end of the line sounded embarrassed. “I’m sorry I left you that message last week. It’s just that the kids were so upset, and I was, too, of course, and we were trying to come up with something to make us all feel better, you know, and not so violated-”

“I have a question that’s going to sound a little odd,” Clare said.

“-but we had a sweet do-it-yourself service and we donated his body, as it were, to the food kitchen, so he didn’t die in vain-”

“Abigail?”

“-and frankly right now I think that having you do anything, you know, official will just open up the wounds again.”

This time Clare waited a moment to make sure she had run down. When she was sure there was nothing else, she said, “No service, then?”

“No service. Maybe we could do something else to remember him.”

“Abigail, do you have someone plow your driveway?”

This time, there was a definite pause. “Ye-e-es,” Abigail said. “I’m divorced. It’s one of those jobs I’m willing to pay someone to do.”

“Who does your plowing?”

A longer pause. “A young man named Quinn Tracey. I sold his family their house a few years back. Why?”