Out Of The Deep I Cry

Chapter 35

Monday, April 3

You think my mother killed my father.” It wasn’t a question. Mrs. Marshall looked at Russ with all the dignity of her seventy-odd years. “That’s impossible.”

“There’s no way we’re going to be able to prove it to the satisfaction of the law,” he said, his voice gentle. “But based on what physical evidence there is and the facts developed in the case file-”

“If she had been a suspect, the police would have investigated her. No one other than a few filthy-minded gossips ever suggested she had anything to do with my father’s disappearance.”

Russ tapped the old green police file. “She was investigated. To a degree. The police chief at the time, Harry McNeil, saw her house and talked to her neighbors. Her story was that her husband had left after a fight and she never saw him again, and there wasn’t any evidence to contradict her.”

“Well then.” Norm Madsen spread his arm across the back of Mrs. Marshall’s chair. “There you go.”

Russ shook his head. “McNeil was laboring under some disadvantages, not the least of which was a mind-set that made it hard for him to imagine a woman murdering her husband and vanishing his body.”

“Wait a minute. Wasn’t this the era of Bonnie and Clyde and Ma Barker and all those female gangsters?” Clare crossed her arms over her chest.

“Sure. Women could be murderous. Bad women. But the general perception of females was still that of the gentler, finer sex. Jane Ketchem, a law-abiding, churchgoing mother, fit the bill.”

Clare arched her eyebrows at him.

“McNeil questioned her once, in her own home, two days after Jonathon vanished. She could have cleaned up all signs of an altercation by then.” He twisted slightly, facing Mrs. Marshall. “If this had happened today, we’d have taken the wife down to the station and interrogated her. We’d search the house with the assumption that the wife had done it, dusting for fingerprints, scraping for fibers, looking for traces of blood and bone. We’d spray with Luminol to look for cleaned-up bloodstains. Technology that wasn’t dreamed of in 1930.”

Clare opened her mouth to speak but closed it again.

“What you’re saying is that my mother got away with it because she got kid-glove treatment from the police.” For the first time, Mrs. Marshall’s voice held something other than stiff indignation.

He nodded.

She sat for a moment. “My mother was the most moral woman I knew,” she said finally.

“None of us can know what happened that night,” Russ said. “Your mother may have been an abused wife who snapped. She may have been defending herself. It may all have been a tragic accident that she felt she had to cover up.” He leaned forward until he caught her eyes with his. “I’m so sorry. I only hope you’ll find some comfort in finally knowing what became of your father.”

“My father,” she said. She turned to Clare. Her scarlet lipstick was the only slash of color in her pale face. “Will we be able to-can we have a funeral service for him?”

“Of course,” Clare said.

“How long until I can have his body back?” Mrs. Marshall asked Dr. Dvorak. He glanced at Russ.

“I’d like to wait a few days,” Russ said. “There are a few police departments going through their old records, just in case. Once I hear from them, Emil can release the remains to you.”

“Do you have any other questions I can answer?” Dr. Dvorak said.

Mrs. Marshall looked down to where her handbag sat in her lap. “I think… I’d just like to go home now. If I have any further questions-”

“Call me at any time. Please.”

Everyone got to their feet as Mrs. Marshall did, Russ yanking on his crutches, Dr. Dvorak pushing himself up with his cane. Clare had time to twist behind Mr. Madsen’s back and mouth, “I’ll call you later,” at Russ before joining the general exodus up the hallway and out of the morgue.

In the Lincoln, in the backseat as wide and comfortable as a sofa, Clare edged forward until her shoulders were jammed between the front seats. “How are you doing?” she asked Mrs. Marshall. “You’ve just been handed an awful lot to deal with.”

Mrs. Marshall shook her head. “I feel like I’ve been looking at an Escher picture. You know him? Etchings of people walking along impossible stairs?”

Clare nodded.

“You think you’re looking at birds, and all at once you realize you’ve been looking at fish. That’s what it feels like.” She looked over at Norm Madsen. “You knew my mother. You were her attorney, for heaven’s sake. Could you ever have imagined her murdering anyone? Let alone her husband?”

Mr. Madsen took his time before answering. “People can do surprising things, Lacey.”

Clare thought of what he had said to her after the emergency vestry meeting that started her whole involvement with Jane Ketchem. She was the only woman who could ever scare me. And the fact that she’s dead doesn’t make me any less scared.

“She never…” Mrs. Marshall peered more closely at her old friend. “She never said anything to you about it?”

Mr. Madsen actually tore his gaze from the road and looked at her. “Good Lord! Of course not.”

She sagged back into her seat for a second and then stiffened again. She twisted to face Clare. “Do you remember what Allan said, that day we went to tell him? About my mother?”

“He said you had no idea what the clinic had meant to your mother.”

“Do you think he knew? Do you think she told him?” She pressed her spindle-fingered hands against her sunken cheeks. “Oh my God, what if he knew what happened to my father all these years and he never told me!”

Clare rubbed her knuckles against Mrs. Marshall’s arm. “Even if he had some sort of knowledge of your father’s death, I’m sure the only reason he would have kept quiet was to protect your feelings. He must have known how much you loved your mother. He wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to tarnish her memory for you.”

Mrs. Marshall closed her eyes for a moment. “All these years, I thought he had left me. I thought my father abandoned me.” She opened her washed-blue eyes, and Clare was struck by how much the pain of the very old looked like the pain of the very young. Vulnerability, and disbelief, and nowhere to hide from it.

“But he didn’t. He was taken away, but he didn’t leave me. All this time, I thought…” She blinked, and the tears spilled down her cheeks and collected in the soft folds of her skin. “He used to tell me he loved me, when I was a little girl. And for years now, years, I didn’t believe him. But he was telling the truth. All those years.” She pressed her hand against her mouth. “He didn’t leave me.”

When Clare reached her office, it was to find Lois with a handful of pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT slips. “If anyone sends you clippings, make sure I get a copy for the parish scrapbook,” Lois said, handing them over.

“Sure,” Clare said. “It’ll make good reading for the next priest. Kind of a what-not-to-do list.” There was one from a Post-Star reporter and another from a columnist at the Albany Times Union. There were two new messages from the diocesan office, one from the bishop’s secretary and the other from the editor of the newsletter. Three were blessedly normal, someone with a question about Easter Eve baptisms, a couple wanting to reschedule a premarital counseling session, a dinner invitation from Dr. Anne. One was from Hugh Parteger.

She ought to get right back to the bishop’s office. She could ask them what to do about the reporters. And of course she needed to return her parishioners’ calls. She picked up the phone and dialed Hugh’s number.

“Vicar!”

“Is this a bad time?”

“I’m just going over a proposal from a pair of twentysomethings who feel now is just the right time to break into the dot-com market with a luxury-car directory and delivery service. All they need from us is a half mil for start-up and a big, encouraging hug.”

“Are they going to get it?”

“Indeed not. I’m going to smack them upside the head, as the natives say, and tell them to go get real jobs. The Internet is dead. Silly buggers.”

“So, you called me.”

“Vicar, I’ve called you four times the past month. You’re hard to get hold of. Listen, there was an article in the Times yesterday.”

“The New York Times?”

“No, the Kankamunga Times. Of course, the New York Times. It’s all about how this lady whose husband went missing showed up at the home of his alleged mistress-”

“Oh God, it doesn’t say mistress, does it?”

“-and said lady proceeded to hold the mistress, her mother, her two children, and the town’s Episcopal priest at gunpoint until the police arrived. Dateline, Millers Kill, New York.”

“It doesn’t give out my name, does it?”

“Hah! I knew it must have been you. No, it only named the wife and girlfriend. The article said it was the priest who phoned the cops.”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“Good God, you’re a regular Xena, Warrior Priestess, aren’t you? I’ve got to get you down here so I can show you off to my friends. You poor baby. Were you frightened?”

She smiled at the conjunction of Warrior Priestess and poor baby. “It was scary. But I was pretty sure Mrs. Rouse didn’t really want to hurt anyone. She just cracked under the strain of her husband’s disappearance.” Unlike Jane Ketchem. “I knew if we could just keep her talking, the police would get there and everything would be okay.”

“Did that surly chief of police show up? Rip Van Winkle?”

“Russ Van Alstyne. And he’s not surly.”

“Hah. At that dinner we went to last summer, he practically patted me down and administered a field sobriety test before he let me drive you home.” His voice shifted, went warmer. “Look, I really do mean it about you coming to the city to visit me. And not just because you’re a fifteen-minute celebrity.”

“Please tell me no one else has seen the article.”

“It was on the third page of the Region section. Must have been a slow news day.”

She groaned.

“What do you say?”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “It’s not a good time. Three Sundays from now is Easter. Things are going to get frantic.”

“And after Easter?”

She hesitated. “If I came down to see you, I’d need someplace to stay. Not with you.”

“My animal sexual magnetism is simply too much in close quarters. I know. I get that all the time.”

One of the things she liked best about him was the way nothing was ever serious. Nothing ever counted for too much or weighed too heavily. “When I get caught up in the middle of things, I’m not always as careful as I ought to be about what people will think of my actions. So when I can spot a problem in advance, like my congregation’s reaction if I overnight in New York with a handsome single man, I like to take steps to cut it off at the knees.”

“Handsome single man, eh?”

“With a British accent. Known to be devastating in the U.S.”

“You do realize, don’t you, that you’re the only girl I’ve ever dated that I didn’t have sex with. I feel like the reformed rake in one of those Barbara Cart-land romances.”

“So shineth a good deed in a naughty world.”

He laughed. “Okay. If I get a female friend to issue an invite, will you come for a visit after Easter?”

“This wouldn’t be one of those innumerable girls you’ve had sex with, would it?”

“Despite what you see on HBO, New York isn’t entirely overrun with single women desperate to sleep with a heterosexual investment banker. Alas. So no, I think I can find someone whose favors I haven’t shared.”

“Maybe you know a nun?”

“A lesbian nun.”

“A blind, senile lesbian nun. With a flatulent dog.” She smiled into the phone.

“All right. I’ll get you a berth with a blind, senile lesbian nun and you’ll let me take you out to dinner. Sounds fair.”

“It’s a deal.”

She said good-bye smiling. She always felt better, talking with Hugh. Lois was right, she ought to keep in touch with him more regularly. Her mother would love him.

Her intercom buzzed and Lois’s voice came into the office, the Ghost of Phone Calls Yet to Be Returned. “While you were on, Karen Burns called. She wants to talk to you about this Debba Clow person. Also, Roxanne Lunt called from the historical society. She has some research packet the librarian there left for you.”

She didn’t know exactly what Karen wanted, but it was bound to take longer and be less pleasant than Roxanne’s research packet. She rang the historical society director.

“I’m so glad you called!” Roxanne’s energy level hadn’t dimmed since their last conversation. “Look, Sonny Barnes told me you had been asking about the Hudson River Regulating Board and the Sacandaga land buyouts.”

“Sonny Barnes?”

“Our librarian. I bet he didn’t introduce himself, did he? Sonny’s a little challenged on the social-adeptness front.” That was an understatement. “Anyway, about your research?”

“I was interested in what had happened to a local family. The Ketchems. But as it is, I’ve just recently found out-”

Roxanne steamed forward. “I have, right here in my hands, the financial records of the long-defunct Adirondack Land Development Partnership.”

“Say what?”

“They were one of the groups that popped up like mushrooms when the HRRB was formed. They were land speculators who had friends on the board. They bought up properties that were going to go underwater and resold them to the board for a nice profit, and they also snatched up land near areas that were undergoing development.”

“Sounds like a recipe for success, if not for sleeping soundly at night. How come they went under?”

“It was a huge, racy scandal. In 1932, the three partners and a bunch of friends were whooping it up at one of their twenty-five-room cottages. There were lots of scantily clad girls at the party, none of whom were their wives, and at the end of the night, two women were dead. There were rumors of orgies, the whole nine yards. Nowadays, they would have just gone on Live with Regis and Kelly and tearfully apologized, but in those days it wasn’t so easy. One of the partners killed himself, and the Adirondack Land Development Partnership went bankrupt.”

“How did the historical society wind up with their financial records? Wouldn’t they have been confidential?”

“We don’t actually have the original documents. That’s probably why Sonny didn’t think of it. He loathes copies. In the early eighties, a true-crime writer who summers around here researched the case for a book. She got copies of the partnership’s records, and when she was done, she donated them to us. Wasn’t that thoughtful?”

“Yeah.” The question of what had happened to Jonathon Ketchem was over. She wasn’t going to find anything in a bunch of financial documents about why his wife killed him, then spent the rest of her life insisting he was dead and building up a living memorial to his name. Unless it was the question of where the money for the clinic came from. Had the Ketchems made a bundle when their farm was sold? Or had there been some sort of insurance on Jonathon Ketchem that no one except his wife knew about? “I’d like to take a look,” Clare said. “Can I come by tomorrow?”

“Nobody’s going to be around tomorrow. I’m here this afternoon.”

“I’m tied up for the rest of the afternoon and then five o’clock evening prayer.”

There was a pause. Clare thought she heard the tap-tap-tap of Roxanne’s manicured nail against the phone. “How long does that last?”

“I’ll be free by six.”

“Okay, you nip over here right afterward and I’ll let you in. I won’t be staying, but I’ll set the alarm for you so that all you have to do is trigger it when you leave. How does that sound?”

“Terrific. Thank you.”

She hung up feeling as if she’d accomplished something, recognizing, even as she let herself warm to the feeling, that it was really just busywork, no different from when she had been a teen and had prided herself on working on one of her dad’s engines while she should have been writing a paper or cleaning her room. It was always easy to escape into work that didn’t matter. The hard part was settling down to the unpleasant tasks of life. She picked up her sheaf of pink papers, shuffled them, and then picked up the phone again. It was time to explain to the bishop’s office how the rector of St. Alban’s had gotten herself into the newspapers. Again.