“Reverend? How about you? Coffee? Crumb cake? You don’t look like you have to watch what you eat, like some of us. Of course, all black is very slimming, isn’t it? Maybe I should join the clergy, too. Ha!” Yvonne tipped her head back and hooted.
Clare turned to Mrs. Rouse. “I have to catch Chief Van Alstyne. I have a question for him.”
Renee Rouse nodded. Clare ducked through the door, snatched her parka out of the coat closet, and was through the front door before Yvonne’s voice could pick up again. She spotted Russ next to his truck, the cardboard box wedged awkwardly between his hip and the driver’s-side door as he fished in his jeans pocket for his keys.
She tumbled down the steps. “Russ?”
He turned. “Hey.” He drew the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. “You leaving so soon?”
“I can’t. I rode here in Mrs. Marshall’s car. I’d be willing to walk home to avoid that Story woman, but then I’d still have to get over to Mrs. Marshall’s house to pick up my car.”
He tilted his seat forward and shifted the box onto the narrow back bench. “Gee,” he said. “I’ve got a truck right here. Drives and everything.”
Her grandmother Fergusson said, Only a tacky person would drop a cake and run on a condolence call. A lady stays as long as she can be helpful. MSgt. Ashley “Hardball” Wright bawled, Retreat is not dishonorable when you’re facing superior forces. He that fights and runs away, lives to fight another day! Her grandmother Fergusson replied, On the other hand, a lady never outwears her welcome.
“Let me see if Mrs. Rouse or Mrs. Marshall need me,” she said to Russ. “If not, you’ve got yourself a passenger.”
Chapter 19
Russ was sitting in the cab, idling the engine and scanning the radio for music performed by someone free of piercings or tattoos. Nowadays everything on the air seemed to be by so-called artists who were younger than his favorite pair of jeans or by groups he had first listened to on 45s and AM radio. He could live happily without ever hearing “My Generation” again. He pressed the play button on the CD, taking his chance with whatever he had left in there last. The voice of Bonnie Raitt poured out of the speakers like a long, tall branch-and-bourbon.
Clare popped the passenger door open, and he turned the music down a notch while she swung up into the seat. She grinned at him. “It was okay. One of the other ladies had corralled Yvonne Story, and Mrs. Rouse’s sister is on her way over. They didn’t need me.” She buckled up, worrying her lower lip. “I’m bad. I shouldn’t feel this relieved to escape.”
He shifted the truck into gear and pulled away from the curb. “What, you mean Yvonne? Don’t be. My mom used to volunteer at the library when she was there. Had to quit. Said she was going to commit homicide if she didn’t.”
She laughed. “How is your mom?”
“Happy as a clam. She’s decided coal-fired electrical plants in the Midwest are responsible for our acid rain problem, so she and her cronies are busing to Illinois in April for a big protest rally.”
“Uh-oh. What if she gets into trouble again?”
“If she does, at least it won’t be me arresting her, thank God. Janet and I will stand by with bail money and Western Union.”
Clare twisted sideways in her seat and looked at him. “You look tired.”
“I am. I was up at the Stewart’s Pond site until one o’clock.” Talking about it made him feel the fatigue, and he pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It would have been nice to sleep in, but we’re short staffed as it is, with Lyle and Noble knocked out by this stomach thing going around.”
She glanced over the seat, to the evidence box in the back. “Can you leave this stuff at the station and go home for a quick nap?”
“Nah. I’m headed back to Stewart’s Pond after I drop you at your car.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. Clare got that look in her eyes-the unholy light, he was coming to think of it.
“Take me with you,” she said.
“No.” He downshifted to slow for a red light up ahead.
“Take me with you.”
“No. Why do you want to go, anyway?” He knew starting to argue with her was a mistake, but he couldn’t resist it.
“Probably the same reason you do. To see it in daylight. To try to get a feel for the place. To imagine what happened there.”
“Before you get on your high horse about Debba Clow, I want to assure you that the Millers Kill Police Department does not officially consider her a suspect.”
“At this time.”
“At this time,” he agreed. “I’m still open to the idea that Rouse is alive somewhere, although since we’ve contacted every hospital within a fifty-mile radius, I’m not holding out much hope. But who knows? Maybe the Amish took him in, and he’s mending up in a beautiful widow’s bedroom, like in that movie.”
“Are they going to continue searching the area?”
“Mountain rescue got there right as I was leaving, with two dogs. When I checked in at seven this morning, they hadn’t found any sign of the doctor.” He turned up Main Street. “I’m driving you back to your car.”
“Take me with you,” she said. “I want to get a better look at those gravestones. I spoke with Mrs. Marshall this morning.” She reached up and touched her neck where her collar would be if she were wearing clericals instead of a sweater. “She said all of her brothers and sisters died of diphtheria while her mother was pregnant with her. The parents chose not to use the vaccine, and they died. Can you imagine anything so awful?”
His mind slid to Stuttgart, and the Dumpster, and opening the garbage bag, slick and rancid from a splash of rotted fruit, and the baby inside. One of his fellow MPs had started to cry. Something must have shown on his face, because she leaned over and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Of course you can. I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless question.”
“No,” he said. “Seeing terrible things shouldn’t make any other terrible thing less…” He couldn’t find the right word.
“Hurtful?”
“Yeah.” He flicked on his turn signal and swung the truck onto the Mill Road. They drove past the old mills, ornate brick mausoleums for the town’s prosperity, headed for Old Route 100, which would take them into the mountains.
“How many years have you been a cop?” she asked.
“Over twenty-five, now. Most of it as an MP, of course.”
“But you don’t feel… I don’t know, jaded by everything you’ve seen? Inured to tragedy?”
He wasn’t sure what inured meant, but he could guess. “For a while I was. Toward the end of my army career, some days I felt like I was encased in clear plastic. Like I could see and hear everything around me, but nothing touched me. No feelings about anything. Of course, I was drinking real heavily, but I never felt drunk. You know, happy and loose and uninhibited. All I ever was was numb.” He glanced out his side window at the Millers Kill, the river that gave his town its name, running low and slow in these last winter days before the snowpack melted and the ice-clotted water came roaring out of the mountains.
“What happened?”
“Linda,” he said. “She had been going to these Al-Anon meetings, for families of alcoholics? She gave me an ultimatum. Booze or her. Then she flew to her sister’s. She had been gone three days when I realized she meant it. I spent two of the worst weeks of my life, missing her like crazy and hating her for what she was putting me through. Man, I had it all drying out-shakes, sweats, cravings, nausea-I looked like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. Then she came home, and I went back to work, and I sort of fell apart.”