“Maybe we could have donors’ names etched into the slate,” Norm Madsen mused.
“Hey, I like that,” Geoff agreed.
Clare was watching Corlew’s face during the conversation. He looked flushed and clammy, as if he might either explode or have a coronary episode any moment. She laid her hand on his arm. “Robert,” she said, her voice pitched low, “we need you on this.” She dropped into the pew next to him. The others were caught up in the excitement of brainstorming suggestions for spurring on donations. “This isn’t a zero-sum game, where you lose and Sterling wins. We all want the same outcome.” Corlew looked up to where the water had stained the elegantly lapped pine. “Nobody else brings your kind of experience to this. You’re the person we’ll need to help vet the bids and the specialists. You’re the one who can tell us if their costs are fair, or if they’re padding the bills. And most important”-she leaned forward so he couldn’t avoid looking her straight in the eye-“you’re a man whose opinions and leadership are well respected in our community.”
He grunted. “I’m not doing this in order to put Sterling’s nose out of joint.” He spoke in the same low tones as she had. “I really don’t think we’re in any position to take on new debt. Or to hit up the congregation for extra money when we ought to be focusing on getting more people into the pews.”
“I know.” She didn’t argue or try to refute him. She just waited.
His broad shoulders sagged a little. “Okay. I’m in.”
She squeezed his arm hard. “Good.”
He squared himself up again. “But I’m going to be keeping an eye on every nail, every two-by-four, every bucket of caulk.”
She grinned. “We wouldn’t have it any other way.” She rose. “Come on, everybody, let’s adjourn to the meeting room. If we’re going to talk money, we may as well make ourselves more comfortable.”
Chapter 6
While they decamped to the meeting room, and people helped themselves to Lois’s bad coffee and they settled around the massive black oak table, she congratulated herself on decisively taking the field. The glow lasted right up until Terry McKellan told her there weren’t going to be any loans to actually get the work done.
“What?” she said, looking at the copy of their financial statement he had sent sailing across the table. “We have to get loans. That’s the way you do it, right?” She stopped. She sounded more like a high school girl running a student council meeting than a Leader of Men. And women. She tried for a more decisive tone. “That is, my experience has been”-watching her mother run a capital campaign for their home parish near Norfolk and a single workshop on fund-raising at Virginia Episcopal Seminary, but they didn’t have to know all the details, did they?-“that necessary improvements on the physical plant are started by loans from the diocese or the bank, and the capital campaign is designed to supplement them and pay them off.”
“That’s a good way to do it,” McKellan agreed.
“So what’s the catch?”
McKellan’s luxurious brown mustache quirked up at each end. “You have looked at the financial statements over the past year, haven’t you?”
“Of course I have.”
“Did you notice the outstanding loan from the diocese? We took it out three years ago to pay for the organ restoration and the parking lot repairs.”
“Sure. But we’ve been making regular payments on it.”
His eyes flicked toward the others seated around the table. “And you noticed the monthly mortgage payment we’re making?”
“Sure. The parish hall burned down nearly to the ground in ’93 and the vestry took out a mortgage to cover the cost of repairs. I’ve looked over the records. We’ve never had a late payment, not once.” She looked around the table. “St. Alban’s must have good credit.”
McKellan’s mustache broadened. He was looking at her in a distinctly paternal way. She didn’t like it. “Clare,” he said, “have you ever taken out a loan?”
“I had a student loan. In college. I paid it off.”
“I mean, a loan requiring collateral. Income flow. A debt-to-asset ratio. A mortgage. A car loan. A business loan.”
“Um.” She had gone from her parents’ house to school and then straight into the army, which for ten years had told her where to go and given her a place to live when she got there. Then it was a group house at seminary, located for her by the housing office, and now the St. Alban’s rectory. Clare realized that not only had she never purchased a house, she had never even chosen her own place to live.
The vestry members, most of whom were old enough to have paid off their mortgages when she was in diapers, were looking at her. “I, um, I’ve always paid cash for my cars,” she said.
McKellan nodded. “We have too much debt in proportion to our income.”
“Which has been falling over the past ten years,” Sterling Sumner pointed out.
“You work for AllBanc,” she said. “Couldn’t you…?”
“AllBanc holds the current mortgage.” McKellan opened his hands. “If we were still doing business the old way, it wouldn’t be a problem. Every officer at the bank knows this church and knows we’re good for the money. But we’re part of a conglomerate now. We can’t make loans based on a handshake and a reputation anymore.”
Clare pulled her shoulder-length hair back and twisted it. From the corner of the room, the Civil War-era grandfather clock ticked away the time. She wondered, for a moment, how much they could get for it at auction.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to need a sizable chunk of change to get repairs started while we’re getting a capital campaign off the ground.” She thought about the annual budget they had hashed out last month. She couldn’t imagine squeezing anything else out of that stone. “Suggestions?”
“Get rid of the outreach programs,” Sterling said. “If it’s really important, people will take up the gap by donating their time and money.”
“No!”
Clare erupted from her chair, setting it rocking unsteadily on the Persian carpet.
Sterling tugged on his scarf. “It’s not as if the soup kitchen will fold without us. And I’m sure the unwed teenage mothers will continue to have babies whether we’re here to ‘mentor’ them or not.”
“Sterling,” Mrs. Marshall said warningly.
“Well, they’re not providing much benefit to the members of the congregation,” he pointed out.
Clare braced her hands flat on the table. “Ministering to the poor, the sick, and the friendless is pretty much the whole point behind the Christianity thing, Sterling.” She caught the wicked gleam in his eye and knew she had risen to his bait. “And you are being deliberately provocative.” She sat down. “Next suggestion.”
People looked up, down, across the room, as if thousands of dollars might materialize from the air.
“What about investments?” Geoff Burns said. “Are there any underperformers in the church’s portfolio we could sell?”
McKellan shook his head. “Not without gutting our already-modest endowment.”
“Ah.” Burns sank back into his seat. Clare considered the leather-and-oak chair, one of twelve in the room. Maybe they wouldn’t have to send anything out to auction. They could do it all on eBay. Mrs. DeWitt, St. Alban’s seventy-something volunteer webmaster, had her own e-store.
“There is the possibility…” Mrs. Marshall’s voice faded away. Clare sat up straighter. The elderly woman tended to be one of the quieter members at their meetings, but when she spoke up, she always did so strongly. Clare had never heard her sound uncertain before.
Mrs. Marshall looked down at the financial statement in front of her. “I suppose I could liquidate the Ketchem Trust.”
Norm Madsen shook his head. “No, no, no no no. Out of the question.”
Such clear-cut decisiveness was out of character for Mr. Madsen, the vestry’s Great Equivocator. “What’s the Ketchem Trust?” Clare asked. “I don’t recall seeing that name in our financial statement.”