Waiting her turn to recess down the center aisle behind the choir, Clare inspected the crowd, taking the emotional temperature of her flock. The Right Reverend Malcom Steptoe, one of her teachers, had pounded in the importance of seeing the congregation as a whole. “You’ll meet with individuals and small groups all the time,” he would say. “Once a week, you have a chance to see the whole family of communicants together. Are they peaceable? Satisfied? Discontent? Angry? You must know!”
Right now, at the end of the Eucharist, several of her family looked entirely disapproving. It wasn’t from her homily on Cody, she knew. That had been a tight piece of writing, comparing the baby to the infant Jesus, and his waiting for a family to the Christian waiting for the advent of Christ on Earth. It segued nicely into her plea for help for the Burnses. And it was under fifteen minutes long, always a plus for a sermon.
The last of the choir crossed the chancel. Nathan Andernach, the deacon, lined up shoulder to shoulder with Sabrina Campbell, today’s reader, and Clare took her place at the end of the line. “The king shall come when morning dawns,” the choir and congregation thundered, “and earth’s dark night is past.” The three trod slowly down the steps, past the altar rail, into the aisle. “O haste the rising of that morn, the day that aye shall last.” From her unquestioned place in the front pew, Mrs. Marshall gave Clare a look that said, “This is not the way we do, things, young lady.”
No, this was definitely about the two police officers in the back of the church. During announcements, in between calls for donations to the soup kitchen and volunteers for the Christmas Eve greening of the church, she had outlined the situation as briefly as possible and asked for everyone’s cooperation with Chief Van Alstyne, who had risen from his seat in the last pew and nodded soberly to the crowd. There had been a buzz of conversation, cut short by the offertory and the celebration of the Eucharist. “And let the endless bliss begin, by weary saints foretold,” the congregation sang. Sterling Sumner tugged the end of his scarf around his throat and glared at her as she marched past his pew. “When right shall triumph over wrong, and truth shall be extolled.” Vaughn Fowler was scanning the congregation, frowning slightly. Probably picking out who was going to be most disturbed by looking at pictures of a dead body.
The choir fanned out in two lines against the back of the church. “The king shall come when morning dawns, and light and beauty brings.” Their harmony soared above the congregation’s melody. Russ Van Alstyne was singing along, his finger tracing across the hymnal, following the words. Now that was a surprise. Nice baritone too, from what she could hear with the choir reverberating only a few feet away. “Hail, Christ the Lord! Thy people pray, come quickly, King of kings.”
Clare held the heavily embroidered floor-length cope—a literal mantle of priestly authority—out with one arm so she could turn without tangling. She drew a deep breath, letting the words come from a place deep inside herself. “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord,” she said, projecting her voice so that it echoed back enthusiastically from the stone walls. “Alleluia, alleluia!”
“Thanks be to God,” the congregation responded, “Alleluia, alleluia!” It was an immensely satisfying moment, even if all hell was about to break loose. A polite, Episcopalian sort of hell, of course. She grinned.
The choir members headed back up the aisles in groups of two or three. Parishioners were rising from their seats, drifting toward the parish hall, putting on coats, collecting squirming children. The din of voices made it hard to hear, so she nearly jumped when Russ spoke quietly in her ear.
“Nice sermon. In fact, the whole thing was pretty cool. Very ritualistic.”
“Isn’t it? Come for one of the big feast days. You’ll get to see me cense the altar.”
“Uh huh. Sounds interesting.”
“Colorful natives practicing their quaint rituals in their natural habitat.”
“Speaking of colorful natives, where should I . . . ?”
“I have to stay here and greet everyone leaving now. You head back to the parish hall, right through those doors there,” she pointed to the front of the church, “down the hall to the right.” The officer Russ had brought with him slipped through the inner doorway into the vestibule. He carried a plain manila folder. “Do me a favor,” she said to Russ, “give people a chance to grab a cup of coffee and have a cookie before you start flashing the photos, okay?”
“Okay.” He tapped his own folder and pushed his way through the crowded center aisle, apparently not noticing the round-eyed glances directed at him. It must be hard, being a cop, she thought. Always either a hero or a bad guy to the public, never just another human being.
“Reverend Fergusson!” Mr. Sumner’s preemptory tone jerked her away from her thoughts. “Don’t you think asking the congregation to view pictures of murdered women in the sanctity of their own church is the height of poor taste?”
Clare’s spine stiffened. It was going to be a long Sunday.
“No, I don’t think we’ll be called upon to help the investigation again, Mr. Fitzpatrick. That would mean the Millers Kill police couldn’t find the killer, and I’m sure that won’t happen.”
“Wouldn’t count on that. When I was an alderman, I told ’em we needed another trained investigator. Too many people coming up from the cities these days! It’s getting so you can’t walk down Main Street without tripping over some newcomer from New York or Albany.” The octogenarian wheezed indignantly. Clare laid a steadying hand on his arm, and he responded by seizing her hand and pumping it in time to his words. “Told ’em we’d be needing more investigators, but they wanted to save money, so what do they do? Hire a detective as chief and send one of the boys off to the state troopers for the summer. I blame Harold Collins, that cheapskate. You haven’t met Harold Collins, yet, have you? You know how he voted when we had that water treatment problem?”
“I really have to get back to the parish hall, Mr. Fitzpatrick. It’s been great talking with you, and I hope that bursitis calms down soon. How about I plan on making a visit later this week? I’ll give you a call Monday. Take care!” Clare deftly pried her hand from the former alderman’s clutches and trotted down the aisle as fast as her dignity and her flapping alb would allow. She made it to the sacristy without having to speak to anyone else. She unknotted the cincture around her waist, a rope-like belt symbolizing her vows, and removed her stole, kissing the embroidered cross at its center with a hasty reverence. During the four years she had served the church as a deacon, she had worn the rectangular scarf across her chest, and it still thrilled her to feel it in the ordained priest’s position, hanging squarely around her neck, falling over both shoulders. She yanked the alb over her head in a billow of white linen, shook it with a snap she hoped would take out most of the wrinkles, and hung it. On a wire hanger. Her conscience pricked her. It didn’t make much of a symbol of purity with one sleeve inside out, ready to slip to the floor at any moment. She pulled it off and rehung it on its own wooden hanger.
In one of her less-mottled mirrors, she was amazed to see herself so collected. Not a hair was out of place in her French twist. After listening to complaints and denials and gasps of horror and agreeing over and over and over again that yes, it was a terrible shame, and no, the police didn’t suspect anyone in their congregation, and what was the world coming to, she felt her hair should be standing away from her scalp in a frizzled heap, the ends smoking.
There was a knock on the door. Clare sighed. Not another round of questions, please. The door cracked open, admitting a hand holding a very full, very enticing sherry glass.
Lois sidled into the room. “I asked the refreshment ladies to bring up the sherry from the kitchen. I thought you might need it.”
Clare held the glass to her nose and sniffed deeply. “Ahhhh . . .” She took a larger-than-recommended swallow. “God bless you, Lois.”
“Is that official?”
“You bet. How’s it going in there?”
“I heard a few comments about priests overstepping the bounds, but so far no one’s used the phrase ‘meddling woman.’ ”
“Oh. Great.”
“Chief Van Alstyne is being quite charming. He hasn’t started waving eight-by-ten glossies of murder victims around, so people are feeling a tad more relaxed.”
“Encouraged by the sherry?”
“I brought up the second bottle myself. I thought the chief might like some as well, but he turned me down. No drinking on duty, I suppose.” Clare finished off her glass and sighed again, this time with contentment. The secretary went on. “He’s really quite attractive, don’t you think?”
“Who?”
“Chief Van Alstyne. All that tousled hair and those sexy lines at the corners of his eyes. He has that rugged, all-American look, like the kind Ralph Lauren puts in his ads, except his models always have this slightly gay edge to them. The chief is very . . . heterosexual.”
Clare laughed. “The chief is also very married, Lois. Just how much of the sherry have you had?”
“Don’t worry,” Lois said, floating back into the hall. Clare followed her. “I’m sure there’s enough left to rustle up another glass for you.”
In the large, sunlit parish hall, things did seem almost normal. Clare worked her way back to the white-draped refreshment table, greeting the people she knew by name and smiling at those she didn’t know yet. Mae Bristol, as plump and pale as an over-risen bun, was serving up coffee and tea from the church’s silver service. She always wore a printed silk dress with a matching hat—this Sunday it was cabbages in shades of blue. The sherry bottles were between the creamer and the coffee cups. They looked seriously depleted.
“This is stupid, Miss Bristol. My parents let me drink wine at home!” A slim girl in a fashionably skinny velvet-and-patchwork dress leaned across the white tablecloth. Her hair was perfectly retro-seventies, straight and shining and parted in the middle. She reminded Clare of the girls at her old high school whose outfits always looked like they were straight off the pages of Seventeen magazine and whose hair was always blown dry to frothy perfection. She could still remember feeling angular and underdeveloped and unfeminine next to them, a jock whose clothes never looked right off the basketball court or the track, a girl whose fingernails were always lined with grease because she’d been helping her dad with airplane maintenance. It had been—what?—seventeen or eighteen years since she graduated? Funny how the individuals changed, but the type remained. There would always be girls who had been blessed by the gods of adolescence, and girls like Clare. She reached around the latest version of the homecoming queen and snagged one of the sherry bottles. Age, thank heavens, most definitely hath its privileges. The girl flashed her a well-polished look of teenage disdain.
“Then your mother can come over here and get a glass for you, Alyson. I’m not giving you any sherry until then, and that’s final.” The girl flipped her dazzling hair in annoyance and flounced away as well as she could in her high-heeled platform boots.
“The difficult age,” Clare said, filling her glass to the top and handing the bottle back to Miss Bristol.
The elderly lady fixed Clare with her black-currant eyes. “That girl is spoiled rotten,” she said. “I had her in my fourth-grade class, and she was spoiled then. Alyson will always be at the difficult age, whether she’s seventeen or seventy.”
“Ah,” Clare said. “Well.”
“Oh, don’t mind me, Reverend. I never felt I could speak my mind when I was teaching, so now that I’m retired, I’m making up for lost time. Which reminds me. Some of those men who believe they run the church undoubtedly want to let you know their opinions about this police business. You stand your ground. I think you’re doing a splendid job.”
“Goodness,” Clare said. “Thank you, Miss Bristol.” She turned away, feeling as if she’d been given a sticker for good behavior from an otherwise strict teacher. She took a sip of her sherry, spotting Russ standing by the door to the street. Casual, not obviously blocking it, but making it impossible to get past him without at least making an excuse. He really was tall, several inches above anyone else in the room. It was more noticeable in a group. She wended her way toward him through the crowd, careful not to spill any of her drink on the faded rose-patterned carpet. As she nodded and smiled at her congregants, Vaughn Fowler fell in beside her.
“Any luck with identifying the victim?” he asked.
“At the church door? No,—no.” She had to forcibly restrain herself from adding “sir” every time she spoke to Colonel Fowler. Mr. Fowler.
“Let’s hope someone here will be able to help the police, then. Speaking as a vestry member, I don’t like it. The sooner we get this off church property the better. You do realize there could be a question of liability for St. Alban’s?”
“Liability? For a murder? I don’t see how.”
“If there was some connection. Do the police have a suspect yet? If it’s a member of our congregation, we may need to consult the diocesan attorney to ensure that the church, as a corporate entity, has no responsibility.”
“Ah . . . as far as I know, Chief Van Alstyne hasn’t singled out any one person as a suspect. After all, finding out who she was is a very preliminary step.”
“I’m thinking about the next step. Suppose he arrests someone from St. Alban’s. It’s in the Post-Star. It’s on the news. Then the real murderer turns up. That leaves us wide open to a lawsuit. Contributing to defamation of character or some such. Lawyers. You have to think of the ramifications of everything you do these days.”
Millers Kill’s chief of police was smiling reassuringly to a young couple wrestling their two little girls into snowsuits. “Mama,” the older child said, “is that Officer Friendly?”
“I was wondering when you’d get over here. I wanted to wait for you before I started showing the pictures around.” Russ reached behind him and swept the folder off an unused prie-dieu standing beside the door. He looked keenly at Mr. Fowler. Clare introduced the two men.
“I recall reading about you in the Post-Star around the time you were appointed police chief, Van Alstyne. You were in the Eighty-ninth MP brigade weren’t you? I was chief of staff at Fort Hood during their deployment there in ’eighty-seven.”
The chief blinked and straightened slightly. “Yes, sir, I was in the Eighty-ninth.” Clare bit back a smile. Evidently she wasn’t the only one to have a hard time treating the colonel as a civilian. “I’m surprised you’d remember something like that,” Russ went on.
“Military service is something I always look for. It’s what makes a man.” He frowned. “Or woman.” Clare felt her cheeks flush. Fowler pointed to the folder. “You ready to start this, Chief?”
“Yessir,” Russ said.
“Then I might as well be the first. Set an example, let everyone know what’s expected of them. Nothing to be afraid of, after all.” Russ looked at Clare. She nodded. He flipped open the folder. Clare had avoided looking at the photographs when she had been saying good-bye to parishioners at the front door, but now she took a long, steady look at the face of the unknown. Four shots, face front, profiles, and full body, covered with an institutional green sheet. She was struck by how much less real the girl looked, laid out on a steel table, lit by fluorescents and flashbulbs. Not at all like the sleeping princess, leaves frozen into her long hair, that she had stood over on the bank of the creek.
“Sorry,” Fowler said. “Don’t know her.” He frowned. “Where did you say it happened?”
“I didn’t,” Russ said. “We found her body just upstream from Payson’s Park.”
The colonel glanced at Russ. “Kids still go there to get away from their parents?” He shook his head. “I used to skinny dip in the river there. Jump off the old trestle bridge and swim downstream. It was a more innocent time. . . . Sorry I can’t be of any help.”
“Thank you anyway,” Russ said.
Fowler nodded, slipping on his overcoat. “Reverend, I’ll be seeing you at the next vestry meeting. Chief Van Alstyne, good to meet you.” When he opened the door, the sunlight and snowlight flooded the parish hall, drawing glances from the rest of the room.
Clare held up her hands. “May I have your attention, please? For those of you willing to help with the police investigation, Chief Van Alstyne is ready to have you look at the photographs. If you could give him your name before leaving, he’ll be able to keep track of which members of our congregation have seen the pictures. I know it’s an unpleasant task, but it’s important that we all do our part to help the police catch whoever is responsible for this crime. Thank you.”
There was a surge of bodies toward them. “Good heavens.” Clare murmured. “They don’t seem to be too horrified at the prospect of autopsy shots, do they?”
“Reality TV,” Russ whispered. “If you’ve seen all those specials on serial killers, this is pretty tame.” He raised his voice. “If you could form a line there, we can get you all out of here quickly.”
It was a repeat of the earlier scene in the vestibule of the church, with more people. The same exclamations, expressions of sympathy, philosophical mutterings. No one recognized her. There was a moment of excitement when Mae Bristol’s turn came up. She held two of the photos in her hands, looking slowly from one to the other. “I feel as if I should know her,” she said. “I just can’t place her. But I’m sure I’ve seen her before.” She shook her head and smiled apologetically at Russ and Clare. “Too many years of too many young people, I suppose.”
The tedium of the whole process reminded Clare of how she had felt waiting on the trail for the evidence to be photographed. Police work was a lot like combat, she decided, hours and days of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
“Oh! My! God!” The squeal brought her mind back to the scene at hand. Alyson what’s-her-name stood in front of Russ, flanked by two well-dressed adults who were presumably the parents who had spoiled her. “I know her! That’s Katie McWhorter! I know her!”