Clare had almost finished her meeting with Terry McKellan when she heard the knock on her office door. Terry was the best finance officer she could imagine, patiently going through the complex web of loans, pledges, income, and endowments that kept St. Alban’s afloat, but words like “cash flow” and “accounts payable” and “adjustable interest option” made her want to cross her eyes and sink into a coma, so she called, “Come in!” with a tone of desperate relief.
“Hi.” Her husband filled the doorway. He wasn’t smiling.
Clare looked at her watch. “What are you doing here so early? Oh, my God, is it Ethan? Is everything okay?”
Russ held up his hands. “I haven’t heard anything from Mom, so I assume they’re both doing fine.” He nodded toward Terry. “I’m here to see Mr. McKellan. Your office told me you’d be here.”
Terry looked around as if there might be another McKellan hiding in the corner.
“No bad news. I just need to ask you a few questions.”
“Me?”
Clare was as surprised as Terry. The AllBanc vice president’s life was as orderly as his spreadsheets: work, church, golfing at Saratoga National and the occasional trip to visit his oldest daughter in New York City. His only vice, as far as she knew, was sneaking food when his wife, who was eternally trying to get his blood pressure and cholesterol down, wasn’t around.
“Is this about the bank? Someone has an account there?”
“Maybe we could talk privately, Mr. McKellan?” Russ glanced toward Clare.
“This is my office!”
“Hmm.” Russ gestured toward the door. “How about the parish hall?”
Terry folded his hands over his rounded belly. “Unless it involves client confidentiality, I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t say in front of Clare.”
“Why, thank you, Terry.” She put a little extra Southern into it.
“Oh, for chrissakes.” Russ dropped onto the ancient love seat. “Look, Mr. McKellan—”
“Russ, he was a guest at our wedding. I think you can call him Terry.”
Russ glared at her.
“No, no, he’s just trying to keep things professional. I understand.” Terry dropped his voice a bit. “I wish I could do the same thing when I have friends applying for a commercial loan. It would be useful to remind clients that having dinner together doesn’t mean I won’t do due diligence.”
“Thank you.” Russ’s voice was strained. “Mr. McKellan. Terry. Can you tell me where you were from the evening of Friday the eighteenth to the morning of Saturday the nineteenth?”
“Huh.” Terry stroked his luxurious mustache. “What was I doing? Were we in Lake George?” He leaned to one side and reached into his coat pocket. Clare saw Russ tense for a second.
Terry pulled out his phone. “Let me see. Yep, Lake George. We have a boat there. I went home after work, got changed, and headed up to the lake.”
“What about your wife?”
“Deborah joined me Saturday afternoon. I needed to process the chemical head and do some other dirty chores.” His cheeks plumped up when he smiled. “Not her favorite part of boat ownership.”
“Where did you stay the night?”
“Right on the Spare Change. She sleeps six.”
Russ frowned. “Anyone see you? Do you have to check in with security to get access to your boat?”
“No, every slip has its own gate and key. I just let myself in.” Terry smiled again and leaned back in his chair. “Now. I’ve been very cooperative. How about you tell me what’s going on?”
“Did you make any stops at all? Anything that might confirm you were in Lake George? Did you fill up at a gas station?”
Terry spread his hands. “There’ll be a record of me using the pumping station. And lots of folks were at the marina Saturday morning.”
“Before that morning. Friday night.”
Terry shifted in his chair. “Well…”
“Oh, Terry,” Clare said.
“I got takeout from Harborside Burgers.”
“That place where they have the deep-fried Oreos?” Clare asked.
“Oh, they’re so good.” His eyes closed for a moment before he shot a glance at Clare. “Don’t tell my wife.”
“That stuff is going to kill you, you know.”
“But what a way to go.” Terry’s eyes sharpened. “So, Russ, are you going to let me know why my itinerary is of such interest?”
Russ looked at Clare, then back to Terry. “Early Saturday morning, we found the body of a young woman dumped on McEachron Hill Road. She was wearing a party dress, no shoes, no purse or cell phone. The ME can’t find a cause of death.”
Terry’s mouth made an O as he let out a silent breath. “Like Natalie.”
“Like Natalie,” Russ agreed. Clare noticed he didn’t mention the other, earlier case. He went on. “You were never actually cleared in that investigation.”
Terry gave him a look. “Were you?”
“No.”
Clare had to press her fingers to her lips to keep a torrent of questions from spilling out.
“You know, Isaac Nevinson’s still—”
“I know,” Russ said. “I spoke with him earlier today. Are you two still friends?”
“I’m not sure we were friends back then. Isaac was … like a planet. The rest of us were orbiting around him. Is Saturn friendly with its rings? I don’t know.” Terry tapped the chair arm. “I’ve bumped into him a few times over the years. Said hello, how’s the family. That was about it.”
“Are you still angry with him for taking Natalie away from you?”
“Good God, no. She wasn’t interested in being anybody’s girlfriend. I’m lucky the only thing we had to worry about in those days was pregnancy.” Terry glanced at Clare, his cheeks pinking over his brown moustache. “Sorry.”
Clare refrained from pointing out she didn’t expect all her congregants to have been virgins when they married.
“In some ways, Natalie’s death set me straight. I thought free love and communal farming was going to save us all. When she was killed, I realized the world was harder to change than that. I went back to college and finished my degree and got a decent job. Met Deborah.” He smiled.
“You ever miss the excitement?” Russ asked.
“What excitement? Getting up at dawn to hand-weed fields? In bare feet, so we could be at one with Mother Earth? No, thank you.”
“The women?”
“The ratio of naughty fun to endless discussions and slamming doors was extremely low. If I want tears, shrieking, and drama, I still have a high schooler at home.”
Russ smiled at that. “Okay. Thanks, Terry. I may be in touch.”
“You know where to find me.” Terry stood and gathered up the financial papers from Clare’s desk. “Clare, I’ll see you on Sunday. Russ—” He paused at the door. “I hope you catch whoever did this. The fact no one was ever brought to justice for Natalie’s death…”
“I know. I’ll do the best I can.”
Clare waited a few seconds until she heard Terry’s footsteps recede down the hall. Then she moved to sit next to Russ. “Terry McKellan in a free love commune. I did not see that coming.” She glanced at Russ. “How about you?”
“I was not in a free love commune. More’s the pity.”
“I mean, what were you doing during the investigation in ’72? You didn’t tell me if you were arrested at any point, or what the cops thought at the time, or anything. Were you living at home with your mom?”
He frowned. “Clare, it was so long ago. That summer wasn’t my finest hour, not by a long shot. I’d just as soon leave it all in the past.”
She tried not to feel stung. “Vietnam was a long time in the past, and you’ve told me about things that were, well—”
“I know. I have.” He took her hand. “There was stuff I needed to let out, and you were there for me, and I thank you for that.” He squeezed her knuckles. “The summer of ’72 isn’t like that. It’s not a half-healed wound, it’s an embarrassment. I was a little shit to everyone around me, and I made a lot of poor choices, and I really, really don’t want to hash it out with you. I have to deal with it enough as part of the ongoing investigation.”
“Okay.” Lord knows she had had any number of folks she’d been counseling refuse to dig deeper on a subject. It just didn’t hurt like it did when the person sitting in her office was Russ.
“Thank you.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “I don’t need to remind you that everything discussed here is confidential, do I?”
“You mean about Terry? Of course not. He’s cleared, though, right?”
Russ frowned. “I’ll have Noble check Harborside Burgers to see if we can confirm Terry’s story. It’s a pretty thin alibi, though.”
“Terry McKellan some sort of serial killer? The guy who looks like President Garfield?”
“Somebody out there killed that girl, and another girl in 1972, and another girl twenty years before that. If the cases are connected. I don’t know.”
“Terry’s your age. He couldn’t be involved in the 1952 death.”
“Nor could Isaac Nevinson.” Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “Which is one of the reasons I’m giving a press conference at the end of the day. Nothing like standing up in public and admitting failure to get the voters thinking about drop-kicking our department.”
Clare felt her stomach drop. He was right, that wasn’t going to look good. “I was going to wait till tonight to tell you this, but Mrs. Marshall has some very sharp ideas about educating voters on the referendum. We’re going to do some strategic planning, and some fundraising, and we’re getting your mother on board. I think they’ll make a formidable team.”
“God save us all.” He groaned as he levered himself up from the love seat. “I better get back to the station before you ladies take charge of it, too. Don’t bother to turn on the TV. I suck at press conferences.”
“Are you kidding? You’ll be fantastic.”