This time, she did bring her glass, as well as the remaining bottle. “Want a slug?” she asked, brandishing the cream sherry in her fist.
“I don’t think you can have a slug of sherry,” Russ said. “No, thank you.”
Clare sat down in the seat she had vacated, thought for a moment, then moved to where Alyson had been sitting, turning that chair sideways to catch more of the sun. “Lord, it gets cold in this room,” she said, pouring herself a measure of sherry. “I must say, though, the sun makes it almost bearable.”
“You’ve got thin Southern blood, that’s your problem. Keep your thermostat set at sixty and always wear no more than two layers of clothing. That’ll toughen you up.”
“Ugh.” She took a sip of sherry. “My mamma would call this a little tot.” She drawled the expression. “Every drink to my mamma is either a little tot or a splash. A tot of wine. A splash of bourbon.” She took another small sip. “So. What do you think?”
“What do you think?” Russ countered.
“I think Alyson’s not being entirely honest. I can’t say why. It’s not as if I know her or her family. It was just . . . something off.”
“Mmmm. I agree. You notice that we still don’t know what Katie’s connection to St. Alban’s is. Alyson only mentioned knowing her from school. Maybe that’s what she’s hiding.”
“Why, though? I mean, if you consider Alyson as a suspect, which I find very difficult to do, what possible motive could she have?”
“Jealousy? Rivalry?”
“They moved in entirely different circles, it sounds like. I remember Ethan Stoner from that fight you broke up on Friday. I realize he wasn’t showing at his best, but I find it hard to believe that even cleaned up and sober, he’d appeal to Alyson.”
“Hmmm mmmm. Ethan Stoner. I hate to think he could do something as bad as this. He was awful edgy and upset that night, wasn’t he?” Abstracted by thought, his upstate accent thickened, so that “wasn’t he” came out “wun’t he?” “Maybe he had real reason to be so upset.”
“Are you going to go out and talk to him this afternoon?”
“No. If I’m going to move him onto the list of possibles, I want more information first. There’s a good piece of advice about interrogating suspects: never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. Not that you ever know all the answers. But if I haul Ethan in now, I’ll be working in the dark. No, I’m going to find Katie’s parents first, if I can, or her sister. Get a handle on who she was, what she was about.”
“What do you mean, find her parents if you can? There can’t be that many McWhorters on or around Depot Street.”
“You haven’t seen the area. It’s our own quaint, rural version of a rat-infested slum. Mostly six-or eight-or ten- unit apartment buildings, falling down around the tenant’s ears. Not that most of ’em would notice if a place came down. Half the residents of that area don’t have telephones. They have twenty-four-inch TVs and satellite reception, but no phones.”
“Being poor doesn’t make a person bad, Russ. Just as being rich doesn’t make a person good.”
“I don’t blame anyone for being poor. Hell, my mother was poor after my father passed on. I blame people who could change their condition but are too lazy or too attached to drugs or booze or who just plain don’t care that they live like pigs and suck off the public teat.”
Clare dropped her glass to the table and stared at him incredulously. “Maybe, if instead of being angry at them, you got angry at the forces that shaped their lives, you might find yourself an instrument of change, rather than just a complainer. Maybe if you tried seeing individuals instead of some amorphous ‘them,’ you’d see people with problems, not just people who are problems.”
“Of all the—’scuse me for being blunt, Clare, but that’s naive.”
“No, it’s not. Reaching out to people who may not even realize what sort of help they need is hard, thankless work. I’ve met men and women who’ve dedicated their lives to it, and they’re some of the toughest, least starry- eyed people I know.”
“I notice you’re not doing that inner city thing, though.”
She threw up her hands. “I think you’ve pretty well proved that Millers Kill has the full compliment of modern problems, even without an ‘inner city.’ Part of my work here is going to be to lead my congregation into service. To get them to open their eyes and see the need all around them.”
“And do what?”
Clare tucked a strand fallen from her French twist behind her ear. “To start, I want us to reach out to girls like Katie McWhorter, girls whose pregnancies would otherwise mean a lifetime sentence of dependancy and bad relationships. Help them to stay in school. Teach them how to find a job, be a better mother. Mentor them so they know there are other ways they have value besides producing babies. Support them in changing their lives.”
“You haven’t seen the ingrained pockets of country poverty yet, Clare. Folks who’ve never held a job, or lived in a house where some man wasn’t beating on a woman, or gotten through a day without pounding down enough booze to make ’em forget their hardscrabble life. I’ve been there, and I’ve seen it all and cleaned up after the messes, and I’m here to tell you, you’re gonna break your heart if you try to change people like that.”
She smiled at him. Maybe not such a hard case after all. “I don’t have a choice, Russ. We’re all called to see the Christ in all people. Even a down-and-dirty atheist like you must have heard of ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ ”
“Oh. Well, hell, if you’re gonna bring God into it . . .”
“You know, I like that about you.”
“What?”
“You’ve just seen me celebrate the Eucharist, I’m sitting here in my cassock and collar, and you still manage to forget that I’m a priest. You argue with me like I’m . . . just me. I like that.”
