Grinning, he pulled up behind the little car and gave it a hit of his flashers. The door opened, and the Reverend Clare Fergusson got out, reluctantly turned around, and spread-eagled against the side of her car. Russ was laughing so hard it took him two tries to find his seatbelt latch.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, once he had managed to get out of his cruiser.
“I was dropping by to speak to you between home visits, and my . . . dang . . . car got stuck.”
He looked down at the scant two inches of snow and ice the plow had thrown up on the lip of the driveway. “In that? Heck, my niece’s trike could drive through that.” The old snow had been churned to dirty slush by her spinning tires. “You gotta get yourself a real car for this climate. Not an itty-bitty wind-up toy like that one.”
“This car,” she told him, “is a marvel of precision engineering. Zero to sixty in ten point seven seconds. It handles like a dream, and it can drive a mountain road at sixty miles an hour without a shimmy across the yellow line.”
“Yeah? Well if I ever catch it doing that, it can also get impounded. C’mon, I’ll help you push it out.” He braced himself against the back fender. Clare leaned into the edge of the door, one hand on the wheel. “Okay, push,” Russ said. They heaved together. The MG slid over the low snowbank and rolled forward a foot.
“Thanks.” Clare looked at the tire marks in the snow, thrown into high relief by the streetlights. “That is an embarrassingly small amount of snow to get stuck in, isn’t it?”
“You need something heavy, with front-wheel-drive,” Russ said, opening the door to his cruiser. “Four-wheel- drive is better. Until you get that, load up the trunk with bags of kitty litter. It’ll give some weight to your rear and if you get stuck, you can always sprinkle some around for traction.”
“Great. I can see it now. I’ll get my car free just in time to run over some old lady’s cat who’s come to investigate.”
He grinned. “Why don’t you park that thing. Let me get the cruiser in, and I’ll stand you a cup of coffee.”
“Any of Harlene’s strudel left?”
“I might be able to rustle something up.” She nodded approvingly, slid into her car, and pulled it forward.
In the briefing room, two of the sheep-and-geese mugs at hand and nothing left of the last slice of strudel except crumbs, he told her about delivering the warrant to Darrell McWhorter. “You should have seen him. So cool. The nicest guy about it you could imagine. He drove himself over to the hospital, with me following, thank God, because I sure didn’t want to have to make conversation with him in my car. Got his blood drawn and went home.”
“That doesn’t sound like a man who’s afraid the test will show something incriminating.”
“AB negative. Same as Katie’s.”
“And Cody’s father has to be Rh positive, doesn’t he?”
“You’ve got it. I’d love to be able to put the sonofabitch away for molesting his daughters, ’scuse my French, but there’s no evidence he abused Katie and Kristen still refuses to cooperate. I spoke to a caseworker at DSS and told her about the warrant and everything, but she said after the home study was completed, they could only delay giving Cody to his grandparents as long as the question of whether McWhorter had been abusing Katie remained open.”
“But if he’s not Cody’s father, there isn’t any other evidence of that.”
“Right. It’ll be a happy family reunion.” He licked his finger and picked up a few strudel crumbs.
“I found out why McWhorter is so eager to get his hands on Cody.” Russ’s eyebrows went up. Clare told him about the offer to the Burnses and the meeting scheduled for tomorrow.
“You really think you can convince this guy to allow the Burnses to adopt the baby?”
“I don’t know. I can get him to think twice about taking Cody. It’s worth a try.”
“Be careful, okay? I don’t like the idea of you drawing McWhorter’s attention. We don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“He sounds like a bully to me, plain and simple.” Clare propped her chin on her fist. “I’m not an easy person to bully. Besides, if the blood tests show nothing, he’ll be out of the running as a suspect in the murder, right?”
“Well . . . I’ll have to drop him back to third place. I haven’t forgotten the Burnses.”
Clare waved her hand dismissively. “You don’t seriously think they did it. You’re thinking it was Ethan.”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“Are you going to serve him the warrant to test his blood type tonight?” she asked, glancing out into the darkness.
“No. I have to pick up Linda and get her on the six-fifteen train. There’s a big fabric convention or something in New York, and she’s buying stock for her curtains.” He took a sip of coffee. “I’ll drive over to the Stoner’s farm tomorrow after school, bring him in then. That’ll give me enough time to question him and then decide whether to arrest him or not.”
“You’re not worried he might take off someplace?”
Russ shook his head. “His whole life’s right here. All his family and friends. I’ll bet the farthest he’s ever traveled has been New York City on the junior class trip. Where’s he gonna go?”
CHAPTER 12
“Mr. McWhorter, Karen and Geoff can’t solve your problems for you. But they can help prevent further problems.” Clare took a deep breath and thought of the Wednesday Eucharist she would be celebrating a few hours away at noon. The prospect helped her keep her cool. The Burnses shifted on her small office sofa and glowered at her, obviously frustrated and out of temper with McWhorter’s continual sad narrative about his financial woes and his declarations of affection for his dear, departed Katie. So far, he had been skirting the outright offering of Cody in exchange for cash, but the implication was clear enough. Karen and Geoff had outlined the benefits they could give Cody; the excellent home, the education, the love
