home!” Another pause. “Then go to your mother’s house. I don’t care. If you show up here, I’ll chase you off myself.” She laughed, then listened for awhile. “Are you really okay? You sound kinda funny.” Harlene glanced over at Clare again. “Hold on, there’s somebody who’s been waiting here to find out how you are. Do you feel like speaking to Reverend Fergusson?” She nodded to the phone and held it out to Clare.
“Hello,” she said, feeling unaccountably shy.
“Hi,” Russ said.
“Remember when you warned me Millers Kill wasn’t a sleepy little town? I believe you now.”
He laughed. “Good.”
“So, it sounds like you’re under strict orders not to come into the office.”
He sighed. “I guess I should go home. Linda’s out of town. And my mother . . . she doesn’t need to hear about this just yet. I’m still . . .” he drifted off.
“I know.”
“You know?” He sounded surprised.
“I know that you’re still . . .” She let her voice trail off, echoing his. “Meet me for a drink somewhere. We can talk.”
“Oh, God. I don’t think I can handle going out in public right now. Besides, I smell like cowshit and the scared- cold sweats.”
“Then tell me where you’ll be, and I’ll come to you.”
“Do you think . . . would my place be okay? I could shower and change, rustle up some burgers or something. Would that be, um, unpriestly or anything?”
She laughed softly. “I think what would be unpriestly would be to let a friend sit at home all alone with no one to talk to. Give me directions and tell me when to be there. Preferably after you no longer smell like cowshit, et cetera.”
He laughed. After she had his address, she handed the phone back to Harlene, who said into it, “You gonna confess your sins to Reverend Fergusson? Make sure she has a few hours.” She listened, snorted at something he said. “Okay. Yes, I will. Yes, I promise. Don’t you trust me? Wait, don’t answer that.” Harlene laughed. “Good. I hope you feel good about this, Chief. You just captured Katie’s killer.” There was a pause. Her smile faded. “Well . . .’Bye then. See you tomorrow.” She hung up.
“What did he say?” Clare asked.
“Said he didn’t know about that. He didn’t know what he had just done.”
CHAPTER 14
When Russ opened the door to her knock, he looked . . . different. It was . . . it was . . . the jeans and a sweater. “You’re in civvies!” she said. “I was beginning to think of you like the sheriff of Mayberry, you know, always dressed in brown poly.”
He laughed. “You obviously didn’t watch enough. He had a plaid shirt and jeans he wore fishing.” He looked over her shoulder. “Where’s your car?”
She grimaced. “I didn’t want to risk getting stuck, so I left it parked at the base of the drive and walked up.”
He moved out of the way and let her enter the mudroom. “In that leather jacket and your oh-so-practical boots, too.” She looked down at her soggy, salt-stained suede half-boots. “Talk about unprepared for the weather. You’re worse than a little kid. I’m gonna get you a pair of mittens with a string attached, so at least your hands will stay warm.”
“I remembered the important stuff,” she said, holding up a six-pack of micro-brewed beer. She dropped it with a thud and bent to remove her boots. “And I could have worn my warm parka. Unfortunately, it actually belongs to the police, and I’m afraid if you see it, you’ll confiscate it.” She handed him her jacket.
“Stolen property.” He hung it up on one of the many hooks running along the wall.
“I prefer to think of it as permanently on loan.”
“Situational ethics.” He opened the door to the kitchen.
“Oh. A wood cooking-stove!” she said. “I always wanted one of those. They’re supposed to be great for baking bread.”
“I hate to disillusion you, but the only thing we make on that stove is hot water.” He unhooked a bottle of beer from the cardboard container and opened a paneled pine cabinet to get a couple of glasses.
“I thought your house was two hundred years old,” Clare said as Russ retrieved a liter bottle of soda from the fridge. “This kitchen looks kind of forties.” The floor was an old linoleum patterned with big flowers, the walls and floor-to-ceiling cupboards warm, glowing pine. The windows over the sink and in front of the table were hung with layer after layer of fruit and flower prints that reminded Clare of the old dish towels in her grandmother Avery’s kitchen. Matching fabric-covered balls hung from the evergreen ropes swagged along the cornice.
“You have a good eye,” Russ said, pouring their drinks. “The first modern kitchen was built here in the mid- forties. Before that, there was just the summer kitchen, which is on the other side of the mudroom, and a keeping room. I put in the brick wall and hearth for the wood stove, but other than that, we just peeled away the so-called improvements the last owners had made to get to this.” He handed her her beer. “You should have seen it. Vinyl flooring and all the woodwork painted in southwestern colors. Took me three months to get down to the pine.”
She sat at the round oak table and touched a finger to the tiny Christmas tree serving as a centerpiece. “I like it like this. It’s like a bright, warm quilt keeping out the cold.”
“Huh.” He sat opposite her. “I’ll pass that on to Linda. She does the decorating. I’m just the hired help.” He drank from a tall glass of soda. She propped her chin in her hand and studied him. He had a fit, outdoors look to him, still slightly tan from last summer, his dark brown hair picked out with gold and copper. She’d have to disagree with Lois, his nose was too big and his lips were too nonexistent to call him handsome. But he looked like a man who had lived comfortably within his skin for the past forty-odd years.
