“Oh—” Clare bit down hard on what she had been about to say, “—gosh darn.” She snatched up her coat again. “No, thanks. I’ll try to get Mrs. Burns at home.”
On the drive to the Burnses’ house, Clare tried out what she might say. Karen, did your husband shoot Darrell McWhorter? Or how about, Karen, did your husband father a child and try to cover it up with this abandoned-at- the-church-doorstep scheme and when that fell through, did he start killing everyone else involved? “Oh, shoot me now,” Clare groaned.
The Burnses’ house was a brick Italianate revival with five-foot-high windows and a cupola that must have given them a view of the entire town. Wreaths decorated with wooden fruits hung from the deeply-paneled front doors, which had the look of an unused entrance. Down the long drive, by the separate garage at the corner of the house, Clare found the back door.
Karen Burns opened at the second ring. “Reverend Fergusson? What brings you out here?”
“Well, I—” Clare stamped her boots on the welcome mat.
“Please, come on in. No need to stand in the cold to talk.”
Clare pushed into the narrow hall lined with hanging coats, boots, shelves of hats and gloves. She left her coat, following Karen into the kitchen.
“Is this about the letter-writing campaign? I’ve gotten some wonderfully supportive notes and phone calls from people, you know. Mrs. Strathclyde told me she actually called our congressman’s office to complain. Can you believe it?” Karen led Clare through a high-ceilinged, granite-countered kitchen into a small den done up in burgundy and hunter green. Karen waved at the glass-fronted barrister’s bookcases and the computer centered on a wide mahogany desk. “My home office. I work here about seventy-five percent of the time, now. When we adopt Cody, I’ll be able to switch to a twenty-hour-a-week schedule without making any drastic changes.” She gestured toward a tapestry-covered love seat.
Clare sat. She took a steadying breath. “Karen, I didn’t come to discuss the letters.”
Karen sank gracefully into a green leather chair. “You didn’t.”
“I know that the police have been asking you about the night Darrell McWhorter was killed. I know you both claim to have come straight home from work.”
“Claim?”
Clare leaned forward, trying to meet the other woman’s eyes. Karen tilted her head, examining her hands. Her fingernail polish matched the study’s rug. “I know Geoff wasn’t at home at eight o’clock that night. He was at Cody’s foster mother’s house. Wearing a suit and tie, as if he’d come straight from work, and smelling as if he’d had a drink or two.”
The lawyer looked straight at Clare, her beautiful face calm. “What are you suggesting?”
“It looks bad, that’s what I’m suggesting! Karen, you two have got to tell the police the truth. What happened that night?”
Karen looked toward the bookcase. “Nothing.” She compressed her lips into a tight line. “I don’t know.”
Clare slid to the end of the love seat until their knees almost touched. “Tell me what you do know.”
The other woman continued staring at the bookcase. Clare touched her arm. “Please, Karen. I want to help you. And Geoff. But you have to be honest with me.”
There was a pause. Slowly, Karen turned her head to face the priest. “We had a horrible fight that afternoon in the office. We had been arguing about what approach to take with McWhorter all day long and we got . . . it just . . . anyway, I told him what he could do, and took off. I was so angry with him I wanted to . . .” She blew out a breath. “I did a little shopping, I called my mother, I fixed some stir fry for dinner—you know, working the mad off.” She laced her fingers together. “Dinnertime came and went, with no Geoff, and no phone call. I started to get worried. I mean, really worried; the weather was bad and he was driving the little Honda Civic. Finally, finally he showed up around ten or so.” She shook her head. “I didn’t know whether to kill him or kiss him. Turns out he’d been out at the Dew Drop Inn most of the night. I don’t know how he managed to get himself home, he was in no condition to drive. I was horrified! He could have killed himself. Not to mention the damage to his reputation if he had been picked up. The last thing we need is a morals censure from the Bar Association or a D.U.I. conviction on his record.”
Clare pressed her forefingers against her mouth to refrain from mentioning that Geoff could just as well have killed other people out on the roads that night. “Does this sort of thing happen often?” she asked, her voice neutral.
“God, no. Geoff’s idea of a blowout indulgence is a bottle of Nouveaux Beaujolais the week it hits the stores. So you can imagine how I felt when those two officers showed up at the door asking where we had been that evening! All I could think of was Geoff being hauled in for questioning. So I told them we’d been home all night, having a few drinks and watching TV.” She sagged back into her chair. “Geoff just went along with my story.” Her gaze went to the ceiling, as if looking for the Fates lurking there. “Yesterday, when we learned that McWhorter had been killed, it was too damn late to recant. There wasn’t anyone except a few anonymous bar patrons to say he’d been at the Dew Drop instead of . . .”
“Instead of taking Darrell McWhorter on his last drive to Albany?”
“Yes. We had already lied to the police. As you said, it looks bad.”
Clare tilted her head back, closing her eyes. Did she believe Karen Burns? Yes? The question was, did she believe Geoff Burns told the truth to his wife? “You’ve got to tell this to the police. You and Geoff.”
“No!”
“Do you believe your husband’s story about what happened Wednesday night?”
“Yes, of course. He would never lie to me.”
“Then tell Chief Van Alstyne. Geoff’s absence that night is going to come out sooner or later. If you wait until the police find out on their own, the two of you are going to look guilty as sin. Go to Van Alstyne’s office, tell him what you’ve just told me, admit that you were both royal idiots to lie about it, and offer to enroll Geoff in one of those driver education courses. Voluntarily.”
