All Mortal Flesh

“Arborist?” Jensen said.

“That’s a tree cutter,” Lyle said.

“I know what a goddam arborist is.”

“Anyway, there wasn’t anything that linked her to the burglaries or the money. I think she dumped him. I don’t recall her even being at the trial.”

“What was her name?” Russ looked at Lyle, then at Noble, who, while slow off the block when it came to original thinking, had a prodigious memory for names and dates.

He shook his head. “Sorry, Chief, I wasn’t involved with that one.”

“You thinking Audrey Keane may be the former fiancee?” Lyle frowned.

“She wouldn’t be the first woman to forgive and forget,” Russ said sourly.

“Is she working with him? Or just giving him bed and board and closing her eyes to whatever’s going on?” Lyle looked at Mark.

“If they’re stealing identities the way I think they are, I can’t see how she couldn’t know,” the young officer said. “Digging up passports, checks, credit card bills-that all takes time. What does she do, walk the dog unawares while he rifles the house? She’s got to be helping him.”

“Dennie’s previous offense certainly lines up with the scenario you two came up with,” Lyle said. “Mrs. Van Alstyne comes home, catches them in the act, and Dennie… shuts her up.”

“I think it lines up a little too conveniently,” Jensen said. “We still have nothing tying Shambaugh and Keane to the Van Alstyne house. Who’s to say you didn’t know about Shambaugh’s release, peg him as a perfect fall guy, and set the scene to mimic a home invasion?”

“I saw the autopsy report.” Mark bristled to the defense of his chief. “Even if you could believe the chief could kill his wife, there’s no way he could have defaced her like that.”

“That makes it more likely he did it than the Check Burglar,” Jensen shot back. “If you’re just shutting somebody up for good, you slice their throat and be done with it. Whoever defaced Linda Van Alstyne did so out of rage and hate. Does that sound like a guy rifling people’s closets for deposit slips? Or a husband whose wife refuses to fall in line?”

“Deface,” Russ said.

“I think you ought to just shut up right about now,” Jensen said.

“You both said ‘deface.’ ” He had seen a movie portraying the creation of a planet once-shards and shafts of matter and light falling inward, coalescing from a vaporous cloud to a brilliant, glowing core and a hard outer shell. That was what was going on in his head right now. “Deface.”

“Look, Van Alstyne-”

“Ssh,” Lyle said.

“What if the woman in our kitchen was mutilated deliberately? Not by someone playing with death, but by someone who wanted to disguise her identity?” He whirled toward Lyle. “Ethan Stoner said Audrey Keane was a good-looking blonde. He said even though she was his mother’s age, she had a great figure. Like Linda.”

Lyle shook his head. “Aw, no, Russ. Don’t start thinking-”

“What if that woman wasn’t Linda at all? What if it was Audrey Keane?”

“Russ.” Lyle’s voice was gentle. “It was her. I saw her, there on the kitchen floor.”

“What did you see, Lyle? A blonde with an unidentifiable face? How long did you look at her?”

Lyle turned his face away. “Not long. I couldn’t-”

“Not that I don’t appreciate the sensitive personal issues arising from the fact that her husband and her lover were responsible for investigating her murder, but Linda Van Alstyne was autopsied, for chrissake!” Jensen glared at them. “Unless you’re telling me the ME was sleeping with her, too, I’m going to take his report as definitive.”

“Don’t you get it?” Russ demanded. He felt as if a ball of light were expanding within his rib cage. “Emil Dvorak assumed the woman he was autopsying was my wife. Because she’d already been positively identified as Linda Van Alstyne. Why would he check her identity against dental records or fingerprints when we already all knew who she was?” The ball of light burst, and he felt himself lifted up, so light it was amazing his boots still touched the ground. “That woman in the mortuary isn’t my wife. My wife is still alive.”

TWENTY-NINE

Clare knew thirty seconds after meeting Oliver Grogan that he would only have killed Linda Van Alstyne if she had ruffled a swag better than he did. The proprietor of Fringes and Furbelows was charming and flirtatious, and batted solidly for the other team.

“J’adore Linda Van Alstyne,” he said, leading Clare between shining, spindle-legged tables piled with rolls of velvet trim and silk grosgrain. “Once you can get her away from the Little House on the Prairie look, she does some wonderful work. Have you seen the draperies and soft furnishings she designed for the Algonquin Waters? To die for. Simply to die for. At least, before it char-broiled.” He pushed a stack of fabric samples off a Victorian tete-a-tete. “Sit. Can I offer you some espresso?”

“No thanks.” Clare sat, narrowly missing pulling down a string of plump gold-and-green tassels hanging from one of the rafters overhead. “Look, I don’t want to mislead you. I’m not here looking for trimmings for some window treatment Linda’s making up for me.”

“My dear Reverend, I didn’t think you were. I expect most clergy persons are as poor as church mice and too busy doing good to bother about silly, self-indulgent things like interior decor.”

She brushed one of the fat tassels away. It was exquisitely soft, the colors in its tail flowing like water. “I’m here with bad news, I’m afraid. I have to tell you Linda Van Alstyne is dead.”

Grogan rocked back into his Louis XIV desk chair. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Good God,” he said. “I’m sorry, too. She was a great gal. I considered her a friend as well as a customer.” He shook his head. His hair, in the soft light thrown by the shop’s many chandeliers, shone like the tassel threads. His face, however, suddenly seemed much older. “What happened?”

“She was found dead in her kitchen,” Clare said carefully. “The police are investigating.”

“Good heavens. And how did you get roped in?”

“Her… family is seeking some closure. I volunteered to help.”

“Well, I don’t know what I can tell you about her that you wouldn’t already have heard from them.”

“Did she ever mention seeing someone? In a romantic way?”

Grogan arched his eyebrows. “I understood she was married.”

“She and her husband recently separated.”

He laced his fingers together and pressed them against his lips, thinking for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I can’t think of anyone. We talked and e-mailed back and forth, but it was mostly just gossipy stuff. The only thing I recall her being serious about was her work. I suppose if you spend your days saving souls, it seems awfully trivial to you, but she was passionate about her draperies. She was distraught when the Algonquin Waters fire ruined so many of her pieces. She went straight back to work on them, re-creating what had been lost. No, let me amend that. Improving on what had been lost.”

“I thought the resort was closed for repairs until the end of January, early February.”

“Bien sur. They’re going to have a Valentine’s Day extravaganza to celebrate the reopening.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Although considering what happened the last time they had a gala event, I think they’d be better off just handing out drinks coupons to the guests. But! It’s Mr. Opperman’s business, not mine.”

“So Linda was working on site, even though it’s not technically open?”

“From what she told me, she was primarily working from home. But yes, she also worked at the resort itself occasionally. With all those muscular, sweaty carpenters around, who wouldn’t?”

Clare couldn’t help herself, with a straight line like that. “I’m only interested in one carpenter, myself.”

Grogan smiled, delighted. “And why not? When you find someone divine, stick with him, I say.”