“Officer Entwhistle, can you escort Reverend Fergusson to the processing room and print her?” Her show-and- tell over, Jensen crossed to where Lyle was standing. “MacAuley, who can we spare to search the Reverend’s house?”
Karen Burns frowned. “Clare, I’m going to say it again. I advise you most strongly against allowing an unwarranted search of the rectory.”
Clare shook her head. “No. Let them.”
“In that case, Investigator, I insist on being present.”
Jensen shrugged. “Sure. But you better get in gear. We’ll be over there in fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes after Officer Entwhistle finishes with the fingerprints.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jensen gestured toward Noble. “Anytime now, Officer Entwhistle.”
Noble lurched into action. He touched Clare on the elbow and steered her toward the hall, her lawyer at her side.
Karen Burns paused in front of her husband. “I’m going to drop her off at our house with the new deacon. I want her to stay there until I get back.”
“Understood,” Geoff Burns said.
And all the time, Russ stood there. Watching Clare. His last sight of her was her face, turned back toward him, as she rounded the corner.
“Listen,” Burns said. “From now on, I don’t want you talking with her. You can’t help her case, and you can only hurt your own. Do you hear me? Van Alstyne?”
A prayer she had told him about chased itself round and round in his brain.
THIRTY-SIX
Clare let herself be trundled out of the station like a juvenile delinquent being picked up by her exasperated parents. “Take your car to my house,” Karen told her, tugging on a wool beret to protect her hair from the steadily falling snow. “You can watch Cody until I get back from the search of the rectory. Which I still really, really don’t like.”
Following her lawyer down the steps, Clare made a feeble attempt to assert her independence. “Can’t I just go home and wait until they’re done?”
“No.” Karen turned toward the parking lot behind the station. “In the first place, you do not want to be there when a bunch of jackbooted thugs go through your every possession. In the second place, I’ve already imposed on the new deacon too much. You can pay off some of your legal fee by babysitting Cody. When I get back, we’ll talk. I want to go over everything that’s happened up to this point.”
“Oh, lord. Karen, I haven’t thought to ask what this is going to cost me. I don’t even know what you charge.”
A smile slanted across the lawyer’s face. “I told you. I’m going to take it out in babysitting.”
“But-”
Karen flicked the snowflakes off Clare’s shoulder before resting her gloved hand there. “You’re my priest,” she said, “and I consider you a friend as well. Neither of which might get you off the hook, normally. But you saved my baby boy’s life. That gives you an unlimited line of credit at Burns and Burns.” Then she surprised Clare by pulling her into a hug. “We’ll get you out of this,” she whispered. “Don’t worry.” She released Clare and held out her hand. “House key?”
“It’s unlocked.”
“Okay.” She paused at her Land Rover’s door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Go straight to my house. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, and for heaven’s sake, don’t hang around here waiting for Chief Van Alstyne.”
Clare, who had been thinking of doing just that, started.
“I mean it, Clare, I don’t want you seeing him or talking to him until we get this thing straightened out.” With that final admonition hanging in the air, Karen got into her SUV and started it up. Clare, watching her pull out of the lot, felt rather like Cinderella being warned that her outfit and ride had an expiration date.
She dragged herself over to her Subaru, got in, and drove to the Burnses’ on autopilot. Their house, on a broad and affluent old street, could have been Judy Garland’s family home in
The Burnses didn’t have a mudroom, they had a back pantry, where Clare let herself in and kicked off her boots. “Hello,” she called, hanging up her parka. “Don’t be alarmed. It’s Clare.”
She heard the thudding of tiny, footsie-clad feet. Cody skidded through the kitchen just as she emerged from the not-a-mudroom.
“Care!” He flung up his arms for a pickup.
“Hey, buddy.” She scooped him onto her hip. “Can we do it?”
“Yes, we can!” he shouted.
“How’re you doing? Where’s Mr. Squeaky?”
“Mistah Squeaky watchin’ zuh twuck video.” Just as quickly, he tired of being held and wiggled away. He dashed toward the family room. She followed. “Elizabeth?” she said.
Elizabeth de Groot was seated in one corner of an oversized sofa, leafing through a magazine by the light of a ginger jar lamp. She folded it into her lap and looked up eagerly. Cody swarmed up onto the cushion next to her and held Mr. Squeaky out for Clare’s inspection. “See?” he said. Mr. Squeaky was a rubbery plastic squirrel whose original colors and features had been almost completely obliterated after two years as a teething-toy-slash-love object. Cody pointed toward the television, where an eighteen-wheeler hummed down a highway to the accompaniment of an upbeat ditty about driving the big rigs. “Mistah Squeaky wuves twucks,” Cody said, before glancing back at the screen and falling under the spell of the video.
“I see you’ve met Mr. Squeaky before,” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, you’ll get to know him, too. He’s a regular attendee at the ten o’clock Eucharist. He tends to make himself known during the homily, but I’ve grown used to it.”
Elizabeth craned her neck, looking past Clare into the dining room. “Is Mrs. Burns with you?”
“No. She has… some more business to attend to. She asked me to watch Cody until she got home. Not that she was worried about your proficiency,” she tacked on, anxious not to offend. “She just didn’t want to impose on you any further.”
“It was no imposition,” Elizabeth said. “He’s a sweet little thing. Besides, as soon as I heard what had happened…” She lowered her voice in sympathy. “Are you okay?”
Since the attentive deacon showed no sign of leaving, Clare took the chair kitty-corner to the sofa. “I’m fine,” she lied.
“I can’t imagine what it would be like,” de Groot said. “Accused, arrested, having to bare your most private moments… it must have been awful.”
“I wasn’t arrested,” she said. A truth. “I am considered a ‘person of interest,’ but that’s because the police have to clear anyone who was remotely involved.” A half-truth. There had been nothing in Investigator Jensen’s avid expression indicating she wanted to absolve Clare of anything.
“Mrs. Burns said you were trying to give an alibi to the police chief and so you told the whole department you two had spent the night together. She was quite overwrought.”
How did she respond to that?
“I told the state police investigator, truthfully, that there was no way Chief Van Alstyne could have murdered
