funds ran out.
She went upstairs for some writing paper, which gave him a chance to poke around some. The place was small, just the parlor, a dining room, a tiny sitting room that looked to be used as a playroom, and the kitchen out back. The furniture was quality, but old. He guessed most of it had come down from a grandparent or two. Mrs. Ketchem was a good housewife-the china in the cupboard shone, the little girl’s toys were all stacked away, and the kitchen was scrubbed. A closet-sized room off the kitchen held a washing machine and a heap of dirty clothes, which he picked through quickly and efficiently. No signs of foul play, drunkenness, or any other type of disorder, except that of an orderly housewife neglecting her Monday wash. Which, if she feared the worst, he could understand. Nothing could bring back a person’s smell once it had been laundered away.
He was peeking out the back door, which led onto an enclosed porch, when she strode into the kitchen. She handed him a sheet of paper with a list of names and addresses written out in neat Palmer penmanship. “Here you are,” she said. Doing something, anything, had helped. She looked around the kitchen with more energy than he had seen so far. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee?” she asked.
Coffee. Oh, yes. “That’s kind of you,” he said. “Yes.”
“Can you fetch me some wood from the bin on the porch back there? It’s right beside the door.”
Like the rest of the house, the woodbin was just as it ought to be, tidy and well-stocked. There was a hatchet hanging over a chopping block, and he casually picked it up and examined it for signs that it had been used on something other than wood. But the fine wood dust caked in the joints between hatchet head and handle would never have survived a thorough cleaning.
Inside, Mrs. Ketchem had set the dripolater on and was reshelving a Chock full o’ Nuts bag. He loaded the stove’s fire box and asked her where the necessary was. She pointed him back out through the porch, and by the time he had done his business and washed up in the kitchen sink, Mrs. Ketchem was ready with a white crockery mug in each hand. She sat at the kitchen table and he joined her.
“I ought to get my daughter soon. At least now I’ll have something positive to tell her. That the police are going to try to find her father. Maybe…” She faltered, and Harry could see her forward momentum die away. She reached into her sweater pocket, withdrew his handkerchief, and wiped her eyes again. She began to hand the damp cloth back to him and then started, as if she had really seen it for the first time. She jerked her arm back and balled it in her fist. “I’ll launder this for you.”
“You don’t need to-”
“Oh, it’s the least I could do.” She stood up, looking frail inside the large sweater, which, Harry realized, was probably her husband’s. “I’m sorry for falling apart like that.” She offered him a rendition of a smile. “I know men hate to have a woman go off on them like that.”
Harry waved his hands in denial. “Not at all. You were upset.”
She smiled a bit more genuinely. “You’re very patient. Thank you.” She took the handkerchief into the laundry closet and then resettled herself in the kitchen chair. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“Let me get the inquiries in motion. Then we’ll talk again, if he hasn’t turned up.”
“When can I expect to hear from you?”
“I’ll follow up on these this morning,” he said, consigning his nap to the realm of impossibly beautiful dreams. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we have your husband back home in time for supper.”
Her face fell blank and still. Only her eyes seemed alive, like dark water cast into shade by a cloud. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think so.” She blinked, and the illusion was broken. She looked at him. “Have you ever had a feeling, Chief McNeil? That something bad has happened? That’s how I feel. I don’t think my husband’s coming home for supper. Not tonight. Not any night.”
Chapter 16
Monday, March 20
Clare woke up late. Most days, the alarm hauled her out of bed early so she could get her run in before morning prayer or the 7:00 A.M. Eucharist. Mondays, she left the alarm off, but she usually woke up at the same time anyway through force of habit. She rolled to one side to look at the clock. Nine A.M. Good Lord.
She flipped the covers off and was instantly all over goose bumps. Holy crow, had she left a window open overnight? She grabbed her robe, which had been tossed over the foot of her bed, and belted it tightly. She tiptoed to the upstairs bathroom, trying for the least amount of contact with the cold floorboards. The little window over the toilet was shut tight.
She tiptoed back to her bedroom, spent a few minutes in a vain search for her slippers, and pulled on a pair of thick sweat socks instead, before going hunting for the window that was letting her expensive oil-fired heat escape.
She couldn’t remember opening anything last night when she got in, but she had been asleep on her feet. After her encounter with the dead Ketchem children-
After Clare had finally delivered the anxious woman to her front door, she had turned homeward, only to be blocked out of her own drive by a tow truck, chaining Debba’s car in preparation for hauling it away. Clare had gotten out of her car and demanded to know what was happening, but the answer was a laconic “Impounded. Police.” The tow truck driver, a man as broad and walleyed as a trout, had actually wound yellow sticky tape around the entire car before levering it up onto his flatbed and rumbling away down Elm Street. Despite the hour, or maybe because of it, Clare had seen lights on and curtains fluttering at most of her neighbors’ houses. Yessir, just another dull night at the rectory.
She reached her thermostat in the dining room and discovered why her house was slowly sinking into a deep freeze. The temperature was set for sixty degrees, but it was only registering fifty. She turned the thermostat up, expecting to hear the soft roar of her furnace firing, and instead heard only silence.
“Oh, wonderful,” she said to the wall.
In the kitchen, she turned on the oven to four hundred and cracked open the door. Then she called her oil company and begged them to send a repairman as soon as possible. She was pretty good with engines-she could tinker with cars and do basic repairs to light aircraft-but there was no way she was going to try to fix her own furnace. The oil company’s burner tech was out on call, but he would get to the rectory when he finished with his morning appointments-no later than two o’clock. Three at the most.
“Tell him I’m leaving the door unlocked and a check on the kitchen table,” she said. Okay. She could have tried for a parish in southern Florida and missed out on the experience of her house turning into a giant meat locker, but on the other hand, she wouldn’t have been able to leave the house open and a blank check on the table in Miami. She consoled herself with that thought while wriggling into her clothes with her nightgown tented around her for warmth. She briefly considered lighting a fire in her living room, but the thought of what might happen if she wasn’t around to keep an eye on things dissuaded her.
Instead, she grabbed her parka and her car keys. She was headed for Mrs. Henry Marshall’s house with a whole boatload of questions. On the drive over, she ricocheted between frustration that she had been kept in the dark about Jane Ketchem, sympathy for Mrs. Marshall’s silence about her family’s grievous loss, and a deep bafflement as to Dr. Rouse’s role in all this.
Mrs. Marshall’s doorbell was set flush in an angular chrome-and-Lucite plate: the best the sixties had to offer. Clare caught a faint “Come in!” when she rang the chime and opened the door.
“Mrs. Marshall? It’s me, Clare Fergusson.”
“I’m back here, in the kitchen,” Mrs. Marshall called out. She emerged in a doorway at the end of the hall, wiping her hands on an apron tied over her wool pants. Her lipstick was a marigold orange, almost the same shade as her turtleneck sweater, and from the distance down the hallway, her face softened in the shadows, Clare could
