One Was a Soldier

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “I drink.”

  “Who says the song is about you?”

  She shoved him. “I’ll tell Betsy we’d like ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ and ‘Come Down, O Love Divine.’”

  He laughed. “Chicken.”

  She grabbed her keys and her coat from the hook inside the sacristy closet and ushered him out. “Seriously. You don’t have to do this. I know you’re flat out with Tally McNabb’s murder investigation.”

  He let her lead him back to the narthex. “First, we’re nowhere near to calling it a homicide. Second, if my department can’t get along without me for an hour, I’m not doing my job right. Third”—he stepped into the early morning sunshine and stood to one side as she locked the great doors—“I put my work ahead of everything else when I was married to Linda. It didn’t turn out so well.” She turned to look at him, and he braced his hands against the wooden door, trapping her between his arms. “I want to do it differently with you. You deserve the best I can bring to the table.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. “Thank you.”

  “C’mon. I parked over in Tick Solway’s lot across the street.” It hadn’t been Tick’s lot since he died two years back and his son inherited, but that was the way things worked in Millers Kill. Clare was sure half the town still referred to the rectory as Father Hames’s house, and that paragon of virtue had been gathered into Abraham’s bosom six years ago.

  It was five minutes before traffic thinned enough to allow Russ to pull his truck onto Church Street. “What’s with all the cars?” Clare looked at her battered Seiko. “The morning rush to Glens Falls ought to be over by now.”

  “Leaf peepers. For the next two weeks or so we’ll see almost as many tourists as we get during ski season.” He braked as an Explorer with New Jersey plates cut in front of him to turn onto Main.

  “I’ve never quite understood how driving an SUV three hundred miles expresses your love of nature.”

  “Don’t say that in front of any local business owners.”

  A thought struck her. “Aren’t you going to be short on manpower? With an investigation and a boatload of tourists in town?”

  “Yep.” He cut the wheel, and they made the sharp turn onto Route 57. “I can already hear Lyle. ‘Ask not for whom the overtime tolls, it tolls for thee.’ What we really need is another sworn officer.”

  “What about trainees from the police academy?”

  “That was fine to plug the gap while Eric and Kevin were away, but in the long run, I need someone full-time. Someone who can cover me or Lyle or Eric when things get tight.”

  He swung onto the bridge. Up and down the river, the trees reflected in the calm water, red and gold, yellow and bronze, green and copper. It was made more beautiful by its brevity; the glory of a few days, a week, and then it was gone.

  Russ sighed with pleasure. “Poor bastards.”

  “Who?”

  “Those folks you were talking about who have to drive three hundred miles for this. Looks like someone set the river on fire, doesn’t it?”

  The river. The fire. The pale Nile green water and the buildings beyond, stone blocks and mud bricks baking in the endless sun. The car exploding, and the barn burning and the fire racing across the dry field. The column of oily smoke, and the chunks of masonry smashing into the hard-baked dirt. The blood. The screams.

  “Clare?”

  She shuddered back into the here-and-now.

  “Are you all right?” Russ’s voice was concerned.

  “Yeah. I’m—” not fine. Just tell him. I’m. Not. Fine. “Okay. Just a little tired.”

  She was a coward. She was straight-up chickenshit. He thought she deserved the best he had to offer. She knew better. She had something ugly living in her, no different in its way than the colon cancer that had eaten up her sister from the inside out.

  She just wanted it to be over and done with so she didn’t have to think about it ever again. The moment the idea touched down in her head, her skin goosefleshed. Was that what Tally McNabb had come to?

  “Do you want to go home? We can reschedule. Or, hell, just have your mother decide everything.”

  “My mother?” She breathed in. She was a big girl. She could handle a few bad memories. “You mean, my mother who wants you to wear a kilt?”

  “What?”

  The horror in Russ’s voice made her laugh, thank God. “That was her suggestion after I told her it was unlikely you’d agree to your police dress uniform. She thought all the men could wear kilts.”

  “That’s the nuttiest—”

  “They did it at my brother Doug’s wedding.”

  He was silent as he slowed the truck and made the turn onto the Sacandaga Road. Finally, he said, “It might be worthwhile just to see how Lyle reacts.”

  She laughed, and the moment was behind her, left beside the river as they rolled up and up through the stone-and-wire-rimmed pastures until they crested a rise and there was the Stuyvesant Inn, looking like a painted Florodora Girl in a wide green skirt sitting in the middle of dairy country.

  It seemed Stephen and Ron were reaping the leaf-peeper bounty as well; their small three-car parking area was filled, and the sign pointing vehicles to the back was in its wooden frame. Russ ignored it in favor of pulling his truck half on, half off the grass beneath a blazing red maple near the road. “Fast getaway,” he said, when she looked pointedly at the parking sign. “In case of a police emergency.”

  “Uh-huh.” They walked up the curving drive and mounted the steps to the wide front porch. In honor of the season, the chintz pillows on the curlicued wicker furniture had been replaced with needlepoint. Lacy throws and plaid lap robes draped over scrollwork settees and fan-back armchairs.

  Russ pressed the brass buzzer. “I always feel like I’m going to break some god-awful piece of bric-a-brac worth a fortune when I’m here.”

  “Maybe we can bypass the house and walk straight around to the tent for the reception,” she said, and then the door opened and Stephen Obrowski was there. “Welcome! Welcome!” He pumped both their hands at once, so it appeared, for a moment, as if they were about to begin a folk dance. “Congratulations,” he said to Russ. “You’re a lucky man.”

  “Thanks. I agree.”

  Stephen tugged them inside. Gray-haired, red-cheeked, Obrowski always reminded her of some jolly British print of a century ago: The Genial Innkeeper or The Happy Host. Instead of a buxom wife in an apron, however, he had the tall and Teutonic-looking Ron Handler, emerging from the kitchen at the end of the hall wiping his hands on a dish towel.

  “Great to see you, Clare.” Ron kissed her cheeks. “And Chief Van Alstyne. You’re looking as butch as ever.”

  “Ron,” Stephen warned.

  “I kid, I kid. Look, why don’t you show them where everything will be set up, and then we can go over the menu and the notes Mrs. Fergusson faxed.” Ron tilted his head toward Clare. “I don’t like to leave the kitchen while we still have guests eating breakfast.”

  “Notes Mrs. Fergusson faxed?” Russ said, at the same moment Clare said, “If this is a bad time…”

  “Of course not.” Obrowski steered them toward the archway on the left while his partner vanished back down the hall. “Now, we thought we’d put the pianist here in the double parlor”—he pointed to a grand piano—“and leave the rest of the furniture pretty much as it is, to encourage folks to sit and talk.”

  “There’s a pianist?” Russ looked at Clare. “I thought it was a DJ.”

  “The DJ will be outside, in the dancing tent,” Stephen said.

  Clare was starting to get a bad feeling. “When you say ‘dancing tent,’ does that imply there’s going to be a nondancing tent?”

  “That’s right. The dining tent will have roll-down walls and heaters, to keep everyone comfortable through dinner and the toasts and all that.” Obrowski looped them through the second parlor, emerging back in the wide entrance hall. “We’re going to have the coat check back
here, with a rolling rack tucked beneath the stairs, and then right here in the hallway, we’ll have one of the bars.” He looked at Clare hesitantly. “I know it’s a little unorthodox, but I thought it would keep traffic flowing and prevent the guests from bunching up around the drinks.”

  “One of the bars?” Russ shook his head. “Christ on a bicycle. It’s like the sacking of Richmond in reverse.”

  Clare caught the look on the innkeeper’s face. “It’s fine, Stephen. Russ’s idea of a wedding is fifteen minutes in front of Judge Ryswick.” And boy, wasn’t that getting more appealing by the minute?

  “Ah. Of course. I understand. Trust me, it sounds like a lot of fussy details right now, but the night of your wedding, when you’re here with your beautiful bride on your arm, you’ll be glad we took pains to get everything just so.” Stephen hurried ahead and cracked open the doors on the other side of the hall. He peeked inside.

  “Having you on my arm is not what I’m looking forward to on our wedding night,” Russ said into her ear.

  “Hold that thought.”

  Stephen beckoned to them. “We have a couple of guests eating breakfast, so we’re just going to walk through the dining room and then on to the kitchen. We can collapse the dining room table by a few feet, but we can’t remove it from the room, so the plan is to have the desserts and coffee served from here.” He opened one door. “Excuse us, folks. We’re just doing a wedding walk-through.” He led them into the elaborately paneled room. “We’ll take the chairs out, of course, and put the tea service on the sideboard—”

  Beside her, she could feel Russ stiffen. He was staring at the other end of the mahogany dining table, where a forty-something woman in a starched shirt was buttering toast and a young black man with very little hair was working his way through eggs and sausage. The woman’s eyes opened wide. She put her toast and her knife on her plate. “Chief Van Alstyne.”

  * * *

  “I see you decided not to head all the way back to Fort Drum. You hoping to become better acquainted with our little town?” Russ’s tone triggered Clare’s early alert system. This wasn’t some tourist whose purse had been returned by the police department.

  The woman’s nose pinched in and her mouth thinned. “I did a little research and became better acquainted with you last night. Twenty-two years in the army, twenty of them as an MP, retired as a CW5. Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Presidential Commendation with Valor. Investigator in chief for the 6th Military Police Group, Fort Lewis, training command at Fort Leonard Wood…” She steepled her fingers. “So what was the Deputy Dawg act yesterday?”

  His service records, Clare thought. The only place that information was accessible—and then only by authorized military personnel.

  Russ crossed his arms. “Why don’t you tell me why you really came here looking for Tally McNabb?”

  The woman’s eyes flicked toward Clare and Obrowski. Clare would go if Russ asked her, but she was damned if she was going to back down for anyone else. The innkeeper was another matter. “Stephen,” she said, “can we meet you in the kitchen in a few minutes?”

  “Absolutely,” Stephen said, with the gratitude of a man whose job made him privy to more dirty laundry than he wanted to hear. He headed for the door. Paused. “I’ll have Ron make a fresh pot of coffee.” That thought seemed to make him happy again.

  When the door swung shut behind him, the woman stared at Clare with a gaze like a dissecting knife. “Who’s she?”

  Instead of answering her, Russ pulled a chair away from the table. “Clare?” She sat. “I’d like you to meet Lieutenant Colonel Arlene Seelye of the U.S. Army Finance Command.” He gestured toward Clare. “The Reverend Clare Fergusson.”

  She wasn’t sure what was going on, but since it looked like Russ had already taken the role of bad cop, she figured she ought to be the good cop. She smiled, showing many, many teeth. “Hello!”

  “This isn’t a matter for a civilian, Chief. Even if she is a priest.”

  “Didn’t I mention?” Russ took the chair next to her. “This is also Major Clare Fergusson of the 142nd Aviation Support Battalion.”

  The private, who had stopped eating when it was clear Russ wasn’t going to keep moving along, straightened in his seat.

  “I don’t care if she’s commander of the Big Red One. I’m not going to—” Seelye slapped her napkin down. She looked at Russ. Despite the heat in her voice, her gaze was cool. Assessing. Whatever she saw, she decided to change tactics. “Mary McNabb, a.k.a. Tally McNabb, was under investigation for peculation.”

  Russ cocked an eyebrow. “She had her hand in the battalion cookie jar?”

  “We believe she made off with a considerable sum.”

  “I have a feeling the army and I probably have different ideas as to what constitutes a considerable sum.”

  Colonel Seelye paused. “In the neighborhood of a million dollars.”

  Russ whistled.

  “Nice neighborhood,” Clare said. Seelye looked at her as if she had just spat chewing tobacco on the table. Clare tried not to let her cheeks pink up.

  “That’s a hell of a lot of money to sneak off with under the army’s nose,” Russ said. “Didn’t she have any oversight?”

  “McNabb altered the records. Destroyed data. She was very skilled. And the chief financial officer of her unit was … lax.”

  Clare nudged Russ’s thigh. He nodded to her. Go ahead. “Tally had been stateside since March,” she said. “Her discharge came through in May, and she’s been living openly in Millers Kill since then. How come you’re only now showing up to investigate her?”

  Seelye crossed her arms over her chest. The private stared at the eggs congealing on his plate. Clare looked at Russ. What did I say?

  “I don’t think it’s because they’ve been taking their own sweet time. I think they didn’t know about it before now.” He twisted in his chair and propped an elbow on the table, for all the world as if he and Clare were having a postbreakfast chat over the paper. “Tally McNabb may have been a damn good bookkeeper, but she wasn’t any sort of criminal mastermind. I think she had help covering the theft up. From the inside.” He glanced toward Seelye, then back to Clare. She frowned. From the inside? The whole Army was one big “inside.” “From another MP,” he clarified.

  Quentan Nichols. Clare’s mouth formed an O. Russ swept his lashes low in acknowledgment.

  Seelye didn’t react. “I need to search that house, Chief.”

  “That house is the property of a civilian who isn’t here to give his consent. You take what you have to a judge, you get a warrant, and I’ll be glad to help you execute it. Hell, I’ll have my whole department pitch in.”

  “This case is not in your jurisdiction.”

  “Maybe not, but Tally McNabb’s death is.”

  “Your people searched their house.”

  “With probable cause, post death by gunshot.”

  “I want to see your files.”

  “You want a lot, don’t you?” He stood. “C’mon, Clare. We have some faxes to decipher.”

  Clare rose to her feet. A hundred questions were screaming in her head, but she smiled and nodded at the soldiers. “Colonel. Private.”

  “Ma’am,” the young man said.

  Seelye shot him an icy look. She steepled her fingers again. “This isn’t over, Chief. If you try to play hardball with the United States Army, I will have your ass hanging from my company flagpole. That’s a promise.”

  Russ flattened his hands against the table and leaned forward. “I was playing hardball with the army back when you were still buffing up your butter bars and trying to memorize the ten-code.” He straightened. “Get a warrant, and we’ll talk. Until then…” He flipped his hand open.

  He gestured Clare ahead of him. She felt as if she had a gun sighted between her shoulder blades as she walked to the kitchen door. As soon as the door had swung shut behind them, she opened her mouth.

  Russ held a finger to his lips and dragge
d her around the industrial-sized center island toward Ron and Stephen, who immediately stopped talking. Ron twisted around and moved a stovetop percolator off the enormous gas range. “What was that all about?” Stephen asked.

  “Police business,” Russ said.

  Ron rolled his eyes.

  Russ ignored him. “How long have they been here?”

  “They checked in late Wednesday night,” Stephen said. “They were complaining about not being able to get a room at any of the motels.”

  “They were damn lucky we had a party cancel. The Adirondacks during peak foliage?” Ron blew a raspberry.

  Stephen frowned at his partner.

  “Don’t give me that Mrs. Grundy look,” Ron said. “I told you they weren’t here for antiques and cider.” He pointed to Russ. “Is there anything we need to worry about? Seeing as they’re involved in police business?”

  “No. They’re cops. Military police.” He turned to Clare. “I’ve got to get back to the station. Do you mind handling the rest of the wedding hoopla without me?”

  “No-o-o. I would mind the walk back to town, though.”

  Russ made a frustrated sound. “Sorry. I forgot. Okay, let’s go.” He took off toward the hallway.

  “Uh—” She looked helplessly at Stephen and Ron.

  “Go, go.” Stephen flapped his hands at her. “Call us when you’re free. We can set up another time. Just don’t leave it too long!”

  “Unless you want to think twice about the whole thing.” Ron indicated the door Russ had disappeared behind. “As I recall, Prince Charming is supposed to chase after Cinderella, not the other way around.”

  Russ had already backed the truck onto the drive when she caught up to him. She swung the door open and jumped in. He started down the road before she had finished buckling her seat belt.

  He unhooked the mic from its mount. “Dispatch, this is Van Alstyne, IOV.”

  The radio cracked. “Chief, this is Dispatch, go ahead.”

  “Is Lyle or Eric in?”

  “Eric’s out interviewing friends and family. Lyle just headed to the courthouse with a warrant request. He’s fixing to get into McNabb’s bank account. The rest of ’em are in the seat.”