“Are you okay?” Kevin let her arm go.
“Yeah,” she said. “This just . . . looks a lot like the MacEntyres’ barn.” She breathed in. Manure and urine and hay, earthy and sharp and green. No copper-sweet smell of blood.
“Don’t worry,” Kevin said, “You’re safe here.” He meant to be reassuring, but all Clare heard was the perfect assurance of someone who had never had anything horrific happen to him.
“Clare?” Janet emerged from one of the stalls, pitchfork in hand. “Officer Flynn?” That last sounded genuinely surprised. She jammed her pitchfork into the manure cart squatting in the middle of the aisle. “What’s up?”
“Hi, Mrs. McGeoch. Sorry to interrupt, but when I went to your house, your daughter said you were over here, and I wanted to talk to you first, because the chief said you’d talked to some local farmers about migrant workers before you hired that service to, you know, help you get your own, so I was hoping you or Mr. McGeoch could fix me up with some contacts so I can find out a little more about who’s hiring migrants and if they’ve had workers stay year-round.”
“What?”
Clare shook off the shadow of the angel of death. “Officer Flynn needs a list of farmers in the area who employ migrant workers.”
Kevin looked a bit affronted. “That’s what I said.”
“Maybe,” Clare said, “if Mike’s around, he could help Officer Flynn?”
“He’s cleaning the equipment. I can—”
“Because I want to talk to you—um, about Amado possibly returning to work here.” She was speaking so broadly, she might as well be winking and nudging.
“O-kay.” Janet walked toward the center of the byre. “You see those doors there?”
Kevin nodded.
“That’s the equipment room. Go ahead and tell Mike what you want. He’s better with names and numbers than I am.”
“Thanks,” Kevin said. He started down the central aisle. Stopped. Turned. “Big place you got here. How on earth do you two manage it by yourselves?”
“Oh, we’ve got help.” Janet’s voice was as light as air. “But it is Memorial Day, you know.”
“Don’t I just.” He resumed walking toward the equipment room.
Clare gestured toward the narrow walkway leading to the larger barn. “Can we talk out there?”
“He won’t be able to hear us. With the steam cleaning equipment on, he’ll hardly be able to hear Mike.”
“It’s not that. This place is way too much like the MacEntyres’ for my comfort. I keep expecting to see someone with a gun coming out of the abattoir at any moment.”
Janet looked, frowning. “Sure.” She led the way, the top of her head almost brushing against the low ceiling of the passage. Clare took a deep breath once they were in the sun-shafted expanse of the hay barn. “So,” Janet said. “Let me ask you something. Do you think my brother would react in the same way? If he were in the byre?”
Clare thought about how, thirty-odd years after the need, Russ still couldn’t walk through heat and green leaves without watching for the glint of a gun barrel. About the way his face would still and his words dry up when conversation wandered onto certain old cases. “Yes,” she said. “I’m pretty sure he would.”
Janet shoved her hands in her jeans and looked around the three-story cross-beamed space. “Okay,” she said. “That helps explain some stuff. Thanks.” She focused on Clare. “What did you need to speak to me about?”
“You’ve got to come clean about the workers you have here.”
“What? Why?”
“I didn’t tell you something—earlier.” Clare caught a strand of free-falling hair and shoved it into her twist. “There were two more bodies discovered yesterday. Killed the same way as your John Doe. Buried in shallow graves a mile past the Muster Field. It’ll probably be all over the local news tonight or tomorrow.” She looked into Janet’s eyes. “Kevin’s asking for names of migrant workers because they’re thinking this may be the work of a serial killer.”
“What, a guy who comes up here from Mexico and whacks people on his day off? That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m not saying one of your men is responsible. I’m not saying the migrant-did-it theory even makes much sense. Russ gave the job to Kevin, so you know it’s not their top priority.” She opened her hands. “What I’m saying is that something terrible has happened. And your brother needs every piece of information he can get to find the person responsible.”
Janet was shaking her head. “I can’t. I just can’t. We haven’t started the application process for new workers, and we can’t get these guys permits retroactively. They have to leave the country and stay out for sixty days before they can apply again. If the police show up here to question them, what do you think’s going to happen? They’ll scatter to the four winds. He won’t get any information from them and we’ll be up the creek without a paddle.”
“Janet, how are you going to feel if someone else shows up dead and you didn’t do anything to help stop it? For what? To save a few bucks on payroll?”
“You don’t understand what a razor-thin margin we’re working on. Almost everything we pay out is a fixed cost: gas, feed, vet bills, insurance. We sure as hell can’t charge more for the milk. The only place where we have some flexibility is our labor. Hiring locals would cost twice what we pay the Mexicans, plus Social Security and unemployment insurance. That “few bucks” on the payroll would be thousands more. Thousands.”
“You’re not paying Social Security and unemployment?”
Janet had the good grace to look embarrassed. “We would have, if the original plan had held up and we had workers with permits. But now . . . the seven guys we have aren’t supposed to be here, so how would we explain having a payroll?” She rubbed her hands on the front of her jeans. “We’re doing the whole thing under the table at this point.”
“Oh, good Lord.” Nervous energy sent Clare pacing in a circle. “That’s just dumb. Just plain dumb. Now you’re going to be in trouble with ICE and the IRS.”
Janet crossed her arms. “I’m not telling my brother about them. I can’t.” She twisted, following Clare. “You can’t tell him either.”
Clare stopped. “How can I not?” She waved her arms in the air, wanting to snatch her hair out in frustration. “Christ on a bicycle,” she said.
Janet stared at her. Then laughed.
“What?” Clare said. “What?”
Janet sobered. “You can’t tell,” she said. “You promised me.”
“Promised you what?” Kevin straightened as he came out of the narrow passageway from the byre. Mike McGeoch followed him, looking as calm and contented as one of his cows, as if he lived in a world where murder and illegal aliens and tax fraud never intruded. Maybe for him they never did.
“It’s personal,” Janet said. She glanced at Clare, then at Kevin. “About my brother.”
Clare saw the lights go on in Kevin’s upstairs. His face pinked. “Oh. Sure. Personal.” He was shaking hands with Mike when he looked toward the barn’s entrance. “Who’s that?”
Clare turned. Amado and the McGeoch’s foreman were silhouetted in the wide doorway; an identical height, one gangly and broken-armed, one broad and muscular. The foreman hugged the younger man, held the back of his head, murmured something too low for them to make out. He handed the kid a backpack, adding to the small duffel and bulging shopping bag he was already toting.
“My interim sexton,” Clare said. “Amado.” The kid and the foreman both looked up. The foreman spotted Kevin’s uniform, slapped the younger man on the back, and strolled out of sight, not fast, not slow.
“No, the other guy. I thought you didn’t have any Latino workers here.”
“Oh, that’s one of our neighbor’s men.” Janet’s voice was thin and high. “Works for us on his off days.” She laughed, a brittle, unconvincing sound. “We’re lucky to get him.”
Kevin frowned. “He seemed pretty tight with Amado for someone who’s
just dropping in once in a while.”
Janet looked at Clare, who kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t telling any more lies for Russ’s sister.
“I think a lot of the guest workers around here come from the same area in Mexico.” Janet shrugged. “They may even be related.” She raised her voice. “Do you know Octavio from home, Amado?” The young man stared at her. “Octavio? ¿Un amigo?” He tightened his grip on the backpack and continued to stare at them like a spooked horse.
“It’s okay, Amado. Go ahead, get in the car.” Clare turned. “I need to get him back to the church. Janet, please consider what we talked about.” She gripped the other woman’s arm, trusting it would look like a friendly squeeze to Kevin. “Officer Flynn. Good luck on the—um, investigation. It’s a big responsibility.”
“It is, isn’t it?” His face brightened. “See you later, Reverend. Enjoy the rest of the holiday weekend.”
Friday night she’d been attacked in her church. Sunday, they had found two bodies at the annual picnic. She opened her mouth to point these facts out, then shut it at the sight of the young officer’s cheerful expression. “Thanks, Kevin. I’ll try.”
III
She went into the church to pray that evening. She hadn’t anticipated how dislocated she would feel with a houseguest, a disturbance made worse by Amado’s shy formality and their lack of a common language. Her unsettled feeling wasn’t helped by the fact that every time she passed her sofa or sat at the kitchen table, she experienced erotic flashbacks hot enough to make her wonder if she were going into premature menopause. When had she last had sex? She couldn’t pin down the exact year, but it was at least two presidential elections ago. She had been celibate a long time. A looong time.
So she fled to St. Alban’s. She loved coming here alone at night, lighting only the candles and reading Compline at the old high altar. She would trace the carving along the edge of the marble—PRAY FOR THE SOUL OF THE REVEREND DR. MATHIAS ARCHIBALD DUNN, RECTOR OF THIS CHURCH—and pray she would, though she suspected the late Dr. Dunn rolled over in his grave every time an ordained woman broke bread at his altar. Tonight, she spent a long time in the quiet and the candlelight, praying to be opened, to discern God’s way, to know what to do.
Go see Lucia Pirone.
The thought was there, fully formed in her mind. Her hands fell open and her head came up. Of course. She should visit Sister Lucia. In person.
You should have paid a call weeks ago.
That was the voice of Grandmother Fergusson, not the Almighty. Tomorrow, she’d head over to the rehab center and spill her guts to the missioner nun. If she baked a homemade treat, she thought, absently rubbing Dr. Dunn’s name, she’d satisfy both God and her grandmother.
IV
“Clare. How wonderful to see you.” Sister Lucia’s eyes were as keen as ever, but her hand shook as she took Clare’s. “And what’s this? For me?” She leaned forward, coughing, to accept the box Clare held.
“Let me help,” Clare said. She untied the string and pulled the top off.
“Good heavens. These look delicious. Are these pecan tassies? And”—Sister Lucia took out a round cookie and put it in her mouth—“bourbon balls?” She chewed and swallowed, closing her eyes. “I haven’t had one of these since the last time I was in Texas. Wherever did you find them up here?”
“I made them this morning.” She grinned. “Since they don’t let you bring in a bottle of bourbon itself.”
“There’s enough there to feed the entire floor! You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s by way of penance. I should have come to visit long before this. How are you doing?”
“Well, the pneumonia has cleared up, and they tell me that’s good. But it put me behind on my therapy for this darned hip.” She made a face. “A broken hip. If that doesn’t tell me I’m an old woman, I don’t know what does. Ah, well.” She looked at Clare sharply. “I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way over here from Millers Kill to learn about my exercises.”
Clare shook her head. “I’m afraid not.” She told the nun about Janet and Mike McGeoch, the bodies, the investigation, her own part in concealing the truth of the situation from the police. By the time she finished, Sister Lucia had put away several more bourbon balls and was nodding.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” she said, when Clare ran out of steam.
“What should I do?”
“Who’d you say was the lead detective on this?”
“Our police chief, Russ Van Alstyne. He was there the night of the crash—I don’t know if you saw him.”
“Surely not the redhead. He didn’t look old enough.”
“No, no. That’s Officer Flynn. He’s a sweetheart. No, the chief was the older man with the”—she couldn’t help it, she gestured with her hands, shaping Russ’s broad shoulders—“tall. Very tall. Blue eyes.”
“The really attractive one?”
“Oh. Yes.”
The nun’s lips twitched upward. “I didn’t see him.”
Clare felt her cheeks go red.
“Evidently, you know him.” Sister Lucia’s glint of amusement mellowed. “Do you trust him? To do the right thing, if you tell him about the men working at the McGeochs?”
“Our definition of ‘the right thing’ is sometimes very different.” She thought for a moment. “If he feels it’s his duty to turn them in, he’ll do it. He may not like it, but he’ll do it.”
“Even if it hurts his own sister?” The nun sniffed. “Sounds inflexible to me.”
“Not inflexible. Honor-bound.” She couldn’t help smile. “Admittedly, it does make him a pain in the ass at times.”
Sister Lucia laughed, which set off another bout of coughing. One of the nurses came in just at the moment Clare began to be concerned.
“Sister?” She helped the nun lean forward until the coughing fit stopped.
“Sorry,” Sister Lucia gasped.
Clare stood. “No, no, I’m sorry. I’ve overtaxed you.”
The nurse nodded. “It may be time for another treatment.”
Sister Lucia grasped Clare’s arm. “Tell him,” she said, her voice a rattle in her throat, “justice is important. Rights and jobs and working conditions are important. But the bottom line is, without life, none of those matter.” She looked up at Clare, her face fierce in its weakness, like a martyr’s. “If there’s some connection, anything . . .” She left the implication unsaid. “Tell him.”
V
Clare was on her way home from the rehab center when her phone rang. She turned down her Jason Mraz CD and glanced at the number: Russ. For a second, she considered letting her voice mail pick it up. She had to talk to him, she was clear on that, but in fairness’s sake she felt she had to let Janet know what she was going to do first.
She flipped it open. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey. It’s me. Where are you?”
Huh. That was to the point. “On my way back from the Rehabilitation Center at the Glens Falls Hospital. I was visiting Lucia Pirone. You remember her.”
“The nun from the crash, yeah. Look, can you meet me at the county courthouse? You know where that is?”
“Certainly. Why? What’s going on?”
He made a disapproving noise. “Amy Nguyen of the DA’s office wants to talk to us.”
“Us? Together?”
“The Christie brothers are up for bail, and apparently their lawyer wants to start the horse trading right now. Can you get over there?”
“Yeah. Where?”
“Just ask for Amy when you check in. Thanks. ’Bye.”
He hung up before she had a chance to say anything else. Maybe he was in a tearing hurry. Maybe they were back to not talking. That’s what she missed the most: talking. Serious, silly, bone-deep, flippant, all their words and thoughts like gifts to each other, the only gifts they, with their hobbled hearts, could give. She turned the CD player back up. Another day to sing about the magic that was you and me. Oh, yeah. Alwa
ys time for that.
The Washington County Courthouse was in a low, modern brick building that could have passed for a bank center or a modest corporate headquarters. Its lines were softened by ornamental crab apples in full flower and row upon row of daffodils and paperwhites. She paused a moment on the walkway from the parking lot, breathing in the scent of apple and thick May grass rising over the tinny smell of cars baking in the sunshine. She wondered if the small slices of spring soothed or taunted the prisoners who went in and out of here.
At the security station, she asked for Amy Nguyen and was pointed toward a meeting room that was, when Clare opened the door to a “Come in!”, scarcely bigger than a broom closet. A petite Asian woman about Clare’s age stood behind a table stacked with manila folders and Redweld document cases.
“Amy Nguyen?”
The woman looked up from the open file she had been reading. On someone less harried-looking, her expression would have been a smile. “You must be the Reverend Fergusson.” She held out a hand. Only the faintest trace of an accent indicated English had not been her first language.
“No one else seems to want the job,” Clare agreed, shaking Nguyen’s hand. That earned her an actual grin.
“Same here. Take a seat.”
Clare pulled out one of the molded plastic chairs shoved beneath the table. “What’s up? Chief Van Alstyne said you wanted to talk to me about the Christies.”
“Let’s wait until Russ gets here so we can all—” Amy broke off as the door opened, almost banging into Clare, and Russ sidled into the room, taking up any remaining free space.
“Sorry if I’m late,” he said. He glanced at Clare. “Reverend Fergusson.” Looked at Nguyen. “Amy. It’s been awhile.”
She reached over the table to shake his hand. “It has been. I was so, so sorry to hear about your wife. I can’t imagine what a terrible loss it must be for you.”
“Thank you,” he said stiffly. “It’s been—yes. Thank you.” At Nguyen’s gesture, he attempted to wedge himself into one of the chairs. He did not look at Clare.
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