In the Bleak Midwinter

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  She shook her head. “I started out this evening hoping I could help you get it all off your chest,” she said, smiling. “Didn’t expect to be on the receiving end.”

  He draped his arm over the back of the seat. “Will I embarrass you if I tell you I admire you? The way you listen to people, the way you want to help?”

  She smiled more emphatically. “Yes, you will. But thanks. For everything. You’re right, you know. I do need a friend.” She looked at him seriously. “Thanks. For letting me be just Clare. Instead of the Reverend Fergusson. It’s been a long time since I—it’s a rare thing to have someone you can just be yourself with, you know. Your whole self.”

  He was going to make a crack about hanging out with heathens more, but he couldn’t, not with her looking at him that way. He shifted his gaze to the dashboard, unable to meet her eyes. “Good night, Clare.”

  “Good night, Russ.” She opened the door and slipped from the cab.

  “Clare—” he said. She paused, her hand on the door, the snow swirling around her and into the passenger seat. Her hair stirred in the wind, already hung with feathery snowflakes.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Talk to you tomorrow.” He waited until he had seen her inside the kitchen before he shifted the truck into gear. She waved at him from the window. He pulled out of her snow-drifted driveway and drove away from the rectory at a much faster speed than was safe.

  CHAPTER 17

  Clare paused in front of the parish bulletin board, a packing box of Christmas banners propped against one hip. Still woolly-headed from the late night and high emotion, she had tackled the messy, mindless task of digging the church’s Christmas decorations out of the undercroft this morning. The Sunday-best of her parishioners’ photographs contrasted with her rumpled, sweaty, dusty state and reminded her that she would have to wash and change in order to be presentable. The picture of Karen and Geoffrey Burns caught her eye. They looked so happy and relaxed in the photo, with the kind of sleek contentment that more than enough money brings.

  For all of Geoff’s raging and Karen’s desperation, Clare still couldn’t believe that their desire for a child could lead them into murder. She had seen them with that baby in the hospital, seen the instant love and tenderness that was ordinarily lost in the brassy blare of their personalities. Within their small universe of two, they were gentle, caring people. It struck her that perhaps they needed a child most of all so they could show that vulnerable side to another human being.

  “Reverend Clare?” Lois’s voice broke her concentration. She hoisted the box higher and walked into the secretary’s office.

  “A few messages for you,” Lois said. “Karen Burns called, and Mr. Felton’s daughter, to reschedule your visit. He’s going in for some tests and he won’t be back to the Infirmary until tomorrow.”

  “Anything serious?”

  “She didn’t sound too concerned. The last one was Kristen McWhorter. Is she related to the—”

  “Her sister. What did she say?”

  “She’s going to see her mother, and wondered if you’d come along.” Lois pushed the pink message memos across her desk. “Her number’s there.”

  “Thanks.” Clare dropped the box against the wall and took the paper slips. “Say, Lois, you don’t know anyone who could get the mold spots out of these felt banners, do you?”

  The church secretary sniffed a few times. “That’s what that smell is.” She tilted her head so that her perfectly cut bob swung sideways. “You’ve come to the right person. Not that I ever have to deal with mold, you understand, but I do know the best dry cleaner in the three-county area.”

  “Somehow, I knew you would.”

  In her office, Clare flung herself into her chair with a creak and a snap. She picked up two of the pink papers and held them up, one in each hand, as if weighing Karen Burns against Kristen McWhorter. She looked out the window at the diamond-pieced sky, longing for a four-hour nap. Steam off the smell of moldy old boxes, burrow under her grandmother’s quilt, turn her Thelonious Monk CD on low and forget about the world for awhile.

  Too bad the inward voice that gently and relentlessly urged her on could find her, even under a Baltimore quilt. And make itself heard even over jazz from the ’68 Monmartre session. Heck, God was probably playing at that session. She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Kristen? It’s Clare Fergusson. You left a message for me?”

  “Yeah. I was hoping . . . I have to go see my mom today to start sorting things out. I was wondering . . . would you come with me?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want some privacy with your mother? I mean, if you want to do more than go over the funeral plans with her. You two have some very intense issues to discuss.”

  Kristen groaned over the phone. “Yeah. The thing is, I think if you were there I’d, you know, be more likely to get to the tough stuff. I know it’s asking a lot . . .”

  “No, I’d be more than happy to come if I can be helpful, Kristen. It’s not asking a lot. I’m glad you thought to call me.”

  There was a pause. “About last night? I’m sorry I got all weird on you. I was just . . . it was all too much, you know?”

  “I know. Believe me, I understand.” Clare pulled her oversized agenda toward her. “I’ve got a counseling session at three, but I’m free until then. Give me the directions to your mother’s apartment, and I’ll meet you there.” She scribbled the address on a piece of scrap paper and wrote KRISTEN: NOON in the agenda. “Okay. See you in about half an hour.”

  Someone had hung a pair of plastic wreaths on the front doors of 162 South Street. The peeling apartment facades must have been workingman’s flats a hundred years ago. Utilitarian and cheap back then, and not improved by the last thirty years of unemployment and neglect. Still, Clare could see evidence of the coming Christmas as she fishtailed slowly down the street. Crayon-colored reindeer taped in windows, strings of fairy lights wrapped around the posts of one battered and sagging porch.

  She parked as close to the curb as she could. No sign of Kristen’s black Civic. She kept her engine running to ward off the cold and turned up the Top Forty station on her radio. Everything was calm in the afternoon’s watery sunlight, but she couldn’t be far from where Russ had answered a domestic disturbance call last Friday when she had gone on patrol with him.

  A girl with a toddler balanced on her hip trudged past Clare, ignoring the unusual sports car, intent on keeping her cigarette ash from blowing into the child’s face. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and Clare wondered if it was choice or a lack of them that kept her out of school. This was the sort of young woman and child her proposed program could help, if she could only get the vestry behind her. She blew out her breath in frustration.

  A slamming door jerked her back to the here and now. Kristen had arrived. Clare killed the engine and slid out of her car. Kristen walked around the MG, her eyes wide, nodding. “This is your car?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow. Way cool. I didn’t think priests had enough money for this sort of thing.”

  Clare laughed. “I don’t. I’ve had it for seven years and if something big goes, I’ll be in deep pockets. I really ought to sell it and get something more practical.”

  “Must be lousy in the snow.” Kristen opened the passenger-side door and peered in at the leather interior. “But, oh, man, it sure has some style.”

  Clare caressed the curve of the hood. “It sure does, doesn’t it?”

  Kristen clicked the lock and slammed the door shut. She pointed to Clare’s side. “You oughtta lock up around here.” She glanced up at the third story windows while Clare complied.

  “Are you ready for this, Kristen?” Clare asked, picking her way over the sidewalk snowbank to keep her boots dry.

  “No. I feel kinda sick to my stomach, to tell you the truth. But I’m here, so hey. Let’s do it.”

  Mrs. McWhorter buzzed them up without comment. The stairs were steep and poorly lit, a
nd Clare wondered if this place could pass a municipal safety inspection. Did Millers Kill have safety inspectors?

  The door to 4A swung open at Kristen’s knock.

  “Hello, Ma,” she said, her voice forcibly calm. Clare tried to school her shock at the size of the woman who embraced the ramrod-stiff girl.

  Brenda McWhorter pulled away from her surviving daughter, her expression a mixture of hurt and frustration. “Aw, Kristen, don’t be like that.” Her eyes flickered to where Clare stood in the hall. “Aw, now don’t tell me you’ve brought a cop with you. Krissie . . .”

  “She’s not a cop, Ma, she’s a priest. She’s the one who was there the night they found Katie’s—the night they found Katie. She’s been helping me out. This is Reverend Clare Fergusson.”

  Clare stuck out her hand. “Mrs. McWhorter,” she said, rummaging for something to say. “Pleased to meet you” and “Sorry about your husband” seemed grotesquely inappropriate under the circumstances. “I’m so very sorry about your recent losses,” she said. “From everything I’ve heard, Katie was an exceptional girl. She’ll be missed.” And as for your husband, good riddance to bad rubbish, Grandmother Fergusson added.

  Brenda McWhorter shook hands and led Kristen and Clare into the apartment. They bunched awkwardly in front of a massive maple sideboard. “Well, go ahead, take your coats off,” Mrs. McWhorter said, gesturing toward a row of hooks by the door. “Same place, nothin’s changed since you left.”

  Kristen rolled her eyes but obediently gathered up Clare’s bomber jacket and hung it alongside her own bulky coat.

  “What interesting pieces you have,” Clare said. “They look like antiques.”

  Brenda surveyed her kingdom. “They were my parents’. Came from the big farmhouse we had out toward Cossayaharie. We had to sell it when my dad passed, but I kept some of the furniture.”

  Kristen plunked herself into the narrow Victorian settee and crossed her arms. “What are you gonna do now that he’s gone, Ma? Move back out to Aunt Pat’s? Get a job? What?”

  Her mother sat, an operation that required her to lower her center of gravity over a well-used, well-sprung chair and then drop in a controlled fall. “Well, honey, I thought I’d stay right here. I know that we’ve had some problems in the past, but I figured now your daddy’s gone you and I can take up again, get to be friends. I got enough money to keep me . . .”

  Clare sat on a cane-seated ladder chair, her face composed and pleasant, wondering how another human being could let herself get that large. She shifted in her chair. No, that wasn’t fair. Not everyone grew up in an active family and started off in a career that demanded physical fitness. On the other hand, basic self-respect should get you off the sofa and on your feet—she twitched. She didn’t call alcoholism a lack of self-respect. She shouldn’t see obesity that way, either. If some people didn’t have the discipline to push away from the table after a third helping—her cheeks warmed at her persistent failure of compassion. Dear God, she thought, help me to accept as Christ accepted. Keep my mind on helping, not judging. And remind me to put in a five-mile run this evening.

  Kristen was going over her mother’s financial situation, asking to look over the pension and insurance documents, quizzing her on any other benefits. Mrs. McWhorter was at best vague about money matters.

  “Ma, you’re going to have to learn to keep a checkbook now. Come on down to the bank tomorrow and I’ll set you up. That way, I can help you balance your account for awhile. You got the information on the CDs and the savings? Can I see it, please?”

  Mrs. McWhorter heaved herself up from her chair and waddled down the hall. “Isn’t she smart?” she tossed back to Clare.

  Clare turned to Kristen, still sitting back with her arms crossed defensively over her chest. “You are smart about finances,” she said.

  “Everybody’s good about something, they say. I like it. I like numbers.”

  “So consistent, aren’t they? So easy to control.” Kristen shot her a look. Clare went on. “It can be a lot easier to throw yourself into your work than to face personal problems, have you noticed that? It’s comfortable and distracting.”

  Kristen shot up from the settee and threaded her way through the heavy furniture to the pass-through kitchen. “You want something to drink? I know Ma’s got soda in here.”

  “I’m fine. Are you going to ask your mother about what she’d like for the funerals?”

  Brenda McWhorter lumbered up the hallway, a sheaf of papers and envelopes in her hand. She stopped dead at Clare’s words. “Aw, Krissie,” she said. “We do gotta talk about that. You’re gonna take care of the details, aren’t you, honey? You know I’m no good at that sort of thing.”

  Kristen slammed the refrigerator door with enough force to set the contents rattling. “Yeah, Ma, I’m gonna take care of the details. I know you’re no good at that sort of thing.” Her voice began to crack. “You don’t like to deal with life’s crappy little details.” She slammed a liter bottle of orange soda on the counter and knocked over two plastic glasses in the drainboard before grabbing hold of one.

  “Krissie . . .”

  “Ma, I’m the kid here, remember? You’re the mom. You’re supposed to be taking care of me, not the other way around.” The soda slopped over the pebbled sides of the glass. “You were supposed to take care of me and Katie and I gotta tell you, Ma, you did a piss-poor job of it.” A barking sob escaped her before she covered her mouth.

  “Krissie . . .” Brenda’s hands fluttered ineffectually. Clare suddenly saw, very clearly, the small woman inside that bulky disguise. Had she done that to herself? Or was it more of Darrell’s handiwork? “I tried . . . you don’t understand. You never understood what it was like to need someone.” She looked down at the paperwork charting how her and Darrell’s money had grown over the years. She looked beseechingly toward Clare. “In a lot of ways, he was a real good husband and father.”

  Clare clenched her teeth tightly to keep her gorge down.

  “Ma, I gotta know. Was he doing Katie? Did he start messing with her after I moved out?”

  “Kristen! How can you say that!”

  Her daughter leaned over the speckled countertop, hands braced. “I know. We never say that, do we? We none of us ever came right out and said what was happening, did we? Not even Katie and me. Did he, Ma? Did he?”

  Brenda dropped her gaze to the carpet and shook her head. “He . . . I dunno if Katie told him something or if it was . . . if it was just you. He was good around Katie.” She looked up at her daughter again. “I couldn’t lose him, Krissie. I didn’t think . . .” She looked at the papers in her hand. “I didn’t think about it, that’s all. You gotta learn to overlook some things when you’re married. He took good care of me, and he loved me.” She started to cry.

  “Aw, Ma. Jesus, Ma. You didn’t think about it.” Kristen plodded around the counter and put her arms as far around her mother as she could. “Ma, he used all of us.” Her voice cracked, but she went on, “I made myself into the kind of person who will never get used again, and you can, too. It’s not too late.”

  Her mother shook her head. “I ain’t tough like you nor smart like Katie. I’ve always needed somebody to help me get along. I know you hate him, and I can’t blame you, you got that right. But I don’t know what I’ll do without him. God damn him for thinking he could make one last big deal.”

  Clare stepped forward involuntarily. What?

  Kristen wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve. “Geez, him and his big deals . . .”

  “Kristen.” The girl looked at Clare, red-nosed and blotchy-eyed. “If your father was killed while involved in one last ‘big deal,’ whoever he was dealing with may have been his killer.” Brenda jerked her head off her daughter’s shoulder. “It may have been Katie’s killer.”

  Kristen and Clare both looked at Brenda, who stepped back out of her daughter’s hold. “No,” she said. “I don’t wanna borrow trouble, Krissie, and neither do you.” She da
rted a glance at Clare. “I already said my piece to the cops, I don’t got anything else to say.”

  “Ma . . .” Brenda shook her head, backing away another step. Kristen’s eyes narrowed. “Ma,” she hissed, “if you know something and don’t tell me, I’m heading out this door and you can bury Dad in a shoebox by yourself for all the help you’ll get from me.”

  Clare laid a hand on the girl’s arm. “I don’t think your mother’s reluctant so much as she’s scared. Is that it, Mrs. McWhorter?”

  The woman shifted from foot to foot, her gaze darting from Kristen to Clare to Kristen again, her face a mask of misery. “I don’t want no trouble from the police,” she said.

  “The police will have to know what you tell us,” Clare said, “but I don’t see that they need to know who told us.” She caught Brenda’s eyes, wide and white, and made herself still, wiping out everything she already knew about the woman, her whole body open, listening.

  Clare held Brenda’s gaze until the older woman sighed and quivered in relaxation. “Darrell said he knew who the baby’s father was. Said he had surprised Katie and him together last winter, in a car.” She looked at the sheaf of papers trembling in her hand. “He said he could get money from the guy. He called him that afternoon, that last afternoon.”

  “Darrell called someone?”

  “Oh my God, Ma, do you know the phone number? Do you know his name?”

  Brenda’s face quivered. “He didn’t tell me none of the details, honey. You know I’m not good—”

  “Not good with details. Yeah, I know.”

  “There was a phone number written down.” Clare’s heart squeezed with excitement. Now they were getting somewhere. “I thought about doing something with it, but I wound up throwing it into the disposal.” Clare couldn’t help a small groan of frustration. “I was scared. I figured whoever this man was, he’d killed your father and maybe your sister and who’s to say he couldn’t kill me, too. I may not be smart, but I know when to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Mrs. McWhorter, when Darrell told you that he was going to get in touch with this man, did either one of you consider that you were going to be making a deal with the man who probably killed your daughter?” Clare knew she was speaking too sharply, but Brenda’s monstrous self-absorption was sucking the patience out of her.