In the Bleak Midwinter

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  Clare frowned. “Are you saying that getting information about Cody’s prospective adoptive parents isn’t an important part of your job?”

  Angela Dunkling let out an irritated snort. “Of course it is. Believe me, we have considerable information on the Burnses already. We don’t need to hear from everybody who goes to church with them about what a great couple they are.”

  Clare tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. If the letters were so ineffective, why was she getting this call from a DSS caseworker? “Why not simply file the letters in with the other information you have, then? Why are you answering them?”

  “Let’s not pussyfoot around this, okay? Your people are sending us letters, and they’re getting their state legislators and senators to send us letters, too. I don’t need some House Rep breathing down my neck over this just because some supporter of his has decided the Burnses would make ideal parents. It’s our job to determine what living arrangements will serve the best interest of the child. We’re still waiting on the police investigation to try to track down the biological parents of the child.”

  “Parent. His mother is dead.”

  “Father, then. The child can’t be cleared for adoption until we’ve made a final determination of his status vis-à-vis his father or living relatives.”

  “So meanwhile, Cody spends his first formative year in a foster home instead of with his future parents?”

  “Ms. Fergusson, he’s in a perfectly good home with a caring, experienced foster mom. I’ll give you her number and you can check her out yourself if you’re so concerned.” There was a pause, the faint sound of a Filofax flipping. “Deborah McDonald. 555-9385. Believe me, we’re not running orphanages out of Charles Dickens.” Ms. Dunkling sighed exasperatedly. “Do you have any idea how many prospective parents are out there looking for the Great White Baby? There are couples who’ve been on lists a lot longer than the Burnses. Why should they get to jump line?”

  “Because Cody’s biological parents left a note saying so?”

  “Forget it. Call off your hounds, Ms. Fergusson. We don’t need the additional headache and believe me, it’s not going to alter our final disposition in the case. If you want to help the Burnses, tell them to settle down and learn to work with the system instead of trying to manipulate it to serve their own purposes. And tell them to stop making unauthorized visits to Mrs. McDonald. They know the rules.”

  “What—they’ve been just stopping by to see Cody? That’s a problem?”

  “Yeah, it is a problem. As prospective adoptive parents, they shouldn’t be seeing the child without DSS supervision. Call Mrs. McDonald, she’ll tell you. Wednesday, Geoff Burns showed up without so much as a phone call at eight o’clock at night. Believe me, stunts like that aren’t going to help their application any.”

  Clare rested a hand on her open calendar. “This past Wednesday? The eighth?” The night Darrell McWhorter was killed.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “No reason. Yes, I’ll talk with them about that.”

  “And you’ll stop the letters?”

  Clare paused for a fraction of a second. “I’ll pass on your comments to my parishioners. I can only suggest, I can’t order them to do anything.”

  The DSS caseworker grunted. “I’ll look forward to being able to get back to work without attempts at coercion, then.”

  Clare rang off quickly. She tapped a finger on the square labeled “Wednesday, 8th.” Eight o’clock. Russ said they had told his officers they had been home all night. Perhaps Geoff Burns considered that to be the end of the workday and not the night? Maybe he stopped by Mrs. McDonald’s on his way home and hadn’t thought to mention it. Maybe he had driven straight home and spent the rest of the night watching TV with his wife. Maybe he had a passenger in his car when he visited Cody. Maybe he killed Darrell McWhorter, drove to Albany, rifled Katie’s room and returned to Millers Kill with no one the wiser.

  Clare folded her arms against her desk and slid flat until her head was resting on her arms. Dear Lord. She closed her eyes. Please, please don’t let me have been wrong about them.

  CHAPTER 20

  Clare grimaced at the back of the eighteen-wheeler spraying dirty slush over her windshield. The plows had cleared the roads efficiently after Wednesday’s snowfall, but the same wet combination of grit and salt that gave her enough traction to navigate through the winding hills to Fort Henry had turned her car’s Scarlet Metallic Special Lacquer finish—for which she had paid an extra seven hundred dollars in the days when she was young and flush—into a drab sparrow color identical to every other car she passed. She wondered how Russ and his officers identified vehicles when they all looked as if they’d been spray-painted with industrial waste. He was right, she was going to have to get another car. She could almost hear the salt eating away at the undercarriage as she drove.

  She glanced down at the directions Deborah McDonald had given her. “I’d be happy for you to come call, Reverend,” the foster mother had told her in their brief phone call. “All the ways I’ve had babies come into my care, and never by being dropped at a church doorstep. It’s a miracle you were there, that’s what I believe. A miracle.” Clare gripped her steering wheel more tightly and thumbed a spray of blue antifreeze across the windshield.

  The McDonald’s vinyl-sided garrison looked as if it had been plucked from some densely populated suburb and capriciously planted on a windy hillside surrounded by pasturage. Two life-sized plastic snowmen flanking the front steps and a plyboard Santa-with-reindeer did nothing to ease the loneliness of the house, whose only neighbor was a dairy farm a half mile down the twisting road.

  The woman who opened the door to Clare’s knock was like her home, a disconcerting blend of bare-bones plainness and cozy domesticity. Angular, unhandsome, with tightly permed hair and coffee colored eyes, wearing double-knit polyester pants and a sweatshirt decorated with puffy bears. Deborah McDonald smiled widely and took both Clare’s hands in her own.

  “You must be the minister. I’m so glad to meet you. Come in, come in!” Her kitchen was country cute and immaculate. “I was saying to Keith, that’s my husband, that of all the babies I took in, there never was one left on the church steps. Thank goodness you were there. Take off your coat! Can I offer you some coffee? Hot cocoa? You have to tell me what to call you. Our minister goes by the name of Mr. Simms—we’re Church of Christ—but I know you folks may do differently. We have lady ministers, too, you know. Not here, of course, but other places. I seem to recall reading in the Evangel there was one in New Jersey.”

  Clare accepted the proffered coffee. The geese marching around the rim reminded her of the mugs in Russ’s office. “Call me Clare. Please. I appreciate you seeing me, Mrs. McDonald.”

  “Deborah, call me Deborah. All these years and ‘Mrs. McDonald’ still sounds like my mother-in-law, though she’s eighty and living up at the Infirmary now.” She tilted her head toward a bulletin board covered with photographs of infants, children, teens, and young adults. “After all the kids I’ve had, ‘Mom’ seems more natural than my own name.”

  Clare examined the faces on the wall. “Looks like quite a crew. They must have kept you busy.”

  Deborah laughed. “Still do. I make it my business to knit something for each one of my kids for Christmas. Hats, scarves, mittens, the like. I start in January. I’m down to just three more to go. Four, including Cody. I’m doing up a little hat for him.”

  Clare, whose only craft accomplishment was refinishing furniture, almost missed the baby’s name while contemplating the scope of the foster mother’s gift-making project. Cody. Right. “Is the baby asleep?”

  “Lord, yes, you’d be able to hear him if he wasn’t. He’s a noisy boy, that one, always wanting to talk with us.” Deborah gestured Clare through the archway leading from the kitchen into the living room. “He gets the cutest expression, too, like he’s thinking, ‘Who said that?’ whenever he makes a noise.” She led Clare through a carpeted hallwa
y into a white-walled nursery with two cribs. The windows and cribs were swathed with petticoat fabric, and dancing bears lined the walls like gingerbread men.

  Cody sprawled in the middle of one of the cribs, his round tummy pushing out his fuzzy blue sleeper. “Gosh. He’s gotten bigger. I can’t believe it’s only been ten days since I saw him last.” Clare found it hard to connect this fat and contented infant with the bundle she had unwrapped that night in the parish kitchen.

  “He’s close to ten pounds. The doctor’s very pleased.”

  Ten pounds must be good. “Shouldn’t he be sleeping on his stomach?”

  “Oh, no. Only on the back, we know that these days. Cuts down on the instances of crib death.” Deborah smiled at Cody, the chocolate-sundae smile people get around babies. “We don’t want anything happening to this little guy.”

  Clare reached inside the crib. “May I?”

  “Touch him? Go ahead, until he’s hungry again nothing’s going to wake him up.”

  Clare settled her whole hand over Cody’s head and blessed him with an inarticulate surge of tenderness and amazement that the most helpless of creatures were caught and held by God. As she signed the cross on his forehead, Deborah nudged her arm and pointed to a needlepoint hanging near the window. HE KEEPS HIS EYE ON THE SPARROW it read. “Yes,” Clare said. “Yes, he does.”

  In the living room, Clare admired more pictures of graduations and proms and weddings before getting to the point. “I understand the Burnses have been visiting Cody. Did Ms. Dunkling from DSS tell you about the note that was left with Cody?”

  “Ayuh, she did, she’s kept me up to date on everything about Cody. She’s wonderful that way.”

  “Is it true Mr. Burns was here this past Wednesday? In the evening?”

  “Ayuh, though that’s not the only time it’s happened. Mrs. Burns showed up at the pediatrician’s office when I took Cody in for his checkup. And they came ’round unsupervised a day or two after I got him, although to be fair, there hadn’t been much time to arrange a proper visitation and they did call first.”

  “Did Mr. Burns call before he stopped by that night?”

  Deborah crossed her legs, a slither of polyester. “No, he didn’t, and to tell you the truth, the whole visit made me nervous. I won’t say he was drunk, because he wasn’t, but he smelled like he had definitely dropped off at the Dew Drop Inn for a few after work.”

  Clare shook her head. “After work?”

  “I figured he must have left his office, gone out for a beer or two and then hit on the bright idea to visit Cody. He was still in his coat and tie. Really, I don’t like to complain. I understand how hard it is for the adoptive parents to wait, and I’m not against a few visits. I like the company, and it’s good for the kids and the parents. But, Lord!” She threw her hands in the air. “I can’t have folks showing up here at eight o’clock at night, sulking all over my living room and disturbing the baby’s routine.”

  “Geoff Burns seemed sulky?”

  “I guess angry would be a better word. He showed up without so much as a by-your-leave, invited himself in just as I was getting ready for Cody’s eight o’clock feeding, and acted mad at the whole world. Insisted on holding the baby, but he was so mad or tense or something that he got Cody all riled up and the poor thing wouldn’t settle down to his bottle for over half an hour.” She leaned forward. “Babies can sense people’s moods very well in their body language, you know.”

  Clare took a drink of coffee. The newspaper headline she envisioned, PRIEST SUPPORTS MURDERER’S ATTEMPT TO ADOPT VICTIM’S CHILD had been joined by a subsidiary lead: DIOCESE SUED BY DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES.

  “Deborah,” she said, “how long does it take to get to the Old Schuylerville Road from here?”

  “Hmmm? Are you heading that way next? Let’s see, if you take the turn at Power’s Corners and then use old Route eleven, you can reach it in about ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes.” Long enough to get to the spot where Darrell McWhorter’s body had been dumped, take off for Albany, and still be home in time to meet the Millers Kill police at his front door. Clare had a sudden urge to drive to the Burnses’ office right that minute. She wanted the truth from them, no matter how wrong it might prove her instincts.

  She put her coffee on a needlepoint coaster. “Deborah, thank you so much for having me over to take a look at Cody and chat.” She stood. “I’d like to stop by and see him again sometime, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Deborah McDonald stood, gathering the mugs in one hand. “Not at all. I’m glad of the company, like I said.”

  The two women walked to the kitchen. “I promise you I’ll talk to the Burnses and mention your concerns.”

  The foster mother unhooked Clare’s coat from the rack. “I appreciate the chance to let ’em know without having to go through DHS and making it all official. I’m sure they’re perfectly nice people. Just terrible eager for their baby by this point, I imagine. I’ve seen it before. Waiting on a baby when you can’t have one of your own makes folks a little crazy at times.”

  Clare had to drive around the block three times before a parking space opened up. It looked as if the boutique owners at this end of Main Street would have a merry Christmas. She could have found a space more readily a few blocks away, but she still hadn’t gotten around to shopping for new boots and her low suede ones had already seen more than enough snow and salt.

  The Burnses’ receptionist looked up, startled, when Clare came through the stairwell door.

  “Ummm . . . can I help you?”

  “Yes. I’m Clare Fergusson. I need to see Mr. Burns right away. Or Mrs. Burns, if he’s unavailable.” Clare unzipped her coat and let it drop onto the asymmetrically striped sofa.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Burns is in court all afternoon and Mrs. Burns is working out of her home today. I could make you an appointment for tomorrow . . . ?”

  “Oh—” Clare bit down hard on what she had been about to say, “—gosh darn.” She snatched up her coat again. “No, thanks. I’ll try to get Mrs. Burns at home.”

  On the drive to the Burnses’ house, Clare tried out what she might say. Karen, did your husband shoot Darrell McWhorter? Or how about, Karen, did your husband father a child and try to cover it up with this abandoned-at-the-church-doorstep scheme and when that fell through, did he start killing everyone else involved? “Oh, shoot me now,” Clare groaned.

  The Burnses’ house was a brick Italianate revival with five-foot-high windows and a cupola that must have given them a view of the entire town. Wreaths decorated with wooden fruits hung from the deeply-paneled front doors, which had the look of an unused entrance. Down the long drive, by the separate garage at the corner of the house, Clare found the back door.

  Karen Burns opened at the second ring. “Reverend Fergusson? What brings you out here?”

  “Well, I—” Clare stamped her boots on the welcome mat.

  “Please, come on in. No need to stand in the cold to talk.”

  Clare pushed into the narrow hall lined with hanging coats, boots, shelves of hats and gloves. She left her coat, following Karen into the kitchen.

  “Is this about the letter-writing campaign? I’ve gotten some wonderfully supportive notes and phone calls from people, you know. Mrs. Strathclyde told me she actually called our congressman’s office to complain. Can you believe it?” Karen led Clare through a high-ceilinged, granite-countered kitchen into a small den done up in burgundy and hunter green. Karen waved at the glass-fronted barrister’s bookcases and the computer centered on a wide mahogany desk. “My home office. I work here about seventy-five percent of the time, now. When we adopt Cody, I’ll be able to switch to a twenty-hour-a-week schedule without making any drastic changes.” She gestured toward a tapestry-covered love seat.

  Clare sat. She took a steadying breath. “Karen, I didn’t come to discuss the letters.”

  Karen sank gracefully into a green leather chair. “You didn’t.”

 
; “I know that the police have been asking you about the night Darrell McWhorter was killed. I know you both claim to have come straight home from work.”

  “Claim?”

  Clare leaned forward, trying to meet the other woman’s eyes. Karen tilted her head, examining her hands. Her fingernail polish matched the study’s rug. “I know Geoff wasn’t at home at eight o’clock that night. He was at Cody’s foster mother’s house. Wearing a suit and tie, as if he’d come straight from work, and smelling as if he’d had a drink or two.”

  The lawyer looked straight at Clare, her beautiful face calm. “What are you suggesting?”

  “It looks bad, that’s what I’m suggesting! Karen, you two have got to tell the police the truth. What happened that night?”

  Karen looked toward the bookcase. “Nothing.” She compressed her lips into a tight line. “I don’t know.”

  Clare slid to the end of the love seat until their knees almost touched. “Tell me what you do know.”

  The other woman continued staring at the bookcase. Clare touched her arm. “Please, Karen. I want to help you. And Geoff. But you have to be honest with me.”

  There was a pause. Slowly, Karen turned her head to face the priest. “We had a horrible fight that afternoon in the office. We had been arguing about what approach to take with McWhorter all day long and we got . . . it just . . . anyway, I told him what he could do, and took off. I was so angry with him I wanted to . . .” She blew out a breath. “I did a little shopping, I called my mother, I fixed some stir fry for dinner—you know, working the mad off.” She laced her fingers together. “Dinnertime came and went, with no Geoff, and no phone call. I started to get worried. I mean, really worried; the weather was bad and he was driving the little Honda Civic. Finally, finally he showed up around ten or so.” She shook her head. “I didn’t know whether to kill him or kiss him. Turns out he’d been out at the Dew Drop Inn most of the night. I don’t know how he managed to get himself home, he was in no condition to drive. I was horrified! He could have killed himself. Not to mention the damage to his reputation if he had been picked up. The last thing we need is a morals censure from the Bar Association or a D.U.I. conviction on his record.”