In the Bleak Midwinter

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  Vaughn nodded. “I want Wes here to answer questions.” He looked at his watch. “I can head for West Point later this afternoon and bring him back tomorrow morning first thing.”

  “Good. I’m going down to Albany. Katie’s sister gave me the address yesterday. I’ll talk to Katie’s housemates, and see what they remember. Do you have a picture of Wes I could borrow?” She looked around the room. All the family photos were framed and hanging on the walls.

  “Here, take this.” Edith Fowler grabbed a large bound volume off the coffee table. “It’s his high school yearbook.”

  “Thank you. I—”

  “I’d like to see that photograph you have,” Edith went on. “Just to make sure there’s no mix-up.”

  “Of course.”

  Vaughn opened the door. In the kitchen, the Shatthams were intently poring over cookbooks. Clare wondered how soundproof the study door was.

  “All set. We’ll just see Reverend Fergusson out.”

  In the hall foyer, Edith handed Clare her coat. “Thank you. It’s—” Clare yanked her gloves from the pocket and dug inside. “—right here.”

  The Fowlers examined the Polaroid. Edith made a soft noise.

  “It’s him, all right,” Vaughn said, his voice gravelly. “I’ll get him on the phone right away. I want to get to the bottom of this.” He shook his head. “May we keep this?”

  Clare reached for the picture. “I’d like to take it with me to Albany. I hope it’s nothing, but it may need to go to the police.” She deposited it back into her pocket.

  There was a noise from the kitchen entrance. “We wanted to say good-bye,” Mitchell Shattham said hesitantly.

  “Edie, are you all right?” his wife asked. Edith Fowler shook her head.

  “We’ll want to get in touch with you as soon as you’re back from Albany,” Vaughn said.

  “I’ll stop by my office. You can leave me a message and I’ll call you from there.” She tucked the yearbook under her arm and shook hands with the Fowlers. “I’m sorry to lay all this on you this morning. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.” She waved to the Shatthams as she stepped off the porch. Before the door closed, she could see Barbara Shattham embracing Edith Fowler.

  In her car, Clare let her head drop back against the headrest and closed her eyes, boneless. She opened them again. Through steel and glass, she could hear the familiar flat pulsing of rotors. She pressed her face against the chilly window. There it was, at maybe eight hundred feet, flying northwest. Maybe a skiing trip. She squinted. Looked like a Bell AH-51. Good ship, fast, reliable. Before she left Virginia, she had been trying to talk her dad into replacing his old OH-50.

  Shifting, she flipped open the glove compartment and flicked through the maps there. Eastern New York State, with a city map of Albany. She folded the heavy paper into a manageable size and started the engine. She could see the helicopter in the passenger-side window now. As she watched, unable to look away, it heeled its tail rotor up, accelerating toward the Adirondacks. She rubbed a gloved hand over her dry lips. God. She wished she were up there right now.

  CHAPTER 22

  Emily Colbaum was a tiny, fey girl with huge brown eyes and a close-cropped haircut that looked like Audrey Hepburn on speed. She stood in the doorway of the room she had once shared with Katie McWhorter, crossing and uncrossing her arms. “You see, Reverend? I mean, I’m not a complete slob, but it would be hard to know what went missing.”

  Clare crawled backwards from underneath Katie’s bed. “I’m really not so concerned about what the man took. I was hoping maybe there was something left behind. A photograph, a note from a phone message . . . something.” She grunted in frustration as she clambered to her feet.

  “The cops were pretty thorough. Of course, I think they were thinking, like, drugs, or something bad like that, like the only thing that could get a girl killed was either a rapist or being mixed up in something bad.” Emily crossed her arms around herself again. “Katie wasn’t like that.”

  “I know.” Clare sat on the bed that had been Katie’s. The posters on her half of the room ran heavily to cute kittens with inspirational sayings and landscapes with greeting-card poetry. There was nothing hinting of a secret life in her messy desk and overstuffed bookcase. Clare brushed a piece of a dust bunny off her nose. She was eighteen, and pregnant. Let’s say by Wes Fowler. She didn’t want anyone to know. Why?

  “Emily, did Katie ever talk about what she wanted to do after college?”

  “Oh, sure. She wanted to get into computers. Maybe Web designing, SYSOP, she had lots of ideas. She wanted her own business, to work for herself. She could have done it, too. She was just amazingly hardworking. She was like, never partying or blowing off class.”

  “So getting married or having children right away wasn’t in her plan.”

  “No way. I couldn’t believe it when they told me she’d had a baby. I just couldn’t believe it.”

  “Hey, who’s here?” A black girl trailing layers of knitwear sidled around Emily into the room. She had multiple earrings and a small stud set in one nostril. “Hi, I’m Ebony.”

  “Ebony rooms with Sara, across the hall.”

  “Yeah, the room where you don’t have to listen to that nasty dog next door.”

  “Yeah, but you get the street lamp all night long. This is Reverend Clare, from Katie’s hometown. She’s kind of helping Katie’s sister.”

  “Hi, Ebony.” Clare rose and shook the girl’s hand. “I have a picture I already showed Emily, of Katie with a boy. I think he might be the father of her baby.” She dug into her pants pocket, grateful she was wearing off-duty khakis and a wool turtleneck instead of her usual garb. “Have you ever seen him?”

  Ebony studied the photograph. She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever saw any guy with Katie, you know? She was . . . focused. She wanted to hit the ground running.”

  “I was telling the Rev how I was, like, in disbelief when I heard she had had a baby.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ebony agreed, handing the photo back to Clare. “I thought she was just putting on weight. We all were complaining about the food, and the freshman fifteen and all that stuff. Most of us eat at the dining halls, and man, that stuff is nasty for your figure.”

  “I remember,” Clare said, smiling a little. “Look, I left a yearbook from Katie’s high school downstairs. There are some more pictures of the boy—his name is Wes. Did she ever mention that name?”

  Ebony and Emily looked at each other.

  “You ever hear that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “Would you take a look at the yearbook? Just in case?”

  The living room of the group house was cheerfully ramshackle, furnished with someone’s old family-room sofa, crate-style and director’s chairs, an elaborately carved coffee table that had been the height of Mediterranean chic in 1972, and the ubiquitous cinder-block-and-board shelving. The girls sat on the sofa together. Clare retrieved the yearbook from the coffee table.

  “This is his senior picture.” Wes was a good-looking boy, square-jawed and athletic, a young version of his father.

  “What is this, skinhead hair?”

  “No, he’s in the U.S. Military Academy.”

  “And he got an early start on the buzzcut thing. No, I’ve never seen this guy.” Ebony leafed through a few pages. “Here’s Katie.” She read the script below the photograph. “ ‘SUNY Albany. Favorite memory of MKHS, the junior trip car wash fund-raiser, and Mr. Delogue’s class. Quote: I think I can, I think I can.’ ” She flipped through a few more pages. “Man, I knew she came from a small town. Look at these folks. What’s the matter, they don’t allow black people in Millers Kill?”

  “Ebony!” Emily squealed.

  Clare smiled crookedly. “Let’s just say that diversity is not their strong suit.”

  “No lie. Hey, Em. Isn’t this that girl who came to see Katie at the beginning of the year?”

  “W
hat? Who?” Clare leaned over the coffee table to see.

  “This blonde copping an attitude. Remember her, Em?”

  On a page of candid photographs, Ebony had one finger squarely on a Seventeen magazine blonde with perfect skin and a form-fitting tie-dyed dress.

  “Alyson Shattham was here visiting Katie?” Clare blinked in disbelief.

  “It wasn’t like, a social call.” Emily said. “She was a bitch on wheels.”

  “She had some sort of problem with Katie. Actually, she had a problem with all of us. Acted like her shit didn’t smell.” Ebony looked at Clare, biting her lip. “Oh. Sorry, Reverend. I forgot.”

  “That’s okay. Tell me what you remember about Alyson’s visit.”

  “She wanted to speak with Katie. She was, like, very rude. They went into the kitchen to talk and shut the door.”

  “She was definitely riding Katie. But Katie, she could hold her own. I don’t know what they went on about while they were in the kitchen, but blondie flounced out of here like somebody had caught her tail in a crack.”

  “Did Katie ever tell you what they talked about?”

  “No. She was, like, very private with stuff bothering her. She would smile and change the subject if you asked if she was okay. Like, she didn’t want to burden anybody.”

  Ebony nodded in agreement.

  “Did either of you ever see Alyson here again? Or did Katie mention she saw her again?”

  Ebony and Emily looked at each other.

  “You ever see her after that time?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me, neither.”

  Clare stood up straight and rubbed her forefinger across her lips. Alyson Shattham. Now that was interesting.

  Clare picked up the yearbook. “I think I’ll show this around at the computer center where Katie worked. Maybe someone there overheard her or saw her with either Wes or Alyson.” She glanced out the window. “Then I’d better head back home. I don’t want to get caught in any more of this upstate weather. I have a friend who doesn’t trust my car in the snow.”

  Clare checked her rearview mirror, changed lanes, and wedged her soda between her thighs. She adjusted the radio tuner as an eighteen-wheeler passed her. Traffic was light on the Northway this Saturday afternoon.

  “WNCR’s accu-weather update!” the speakers blared. She turned the volume down. “A low pressure system continues to move in fast from the northeast,” the announcer said portentously. “I’m looking for snow to start mid-afternoon, with temperatures falling into the single digits by nightfall and increasing storm intensity. Accumulations from four to six inches along the Hudson Valley areas, higher in the mountains. Get out those skis if you haven’t already, because it’s prime time at the peaks!” The weather report broke for an ad extolling snowboarding at Hidden Valley Ski Area.

  “Wonderful,” Clare muttered. She ate a few more french fries. She was a long way from being able to “smell snow” as Russ claimed he could do, but even she could tell the lead-gray clouds darkening the sky to the north meant another snowstorm. Didn’t it ever stop snowing up here?

  “Is it my imagination, or is this a really snowy December?” the DJ asked.

  “It’s not your imagination, Lisa, this is the third snowiest December since 1957,” the smooth-voiced weatherman said. “And with the storms now forming over the Rockies and the Canadian plains, we may set a new record before the month is over.”

  Clare groaned.

  “So get out and get that Christmas shopping done before you’re stuck indoors waiting for the plows, right, Dave?”

  “That’s right, Lisa!”

  “Let’s have something seasonal, then!”

  Harry Connick, Jr.’s voice filled the car. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas . . .” Clare picked her bacon burger off the yearbook cover. She might as well have left Albany right after talking with Emily and Ebony, instead of waiting until the afternoon, risking driving into the storm. No one at the university’s computer center could recall seeing Katie with Wes or Alyson.

  She chewed her rapidly cooling burger thoughtfully. Alyson had lied straight out to her, Russ, and her parents. Maybe Wes had thrown her over for Katie. Could she have murdered in a fit of jealousy? What could she have said to have lured Katie back to Millers Kill? Had she found out about the baby, somehow?

  Keeping her eyes on the highway, Clare groped for a napkin and wiped her mouth. She found it easy to think the worst of Alyson. Something about that girl got under her skin. Who would have guessed she still had unresolved issues from her high-school days as an ugly duckling? She frowned. Maybe Alyson and Wes both did it, like that high-school couple out in Texas, who had murdered a girl who threatened their romance.

  She sighed. She was going to have to call Russ and tell him everything she’d found out. The convoluted strands of this case twisted around like bad wiring, an offense to her pilot’s sense of order. Maybe he had been right to jump on the Burnses. Not because they had been guilty, but because trying to put together the events of the crime with only pieces of motivation and insight into the human heart was hopeless. Real, physical evidence, that’s what pointed the finger at the guilty. Besides, how was she going to get Alyson to talk to her? Russ was . . . was . . . not entirely right. But he was a little right when he told her to leave it to the professionals. Although if he thought she was going to admit that over the phone, he had another think coming.

  She pulled into the tiny parking area behind St. Alban’s an hour or so before sunset, grateful to have beaten out the storm. She had no illusions about her winter driving skills. She unlocked the back door and made her way up to her office, pausing to plug in the coffeemaker. Lois must have turned down the thermostat when she left at noon, since the parish hall was even colder than usual. Clare could up the setting by a few degrees, but her first good look at the yearly oil bills a few days ago had shown her exactly why the church was rarely warmer than 62 degrees, even in the coldest weather. She sighed. Mr. Hadley would be in at 5:30 tomorrow morning to turn the heat up before the services. She could tough it out for a few hours this afternoon.

  She carried her coffee into her office. As if in answer to her virtuous intentions, there was an iron carrier overflowing with split logs and a basket of kindling next to the fireplace. “Mr. Hadley!” she said. “You dear, sweet man!”

  She had once read that a fire actually takes warm air out of a room, but you couldn’t prove it by her. With flames popping the logs and the iron fire-back radiating heat, she finally felt warm enough to take off her parka. Reaching for the phone, she shook her head in bemusement. Computers and cell phones and nuclear power and space shuttles, and here she was, heating herself like a curate in a Dickens novel.

  “Millers Kill Police. May I help you?”

  “Harlene? It’s Clare Fergusson. Is the chief in?”

  “He sure isn’t, Clare. But I know he’s been trying to get ahold of you. I expect him back within an hour or so. Want to leave a message?”

  “He’s been trying to reach me? Okay. Yes . . . tell him I called, and that I’ll be here at my office for a couple of hours. I need to speak with him about Katie McWhorter’s case.”

  “I’ll do that. Have a good one.”

  “Thanks, Harlene. You, too.”

  She clunked down the receiver. Tapped a pencil against her lips. May as well get the messages and start returning calls. Maybe the Fowlers had spoken to Wes and persuaded him to tell the truth about his relationship with Katie. And there was Alyson to consider. It was probably a bad idea to talk with the Shatthams before she heard back from Russ.

  She retraced her steps to the main office and pressed the messages button on Lois’s phone. The first message was from Russ. “Just calling to see how everything’s going. Give me a call when you get in.” The second was someone asking about early-morning services, the third was from the Cutlers, wanting to know their pledge balance. The forth and fifth were also from Russ. “I’ve tried calling your home. Are you
out, or what? Give me a call when you get this, will you?” The last message was from Edith Fowler. “Reverend Clare? Vaughn and I spoke briefly with Wes this morning. I don’t want to go into it over the machine, I’m sure you’ll understand. Vaughn called the Commandant and has permission to pick up Wes for the rest of the weekend. If the driving’s not too bad, they’ll be back late tonight, otherwise he’ll stay over and they’ll return tomorrow. Can we all meet tomorrow afternoon? Let me know. 555-1903.”

  Six or seven pink memo slips poked out of her mail cubbie on the wall. She squinted against the growing dimness in the hall, reading them on the way back to her room. Inquiry about a christening. Possible new members. Sterling Sumner wants another meeting about the boiler. Chief Van Alstyne called, no message.

  Kristen McWhorter called, left no return number. Most urgent, underscored by Lois’s confident pen. Has info re: who killed her father. She and mother are hiding out—here Lois had made a big, black question mark and exclamation—at cousin’s hunting cabin. Please come at once. Mother does not trust police. The detailed directions to the cabin covered the rest of the pink slip and continued onto another.

  “Lois!” Clare said to her fireplace. “Couldn’t you put the ‘most urgent’ one on top? Holy cow.” Too many years as a church secretary undoubtedly gave a person a jaundiced view of others’ emergencies. She took a quick gulp of coffee and donned the police parka. She really did need to get her own someday soon. She stuffed the directions into her pocket and pulled on her gloves. Kristen’s call had come in just at noon, three and a half hours ago. She must be frantic by now.

  Outside, snow was showering down in tiny, dry flakes, freckling her cheeks and nose as she brushed off her windshield. There wasn’t that much accumulation yet. If it took her less than an hour to reach the cabin, she shouldn’t have too much difficulty with the roads. The MG’s engine roared to life reassuringly. Of course, she might not be able to get back out until the storm finished up. She used the last napkin to wipe the melted snow off her face. When she had been young and romantic, she had fantasized about being snowbound in a rustic cabin. But she had for sure never pictured Brenda McWhorter in there with her.