“How about you?”
“When I was a girl, I was definitely in my mother’s camp. I was sure he had been set upon by brigands and murdered after fighting like a lion to escape. Later, as an adult…” She flicked on her turn signal and swung the car majestically onto Main Street. “I came to believe he ran away. He certainly wasn’t the only man to take that way out during the depression. I didn’t notice it much as a little girl, but those were hard times. The year he disappeared, two of the four banks in town closed. I remember the Ladies Auxiliary started coming by my school with box lunches because some children had nothing but a hard roll or an apple to eat. I found out later, from my grandmother, that by the time my father had been ruled dead, his life insurance was gone. The company went bankrupt. That happened far too often in the thirties.” The light turned red a block ahead of them, and Mrs. Marshall braked, reducing the speed of the boat-sized car from thirty-five miles an hour, to twenty-five, to something Clare could have matched during a good run. Clare tried not to twitch.
“How did you and your mother get on without your father? Did she have a job?”
They were still slowing down when the light turned green again. “No, Mother never worked. Of course, few women did, even in those days. There was so much more work to do at home than there is now, you know. It was hard for her, but she always managed to pinch by. She had investments. She and my father helped Uncle David start his garage, and that certainly did well over time. We never had luxuries, but I never wanted for anything important. And when the time came, I was able to attend college. I was the only girl in my high school class to do so. That was before the GI Bill and student loans and all that.”
“Where did you go?” Clare asked, imagining one of the state universities or subsidized colleges.
“Smith. Class of ’47.”
Clare blinked. “Good school. Were you a work-study student?”
“No, Mother paid for it all.” She risked another glance at Clare before returning her attention to the road. “She never spent anything on herself. Everything she had she spent on me, and then on the clinic, and then it went into the trust at her death.”
Clare opened her mouth to point out that Jane Ketchem hadn’t done too badly for a woman with no job and no visible means of support, but her grandmother Fergusson hissed in her ear, Nothing’s more vulgar than talking about money! So she snapped her jaw shut and watched as they turned with great deliberation onto Elm Street.
Several cars were parked along the street in front of the Rouses’ house, including, Clare noted with no surprise, the chief of police’s pickup truck. Mrs. Marshall pulled in as close as she could, and Clare juggled the casserole dish out of the car while Mrs. Marshall retrieved a cherry pie-“Store bought, I’m afraid”-from the backseat.
This time, Clare didn’t have a chance to admire the deep moldings and polished brass on the Rouses’ door. The minute Mrs. Marshall set foot on the steps, it whisked open, revealing a little pear-shaped woman with a face like a homemade dumpling. “Lacey Marshall, you be careful on those steps,” she said, reaching for the pie. “Give me that. Come on in. Oh, is that a casserole? How nice. Renee will be set for a few days at this rate. Which’ll be a help. Although you know, sometimes puttering around in the kitchen can be a relief from thinking about your problems. Oh! Who is this?”
During the course of the monologue, Clare had followed Mrs. Marshall into the foyer, set the casserole dish on a marble-topped commode that had probably stashed mittens and hats in the Rouses’ child-rearing days, and unwound her scarf from around her neck.
“Yvonne, I’d like you to meet the Reverend Clare Fergusson, our priest at St. Alban’s. Clare, this is Yvonne Story. Yvonne was our librarian at the Millers Kill Public Library until she retired, much to our loss.”
“Oh, I had to retire in order to fit in all the other things I was doing at the time. Not that I didn’t love being librarian. Everyone always said it was a natural fit, a librarian named Story.” She snorted at her own joke. “So nice to meet you. I’d heard the Episcopalians had a new minister. I used to be a Methodist myself. But when Dr. Gannet left, it all went straight downhill. That new fellow couldn’t preach his way out of a paper sack. So I abandoned ship. Now I watch this nice television preacher. So much easier than getting up and dressed on a Sunday morning!”
Clare tried to squeeze in a how-do-you-do while Yvonne Story pumped her hand, but it was futile. She settled for smiling and nodding.
“Isn’t this terrible about poor Allan? I mean, I hate to assume the worst. But there’s not much of a way you can put a good face on this, is there? Poor Renee. I hope he left her well set up. She’s never had to work, like me. What will she do without him? That’s the downside of having a husband. That’s why I never got married.”
Clare felt her smile glazing over. Deliver me, O Lord, she prayed.
“Yvonne.” Renee Rouse appeared in the doorway between the front hall and the living room. “Would you be a dear and go make some more coffee? And a pot of tea. I’m sure everyone would like something warm on such a cold day.”
“Oop. Of course, Renee. And I’ll put this pie in the kitchen for you, Lacey. Did you get it from the IGA? They do nice pies. Not as good as homemade, mind you, but good.”
“Thank you so much, Yvonne,” Mrs. Rouse interrupted.
“Oh, you’re right. To the kitchen for me. Ta-ta. See you later. Nice meeting you, Reverend.” She continued to talk as the door to the kitchen shut behind her. Clare took off her coat and hung it in the hall closet. The librarian?
Renee Rouse closed her eyes. She was holding the edge of the archway, her knuckles white.
“How long has she been here?” Mrs. Marshall asked.
“Since nine.” Mrs. Rouse tried to smile.
Mrs. Marshall picked up her casserole. “I’ll pop into the kitchen and keep her occupied for a bit.”
“Bless you, Lacey.” Renee Rouse squeezed one of Mrs. Marshall’s slender arms. She was dressed much the same as the older woman in a simple sweater and warm slacks. Classics. Her grandmother Fergusson would have approved. But unlike Mrs. Marshall, who radiated warmth in her marigold sweater and lipstick, Renee Rouse looked cold. The wall that had held life’s problems at bay had crumbled in the space of an evening, and now she was drowning in reality.
“Reverend Fergusson.” She blinked, as if she had just noticed Clare. “Thank you for coming by.” Her smile was a bad copy of the smooth social face Clare had seen on her last visit.
She took Mrs. Rouse’s hands. “How are you doing?”
“Okay. It seems to vary from minute to minute. Last night, when the officer called to tell me about Allan’s car, that was very bad.” She bit her tongue, and for a moment, it looked as if she was going to cry. “But Chief Van Alstyne is here, and from the things he’s been asking me, I know he’s still holding out hope Allan is… all right.”
Clare squeezed her before letting go. “No one will do more to get your husband back than the chief.” Then, because even hopeful speculation about the future would likely be painful, she said, “Tell me about Allan. You two seem very close. How did you meet?”
This time, Mrs. Rouse smiled the genuine smile of happy recollection. “It was the oldest cliché in the book. I was his secretary.” She linked her arm in Clare’s and led her through the living-room archway. “He was fresh from his residency in New York and had just started working at the clinic. The old secretary couldn’t spell and refused to take dictation from a machine, so he fired her.”
Clare could see three women in the living room, grouped together on the sofa, and another pair at the gleaming dining-room table, visible from the doorway separating the two rooms. Someone had evidently brought a Bundt cake, and the tables were littered with porcelain dessert plates and straight-edged coffee cups in saucers, as if the gathering were a morning bridge game that had taken on an unexpectedly somber cast.
“I had been working for the Glens Falls Insurance Compa
ny, but I wasn’t terribly happy there, so when my mother told me about the handsome, young, single doctor who was looking for a secretary, I jumped ship.”
“And it was obviously a good career move.”
Renee Rouse laughed. The three women around the sofa glanced at her, as if checking to make sure it wasn’t the opening salvo of a hysteric fit, and then returned to their conversation. Mrs. Rouse led Clare to a love seat tucked between two bookcases and sat down. “It was the best thing I ever did. Allan had been in New York for several years, in medical school and afterward, and he was the most cosmopolitan and sophisticated man I had ever met. He had been dating a woman in New York but wasn’t seeing anyone here, and he was always complaining at the clinic about how his life was all work and he never had any fun. One day I screwed up my nerve and said to him, ‘Why don’t you come to Lake George Saturday night with me and some friends?’ I was sure he’d think the carny rides and boardwalk would be stupid, compared to what he was used to in New York. But we had a wonderful time, and we went the next weekend, and the next, and one thing led to another, and we were married the next summer.”
“That’s so romantic.” And it was true. Every story of “how we met” was romantic because every one had the magical element of blissful chance-if he had kept on the old secretary, if her mother hadn’t told her about the job-and the sense of divine providence. They were meant to meet. They were destined to fall in love.
Russ Van Alstyne walked through the living-room door.
He was jacketless, in jeans and a uniform shirt, which meant he was probably not officially on duty. He was carrying a cardboard box big enough to hold the contents of a file cabinet drawer, and as he turned, scanning the room for Mrs. Rouse, Clare had just enough time to register that he was overdue for a haircut, before his eyes settled on hers.
He covered the space between the door and the love seat in three steps and was lowering the box to the floor before he shifted his gaze from Clare to the woman sitting next to her. “Mrs. Rouse,” he said, “I want to take a minute to go over what I’m bringing with me, but first”-he smiled a little-“can you point me toward a bathroom?”
“Through the dining room, into the kitchen, on your right,” she said.
“Thanks.” His eyes returned to Clare. “Reverend.”
“Chief.” She twisted toward Mrs. Rouse, quite deliberately not watching him walk away, and picked up the first thread she could find leading back to their conversation. “So you’ve been married since…?”
“Nineteen sixty-four.”
“And have you lived in this house since then?” Clare glanced around the room, safe now that Russ had disappeared through the dining-room doorway. “It has a wonderful feel to it. Very welcoming, as if it’s been sheltering a family for a long time.”
Mrs. Rouse smiled. “Thank you! But no, we didn’t move here until we’d been married about ten years. When we started out, we were the proverbial church mice. We had Kerry right away, which was what everyone did in those days, start your family before the ink had dried on the wedding certificate.” She leaned forward and patted Clare’s knee. “Your generation is much more sensible. Wait until you’ve established yourselves before having children.” Clare had a flash of self-consciousness-is that what I’m doing?-before returning her attention to Mrs. Rouse. “Of course, Allan was working for the clinic, so it wasn’t as if he was earning what he could have in private practice.”
“Did he ever consider leaving the clinic?”
“All the time. At least during those early years. He had a plan all worked up for after he had fulfilled his obligation to Mrs. Ketchem. She had paid his way though medical school and his residency, you know, so that he could come back and serve in her clinic.”
“Like the military.”
“Yes. He was going to go back to New York once his seven years were up and join in a partnership with some of his friends from medical school. Then life would be grand, we wouldn’t have to eat beans, etcetera. I used to tease him about it, call him Jacob. Laboring seven years to win his bride.”
“But you didn’t leave.”
“No. He became very close to Mrs. Ketchem in her final illness. He was with her when she died, you know. I think he became caught up in her vision of what the clinic could mean for the town. He knew darn well the board of aldermen would never find anyone as dedicated to the job as he was.” Her smile tipped up on one side. “And it didn’t hurt that they revisited his salary after Mrs. Ketchem died. It’s funny,” she said, her eyes easing into nostalgia. “During the years when you’re living on macaroni and cheese and falling into bed exhausted each day from taking care of little kids, you long so for the future. And it isn’t until the future arrives that you realize how wonderful it all was.”
Clare reached for Mrs. Rouse’s hand at the same moment Russ reentered the dining room. Without turning to look, she knew he was there, circling around the shining walnut table, coming through the archway, crossing the floor. “Mind if I interrupt you two?” he said. Mrs. Rouse’s relaxed expression tightened into taut lines of reined-in panic.
He squatted next to the love seat, resting one hand on the cover of the cardboard box. “The first thing I want you to know is that we’ll be calling the friends that you said you were calling the night your husband disappeared. We’re not checking up on you-”
Oh yeah? Clare thought.
“-but maybe talking with the police will jar some memories loose.” He smiled, an I’m-on-the-job-so-everything-will-be-all-right smile that seemed to ease Mrs. Rouse’s tension.
“I’ve got a lot of your husband’s financial information here,” he said. “Bank account statements, credit card bills, things related to your expenses. There were also a lot of miscellaneous papers in the middle drawer of his desk; I’ve packed them up, too.”
“I can’t imagine what use all that will be, except for you to see I spend too much on clothes.” Renee Rouse laughed, a brittle sound that died away almost before it had begun. “What do you think you’re going to find?”
“I don’t know yet. But if we go on the assumption your husband is alive, then either he’s taken himself off deliberately, or he is, for some reason, unable to come home to you. I’m going to look for something that might give us a push in one direction or another.” Clare watched Mrs. Rouse’s face as she came to the realization that there could be explanations behind her husband’s disappearance almost as painful as his death.
“One thing we know is that he had his wallet and his checkbook with him. You two keep your accounts at Key Bank, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d like to contact the manager and have them place an alert notice on your accounts. They’ll notify us if a check is written on the account or if he uses his ATM. Obviously, this’ll be a lot easier if you aren’t writing checks and using your card-”
Mrs. Rouse held up one hand. “I have a separate account that I use most of the time. Allan’s checkbook and ATM card are to our big joint account, and I hardly ever draw on that. He was-” She caught herself, her eyes terrified by the way she had put him into the past tense. “He is,” she began again, “the bill payer in our house.”
At that moment, a single voice in a one-woman conversation flowed out of the kitchen, cascaded through the dining room, and began to swirl around the living room. “Here comes the coffee! And Lacey has the tea. Nancy, you go back and bring out the tray with the sugar and cream on it, will you? I hope everyone is okay with leaded. I couldn’t find the decaf. But nowadays they say it’s not the caffeine that’s bad for you, but the stuff they use to take it out. So we’re probably all better off.”
Renee Rouse stood. “Yvonne’s finished in the kitchen.”
“Now, Renee, you sit right down and rest! That’s what we’re here for, to make things easier for you. Who wants a cup? And there’s another crumb cake in the kitchen I’m going to bring out.”
Russ, who had evidently already met Yvonne, squared the box
of documents under his arm and thrust his hand toward Mrs. Rouse. “I’ll let you know the minute we have any news,” he said, his voice pitched low. “You have my card. Call me at any time, day or night, if you need to.”
“Thank you, Chief.”
“It looks like a homemade crumb cake. You can always tell because the store doesn’t use enough butter to hold things together. Of course, enough butter, you might as well just call ahead and book your bypass surgery. So who made the crumb cake? Fess up!”
Russ glanced at Clare, as if he might say something, then settled for nodding and disappearing through the living-room door as fast as he could.
“Reverend? How about you? Coffee? Crumb cake? You don’t look like you have to watch what you eat, like some of us. Of course, all black is very slimming, isn’t it? Maybe I should join the clergy, too. Ha!” Yvonne tipped her head back and hooted.
Clare turned to Mrs. Rouse. “I have to catch Chief Van Alstyne. I have a question for him.”
Renee Rouse nodded. Clare ducked through the door, snatched her parka out of the coat closet, and was through the front door before Yvonne’s voice could pick up again. She spotted Russ next to his truck, the cardboard box wedged awkwardly between his hip and the driver’s-side door as he fished in his jeans pocket for his keys.
She tumbled down the steps. “Russ?”
He turned. “Hey.” He drew the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. “You leaving so soon?”
“I can’t. I rode here in Mrs. Marshall’s car. I’d be willing to walk home to avoid that Story woman, but then I’d still have to get over to Mrs. Marshall’s house to pick up my car.”
He tilted his seat forward and shifted the box onto the narrow back bench. “Gee,” he said. “I’ve got a truck right here. Drives and everything.”
Her grandmother Fergusson said, Only a tacky person would drop a cake and run on a condolence call. A lady stays as long as she can be helpful. MSgt. Ashley “Hardball” Wright bawled, Retreat is not dishonorable when you’re facing superior forces. He that fights and runs away, lives to fight another day! Her grandmother Fergusson replied, On the other hand, a lady never outwears her welcome.
Out Of The Deep I Cry Page 17
