Julia Spencer-Fleming - Out Of The Deep I Cry

“It might be a good idea to stop in at the Farmers and Merchants and see if he made any withdrawals in the past few days. Yours wouldn’t be the first husband to take off in a huff, find an extra few bills in his wallet, and decide to spend them on himself before coming home.”

“But Jonathon isn’t like that,” she said, her voice rising. “That’s why I know something bad’s happened to him. He would never be gone so long without letting me know where he was.” To Harry’s discomfort, her eyes filled with tears. “I just don’t know what to do. Please. Please, find my husband.” The tears overflowed.

Harry leaned up out of the chair, yanking at his handkerchief. “Aw, now, don’t-don’t cry.” He thrust the white fabric at her and prayed she wouldn’t fall apart completely. Growing up the one son amid five sisters had left Harry with a lifelong horror of bawling females. “I’ll tell you what. I can’t put out the alert on him as a missing person. It’s at least five days too early.” Mrs. Ketchem started to cry even harder. “But!” he said. “If you can calm down and write me out a list of your husband’s friends and the places where he’s found work recently, I’ll begin asking around for him.”

Mrs. Ketchem lifted her face, red-eyed and blotchy, from his handkerchief. “Would you?”

“Yes, ma’am, I would. And I want you to try to stop worrying. In all likelihood, he’s holed up with some buddy of his, trying to think of a way to come back and apologize without bruising his pride too much.” He thought it was more likely that the missing man was either on a bender or shacked up with some sympathetic floozy, but Harry wasn’t about to suggest that to a jumpy, frightened wife. Either way, ol’ Jonathon would be back as soon as his funds ran out.

She went upstairs for some writing paper, which gave him a chance to poke around some. The place was small, just the parlor, a dining room, a tiny sitting room that looked to be used as a playroom, and the kitchen out back. The furniture was quality, but old. He guessed most of it had come down from a grandparent or two. Mrs. Ketchem was a good housewife-the china in the cupboard shone, the little girl’s toys were all stacked away, and the kitchen was scrubbed. A closet-sized room off the kitchen held a washing machine and a heap of dirty clothes, which he picked through quickly and efficiently. No signs of foul play, drunkenness, or any other type of disorder, except that of an orderly housewife neglecting her Monday wash. Which, if she feared the worst, he could understand. Nothing could bring back a person’s smell once it had been laundered away.

He was peeking out the back door, which led onto an enclosed porch, when she strode into the kitchen. She handed him a sheet of paper with a list of names and addresses written out in neat Palmer penmanship. “Here you are,” she said. Doing something, anything, had helped. She looked around the kitchen with more energy than he had seen so far. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee?” she asked.

Coffee. Oh, yes. “That’s kind of you,” he said. “Yes.”

“Can you fetch me some wood from the bin on the porch back there? It’s right beside the door.”

Like the rest of the house, the woodbin was just as it ought to be, tidy and well-stocked. There was a hatchet hanging over a chopping block, and he casually picked it up and examined it for signs that it had been used on something other than wood. But the fine wood dust caked in the joints between hatchet head and handle would never have survived a thorough cleaning.

Inside, Mrs. Ketchem had set the dripolater on and was reshelving a Chock full o’ Nuts bag. He loaded the stove’s fire box and asked her where the necessary was. She pointed him back out through the porch, and by the time he had done his business and washed up in the kitchen sink, Mrs. Ketchem was ready with a white crockery mug in each hand. She sat at the kitchen table and he joined her.

“I ought to get my daughter soon. At least now I’ll have something positive to tell her. That the police are going to try to find her father. Maybe…” She faltered, and Harry could see her forward momentum die away. She reached into her sweater pocket, withdrew his handkerchief, and wiped her eyes again. She began to hand the damp cloth back to him and then started, as if she had really seen it for the first time. She jerked her arm back and balled it in her fist. “I’ll launder this for you.”

“You don’t need to-”

“Oh, it’s the least I could do.” She stood up, looking frail inside the large sweater, which, Harry realized, was probably her husband’s. “I’m sorry for falling apart like that.” She offered him a rendition of a smile. “I know men hate to have a woman go off on them like that.”

Harry waved his hands in denial. “Not at all. You were upset.”

She smiled a bit more genuinely. “You’re very patient. Thank you.” She took the handkerchief into the laundry closet and then resettled herself in the kitchen chair. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“Let me get the inquiries in motion. Then we’ll talk again, if he hasn’t turned up.”

“When can I expect to hear from you?”

“I’ll follow up on these this morning,” he said, consigning his nap to the realm of impossibly beautiful dreams. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we have your husband back home in time for supper.”

Her face fell blank and still. Only her eyes seemed alive, like dark water cast into shade by a cloud. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think so.” She blinked, and the illusion was broken. She looked at him. “Have you ever had a feeling, Chief McNeil? That something bad has happened? That’s how I feel. I don’t think my husband’s coming home for supper. Not tonight. Not any night.”

Monday, March 20

Clare woke up late. Most days, the alarm hauled her out of bed early so she could get her run in before morning prayer or the 7:00 A.M. Eucharist. Mondays, she left the alarm off, but she usually woke up at the same time anyway through force of habit. She rolled to one side to look at the clock. Nine A.M. Good Lord.

She flipped the covers off and was instantly all over goose bumps. Holy crow, had she left a window open overnight? She grabbed her robe, which had been tossed over the foot of her bed, and belted it tightly. She tiptoed to the upstairs bathroom, trying for the least amount of contact with the cold floorboards. The little window over the toilet was shut tight.

She tiptoed back to her bedroom, spent a few minutes in a vain search for her slippers, and pulled on a pair of thick sweat socks instead, before going hunting for the window that was letting her expensive oil-fired heat escape.

She couldn’t remember opening anything last night when she got in, but she had been asleep on her feet. After her encounter with the dead Ketchem children- don’t go there -she had driven Debba Clow back to the house Debba shared with her mother. It had been a nonstop stream of speculation on Debba’s part; what might have happened to Dr. Rouse, what the police suspected, how her ex would react, how this would affect the custody case.

After Clare had finally delivered the anxious woman to her front door, she had turned homeward, only to be blocked out of her own drive by a tow truck, chaining Debba’s car in preparation for hauling it away. Clare had gotten out of her car and demanded to know what was happening, but the answer was a laconic “Impounded. Police.” The tow truck driver, a man as broad and walleyed as a trout, had actually wound yellow sticky tape around the entire car before levering it up onto his flatbed and rumbling away down Elm Street. Despite the hour, or maybe because of it, Clare had seen lights on and curtains fluttering at most of her neighbors’ houses. Yessir, just another dull night at the rectory.