Julia Spencer-Fleming - Out Of The Deep I Cry

When he and Lyle were finally back in the car, Lyle had that vacant, dreamy look that meant he was thinking hard.

“How do you like Mrs. Rouse as a suspect?”

“Not much.” Russ buckled his seat belt.

“Usually, the spouse is first call for the bad guy in these cases. We haven’t even looked at her.”

“We’ve confirmed that Renee Rouse placed numerous calls to friends from four o’clock onward, looking for her husband. Debba Clow was with Rouse between six and seven or seven-thirty the night he disappeared. We’ve got evidence that places him in her car. At eight-thirty, the wife is speaking with Harlene. At nine-thirty, Mark Durkee’s already spotted Rouse’s car, crashed into some trees off the road. How would you suggest we put Mrs. Rouse into this picture?”

“Maybe she was waiting in his car. Debba Clow never said she got a look inside.”

“Okay, let’s say she’s sitting in the car, freezing her tail off while her husband chats about vaccinations with Clow. Clow drives off, leaving Mrs. Rouse with her husband.”

“Who has a bashed-in head.”

“What’s she going to do with him? Even if she dumped him in the lake and crashed the car to cover her tracks, how does she get home in time to call Harlene looking for help?”

“She called on her cell phone.”

Russ snorted. “Not out there.”

“Maybe she and Clow are in on it together.”

“Would you trust your neck to Debba Clow?”

“Maybe she hitchhiked out with someone.”

Russ threw up his hands. “You’re not going to give up, are you? Okay, look into it. See if she stands to inherit a bundle from insurance, if there’s another man on the scene, the usual.”

Lyle started the car. “I know it’s a long shot. But there was something about the way she said she didn’t know anything about the accounts. Creeped me out. My ex, if I took my checkbook out of my coat pocket, she knew about it.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Linda handles most of our money.” He stared out the window at the passing yards with their rapidly shrinking patches of ice and snow. A few more days up in the forties and it’d be gone. Unless they had an April storm, which wasn’t out of the question.

“Do you know what the average date is for ice out on Stewart’s Pond?” he asked Lyle.

“Third, fourth week in April, usually.”

“You think there’s patches of open water up there yet?”

“Sure. That’s why everybody goes to Florida in March, you know. Because there’s not enough ice for ice fishing, and there’s not enough water for a boat.”

“Let’s get in touch with the staties’ dive team, see if they’re open for business yet.”

Lyle glanced over at him. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that we’re clutching at straws, with all this running around to pharmacies and trying to shoehorn his wife into the facts. I’m thinking it may be time to send someone down there, into Stewart’s Pond. Because we need to find Rouse’s body before all the evidence washes away.”

Thursday, March 30

They had said the prayers together, and she had read Lauraine Johnson the Gospel and heard her confession. Now Clare spread the small linen square over the elderly woman’s rolling bedside tray and arranged the round silver container and stoppered silver bottle on top. She unscrewed the pyx and removed the wafer, holding it up to Mrs. Johnson with both hands. “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” On one of their first meetings, Mrs. Johnson had told her, a little embarrassed, that she was most comfortable with the old language from the 1928 prayer book. And why not? She had been in her sixties when the new prayer book became official. She tried to cup her hands to receive the host, but her body betrayed her, as it usually did these days, and she couldn’t get them high enough.

“Let me.” Clare leaned forward and placed the wafer on her tongue. “Take and eat this,” she said, “in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving.”

She said the offertory for the consecrated wine and held the bottle to Mrs. Johnson’s lips. The old woman sank back onto her pillow, her eyes closed, while Clare folded the pyx and bottle into clean linen and replaced them in their small leather carrying case.

She laid a hand on Mrs. Johnson’s forehead, pushing a weightless strand of silver hair back into place. “I don’t think I need to tell you to go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.”

Mrs. Johnson smiled, but did not open her eyes. “I’m going to do that soon enough, whether you tell me to or not.”

“I need to do a shorter bedside service for you. This tires you all out. Last week your nurse chewed me out.”

Mrs. Johnson looked at her. Her eyes were pale, as if too many days living had washed all their color away. “No. I love your visits.” She lolled her head to one side. “You know what pleases me?” Clare shook her head. “That the last priest to tend to me on this earth is a woman.” She let her eyes drift closed, and she smiled. “For most of my life, women couldn’t serve on the vestry. Couldn’t be in holy orders, couldn’t sit in convention and vote with the men. I was in Philadelphia, you know, when the first eleven defied the bishops to be ordained. I was fifty-six years old.” She opened her eyes again. “How old were you?”

“In 1974?” Clare smiled. “Nine.”

“You’re just a child yet.” She managed to move her hand so that it fell on Clare’s arm. Clare hadn’t taken her alb off yet, and they both looked at the contrast between the ancient, ropy-veined hand and the fine white cloth. “I knew this,” Mrs. Johnson breathed. Her eyes closed. “I knew we were good for more than ironing the altar cloths and holding bake sales.”

When Clare slipped out of the room a few minutes later, the old woman was asleep. She had pulled her alb off and rolled it into a ball. It would mean wrinkles later, but she couldn’t go flapping through the hospital corridors looking like a dean in a cathedral close. She didn’t need to wear the long white gown when delivering the Eucharist, but the more things looked like a regular service, the more Mrs. Johnson liked it. The dying woman had precious few pleasures left in life. If it had been within Clare’s power, she would have lined the walls with cut stone and set up a stained-glass window.

She stopped at the nurses’ station. It was quiet in the early afternoon. Only the charge nurse, furiously typing her records into the computer, and a doctor buried in a file. “She’s asleep,” Clare told the charge nurse.

“Good,” the nurse said. She looked up at Clare, her fingers still keystroking, as if they were more a part of the machine than of her body. “She needs to rest up for visiting hour tonight.”

“I’ll see you next week,” Clare said. “Please call me if she wants me for anything.”

The doctor straightened. “I thought I recognized your voice.” He stepped forward. It took her a moment to place him; nondescript brown hair, a pleasant face, and the ubiquitous white jacket went a long way toward making him anonymous.

Then she remembered. “Dr. Stillman.” She shifted her bundle under her arm and shook his hand. “How are you? What are you doing up here?”

“One of my older patients had a bad fall,” he said. “Broke her hip.” He gestured toward Clare’s clericals. “Look at you. You can sure tell you’re a minister now. You were a lot more casual when you brought your friend in. How’s he doing?”

“I haven’t seen him since then,” she said. “He’s been keeping pretty busy investigating Dr. Rouse’s disappearance.”