All three of them stared at him.

“You want me to ask Hugh Parteger to be my beard?” Clare’s voice cracked with incredulity.

“Terry, you sound as if you’ve been reading one of my Regency romances.” Mrs. Marshall shook her head. “False engagement, indeed.”

Geoffrey Burns was, for once, speechless.

“Well…” Terry’s round cheeks reddened. “It may sound silly to you, but I bet it would work. What else are we going to do?”

“Ignore it,” Clare said.

“A word into the right ear can work wonders.” Mrs. Marshall deliberately touched her eye-scorchingly lipsticked mouth. “Pretty soon, everyone who’s anyone knows the truth.”

Geoff shook his head. “The story is a lot better than the truth. People want to hear about illicit sex and murder. No, I think we’ll have to be ready with a credible threat of a defamation of character suit. This is a classic case of slander. Van Alstyne may have killed his wife, but he sure as hell didn’t have an affair with our priest.”

Clare didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Her defenders. “There is no illicit sex. There is no murder. There is no story.” She got to her feet. “I’m not a dreamy-eyed girl in the throes of her first love. I knew I couldn’t have Russ Van Alstyne. I made a choice. I chose my congregation and my position as your pastor. If you can’t appreciate that and support me now when I need you, then to hell with you.”

The meeting broke up very shortly afterward.

When Clare went out the open door of the chapter room and in the open door of her office, she discovered Elizabeth de Groot, sitting wide-eyed and well within earshot, waiting for her.

“I couldn’t help but overhear-” de Groot began.

“Go home, Elizabeth.” Clare sounded rude and didn’t care. “I’m talked out for the night. Go home to whoever it is that loves you and thank God for your blessings. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Wednesday, January 16

Russ’s third day as a widower started at bad and went to worse. He dragged himself down his mother’s stairs-after taking twenty minutes to dress, stupidly holding up pieces of his uniform, trying to remember how they went-to find his mom and sister whispering furtively across the kitchen table. They both jumped up to hug and squeeze him, to rub his back and inquire how he was and how he had slept, and while he appreciated their heartfelt concern, he also knew they were trying to shield him from something.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

His mother and Janet looked at each other.

“Mom?”

She turned to the coffeemaker on the counter. “Linda’s sister’s plane was delayed last night. Mike was in Albany for nine hours, waiting to pick her up.”

Considering how reluctant his brother-in-law was to leave his dairy herd’s milking to anyone else, this was a true sacrifice. Then the import of it struck him. The silence. The lack of we-have-a-guest bustle. “She didn’t come here after I conked out, did she?”

His mother, dumping spoonfuls of sugar into his mug, shook her head.

“Is she at your place?” he asked Janet. “Oh, Christ, she didn’t go to the house, did she?”

“No, no, no.” Janet let out a breath, half sigh, half exasperation. “She’s at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls. She refused to stay with either of us. In fact, she wouldn’t even let Mike take her to the hotel. She rented a car and drove herself.”

“She drove herself? That’s nuts. She’s lived in Florida all her life. She can’t drive for shit in the snow.”

“Russell!” his mother warned.

“ ’Scuse my french, Mom. But Debbie shouldn’t be on the roads up here in January.” He turned back to Janet. “When did she decide not to stay with Mom?”

Janet’s mouth twisted. “She had reservations when she got off the plane.”

His mother snorted. “Too bad she didn’t mention that before Mike wasted a day at the airport.” She handed Russ his coffee. “Never mind. She’s heartbroke and angry, and folks do foolish things when they’re in that state.” She tilted her head back to meet her son’s eyes. “You remember that, Russell.”

That was the bad. The worse was waiting for him when he arrived at the station. He hadn’t even made it to his office when Harlene stopped him. “I got a message for you from the mayor. He wants to see you to meet with him and a few of the aldermen as soon as you set foot in the door.”

Russ checked the clock. “I got the morning briefing in twenty minutes.”

“I think you better do as he said, Chief.” Harlene, who had been known to claim she could replace all seven members of the governing board and still do a better job, looked worried. “He sounded pretty urgent.”

Russ turned around and stomped out of the station. He didn’t have far to go; the Millers Kill town offices were just down the block. The original building, an overelaborate Italianate built during the boom times of the 1870s, had been torn down in an early-fifties improvement fit, when all things Victorian were anathema. It had been replaced with a then-cutting-edge cube faced with painted aluminum panels that had not worn well over a half century of harsh Adirondack weather. Every year it looked more and more like a giant child’s building block that had been kicked around too much and left out in the rain.

Russ took the concrete steps two at a time. Inside, the furnace blast of heat steamed up his glasses and forced him to remove his coat and scarf. He went up the blurry stairs and into the secretary’s empty office, where he wiped the condensation off his glasses with the tail of his shirt, retucked it, and strode into the mayor’s room.

Jim Cameron was seated not at his modest desk but at the rectangular table that took up much of the room’s space. With him were three of the six aldermen who ran the town board and a thirty-something woman Russ had never seen before. He had time to wonder if they had replaced the town’s attorney before Jim rose, clasped his hand, and said, “Russ.”

He sounded like he was speaking in a sepulchre. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear about your wife. I just can’t imagine what you’re going through. I know if I lost Lena, I’d just…” The whole time he spoke, Jim continued to pump Russ’s hand up and down. “Anyway. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” Russ ground out.

Jim released him. “You know Garry Greuling.” The retired teacher, his scalp tanned from his annual trip to Florida, rose and shook Russ’s hand with a brief condolence. “And Ron Tucker.” Ron ran the best garage in town, and when he leaned across the table to shake hands a faint smell of oil and gasoline followed him. “This is Emiley Jensen.” The unfamiliar woman nodded to him. “And you know Bob Miles.” Miles, a public works engineer for the county, was the only one in the room, besides the strange woman, wearing a suit. Their tastes were very different, though. Bob’s ran to expensive and conservative. Her pink tweed jacket was trendy but cheap. The sort of thing Linda used to call-

He sat down.

Jim Cameron took the seat at the head of the table. “Russ, we wanted to talk with you this morning because we’re concerned about you investigating Linda’s death.” He spread his hands on the table, revealing hairy forearms. The mayor habitually worked with his shirtsleeves rolled up, as if he were about to wrestle the problems of government to the ground at any moment. “It’s a hell of a time for you personally. You ought to be at home with your family, processing your loss and dealing with your grief.”

“I appreciate your concern. But right now, the only thing I want to process is the perpetrator’s county lock-up papers.”

Cameron glanced toward Garry Greuling. Russ remembered him from high school, when he had been the super-cool science teacher who grew sideburns down to his jaw and assigned Star Trek as homework. “Russ,” he said, “as I recall, the department regulations say any officer who’s undergone a traumatic experience gets a minimum one-week suspension with pay.”