“I don’t know if I can help you,” she said. “I only met Mrs. Van Alstyne a couple of times.”

“But you do know her husband.”

She decided to brazen it out. “Of course. Russ and I are good friends. We have lunch together almost every Wednesday at the Kreemy Kakes Diner, barring urgent police business or pastoral emergencies.”

“According to Mrs. Van Alstyne’s sister, you two were more than just good friends.”

Clare forced a small smile. “We live in a small town, and there are always people who are going to find it impossible to believe a man and a woman can be friends.” Lacking pockets in her alb, she slid her hands inside her sleeves and clenched her forearms. Her flesh was icy. “The chief of police and I have a lot of professional interests in common. We’re both trying to serve the well-being of the people of Millers Kill.”

“So… does the chief also have regular meetings with the Presbyterian and Baptist ministers?”

“Uh… I really don’t know,” she answered truthfully.

“You know that two weeks before she died, Linda Van Alstyne asked her husband to leave their marital home.”

Clare nodded.

“According to Debbie Wolecski, that was because Russ Van Alstyne told his wife that he was having an affair with you.”

Clare closed her eyes for a moment. “Mr. Beagle-”

“Call me Ben,” he said cheerfully.

“Ben. I don’t know exactly what the chief said to his wife before or after their decision to separate, but I’m dead sure it wasn’t that we were having an affair. May I suggest that thirdhand quotes from a grief-stricken family member who was speaking to a woman struggling through a crisis point in her twenty-year marriage might not be the most reliable information in the world?”

“So, you’re saying you and Russ Van Alstyne weren’t involved in a relationship?”

God, she hated this. If she told the truth, she’d be throwing Russ to the wolves, and if she sidled around it, she’d be painting Linda Van Alstyne as a jealous, paranoid woman.

That was it. She could tell the truth about not being able to tell the truth.

“Anything I say at this point is going to reflect badly on Mrs. Van Alstyne and probably cause pain to her sister. I’m not going to do that.”

He nodded. “How long have you been here at St. Alban’s?”

“Uh.” She thought he’d keep pressing her about Russ. His switch to another topic threw her. “A little over two years.”

“Where were you before this?”

She snorted. “At seminary. And before that, in the army.”

He grinned. “Interesting career choice.”

“It kind of chose me.”

“Hah. Right. Well, thanks for talking with me.” From the depths of his parka, a cell phone began to ring. “If I have any other questions, I’ll call you.”

I’ll make sure I’m out, she thought. Beagle checked the number and half-turned away from her to take the call.

She headed up the aisle toward the sacristy, eager to shed her alb and stole and get into her office, where there was at least an occasional wheeze of hot air from the vent. Something tickled in the back of her mind, something off, but it wasn’t until she was stripping the alb over her head that she realized: The woman who had been sitting near the north wall had disappeared. There was no way she could have gotten past Clare at the main entrance, which meant that she had to be back in the offices or in the parish hall.

Maybe Linda Van Alstyne’s sister had to use the ladies’ room before leaving.

Maybe the archbishop of Canterbury was going to come through the door to congratulate her on a job well done. Clare hung up the long white robe, checked herself in the sacristy mirror-hair still up in its usual knot, blouse buttons done up around her clerical collar, no obvious lint clinging to her long black skirt-and strode down the hall toward her office.

She didn’t make it very far. Debbie Wolecski stood in the doorway, arms crossed, glaring at Clare. Linda Van Alstyne had been a beautiful woman, and her sister had traces of her looks in her large blue eyes and her delicate bone structure. But Debbie Wolecski’s features had been dried to hardtack by a lifetime of Florida sun, and the roundness that had softened her sister had been ruthlessly banished. Clare could see Wolecski’s collarbones slicing across the neckline of her skimpy sweater.

“I want to talk to you,” the woman said.

“All right.” Clare gestured toward the door. “Do you want to come into-”

“My sister would be alive right now if it weren’t for you.”

Clare gaped.

“You ran around with her husband, and filled his head with lies about Linda, and then when push came to shove you gave him an ultimatum, didn’t you? You told him it was you or her.”

Clare meant her response to be a measured I’m so sorry about your loss. Instead, she blurted out, “That’s not true!”

“You must have brass balls to get up in front of a church and pretend to be all holy. You’re nothing but a cheap tramp home wrecker. You wanted my dear brother-in-law? Well, now you got him. Did you know he was a boozer? He used to drink himself into a stupor every night. And when he wasn’t drinking, he was off on deployment or on a case. Did he tell you that my sister had three miscarriages and he wasn’t there for a one of them?”

Clare went pale.

“Didn’t get into that during your romantic interludes, did he? Bet he didn’t tell you he left the army because he had a fucking breakdown and nearly got his whole platoon blown up, did he? Or that he dragged my sister back to this godforsaken hole because he was such a mama’s boy he couldn’t cut a real job in Phoenix?”

It was like being battered by a howling wind, her breath snatched away, her eyes tearing.

“What did you get? Flowers? Fancy dinners? Dirty weekends at expensive hotels? You know who bought that? My sister! Every penny he has comes from her, her work, what she got from our parents. I’ll see you in hell before I let either one of you touch it. In fact”-she stepped forward, jabbing a shiny acrylic nail at Clare’s chest-“I’m going to see to it that everyone knows what a slut you are. We’ll see who wants to come to your church once they hear-”

“Shut up, Debbie.”

Clare blinked. Russ stood in the doorway to the parish hall, his hands jammed so tightly into his parka pockets that she could see the outline of every knuckle.

His sister-in-law sucked in her breath. “My God, it is true,” she said. “Linda isn’t even in the ground yet and you can’t keep away from your girlfriend.”

Russ’s boots sounded heavy as he walked up the hallway. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I’m going to cut you some slack because you’re angry and upset.”

“Angry? Upset?” Debbie stared at him, loathing written across her heavily made-up features. “You bastard. I’m going to see you strung up by the nuts for what you did to my sister.”

“You can do what you want after I’ve caught whoever killed her. I don’t care.” Russ stepped toward her. In the narrow confines of the hall, he seemed to loom even larger than usual. “You got that? I don’t care.” His glance flickered toward Clare, so briefly she wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it. “I’ve already lost everything. You want to hang me up by the balls? Fine. I’ll hand you the rope. But first, tell me who Mr. Sandman is.”

What the hell?

“How did you know about that?” Debbie asked. “That’s private! Have you been reading her private mail?”

“This is a goddam murder case, Debbie. There isn’t a single detail of Linda’s life that’s going to remain private by the time this thing is through. Who was she seeing? Tell me!”

Clare was utterly lost.

“I don’t know!” For the first time, Debbie sounded more defensive than angry.

“Was it the same guy she was seeing after we moved back to Millers Kill?”

Clare should have enjoyed the about-face as Debbie gasped and went pale beneath her tan, but she just felt sick. Sick for Russ, and for Linda’s sister, and for everyone who was going to be hurt by the corrosive secrets splashing out into the open.