In her office, Clare poured more coffee and then picked up the phone before her nerve failed her.

“Millers Kill Police Department.”

“Harlene? Hi, it’s Clare Fergusson.”

“Clare!” Harlene’s voice dropped. “How are you, honey? I just want you to know, no matter what they say, I’ll never believe you did it.”

“Uh, thanks.” She swallowed some coffee and pressed on. “Look, Harlene, I’ve come across some information that I think might be very important to the investigation. Who should I talk to?”

“Hmmm.” Clare could picture Harlene’s face furrowing with thought beneath her tightly permed curls. “Well, most all of ’em who investigate are out beating the bushes for this Shambaugh fellow. So you got your choice. Investigator Jensen or Mark Durkee, who hasn’t been given nothing to do yet.”

“I’m guessing Investigator Jensen is still hot for me as suspect number two?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How about Officer Durkee?”

“I don’t think he’s so convinced you did it anymore, but nobody’s talking to him on account of his bringing Jensen here, and since the reason he got the staties involved was because he thought you were a suspect, he might not be feeling too kindly toward you.”

“I didn’t ask him to run to the state police in order to investigate me.”

“No, but he’s not the first person to blame someone else for troubles he brought on his own head.”

Clare sighed. “Give me to Investigator Jensen. At least she doesn’t have anything personal against me.”

The line buzzed quietly for a moment and then Clare heard, “Emiley Jensen.”

“Hi, Investigator Jensen. This is the Reverend Clare Fergusson.” Her grandmother Fergusson would be rolling over in her grave at Clare using her own full title to introduce herself, but Clare figured at this point, every advantage counted.

“Reverend Fergusson. Do you mind if I put you on speakerphone?”

Clare interpreted that to mean Do you mind if I tape this conversation? “Not at all,” she said.

The sound in her ear changed. “Can you hear me?” Jensen asked, her voice now distant and tinny.

“Yes.”

“So, you wanted to speak to me?”

“I have some information I think is relevant to the investigation.” Clare started with what she had observed when she met Quinn Tracey at the high school, touched on her talk with Aaron MacEntyre, and finished with what she had learned this morning. When she was done speaking, there was a long, tinny pause.

“Let me get this straight,” Jensen finally said. “You think this teenager might have killed Audrey Keane?”

“I don’t know,” Clare said. “But I do know it’s an awfully weird coincidence that four people have had animals killed recently and all of them are Quinn Tracey’s customers. And, of course, the Van Alstynes had hired him, too.”

“The murdered woman wasn’t Mrs. Van Alstyne, though. Does Tracey have any connection to Audrey Keane?”

“Not that I know of. But maybe it’s like the animals. He was in a relatively remote place, no one was around, and so he… killed her.” Stated baldly like that for the first time, it sounded lame. “There’s a well-known connection between sadism to animals and violence against humans,” she said defensively.

“I’ve heard that, yeah. There’s also a well-known connection between being an incredibly bored teen trapped in the countryside and dumb, destructive pranks. Do we know for sure all these animals were killed by a human being instead of a predator?”

Someone in the room with Jensen spoke to her. The words were too far away and indistinct for Clare to make out, but after the unknown officer had finished, Jensen’s voice came back on. “Okay, I’m told investigation confirmed Perkins’s dog and Underkirk’s pig were killed by someone. The chief suspect in the dog’s case is a neighbor whose favorite snowmobiling course was blocked off by Perkins. The theory about the pig is that somebody wanted it for its meat and got scared off by Underkirk before he could finish the theft.”

“But you didn’t know about the Quinn Tracey connection then,” Clare said.

“No, the department didn’t.”

“Will you have someone look into it?”

“I’ll pass the information along to Deputy Chief MacAuley. He’ll put someone on it as soon as he can spare the manpower.”

While Jensen had been talking, Clare had tightened her grip on her coffee mug. Now her knuckles showed white. “You can’t wait until Lyle MacAuley decides there’s nothing more important. You need to investigate this now. Quinn Tracey may have murdered Audrey Keane.”

“This kid who has no record-you haven’t run into him on anything, have you?” The question was spoken to the anonymous officer. He said something to Jensen. “Okay, he has no record and no encounters with the police,” she told Clare. “And according to his guidance counselor, he’s bright and hardworking, and he evidently has an involved, caring, educated family. And you think because two of his snowplowing clients had animals killed-crimes which were investigated but didn’t implicate him-that last Monday he decided to slash a complete stranger’s throat and cut her face off. Is that about it? Your theory?”

When you recognize an ambush, Hardball Wright said, don’t think you can turn tables on the enemy. You can’t. Get out while the gettin’s good.

“Thank you for your time and consideration, Investigator Jensen.” Clare did her best to sound as if she didn’t want to strangle the woman on the other end of the line.

“Thank you for reporting this possible criminal activity, Reverend Fergusson. I’m sure we’ll be speaking again soon.”

Clare hung up. God. If Karen Burns were here, she’d probably thump Clare over the head for contacting Jensen without a lawyer standing by.

The remaining coffee was cooling rapidly. Better chuck it out and start over again. As she passed the office toward the ladies’ room, Lois called out, “What did the police say?”

Clare allowed herself the detour. She perched on the edge of the secretary’s desk. “I spoke to Investigator Jensen. She didn’t come right out and call me an idiot for conflating a couple of dead cats into a conspiracy theory, but she managed to get her point across.”

“Sorry,” Lois said.

“She didn’t dismiss the possibility that the Tracey boy might be involved in some of the animals’ deaths, but she shot down my idea that there might be a connection between them and Audrey Keane’s murder. She thinks it’s just vandalism gone awry.”

Lois tilted her head, causing her strawberry blond bob to swing along one side of her jaw. “She has a point. When my brother was in his teens, he and his friends used to set haystacks on fire for fun.”

“You’re kidding. You could burn someone’s house or barn down.”

“There’s not a lot to do when you’re a kid in the country.” Lois gave her a sympathetic look, then perked up as the sedate fox-trot music on the radio gave way to the thunderous sound of the Storm Center First Response Team’s theme music. Clare retreated with her cold coffee and her shredded enthusiasm, pursued by dire predictions of snow, snow, and more snow.