In the Bleak Midwinter

“Oh, my lord, and you had to listen to Vaughn speechifying about the charm, intelligence, good looks, and record-breaking success of his kids, did you?” She rolled her eyes. “Me, I figure if the police aren’t actively looking for my sons, they’re doing okay. Vaughn and Edie, they’ll take the family to the beach because they want to see their children walk on water.” She laughed. “Oh, come here, darling, say hello to Reverend Fergusson.” Doctor Anne snagged her son as he shuffled past with an empty water pitcher. “I was just telling the Reverend how highly accomplished you are. This is my oldest boy, Anderson.” The teen ducked his head awkwardly, setting his long blond hair swinging around his face. He mumbled hello. “Anderson’s in his last year of school at Millers Kill High. When he’s done, we’re throwing him out of the house and forcing him to support himself as a karaoke singer in nightclubs.”

“Ma!” the boy protested. “She says that because I’m in the drama society. I’m going to Brown. I got my early acceptance,” he told Clare.

“Congratulations. That’s a great university. It’ll be a big change from Millers Kill High School, won’t it?” she asked.

“You bet. I can’t wait. Hey, they were talking about our church today, did I tell you?” Anderson looked at his mother. “It was all over the place that Ethan Stoner killed his old girlfriend and Alyson Shattham identified her from a picture right in St. Alban’s! That was way cool.”

“What?” Clare looked from Doctor Anne to her son. “Anderson, there’s no evidence that Ethan Stoner killed anyone. The police are looking for anybody who knew Katie McWhorter and who might be able to give some information on the case.”

“That’s not how I heard it. It sounded like the cops were ready to haul old Ethan into the county jail and charge him with murder. You mean like somebody else might have done it?” He sounded disappointed. “Shoot. If it was Ethan, it would have been the biggest thing to hit the high school since girls’ basketball took the state championship.”

Of course it would be, in a town of eight thousand. An awful, low, unworthy thought occurred to Clare. What if Geoff Burns was guilty of Katie’s murder? She could see the headlines in every paper in eastern New York state: SAINT ALBAN’S PARISHIONER SLAYS MOTHER OF ADOPTED SON! And in smaller type: PRIEST SPEARHEADED EFFORT TO PLACE INFANT WITH MURDERER! She shook her head. No. She knew the Geoff Burns type. All the heat and fire came right out, up front, leaving behind nothing more menacing than low-level discontent and grumbling.

“I think we’ll have to wait and see what Chief Van Alstyne comes up with in his investigation before we can make any reasonable guesses about Katie’s murderer,” she said. “Did you know Katie McWhorter, Anderson?”

He draped a gangly arm across the back of his mother’s chair. “No, not really. I knew who she was, ’cause she was in Honors track, like me, but she was a year ahead of me.”

“Millers Kill High is a big school, too,” Doctor Anne said. “It’s got the kids from this town, Cossayaharie, and Fort Henry.”

“I know most of the other seniors,” Anderson said. He pounded his fist against his forehead. “Oh, duh, I should have known Alyson was exaggerating about Ethan. She’s, like, ‘I’m the center of attention and the rest of you aren’t.’ I think she’s still fried about not getting elected to the student council in September. So now she’s like, ‘Ethan’s O. J. Simpson and I brought him down.’ ” He looked at his mother. “She never got it that the reason she was in with everyone last year was because she was going out with Wesley. But now, she wants to buddy up with the jocks or the brains—”

“Anderson is a brain-slash-jock,” Doctor Anne interrupted.

“—and they’re, like, go back to the mall girls, Alyson.”

“Do you need that translated?” Doctor Anne smiled wryly.

“I think I got the gist of it,” Clare said.

“Wesley is Wesley Fowler, he-who-walks-on-water.”

“Ma!”

“Okay, okay, Wes is a perfectly nice boy who helped you a lot last year in the plays you were in together, and the musical, in which he was, of course, the lead.” She leaned over in an exaggerated aside to Clare. “I suppose it’s not his fault his father made a golden statue of him and put it on his front lawn.”

“Ma!”

Doctor Anne laughed. “Me, I practice the traditional Chinese method of child rearing, I never say anything nice about my kids. That way, they avoid the notice of evil spirits.” She wrapped an arm around Anderson’s waist and hugged him hard.

“Ma, you are so weird,” he said. The boy picked up his pitcher and scuffled off toward the kitchen.

“That means, ‘I love you,’ in seventeen-ese,” his mother said.

Clare laughed. “He’s a nice kid. You must be very proud of him.”

“Very,” Doctor Anne said. She leaned toward Clare. “So tell me, Reverend, do you have the inside scoop on this murder? Since you’ve been helping the police?”