Such a Perfect Wife

by Kate White

  “Tom Nolan told me she’d recently rejoined the church.”

  He eyed me warily. “That’s right. So what?”

  “Part of me wonders if her killer is someone she met at church.”

  “You mean another parishioner?”

  “Maybe. It seems like a pretty big coincidence that Shannon recently started going to mass again and then her body is discovered at a Catholic retreat center. Did she ever mention anything odd that happened at church?”

  He shook his head in dismay. “No, nothing like that. She’d go to mass for an hour every Sunday and come straight home.”

  “Do you have any sense of why she started participating again?”

  “She never spelled it out for me, probably because I’m not religious. Shannon’s whole family is Catholic, and it was once a big part of her life, but by the time we met, she’d lost interest. I figured it was probably something she wanted to share again with her mom now that she was growing older.”

  “I see.”

  Cody raked a hand through his cropped hair. “I really need to get a move on. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course. Thanks for talking with me. And again, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He motioned to turn and caught himself. “I trust you mentioned this theory of yours to the sheriff.”

  “I threw it out there. I’m sure they have it under consideration.”

  “I’ll make sure they do.”

  He nodded goodbye and slipped into the Lexus, shoulders slumped. He was probably going home to be with his kids, fix them boxed instant mac and cheese for lunch or heat up one of the casseroles that neighbors had dropped off. Maybe Kelly would be lending a hand. That was one of the things you discovered the more tragedy you saw. No matter how devastating the event, life went on, which meant funeral arrangements had to be made, meals had to be served, kids had to be put to bed for the night.

  As Cody drove away, I crossed the parking lot to the parish center. One story high and T-shaped, it was a less attractive building than the church next to it, probably built on a budget. I pushed open the glass door and stepped into a large white lobby with a wooden crucifix hanging high on the wall. The only furniture was a single navy-blue wingback chair and a small side table featuring a pot of yellow mums, which gave off a vaguely unpleasant herbal scent.

  Beneath the crucifix was a set of glass doors, through which I could see a small library and a series of meeting rooms, all with the lights off. A door to my right, however, had a crack of light beneath it, and a woman soon emerged from behind it. She was in her late forties, I guessed, dressed in brown slacks and a lightweight beige sweater, her champagne-blond hair framing an attractive tanned face.

  She smiled warmly at me. “May I help you, dear?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’m looking for Deacon Nolan?”

  “Tom? I’m afraid he’s not here. He’s generally only here on Saturday mornings. . . . Is this about a wedding? Father Jim is over at the church and could answer any questions.”

  That was funny. Me giving off a bridal vibe.

  “No, actually, Tom and I have been in contact about Shannon Blaine and I was hoping to speak to him further.”

  “Oh, what a heartbreaking story. I know Tom has been meeting with some of the family members. Is he doing bereavement counseling with you as well?”

  “No, I’m a reporter actually, the one who found the body. Bailey Weggins.”

  “Goodness, I read about that. It must have been very traumatic.”

  “It was, yes. Are you familiar with the place—the retreat center?”

  “I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never actually been there. I moved to the area around the time it was closing. I’m Emma Hess, by the way. The parish house administrator.”

  “Nice to meet you. I hear it became too expensive to run the center, but the diocese wasn’t allowed to sell it?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve been told. Kind of an unfortunate catch-twenty-two.”

  “And what about records of retreat attendees from the parish? Or people who worked there? Would you have anything like that here?”

  “The police already talked to Father Jim about the matter, but he said there’s nothing like that in our files. It’s too far back.”

  “Father Jim is the pastor?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are there any other clergy members in the parish?”

  “Not presently. He and Tom do a wonderful job of holding down the fort here.”

  “Do you happen to have a cell number for Tom?”

  “Yes, but it’s better if you give me your number and I can have him reach out to you.”

  I withdrew a business card from my purse. I’d already given one to Nolan, but I didn’t know if he still had it.

  “You know, I’m just remembering,” she said as she accepted the card with a slim, manicured hand. “Tom mentioned that his son has a baseball game later this afternoon, so it may take me a while to reach him.”

  So Tom was a family man. It looked like it might be tough to catch up with him today, but perhaps Emma might provide a portion of the information I was searching for.

  “I’m sure he’s extremely busy. Being a deacon must be very rewarding, though.”

  “Yes, and rewarding for us as well. With Father Jim in his eighties, Tom has been a great backup and a real godsend to the parish.” She chuckled as she caught her turn of phrase. “Ha, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Tom mentioned he has a regular day job, too, but I forget what he said it was.”

  “He’s in banquet sales for one of the hotels. It gives him a nice degree of flexibility.”

  “How long has he been a deacon?”

  “Probably close to ten years, which I know because it was around the same time I started my job. He gives so much, and everyone adores him. I don’t know what we would have done if we’d lost him.”

  A warning ping went off in my brain.

  “Lost him?”

  “He was very ill for a while, a few years back. With esophageal cancer.”

  The pinging started to sound more like a piercing car alarm.

  “Oh wow. I bet that meant a lot of chemo and radiation. When was this exactly?”

  “Five or six years ago, I’d say, and yes, it was terribly arduous. But Tom faced it brilliantly, and he’s fully recovered. I know it seems I’m speaking out of turn, but Tom is open about his experience. He’s a big believer in people sharing what they’re going through—as part of healing.”

  “How thoughtful of him.” My mind raced, scrambling for other questions, but a phone in the office rang, tugging Emma’s attention.

  “Will you excuse me?” she asked, already on the move.

  “Of course. Thanks for your help.”

  Strolling back across the parking lot, I weighed what I knew about Nolan against Marc Horton’s theory that the killer might be a member of the clergy. Nolan had been seriously affected by cancer for at least several years. During his treatment, he wouldn’t have had much strength or stamina, which could explain a hiatus. Tom knew Shannon. And Tom surely would have known about the retreat center. What if Tom had actually become a deacon ten years ago as a way of repenting for the murders of Amy and Page? The possibility of Father Jim being a suspect, I noted, seemed highly unlikely, considering he was in his eighties.

  J. J. Rimes was still on my list of people I needed to see today, but I headed to town first, where I grabbed a sandwich and checked for any alerts from the sheriff’s office. There was only one, stating the sheriff would be issuing a press release on the case later today, but there would be no briefing. Maybe Killian wasn’t in the mood for facing tons of questions he wasn’t at liberty to answer.

  Next I scrolled through a bunch of news sites. None of the outlets had breaking news on the case, though several were presently linking the development tentatively to the disappearance of the campers. A few were running other theories up the flagpole—like the one Alice had f
irst suggested about the killer being an out-of-towner who had hauled the bodies from another location and dumped them here.

  But I still didn’t buy it. Even if the killer had once lived elsewhere, he was clearly in these parts now.

  Finally, I checked my email in-box. Several reporters had reached out, using a second email address of mine that was listed on my author website, and asked if they could interview me about discovering the bodies. I took a few minutes to respond, promising to call them later in the afternoon if time permitted. By doing so I’d be establishing goodwill, in case I ever was looking for reciprocity.

  My good pal Matt Wong had written me a note, too, congratulating me effusively. Of course. I had the inside track now, and he wanted to make nice and see what info he could download from me.

  The one message I was actually happy to see was from my friend Jessie Pendergrass, whom I’d worked next to during my short stint at Buzz magazine. “See from your posts you’re in LG. I’m in Lake Placid for the weekend. Want me to stop by for lunch on drive back Mon?”

  “Absolutely,” I wrote back, relishing the thought of her company. “W confirm Sun.” I assumed I’d still be in Lake George on Monday, but it would all depend on how the story evolved from here.

  I’d just finished my meal and ordered coffee when Dodson Crowe phoned.

  “I’d always heard you like to put yourself in the thick of things,” he said, “but I wasn’t expecting you’d actually find the body.”

  “Well, don’t count on that for every story,” I said, laughing.

  “The site traffic’s been outrageous. People are eating this stuff up.”

  “Frankly, I never would have guessed it would unfold this way. You want me to see how this plays out, right?”

  “Definitely. And we need to leverage it even better than we have been.”

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “Video. I want to shoot one with you tomorrow.”

  That was the last thing I wanted to be doing. In fact, one of the factors that had attracted me to Crime Beat was that it didn’t feature lame reenactments of crimes and hyperactive, hardly-ready-for-prime-time reporters pumping stricken family members for quotes.

  “I didn’t think you did video.”

  “We’re beginning to roll it out with a few stories. I hadn’t planned on it for this one, but considering how big the case is now, I think we should put you on camera.”

  “Dodson, I have zero experience interviewing people on camera,” I said.

  “You won’t have to interview anyone. I only want you to recap the story to the camera and we’ll splice in photos and footage.”

  That didn’t make it any better. Though I’d done my fair share of TV appearances, both when I worked at Buzz and when I was promoting A Model Murder, I found the experience about as much fun as a bikini wax. Besides, I could hear Marc Horton’s words echoing in my mind: You never know what can trigger one of these guys.

  “Um—”

  “There’s a videographer in Albany whom I’ve used for one of my other sites. I’m going to have him arrange to meet up with you midday.”

  Didn’t sound like I had a choice.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll give it a try.”

  Signing off, I checked my watch. Time to swing by J.J.’s. This being Saturday, there was a chance, I realized, that she was currently standing on the sidelines of a soccer game or dance recital, but as I pulled up to the house ten minutes later, I detected movement through one of the front windows. Maybe I was in luck.

  I had one foot on the pavement when I caught sight of J.J.’s door swinging open. If she was on the move, I needed to catch up with her before she jumped in her car. But lo and behold, it wasn’t J.J. who stepped onto the porch.

  It was none other than Doug Claiborne. Kelly’s Ken-doll husband.

  Chapter 12

  OKAY, SLOW DOWN, I WARNED MYSELF AS I STARTED to leap to conclusions. It was possible that Doug Claiborne’s visit was related to recent events. Perhaps he was conferring with J.J. about what role she would play in a memorial service.

  And yet his furtive movements suggested that he was on the down low. After the door closed behind him, he glanced quickly up and down the street and then bolted to a vehicle parked five cars up from the house.

  It was definitely possible that J.J. and Doug were having an affair. In our previous conversation, J.J. had mentioned that she was seeing someone whom she’d arranged to meet at her family’s cabin in the Adirondacks, but she hadn’t told me his name. I searched through my tote bag for my notes from my first conversation with Kelly. Yup, Kelly had said her husband was out of town the day Shannon disappeared. If they were having an affair, it shed an interesting light on the Baker/Claiborne family dynamics.

  At the very least, Doug’s circumspect manner hinted that he and J.J. were doing something that they didn’t want anyone else to know about—perhaps sharing information about the case. If so, I needed to determine what it was.

  I let five minutes pass before I knocked on J.J.’s door. I wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t suspect that I’d spotted Doug’s departure. I’d spring that information on her at the end, even though it was bound to piss her off.

  It took three rings for J.J. to answer. She was fully dressed when she opened the door, in black leggings, ballet flats, and a long denim top, but her hair had a more tousled, bedheady look than I’d seen on her before. Of course, she could have taken to her bed in grief over the death of her friend.

  “Yes?” she said warily, clearly remembering me.

  “Hi, J.J. I’m so sorry for your loss. Do you have a minute?”

  “I really don’t want to talk to the press anymore. I’ve had my name in the papers way more than enough.”

  “What if we speak off the record? I’m not looking for quotes as much as for background that can help track down Shannon’s killer. I’m the reporter who found her body.”

  “I thought it was the reporter from the Post Star.”

  “We were together, but I was the one who received the phone tip.”

  “Okay, come in.”

  “Are your kids off doing kid things today?” I asked, trailing her into the quiet house.

  “They’re with their father.”

  Which meant she’d had plenty of privacy this afternoon.

  Rather than taking me to the kitchen this time, she led the way to a spiffily decorated family room with cream-colored walls. The sofa was beige, covered in a nubby, suede-like material, and punctuated with ikat pillows in red, mango, and beige. A built-in unit featuring a flat-screen TV took up most of one wall, its low shelves neatly stacked with board games and DIY craft kits. I saw that J.J.’s real estate staging career definitely carried over to her home.

  After dropping onto the sofa, she motioned for me to take the armchair facing it. Now that I was in better light, I could see that she looked spent, and not necessarily in a postcoital way. Her skin was blotchy and her eyes puffy, from either lack of sleep or crying, or both. All in all, she seemed less flinty today, too, softened a little by events.

  “Thank you, J.J,” I said, “I really appreciate this. It must be such a tough time for you.”

  She said nothing for a moment; instead, she stared hard at me, her eyes dancing a little as if there was a question in her mind itching to make an escape.

  “How did Shan die?” she said finally, her voice catching.

  “I don’t know. There’ll be an autopsy, of course, and the police will release certain details, but perhaps not all of them.”

  “Do you think she suffered?”

  “I don’t—”

  “What if she was tortured? Or raped?”

  “J.J., I’ve covered my share of homicide cases, and I know that friends and family often struggle with questions like that. But it’s best not to agonize over those details. Concentrate instead on everything good that Shannon brought into the world.”

  “You mean all the good that’s now been t
rampled on? Noah and Lilly are going to be forced to live in this permanent horror show. I left Cody a message saying I’d pick them up anytime he needed help, but I can’t imagine how I can look them in the eye.”

  “Let me get right to the point. I’ve been wondering if there may be a connection between Shannon’s body being left at a former Catholic retreat center and the fact that she became reinvolved in the church a few months ago.”

  She frowned, obviously not sure what I was insinuating. Finally the point landed.

  “You think someone from the church killed her?”

  “I think it’s a possibility. Did Shannon ever mention anything strange that had happened to her at church? Something that unsettled her?”

  J.J. shook her head hard. “Nothing.”

  Cody’s response to that question had been negative, too, so if someone from the congregation had been watching Shannon, targeting her, she clearly hadn’t sensed anything wrong or at least hadn’t felt enough unease to mention it to her husband or friend.

  “Do you have any idea why she started going back?”

  “No, she never said a word, not until one Sunday in the middle of the summer when I called and asked if she wanted to take the kids for a bike ride and she said she had to drop by church first. I asked what she meant and she said she’d started going to mass again. It didn’t seem like something she was eager to discuss.”

  Funny that Shannon wouldn’t have suggested her reasoning to either her husband or best friend.

  “Can you recall anything that could have factored into her decision?”

  “Not really. At first I thought it had something to do with her cousin Destin passing. She’d been really close to him. But he’d been dead a whole year by then, and I didn’t have the sense that she was still actively grieving.”

  But as J.J. herself had indicated, Shannon was a private person. She might not have wanted her friend to know that she was still consumed by the loss. And her father had died only a couple of years before, which might have cumulatively felt like too much to her.

  “So if not her cousin’s death, what else could it have been?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was simply searching for answers.”