Chapter 9
Clare drove home from the Glens Falls Airport with multiple parental admonitions ringing in her ears.
From Mother, an encyclopedia’s worth of baby-rearing advice, and several complaints about the fact Ethan was at the drop-in day care they were trying out, instead of saying good-bye at the airport.
From Daddy, the eternal offer to take her on as partner in the company, and she didn’t even have to stop being a priest because he was sure their church in Petersburg would love to have her as an associate.
What Russ was supposed to do in southern Virginia was left unsaid.
Someday her child would be driving away from her, thinking how crazy she made him, and wasn’t that a cheerful thought.
“Lord, help me do better. Or at least not worse. Amen.” That made her realize she hadn’t written her sermon yet, and Sunday was coming right up.
She could feel the spot between her eyes where a headache was starting to pound.
Her phone rang over the car speaker. “Answer.”
“Hey, Clare, it’s Meghan Smith. Bad time? Good time?”
“It’s fine. I’m in my car. What’s up?” And how had she gotten to a place where the woman she’d spoken to most frequently in the past week was a white nationalist? She really needed to work on her friendships.
“I got a call from Tiny March. She was asking for your number, and I wanted to check with you before I gave it to her.”
“I already have her in my phone. If she’s reached out, I’ll call her. You don’t happen to know what her real name is, do you? I feel weird calling a grown woman ‘Tiny.’”
“I’ve never heard her use anything else.” Meghan sighed. “I suppose I oughta invite her to one of our homeschooling things. Her husband’s away a lot and she just sits up there all alone with a baby. I suppose it’s no wonder she makes herself so small.”
Clare said good-bye, then scrolled to find Tiny’s contact info. She jabbed her finger at it while trying to keep her eyes on the road. “Hello?” a tentative voice answered.
“Tiny. It’s Clare Fergusson. I heard you wanted to speak to me. Can you talk?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, hi, Clare. It’s nice of you to call. I…”
Uh-oh. This sounded like a full-attention conversation. Clare signaled and turned into the Fort Henry Super Kmart, parking near the high-school swim team’s Christmas tree sale.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to be, you know, disloyal to my husband.”
“That could mean a lot of things,” Clare said carefully. “Sleeping with somebody else, for instance.”
“I wouldn’t do that!” Tiny’s shock was loud enough for the tree shoppers to hear. “I mean … I think he may be getting himself in trouble. I don’t want him to … I don’t know, do anything? But I don’t want to break his trust.”
“What makes you think he’s headed for trouble?”
“So, you know how Dillon Forrester came by when you were here? He told Cal there was someone at the house. I mean, I told him, too, as soon as he got home, but Cal got mad. He said it was okay for me to go to the library, but no one was supposed to be in the house. And then he said I wasn’t ever, ever supposed to go in the downstairs unless he told me so specific. That’s when I started worrying.”
Clare wanted to say, Worried because you’re married to an abusive, controlling fascist? Instead, she made a go-on noise.
“I mean, why would Dillon get to go down there but not me? We got the chest freezer down there, what if I need something? And how come they take stuff out of there and I never see what it is?”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“I don’t know. Maybe stolen stuff? Dillon works for a trucking company, maybe he’s stealing things and hiding them in our downstairs.”
Clare looked out the window. Two tall swimmers were tying a tree atop an older couple’s car. “How can I help you? I’m guessing you don’t want me to call the police.”
“God, no. What if Cal goes to jail and it’s all Dillon’s fault?”
Clare didn’t point out hiding stolen goods didn’t exactly make Cal an innocent party.
“I was wondering if you could come over again.”
“You’re okay with me visiting? After Cal said no?”
Tiny, surprisingly, sounded crafty. “He said ‘not in the house.’ Fine. You can be outside. I’ll give you the keys and you can look in the downstairs and see what’s there.”
“Because he said you couldn’t go in the downstairs. Very clever!” Clare buckled up. “I’ll head over right now.”
“I’m not … I don’t want to trick him or be bad.”
Clare pulled out slowly, swinging wide around a student toting a stack of plain wreaths from a box truck. “Tiny, if your husband is getting in trouble, it’s better to stop it sooner rather than later.”
The trip up the drive—honestly, “private road” fit better—was as jouncy as the first time, but at least she was expecting it.
Tiny was standing on the deck when she drove into view, and she hurried down the ramp and stairs to meet Clare as she stepped out of her car. Clare gave her a hug. “You doing okay?”
Tiny glanced around as if there might be watchers in the woods. “I’m just…” She trailed off.
“I understand. It’s scary. You’re worried about your husband and you’re not sure you’re doing the right thing. I’ll see what’s down there, okay? Then we can figure out the right thing together.”
Tiny nodded. She looked around again, then shoved her hand in her jeans pocket and came up with three keys on a ball chain. “The gold-colored one is for the downstairs.”
Clare tried to peer inside to see what she was getting into, but the aluminum louvered windows revealed nothing. She walked to the back of the house and unlocked the door.
At first, it looked a lot like what she’d expect in this sort of place—peeling linoleum floor, a few walls roughed in but never completed, bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling.
There was a chest freezer humming near the door, and line looping back and forth along the rafters said someone had once hung laundry down here.
There was a battered workbench, with the sort of tools and cans a reasonably handy person might have.
A worse-for-the-wear weight bench was shoved in a corner, with an untidy collection of dumbbells.
Then there was the shelving unit stretching out across half of one wall and cornering onto the next.
It was new, sturdy, still gleaming silver, and it was stacked with cans and containers and narrow green bottles.
She took her phone out and began shooting.
Some, on the lower shelves, were clearly camping or survivalist supplies; civilian versions of MREs, tubs of water-purification pills, folded tarps, and bungee cords.
The top shelves were more specialized. There were dozens and dozens of cans of Klean Strip paint stripper. An equal number of camper-sized propane bottles. And enough Sterno containers to keep every Boy Scout camp in America supplied.
She finished taking pictures and walked around the open space.
She found a gun locker, locked, which surprised her, since Cal didn’t strike her as a real safety-conscious guy.
No other indication of stockpiling arms or ammo.
Needless to say, no stolen goods, unless Dillon was knocking off Lowe’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
She closed the door, relocking it behind her, and trudged up the steps to the deck.
Tiny had dragged out a couple of chairs and set them by the open front door.
Clare peered in. The baby was on a play mat, gnawing on brightly colored stacking rings.
“We don’t have a gate around the woodstove yet, so I’m going to keep the door open to keep an eye on her. ”
“Sounds good.” Clare sat. Still in her coat and with the sunlight streaming over the deck, it was comfortable.
She leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Tiny, did you know Cal was a member of a white supremacist group before he met you? It was called National Alliance, and they were responsible for violent attacks during protests.”
Tiny looked down at the wooden planking of the deck before nodding. She looked up at Clare. “But he never did any of those things.”
“He was in jail for two years on assault and threatening charges.”
“That wasn’t his fault! He was set up by his awful ex-girlfriend. She said she was going to ruin his life and she did. The courts’ll always believe a crying woman over an honest man.”
That last sounded as if it was a direct quote from Cal.
“Let me tell you what I’m worried about.
Cal has a huge amount of Sterno, propane, and paint stripper down there.
I’m not sure about the paint stripper, but the first two are great at setting fires and making them spread.
Arson investigators call them accelerants. ”
“Arson!”
“Yeah. Tiny, is Cal involved with another group here? Something like the National Alliance?”
Tiny looked at her daughter, who was crawling between tumbled toys and babbling cheerfully. She looked back down at the deck.
“Tiny. Owning these materials isn’t against the law.
Cal hasn’t done anything illegal. Yet.” That they knew of.
“But if he or a group he belongs to manages to use them to firebomb a, I don’t know, a mosque or a synagogue, then he’s going to be in a world of trouble.
Serious, twenty-years-in-prison trouble. ”
Tiny made a muffled noise. She pressed her hands against her mouth and then released them. “They call themselves ‘Knox’s Noble Train.’”
“After Colonel Knox’s expedition during the Revolutionary War? His militia dragged cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. They saved the colonists from surrendering to the British.”
“Well, Cal does say it’s a militia. They have meetings and go camping and run around in the woods playing paintball. I mean, Cal talks a lot about defending our liberties and our way of life, but I didn’t think he meant anything bad by it.”
“He might not have.” Clare didn’t believe that, but Tiny needed to hear it. “But people tend to get sucked into what their friends or their group is doing, and even someone who didn’t mean to do anything wrong can get swept along.”
Tiny nodded.
“I know someone who specializes in these sorts of groups. She’s a lawyer. Could I call her? I think she could help us figure out what to do next.”
“Oh, would you? That sounds … Yeah. Please. I just want to make sure things are okay again.” She looked through the open door.
Rose was rear-rumping herself into a standing position.
“I want her to have the kind of life I didn’t get, you know?
A real home, with a mom and a dad and books to read and … I don’t know.”
“I understand. Believe me. We all want a better world for our kids.” Clare stood and stretched in the sunshine. “It would be nice if we could all agree on what a better world means, wouldn’t it?”