“You’re not going to be in any state to drive, either, if you keep going like that.”
“I know.” He grinned. Those dimples really were awfully cute. “I’m getting a lift from the Spoffards. They’re staying at the same B and B. She’s preggers, so she’s the designated driver. They already have a minivan, in anticipation of the blessed event, so there’ll be plenty of room for you. You won’t even have to sit on my lap. Unless you want to.”
This man was flirting with her. Good God. When was the last time anyone had flirted with her? She instantly thought of the race on the Fourth of July, Russ saying, “I’ve let you drive me crazy,” his voice suddenly husky, like a boy’s voice changing between one word and the next. The thought of it, here in Peggy Landry’s library, made a shiver run up her spine. That wasn’t flirting. That was something much more dangerous. She blinked ferociously and took the glass from Hugh, gulping a mouthful.
“The Fourth of July race,” she said. “That’s what I was thinking of. When I said it didn’t make sense.”
Hugh sat down next to her. “How so?”
“There was an antidevelopment protest. There have been PCBs found in the groundwater in town, and some folks are blaming the construction work. There’s a movement, I guess you’d call it, to get the DEP to take another look at the site. Bill Ingraham stood up and told the whole town that if they called in the state, he’d abandon the project. Said it wasn’t worth the trouble.” She turned toward Hugh, drawing one leg up onto the cushion. “Why would he say that if BWI needed this development to go through so badly?”
“Bluffing maybe? Perhaps he didn’t know as much about the financial state of the company as he should have. Or maybe he was getting sick and tired of it all and was looking to retire anyway.”
She sipped her drink, thinking of the possibilities. Her thoughts were all loose and slippery, hard to grasp and connect. But that was okay. Tomorrow, when she was stone-cold sober, she would be able to see a pattern. She was confident of it. Bill Ingraham. The resort. The debt. Malcolm Wintour.
“And how does Malcolm fit into all this?” She wasn’t sure she had actually said the words out loud until Hugh answered her.
“Malcolm? I don’t think he’s going to have any influence on whether BWI goes under or not.”
“No,I mean…” She wasn’t quite sure what she meant at this point. “He and Bill Ingraham were an item, weren’t they? Is there any way that Malcolm could have benefited from Ingraham’s death?”
“You mean other than the fulfillment of every dumped person’s fantasy that the dumper will drop dead? I don’t think so.”
“Maybe he inherited a stake in the company. Or maybe he was the beneficiary of another life-insurance policy.”
Hugh grinned. “Are you suggesting that Malcolm bumped his ex-boyfriend off? Like some film noir tart?”
Clare swallowed another mouthful of kir royale. “You seem to know him some. Would you say he’s incapable of it?”
Hugh crossed his arms and looked up to the ceiling. “No…not incapable of it. I can imagine him being a vindictive little weasel. Although it’s hard to picture him doing anything that might muss his Brioni pants.” He looked back at her. “Problem is, I can’t imagine him doing anything without there being a direct benefit to Malcolm. And I very much doubt Bill Ingraham’s death benefited him in any way.”
“If he inherited—”
“Look, I didn’t know Ingraham personally, but I’ve certainly heard tell of him over the years. And from what I understand, Bill liked—do you know those tycoon sorts who have a new surgically enhanced blonde on their arms every year? The man keeps getting older, but the girls stay the same age, until he’s ninety-seven years old and marrying Pamela Anderson?”
Clare nodded.
“Well, Bill was like that. Only difference was in the gender.”
“I see. So Malcolm was less like his true love and more like the flavor of the month.”
“Flavor of the year, I would think. They must have been together for a while, because the initial contracts were signed on this spa deal over twelve months ago.”
“So what about Malcolm? Someone described him to me as a gold digger. Was Ingraham just the latest in a string of sugar daddies?”
“That, I don’t know. First I ever heard of him was in connection to Ingraham, after I’d gotten to know Peggy. That’s just been in the past year.” He leaned toward her, very serious now. “I do want to emphasize that none of my knowledge about Bill or Malcolm was obtained inside a gay bar, that I have never been inside a gay bar, and have no intentions so to do.”
“Are you dropping me a little hint here? You’re straight?” She grinned. “You know what they say about men who protest too much.”
“I’m quite comfortable with my own sexuality, thank you. It’s just that I realized I usually don’t spend most of my conversation driveling on about shirt-lifters with a woman I’m trying to chat up.”
“I just love those British expressions.”
“All American women do. That’s why I volunteered for the New York office. I’m really hopeless with women at home. Only in the New World do I stand a chance.”
She laughed loudly.
“Reverend Clare! There you are! I’ve been looking for you. I have some people I want you to meet.” Peggy Landry stalked through the library, making her way to the window seat. “Hello, Hugh.”
“Reverend?” Hugh looked at her goggle-eyed.
“Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t get introduced. Hugh, this is the Reverend Clare Fergusson; she’s the priest at our local church, St. Alban’s. Reverend Clare, this is Hugh Parteger, vice president of Barkley and Eaton Capital.”
“You’re a priest? An Anglican priest?”
Clare nodded, smiling weakly. “I told you I wasn’t a reporter.”
“What on earth did you two find to talk about? Never mind. Reverend Clare, I have a nice couple for you to meet. Cary’s great-uncle and –aunt. They’ve just returned from a lengthy trip to the Holy Land, and I know you’ll love hearing all about it.”
“Ah.” She tried to shore up her face into a cheerful and interested expression. From the dubious look Hugh was giving her, she doubted she was being successful.
“And Hugh,” Peggy continued, “circulate, will you? I’m counting on you to find some single ladies and charm the socks off them. And don’t sneak away later. I want to talk with you about a date for this financing proposal. John Opperman’s flying to Baltimore tomorrow afternoon, and he won’t be back until Tuesday. Now, off you go. Unmarried women only, please.”
She flipped her hands up, indicating both of them were to rise and go forth to entertain her guests. Clare thought, all in all, that Hugh was getting the better job. Oh, well. At least here the elderly couple couldn’t subject her to a slide show.
“Later for you, Vicar,” Hugh said under his breath as they entered the wide living room. “I think you owe me a bit of an explanation.” He peeled off in the direction of the nearest herd of young women.
“What was that all about?” Peggy asked, steering Clare toward the corner of the room. “Oh, look, here are the Woods, all set up on the table.”
Clare’s heart sank at the sight of a couple in their seventies, sitting on either side of an open laptop.
“You must be the minister Peggy’s been telling us about,” the sweet little old lady said. “Pull up a chair! We’re all ready for our Powerpoint slide show!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Clare found being half in the bag did not improve a slide show on the Holy Land. For one thing, the stupefying boredom of it was lulling her to sleep. And when she wasn’t fighting to keep her chin from dropping to her chest, she couldn’t help darting glances at the party beyond the small circle of chairs around the table occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Wood and herself. The wide French doors at the end of the room had been thrown open and couples were dancing outside on the deck. People she hadn’t seen before kept appearing and dis
appearing at the head of the stairs, girls in fluttery dresses, their legs bare, young men in slouchy pants and open-collared shirts. Over the music, she could hear bursts of laughter drifting from the library. It was like the sort of bad dream where you show up at work, not knowing at all what to do and having to fake competence, while all around you your coworkers are having an orgy.
“And in this series of pictures, Cyrus really got up close to show the fantastic detailing in these mosaics. Honey, can you center that picture better? As I said to Betty—she was with us at this church—you can just feel the love and devotion in every tile. Oh, look, this is where they were making repairs. Cyrus, did you get a good look inside that grout bucket?”
God, Clare prayed, if you love me, help me.
“Uncle Cyrus! Aunt Helen! We’re going to take some pictures.” They looked up to meet Cary’s cheerful face.
Angels walk among us, unawares. Clare gave him a smile of such undisguised pleasure, he started. “Reverend Clare? Would you like to be in the pictures, too?”
“Actually,” she said, “I really need to escape to the bathroom.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll catch you all later.” At the wedding, she added silently. She strode off as fast as she could manage in her high heels, crossing to the opposite end of the living room and entering the dining room. It was filled with people circling around a large table, forking up tidbits from chafing dishes and trailing phyllo crumbs behind them. “Bathroom?” Clare asked a woman who was about to bite into a miniature quiche.
“In the hallway to the kitchen,” she said, gesturing to a doorway thronged with guests. As Clare watched, the caterer pushed her way through, wedging openings with her elbows to get her platter into the dining room. “But there’s been a steady stream of customers. You’re going to have a wait.”
Clare made a face. “There must be some other ones,” she said.
“There’s one in the pool house, outside. You leave through the main door and go around the—”
“Anything closer?”
The woman sighed. “Well. It’s supposed to be off-limits except for the houseguests, but there’s one on the top floor. That’s where the guest rooms are. Probably one on the floor above us, too, but I haven’t been up there. Those are the family bedrooms.” She cast a glance around, as if she were giving away a state secret. “Head back to the foyer in front of the main door. There’ll be a door to your left. It opens onto a little stairway that runs up to the bedrooms. The bathroom is in the middle of the hall; you can’t miss it. But you didn’t hear about it from me.”
“My lips are sealed,” Clare said, “and my bladder thanks you.”
She found the door in the foyer without difficulty and climbed up to the third floor, where the guest bathroom was, as promised, easy to find and unoccupied.
It was when she was washing her hands that the thought hit her. The family bedrooms. Which meant Malcolm’s bedroom. One floor below her. Staring unseeing into the bathroom mirror, she could just picture herself finding the correspondence between Ingraham and his lover. An incriminating letter promising a fortune to the younger man. Or maybe an insurance policy. Another lover. Or an offer of part ownership interest in the firm. The possibilities bubbled up in her head like champagne, popping excitedly in a currant-flavored cloud. Malcolm, the mastermind behind the attacks. She would expose him, even though it countered her theory about the reasons behind the beatings. Russ would see she was big enough to embrace the truth, whatever it was. Ron and Stephen and all the other business owners would be so pleased. Russ would be happy. Paul would find peace. Russ would be proud of her. She pictured her vestry congratulating her for finally generating some positive publicity. She pictured Russ’s face when she handed over the evidence that would put Malcolm away. She toweled off and left the bathroom, heading straight for the stairs.
The second floor was dark and hushed, thickly carpeted like the floors above and below. The hallway ran the length of the house, and the floodlight outside, on the house’s facade, provided plenty of illumination for her to see where she was going.
The first door was open, and it led into a bedroom that glowed pale and gauzy in the ambient light. Clare knew without going any farther that this was Peggy’s room. She cautiously made her way over to a door set in the wall at the end of the room, but poking her head inside revealed the muffled interior of a walk-in closet, instead of the next bedroom.
The second bedroom was much darker, its heavy curtains drawn against the outside. But it smelled strongly of Diana’s perfume and Cary’s cologne. She crossed the floor toward where she suspected another closet, intending to turn on the light inside it for a discreet look-see. She promptly tripped over an open suitcase. She went down hard, bouncing off the floor with a loud thud and an involuntary “oof” as the air was knocked out of her. Only the plush carpeting saved her from scraping her knee. She scrambled to her feet and stood motionless for a long moment, listening for the sound of steps on the stairs and an inquiring voice. What was she going to say if she got caught up here? Her mind drew a blank. No helpful advice from Msgt. Wright. No words of wisdom from her grandmother. She was on her own.
She made her way back to the door, skirting the suitcase by sweeping her foot in front of her like a blind man’s cane. Her heart rate was up, and she breathed slowly and deeply to try to calm herself as she walked down the hall and then entered the last bedroom.
The curtains were drawn back and the windows were open, which allowed the faint light and sounds from the party below to float up to the wooden beams of the angled high ceiling. Clare could see the four-poster dominating the room, the dressers against the walls, the two doors, one ajar, leading to another walk-in closet, and the other closed. She crossed the floor and pushed the door open, revealing a tiny bathroom. She took the nearest pair of curtains and drew them tightly shut before reaching into the inside of the closet and sliding her hand along the wall. When she found the light switch, she flicked it on, quickly shutting the door until only a crack of light spilled into the room. Then, confident she would be able to see and thus avoid any more unexpected trips, she circled the bed and drew the other set of curtains shut. She went back to the closet and pushed the door wide open, eager to see what she could find.
In the closet was a fortune in Italian wools and enough polished shoe leather to stock a boutique. There might be something hiding under one of the sweater boxes that marched along the upper shelf, but there were probably more fruitful hiding places to try first. She turned back to the room.
The dresser between the closet and the bathroom held an antique mirror and a brushed-steel CD player the size of her first Kenner Close-and-Play record player. A row of CD jewel boxes stood trapped between bronze bookends. A flat leather box, when opened, revealed earrings and bracelets and cuff links, all of them gleaming with the luster only pricey jewelry had. There was nothing else cluttering up the top of the dresser. Either Malcolm was innately tidy or Peggy Landry employed a hardworking maid. She opened the top two drawers and decided it was Malcolm after all, not hired help. She couldn’t imagine a maid arranging rolled socks and folded underwear with such precision. She slid her hands underneath the clothes and then worked her way through the lower two drawers, searching with her fingertips between silky cottons and feathery cashmere and finding nothing except more confirmation that Malcolm had champagne taste and caviar dreams, or however the slogan went.
She closed the drawers tightly and went on to her next search area. What she had thought was a second dresser, placed between the two windows, turned out to be a square mahogany writing desk. She drew out the spindly-legged chair that had been shoved beneath it and sat down. The surface held a cell phone, a cube calendar, and a few pieces of junk mail. She leaned over to check the wire wastebasket and saw that it was empty. So he didn’t believe in the purloined letter theory of hiding things in plain sight. She opened the top left-hand drawer. Old bills, ripped open and restuffed into their envelopes. Second notices. Third
notices. She shuffled through them. A whole series of demands from a car-loan agency, leading to an official-looking notice of repossession.
The second drawer held several fat paperbacks. Airplane reading. Evidently, Malcolm was a fan of Clive Cussler and Danielle Steel. She riffled through their pages, just to be sure, but the only things that fell out were old ticket stubs for flights to D.C., Chicago, and Houston.
The third drawer was heavy with telephone books, none of which had anything inside or in between them except white and yellow pages. She shut the drawer in disgust, then started on the right-hand side. There was a stack of mismatched stationery, evidence that Malcolm liked to steal hotel writing paper, but nothing indicating a more serious crime. The second drawer was full of junk—paper clips and matchbooks and half-used pads of Post-it notes, the kind of things that accumulate in your pockets and car but seem too potentially useful to throw away.
The last drawer held magazines that—whoops! She shoved the drawer back in. She did not want to look at those magazines. She especially did not want to look through those magazines to see what might have been stashed between the pages. Idiot, she thought. Maybe that’s the point. Like a woman hiding her jewelry in a box of tampons. She nodded. That made sense. Reopening the drawer, she compromised by pinching each magazine by the staples and shaking it vigorously. Nothing, not even one of those annoying inserts selling perfume or subscriptions. On second thought, it was probably illegal to send stuff like this through the U.S. mail, so why would they need subscriptions? She returned the magazines to the drawer, trying not to look too long at the covers.
She stood up, light-headed, and shoved the chair back into place, staggering slightly as her heels caught in the deep carpet. For the first time, she considered that she might not be in the best-possible shape for the task she had undertaken. She tried to recall exactly how many kir royales she had taken off those circulating trays. Four? Five? Oh, well. Nothing for it but to soldier on. That, she could do. What next?