Her fingers tightened around her glass. If she had had anything, anything, heavy to hand, she would have brained him.
“Any other woman, alone, attracts attention of the wrong kind. As, I hear, you may have done.”
She froze.
“Find a nice young man and settle down. Your congregation and your bishop will thank you. With the help of the right sort of spouse, you may find you have a career in the church, not just a vocation.”
Clare didn’t trust herself to say anything. She nodded stiffly to the deacon, gripped her skirts in one hand, and stalked out of the bar. Hugh was loitering near the ballroom entrance. “What’s the matter?” he said. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“That . . . disgusting old man.” She lifted her drink and saw her hand was shaking. She knocked back half the whiskey in one swallow.
“Go easy,” Hugh said. “That’s too good to take as medicine. What did that disgusting old man do?”
“He told me I had three options open to me if I wanted to be a successful parish priest. Go through menopause, become a dyke, or get married.”
Hugh was silent for a moment. “So,” he said finally. “I guess this means you’ll be wanting an introduction to Brunhilda over at the Womyn’s Moon Circle Collective, then.”
She laughed.
“C’mon,” he said. “You can’t let a relic from the nineteenth century get your goat. You’ll outlive him, anyway. Someday he and all the old gents running the show will die off, and who will be left? That’s right, a bunch of postmenopausal lesbian and married women.”
She smiled at him gratefully. “You really are very good for me, you know?”
“Of course I do. Let’s get inside and find our seats.”
The Algonquin Waters ballroom elevated Adirondack haut rustic to new heights. The rosewood floor glowed in the light from a dozen antler chandeliers. Three walls of polished pine were punctuated with twenty-foot riverstone pillars, while the fourth, which faced them as they walked through the entryway, was glass, sheets and slabs of glass, providing indigo and silver views of the mountains and the nearly full moon.
“Not bad,” Hugh said.
“This place is going to be wedding reception central,” Clare said. “Believe me. I officiated at twenty weddings this year, and at least half the brides and their mothers would have given their right arms for a place like this.”
Round tables encircled the dance floor, long white linen and low dark flowers with votives that reflected in the silver and silver that reflected in the crystal. Clare felt self-conscious suddenly, out of place amid the finery. Her grandmother Fergusson would have been thoroughly at home here, admiring the men in their dinner jackets, critiquing the women’s long dresses. But every step Clare had taken in her life had brought her farther and farther away from places like this, and she found herself nervously plucking at her skirts, wondering if that off-the-shoulder cassock might not have been a better idea after all.
Then Hugh spotted someone from Saratoga that he knew, and she was swept up in introductions and chitchat. The bell rang again, and waiters began to emerge from doors on the far side of the room, carrying trays of salads and carafes of water. Clare tugged Hugh away to search among the tables for their name cards. She had just bent over to eximine a piece of pasteboard more closely—it turned out to read CHERYL ERNGARTEN—when she heard a voice behind her. “Reverend Fergusson! Over here!”
She turned and saw her senior warden, Robert Corlew, standing and waving. She wended her way past the intervening tables and took his outstretched hand. “You look terrific!” he said. “By God, say what you like about Father Hames”—Clare smiled patiently at the mention of her saintly predecessor—“he couldn’t do justice to a dress like that!”
The other man sitting at the table had also risen, and Clare saw with interest it was Jim Cameron, the mayor of Millers Kill. “Reverend Fergusson,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”
She introduced Hugh to the mayor and to Robert, and they in turn presented the ladies at the table, Eunice Corlew, a small, wrenlike woman so self-effacing she seemed to disappear into the furniture at times, and Cameron’s wife, a keen-jawed, graying blond Valkyrie named Lena Erlander.
“Sit with us!” Corlew urged. “We have two empty places. Two little old ladies came by, looked over the rest of the names at the table, and then collected their cards and went away!” He swept his hand, indicating the empty seats between him and Lena Erlander. “Guess they must have been Republicans, Jim!” He laughed at his own joke.
Clare glanced at Hugh. Corlew could be a bit of a blowhard, but she wouldn’t mind having some face time with the mayor. That was the sort of relationship that could pay off when the church went looking for, say, donated space for their young mothers’ child care program.
“You’re a Republican, Robert,” Cameron pointed out. He turned to Hugh. “Please, do join us.”
“Well, I suppose if Clare doesn’t—”
“Oh, yes, sit here! Sit with us!” The new voice was richly feminine, bright and breathy. “I haven’t had a chance to talk with Reverend Fergusson since she saved my poor husband’s leg.”
Clare jerked around. A tiny blonde wrapped in pale pink satin that made her resemble a well-endowed Greek goddess stood framed between Eunice Corlew and Jim Cameron. She smiled at Hugh, and despite the fact that she was easily a decade or more his senior, Clare could feel him straighten his spine and expand his chest in response. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Linda Van Alstyne.”
8:05 P.M.
Russ watched across the table and counted the expressions flickering, subtle as brushstrokes, across Clare’s face. Horror. Chagrin. Embarrassment. And now the dawning realization that she wasn’t going to be able to get out of sitting down with them. Cataloging Clare’s emotions helped him ignore his own.
Linda was chattering away. “. . . so Russ was tromping around in the woods, doing some investigation or something, and he slipped into a woodchuck hole and broke his leg! If Reverend Fergusson hadn’t been there to help get him to the hospital, he would have frozen to death.” She beamed up at Clare. “Sit! Sit!”
Hugh Parteger, whom Russ hadn’t even registered until that moment, pulled out the seat next to Robert Corlew. Clare collapsed into it with none of her usual grace. Parteger, who looked considerably more at home in his tuxedo than Russ felt in his, sent a cool glance across the table before seating himself next to the mayor’s wife.
“How brave and clever of you, Reverend Fergusson,” Lena Erlander said in her Scandinavian accent. “Your name—is it Swedish?”
“Scots,” Clare said. “And please, call me Clare.”
Jim Cameron launched into the story of how he and Lena met on a trip to Scotland three years back, which opened the door for Parteger to make the table laugh with a description of learning the Scottish fling for a party, which got Rob Corlew onto dancing lessons he and his wife took on their last cruise, which pretty much got them through the salad. All that time, Russ watched Clare, avoided watching Clare, watched her without seeming to watch her, and felt like a complete shit.
He was the guy in the cartoon with the comic angel on one shoulder and the leering devil on the other. One of them was smacking him upside the head and saying, Look at this gorgeous woman sitting next to you! Do you want to screw that up? The other had eyes popping out on cartoon springs and was drooling. Those eyes, that hair, all that skin . . . He’d never seen Clare so undressed before. He wanted to run his hands over her pale white shoulders and down her—He forked a large and bitter piece of endive into his mouth and crunched it.
“You still working on that?” the waiter said. Russ dropped the silverware onto the plate and waved it away.
Linda started describing the frantic hours of work she put in today to get the draperies up all over the hotel. He let his gaze wander to the table next to them, and to the table next to that, automatically checking for signs of intoxication or aggression or distress. Way up at the front of
the room, he saw his mom and her cousin Nane, talking and laughing with a rowdy group of women he assumed were the volunteer gardeners of the ACC. A little distance away, he spotted a table with an imbalance of seven men: four elegantly dressed Asians, three white guys in badly fitting rental tuxes, and one slim, older woman in a smoke-gray dress.
“What was the oldest van der Hoeven’s name?” he asked Clare, without thinking.
“Luella? No, Louisa.”
“I think that’s her over there.” He pointed with his chin. His wife gave him an incurious glance before returning to the mayor. She was pitching him on redecorating his office.
Clare turned around in her seat. “It could be,” she said. “I can see a family resemblance.” She turned back. “Do you think she knows?”
“Knows what?” Robert Corlew looked at Clare, then Russ, then back to Clare.
“Eugene van der Hoeven was killed today,” Russ answered.
“No sh——oot!” Corlew said. “Is that going to put a stop to the land sale?”
“Evidently not,” Clare said. “Those Malaysians are the bigwigs from GWP.” She bit her lower lip. “Oh, crud. I have two cases of wine in my car I was supposed to deliver for them.” At Corlew’s baffled look, she went on, “Eugene asked me to do it as a favor. The guy who was supposed to pick them up never showed.”
“Eugene?” Corlew said. “How did you get to be on a first-name basis with the van der Hoevens?”
Clare launched into an account of her time as a search and rescue volunteer. Russ checked out the table next to the GWP brass. And whaddya know, there was his old friend Shaun Reid, with his young and lovely second wife. The tables at the head of the room had already been served their entrees, and he could see Shaun eating methodically. Even from a distance, Russ could see his movements were those of someone stiff and sore.
One of the waiters came up to Shaun. Russ, expecting to see a wine bottle produced, was surprised when the uniformed man handed Shaun what looked like a piece of paper. Shaun unfolded it, read it, and looked around wildly. He sat, head bowed for a moment, then rose and followed the path the waiter had taken out of the ballroom.
That’s interesting.
Russ skidded his chair back. “I think I’ll excuse myself before dinner arrives,” he said. He left through the main entrance, but instead of turning right toward the restrooms, he turned left. He walked past the length of the ballroom until he came to a door bearing a discreet brass plaque: EMPLOYEES ONLY. He pushed against the door and was disappointed to see it led into a shallow room lined with shelf upon shelf of table linens. He stepped back into the lobby. The wall continued unbroken to the corner. Somewhere behind there was the kitchen, but it obviously had an entirely separate entrance, so that unsuspecting guests couldn’t stumble their way into the noisy chaos that made their dinners possible.
He reached into his jacket pocket and removed his cell phone. “Hey, Harlene,” he said when his number connected. “Any news?”
“Hey, Chief. The crime scene boys just finished up at Reid-Gruyn. They said there’s a load of prints off the couch, so it may take ’em a while to eliminate the duds.”
“Do you know if anyone’s tried to get ahold of Shaun Reid? To question him, or maybe to get him to open up a room or something?”
“Not to my knowledge. Lyle’s still on the road checking out places where the Schoof boy might be. Kevin’s still watching the house. He’s called in a few times to complain about how bored he is.”
“Tell him boredom is good. It’s when things get interesting that you have to worry.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Eric’s still up at Haudenosaunee. Mark’s trying to eliminate some of the Mercedes . . . oh, wait, he wants to talk to you.”
There was a pause, and then he heard Mark’s voice. “Hi, Chief.”
“Hi. You find something?”
“Not yet. But there was something interesting. I’ve been going through the names trying to see if anybody who’s ever had a connection to the van der Hoevens has a black Mercedes, right? And I run across a name that doesn’t have a connection to the family but may be linked to Haudenosaunee.”
“Who?”
“Shaun Reid. He’s a possible suspect in the Castle assault, right? And she was found on Haudenosaunee property.”
Shaun Reid. Who looked for all the world as if he had been brawling today. “Good work. I think it might be time to pay Shaun a more formal visit. Pull together everything we’ve got for a warrant request. If Ryswick comes through, maybe we can hit him early tomorrow morning. In the meanwhile, keep looking for any other connections for the Mercedes. This could easily be someone from the city, you know. Their father, Jan van der Hoeven, headquartered his business there.”
“Yeah, I know.”
From the entryway in the middle of the lobby, Russ could hear the muted clinking of forks hitting china. “Gimme back to Harlene, will you?”
Harlene came onto the line. “Yeah?”
“Tell Lyle I want him to drop by the hospital again as soon as he can. See what the reaction is when he tells Becky Castle her stuff was found in Reid’s office. Have Eric call me from Haudenosaunee as soon as he can. I want to know if he’s turned up anything.”
“Will do, chief. How’s the fancy party? Is it making up for having to work on your birthday?”
He thought about their table. Linda and Clare and Hugh and Russ. Like a bad Italian art movie. “Harlene, I can honestly say I’d rather be eating greasy takeout and waiting for an autopsy report than be here.”
8:20 P.M.
Lisa Schoof tried to control her shaking. She stood in the passageway outside the Algonquin Waters kitchen, listening to pots hammering iron burners and dishes clanging against stainless steel. The door swung open, and she jerked to attention, but it was only an assistant in a grease-spattered white shirt, ducking down the hall for a quick smoke. The door, shutting, pumped a blast of steam and smell and the sound of harsh voices jabbering in a language Lisa couldn’t even recognize.
She had found her way to the kitchen door easily enough: In her sweater and padded motorcycle jacket she looked nothing like the guests she had seen in her brief flight through the lobby, and a sympathetic chambermaid, thinking she was new and late for her shift, pointed her in the right direction.
She stepped into the kitchen, thinking she could snag a waiter to deliver the message she had written out, but was stymied immediately by the chaos around her. She had waitressed before, at the Red Lobster in Glens Falls, but that kitchen could have fit into a corner of the acreage of white tile and chrome racks that surrounded her here. She was perhaps ten steps in when a short man in front of an open blast furnace of an oven started screaming at her, first in a foreign language, then in English. “Get out! Get out, you! Get out!”
Lisa stumbled back, breathless, and was on the verge of bolting when a hand fell on her shoulder and a pleasant voice asked, “What are you doing here, kiddo?”
She was face-to-face with a faultlessly white shirt and an elaborate waistcoat. The man holding her looked like a riverboat gambler in a western. “Are you a waiter?”
“Sure am. Are you new?”
She shook her head. “No.” Her throat threatened to close up, but she got her prepared story out. “I work for Mr. Shaun Reid. I have to get a note to him. It’s important. It’s about the, the mill. His mill.”
“Where’s he at? The banquet? The door’s right over there. I can show you the way.”
“Oh, no. I can’t. I’ll get in trouble. He, he doesn’t want the other businessmen to know. That . . . there’s a problem.” She reached into her pocket and withdrew the tightly folded note. “Could you?”
The waiter smiled at her indulgently. “Sure, kiddo. Do you know where he’s sitting?”
She had thought about that, driving in. “I think he’s with the people from the big paper company.”
“GWP? Okay, I’ll see that he gets it.” He held out his hand for the paper, but she unfo
lded it quickly and pulled her ballpoint from her pocket. Meet me in the hallway outside the kitchen, she scribbled at the bottom. She refolded the paper and passed it to the nice waiter.
“You better leave now, before Egoberto tries to fillet you.”
She glanced over to where the ferocious cook was ramming rounds of helpless bread into the fiery inferno. “Right,” she said.
So here she stood, chafing her hand over her arms in a futile attempt to rub away the cold seeping from her gut. It already felt as if she had been waiting for an hour. What if the waiter couldn’t find Reid? What if he laughed and tore up the paper? What if he called the cops and they were already on their way to arrest her for blackmail? What if—
The kitchen door swung open again. Shaun Reid strode into the hall, brushing at his tuxedo jacket as if it had been soiled by his time in the kitchen. He saw her. His head went up. His black eyes and bruises startled her. He looked like a boxer. “Who are you?” he asked.
His age, his clothing, the authority in his voice—she almost blurted out the truth by sheer force of habit. The thing that caught her was that he didn’t know already. She had been cleaning his house for a year now, and he didn’t recognize her. Then she noticed the sheen of sweat across his forehead, the dampness on his upper lip.
It was quite cool in the kitchen passageway.
“I’m the person who has Millie van der Hoeven safe.”
He glanced quickly over his shoulder, then back at her. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
“Fine. I’ll go call my friend, and he’ll take her to the cops. She’s been dying to talk to them all day.” She feinted, as if she were going to go around him.
He threw out his arm to stop her. “Open your jacket,” he said.
She did.
“Pick up your sweater.”
“Screw you. You want to see tits, go somewhere else, you perv.”
“I want proof you’re not wearing a wire before I talk with you, you little twit.”