A Fountain Filled With Blood (29 page)

“You’re not married,” Gayle said.

“No, I’m not. How did you know?”

“No ring,” she said, pointing to Clare’s unadorned left hand. Clare was impressed. She knew women checked out men’s hands, but other women’s? It was a good thing she had been out of the singles scene for so many years. She’d have been eaten alive.

“Well, the church traditionally teaches that sex should be reserved for marriage. There’s been a lot of talk in the General Convention lately about redefining that to a mutually committed, loving relationship. I think…” she paused. “I believe that a priest has an obligation to be a model for her or his parish. To try to live very much in the open, in the way Christ wants us to live.”

“So no sex? Until you’re married? At all?” Dennys was clearly intrigued by the idea. She hoped he wasn’t the type of guy who got off on the idea of an unobtainable woman. Now that marriage didn’t stop people fooling around, it must be hard to find any really challenging conquests.

“That’s right,” she said, and as she said it, an image from her dream appeared in her head, the floating warmth, the hands, Russ rising out of the water. She could feel her cheeks heating up.

“She’s blushing!” Chelli said.

Clare smiled and hoped she looked composed. It was only a dream, for heaven’s sake. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me out. We priests are used to asking the personal questions, not answering them. Oops! There’s Peggy. If you’ll excuse me, I want to say hello to our hostess. Nice meeting you all.” She sidestepped quickly behind a waiter circulating a tray of chicken satay and made her escape through the crowd, headed for the open doorway through which Peggy could, possibly, have gone.
If you don’t have to engage the enemy,
Master Sergeant Wright’s voice echoed in her head,
don’t stand there like an idiot, waiting to get shot. Retreat!
There were times, she realized, when being a priest was a distinct disadvantage, and one of them was at a big boozy party where you were hoping to hear some hot gossip about the hostess’s nephew and his ex-lover.

The room she entered was smaller and cozier, with plump love seats and squishy chairs, instead of the sleek modular stuff in the living room. It had bookcases on its walls, mostly filled with photos and important-looking pieces of pottery. Clare decided this room must be called the library. Peggy Landry wasn’t one of the seven or eight people crowding the available seating, but Clare did spot Peggy’s nephew, Malcolm Wintour. He was even more beautiful this evening than he had been when she met him Monday morning, relaxed and younger-looking, with his honey-blond hair falling to either side of his face in perfect glossy wings. For a moment, she could feel the shade of her sister, Grace, beside her. Grace, who had always loved beautiful boys, sighing and saying,
What a shame he’s gay
….

The drinks waiter passed by and she deposited her empty glass and snagged a new one. She strode up to where Malcolm was standing and talking with two other guests, one a young woman whose fashion statement was “My clothes all shrank in the wash,” and the other a man a few years older than Clare, perhaps, with close-cropped hair graying at his temples.

“Malcolm? Hi, it’s nice to see you again. Wonderful party.” Malcolm smiled vaguely, his expression the one people get when they can’t recall an acquaintance. She smiled at his two companions. “Hi, I’m Clare Fergusson.” She deliberately left off her title. She was wearing an outfit that reminded her of something she had seen on the quizmaster of
The Weakest Link
: severely cut silk pants and a long matching jacket with a dozen small fabric buttons marching up to a stiff high collar. She had modeled it for Lois, who’d said she looked like a cross between a Jesuit and a dominatrix. Maybe the people in this room hadn’t heard Diana’s and Cary’s introduction. Let them figure out if she was a religious or a disciplinarian.

“Hi,” the young woman said, taking Clare’s hand limply. Clare paused for a beat, but the girl evidently wasn’t going to pick up the cue and introduce herself.

“Hugh Parteger,” the man said, shaking her hand in turn. Surprisingly, he had a British accent.

“You don’t spell that with a
y,
do you?”

“Not a one.” He smiled, which gave him dimples on either cheek.
Cute,
Grace’s shade advised.

“I’m trying to think…are you the florist?” Malcolm’s voice was slightly off, as if it were coming from someplace other than his own throat. She looked at him more closely. He had evidently had a few too many kir royales. Or something.

She took a sip from her own drink. “Nope. I like flowers as much as the next woman, but I can’t tell a dahlia from a daisy.”

“Or a lupine from a lobelia?” Hugh Parteger said.

“Or a carnation from a chrysanthemum.”

“You’re obviously not into floral sects,” he said.

She almost spit out a mouthful of kir royale laughing. Malcolm and the nameless girl just looked puzzled. She shook her head. “Mr. Parteger, I don’t discuss what I do in my garden bed with anyone.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “For most women, it’s just a matter of finding the right tool.”

She took another drink, enjoying herself immensely. The girl was murmuring something to Malcolm, who was looking around the room. “Yes, but it’s such a tedious process, finding one that fits and works really well. Better just stick to hand weeding. Fewer complications that way.”

“Ah, so you’re a master gardener.”

She actually giggled. How mortifying. She took a long swallow from her drink. “As Voltaire said, we must cultivate our garden.”

“I believe he also said, ‘Once, a philosopher, twice, a pervert.’”

“Hey, you two. Later.” They had not only lost Malcolm and the girl; they had driven them away. With a pang, Clare watched them drift toward the door. This was not the way to untangle the relationship between Malcolm and his late business partner.

“Ah, did I put a foot wrong?” Hugh Parteger waved over the waiter, who had reappeared in the doorway with a trayful of fresh drinks. “Were you after speaking with Malcolm? Because I have to tell you, you’re not his type.”

She laughed again. “So I understand. No, I just wanted to talk with him at some point. And offer my condolences, I guess.”

Hugh reached for her now-empty glass and put it on the waiter’s tray alongside his own. He handed her another drink before taking one, as well.

“Condolences?”

“I had heard that he was…that he had been particularly close to Bill Ingraham, the developer. He died this weekend.”

“I read he was knocked off.”

Again, she almost choked on a mouthful of champagne and currant liqueur. “‘Knocked off ’?”

“Rubbed out. Done away with. Whacked. Fed to the fishes. Stop me if I’m using clichés.”

She couldn’t help laughing again, although it was horrible, too, with the sight of Ingraham’s mutilated corpse still in her mind.

“No, really. The gossip mills in Saratoga are blaming it on the mob.”

“In Millers Kill? What mob?”

“I don’t know. You don’t have a lot of Russian émigrés around, do you?”

“I believe I’m the last person to emigrate here, and I’m from southern Virginia.”

“I thought I detected more of a drawl than usual. How did you wind up in this remote and desolate place?”

“It’s not—” She stopped herself. His dimples were showing again. “I came for a job,” she said. “How about you? You sound like you’re a lot farther away from home than I am.”

“Protecting my interests. I work for a venture-capital firm in New York that’s made some investments in Saratoga. It gives me an excuse to come up during the racing season and hang about, sponging off people.” He waved a hand, indicating the house around him. “Peggy had been extolling the beauties of her hometown, and it was the perfect opportunity to pump her for information about BWI Development, so here I am. Not a houseguest, thank God. I’m billeted at a bed-and-breakfast in town.”

Several questions crowded into her head at once, all of them jostling for attention. She grabbed the first one she could articulate. “Why ‘thank God’?”

“Peggy—look, she’s not your best friend or anything, is she? Your cousin?”

Clare shook her head.

“Well, I find a little bit of Peggy goes a long way. She’s a bit too ruthlessly organized and peppy. She’ll probably have the houseguests up at five for a brisk scenic hike. Plus, she’s been hitting me up about getting Malcolm a job at my firm, if you can believe that. Do you know him well?”

“We’ve only just met.”

“Peggy is amazingly sharp, but Malcolm couldn’t find his arse with both hands. I shudder to think what he could do if he actually had to take responsibility for something.”

“I heard he was the one who got Peggy and Bill Ingraham together for this Algonquin Waters Spa development.”

“Oh, he’s good at the social thing, no doubt about that. Which is probably why Peggy has him down for my job. There’s a lot of circulating and schmoozing you have to do. There’s also a lot of researching and interviewing and digging into company books. I suspect the last book Malcolm cracked was
The Home-Brew Guide to Making Your Own Methamphetamines.
”

She clapped one hand over her eyes. “You’re dropping a hint here…. I’m getting a clue as to what you think of him.”

He laughed. “Oh God, I forgot to ask. You’re not a reporter, are you?”

She opened her eyes. “Nope. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty well known for my ability to keep things confidential.” She sipped her drink. “But I am interested in the development. It’s been a real source of controversy here in town.”

“So I hear.”

“Why are you trying to pump Peggy Landry for—”

“No, believe me, the last thing I want to do is pump Peggy.”

She giggled again—no!—and clapped a hand over her mouth. “For information about BWI,” she said firmly.

“We’ve been thinking about sinking some money into it. After the Internet bubble burst, the partners have become interested in more traditional investments. And there’s not much that’s more traditional than buying land and sticking buildings on it.”

“Are you going to go through with the investment? Now that Bill Ingraham is dead?”

“I don’t think that’s the problem. He did a terrific job, and he had a real feel for what people wanted on these luxury resorts. But he can be replaced. Maybe not by one larger-than-life guy like himself, but by an architect, a construction boss, and a marketing designer. The problem is”—he moved closer and dropped his voice—“as near as I can tell, BWI is standing on a mountain of debt. Any investment we, or others, make is just going to go into the hopper.”

In her sandals, she was exactly Hugh’s height. It made her feel like they were swapping secrets. “What’s going to happen now? Are they going to go under?”

He shook his head. “Not if they can carry off this resort. This one’s funded by private backers, not by the banks. Oppenheimer has gotten smarter.”

“Opperman. Oppenheimer invented the atomic bomb.”

“Okay. The one that didn’t invent the atomic bomb is now trying to put together consortiums of investors, rather than doing their financing through banks. Makes it a lot easier to sidestep those nasty time payments.”

“What about insurance on Bill Ingraham?”

“What do you mean?”

Clare finished off her drink. “There would have been insurance on Bill Ingraham, right? As a partner? My folks run a small aviation business, and I know my dad has insurance that goes directly into the company if he dies.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure Ingraham had insurance.” Hugh frowned in thought. “Actually, that’s a good question. I wonder how much it was?” He drained his glass and refocused on her. “But even if he was insured for a couple million, it wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket against their debt load.”

She worried her lower lip. “Something’s not making sense here.”

“I’ll say. They keep sending in the drinks tray, but we haven’t seen any of the hors d’oeuvres. C’mon, someone less hardy than ourselves had fled to find food and we can nab the window seat.”

He slid his hand beneath her elbow and steered her toward a window seat tucked behind a large desk angling out from a corner of the room. She collapsed onto the well-stuffed cushion and slipped off her sandals. “Oh, yes. That feels good.” Hugh flagged down the waiter. “No, I shouldn’t. I think I’ve had enough all ready. Eventually, I have to drive home.”

“You can ride with me,” he said, lifting two glasses from the tray.

“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.”