To Darkness and to Death (38 page)

“Are you home for a visit?” Behind the counter, she heard hangers rattling. Millers Kill boasted the last dry cleaner in America to resist automation.

“Nope. I work here. Well, not here, exactly. At the new resort.”

“Oh! I’m going to be there tonight. At the grand-opening dinner dance. At least,” she considered, “I think I’m going. If it’s still on.”

“It’s still on. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because of the van der Hoevens.” A plastic
thwap-thwap
drew her around. The woman laid Clare’s clothes on the counter.

“Twenty dollars,” the attendant said, her impatient expression signaling that she was mentally already locked up and gone.

“What about them?”

Clare dug her wallet out of her jacket pocket. “Millie van der Hoeven is missing.” She dropped her voice. “And I don’t think it’s made the news yet, but Eugene van der Hoeven died today.”

“Holy shit!” His eyes went to her collar, which she had put on for her hospital visit, and he blushed slightly, burnishing his high cheekbones. She smiled to herself. Her sister Grace would have gone after this one with both hands. “Sorry. But no, we haven’t heard anything about canceling the dinner dance. When I left, preparations were in full swing.”

She handed over her twenty. “Who’s sponsoring the event?”

“GWP, the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation, and the resort. It’s not just for the land transaction, you know? It’s also a thank-you for Mr. Opperman’s investors and big donors to the ACC.” He frowned. “Even without the van der Hoevens, I don’t think Mr. Opperman would pull the plug. He wants to open the resort with a bang.”

“Mmmm.” She had met John Opperman two summers ago, when the resort was just breaking ground. He had engaged in the most cold-blooded business dealings she had ever witnessed. She had destroyed his corporate helicopter. It was safe to say neither had been left with a good feeling about the other.

The clerk hoisted a stack of suits and shirts onto the counter. “Forty-three bucks,” she said. Jeremy handed her a card.

“Do you think your father will be worried? If the land deal is off?”

He looked at her sharply.

“I heard the company buying the property was on the verge of making a bid for your family’s mill.”

“That’s not widely known.”

She smiled in what she hoped was a disarming fashion. “Priests hear all sorts of stuff that’s not widely known.”

He bent over to sign the charge slip. “Yeah, well, Dad won’t be shedding any tears if the deal doesn’t come through.”

“Oh? I heard he was looking forward to retirement and travel.”

Jeremy stood. “Courtney told you, right? I swear, Dad could shave his head and become a Buddhist monk and she wouldn’t notice if it didn’t fit in with her worldview.” He dragged his clothing off the counter. “He’s not happy about the acquisition. I think it’ll be good for the company and good for him, and I’m trying to convince him of that, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking he’s all okay with it.”

“Excuse me,” the woman behind the counter said. “We’re closed now.” She stared pointedly at Clare’s dress and blouses, still on the counter.

“Right. Sorry.” Clare scooped up her clothing. “What do you think your dad will do? If the company gets bought out?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Join the twenty-first century? There’s not much call for small manufacturers who want to pass down the business from father to son like a feudal lord. Maybe if he’s forced to hand over the reins, he’ll finally accept that I’m not going to be the fifth generation of Reids to spend his life chained to a paper mill.”

“Excuse me,” the woman said loudly. “We’re. Closed. Now.”

Jeremy stepped ahead of Clare and opened the door for her. “Thanks,” she said.

“My pleasure. I’ll see you at the dance tonight.” He flapped the plastic bags. “You’ll recognize me by my neatly pressed dinner jacket.”

She smiled. “Nice meeting you, Jeremy.” She watched him cross the street before turning and walking down the sidewalk to her car. She had parked in front of Coffee To Go and was considering getting a cup before heading over to the hospital when she became aware of a large red pickup parked behind her little Shelby.

She laid her dress and blouses in her car and crossed to the truck’s passenger side. The window rolled down. Warm air and the sound of country music spilled out of the truck cab.

“Are you following me?”

Russ hooked one hand over the steering wheel. “I’m on my way from the station to the hospital. I saw your car. There was a parking space right behind it.”

“That’s quite a coincidence.”

In the faint light from his dashboard, she thought she could see him blush. “It’s not entirely coincidental. I, um, remembered you said you were going to the dry cleaners.”

“And to the hospital?”

“Mmm.”

She couldn’t stop her mouth from curving into a smile. “Why don’t you walk with me, then?”

“Walk?”

“Sure. It’s only, what, five or six blocks away?”

“More like eight or nine,” he said, but he was already shutting down the engine and sliding out of the truck.

“C’mon. Walking’s supposed to be good for you senior citizen types.”

He gave her his death-ray glare. She laughed.

“Just you wait, darlin’,” he warned. “First time you jaywalk—you’ll feel the long arm of the law.”

6:00 P.M.

Help me get this stuff off my ankles.”

“No.”

“For chrissakes, then!” Millie stood up from the box where she had been sitting. “Just give me the damn knife! I’ll do it myself!”

Randy backed out of reach. “No.”

“I thought you were going to help me!” Anger fueled her stride, and she tried to stalk toward the man fading into the darkness. The six inches of duct tape stubbornly twined around her ankles caught her up short, and she would have plunged face forward onto the dirty floor if she hadn’t flung her arms wide and dropped into a squat. Finally her yoga lessons were paying off.

“I have helped you.” She couldn’t see him at all now. “I cut your hands free, I gave you food, I helped you to the bathroom—”

Her face burned. “You’re keeping me as much a prisoner here as Shaun Reid is.” Her gratitude toward this guy for putting a name to her brother’s murderer had shriveled up somewhere between the sandwich and the potty break, when she realized he was keeping her hobbled for a reason. “You’re probably in it with him.”

“I am not!”

She had learned a few things about Randy Schoof in the hour or so since he had stumbled into her new prison. One: He had little, if any, control over his emotions. Her father would have rolled his eyes at the way Schoof revealed his passion and his envy as he spoke about his wife, his hard luck, and Shaun Reid. He gave himself away with both hands, something van der Hoevens learned not to do by the age of four.

Two: Randy Schoof wasn’t very bright. She discounted formal education—she knew several environmental activists who hadn’t graduated high school and yet were razor sharp and well read—but Randy didn’t fall into that class. He seemed little informed about and less interested in the world. She got the feeling that in the right circumstances he might be downright gullible.

Three: He was scared of something. And that made her scared as well, because he had all the impulse control of a fourteen-year-old with ADHD. If it was Shaun Reid who frightened him, she might be in bigger trouble than before.

She sat back down. She needed to keep him her friend. “Just tell me what it is that’s keeping us here. You know, I have friends and connections all over the country. I could help you disappear.”

“I don’t want to disappear. I just want to stay in my house, with Lisa.”

“Lisa could come with you. I have an awful lot of money, you know.” Actually, compared to her parents in their heyday, she was practically a pauper. But she was pretty sure that in Randy Schoof’s eyes, she was rich.

“I don’t want a handout.” He was only a shadowy form as he spoke. Moonlight from the window above them shafted onto the floor several feet away. “I wasn’t looking for no special favors. I just want a chance to make a decent living out in the woods. That’s all I want. But you know, everything’s stacked against a guy like me. If you didn’t get into the business forty years ago, like Ed Castle, forget it.”

“Look, all I’m saying is that I can help you. But you have to help me.”

“I will. But we need to stay put for a while. I’m gonna call my wife soon, and then we’ll see.”

Theoretically, there was nothing keeping her from getting to her feet and inching her way across the warehouse until she found the door to the outside. She had more than a hunch that he’d stop her by force if he had to, though. Her arms were untied, but she didn’t have any illusions on that account. He had carried her into the ancient and odiferous water closet, and although he wasn’t much taller than she was, he was built like a hunk of Adirondack granite. It was, she thought, a kind of game. If she put him into a position where he felt he had to restrain her, she would lose. In order to keep playing, she had to stay on his side.

“Why don’t you go call her, then?”

She felt, rather than saw, his consideration.

“I won’t try to leave,” she promised. “If you want, you can even tie up my hands.” She forced a chuckle. “Although I’d appreciate it if you did it in front instead of in back. My shoulders are still aching.”

“Well…”

She crammed her fear and desperation into a tiny, tight box and pushed it to the back of her mind. She spoke to her latest captor in the jolly “we’re all in it together” tones that she used to cajole agreement out of sulky activists trapped in overlong meetings. “C’mon. I’m in a jam. You’re in a jam. I know you need to talk to your wife before you do anything else. The sooner you do that, the sooner we can get out of here.”

“Okay.”

His capitulation surprised her. “Okay,” she echoed.
Stay
on his side. Show him how well you cooperate.
“Um… do you want to tie up my hands?”

“Naw. I figure you ain’t going nowhere. Even if you made it to the door, I’d be back by the time you could get outside. And outside, there isn’t no place to hide.” There was a scraping sound. Millie stiffened, but it was only him rising from whatever crate he had been perched on. “I’ll be back.”

She was alone in the darkness again.

6:05 P.M.

Millers Kill was closing down for the night. Russ walked with Clare along Main Street, hearing the door chimes jingling as shopkeepers locked up, looking into store windows where display lights simmered like fires banked to last out the night. This being one of the last dry towns in New York, there were no bars or pubs springing to life, no restaurants gearing up for an influx of customers. Except for gamers hanging out at All Techtronik or dads dashing into MacPherson’s Video for the latest movies—action for him, chick flick for her, Disney for the kids—the streets emptied out. If you lived in Millers Kill, you went elsewhere on a Saturday night. To the Dew Drop Inn across the Cossayuharie line, or to the second-run cinema in Fort Henry, four screens, no waiting. If you wanted Dolby Sensurround and well-sprung seats, it was another half hour to the Aviation Mall in Glens Falls. If you wanted to drink in a place where the bartender didn’t look at you funny for ordering a martini, well, Saratoga was forty minutes and a whole cultural time zone away.

“Are you having second thoughts?”

Clare’s voice broke him out of his reverie. “About what?”

She jammed her hands into her bomber jacket pockets and stared straight ahead. “Walking with me. In public.”

He laughed. “Are you kidding?” He looked at her more closely. Under a sodium streetlight, she was burnished orange, striped by black shadows from a leafless maple arcing over them. Like a kid wearing tiger face paint for Halloween. “No,” he said more seriously. “I don’t worry about stuff like that.” He hesitated. “Do you? Did—has anyone said anything to you?” By anyone, he meant Hugh Parteger. He was trying, he really was, not to be unreasonably jealous, especially because he recognized that if he were a better friend to Clare, he’d be throwing her toward the rich, single guy who was obviously nuts for her, instead of snarling like a dog in the manger.

She glanced behind her. “I had a visit from the diocesan deacon this afternoon. Before you, uh, arrived.”

“I hope you didn’t entertain him in your bathrobe, too.”

She glared at him, then blew at a strand of hair that had worked its way free of her usual knot. “It turns out the bishop sent Father Aberforth to—”

“Wait a sec. Who’s Father Aberforth?”

“The diocesan deacon.”

“Shouldn’t he be Deacon Aberforth?”

She glanced up at him sideways, the ghost of a smile in her eyes. “Somebody hasn’t been reading
The History and Customs of the Episcopal Church in America
. Career deacons are, in fact, properly designated ‘Father.’ Unless, of course, they’re women, in which case I’m sure Aberforth refers to them as ‘Ms.’ ” She snorted. “Anyway, he was there to call me out on a serious matter. One that he attributed to my inexperience and to not understanding how people will talk in a small town. A matter he wanted to keep quiet so as not to give any other priests bad ideas.”

His stomach sank.

“Us?” “Ha! Exactly what I thought. I was sure someone had come tattling to the bishop about seeing the two of us together.”

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” he said automatically.

“Oh, Russ.” She looked up at him ruefully. “Tell me you’d have no qualms describing our relationship to your wife. And make me believe it.”

He kept his mouth shut.

“Anyway, it turned out he and the bishop are hot under the collar about Emil Dvorak’s and Paul Foubert’s union ceremony. I was supposed to apologize and repent, and I wouldn’t—”

“What a surprise,” he said under his breath.

“—so Father Aberforth is going to talk to the bishop and let me know what shape my discipline will take.”

“Discipline? This isn’t just them getting cranky?”

She shook her head, sending another strand of hair floating loose.