To Darkness and to Death (42 page)

Randy grinned. “I know who killed Eugene van der Hoeven.”

This was so far outside anything Lisa expected, she thought she must have misheard him. “Come again?”

“I know who killed Eugene van der Hoeven. It was Shaun Reid.”

“Mr. Reid? The guy who owns the mill?”

Randy nodded. She glanced out the windshield, wondering when the
Candid Camera
guy would show up and Randy would announce the whole day, everything, had been an elaborate gag. “Well,” she said.

He made an impatient noise. “You know the missing woman? Millie van der Hoeven? She’s in the old mill.” He pointed to where the building moldered, hidden behind the faceless brick wall of the new mill. “She witnessed the whole thing. Shaun Reid killed her brother, stuck her in the trunk of his car, and stashed her there to hide her.”

“You’re serious.”

“Of course I’m serious.”

She leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder. “Okay. So how is this going to help you?”

“We tell Mr. Reid that we have her. If he confesses to beating up Becky Castle, we’ll keep her hidden away. If he doesn’t confess, we bring her out and he’s going down for murder.”

Lisa blinked at him.

“Don’t you see? He’d for sure rather be charged with assault than murder.”

It was such an ambitious and, in its own weird Randy way, brilliant idea that she almost hated to point out the flaw. “What about Millie van der Hoeven?”

“What about her?”

“What do we do with her during the months it takes for Mr. Reid to come to trial? Or is she volunteering to go into hiding to save you?”

He looked abashed. “That’s the fuzzy part of the plan.”

“Fuzzy? Babe, that’s a freaking jungle growing up around you. It’ll never work.”

“It could,” he insisted. “Think about it. Even if we didn’t make it stick, you know, with Mr. Reid, we could buy some time. We could take her home with us—”

“Take her home with us?” Lisa screeched.

“Long enough for it to set up in the cops’ minds that Mr. Reid did it. Then, even if we let her go and she narcs on Reid and he says he didn’t have nothing to do with Becky Castle, it’ll be his word against mine. Or who knows? Maybe we could convince her to say she saw him beat up Becky
and
kill her brother.”

“Like a buy-one-get-one-free.”

He didn’t hear the sarcasm in her voice.

“Yeah! There’s nothing says we have to, you know, treat her bad while we keep her. Maybe we can make her our friend.”

Lisa held up her hand for him to stop talking. There was something in what he just said—some kernel of an idea that might just possibly work. She closed her eyes so she could think better. Okay, what if Shaun Reid confessed? The cops would focus all their investigation on proving Shaun was the guy who beat up Becky Castle. Stuff that incriminated Randy would be pushed aside. Overlooked. Maybe, if they were lucky, forgotten. It wouldn’t be perfect, not with the victim herself yawping on about Randy, but it would be a big old help to that smart lawyer Rachel thought they should hire.

It would be terrible for Mr. Reid, of course. Maybe even—and here she shivered, from deep inside the core of her, because she hadn’t known that she was capable of thoughts like these—maybe he would even commit suicide.

Maybe it could just look like he had committed suicide.

Maybe Millie van der Hoeven, who had so mysteriously vanished without a trace or clue left behind, might never show up again.

Lisa looked into Randy’s hopeful, innocent eyes. “I think it’s a great idea, babe. I think we can really do something with it.”

7:50 P.M.

Millers Kill, like most towns within reach of Lake George, Saratoga, and the mountains, had numerous campsites, cabins, and motels devoted to summer vacationers. Visitors arriving after leaf-peeping season was over had a far narrower range of accommodations. If the travelers didn’t want to stay in one of six bedrooms divided among three bed-and-breakfasts, they had the choice of the Sleepy Hollow Motor Lodge, the Stuyvesant Inn, or the brand-new and very luxurious Algonquin Waters Spa and Resort.

After nearly two years living in the area, Clare knew this. So she shouldn’t have been surprised when she entered the lounge at the Algonquin waters and found her date chatting with Deacon Willard Aberforth.

They were sitting at the long green-granite bar, identical glasses of peat-brown whiskey in front of them. From the high color on Aberforth’s face, his was the latest in a line of drinks.

Hugh spotted her first, jumping off his stool and clutching his heart, staggering like a man blinded by beauty. He recovered in time to take her hand and help her onto his abandoned seat, assistance she was grateful for, given the volume of material in her skirt. “Vicar! You’re absolutely stunning! You’re going to be the most beautiful woman here tonight. Doesn’t she look absolutely amazing?”

His last remark was directed to Deacon Aberforth, who examined Clare with a great deal more attention than he might have had he been strictly sober. “Elegant,” he pronounced with a disappointed air. “Although perhaps a bit too revealing?” He waved in the direction of Clare’s shoulders and chest. “I myself prefer to maintain the dignity of the church with good, classic clothing.” Aberforth still wore his black wool jacket and dog collar; he had spiffed up for the evening by replacing his black blouse with a deep purple one.

Clare resisted the urge to tug her neckline higher. “I’m trying to envision the intersection between clerical clothing and ladies’ evening wear. Maybe an off-the-shoulder cassock?”

Hugh laughed. “If you write up the business plan, I promise you, I’ll have my firm invest.” He waved the bartender over. “Do you want a Macallan?”

She nodded. After the day she’d had, she wanted several Macallans.

“You didn’t tell me, Ms. Fergusson, that your friend here is the nephew of the bishop of Warwick.” Aberforth leaned his elbow on the bar and toasted Hugh.

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s because I didn’t know.”

Hugh smiled smugly. “Told you we’d make a good match. Stick with me, Vicar, and we’ll have a pectoral cross on you before you can say, ‘the Very Reverend Mrs. Parteger-Fergusson.’ ”

She stared at him.

“Fergusson-Parteger?” he suggested, handing her her glass of whiskey.

How much had he had to drink? “That’s the silliest name I’ve ever heard,” she said. “And I don’t believe in this married-hyphenating business. Either keep the old name or take the new one.”

“Hear, hear.” Aberforth toasted both of them. From the lobby, a bell rang out, so perfect in pitch and modulation, it had to be a recording of some sort.

“I think that’s the sign to head in to dinner,” Hugh said. “Father Aberforth, it was great meeting you. P’raps I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’m sure of it. I will be attending the ten o’clock Eucharist at St. Alban’s, with the bishop.”

“Ah. Yes.” Hugh’s face had a trapped expression. Anglican and episcopal-nephew though he was, Clare had yet to see him inside a church. She took pity on him. “Do you need to stop off anywhere before we go in to dinner?”

Hugh’s face cleared. “Yes. Yes, I do. I’ll meet you outside the ballroom door.” He dashed off before Aberforth could pin him down about tomorrow.

Clare collected her whiskey and carefully slipped off the bar stool. “I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning, Father Aberforth.”

He surprised her by taking her bare upper arm. “Ms. Fergusson.” She frowned at his hand, but he didn’t release her. “Let me give you some advice. The only female clergy who are successful at celibacy are the ones who are too old and dried up to care or the ones who are too mannish to attract members of the opposite sex.”

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.