Sumner flipped his hand, as if to say, Life’s like that. “In the matchup between youth and wealth, only the wealth stays the same. The youth has to be replaced periodically.”
Corlew took a drink. “So the nephew is the missing piece.” Terry snickered at his pun, and both men began sniggering.
Sterling tilted his head toward Mrs. Marshall. “You see why I rarely gossip.”
Clare slung one leg back over the edge of the seat and propped her foot against the rail deck. Mal Wintour. What was it Peggy had said? “He’s just having trouble living a life of wealth and leisure without any visible means of support.” Even if she did have to wear high heels, she was suddenly looking forward to the party tonight.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Marriage is meant to be for life,” Clare said, taking a kir royale from one of the caterer’s staff. “It gives ordinary people like you and me a chance to emulate Christ, to offer ourselves up for another person, to truly put another’s happiness first.”
The men and women clustered around her looked alternately interested, amused, and put off. Diana’s fiancé shook his head. “See? She just puts a whole new spin on it for me.” He gulped at his martini. “You should all take counseling from Reverend Clare. Keep you from screwing up so much.”
“Or screwing so much,” one corkscrew-curled young woman said to the man beside her. He was so tan and sun-bleached blond that his teeth appeared to be lighted from inside when he flashed a smile.
“Chelli!” The other woman, dangerously thin, with long nails that owed nothing to nature, frowned at her friend.
When Diana and Cary brought Clare into the enormous living room and announced her as their priest, she had immediately gathered a clump of interested listeners. She put it down to the curiosity value of her calling and gender, rather than a sudden desire for a conversion experience by anybody in the crowd, which looked as if it had been assumed bodily from the set of Sex and the City and set down in this three-story tumble of wood and windows clinging to the side of a mountain. Cary Wood—the name still made her shake her head—had dropped several interesting details about the counseling session they had just completed in the quiet home office next to the family room. “So we were talking about self-sacrifice and sticking it out, and tell them what you said about divorce, Reverend Clare!”
Clare flexed her feet inside her high-heeled sandals and thanked God for the thick carpet covering the floors. If she was trapped here, at least she wasn’t in shoe hell. She smiled at Cary. It was possible she had impressed upon him some essential wisdom he was going to need a few years down the road, but she suspected she was being asked for this tidbit again because of its thrilling break with current thinking. “I said that if marriage made two people one flesh, then divorce was like an animal gnawing its leg off to escape a trap before it dies. It should only be considered as the very last resort.”
“That sounds like me when I split from Annalise,” the bronzed sun god said. “Except she was the animal chewing on my leg.”
The perfect-fingernailed woman laughed. “You mean the only reason you can consider divorce is if you’re threatened with death? That sounds extreme.”
Clare sipped her drink. It was cool, tingly, and perfectly currant-flavored. “Not necessarily a literal death. Sometimes, a marriage can mean the death of your soul. The death of who you are. Or think of the traditional grounds for divorce or annulment: infertility, the death of your future, insanity—the death of the mind that made the vow—adultery.”
“Death if you get found out!” Chelli’s corkscrew curls bobbed as she laughed.
“What gets me, and no offense, Reverend Clare”—by this statement Clare understood that what the very tan man was going to say would offend her—“is how priests who have no experience with sex and marriage get off on telling the rest of us how to stay married.”
“My mother says that a doctor doesn’t have to have cancer in order to know how to cure it,” Chelli said.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” Clare said. “I think it’s better to think of your priest as an investment adviser. Let’s say you’re going to invest everything you have, and commit all your future earnings as well, in the hopes that you’re going to get a terrific return. Do you want to consult someone already deep into the market? Someone who may have opinions and self-interest based on his own experiences? Or do you want to hire an independent adviser, someone who has followed the market and read up on its history and all the different investment schemes? Someone with no vested interest in the outcome, other than to make sure you put your money where it will do you the most good?”
“Huh. I never thought of it like that.” The sun god stuck out his hand. “I’m Dennys, by the way. With a y.”
“Hello, Dennys with a Y.”
“And I’m Gayle. Also with a y.”
Clare took her hand gingerly. Those nails were scary. She wondered if she should figure out some way to spell her name with a y. Clayr?
“So tell me.” Dennys dropped his voice and the two women leaned in to hear him. “What’s it like? Being celibate? I mean, I can’t imagine it.”
“I bet you can’t.” Chelli giggled.
“I think you may be making a common mistake and confusing celibate, which also means not married, and chaste, which means…well, not having sex. Episcopal priests don’t take vows of celibacy. Lots and lots of priests are married and have kids.”
“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, Msgt. 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 quiz-master 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 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 tray-ful 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 has 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.
A Fountain Filled With Blood Page 23
