“Don’t worry, I won’t keep you all day,” Landry was saying to the driver. She turned to Clare. “Thanks, Reverend Fergusson. Look, about Diana and Cary’s counseling. I’m throwing a party for them out at my place this Friday. Seven-thirty. Come an hour early and I promise I’ll lock the happy couple in the den with you and let you go at it.” Her gaze flicked over Clare’s outfit. “We’ll be dressing. Oh, let me introduce you to my nephew. Mal, come out of there and say hi.”
The young man who reluctantly got out from behind the steering wheel could have stepped just as reluctantly from the pages of a glossy magazine. He was beautiful, in the full-lipped, thin-bodied, blank-eyed way of models. His shining hair fell in an artless tousle that could only have come from frequent and expensive attention, and his five o’clock shadow was more of a statement of style than a missed shave.
“Malcolm, this is Clare Fergusson. She’ll be officiating at Diana’s wedding. Clare, Malcolm Wintour.”
Upon closer viewing, Clare could see he wasn’t quite as young as she had thought. Telltale lines framed his eyes, which were extremely dilated. It looked as if this exotic hothouse specimen had taken some sort of pepper-upper before breaking that land speed record. “How do you do,” she said, shaking his hand. His grip was stronger than she would have guessed from his fashionably wasted frame. He dropped his gaze and mumbled like a shy adolescent. It sounded like “Pleasameetcha.”
“I’m afraid we have to get going. Come along, Mal, lots of stops to make before I can turn you free.” Malcolm got back behind the wheel and leaned over to unlock the passenger door for his aunt.
Clare bit the inside of her lip in frustration. She had spent all her time talking about weddings and the development, and now Peggy was leaving and she didn’t know a thing more about Bill Ingraham than she had sitting on her front porch. Weddings. The development. The development.
“Peggy, I’d love to visit the site and see where the new spa is going to be.”
Landry paused in the act of sliding into the passenger seat. “What?”
“The development. I’d like to drive out and see the development. There’s been so much talk about it, pro and con, I’d really like to get out there, see what it’s all about, get a feel for what sort of jobs are going to be created. So I can convey that to my congregation.” She flushed a little at that instant fabrication. Now she would have to write a sermon about the development to keep herself honest.
Landry frowned again. “It’s pretty much a bunch of rough-plowed roads, holes in the ground, and big piles of dirt, Reverend Fergusson. I don’t think you’d get much from it at this stage.”
“Please?” She copied her mother’s wheedling voice, like sugar syrup over crushed ice. “It’d mean so much to me.”
Landry gestured with her hands, half in puzzlement, half in surrender. “Okay. Sure. When?”
“Today? It’s my day off, and I don’t have anything scheduled. You did say they were working today.”
Landry checked her slim watch. “It’ll take me at least another three hours to hit the tent rental, the craft store, and the lighting place. Then I need lunch…. Shall we say three o’clock? That should give me enough time.”
“Three o’clock it is.”
“Do you need directions?”
“No, no,” Clare said. “I’ll just follow the road until I hit the dirt pile.”
Chapter Thirteen
The road leading up to the future Algonquin Spa was dirt and gravel, narrow, marked by switchbacks every quarter mile as it made its way up the mountain. It put Clare in mind of a hunting-camp road, so when she reached the end, she had to blink three times in order to reconcile what she had been envisioning with what was actually before her.
An area the size of two football fields had been denuded of trees, terraced into four levels, and scraped flat to the yellow-orange soil. Several openings had been cut into the trees surrounding the building site, all but their first few feet hidden from view by the dense forest. She could see pallets of lumber covered in clear plastic tarps and barrels of steel rebars, waiting for the start of construction. Dump trucks, excavators, bulldozers, and a half dozen other machines she couldn’t name dotted the site like dinosaurs grazing, but the only engine she could hear running was the Shelby’s, purring quietly after its chug up the mountain. Nothing was moving. In fact, the place seemed unpopulated, with the exception of a few hard-hatted men clumped in front of a long trailer. There was an uneven line of pickups, interspersed with a token car or two, to her left. She pulled in next to a Ford truck with a toolbox in the bed and a gun rack in the window. Probably not a lot of Sierra Club members here, she thought as she got out of her car. The sense of openness and clear sky was dazzling after the tunnel of trees that was the road. It smelled good, earth and oil and the wet odor of new concrete, like the small airfields around her parents’ place. It had heated up since morning, but despite the strength of the sun beating the soil into powder-cake dryness, there was enough of a cooling breeze from the surrounding woods to make it comfortable. Clare pocketed her keys and walked over to the trailer.
The cluster of men loosened a little as she approached. There were five or six of them, in dirt-stiffened jeans and well-worn T-shirts featuring NASCAR racing, a plumbing company advertisement, and the Desiderata. One man wore an illustrated catalog of sexual positions on his chest. She decided, all things considering, to address the Desiderata guy.
“Hi, there. I’m supposed to meet Peggy Landry at three. Can you tell me where to find her?”
“Dunno,” the man said. “She was here for about five minutes and then took off again.”
“You ain’t here with Leo Waxman, are you?” the NASCAR-shirted man asked. “From the state geologist’s office?”
“Nope,” she said, “I’m just here to get an eyeful of the site. Peggy told me I could have the three-dollar tour.”
The one with the educational shirt grinned at her, revealing that while he may have known all about sex, he had a way to go with dental hygiene. “Well, we’ve all been taken off duty for now, so I can show you around, baby. You wanna see my big machine?”
The big guy in the plumbing shirt whacked him. “Shut up, Charlie.” He looked at Clare. “You a friend of Ms. Landry’s, ma’am?”
Clare smiled beatifically and gave them what she thought of as her Touched by an Angel look. “I’m her priest,” she said, stretching the truth. “Reverend Clare Fergusson of St. Alban’s Church.”
The leer vanished off the face of Mr. Sexual Positions, and his eyes darted around frantically, evidently looking for a rock to crawl under. The big guy whacked him again, grinning. “Ha! Ya mook!” He nodded to Clare. “Pleased to meet you, Reverend. I’m Ray Yardhaas. Like Charlie here said, we were called off duty ’bout an hour ago, after Ms. Landry had gone. We’re just waiting to hear if we’re going to work again today or if we can go home. I’m afraid if you came out to see the big dig, you’re out of luck.”
“Actually, I was interested in seeing the grounds,” she said. “Not that I don’t have enough of the kid in me to enjoy great big construction machines.” She glanced at the long trailer, which could only have been the field office. “Just this morning, Peggy told me work would be going on as usual. How come you all were pulled off the job?”
“They don’t tell us why, ma’am.” The big man sounded more amused than offended. “Something’s up, though. Ms. Landry no sooner gets here than she gets a call and takes off; then the geologist shows up to meet with Opperman, but he ain’t—isn’t—here; then we get a call from him, telling us to lay off until he gets back to us. Last time I saw so much telephoning back and forth on a job, the bank had pulled the financing. Sure hope that’s not what’s happening here.”
“I’m betting that one of the guys who didn’t show up today’s called in a fake bomb threat, so’s we can all take off,” said the Desiderata guy. “We should have gotten a vacation day anyway, since the Fourth was on Sunday.”
“Knock it off,” Ray said. “You’re getting paid to hang around and tell lies about fish, ain’tcha? If he closes down the site, we can all go home on full pay. Better than the mooks who never showed up today.”
Clare had a pretty good idea of what it was that had caused the flurry of telephoning and the work stoppage. “Is Bill Ingraham usually here while you’re working?”
Ray thumbed at the trailer. “Right in there. He’s a hands-on kind of boss, Bill is. Hasn’t been in today, though.”
The guy in the sexual positions T-shirt sniggered. “Maybe he’s found some cute young—”
“Cut it,” Ray said, spearing the other man with a look. When he spoke again to Clare, he raised his voice slightly so everyone could hear. “Bill’s a good guy. He knows the building trade from the ground up and he always treats us fair. His personal life’s his own business.” He glanced at Mr. Sexual Positions. “Me, I kinda wonder about guys who spend a lot of time thinking about it, you know?”
The other men hooted. Within seconds, Ray’s target was the eye of a hurricane of jokes about his own proclivities. They were moving past men and getting to sheep when Ray cupped a hand beneath Clare’s elbow and drew her a few feet away.
“Sorry you had to hear that, ma’am. These guys, they’re not used to having”—he looked as if he were struggling between the words lady and priest—“to watch their language.”
Clare compressed her lips to keep from grinning. “Thank you, Ray. I appreciate your concern. So, what about the tour I was promised? I’m guessing I’m not supposed to clamber about all on my own. Can you spare me a few minutes to show me around?”
Ray frowned, looked back at the trailer, then at Clare. “I don’t know, ma’am,” he said finally. “Without an okay from one of the bosses—they’ve been keeping a tight watch on this place since the tree-huggers started kicking about PCBs and all that. Not that I think you’re here to cause trouble,” he added quickly.
She wasn’t as sure as Ray was. “What do you think about the PCB talk? Do you have any worries, working here day in and day out?”
He shook his head. “I think it’s a load of bull puckies. Bunch of hysterical women who don’t know anything about construction and who’d like to make it a federal offense to cut down a tree. I’m here, moving dirt and sucking dust five days a week, and I’m as healthy as a horse.” He jerked his head in the direction of the other men. “And those guys were already brain-damaged.”
Clare grinned. “So there’s no danger to me if I look around, right?”
Ray looked unhappy. “Well, no, but I still think you need to wait until Ms. Landry is here herself. Why don’t you come back tomorrow? I’m sure everything will be back up to speed then. You’ll get a better idea of what we’re doing, anyway.”
“Ah, but today’s my day off,” she said, taking a few casual steps farther away from the trailer. “C’mon, Ray. Help me out.” She looked up at him, radiating sincerity and innocence. “It’s not my fault Peggy didn’t make our date. I’m here, just like she said, and this may be my only chance to see this place before the buildings go up. Show me around.” She waved her arm to indicate the whole site and followed her own gesture toward the nearest hole in the ground.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake—ma’am! Reverend!”
“What’s this going to be? Is this the main building?” She strode briskly around the edge of a rectangular excavation, trying to think of an intelligent question to ask. What do you think you’re going to find here? was the only one that came to mind. Russ’s voice, his face last night, seemed fixed in her consciousness. “Your version of the truth,” he had said. Maybe he was right. Maybe she wanted him to be right.
“Look,” Ray said, catching up with her. He gave an exasperated sigh, which she ignored. “Okay, I’ll show you around. But the rules say you gotta have a hard hat. So just stay there, okay? Just stay there while I get you one.”
“Absolutely. Anything you say.”
He dashed back to the trailer, banged inside, and emerged a few seconds later with an orange hard hat, which she dutifully strapped on. It made her hotter, but it wasn’t as bad as walking around a tarmac in a flight helmet, so she couldn’t complain. Then, true to his word, Ray showed her the site.
It wasn’t much to see, a bunch of half-finished foundations and trenches laid with pipes. Ray pointed out where the main lodge was going to be, the guest wings and the health club. She tried to envision the lawns and gardens as Ray described the layout, but it was hard to see anything except the raw gash in the forest. Ray was very fond of numbers, so she heard about the tons of cement, the gallons of sewage, the meters of piping, the square footage of the buildings. She listened and made appropriate comments, all the time waiting for something that would reveal more of Bill Ingraham to her, trying not to analyze the impulse that had made her jump on Peggy Landry for this chance to see the man’s last work in this world. Thinking too hard about her impulses always made them seem a little stupid. Better just to trust in her unconscious—or whoever it was directing her inner voice—and go with the flow.
Ray was going on about the inflow and the outflow to the whirlpools when she realized she hadn’t seen something she would have expected. “Where’s the pool?” she said. “I mean, they’re not just going to have hot tubs, are they? On a day like today, you’d really want to be outside, soaking up the sun.”
Ray pointed toward one of the openings cut into the forest. “That way.” They went up the earthen ramp linking one terrace to the next and walked out of the heat and into the coolness of the trees. “The pool for this place is something else. Bill designed it around the quarry. You come here as a guest in the summer, you’re going to feel like you’re back at the ole swimming hole”—he grinned at her—“except the ole swimming hole didn’t have a bar.” The road, two ruts of bald dirt sunk between overgrown grass and delicately stemmed wildflowers, curved and headed slightly downhill. “Best thing about it is, we’re killing two birds with one stone. Right now, the quarry’s set up as our cement works; plus, we’re getting all our stone for the paving and the walls out of it. So we’re digging out the pool just by working there. When we don’t need it anymore, we cement in the bottom, tile it, and there you go, just like the real thing, only better.”
“Wasn’t Mr. Ingraham”—she caught herself—“isn’t he worried about the PCBs? I assume this is the same quarry that was used for storage back in the seventies.”
The road opened up to a breathtaking view. They were at the upper end of the quarry, to one side of a curving cliff of pale rock that fell dramatically to the working quarry below. It sloped as it reached the lowest point and was riddled with ledges and dotted everywhere with stubbornly surviving plants. A narrow crevasse split the cliff, and Clare was delighted to see a thin waterfall pouring out of it, splashing over the scree and filling a wide, dark pool. “Water from the cleft,” she said, grinning at Ray. “Very biblical. Is that going to flow into the swimming pool?”
“Naw. That stream comes from up the mountain, and it’s too unreliable. When we started, it was gushing so fierce, you wouldn’t want to go near it, but by the end of July, it’ll just be a damp spot. Besides, there’s no way to guarantee the quality of the water. We’re gonna build a catch basin and channel it off the property. Put a screening wall of natural stone in front of it, so the guests can still see the water falling. It’ll be real pretty.”
Below, in the work pit, a rock crusher and a cement mixer squatted amid a tumble of rocks and enough bags of sand and chalk to stop a flood. The road Ray and Clare were standing on wound down in a curve to an earthen staging ground plowed out between the quarry and the trees. Three dump trucks, idle now, sat on the dirt, flanked by an excavator and someone’s Jeep. She took off her helmet to let the breeze cool her head. Ray was right: It would be pretty. If you didn’t worry about carcinogenic chemicals floating around with you, that is.
“Hey, there’s Leo Waxman,” Ray said, pointing. Clare squinte
d. She could make out a man approaching the natural pool across a field of scree. Wearing shorts and a backpack, he looked like a hiker. “Leo! Hey!” Ray headed down the steeply angled road in long strides Clare had to hop to keep up with. “Sorry,” Ray said, “you were asking about the PCB stuff, right? This place was cleaned out in the eighties by the feds. Leo Waxman here, he’s from the state geologist’s office. He’s been over this place two, three times now for the certifications. It’s clean. I’d take my grandkids here for a swim”—he grinned at her again— “except once the place is built, I won’t be able to afford to get through the gate.”
The peculiar flat tang of rock dust rose to meet her as they neared the quarry floor. “Hey! Leo!” Ray yelled again. The man in shorts stopped, reversed himself, and began picking his way down a rubble-strewn trail toward the machinery.
Leo Waxman was surprisingly young, with a goatee and ponytail that made him look more like a grad student than a state employee. He wiped his hands on his rumpled, sweat-stained shirt, hitched his backpack more comfortably on his shoulders, and reached for Ray’s hand. “Hiya, Ray. What are you doing down here?”
“Showing this lady around. Leo, this is Reverend Clare, um…”
“Fergusson,” Clare supplied.
“Leonard Waxman,” he said, shaking her hand. He glanced back up the curving road, as if to see if any other tourists would be emerging from the woods.
“Peggy Landry kindly said I could see the place. Since she’s not here, Ray volunteered to be my escort.” She raised her eyebrows at Waxman’s backpack. “I hear you’re the state geologist for this project. Are you here for business or pleasure?”
He shifted the backpack again. Clare could hear things clanking inside. “Business. Getting soil and water samples.”
“Again?” Ray asked. “Jeez, how many tests does it take to satisfy the government?”
A Fountain Filled With Blood Page 13