“Hi there.”
He leaned against the door frame, not entering the office. “There’s birdseed on the walkway in front of your church. I’m afraid I tracked some in.” He lifted one foot and examined the deep tread of his hiking boot. A few minuscule pellets dropped to the floor with a faint tic-tic. The wind from the fan immediately blew them into the hallway.
“Did Mr. Hadley yell at you?”
“Not yell, exactly. He wasn’t very happy, though.”
She squared off the marriage papers and stood. “You’re not in uniform.”
He looked down at himself, as if surprised to see jeans and a polo shirt instead of brown poplin. “It’s my weekend off, so I’m not officially on duty.” He grinned at her, showing a bit of his eyeteeth. “You look like you are, though.” He gestured toward her short-sleeved clerical blouse and black skirt.
“I’m finished up for now. Let me hit the rectory and change; then I’ll be ready to get my car.” She glanced at him before unnecessarily squaring off the documents again. “If you still want to take me.”
“I told you I would, didn’t I?”
“I could always get a ride from”—she drew a blank on any of her parishioners who might be headed out toward Peggy Landry’s house—“someone.”
“But you don’t have to, because I’m taking you. Besides, you’re supposed to smooth the way so I can question Ms. Landry about her nephew, remember?”
She wished she didn’t. It was amazing how drink-induced ideas looked in the clear light of day. “Okay, then.”
“I’m parked out back.”
“I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
“Bring some water. It’s going to be easy to get dehydrated today.”
She fled before she could drivel on with increasingly meaningless sentences. In the rectory, she threw on shorts and a sleeveless blouse, grateful to be shucked of her hot black uniform. She took a quick look at her hair in the bathroom mirror, but she had taken the time to braid it tightly against her scalp after her shower, so it was still neat and cool. She slipped on her sneakers, grabbed a bottle of Poland Spring from the fridge, and ran back to the small parking lot behind St. Alban’s.
The seat in Russ’s pickup stuck to the back of her thighs. He had both windows rolled down, but the wind that blew through the cab felt like exhaust from a dryer. “Don’t you have any air conditioning in this thing?” she said.
“Oh, yeah.” He patted the dashboard affectionately. “This is my baby. She comes fully loaded.”
Clare looked at him pointedly and let her eyes drift toward the temperature controls. “What?” he said. “You want me to turn it on? We’re only going thirty-five miles an hour. The breeze feels good.”
“You have a speed limit for your AC? When does it kick in?”
“When I’m driving so fast that I can’t hear the radio over the sound of the wind.”
“What is it with you people and air conditioning? One of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century, and folks in the north country act as if it were some sort of leprous beggar. You know, something you occasionally have to put up with in public but not something you’d ever take home.”
He stopped at a red light. Several shoppers staggered across the crosswalk, sucking iced coffees and clutching bags labeled ADIRONDACK GIFT SHOPPE. “I guess,” he said slowly, “it’s because air conditioning feels like an indulgence. An imported indulgence, like paying someone to detail your car, or installing an in-ground swimming pool.” The light turned green and he drove on to a residential street. “Look there.” He pointed to the backyard of a house where several children were jumping into a round aboveground pool. “See? That’s the sort of pool we have here. Not something that costs ten thousand dollars to install and only gets used three months out of the year.”
“But an air conditioner only costs a few hundred bucks!”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
She sat back in her seat, trying to ignore the way her shirt slid against her damp skin.
“Oh, all right. Wussy.”
“I am not a wussy.” They drove the rest of the way in silence, the thrum of the truck’s air conditioning and the music from a country station taking the place of conversation.
When they pulled into the long driveway leading up to Peggy Landry’s house, Clare’s car was still where she had left it. There were several other vehicles pulled off to the edges of the gravel. “Houseguests,” Clare said in response to Russ’s dubious look at the vehicles. She climbed out of the cab as soon as he stopped the truck. “How do you want to do this?” she asked.
“How about you thank her and introduce me as the guy who brought you up here. Then I’ll ask her if I can take a little of her time. I don’t want to scare her off.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Their brilliant plan hit a major roadblock when the door was opened by the bride-to-be, looking considerably less vivacious than she had the night before. “She’s not here, Reverend Clare,” Diana said after Clare asked for Peggy. “I don’t know where she went to. Cary and I were still asleep.”
From the foyer, Cary’s great-uncle called out, “I talked to her before she left.”
Clare leaned around Diana. “Hi, Mr. Wood. Did Peggy say where she went?”
“Got a phone call, she said. Had to go out to her construction site. Say, we’re just about to sit down to lunch. Care to join us? Helen and I can show you the rest of our trip.”
“I’m afraid we have to head back into town,” Russ broke in. “Thanks for the info. You don’t happen to know if Malcolm is here?”
Diana waved a hand. “He borrowed my car. God knows if I’ll ever see it again.” She pushed her hair away from her face. “Do you want to leave him a message?”
“No,” Russ said. “No message. Thanks for your time. Sorry to bother you.”
Russ and Clare retreated back to his pickup. “I don’t like it,” he said.
“I’m sure she gets called out to the construction site frequently.”
He waved a hand. “The work site’s been closed down since Monday. What would she be doing?”
“The office is still there.”
He shook his head, squinting up at the dull glare of the sky. “If you heard what you thought you heard—”
“Please don’t say ‘if,’ ” she said.
“If you heard what you thought you heard, there’s a scared co-conspirator out there who has already gone to Malcolm for help. He’s gotten a Baggie of trouble for his time, worse than useless, because now he’s carrying, and if he gets stopped while holding, he’s in deep sh—trouble.”
“You think he might try to shake down Peggy?”
“Maybe. Try to hit her up for money. Or try to hold her until Malcolm comes up with cash. I don’t know; I’m just feeling my way here. But I don’t like the feeling.”
She dug her keys out of her pocket. “Let’s go, then.”
“Whoa. What is this ‘we,’ kemosabe?”
She crunched over the gravel to her car. “I am going to go to the Algonquin Spa construction site now to see if I can offer any aid or comfort to Peggy Landry. You can come along if you like.”
“Clare, you have no business—”
She shut the door, partially blocking out his harangue. She cranked up the air conditioner as high as it would go and turned on the radio. She checked the rear window to make sure he was following. He was stomping across the ground, evidently talking to himself, or swearing. Clare readjusted the rearview mirror and reversed in a smart turn, kicking up gravel. She grinned. She didn’t want anything to happen to Peggy, of course, but she was alive with the prospect of finally answering the questions surrounding Bill Ingraham’s murder and Dr. Dvorak’s and Todd’s assaults.
She gunned the Shelby and sped down the drive. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed that Russ’s truck was behind her. She envisioned herself triumphantly bearing the truth to the MacPhersons, and to Stephen and Ron. You
don’t have to be afraid because of who you are! she’d say. She pictured herself laying her cleverness before the vestry—the man responsible caught! And imagine if her role in uncovering Malcolm was recounted in the Post-Star. It could deliver a huge boost in attendance at a candlelight vigil. Maybe she could follow up with organized discussion groups at St. Alban’s, involve the outreach commission….
With plans cascading through her head, she went back through town on autopilot, just aware enough of her surroundings to avoid rear-ending a tanker trailer whose driver had stopped shy of the Route 117 bridge in order to back into a Stewart’s convenience store. Waiting for a truck to turn would normally have had her drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and glancing at her watch, but at this point in her daydream, her activities and outreach had brought large numbers of new members into St. Alban’s, and she smiled so beatifically at the overflowing pews that the startled truck driver smiled and waved back.
By the time she passed the Stuyvesant Inn, she was being feted by the vestry and acclaimed by the bishop for her fearless dedication to the truth. The little Cobra bounced and jounced up the road to the construction site, clouds of dust roiling up behind her for Russ’s pickup to drive through.
As he had said, the site was closed to work. It would have been obvious even if there had been other vehicles alongside Peggy Landry’s Volvo in the dirt parking area. The excavators and bulldozers rested in exactly the same positions they had been in when Clare visited five days before. The clear plastic tarpaulins on the pallets of brick and Sheetrock were dusted over with a gold-green layer of pollen, giving them the look of tomb relics.
She pulled in a few feet away from Peggy’s sedan and got out. No piney mountain breezes today. The air was thick with humidity and smelled of the rich humus composting on the forest floor all around them. Russ had driven past Peggy’s car and parked the truck farther away, angled sharply, its nose out. So he could pull out and onto the road without having to reverse and turn, she realized. Probably picks the corner seat on a bar, Clare thought, with his back to the wall and his eyes on the door. She leaned on the hood of her car, scuffing the toe of her sneaker through the talc-fine dirt.
Russ walked over. “Well, her car’s here. Let’s try the office.”
But the office door was locked. “Now what?” Clare asked.
“I don’t like this.” Russ looked at the ground, which had been beaten into a formless wash of fine dirt by the constant pounding of feet and machinery. “We’re never going to be able to track her here.” He took his glasses off and polished them with the corner of his polo shirt, squinting at the woods surrounding the site.
“The only car around is hers,” she said. “What if he’s already met her and taken her away?”
“Her purse is still in her car,” Russ replied. “If this guy you heard is really up against the wall, I doubt he’d leave behind her credit cards, cash, and ATM card.”
“Oh. I didn’t see that.”
“Didn’t look, did you?”
She ignored the amusement in his voice and pointed to the edge of the site. “There’s a rough road back there. Just a couple of ruts between the trees, but if I were walking away from here”—she swept her arm around, encompassing the work zone, “I’d use it, instead of bushwhacking through these woods.”
“Do you know where it goes?”
“The foreman took me around. If you head to the left, there’s a helipad.” He looked at her. “Yeah, I know; I thought it was pretty cool myself. In the other direction, it leads to the old quarry. It branches off there and follows the gorge farther up the mountain. The less attractive stuff is going to be up there—their power plant, their laundry, the garage, things like that.”
“How far does it go?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t go there.”
“Okay. Hang on a sec.” Russ returned to his truck, bent the driver’s seat forward, and pulled something from the back. He emerged with a standard-issue gun belt. He buckled it on and drew the gun, inspecting the ammunition clip before returning it to the holster. In his jeans and knit shirt, he looked almost like a tourist playacting at Frontier Town, but the heavy solidity of the belt and holster could never be mistaken for a toy.
“Is that really necessary?” she asked.
“I sure as hell hope not,” he said. “But it’s better to have it and not need it than the other way around.” He paused in front of her. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to get back into your car and go home.”
She shook her head, her braid thumping against her neck.
“Wait for me here?”
She laughed.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He headed for the nearest earthen ramp. She fell in beside him. “Stick close. If we see anything funny, get behind me and let me do the talking. Got it?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“And don’t ‘sir’ me. You were the captain. I was just a lowly warrant officer. And I had to work my way up to that from being a dumb grunt.”
“We’re civilians now. Who do you think outranks, the chief of police or the rector?”
“The chief of police does. I’ve got more years on the job and more people I have to worry about.”
“Plus, you’re older than I am. A lot older.”
He shot her a look as they entered the forest track. Unlike the last time she had been here, there was no current of cool air running beneath the trees. The leaves around them hung limp in the humidity, and the smell of rotting vegetation was everywhere. “This way,” she said, pointing toward the quarry.
They trudged through the green tunnel in silence. Clare’s blouse clung to a damp patch at the small of her back. She waved away a mosquito that was attempting to land on her thigh. Russ slapped his forearm and flicked off a tiny corpse. They passed a tree-clinging vine dotted with starry white flowers that gave off a sickly-sweet smell. “Pretty,” she observed.
He just grunted. “Do you know what it is?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Y’know, Ray Yardhaas was a lot more entertaining as a hiking companion than you are,” she said.
“Be quiet,” he replied. “If there’s somebody in here with Peggy Landry, I don’t want to give him advance notice we’re coming.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
He waved her apology away. They reached the fork in the track she remembered from Monday. “Quarry,” she said, pointing right.
He gestured with his head that they should go right. After a few yards, the forest canopy opened up and she could see the hazy sky, colorless and cloudless. He waved her behind him and walked toward the edge slowly. When he got within a few yards of the rocky outcrop that Clare and Ray had stood on to view the quarry, Russ dropped down on his belly and crawled forward. Clare did the same, the small rocks and scrub grass scraping her exposed skin.
“Anything?” she asked as she drew near to the edge.
He pushed back and clambered to his feet. “No.” She stood up as well, gratefully brushing away the bits of rock embedded in her thighs. They looked over the smooth chunks of shale that marked the upper rim of the quarry. “What’s that over there?” he asked, pointing to where the crevasse opened into the rear of the quarry. After several days without rain, the waterfall was a weak trickle down the rock face. “Is it part of the construction?”
“No, it’s a natural gorge. Runs down from the mountain.”
“Could they have hiked up there?”
“I don’t think so. I met the state’s geologist when I was here on Monday, and he described it as knifing down the mountain. I suppose someone could climb up the back wall of the quarry and get in, but I can’t imagine this Colvin guy getting Peggy up there under duress. Look at it. That’s a real toe-and-fingerhold climb for at least fifteen or twenty feet.”
“Yeah.” Russ squatted on his haunches and took a long, slow look at the quarry beneath them. “What about past those dump trucks? Where the forest takes up again?”
“I don’t know
. I guess if you headed downhill long enough, you’d eventually run into the road. I can’t say I took a close look around when I was down there, but I sure didn’t see anything that leapt out at me as a trail.”
“I don’t like it,” he said. He stood up again, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “If she really is here on spa business, why the hell isn’t she at the office? I don’t see her as the type to take spontaneous hikes through the deep woods on a ninety-degree day.”
“Not with a houseful of guests,” she said.
“And if Colvin or someone was trying to lure her here, where did he take her? If you want to rob someone, you take the valuables and leave. If you want to kidnap someone, you take the person and leave. Except this guy, from the way you describe hearing him, sounded too chickenshit for an actual kidnapping. ’Scuse my French.”
“Maybe he took her in his car and left the purse behind.”
“In which case, we’re back to square one.” He twisted around, looking back into the woods. “What I worry about is that he might have met up with her here, tried to intimidate her into paying him off, and—”
“And then something went wrong,” she said.
He looked at her. “There’re lots of places to hide a body in these woods.”
Despite the heat, she felt a prickle of gooseflesh along her arms. “Let’s try the other trail, the one that heads up the mountain.” Even as she made the suggestion, she knew that it was more an attempt to deny the awful possibility that Peggy was lying dead out there than a realistic hope that they might find her.
He shifted his weight. “Okay. We’ll try it for a ways. But if we don’t see anything, we’re turning around and heading into town.”
“Will you put together a search team?”
He nodded. “And get a dog up here.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The track up the mountain was harder. They walked side by side, silent once more, although Clare had stopped expecting they would find anyone lurking ahead. At least anyone alive. Silence in the woods seemed to come naturally to Russ. She slogged along, one foot in front of the other, feeling as if she were hiking with a wet Turkish towel draped around her, but his back and arms had a line of tension about them, and each step he took was deliberate. He kept looking into the trees, left, right, scanning overhead.
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