To Darkness and to Death

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “You’re not Millie van der Hoeven, are you?”

  One of the search team, then. “I’m afraid not. I’m a friend of hers. She’s still missing?”

  He nodded. “Hopefully not for long, though. You say you’re her friend? Has she ever mentioned someone she’s seeing in the area? A boyfriend?”

  Becky propped her arm over the edge of the window. “No, she hasn’t.” What a weird thing to ask. Unless—“Does she have one? Do you think she might be with some guy instead of lost in the forest?”

  The man nodded. “Maybe. It’s something I’m following up on.” He leaned forward and fired up his truck. “Sorry to bother you. You looked sort of like her picture.”

  “No problem. Sorry I couldn’t help.” She raised her hand and shifted into gear again. When she was past the truck, she rolled her window up. Looked like Millie. She wished. She supposed that to a guy as old as her dad, any two girls with long blond hair looked alike.

  She hoped Millie had an unknown, undisclosed boyfriend. It made more sense than getting lost at Haudenosaunee. And, that selfish voice in the back of her brain said, it would mean she’d still show up on time for the ceremony tonight. Becky shoved the thought away. The ceremony was going forward. Everyone would be there to sign papers and shake hands and smile for the cameras. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, consider the alternative.

  Even this trip to Haudenosaunee was going on faith. If she had had any real doubts about the sale going through, she could have called the contractor and told him to dismiss the crew that would be meeting her at the great camp within the next half hour. She glanced at her car’s clock. Make that twenty minutes. She hadn’t canceled. The planning walkthrough would go on as scheduled. She and the crew would discuss the most economical and efficient way to dismantle all the modern Haudenosaunee buildings.

  Then came the hard part of the day. She had to tell her father, as the owner of Castle Logging, that his equipment, which he had garaged over the summer at his most recent cutting site, had to go. The conservancy’s lawyer had asked her to get a detailed inventory, because they would be responsible for any buildings and machinery on the property after the title changed hands. She wasn’t looking forward to getting the document from her dad. As much as she loved Bonnie, she really preferred to stay with her parents when she visited. She wasn’t sure her dad would want to have her in his house after she had hit him up for his inventory and proof of insurance.

  But whether or not Dad tossed her out on her ear, by 7:00 P.M. she was headed for the Algonquin Waters Spa and Resort in her party dress and new shoes. And if Millie van der Hoeven hadn’t shown by then, Becky would by-God go out and find her herself. A fierce smile snapped across her face. Her dad always said she was as hard to budge as an old oak tree. It was time to prove him right.

  10:05 A.M.

  She considered the blankets. Could they be used to attack somehow? To defend? They were too tough to tear. One was heavy wool, almost a horse blanket, the kind you’d use as a topmost layer on a bed because it would make you itch if it was sandwiched between the sheet and the quilt. The other two were more modern, lofty fake-fiber things, soft and warm. They had satin edging. Now those, they might be useful. If she could figure out a way to rip them from the rest of the blanket.

  It was funny, really. All those years of trying to shuck off her belongings, trying to find out what was intrinsic to herself instead of what was bought and paid for with her family’s money. As an adult, she had tried to live simply, first from conviction and then from necessity, as her funds dwindled and her support of various organizations grew. If she ignored the fact that she didn’t have to work for a living, that she could stay at her father’s Park Avenue apartment in New York City and at her mother’s Palm Beach cottage in Florida, she could pretend she had the same sort of life as most of her friends.

  Standing in the chill of her cell, she could see how badly she had been fooling herself. Take away her parents’ homes and the great camp and the private schools and trips abroad. She was still rich. She had a home and a car and a thousand objects filling them both: furniture and clothing and camping gear and books and CDs and pots and pans and sharp, long knives that rested in their own square of cherrywood. What she wouldn’t give to have those knives. Now. Now that all her earthly goods had been reduced to the clothes on her back, an iron hinge pin, and three blankets.

  And a plastic five-gallon bucket. When whoever imprisoned her here came back, maybe she could spill pee on their shoes.

  When whoever imprisoned her here came back. She had been concentrating so hard on what she could do to get away, she had overlooked the fact that she was missing. Not where she should be. People would be looking for her. Wouldn’t they?

  She looked at the blankets. At the arrow slits. At the blankets again. She shuffled to the pile. The heaviest one, she thought. She teased it out with one boot-clad foot, balancing carefully to avoid knocking herself over. Once she had a sizable piece separated from the rest of the pile, she hobbled toward the nearest window, dragging the blanket beneath her boot tread. It was as tedious as positioning the bucket had been—step, scrape, step, scrape—although at least now her full bladder wasn’t making it hard to think. Instead, she was charged with the idea that her unknown captors could return at any moment.

  The dense wool blanket unfurled from the pile. She scuttled back, positioned herself at the trailing edge, and booted it across the floor. When she had it bunched beneath the arrow slit, she considered a moment, then dropped to her knees on top of it. Shuffling slowly off the fabric, she bent over like a supplicant before an almighty god and worked her head as far under the blanket’s heavy folds as she could. Butted hard against the stone wall, she pressed upward. The blanket rose. She inched it higher and higher, until her kneeling form made an acutely uncomfortable triangle with the curved wall.

  This would be the hardest part. Leaning into the stones until she thought the top of her head would split open, she curled her toes underneath her and pushed with all the strength in her thighs. Her legs straightened, her neck trembled, and, greased by the blanket’s smooth surface, her head skidded upward. She was standing. She shuffled close to the wall. The pinned blanket rose until she could feel a change in the angle of the stone beneath her head. The wide embrasure. She pushed, rolling her head up until her face was buried in the scratchy wool. Desperate for extra height, she went on tiptoe. She felt the blanket slide upward, then catch. Pressing her chest against the stone to stop the blanket from backsliding, she risked raising her head.

  The blanket was stuck in the middle of the arrow slit. She bent again, rolling her head up against the dangling edge, forcing more material into the opening. It bunched fast. Half of it must be dangling from the outside right now. For a moment, she considered letting it stay like that, but then she realized people might walk by without ever lifting their eyes to see her banner. She pressed her face against the wool and sprang up as best she could, making an awkward en pointe in her boots.

  It worked. The blanket slithered through the window and was gone. She heard nothing except a brief crack where it caught and broke a brittle branch. Was it spread out like a picnic cloth on the ground? Draped over a bramble bush? Hanging from a branch? It didn’t matter. It was large, it was white and red and yellow and green, it didn’t belong out there. Anyone who came by would notice it.

  She thought of the way it had bunched in the opening, half in and half out. She looked at one of the remaining blankets, a fluffy, fuzzy lavender. She imagined a searcher spotting the wool blanket on the ground, glancing around, seeing another blanket flapping from an arrow slit high above the ground. Imagined friendly feet pounding up the stairs. Imagined someone saying, Hang on, I’ll have you out of here in a moment.

  She shuffled over to the blanket pile and began kicking.

  10:30 A.M.

  Clare was in the middle of listening to Courtney Reid’s litany of complaints when she heard a woman shout from the drive. The search
and rescue team had completed their huddle, gone over the topo maps, and accepted assignments in different parts of the wood. The possibility that Millie had simply debunked to her boyfriend’s house had acted as a sort of antienergizer, making it that much more difficult to whip up the necessary enthusiasm for hours of careful searching through cold, bare woods. Even though she was privy to Russ’s doubts about the existence of the alleged boyfriend, Clare’s zeal was starting to flag as well. She kept thinking about the whirlwind of activity that must be going on at St. Alban’s. Next to Christmas and Easter, the bishop’s annual visit was the most important Sunday of the year, at least in terms of polishing silver and waxing wood and laying out the fatted calf. Or the individual puff-pastry quiches, in this case.

  “She was supposed to pick up individual pastry shells from the bakery,” Courtney was saying. “Instead, she got phyllo dough. We now have phyllo dough for two hundred and no quiche pastries. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Hang on just a second,” Clare said. “Someone’s hollering out in the drive.” When she had asked Eugene if she could use his phone, he had escorted her to a small den on the opposite side of the foyer from the living room. He had shut the door to give her privacy, but John Huggins, whose ideas of delicacy were somewhat different from van der Hoeven’s, had stuck his head in the door and reminded Clare in no uncertain terms that she’d better not sit yapping on the phone all morning. When he left, the door was still ajar. If she stretched to the length of the cord, she could see out the wide window to the drive. Her view of the porch was restricted; she couldn’t see Eugene, but she could hear him. He must have left the front door open.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  So the young blonde in barn coat and jeans walking toward the porch wasn’t Millie. Clare sighed. It would have been too much to ask, she supposed.

  “Reverend Fergusson?” Courtney Reid demanded from the vicinity of Clare’s chest.

  Clare brought the phone back to her ear, keeping her eye on the people outside her window. “I’m here.”

  “Okay, so my problem is, what am I going to do? Serve baklava? I could send one of the other volunteers to the baker’s for the puff pastries, but I don’t think our budget will stretch that far.”

  Eugene had stepped off the porch. The young woman approached him. She said something Clare couldn’t make out, then gestured to the two—no, three men clustered behind her. Like the blonde, they were dressed in sturdy coats and jeans. One of them carried a clipboard. One had a camera looped around his neck. All of them had metal measuring tapes hanging off their belt loops.

  “You can use the phyllo dough to make the shells,” she said into the phone. The unheard conversation continued. The woman’s body language said, I’m being polite, but I’m in charge here. Eugene was stiff, as he had been when Clare met him. A shy man shielding himself with an aristocrat’s hauteur. “You’ll have to separate the dough and bake them before you fill them, of course.”

  “I thought of that,” Courtney said impatiently. “We don’t have any individual-sized tins to bake them in.”

  Clare couldn’t remember why full-sized quiches, sliced up, were unacceptable. She suspected raising the issue would be a lost cause at this point. “There’s a great kitchen supply store in Saratoga. Send someone down to pick up a couple stacks of disposable baking tins.”

  “To Saratoga?” Courtney screeched.

  The woman handed van der Hoeven several sheets of paper. Clare could spot a letterhead but couldn’t make it out. Eugene bent his head over the documents.

  “It’s a forty-five-minute drive,” Clare said, in as reasonable a tone as possible. “Surely you can find someone willing—” Courtney cut her off with a wail of reasons why it would be impossible, impossible, to spare one of the already-too-few volunteers for a daylong trip to Saratoga. Clare let her rattle on. It never ceases to amaze me, how many folks jump straight over ‘I’ll try’ to ‘I can’t,’ Master Sergeant Ashley “Hardball” Wright drawled.

  Eugene turned and disappeared into the house. No farewell, no acknowledgement that the blond woman still stood there. Clare blinked. Not that she was an expert on Eugene van der Hoeven, but that seemed out of character. She heard his footsteps ringing over the floorboards, headed away from her into the living room.

  “. . . and Judy Morrison hasn’t even shown up like she promised . . . ,” Courtney was saying.

  The young woman turned to the men gathered behind her and began speaking. She motioned toward the house, the garage, the utility shed. One of the men snapped the measuring tape off his belt, and another produced a fat, dog-eared notebook from the depths of his jacket. Surveyors? Tax assessors? They couldn’t be painters—it was far too late in the season to paint outdoors.

  She heard van der Hoeven’s tread returning through the foyer and out onto the porch. Through the front door, she heard his voice. “Hey. You.”

  The young woman and the men looked up. The woman’s eyes and mouth widened. Everyone froze in position, except the man holding the notebook, who dropped it, bent over, scrabbled it off the ground, then hotfooted back several paces.

  “Get off my property,” van der Hoeven yelled. He descended from the porch into Clare’s view. She nearly let go of the phone. Eugene was carrying a rifle. Not carrying it, aiming it, stock up and butted against his shoulder, sights pointed toward the pale-faced, motionless group in his drive. “Get off my property, I said.” He was shouting; Clare could hear every word.

  “Courtney.” She cut off the banquet preparation committee chair ruthlessly. “Find someone to go to Saratoga.” She let her command voice out, the one that crackled with authority. The one that brooked no disagreement. “I don’t care who, just do it. Something’s come up. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” She stalked to the phone, replaced the receiver, and hurried back to the window.

  The young woman, with more guts than sense, had stepped forward. Clare couldn’t make out what she was saying, but whatever it was, it didn’t have the effect of calming van der Hoeven.

  “I said now,” he said, chambering a round.

  Oh, no. Clare was out of the den, hurtling down the hall toward the front door, when she heard the shot go off. Oh, God, no. She lunged for the handle, flung the door open, and stumbled onto the porch.

  The three men were fleeing to their cars and trucks, parked on the far edge of the drive. The young woman teetered on the toes of her boots, two bright pink spots burning high on her cheekbones. “I’ll be back!” she screamed. “You can’t stop this, Eugene! I’ll be back!”

  Eugene chambered another round and sighted the rifle at the infuriated woman.

  “Stop!” Clare yelled. Eugene whipped toward her. She ducked out of the line of fire, but as soon as van der Hoeven saw who she was, he lowered his weapon. Clare sagged with relief.

  Behind her, she heard the clatter of feet down the stairs. “What the hell was that?” Lisa said. Eugene turned back toward the drive, but the woman had finally come to her senses and fled. She dove into a green Toyota Prius as the three men’s trucks roared to life. They spun out on the drive and disappeared down the road, gravel spitting in their wake.

  Eugene mounted the porch steps slowly, his rifle uncocked, held loosely in his hand. He looked at Clare, clutching the edge of the door, then at Lisa, poised halfway down the stairs. “I open my land to hunters,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I allow anybody and everybody on my property.” His voice was calm, but his hand was shaking.

  He trudged past them, down the hall, into the living room. Clare heard the clunk of the gun case opening. She looked up at the housekeeper. “Do you think I should . . .” What? Report the incident? Ask if Eugene needed help? Get herself and Lisa out of the house?

  Eugene returned. He stopped in front of them. “Reverend Fergusson, have you finished with your phone call?”

  She nodded, speechless.

  “Good. I’m going to retire to my den. Lisa, you’ll find
your envelope on the kitchen desk in the usual spot. Please don’t disturb me.”

  He continued on toward the room Clare had recently vacated. She looked at Lisa, who shrugged. “Mr. van der Hoeven? Eugene?” He paused in the doorway. Half-turned toward her. “Do you need any . . . can I help you?”

  “I believe, Reverend Fergusson, that the Lord helps those who help themselves.” The den door clicked behind him, closing the world out.

  10:35 A.M.

  Shaun Reid ran his thumb and index finger over the crease in his navy serge pants, then glanced up quickly to see if Terry McKellan had noticed. He hadn’t. Eyes on the proposal Shaun had brought to the meeting, reading glasses slipping down his nose, Terry was abstracted, rolling his cigar-brown mustache between his fingers, occasionally tapping out the beat of some song only he could hear against the spreadsheets scattered across his messy conference table.

  Shaun congratulated himself on choosing just the right look for this meeting—country club casual. He had bought the pants and shirt in the Bahamas during his honeymoon with Courtney, from an exclusive shop with a PATRONIZED BY THE PRINCE OF WALES sign by the door. They had cost more than he usually spent on a suit, tie, and shoes combined, but Courtney had said they made him look young and fit and successful.

  Terry, on the other hand, with his round moon face and vanishing hair, looked like what he was, a guy rapidly headed north of middle age, who had given up the fight to stay fit and any hopes of rising past senior vice president long ago. With his shapeless sweater stretched over his belly and his shiny-kneed corduroys, he resembled an untenured academic more than a commercial loan officer.

  Looking the part wouldn’t win Shaun his loan, but it couldn’t hurt. In truth, he was feeling more relaxed than he had all week. He had good numbers on the past three years’ profit-and-loss statements. He had a great proposal, laying out all the ways in which Reid-Gruyn could expand and grow with the future. He had highly favorable estimates of the value of his personal property. And he had a relationship with the man across the table from him. For God’s sake, he and Courtney had had the McKellans to their house for dinner.