To Darkness and to Death

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

“I feel responsible,” Millie said. “I was the one who brought the land sale up. I knew Gene was attached to Haudenosaunee, but I didn’t realize . . .”

  Louisa looked at Clare and Russ. “I believe it’s common knowledge that Gene’s lived a reclusive life at Haudenosaunee since the fire that destroyed the old camp and took his mother’s life.”

  Russ nodded.

  “What is not commonly known—in fact, no one outside the family knew—was that . . . Gene . . .”

  “Gene started that fire.” Millie’s face was as expressionless as her inflection.

  “His mother had gotten primary custody of him, and he didn’t want to go. He loved to . . . tinker with things. Make things.”

  “Things that blew up?” Clare asked bluntly.

  Louisa nodded. “I don’t think he actually meant to hurt her . . .”

  “Yes, he did,” Millie said. “He hated her, and he didn’t want to leave Daddy and Haudenosaunee. So he waited until she was alone in the old camp, and he set off his firebomb.”

  “Good heavens,” Clare said, which was a lot milder than what Russ was going to say. “That’s a pretty big secret to carry around for all those years.” She searched both the sisters’ faces. “Are you sure, though, that means Eugene was responsible for tonight’s violence?”

  “He locked me in the tower,” Millie said. “He slipped something in my drink last night during dinner. I don’t know what. I couldn’t remember anything when I woke up this morning.”

  “Probably roofie. Rohypnol,” Russ explained. “Makes you extremely susceptible to suggestion and wipes out your memory. He could have told you to walk to the tower and climb the stairs and you wouldn’t recall doing it.”

  “He did it to keep me away from the ceremony,” Millie said. “So I wouldn’t get hurt.”

  “He didn’t tell me to keep away,” Louisa said. Her mouth drew taut, as if its strings had been yanked shut.

  “Lou, I’m sure he had some plan up his sleeve. He didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “No,” Russ said, “just the leadership of the ACC and the GWP corporate brass.” All three women looked at him.

  “Oh, my God,” Clare said. “This afternoon, when I agreed to deliver the cases of wine for him, Eugene told me to leave the ballroom and come outside at nine o’clock. And bring my friends. He told me he was going to set off fireworks.”

  Everyone looked out the open ambulance door, to where the night was alive with whirling lights and color.

  “And so he did,” Clare said, so quietly Russ doubted the van der Hoevens heard her.

  His phone rang. He excused himself and jumped out of the ambulance. “Van Alstyne here.”

  “Russ? It’s Lyle. I’m calling to update you on the Reid-Gruyn fire.”

  Russ listened while Lyle told him the news. He thought about Becky Castle, and Ed, and about Shaun and his new young wife, and about Lisa-the-housekeeper. He thought about Mark and Rachel Durkee. It’s true, he thought. We are all related. If not by blood, then by bonds we don’t even realize. Until they’re gone.

  He walked back to the ambulance in time to hear Clare saying, “Let’s be thankful for at least this. No matter what the damage, it’s been confined to things. Things can be replaced. At least no people have been hurt.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not true.” The ambulance dipped under his weight as he climbed in. “I just got off the phone with my deputy chief. He’s been monitoring the fire over at the Reid-Gruyn mill. It seems Randy Schoof and Jeremy Reid were caught in the old mill. They’ve both been confirmed dead.”

  Millie van der Hoeven burst into tears.

  10:00 P.M.

  Lisa Schoof sat in the back seat of her brother-in-law’s cruiser. It was dark, very dark, except where it was lit by the light of the still-burning fire. Every once in a while someone would come up to her and ask if she was okay, if she wanted to go to the hospital, if she could answer a few questions. She didn’t reply; even if they opened the door, their voices remained behind thick glass, and eventually Mark spotted whoever was bothering her and shooed him away.

  She tilted her head against the back of the seat. She was tired. So very tired.

  Once, when she and Rachel were kids, they had spent the day sledding down a hill behind their grandfather’s pasture. They had been cold, then colder, and finally their toes and fingers ached and pinched with the bite of it. But they had dared each other to stay out till dark, and Lisa had found that after a while, the pain went away, and she felt nothing at all.

  That was how she felt now. Numb. And tired.

  She had thought, when the firetrucks arrived, that would be the end of it. So many of them, and so many men, tossing hoses into the river, sending great sprays of water arching over the old mill. She stood on the scrubgrounds surrounded by Reid-Gruyn workers, the plant emptied out, and someone had said, “Thank God it didn’t start in the new mill,” and she had turned and said, “My husband’s in there,” and they all fell silent and drew away from her.

  But still, she believed the firefighters would save him. Him and the man who had gone in to get him out. She believed, right up until the moment when, with a series of cracks and pops that echoed through the night like artillary fire, the joists and braces that had held up the old mill for one hundred and thirty years gave way. The roof collapsed inward with the flaming roar of a dying forest, blasting out great gouts of fire that scattered the firefighters and made the onlookers stumble back in shock and awe.

  Randy was gone.

  She couldn’t remember what she had been thinking of when she ran, screaming, toward the fire. Someone had tackled her, several someones, and held her down while she thrashed and screamed and clawed, until the paramedics appeared and gave her a shot, one of them kneeling on her chest and another one immobilizing her arm.

  Now she was numb.

  Mark had asked her some questions—about Randy, and Becky Castle, and Shaun Reid. She had answered them because it was the quickest way to get him to stop bothering her. After that, he left her alone. And kept the others away.

  Outside, she could hear someone crying, and Mark’s voice, and then the squad car door opened and Rachel was there, saying, “Lisa. Oh, Lisa,” in a tear-clogged voice.

  Lisa let her weeping sister wrap her arms around her shoulders and hold her. She wanted to tell her it was okay. She wanted to ask her if she remembered that day sledding, and the sun going down, and the numbness. But she was too tired to talk. So she let Rachel choke and sob over her, and she closed her eyes against the darkness and the light.

  Compline

  Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless thy dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

  2:00 A.M.

  Clare rolled to a stop and turned off the lights. “Here we are.”

  “Let’s go,” Russ said without moving. “You must be exhausted.”

  “I’m not, surprisingly. I think I’ve gotten my second wind.” She had shuttled Hugh to the Stuyvesant Inn and Deacon Aberforth to the rectory before returning to the Algonquin Waters resort—or what was left of it—to pick up Russ. He had been adamant about getting a ride with one of his officers, but when she pointed out that they could drop her at the rectory first, and that he’d be doing her a favor by returning Hugh’s car to him on Sunday, he agreed.

  “How’s Mark?” she asked.

  “Okay, I guess. I took him off duty as soon as I found out about Randy Schoof. I think they were all planning on going over to his in-laws’ house. I’m sure it’ll help the girls, being with their parents.”

  “Mmm. I have to remember to call tomorrow and ask if I can do anything.”

  “You mean today. It’s Sunday.”

  “Is it?”

  “Has been for two hours.”

  She wrapped his dinner jacket, which
she hadn’t taken off yet, more tightly around her. She liked the smell of it. “Now you’re fifty years and one day old.”

  “I’ve decided I’m not going to have another birthday until I turn sixty. Maybe by then the town will have recovered from this one.”

  “I wonder what you’ll be like when you’re sixty?”

  “A geezer, just like everybody else.”

  She grinned into the darkness. “Nah. I bet you’ll be all dashing and sexy, like John Glenn.”

  “John Glenn? The astronaut? You think he’s sexy?”

  “Yep.”

  “You have some serious father issues you’re working out, don’t you?”

  She laughed.

  “Clare?”

  Something in his voice made her laughter die away. “Yeah?”

  “I decided something tonight.”

  She took a breath. “What?”

  “I’ve decided to tell Linda. About us. About my feelings for you.”

  Say something, Clare. Say something. “Oh.”

  “I can’t be dishonest with her anymore. She’s been beside me every step of the way for the last twenty-five years, and now I’ve walked so far afield we can’t even find one another with a map. I need to do something about it. I’ve decided to start by being truthful.”

  “What do you think her reaction is going to be?”

  He laughed briefly. “Damned if I know. Somewhere between shooting me and giving me her blessing, I think.”

  “What if she asks you to cut off all contact with me? That wouldn’t be unreasonable, you know. A lot of marriage counselors would probably recommend it.” She forced herself to consider, dispassionately, what might be best for Russ. “Maybe it would be better.”

  He looked at her in the darkness. “It wouldn’t be better. It would kill me. The thing about all this is, Linda loves me. I don’t think she’d ask me to do something that will”—he searched for the right word—“eviscerate me.”

  She reached for his hand. He interlaced his fingers with hers. I’m going to have to be the one, she thought. When the time comes, I’m going to have to be the one to break it off. She squeezed his hand, and he tightened his fingers in return. Lord God, give me strength.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Time to get you into bed.”

  She laughed. He paused, not getting it for a second, and then groaned. She opened the door, leaving the keys in for him. He held out his hand, and she went around the side of the car and caught it, interlacing her fingers in his again.

  “Look at that moon,” he said.

  She looked to where it was riding, halfway to the horizon.

  “We had dinner,” he said, “but we never danced.”

  “Nobody danced. The bandstand blew up and the instruments melted.”

  He tugged her off the driveway and onto the front lawn. The frost on the grass was pure silver in the moonlight. She could feel it, chilling her feet.

  “Dance with me,” he said.

  “You’re moonstruck,” she said.

  He placed one hand at the small of her back and took the other in a proper dancing position. “No, I’m not. I’m alive, and you’re alive, and we don’t know where we’ll be twenty-four hours from now. So let’s dance while we can.”

  He began singing a melancholy, wordless tune. “Dum-da-dum, da-dee-da-dumdum, dum-da-dum, da-dee-da-dumdum.” His free hand nudged her back, and the next thing she knew, they were waltzing, her skirts swishing through the frost, his feet crunching the frozen grass. She recognized the melody suddenly. “Ashokan Farewell,” from the Civil War documentary.

  She chimed in, her alto humming above his baritone, the sleeves of his dinner jacket falling over her hands, and they danced, beneath the November moon, to sad, sweet music they made themselves.

  Keep reading for an excerpt

  from Julia Spencer-Fleming’s next mystery

  All Mortal Flesh

  Coming Soon in Hardcover from St. Martin’s Minotaur

  Meg Tracey wasn’t the sort of woman who had to keep tabs on her friends. She enjoyed her own privacy too much to intrude on others, and she frequently quoted the phrase, “And it harms no one, do what you will,” which she had picked up in a book on Wicca she bought at the Crandall Library’s annual sale for a buck.

  She liked to think of herself as a neo-pagan, and threw an annual Winter Solstice party with lots of torches and greenery and drinking of grog, but she wasn’t interested enough to dig much deeper into the philosophical underpinnings. It was enough for her that it annoyed the hell out of her intensely Catholic family (she had been born Mary Margaret Cathwright) and that it distinguished her from the vast majority of her neighbors in Millers Kill, a town she frequently described as “three stop signs East of Nowhere.”

  It was a mutual loathing of the poky little berg their husbands had brought them to that first threw Meg and Linda Van Alstyne together. On the surface, they had nothing in common. Meg was the full-time mother of three while Linda, childless, was busy starting up her own business. Meg’s husband was a former peace activist who taught at Skidmore College; Linda’s husband “retired” to run the Millers Kill Police Department after a twenty-five year career in the Army. Linda was a meticulous homemaker whose two-hundred-year-old farmhouse was a showplace for her decorating skills; Meg’s house, like her, was careless and eclectic, filled with child-battered furniture and dog hair. Linda guarded her space, inviting few people into her sanctuary; Meg’s family room was always filled with sprawls of teenage boys, her kitchen overrun with giggles of girls.

  But at an estate auction in Glens Falls, Meg (scouting out the Adirondack cedar chairs) overheard Linda (examining the hand-forged iron trivets) cracking a joke about Millers Kill. (The punch line had something to do with dairy farmers and cow insemination.) She introduced herself. Their discussion led to lunch, which led to an invitation to Meg’s for a blender of strawberry daiquiris, which led to an impromptu dinner invitation since Linda’s husband was working late. As Linda’s husband frequently worked late, dinners together became a more-or-less regular thing until Linda’s custom curtain business began to take off in a serious way. Still, Linda touched base with Meg by phone if not in person almost every day. Especially since her husband dropped the bomb on her. Which was why, a full forty-eight hours after their last conversation, Meg was worried.

  “I haven’t heard from her since Saturday afternoon,” she said into the cordless phone tucked beneath her chin.

  “Maybe she’s at the Algonquin Hotel. Didn’t you say she’s spending a lot of time there on the renovation?”

  “Not all weekend.”

  “Honey, the woman does have a life. Give her a break.” In the background, she could hear the sound of rattling file cabinet drawers and footsteps. Instructors in Anthropology didn’t get large, sound-proofed offices. “Maybe she went out Saturday night, picked up some young stud, and has been holding him hostage ever since.”

  “I wish. That’s what I’d be doing. And don’t you forget it.”

  He snorted. “I believe you.”

  “So if you think you can get away with any private counseling with one of those nubile young hotties you have floating around campus . . .”

  “Please. I value my equipment too much to risk losing it.”She could hear Deidre slamming through the front door. “Mo-om! I’m home!”

  Meg lowered her voice. “Get home early tonight and I’ll show you how much I value your equipment.”

  “Mo-om! I need a ride to piano!”

  “I gotta go,” Meg said. “Deidre’s bellowing. Hold that thought.”

  “Faster, pussycat! Faster, faster!”

  She could hear Jack laughing as she hung up. He was right, she thought, gathering up her coat and car keys. She had been keeping very close tabs on him since the morning Linda, ping-ponging between fear and rage, had told Meg about her husband’s infidelity. It wasn’t that Meg thought she had anything to worry about. On the other hand, Linda hadn’t thought she had an
ything to worry about, either.

  Despite the steadily falling snow, Meg drove to the piano teacher’s with only half a mind on the road. Deidre, plugged into her personal CD player in the back seat, didn’t say a word until a quick, “See ya later, Mom,” punctuated by a slamming door.

  Okay. Now she had an hour to kill. Meg tried Linda one more time on her cell phone. The number rang, and rang, until a recorded male voice clicked on.

  “You’ve reached the home of Russ and Linda Van Alstyne. Leave a message.” Meg hung up. Without consciously deciding, she switched on her headlights and turned left out of the piano teacher’s driveway, headed toward the Van Alstynes’.

  Linda lived on an old country road half-way between Millers Kill and Cossayuharie, dotted with houses that had been farms in the nineteenth century, widely-spaced, with quarter-mile long driveways. Good business for Meg’s son Quinn, who had kitted out his 200,000-mile pickup with a plow to earn extra money, but way too remote for Meg’s taste.

  The Van Alstynes’ house was set back, high on a treeless rise that gave them sweeping views in the summer but which looked desolate and wind scoured in the winter. The long, long drive hadn’t been plowed anytime recently. Meg drove up as far as her Volvo would take her, riding in the ruts left by the last vehicle to brave the hill, but around the half-way point she slowed, skidded, and slipped back several feet. Admitting defeat, she yanked on the parking brake and got out to walk the rest of the way.

  Despite the gathering twilight, there weren’t any lights on that Meg could see. On the other hand, she would have to circle around to the west side of the house in order to spot the windows in Linda’s upstairs workshop. She banged on the mudroom door. No answer. Maybe Linda was out? Meg crossed the end of the drive and peered through the barn windows. No, there was her station wagon.

  It was turning back toward the house that she noticed the odd blot in the snow near the doorway. She recrossed the drive to look at it. The falling snow was beginning to cover it, but she could see it was pink, and slushy, as if someone had plunged a spoonful of spaghetti sauce into the snow and stirred vigorously. At the sight of it, something cooled in the back of her brain, and she suddenly noticed the rhythm of her heartbeat making its way to the very edge of her skin.