The great Gothic doors of St. Alban’s, polished by the sun and framed by masses of summer flowers, seemed preferable as a spot for getting married, rather than the cool and shadowed interior of the church. Of course, Clare thought as she unlocked the doors, the florist couldn’t charge for the design if that were the case. She had just emerged from the sacristy, where the light switches were, when she heard the clatter of sandals on the tiled floor of the nave.
“Hello? Anybody home?”
“Over here,” Clare called.
Diana Berry resembled her aunt—angular, tanned, no-nonsense. Her fair hair was long and loose, where Peggy Landry’s was cropped close to her head, not a strand out of place. But Clare could envision her at her aunt’s age, a tough businesswoman or one of those relentlessly efficient wife-mother-volunteer types who ran their communities. Or both. She and Peggy were dressed much as Clare was—sleeveless blouses and chinos or jeans. The woman accompanying them was obviously the florist, an Asian woman of perhaps forty, whose thick, bobbed hair swung along her jawline as she glanced around and then approached the altar.
“Fabulous space,” she said.
“Thanks,” Clare replied.
“Reverend Clare!” Diana said. “It’s great to see you again. Thanks for letting us in on such short notice. This is Lin-bai Tang, our floral designer, and my aunt, Peggy Landry.”
Clare shook hands all around.
“What is it,” Tang asked, her eyes taking in the ornate woodwork, “mid-nineteenth century?”
“Started in 1857, completed just after the end of the Civil War.”
“Wonderful. I adore Gothic churches. Come here, Diana, let’s start at the altar rail. I see faux-medieval swags with flowers that look as if they’ve been gathered on the riverbank by the Lady of Shallot….” She whipped out a notebook and a measuring tape.
“Wow,” Clare said. “She’s good. I don’t know what her flowers look like, but she’s good.”
“She’s the hottest floral designer in Saratoga. We were lucky to get her at the height of the season. My brother-in-law’s dropping a fortune on this thing. For the amount he’s spending, the bride and groom ought to give him a money-back guarantee.”
“Where’s the reception?”
“At the Stuyvesant Inn. Do you know it?”
Clare blinked. “I do, yes.”
“Of course, we think of it as Grandfather’s house. It used to be ours before my grandmother sold it. Enormous old place, impossible to keep up.”
Clare got the distinct feeling Ms. Landry wouldn’t mind trying, though. “The inn’s lovely,” she said. “How nice for you that it’s available for a family celebration.”
“Well, it’s been a pain to try and handle the latest owners, I can tell you.” Landry sat down in a pew, tipped the kneeler into position with one sandal-shod foot, and propped her feet up on the red velvet surface. “Fussy little pair. All these rules we have to work around. ‘No drinks in the parlor. No high heels in the music room.’ They’re trying to make it a historically correct tomb. They’ve been running it as an inn for a year, and I can’t imagine how they’re managing to stay in business.”
Clare sat down sideways in the pew in front of Landry’s, crossing her arms over the smooth, age-darkened wood. Ron Handler’s unflattering description of Peggy Landry suddenly made sense. Why hadn’t he and Stephen mentioned that Landry’s niece was one of their clients?
“It’s a shame you couldn’t have seen it in its heyday, when my grandfather was alive. It had real elegance then, and comfort, and dash. I still have quite a few family pieces at my own house.” She stretched a well-toned arm along the back of the pew. “If I ever manage to get the place back in the family, I’ll have a head start on furnishing it properly.”
Clare, who had been trying to fit Emil Dvorak, the Stuyvesant Inn, Peggy Landry, and Bill Ingraham into some sort of logical picture, snapped back to attentiveness. “You’re hoping to own the inn someday? But the new innkeepers just bought it a year or so ago, from what I understand.”
Landry snorted. “That pair are the third owners in the last decade. So far, the Landry house has proved too expensive for a summer home and too distant to be a retreat from New York City. I’m not particularly confident that it’ll be any more manageable as an inn.” She snorted. “I suppose the fact that I still refer to it as ‘the Landry house’ gives my feelings away. Up till now, I’ve never had the wherewithal to make it more than a pipe dream.”
“You must be delighted about the new spa being built,” Clare said, keeping her voice as casual as possible.
“Delighted? Yes, I suppose you could say that. It makes it sound as if it’s a piece of good fortune that happened by chance, though.” She crossed her arms over her chest, crinkling the smooth white cotton of her blouse. “I’ve worked like a dog for three years putting this thing together. Not to mention all the time before, keeping my ear to the ground, building up my capital, forgoing the income I could have made if I had done what everyone said and put a campground or a couple of rustic cabins at the site.” She smiled in a satisfied way. “I knew the potential that was there. I knew that land could be used for something much, much bigger. I played my hand out, and now I’ve got the pot, metaphorically speaking.”
“You must be worried about the protests and all. I mean, if the resort doesn’t go forward…”
“Won’t happen. I guarantee it. The protesters are just a bunch of tree-huggers blowing smoke. They have no real political clout.”
What if the head of the development company is dead? Clare thought. She absolutely did not want to be the one to break that piece of news to Peggy Landry. She cast about for an innocuous response. “Um…I confess I don’t know how it works, but what if the state looks at the site again because of this new pollution problem?”
“We’ve gotten an absolutely clean bill of health in all the site surveys up to now. I don’t expect that will change.”
Landry sounded utterly sure of her statement. Clare raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t you worried that an inquiry, or recertification or whatever, would bring the development to a halt for however long the DEP was poking around? I thought Mr. Ingraham”—the name recalled the image of what she had seen in the scrub at Riverside Park, and her breath caught for a moment before she could go on—“said he would withdraw from the project if they even got involved.”
“John Opperman and I agree that’s unnecessary. We have a perfectly legal right to proceed full speed with the development, which means the bulk of the work would be done before the DEP finished with its initial evaluations here in Millers Kill. The workers are supposed to be on site today. We need to pick up the pace in order to get all the outside work done before winter.” She looked distracted for a moment and reached for her purse. “In fact, I need to speak with John.” She retrieved a cell phone. “If you don’t mind, Reverend Fergusson?”
Amusement won out over amazement at the sheer brass of being asked to remove herself from a pew in her own church so that Landry could use it as an office. Clare slid out of the pew and wandered to the back of the church, where the great double doors were open to a warm breeze, the smell of roses, and the faint sound of children playing in the gazebo across the street. It seemed strange to be planning for winter at the delicious peak of summer. It also seemed strange to think of death in the middle of such a cornucopia of life. She thought of the old words from the graveside committal service, which she had always disliked for their fatalistic view: “In the midst of life we are in death.”