“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.