“Hmph,” he rumbled. “You only get married once, knock on wood. You ought to milk it for what it’s worth.”
When she finally emerged into sunshine and a brisk easterly wind, she realized she was never going to make the diocesan development committee lunch scheduled for noon in Schenectady. She had to admit giving up boxed sandwiches and a tedious meeting wasn’t a hardship. Plus, she now had a legitimate couple of hours free before her afternoon counseling sessions.
She considered going back to the rectory for a nap. Trip’s prescribed ten milligrams of Dexedrine was clearly a much lower dosage than she’d been taking out of her go-bag. She felt like she was wearing an overcoat of fatigue. Trip surely wouldn’t call her in for a blood test this soon. He wouldn’t know if she upped her dose for a day or two. She climbed behind the wheel of her Jeep and headed toward Millers Kill.
She thought about the therapy group. If she could get hold of Colonel Seelye, she could ask the others what they thought about the situation. Get their take on Quentan Nichols’s surprise visit, too. He was obviously in it up to his neck, as Russ would say. In town and looking for his money. Which was… where? Who knew? Had Tally had someone helping her stateside? There must have been other people involved in Iraq, if only to move the cash from point A to point B. What if Nichols knew the other accomplice? Knew, and had struck a deal with him. Or them. After all, taking even one person out of the pool left considerably more money for everyone else to divide.
Clare drove over a hill and blinked at the sight of the Stuyvesant Inn. She had driven the entire way on autopilot. So much for her vaunted observational skills-and so much for her nap. She turned into the drive and pulled into one of two empty parking places. The leaf peepers must have decamped to the city.
The inn’s enormous maple was half-stripped of leaves, the remainder looking like the tattered red pennants of a defeated army. The wind across the valley, which cooled the sprawling Victorian all summer long, was a cold slice against her back as she got out of her car.
The door opened while she was climbing the porch steps. “You must be psychic,” Ron Handler said. “We just got another fax from your mother.” He stepped to one side and let her into the wide front hall.
“Lord help us.” Clare shucked her jacket off. “What is it now?”
“Oh, a bunch of stuff. She wants to make sure we’re coordinating with the baker and the patisserie. A rundown on the linens. She has a sketch of how she wants the presents displayed-what’s a ‘sip and see’?”
“A party for silver fetishists.” She glanced at the hallway’s etagere, where an authentic nineteenth-century feather bouquet bloomed eternally beneath a glass bell. “Don’t worry about it, though. There aren’t going to be any presents.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, Your Reverence, but they’re already arriving. Your mother’s been forwarding the ones sent to your parents’ house.”
“Oh, for…” She scrubbed her hands over her face. Wished she had some cold water to splash there. “Look. I didn’t actually come over here to discuss the reception. I was hoping to talk to Colonel Seelye. She never returned my phone messages.”
“Rude, but not unexpected. I’m sorry, but she’s gone.”
“Any idea when she’ll be back?”
Ron shook his head. “I mean she’s gone. Checked out. Took her luggage, her car, and her life-sized GI Joe doll with her.”
Russ was negotiating the turn off of Route 57 when his cell phone rang. He picked it up without looking. “Van Alstyne here.”
“Hey. It’s me,” Clare said.
“Hey, you. Are you feeling better?”
“I guess so.” She paused. “I think I know why we’ve been so snippy with each other lately.”
“Snippy” wasn’t the word he would have used, but what the hell. “Why?”
“Because we’re not having sex.”
He grinned. “I sure am thinking about it a lot, if that’s any consolation.”
“Oh, yeah? What sort of things are you thinking about?”
“Stop that. Are you calling about Nichols?”
“What? No. Why?”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“No. Sorry. I didn’t check before I called you. What’s going on?”
“Wyler McNabb has flown the coop. He left his car with his in-laws and told ’em he was off to join the BWI Opperman construction team in Iraq.”
“Wasn’t he out on bail?”
“Uh-huh.”
“With a broken cheekbone?”
“Plus a hairline fracture in his skull.”
“And they let him go to a construction site in a war zone?” Clare’s voice carried all the disbelief his had when Knox and Flynn had reported in.
“That’s what I’m about to find out. I called the construction depot in Plattsburgh, but the guy there didn’t know anything except that the monthly flight to Iraq left yesterday evening. All the operations-level stuff is handled at headquarters. I’m headed for the Algonquin Waters to get the truth out of somebody.”
“I’m at the Stuyvesant Inn. I’ll meet you there.”
“No. Do
“Why were you calling about Nichols?”
He hissed frustration as he swung his squad car onto the Sacandaga Road. “Clare, I mean it. I don’t want you-”
“Oh, honestly, Russ, you’re not going up against a terrorist cell holding the hotel with guns and explosives. You’re going to ask the human resources manager if they authorized McNabb to get on their plane. I think I can survive the danger. I’ll see you over there.” She hung up.
He swore under his breath. The wedding, which she had just been complaining about, was in nine days. She was carrying her usual overfull schedule at St. Alban’s. On top of it all, he knew, despite her being less than forthcoming about therapy, that she was still struggling with her experiences in Iraq. So what does she do? Go chasing after Tally McNabb’s nonexistent killer.
He switched his light bar on and stepped on the gas when he hit the resort’s road, causing a car speeding down the mountain to brake hard enough to spew dirt and leaf mold into the air. He was going to have to lobby the aldermen to install a traffic light on the Sacandaga Road, or sooner or later there was going to be another fatality like this summer’s. Of course, the aldermen, who liked spending money as much as Clare liked sitting quietly at home, would make him choose: traffic control or a new officer’s position.
He saw Clare’s ratty old Jeep as soon as he drove into the parking lot. That was another thing on his list. The first weekend after they were married he was marching her over to Fort Henry Ford and buying her a reliable four- wheel drive with all-weather tires and side-door air bags.
She hopped out of her clunker when he got out of the cruiser. She tugged a wool cardigan over her clerical blouse. “So why were you calling me about Nichols?”
He zipped his jacket up. “I wanted to ask you if you had any idea where he might be. If he said anything to you. Why are you so keen on Wyler McNabb’s whereabouts?”
She looked up at him. “I told you. I think Tally McNabb was killed for a million dollars. I want to find out everything I can about the money, because if I know that, I’ll know who murdered her.”
It came to him as he spoke the words. “You know, distracting yourself by playing private eye won’t make the bad stuff in your head go away.”
She opened her mouth. Shut it. “Is that why you became an MP? Because focusing on other people’s problems helped you ignore your own?”
His breath hitched in his chest. Jesus. Sometimes she pulled truth out of him like a magician conjuring scarves. Then he saw her eyes, wide and white-edged, and realized she was feeling the same way he was right now.
