A Fountain Filled With Blood

me out. We priests are used to asking the personal questions, not answering them. Oops! There’s Peggy. If you’ll excuse me, I want to say hello to our hostess. Nice meeting you all.” She sidestepped quickly behind a waiter circulating a tray of chicken satay and made her escape through the crowd, headed for the open doorway through which Peggy could, possibly, have gone. If you don’t have to engage the enemy, Msgt. Wright’s voice echoed in her head, don’t stand there like an idiot, waiting to get shot. Retreat! There were times, she realized, when being a priest was a distinct disadvantage, and one of them was at a big boozy party where you were hoping to hear some hot gossip about the hostess’s nephew and his ex- lover.

The room she entered was smaller and cozier, with plump love seats and squishy chairs, instead of the sleek modular stuff in the living room. It had bookcases on its walls, mostly filled with photos and important-looking pieces of pottery. Clare decided this room must be called the library. Peggy Landry wasn’t one of the seven or eight people crowding the available seating, but Clare did spot Peggy’s nephew, Malcolm Wintour. He was even more beautiful this evening than he had been when she met him Monday morning, relaxed and younger-looking, with his honey-blond hair falling to either side of his face in perfect glossy wings. For a moment, she could feel the shade of her sister, Grace, beside her. Grace, who had always loved beautiful boys, sighing and saying, What a shame he’s gay….

The drinks waiter passed by and she deposited her empty glass and snagged a new one. She strode up to where Malcolm was standing and talking with two other guests, one a young woman whose fashion statement was “My clothes all shrank in the wash,” and the other a man a few years older than Clare, perhaps, with close-cropped hair graying at his temples.

“Malcolm? Hi, it’s nice to see you again. Wonderful party.” Malcolm smiled vaguely, his expression the one people get when they can’t recall an acquaintance. She smiled at his two companions. “Hi, I’m Clare Fergusson.” She deliberately left off her title. She was wearing an outfit that reminded her of something she had seen on the quiz-master of The Weakest Link: severely cut silk pants and a long matching jacket with a dozen small fabric buttons marching up to a stiff high collar. She had modeled it for Lois, who’d said she looked like a cross between a Jesuit and a dominatrix. Maybe the people in this room hadn’t heard Diana and Cary’s introduction. Let them figure out if she was a religious or a disciplinarian.

“Hi,” the young woman said, taking Clare’s hand limply. Clare paused for a beat, but the girl evidently wasn’t going to pick up the cue and introduce herself.

“Hugh Parteger,” the man said, shaking her hand in turn. Surprisingly, he had a British accent.

“You don’t spell that with a y, do you?”

“Not a one.” He smiled, which gave him dimples on either cheek. Cute, Grace’s shade advised.

“I’m trying to think…are you the florist?” Malcolm’s voice was slightly off, as if it were coming from someplace other than his own throat. She looked at him more closely. He had evidently had a few too many kir royales. Or something.

She took a sip from her own drink. “Nope. I like flowers as much as the next woman, but I can’t tell a dahlia from a daisy.”

“Or a lupine from a lobelia?” Hugh Parteger said.

“Or a carnation from a chrysanthemum.”

“You’re obviously not into floral sects,” he said.

She almost spit out a mouthful of kir royale laughing. Malcolm and the nameless girl just looked puzzled. She shook her head. “Mr. Parteger, I don’t discuss what I do in my garden bed with anyone.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “For most women, it’s just a matter of finding the right tool.”

She took another drink, enjoying herself immensely. The girl was murmuring something to Malcolm, who was looking around the room. “Yes, but it’s such a tedious process, finding one that fits and works really well. Better just stick to hand weeding. Fewer complications that way.”

“Ah, so you’re a master gardener.”

She actually giggled. How mortifying. She took a long swallow from her drink. “As Voltaire said, we must cultivate our garden.”

“I believe he also said, ‘Once, a philosopher, twice, a pervert.’ ”

“Hey, you two. Later.” They had not only lost Malcolm and the girl; they had driven them away. With a pang, Clare watched them drift toward the door. This was not the way to untangle the relationship between Malcolm and his late business partner.

“Ah, did I put a foot wrong?” Hugh Parteger waved over the waiter, who had reappeared in the doorway with a tray-ful of fresh drinks. “Were you after speaking with Malcolm? Because I have to tell you, you’re not his type.”

She laughed again. “So I understand. No, I just wanted to talk with him at some point. And offer my condolences, I guess.”

Hugh reached for her now-empty glass and put it on the waiter’s tray alongside his own. He handed her another drink before taking one, as well.

“Condolences?”

“I had heard that he was…that he had been particularly close to Bill Ingraham, the developer. He died this weekend.”

“I read he was knocked off.”

Again, she almost choked on a mouthful of champagne and currant liqueur. “ ‘Knocked off’?”

“Rubbed out. Done away with. Whacked. Fed to the fishes. Stop me if I’m using cliches.”

She couldn’t help laughing again, although it was horrible, too, with the sight of Ingraham’s mutilated corpse still in her mind.

“No, really. The gossip mills in Saratoga are blaming it on the mob.”