A Fountain Filled With Blood

wondered if she would ever be able to listen to it again after tonight. She eased the latches into place in the uppermost notches and stuck her head out the window to scope out her escape route.

The good news was that Malcolm’s suite overlooked a six-foot-square porch roof, an easy drop from the window if she were hanging from the bottom of the sill. The bad news was, the porch and its roof were attached to the kitchen. Over the jazzy beat of the Dave Matthews Band, she could hear the clang and clatter and chatter of kitchen staff engaged in a full-scale cleanup. Craning her neck to one side, she could see the outlines of several people clustered in conversation on the flagstone terrace surrounding the pool. All it would take would be someone glancing up at the wrong moment and she would look like a character from a Lawrence Block novel. She could see the title now: The Burglar Who Thought She Was a Priest.

Once she got down to the ground, the view from the pool would be cut off by a wide-planked wind fence that shielded swimmers and sunbathers from the sight of three large trash cans. How long would it take her to climb out of the window, drop, and slide off the porch roof? Thirty seconds? A minute?

She heard the thump-thump of footsteps down a pair of steps and then one of the caterers emerged from beneath the roof, striding to the nearest trash can with a white plastic bag swinging from his fist. He tossed it in and vanished back into the kitchen, never once looking up or about.

A quote from Macbeth bubbled up from the primordial English-lit ooze: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly…” She glanced at the sandals dangling from her hand. Bogatta Veneta. Italian leather. Bought back when she was flush with a captain’s pay. Praying she would be able to find them again, she leaned out the window and tossed them as hard as she could past the light spilling from the kitchen, toward the gravel drive. She wiggled through the opening until she was sitting on the sill, then stood up, clutching the window’s exterior frame. She awkwardly lowered herself to her knees and then, her hands digging into the sill, let her legs slip off the reassuring solidity of the wood and into space.

The edge of the windowsill dug into her abdomen as she slid farther and farther down. Something interrupted her descent for a moment, tugged at her, and then she felt a release as two silk-covered buttons popped off her jacket and pitter-pattered across the roof and into the darkness below. She dangled for a moment by her hands alone and then let go, dropping as limply as she could. She skidded off the side of the porch roof and tumbled to the ground with a blow that knocked the wind out of her.

Inside the kitchen, someone said, “What the hell was that?” Clare staggered upright and lurched backward, bouncing off a rubberized trash can.

A woman in a large white apron appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Hello?” she said to the night air in general. Then, as she spotted Clare tottering beside the trash cans, she said, “Excuse me? Can I help you?” The woman glanced doubtfully at Clare’s bare feet and her jacket, which was gaping open over her midsection. Clare grabbed the edges and smiled cheerfully. “Great party!” she said, loosening her southern Virginia drawl to sound drunk. More drunk, she amended.

The caterer squinted at her. “Are you okay?” She looked back into the kitchen. “Look, why don’t you come in and let me get you some coffee?”

Clare clutched the jacket more closely and squeezed her bare toes in the dirt she had recently rolled in. “No, thank you, ma’am. ’M just going out front. Waiting for my ride.”

“You do have a ride.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, ma’am,” Clare said, saluting for full effect. Her jacket swung open, revealing a great deal of skin.

The woman smiled at her uncertainly. “Okay, then. Good night.”

Clare waved, crossed the kitchen yard, and headed toward the drive, walking straight until the woman retreated into the house. Then she cast about the edges of the gravel drive, trying to spot her sandals somewhere amid the grass and dirt and sweep of stones. She failed to turn up anything except a couple more mosquito bites. She let herself curse under her breath. There was no way she could afford to replace those babies on her priest’s salary. She abandoned the search and headed for her car, parked at the other end of the house.

The top of her convertible was up because she had left her purse and her keys in the car when she had arrived. Even she wouldn’t normally be so careless, but in a secluded mountain estate, she had yielded to the impulse not to have to keep track of her things while at the party. She got into the passenger seat and let herself sag against the vinyl, which felt warm and tacky against her skin. She rubbed the soles of her feet together and thought that she had even fewer things to keep track of now. She curled over, buried her face in her hands, and gave in to the shakes, her teeth chattering, throat whimpering, skin shivering. Then she felt better. She scrubbed at her face with her hands, remembering as she did so that she was wearing makeup.

She dug into her purse for the lighted compact her sister Grace had given her years ago and examined the damage. Her lipstick was long gone, her skin was blotchy, and her mascara and eye shadow were smeared. She popped open the glove compartment and retrieved one of the little wet foil-wrapped towels she kept there, a habit of her mother’s that had stuck with Clare throughout the years. After she mopped off her face, she used the compact light to check out the rest of her appearance, which was even more disreputable-looking than she had imagined. Her elegant pantsuit was crumpled, the jacket gaping open where her buttons had come off, one leg stained with something dark and unidentifiable—though from the smell, she thought she must have picked it up when she rolled into the trash can.

She snapped the compact shut and closed her eyes. She didn’t care if it was rude; she was not going back in to join the partygoers. She might not be sober enough to drive, but she sure wasn’t drunk enough to appear looking like she had been out for a roll in the clover. She could hide away here in her car, and when the rest of the alcohol had worked its way out of her system, she would drive home. Then tomorrow, she would call Russ and tell him that—

Her eyes snapped open. Call Russ. Holy cow, he needed to know about Malcolm’s little business venture. And that it sounded like Bill Ingraham’s ex-lover knew a lot more about his death than what he had read about in the papers. She fumbled in her purse for her phone, letting her grandmother’s voice—which was saying No lady would ever call after ten o’clock at night—wash away on a tide of exhaustion, relief, and the remnants of several kir royales.

As she pressed the send button, she had a flash of panic. What do I say if his wife answers? The phone rang. Once. Twice. She clicked it off, sagging back into her seat. Coward. Then she remembered. Friday. Dinner at his mother’s. Maybe he was still there. She called information for the number and dialed it, hoping against hope that she wasn’t about to wake Margy Van Alstyne, who might have retired early.

“Hello?”

Margy’s voice sounded crisp. Clare closed her eyes in relief.

“Mrs. Van Alstyne? Margy? It’s Clare Fergusson.”