thoughts; And let them turn to the Lord, and He will have compassion….’” Paul’s broken, lost expression. Dvorak’s still form at the eye of a whirlwind of activity. “ ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says the Lord.’ ” She tried to imagine what would lead someone to stomp an unoffending man half to death. It seemed infinitely more vicious, more personally hateful than that American classic, murder by cheap gun. “ ‘So is my word that goes forth from my mouth; it will not return to me empty….’” Sometime during her once-a-week visits to the Millers Kill infirmary, Paul had become her friend, one of the very few people in Millers Kill who didn’t look at her and stop when they got to her collar. A man who spent his days caring for the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. His world had collapsed in the space of a few minutes because of—what? Careless malice? Cool calculation? An explosion of anger? “ ‘But it will accomplish that which I have purposed, and prosper in that for which I sent it.” She wanted to know. She wanted to know why. And who. Was it a monster? She didn’t believe in monsters. She believed in redemption. But some days, it was awfully hard.
After the service, she checked the calendar. Two premarital counseling sessions today and another three next week. Whoever said Generation X was not interested in marriage hadn’t been looking in the Adirondack region. And the MacPherson-Engals wedding rehearsal Friday evening. She underlined that. She left a note for Lois, the church secretary, asking her to contact the organist, and another for the sexton, reminding him to unlock the door by eight o’clock Saturday morning to give the florist time to arrange the wedding flowers. Then she dashed back to the rectory next door and changed into an outfit that compromised between the weather and her customary clerical uniform: a long, loose-fitting shift in black linen, with a collar attached by hand.
Outside, it was promising to be another ninety-degree day, but the storm last night had cleared the air. The light, dry breeze reminded Clare of the best sort of weather at her parents’ home in southern Virginia. She had dropped the top of her convertible, and once she had taken care of Paul’s dogs, she might have time for a little spin through the countryside before the first of her two counseling sessions that afternoon.
The first hitch in her plans came when she got to Emil and Paul’s handsome old farmhouse. For some reason, she had pictured little dogs, Jack Russells or toy poodles perhaps. The pair that bounded out of the attached barn were big. Really big. Big, hairy, bouncing, barking black-and-white Bernese mountain dogs. She turned around and looked at the minuscule backseat, which would have been a snug fit for Jack Russells. She looked back at the dogs, which were excitedly tearing along the limits of an invisible fence. “Oh…shoot,” she said.
The dogs were ecstatic at meeting her. As she crossed from the driveway onto the lawn, they leapt and wiggled against her, pawing at her ankle-length dress and frantically licking at her hands. “Not exactly standoffish, are you?” she said. They discovered her sandal-clad feet and immediately began licking her toes. “Stop!” she shrieked. “Sit!” They plunked down, looking up at her hopefully, their tails thumping hard against the grass. She fished for their collar tags among handfuls of silky hair. “Okay, Gal and… Bob?” The dogs thumped more energetically. “Who names a dog Bob?” She sighed. When he had mentioned the dogs while they were waiting in the emergency room, Paul had said their bowls and leashes were in the barn. “C’mon, then,” she said. “Let’s get your things. Then we’ll try to fit you into my car.”
She wound up squeezing Gal, who was the slightly smaller of the two, across the backseat, the dog’s head out one side of the car and her tail out the other. Bob sat in the passenger seat, his dinner plate–size paws precariously balanced on the very edge of the smooth leather. Clare’s trunk lid barely shut over leashes, bowls, fifty pounds of dog chow, and an assortment of squeaky toys the dogs had brought and dropped in her way while she was loading the car.
The second hitch came at the Clover Kennels. “I’m sorry, Reverend Fergusson,” the plump, blonde owner said. She vigorously scratched the dogs’ heads. “All of our big dog runs are booked up through next week. It’s the Fourth of July weekend, and lots of folks are traveling.” She crouched, running Gal’s floppy ears through her hands and kissing her nose. “And we can’t fit these two into anything smaller. You wouldn’t be able to move, would you, you sweet thing?” She looked up regretfully at Clare. “There are a couple kennels over to Saratoga, of course, but I’d call first before going over. It’s going to be hard to find any spaces this weekend. Maybe some friends could watch them?”
And so Clare found herself taking her spin through the countryside with two hundred pounds of dog packed in the car. The only friends of Paul and Emil she knew of were the two Paul had mentioned last night, the owners of the Stuyvesant Inn. Maybe they would take the dogs off her hands. Bed-and-breakfasts were supposed to have cats or dogs hanging around.
The road to the inn ran along the river—what the early Dutch settlers had called a “kill”—through green shade and sunlight. Falling away from the water, it climbed westward through lush fields of tender-leaved corn and grazing pastures landscaped by Holsteins and Herefords, grass as trim and tight as a broadloom carpet, set off by lichen-mottled rocks and bouquets of thistles and wildflowers. The road rose and dipped, rose and dipped, until it came to a high spot and Clare saw the exuberantly painted inn, a well-maintained fantasy of Carpenter Gothic, with mauve and coral and aqua trimmings. Behind the inn, perennial beds and ornamental trees gave way to a meadow that rolled over the top of a hill and was surmounted by the first in a series of mountains, sea green and smoky in the morning sun. She pulled into the semicircular drive and was not surprised to see a Millers Kill police car already parked in the shade of one of the massive maples sheltering the dooryard.
She had barely pulled the key from the ignition when the dogs bounded out, Gal squashing Clare’s shoulder as she squeezed herself from the narrow backseat and over the door. They snuffled around the cars, the trees, and the neatly edged bed of annuals before relieving themselves against an iron hitching post and the rear tire of the squad car. “Gal! Bob! Come!” They fell in behind her as she climbed up to the wide porch and rang the doorbell.
The mahogany door opened a moment later, revealing a gray-haired man with a face as pleasantly rumpled as an unmade bed. “Hello, can I—Why, Bob! And Gal! Hi there!” The dogs abandoned Clare to butt their heads against the man’s knees. “Come in, come in,” he said, trying to scratch the dogs’ heads and offer his hand to Clare at the same time. “I’m Stephen Obrowski.” He swung the door wider and stepped back into a wide hallway papered in velvet flock and furnished with chairs and tables that were so ugly, she knew they must be authentic Victoriana.
The dogs pushed past Obrowski, their toenails clicking on the polished wooden floor. “Thank you. I’m Clare Fergusson, the rector at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church.” She reflexively fingered the clerical collar attached to the neckline of her shift, then noticed that the linen dress now resembled mohair, with great quantities of white dog hair sticking out every which way.
“Please, come on back to the kitchen. We were just talking with Chief Van Alstyne about last night. Poor Emil. It’s unbelievable. You read about these things, but when it’s someone you know…”
Clare followed him down the long hallway, through an alcove formed by a spindle-banistered stairway, and into a kitchen that was mercifully not true to the period. Russ was standing next to a stainless-steel cooking island, polishing his glasses with a tissue. He looked up as they came in, eyes vague and out of focus. An attractive man in his mid-thirties was pouring coffee into chunky ceramic mugs. He had the look of a German skier—lean, tan, blond. She wouldn’t be surprised if his name was Hans or Ulf. “This is Ronald Handler, chef extraordinaire. Ron, this is the Reverend Clare Fergusson. And I take it you two know each other?” he said, looking at Russ.
Russ replaced his glasses and tucked the tissue in his pocket. “Yup. What brings you out here, Reverend?”
Before she could open her mouth, the dogs muscled open the door and swarmed into the kitchen, tails
