I Shall Not Want

'Who's the fellow with Reverend Fergusson?'

Russ blinked. 'Hugh Parteger. Forty. Unmarried. He's an investment banker from the city. Resident alien. One DUI, got it bargained down to DTE. No other record.'

Lyle looked at him sideways. 'It was more in the line of a social question.'

He felt his cheeks heat up and hoped the light from the streetlamps wasn't enough to give him away. 'Guy comes dropping into my town for no good reason every couple of months, why shouldn't I run him? Forewarned is forearmed, or however the saying goes.'

'Mmm.' Lyle turned back to the dancing. Anne Vining-Ellis and her husband blocked Clare from view, but as the Ellises twirled out of the way, Russ could see her, locked up tight in Hugh's arms, the overdressed bastard sliding one hand all up and down her half-bare back.

'Looks to me like he's got a perfectly good reason for coming to town.'

But I can dream, can't I?

'Whyn't you go over there and ask her to dance?'

He rounded on Lyle. 'Why don't you mind your own business?' He turned back toward Clare and her date, determined to poke the knife in himself a little deeper. 'You're the last person who oughta be handing out advice.'

Lyle was still a moment. 'You're right,' he finally said. 'I've managed to ball up every relationship I ever had. Includin' our friendship. But you know what? That means I can recognize when someone's making a dumb-ass mistake.' He waited, as if inviting Russ to chime in. Russ kept his mouth shut. 'Whatever.' Lyle sighed. 'I'm gonna take a turn around the park and check in with Kevin. See ya around.' He strolled off beneath the trees.

The song ended to a clamor of applause. Russ turned on his heel and strode across Church Street without looking, headed for his truck, parked in the lot across from St. Alban's. He unlocked it and stripped off his gear belt, dropping the whole thing into his lockbox along with his pump-action shotgun and.40-.40. There. Officially off-duty.

He climbed behind the wheel and fired up the truck. Wondered if his mother was still out at Cousin Nane's. Probably not. He wished he had someplace to go where he could be alone.

How about your own house?

He shook his head. He had been back to the house on Peekskill Road several times since Linda's death, but he was never, he realized, going to spend the night there again.

What was he going to do? Sell it? Then what? Buying another house seemed pointless. Keep living with his mother? He had a sudden vision of himself, a decade on, sixty years old, coming back to his eighty-five-year-old mother's house-the women on her side of the family lived a long time, he had no doubt she'd still be alive and kicking-eating the same low-carb dinner, watching the Yankees kick the hell out of the Red Sox, nothing changing, everything exactly the same as it was now. As it had been since Linda died. That's what he had wanted, wasn't it? To stop time? To never let go of her?

God Almighty. What was he doing to himself?

He swiped his hand over his face. Rolled down the window. In the park across the street, the band was playing 'In the Mood,' and somewhere in the crowd Hugh Parteger had his hands all over Clare Fergusson.

Jesus Christ. What the hell was he doing sitting in this damn truck?

He twisted the key out of the ignition, popped open the door, and thumped to the asphalt. He recrossed the street. The dancing had been going on long enough that people had wandered out to the edges of the park, women fanning themselves, men tugging at their ties and unbuttoning their cuffs. He passed a 'Chief Van Alstyne!' and a 'Hey, Russ,' but kept his course single-mindedly toward the bandstand.

The music stopped, and applause burst like champagne bubbles in the air around him. He looked around, but for the first time that evening he couldn't spot the red dress. His stomach tightened. I could always put him up at the rectory. What if she decided… What if they had-

'Why, hello, Chief Van Alstyne.' He looked down to see Mrs. Henry Marshall, one of Clare's vestry, smiling up at him. She was in bright pink tonight, with matching lipstick that was almost fluorescent compared to her white hair. Her hand was looped through the arm of her-'gentleman friend' was the right term, he guessed.

'Evening,' Norm Madsen said.

'Hi,' Russ said. 'Have either of you seen Clare?'

The elderly lawyer frowned. 'Not more trouble, I hope?'

Mrs. Marshall gave her escort a look of loving contempt. 'I don't think that's why he's asking, dear.' She cocked her head at Russ like a sharp-eyed sparrow. 'Is it?'

He shook his head.

'She said she was going to get something to drink. But I'm sure she'd be happy to dance…'

He didn't stay to hear the rest of her comment. He tossed a 'Thanks!' over his shoulder as he elbowed his way through the crowd.

He found her as promised, near the refreshment table, sitting on one of the folding chairs strewn haphazardly beneath the chestnut trees, drinking from a paper cup. Parteger, standing behind her, was trapped in conversation with Robert Corlew. Clare looked up. 'Russ.' She sounded surprised. 'Is something wrong?'

Her eyes were large and dark in the half-light filtering through the leaves. She was faintly flushed, a little damp, as if she had just toweled off after a shower. She looked… edible.

'I'm off duty,' he said.

She dropped her gaze to his hip. 'Oh,' she said.

'Dance with me,' he said.

She jerked her head back up to meet his eyes.

'Please,' he added.

She glanced around. Unfolded herself from the chair. 'There are a lot of people we know here,' she said, keeping her voice low.

'Yeah,' he agreed.

'Are you sure you want to dance?'

'Yeah.'

'With me?'

He grinned. 'Oh, yeah.'

She drained whatever she had been drinking. 'Why, then, thank you, Chief Van Alstyne. I'd like that.' She turned and handed the empty paper cup to Parteger. 'Hugh, will you excuse me?'

He took her hand-and didn't that feel weird, holding her hand in public-and led her to the dance floor. He didn't recognize the opening bars until the bandleader began to sing There may be trouble ahead, and Clare laughed and he swung her into his arms.

'Did you request this?' she asked.

'Just coincidence.'

'You don't believe in coincidences.'

'No, but I'm working on believing in fate.' He put a little cha-cha into it and she followed perfectly. The tiny white lights overhead made her skin glow.

And while we still have the chance…

'There are people looking at us,' she said.

'Yeah?'

'This is going to be all over town by lunchtime tomorrow,' she said.

He didn't answer, concentrating on moving them toward the less crowded edge of the floor. Her red skirt twirled around the front of his legs. He decided if she let Parteger do it-and slid his hand up her back. No bra. Lots of bare skin.

Let's face the music and dance.

'Stop looking at me like that.'