Out Of The Deep I Cry

Eve baptisms, a couple wanting to reschedule a premarital counseling session, a dinner invitation from Dr. Anne. One was from Hugh Parteger.

She ought to get right back to the bishop’s office. She could ask them what to do about the reporters. And of course she needed to return her parishioners’ calls. She picked up the phone and dialed Hugh’s number.

“Vicar!”

“Is this a bad time?”

“I’m just going over a proposal from a pair of twentysomethings who feel now is just the right time to break into the dot-com market with a luxury-car directory and delivery service. All they need from us is a half mil for start-up and a big, encouraging hug.”

“Are they going to get it?”

“Indeed not. I’m going to smack them upside the head, as the natives say, and tell them to go get real jobs. The Internet is dead. Silly buggers.”

“So, you called me.”

“Vicar, I’ve called you four times the past month. You’re hard to get hold of. Listen, there was an article in the Times yesterday.”

“The New York Times?”

“No, the Kankamunga Times. Of course, the New York Times. It’s all about how this lady whose husband went missing showed up at the home of his alleged mistress-”

“Oh God, it doesn’t say mistress, does it?”

“-and said lady proceeded to hold the mistress, her mother, her two children, and the town’s Episcopal priest at gunpoint until the police arrived. Dateline, Millers Kill, New York.”

“It doesn’t give out my name, does it?”

“Hah! I knew it must have been you. No, it only named the wife and girlfriend. The article said it was the priest who phoned the cops.”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“Good God, you’re a regular Xena, Warrior Priestess, aren’t you? I’ve got to get you down here so I can show you off to my friends. You poor baby. Were you frightened?”

She smiled at the conjunction of Warrior Priestess and poor baby. “It was scary. But I was pretty sure Mrs. Rouse didn’t really want to hurt anyone. She just cracked under the strain of her husband’s disappearance.” Unlike Jane Ketchem. “I knew if we could just keep her talking, the police would get there and everything would be okay.”

“Did that surly chief of police show up? Rip Van Winkle?”

“Russ Van Alstyne. And he’s not surly.”

“Hah. At that dinner we went to last summer, he practically patted me down and administered a field sobriety test before he let me drive you home.” His voice shifted, went warmer. “Look, I really do mean it about you coming to the city to visit me. And not just because you’re a fifteen-minute celebrity.”

“Please tell me no one else has seen the article.”

“It was on the third page of the Region section. Must have been a slow news day.”

She groaned.

“What do you say?”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “It’s not a good time. Three Sundays from now is Easter. Things are going to get frantic.”

“And after Easter?”

She hesitated. “If I came down to see you, I’d need someplace to stay. Not with you.”

“My animal sexual magnetism is simply too much in close quarters. I know. I get that all the time.”

One of the things she liked best about him was the way nothing was ever serious. Nothing ever counted for too much or weighed too heavily. “When I get caught up in the middle of things, I’m not always as careful as I ought to be about what people will think of my actions. So when I can spot a problem in advance, like my congregation’s reaction if I overnight in New York with a handsome single man, I like to take steps to cut it off at the knees.”

“Handsome single man, eh?”

“With a British accent. Known to be devastating in the U.S.”

“You do realize, don’t you, that you’re the only girl I’ve ever dated that I didn’t have sex with. I feel like the reformed rake in one of those Barbara Cart-land romances.”

“So shineth a good deed in a naughty world.”

He laughed. “Okay. If I get a female friend to issue an invite, will you come for a visit after Easter?”

“This wouldn’t be one of those innumerable girls you’ve had sex with, would it?”

“Despite what you see on HBO, New York isn’t entirely overrun with single women desperate to sleep with a heterosexual investment banker. Alas. So no, I think I can find someone whose favors I haven’t shared.”

“Maybe you know a nun?”

“A lesbian nun.”

“A blind, senile lesbian nun. With a flatulent dog.” She smiled into the phone.

“All right. I’ll get you a berth with a blind, senile lesbian nun and you’ll let me take you out to dinner. Sounds fair.”

“It’s a deal.”

She said good-bye smiling. She always felt better, talking with Hugh. Lois was right, she ought to keep in touch with him more regularly. Her mother would love him.

Her intercom buzzed and Lois’s voice came into the office, the Ghost of Phone Calls Yet to Be Returned. “While you were on, Karen Burns called. She wants to talk to you about this Debba Clow person. Also, Roxanne Lunt called from the historical society. She has some research packet the librarian there left for you.”

She didn’t know exactly what Karen wanted, but it was bound to take longer and be less pleasant than Roxanne’s research packet. She rang the historical society director.

“I’m so glad you called!” Roxanne’s energy level hadn’t dimmed since their last conversation. “Look, Sonny Barnes told me you had been asking about the Hudson River Regulating Board and the Sacandaga land buyouts.”

“Sonny Barnes?”

“Our librarian. I bet he didn’t introduce himself, did he? Sonny’s a little challenged on the social-adeptness front.” That was an understatement. “Anyway, about your research?”

“I was interested in what had happened to a local family. The Ketchems. But as it is, I’ve just recently found out-”

Roxanne steamed forward. “I have, right here in my hands, the financial records of the long-defunct Adirondack Land Development Partnership.”

“Say what?”

“They were one of the groups that popped up like mushrooms when the HRRB was formed. They were land speculators who had friends on the board. They bought up properties that were going to go underwater and resold them to the board for a nice profit, and they also snatched up land near areas that were undergoing development.”

“Sounds like a recipe for success, if not for sleeping soundly at night. How come they went under?”

“It was a huge, racy scandal. In 1932, the three partners and a bunch of friends were whooping it up at one of their twenty-five-room cottages. There were lots of scantily clad girls at the party, none of whom were their wives, and at the end of the night, two women were dead. There were rumors of orgies, the whole nine yards. Nowadays, they would have just gone on Live with Regis and Kelly and tearfully apologized, but in those days it wasn’t so easy. One of the partners killed himself, and the Adirondack Land Development Partnership went bankrupt.”

“How did the historical society wind up with their financial records? Wouldn’t they have been confidential?”

“We don’t actually have the original documents. That’s probably why Sonny didn’t think of it. He loathes copies. In the early eighties, a true-crime writer who summers around here researched the case for a book. She got copies of the partnership’s records, and when she was done, she donated them to us. Wasn’t that thoughtful?”