you’d stop your own funeral for police business.” She leaned on the table and spoke confidingly to Clare. “Listen to a woman who knows. Never marry a cop.”
Clare felt hot color flooding her cheeks. She was saved from coming up with a response by Hugh, who took her hand in his and said, “I’ll do my best to see she takes your advice.” He kissed the back of her hand. Robert Corlew made an awkward harrumphing sound, and Lena and her mayor “aaaahhhhed” as if they were sinking into a vat of marshmallow goo.
Russ looked like one of the great stone faces of Easter Island.
Clare had never been entirely convinced of the doctrine of bodily assumption, but she found herself wishing it were true and that God would see fit in His wisdom to whisk her, dress, hand, flaming cheeks, and all, into His heavenly kingdom. Now. Right now. Any time now.
She gently withdrew her hand and smiled almost convincingly at Hugh. Apparently she still had work to do on earth. To escape the massed gaze of the entire table, she twisted away, looking to where waiters were rolling out a podium next to the head table. “What’s on the schedule?” she asked no one in particular.
Jim Cameron answered. “The president of the ACC is going to give a little speech, introduce a few people, and make a plug for donations. Then the GWP folks and the van der Hoevens-” He tilted his head back, apparently just noticing the dearth of van der Hoevens at the head of the room. “Well, whoever else has to sign the deed of sale will do so. Then the dancing starts.” Beyond the head table, Clare could see where a bandstand had been set up next to the glass wall.
As she watched, the sommelier and her assistant rolled a heavy wine cart to the head table and began unloading some familiar wooden crates. “Oh, no,” she said. She couldn’t remember the damn wine for more than five minutes. She turned back to the table in time to see Linda twine her arm around Russ’s. On the other hand, perhaps she had good reason for her lack of focus.
“Excuse me.” She pushed back from the table and stood. Hugh, Russ, and Jim Cameron all rose.
Robert Corlew looked at them. “What?” he said. “What? Guys still do that?”
Lena Erlander looked sympathetically at the nonentical Mrs. Corlew.
Clare wove her way through the tables, careful to control her skirts. She crossed the dance floor and caught up with the sommelier just as she was unlocking the cart and preparing to roll it away. The crates, with their van der Hoeven Vineyards labels proudly displayed, were stacked in a staggered pyramid in front of the head table. Clare thought she had never seen a sadder sight. “Excuse me.” She touched the sommelier’s arm to get her attention. “Mr. van der Hoeven gave me two crates of his family’s wine to deliver to the banquet tonight. I’m afraid I forgot and left them in my car. Is it too late to bring them in?”
The sommelier frowned thoughtfully. “Mr. van der Hoeven’s instructions-” She caught herself, and Clare guessed that the news about Eugene van der Hoeven had already made the rounds at the Algonquin Waters. “His wishes,” she amended, “were that all the principals get a case as a gift and that the remainder be uncrated and uncorked for the dancing.” She tapped the side of her mouth with a white-gloved hand. “Yours will be awfully cold, but I suppose if we hold them back until the end of the evening… sure, go ahead. Bring them in. Do you need any help?”
“No. I’m right out front. My date and I will get them.” She turned back to her table, paused, then turned again. She crossed to where the slim woman in gray was seated, staring listlessly into nowhere. “Ms. van der Hoeven?”
The woman blinked and looked up at Clare. “Actually, it’s Tuchman. Well, no, I suppose it isn’t anymore. Maybe this time I’ll go back to being Louisa van der Hoeven. That sounds better than Louisa Tuchman, doesn’t it? Or Louisa de Parrada. I always thought that sounded like a flamenco dancer’s name. Who are you again?”
Eugene and Millie’s sister was apparently drowning her sorrows the old-fashioned way. “I’m Clare Fergusson,” she said. “I just wanted to say how very sorry I am about your brother.”
Louisa van der Hoeven de Parrada Tuchman blinked slowly. “I think Gene is one of those people about whom you can say, ‘His sufferings are over.’ ”
“Perhaps so.” Clare chose her words carefully. “I only knew him briefly, but he struck me in that time as a man who cared deeply about many things. Including your family and its history.” She waved a hand at the rough wooden crates framed by snowy linen. “I think it’s lovely that his last gesture will enable everyone to celebrate the van der Hoeven name with the van der Hoevens’ wine.”
Louisa looked down at the crates with a jaundiced eye. “No,” she said. “That’s just another example of how fake we are. Trying to impress everyone with money that was lost two generations ago.”
“I’m sorry?”
Louisa flopped one bony wrist over the edge of the table. “This is that stuff you buy in California and get stamped with whatever label you choose. The van der Hoevens don’t
Millie heard the door open. She hunched over her ankles, franticially jabbing the point of the door hinge into the stretched expanse of her duct-tape shackles. She had already punched ten, twelve, fifteen holes in the thing, but it still wouldn’t tear apart.
“Millie?” It was Randy, of course. “Still back there?”
“I told you I’d wait right here,” she called back, her voice as lighthearted and reassuring as she could make it. It wasn’t as if she could go anywhere else. Still, if she could just separate the tape before he walked back and discovered what she’d been doing while he was away… “Hey, when Shaun Reid brought me here, he said something about a box of wine near the door. Why don’t you find it, and we’ll have a drink? I don’t know about you, but I could use one.”
“Okay.” The thin beam of the flashlight appeared. It bounced around near the narrow door Randy had used to leave and enter. In the light’s backsplash, she could make out his silhouette. He had shoulders like a freaking gorilla. She thought of herself as a strong woman, but she didn’t have any illusions. He could do just about anything he wanted to her. If she didn’t get to him first. She redoubled her efforts, poking and tugging at the holes in the duct tape.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Try by the big door, the one that has the loading dock outside,” she called.
“Are you okay? You sound kind of winded.”
She took a deep breath. “Just feeling a little stressed. The wine will help.”
The flashlight beam tilted toward the front of the building. Millie poked another hole into the tape. She thrust her fingers through and pulled, her arms shaking, her thighs cramping from the strain of keeping her ankles as far apart as possible. She felt something yield. She pulled harder. There was a moment’s catch, and then a tearing sound, and her fetters fell into two pieces of tape, the ragged ends fluttering between her ankles.
She bit her lip to keep from howling. Then, for the first time all day, she stretched her legs wide, wide apart. The painful stretch was the most wonderful thing she had ever felt.
“Hey, I found it. Lemme see if I can get the lid off the box.”
Millie slowly rose from the floor. She straddled a crate, rolling her pelvis forward and back, cracking her spine and flexing her arms. From near the flashlight’s glow, she heard the distinctive sound of nails screeching out of wood.
“Phew! I hate to tell you, but this wine smells way bad. Like somebody stuffed old garage rags inside.”
“Nevermind, then.” Now she was free, she was anxious. She wanted to do what she had to do and get out. “Would you come back here, please? I’m feeling a little scared, all by myself in the dark.”
“You want me to find some water or something? I got a couple bottles in my backpack.”
“No. Please, I don’t want to sit here alone.”
“Okay.” His voice had the resigned tone of every man baffled by a woman’s changeable mind. “If that’s what you want.”
She wiped her palms against her pants. She wanted them to be hard and dry for this. “What did you and your wife decide to do?”
His voice, and the light, came closer. “Uh… she thinks you’d be better off coming home with us. In case Mr. Reid, you know, comes after you.”
