A Fountain Filled With Blood

“We always have a family get-together over the Fourth of July, and this year a bunch of people decided to stay on for a few days. I thought, What a perfect time to get all the last wedding details pinned down! So I was wondering if Diana and the florist and I could drop by the church sometime today to work on the floral design.”

“The floral design,” Clare echoed.

“Yes, well, evidently you can’t just order up flowers in vases and have someone set them here and there anymore. Nowadays, the florist wants to design the site, so we need to get her in to take a look.”

Clare weighed her options. Monday was her day off. Also Mr. Hadley’s day off, since the sexton worked all weekend, cleaning up before and after the services. She wouldn’t be able to pass the buck by having him open the church for Landry and company. She would have to be there herself. Talk with Peggy Landry. Find out more about Bill Ingraham.

“Of course, Ms. Landry. I’d be happy to meet you at the church and let you all in. When’s a good time for you?”

They agreed on ten o’clock. Clare decided not to use her two hours lead time to go running—she still felt yesterday’s race in the slight stiffness in her thighs—but instead dressed quickly and put in a call to Robert Corlew’s office. Corlew was a member of St. Alban’s vestry. He was also a prosperous local builder, whose work ran to small developments with names like Olde Mill Town Homes and the occasional strip mall. Clare figured he might have some information on Ingraham and the Landry property, seeing as how he was in the same business. He hadn’t arrived at his office yet, but she left him a message.

She let herself consider her sudden interest in Ingraham’s background while she was scrambling eggs and brewing coffee. After all, if she had been right last night when she cut Russ down, his murder was more or less random, the result of being the wrong man in the wrong place. Her time would be better spent organizing that march Russ had suggested. But as soon as Peggy Landry had identified herself, Clare had felt a powerful impulse to take a closer look at Ingraham. What had Russ said to her last night? “Your version of the truth”? There’s ‘I’m right’ and there’s ‘you’re right’ and there’s ‘what’s right’, her grandmother Fergusson had always said. You can’t have but one of them. Which one will it be? The only way she was ever going to be able to face Russ again was if she let go of “I’m right” and went looking for “what’s right.”

The great Gothic doors of St. Alban’s, polished by the sun and framed by masses of summer flowers, seemed preferable as a spot for getting married, rather than the cool and shadowed interior of the church. Of course, Clare thought as she unlocked the doors, the florist couldn’t charge for the design if that were the case. She had just emerged from the sacristy, where the light switches were, when she heard the clatter of sandals on the tiled floor of the nave.

“Hello? Anybody home?”

“Over here,” Clare called.

Diana Berry resembled her aunt—angular, tanned, no-nonsense. Her fair hair was long and loose, where Peggy Landry’s was cropped close to her head, not a strand out of place. But Clare could envision her at her aunt’s age, a tough businesswoman or one of those relentlessly efficient wife-mother-volunteer types who ran their communities. Or both. She and Peggy were dressed much as Clare was—sleeveless blouses and chinos or jeans. The woman accompanying them was obviously the florist, an Asian woman of perhaps forty, whose thick, bobbed hair swung along her jawline as she glanced around and then approached the altar.

“Fabulous space,” she said.

“Thanks,” Clare replied.

“Reverend Clare!” Diana said. “It’s great to see you again. Thanks for letting us in on such short notice. This is Lin-bai Tang, our floral designer, and my aunt, Peggy Landry.”

Clare shook hands all around.

“What is it,” Tang asked, her eyes taking in the ornate woodwork, “mid-nineteenth century?”

“Started in 1857, completed just after the end of the Civil War.”

“Wonderful. I adore Gothic churches. Come here, Diana, let’s start at the altar rail. I see faux-medieval swags with flowers that look as if they’ve been gathered on the riverbank by the Lady of Shallot….” She whipped out a notebook and a measuring tape.

“Wow,” Clare said. “She’s good. I don’t know what her flowers look like, but she’s good.”

“She’s the hottest floral designer in Saratoga. We were lucky to get her at the height of the season. My brother-in-law’s dropping a fortune on this thing. For the amount he’s spending, the bride and groom ought to give him a money-back guarantee.”

“Where’s the reception?”

“At the Stuyvesant Inn. Do you know it?”

Clare blinked. “I do, yes.”

“Of course, we think of it as Grandfather’s house. It used to be ours before my grandmother sold it. Enormous old place, impossible to keep up.”