A Fountain Filled With Blood

“Malcolm? Hi, it’s nice to see you again. Wonderful party.” Malcolm smiled vaguely, his expression the one people get when they can’t recall an acquaintance. She smiled at his two companions. “Hi, I’m Clare Fergusson.” She deliberately left off her title. She was wearing an outfit that reminded her of something she had seen on the quiz-master of The Weakest Link: severely cut silk pants and a long matching jacket with a dozen small fabric buttons marching up to a stiff high collar. She had modeled it for Lois, who’d said she looked like a cross between a Jesuit and a dominatrix. Maybe the people in this room hadn’t heard Diana and Cary’s introduction. Let them figure out if she was a religious or a disciplinarian.

“Hi,” the young woman said, taking Clare’s hand limply. Clare paused for a beat, but the girl evidently wasn’t going to pick up the cue and introduce herself.

“Hugh Parteger,” the man said, shaking her hand in turn. Surprisingly, he had a British accent.

“You don’t spell that with a y, do you?”

“Not a one.” He smiled, which gave him dimples on either cheek. Cute, Grace’s shade advised.

“I’m trying to think…are you the florist?” Malcolm’s voice was slightly off, as if it were coming from someplace other than his own throat. She looked at him more closely. He had evidently had a few too many kir royales. Or something.

She took a sip from her own drink. “Nope. I like flowers as much as the next woman, but I can’t tell a dahlia from a daisy.”

“Or a lupine from a lobelia?” Hugh Parteger said.

“Or a carnation from a chrysanthemum.”

“You’re obviously not into floral sects,” he said.

She almost spit out a mouthful of kir royale laughing. Malcolm and the nameless girl just looked puzzled. She shook her head. “Mr. Parteger, I don’t discuss what I do in my garden bed with anyone.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “For most women, it’s just a matter of finding the right tool.”

She took another drink, enjoying herself immensely. The girl was murmuring something to Malcolm, who was looking around the room. “Yes, but it’s such a tedious process, finding one that fits and works really well. Better just stick to hand weeding. Fewer complications that way.”

“Ah, so you’re a master gardener.”

She actually giggled. How mortifying. She took a long swallow from her drink. “As Voltaire said, we must cultivate our garden.”

“I believe he also said, ‘Once, a philosopher, twice, a pervert.’ ”

“Hey, you two. Later.” They had not only lost Malcolm and the girl; they had driven them away. With a pang, Clare watched them drift toward the door. This was not the way to untangle the relationship between Malcolm and his late business partner.

“Ah, did I put a foot wrong?” Hugh Parteger waved over the waiter, who had reappeared in the doorway with a tray-ful of fresh drinks. “Were you after speaking with Malcolm? Because I have to tell you, you’re not his type.”

She laughed again. “So I understand. No, I just wanted to talk with him at some point. And offer my condolences, I guess.”

Hugh reached for her now-empty glass and put it on the waiter’s tray alongside his own. He handed her another drink before taking one, as well.

“Condolences?”

“I had heard that he was…that he had been particularly close to Bill Ingraham, the developer. He died this weekend.”

“I read he was knocked off.”

Again, she almost choked on a mouthful of champagne and currant liqueur. “ ‘Knocked off’?”

“Rubbed out. Done away with. Whacked. Fed to the fishes. Stop me if I’m using clichés.”

She couldn’t help laughing again, although it was horrible, too, with the sight of Ingraham’s mutilated corpse still in her mind.

“No, really. The gossip mills in Saratoga are blaming it on the mob.”

“In Millers Kill? What mob?”

“I don’t know. You don’t have a lot of Russian émigrés around, do you?”

“I believe I’m the last person to emigrate here, and I’m from southern Virginia.”

“I thought I detected more of a drawl than usual. How did you wind up in this remote and desolate place?”

“It’s not—” She stopped herself. His dimples were showing again. “I came for a job,” she said. “How about you? You sound like you’re a lot farther away from home than I am.”

“Protecting my interests. I work for a venture-capital firm in New York that’s made some investments in Saratoga. It gives me an excuse to come up during the racing season and hang about, sponging off people.” He waved a hand, indicating the house around him. “Peggy had been extolling the beauties of her hometown, and it was the perfect opportunity to pump her for information about BWI Development, so here I am. Not a houseguest, thank God. I’m billeted at a bed-and-breakfast in town.”

Several questions crowded into her head at once, all of them jostling for attention. She grabbed the first one she could articulate. “Why ‘thank God’?”

“Peggy—look, she’s not your best friend or anything, is she? Your cousin?”

Clare shook her head.