To Darkness and to Death (18 page)

He closed his eyes and pictured getting into the offices. The admin building door was sure to be shut up tight, but the plant door was never locked. From the break room, past the entrance to the mill floor, there was a dark little hall that ran all the way alongside the floor until it reached the ladies’ john. There had been three women working the floor when he was there, and that’s where they went to do their business. The trick was, the bathroom opened from both ends. It had originally been built for the reception area, and when Reid-Gruyn started hiring women at the mill, they just punched a door into the wall to give the ladies their own place to go.

Even if the door was locked on the reception side, it didn’t have anything better than one of those little punch-in buttons. He could pop that in five seconds with a credit card, plant a few things from Becky Castle’s overnight bag in the reception area, and be out again within a minute.

He grinned. And if Mr. Reid’s office had one of those feeble locks… he could really go to town.

12:15 P.M.

His mother’s cousin Nane’s car in the driveway should have tipped Russ off to the chemical stench he discovered when he opened the kitchen door.

“Good Lord.” He waved his hand, trying to clear some breathing room. “What is that?”

“Happy Birthday, sweetie.” His mother sat in one of her kitchen chairs, pulled next to the sink. She was swathed in what looked like a pink plastic tablecloth. Her cousin was rolling a section of her silver hair onto a tiny pink roller.

He bent down to kiss her cheek, his eyes watering. “Hi.” He retreated as far as he could, to the edge of the washer and dryer. “Hi, Nane.”

“Hello, Russell. Aren’t you looking well? We were just talking about you, weren’t we, Margy? About the day you were born.” Nane was older than his seventy-four-year-old mom, but, unlike Russ and his maybe-relation Harlene, the two cousins bore a strong resemblance to each other. Both ladies were short and cylindrical, with plump cheeks that narrowed into pointy chins. They looked like the sort of sweet little old ladies who spent their days tatting doilies. It was a clever disguise.

“I swear,” his mother said, picking up from their earlier conversation, “I didn’t think I was going to be able to push him out.”

“You were almost ten pounds,” Nane said to him, clipping the roller into place on his mother’s head and reaching for a plastic bottle. She squirted something that smelled like chemical solvent on the new curl.

“I had an episiotomy scar you could see from the moon. They cut me from stem to stern.” She chuckled. “The first time Walter saw it he said—”

“Mom! Mom!” Russ clamped his hands over his ears. “Too much information!”

She pursed her mouth. “Really, Russell. You’re a little old to be thinking we found you in the cabbage patch, aren’t you?”

“Can you just wait till I leave before you stroll down that particular memory lane?”

“Well, what did you come for? Are you hungry? I’ve got some sandwich fixings in the icebox. Help yourself, sweetie.”

Lunch had definitely been on his mind on the drive up here, but he didn’t think he could manage eating with poisonous fumes wafting through the air. “What is that smell?” he repeated.

“I’m giving your mother a permanent wave,” Nane said. “She’s going to look like she just stepped out of a New York salon for the party tonight.”

Russ, who had been reading a new bumper sticker—THERE’S A VILLAGE IN TEXAS MISSING AN IDIOT—on his mother’s already plastered-over refrigerator, straightened. “You’re going to the dinner dance tonight? The one at the Algonquin Waters?”

“All the active members of the local ACC chapter have been invited. I told you that, Russell.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, I left a message with Linda.”

He shut up. His mother and his wife had a relationship best described as an armed truce. He wouldn’t put it past Linda to “forget” to tell him about his mother coming, just to make sure they weren’t all roped into sharing a table together. His mother must have had a similar thought, because she said, “I’m sitting with other folks from the ACC.”

“And she’s going to look just wonderful, aren’t you, Margy?” Nane smiled proudly at Russ. “We went into Saratoga and she bought a new dress.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Gee, Mom.”

Her cheeks pinked up. “Just ’cause I’m an old lady doesn’t mean I don’t like to look nice now and again.”

“I better get my reservation in for a dance right now. You’ll probably be so swamped with men I won’t be able to get near you otherwise.”

“Oh, go on. You didn’t drive up here to pitch woo at me. What’s up?”

He decided that he’d be able to stomach a sandwich in his truck. He opened the fridge and dug inside. “Do you know Millie van der Hoeven?”

“Of course. I’ve met her several times since she came back east. She’s been one of the driving forces behind this Haudenosaunee land deal, more power to her.”

He pulled out ham slices, cheese, and a jar of mayonnaise. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“The week before last. The ACC is interested in reclaiming the gardens and the cultivated areas of Haudenosaunee. Replacing the imported plants with native species. They asked for a group of volunteers, and I signed up.”

“You do love to garden, don’t you, Margy?” Nane snapped another roller into her cousin’s hair. Russ’s mother’s head was beginning to resemble a pink-and-white Wiffle Ball.

He opened the bread tin on the counter and pulled out a loaf of pumpernickel.

“We took a little tour of the grounds, made lists of what we saw, and did some brainstorming about plants and a schedule,” his mother said.

“Do you know anything about Millie’s personal life?”

“Like what, sweetie?”

“Like why did she come east, anyway?”

“Well, after her father died last year, she wanted to see Haudenosaunee in public hands. She said she thought that would be the best memorial for him, to have the land he had loved preserved forever wild.”

“Was that an issue? Developing the land?”

His mother pursed her mouth again, this time in thought. “I got the impression that money was the thing that mattered to the older sister. She may have been pushing to use some of the land to turn a profit.”

Russ plucked a bread knife from the drain board and unscrewed the mayonnaise. He looked at the unfamiliar label more closely. It was made from soy.

“Go ahead, sweetie, try it. It’s good for you.”

“Your mother and I are on the Atkins diet. Lots and lots of good protein. You should think about it, too, shouldn’t he, Margy? You’re not getting any younger, Russell. Once you reach that half-century mark, your metabolism slows right down.”

He slathered the soy spread on the pumpernickel. Suspicious, he checked the wrapper. Yep. Low-carb bread. “What about her boyfriend?” he went on.

“What boyfriend?”

“Millie’s. Her brother told me she was seeing some guy from around here. Michael McWhorter.”

Nane squirted another glob of unbelievably foul-smelling liquid onto his mother’s hair. “We know a few Michael McWhorters, don’t we, Margy?”

“Mmm-hmm. But I don’t know as Millie van der Hoeven was seeing any of them. She certainly never mentioned anyone where I could hear her.”

“You haven’t heard any talk around town? Maybe about one of the McWhorters dating a new girl?”

His mother started to shake her head and was caught short by Nane’s iron grip on a strip of hair. “Ow,” she said. “No, I haven’t heard tell of anything like that. Have you, Nane?”

“Not me. But I’m not one to listen to gossip, am I, Margy?”

“I have to say, I’d be very surprised if Millie van der Hoeven was to keep company with any of the local boys. She struck me as too much of a high flyer.”

Russ finished laying out the ham and cheese on his sandwich. Both had proudly proclaimed themselves “low fat” on their wrappers. “What do you mean?”

“She’s a nice girl, don’t get me wrong. And very, very dedicated to preserving the environment. But she doesn’t understand why the rest of us can’t simply hop on a plane and fly to wherever urgent action is needed. She wears all-natural cotton clothing and never eats anything that’s not free-range and organic. I’d like to do the same, I’m sure, but I’m on a fixed income.” She rustled beneath her pink plastic shroud. “I just can’t see her taking up with a boy who has to work for a living. At least, not the sort of work boys do around these parts.”

“Hmm.” He slapped the sandwich together and turned to her cupboards. “Any chips?”

“No chips. Nuts.”

He made a face. “What about her relationship with her brother?”

“They seem very close. She’s sounded a bit exasperated with him at times—”

“And who wouldn’t,” Nane broke in, “having a brother who lives like a hermit all alone up there, never going anywhere or seeing anyone?”

“Well, yes. But she always speaks of him with great affection.”

“Any sign of trouble between them? Him disapproving of her environmental work or anything?”

“Far from it. I believe she was fixing to have him move in with her after the estate sold.”

He picked up the sandwich. “Okay, ladies. Thanks for the lunch. Mom, I’ll see you tonight.”

“Bye-bye, sweetie. Drive careful.”

“I always do. Nane, be good.”

The elderly lady giggled. “I always am,” she said. “Except when I’m not, right, Margy?”

He blew a kiss to both women before escaping to the sweet, fresh air outside. He climbed into his truck, thinking. The boyfriend story was looking increasingly like just that, a story. The question was, had Eugene been lying to him when he brought it up? Or had his sister been lying to Eugene, to cover up absences she didn’t want to have to explain?

He took a big bite of his sandwich and almost spit it out. He stared accusingly at the low-fat, low-carb, soy-enriched crap. Maybe he could stop by the KreemyKakes Diner before he hit the station.

12:15 P.M.

Clare was tromping her assigned pattern with more doggedness than enthusiasm, checking her map, crossing off the ground she unsuccessfully covered. Every step seemed to indict her for not calling Russ about Eugene van der Hoeven’s gun-waving, and every passing minute left her less and less hopeful that they would find Millie van der Hoeven on her family’s land.

When her radio crackled, she had thought it must be the usual half-hour check-in. Instead, Huggins’s voice said, “Fergusson? We’ve got a couple of replacements in from the Albany team. Hand in your map and GPS and go home.”

Always the tactful spokesman, John Huggins. She keyed her radio. “I’m not that tired,” she lied. Her overdeveloped sense of duty forced her to add, “I can keep on going,” even though she had instantly started thinking about how fast she could get to St. Alban’s to help out with the preparations.

“Don’t worry about it,” Huggins said. “These guys have years of experience on you. Of course, they weren’t in the army, but they’ll do.” She thought she could hear laughter in the background before he keyed off. She gritted her teeth. She suspected that along with experience, the relief searchers had the equipment that seemed most important to Huggins: a penis.

She waited until she was sure her voice was civil before answering. “Give me your coordinates, and I’ll drop my stuff off with you.”

Huggins gave her his location, and within twenty minutes she was handing over her topo map and GPS to a pleasant young man with a serious case of labelmania on his outdoor gear. “Thanks,” Huggins said. “I’ll give you a call next time we need you.”

“Give me a call next time you schedule a training,” she said, her tone even but emphatic. “I won’t be much use unless I get better as I go along.”

Huggins grunted.

“No dogs yet?” she asked.

“They’re still up chasing the old lady near Plattsburgh. That search has priority. Can’t disagree with them. Young girl in warm clothing and boots has a hell of a lot better chance out here than a confused old lady in pajamas.”

Clare shivered, then said her good-byes and struck off for Haudenosaunee. She wondered if she was ever going to get used to living in a place where wandering past your backyard could get you killed. Funny. She had studied at Virginia Episcopal Seminary, living in the dense suburban corridor of Arlington County, working at times in Washington, D.C., a city known for, among other things, its crime rate. Yet she had never felt menaced by her surroundings, maybe because ultimately she figured she could always deal with other human beings, reason with them—or, as had happened when she was mugged once, simply surrender her bag. But there was no reasoning with the Adirondack Mountains, nothing you could hand over to ransom your life from six million acres of trackless forest, wild rivers, and hidden lakes. Not to mention arctic air flowing south from Canada and blinding snowstorms blowing east from Lake Ontario.

The woods gave way to a blaze-marked trail, which gave way in turn to a path through the trees. When she reached the stone wall dividing Haudenosaunee’s cultivated garden from the wilderness, she was torn between knocking at the door and seeing if she could talk with van der Hoeven or beating a retreat to Millers Kill, where her church, her volunteers, and a hot shower awaited her. Her grandmother Fergusson prodded her.
A lady never leaves without thanking her host
. The excuse that she was one of the search team, she knew, wouldn’t cut any ice with her grandmother.

Van der Hoeven was nowhere in sight when she let herself in the front door. The den was open again, but there was no sound or movement indicating anyone was inside. As she walked toward the kitchen, she felt herself quieting her steps, as if she were walking through a museum gallery. The comparison fit. Haudenosaunee, for all its beautiful furniture and rich rugs, had a curiously empty feel to it, as if it had already been closed up for the winter, the family dispersed to their real lives.

She opened the kitchen door. The housekeeper, who was just hanging up the phone, jumped and clutched her heart.

“Sorry!” Clare held up both hands in the universal “I’m harmless” signal. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m leaving, and I wanted to pay my respects to Mr. van der Hoeven before I go.”