A Fountain Filled With Blood (4 page)

Outside, it was promising to be another ninety-degree day, but the storm last night had cleared the air. The light, dry breeze reminded Clare of the best sort of weather at her parents’ home in southern Virginia. She had dropped the top to her convertible, and once she had taken care of Paul’s dogs, she might have time for a little spin through the countryside before the first of her two counseling sessions that afternoon.

The first hitch in her plans came when she got to Emil and Paul’s handsome old farmhouse. For some reason, she had pictured little dogs, Jack Russells or toy poodles perhaps. The pair that bounded out of the attached barn were big. Really big. Big, hairy, bouncing, barking black-and-white Bernese mountain dogs. She turned around and looked at the minuscule backseat, which would have been a snug fit for Jack Russells. She looked back at the dogs, which were excitedly tearing along the limits of an invisible fence. “Oh…shoot,” she said.

The dogs were ecstatic at meeting her. As she crossed from the driveway onto the lawn, they leapt and wiggled against her, pawing at her ankle-length dress and frantically licking at her hands. “Not exactly standoffish, are you?” she said. They discovered her sandal-clad feet and immediately began licking her toes. “Stop!” she shrieked. “Sit!” They plunked down, looking up at her hopefully, their tails thumping hard against the grass. She fished for their collar tags among handfuls of silky hair. “Okay, Gal and…Bob?” The dogs thumped more energetically. “Who names a dog Bob?” She sighed. When he had mentioned the dogs while they were waiting in the emergency room, Paul had said their bowls and leashes were in the barn. “C’mon, then,” she said. “Let’s get your things. Then we’ll try to fit you into my car.”

She wound up squeezing Gal, who was the slightly smaller of the two, across the backseat, the dog’s head out one side of the car and her tail out the other. Bob sat in the passenger seat, his dinner plate–size paws precariously balanced on the very edge of the smooth leather. Clare’s trunk lid barely shut over leashes, bowls, fifty pounds of dog chow, and an assortment of squeaky toys the dogs had brought and dropped in her way while she was loading the car.

The second hitch came at the Clover Kennels. “I’m sorry, Reverend Fergusson,” the plump blonde owner said. She vigorously scratched the dogs’ heads. “All of our big dog runs are booked up through next week. It’s the Fourth of July weekend, and lots of folks are traveling.” She crouched, running Gal’s floppy ears through her hands and kissing her nose. “And we can’t fit these two into anything smaller. You wouldn’t be able to move, would you, you sweet thing?” She looked up regretfully at Clare. “There are a couple kennels over to Saratoga, of course, but I’d call first before going over. It’s going to be hard to find any spaces this weekend. Maybe some friends could watch them?”

And so Clare found herself taking her spin through the countryside with two hundred pounds of dog packed in the car. The only friends of Paul and Emil she knew of were the two Paul had mentioned last night, the owners of the Stuyvesant Inn. Maybe they would take the dogs off her hands. Bed-and-breakfasts were supposed to have cats or dogs hanging around.

The road to the inn ran along the river—what the early Dutch settlers had called a “kill”—through green shade and sunlight. Falling away from the water, it climbed westward through lush fields of tender-leaved corn and grazing pastures landscaped by Holsteins and Herefords, grass as trim and tight as a broadloom carpet, set off by lichen-mottled rocks and bouquets of thistles and wildflowers. The road rose and dipped, rose and dipped, until it came to a high spot and Clare saw the exuberantly painted inn, a well-maintained fantasy of Carpenter Gothic, with mauve and coral and aqua trimmings. Behind the inn, perennial beds and ornamental trees gave way to a meadow that rolled over the top of a hill and was surmounted by the first in a series of mountains, sea green and smoky in the morning sun. She pulled into the semicircular drive and was not surprised to see a Millers Kill police car already parked in the shade of one of the massive maples sheltering the dooryard.

She had barely pulled the key from the ignition when the dogs bounded out, Gal squashing Clare’s shoulder as she squeezed herself from the narrow backseat and over the door. They snuffled around the cars, the trees, and the neatly edged bed of annuals before relieving themselves against an iron hitching post and the rear tire of the squad car. “Gal! Bob! Come!” They fell in behind her as she climbed up to the wide porch and rang the doorbell.

The mahogany door opened a moment later, revealing a gray-haired man with a face as pleasantly rumpled as an unmade bed. “Hello, can I—Why, Bob! And Gal! Hi there!” The dogs abandoned Clare to butt their heads against the man’s knees. “Come in, come in,” he said, trying to scratch the dogs’ heads and offer his hand to Clare at the same time. “I’m Stephen Obrowski.” He swung the door wider and stepped back into a wide hallway papered in velvet flock and furnished with chairs and tables that were so ugly, she knew they must be authentic Victoriana.

The dogs pushed past Obrowski, their toenails clicking on the polished wooden floor. “Thank you. I’m Clare Fergusson, the rector at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church.” She reflexively fingered the clerical collar attached to the neckline of her shift, then noticed that the linen dress now resembled mohair, with great quantities of white dog hair sticking out every which way.

“Please, come on back to the kitchen. We were just talking with Chief Van Alstyne about last night. Poor Emil. It’s unbelievable. You read about these things, but when it’s someone you know…”

Clare followed him down the long hallway, through an alcove formed by a spindle-banistered stairway, and into a kitchen that was mercifully not true to the period. Russ was standing next to a stainless-steel cooking island, polishing his glasses with a tissue. He looked up as they came in, eyes vague and out of focus. An attractive man in his mid-thirties was pouring coffee into chunky ceramic mugs. He had the look of a German skier—lean, tan, blond. She wouldn’t be surprised if his name was Hans or Ulf. “This is Ronald Handler, chef extraordinaire. Ron, this is the Reverend Clare Fergusson. And I take it you two know each other?” he said, looking at Russ.

Russ replaced his glasses and tucked the tissue in his pocket. “Yup. What brings you out here, Reverend?”

Before she could open her mouth, the dogs muscled open the door and swarmed into the kitchen, tails whipping like rubber hoses, tongues hanging, mouths drooling. Ron Handler stepped to a curtained door tucked away to the left of a large commercial range. “Gal! Bob! Out!” He opened the door and the Berns galloped out into the sunshine.

“Bob?” Russ said.

“Coffee?” Handler offered, tilting the pot toward Clare.

“Please. So have you found anything new? Do you know what happened last night?”

Obrowski picked up his mug and blew across the steaming surface. “We were just telling the chief. We had a small dinner party last night—just us, Emil, Samuel Marx, and Rick Profitt. Samuel and Rick are staying with us. They’re up from New York City.”

Handler handed Clare a mug. “They own a travel agency. They send us a ton of business.”

“We put it together very spontaneously, because it was a free night in what’s otherwise a pretty busy season for us. I don’t see how anyone who might have been intending to hurt Emil could have known about it.”

Russ shifted his weight. “Your other guests, Marx and Profitt. Did they know Emil beforehand?”

“No,” Obrowski said. “And they both retired before Emil left. They didn’t even realize we had had a drive-by.”

“Maybe Chief Van Alstyne thinks they shimmied down the drainpipe in the rear and went after Emil while we were distracted washing up,” Ron said. “Like in one of those British murder mysteries on PBS.”

Russ ignored this and continued looking at Obrowski. “Anyone else invited who didn’t show? Did you tell any vendors, any delivery people?”

“No. No need. Ron can throw together a five-star meal out of whatever we have in stock.” Stephen Obrowski swept his hand toward the chef, who bowed. “We had invited Paul, of course, and our other guest, Bill Ingraham, but they both had to attend the aldermen’s meeting instead.”

“Bill Ingraham?” Clare said. “The developer?”

“That’s right. He’s been staying with us at least once a month since this winter.” Obrowski pointed at a mullioned window centered over a stainless-steel sink framing a view of the mountains. “The Landry property, where he’s working, starts about a mile west of us. As a matter of fact, this house used to be the Landry mansion. The family made their fortune in logging and real estate speculation. Archibald Landry built his own railroad line into Adirondack Park to transport timber and holidaymakers, but the connecting lines that other developers were supposed to build never came through, so his track just petered out in the wilderness.” Obrowski took a sip of coffee. “Then a son died in World War One. When the stock market collapsed, it took most of the family money with it. They sold this place in the thirties.”

“So this guy Ingraham, he’s the one who’s building the new hotel?”

“Luxury spa,” Obrowski corrected. “Very exciting. It’s going to bring in lots of people, lots of money. Lots of traffic past our door.”

“And he couldn’t make it to your dinner last night.”

“He was definitely at the meeting,” Clare said. “There was quite a to-do about PCBs in the area maybe coming from the old quarry on the Landry property. He stood up and told everyone what a good thing the spa was going to be, but he said that he wouldn’t be building it if the town called in the DEP for another go-round.”

“You’re kidding! That would be a disaster. Let’s hope they don’t jump the gun and call in the DEP prematurely. Lots of people are counting on that resort going forward.”

“Not the least of whom is that Landry woman.” Handler rolled his eyes.

“Oh, cut it out. She’s not that bad.”

“Joan Crawford on hormone-replacement therapy.”

Russ snickered. Clare pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. “How about his partner?” she asked. “Did he stay here, too?”

Handler and Obrowski glanced at each other. “Well…” Obrowski said.

“He used to,” Handler said.

Obrowski sighed. “They had a big blowup here at the end of May. The kind where Ron and I try to disappear into the woodwork for the duration. We haven’t seen him since then.”

Clare put her mug down. “But he was at the meeting last night. Mr. Ingraham introduced him.”

“He did what?” Handler goggled at her.

“Wait. Wait.” Obrowski laughed. “Slightly chunky guy with lots of slicked-back dark hair?”

“Yes, that’s the one. John something.”

“Opperman. John Opperman.” Obrowski grinned at Handler. “She meant his business partner.”

“We thought you were referring to the Queen of Tarts,” Handler said.

“His girlfriend?”

“His boyfriend.”

Russ started. “Ingraham’s gay?”

Handler grinned, showing his pointed eyeteeth. “We’re everywhere. Scary, isn’t it?”

“Cut it out, Ron,” Obrowski said.

Russ’s cheeks grew pink beneath his tan. “Did Ingraham know Emil?”

“No, not to my knowledge. He hasn’t been one for socializing,” Obrowski said. “When he stays here, he spends most of his time meeting with subcontractors and tramping around the woods, plotting out the resort and directing what construction they’ve already started—cutting down trees, plowing roads, that sort of thing. Opperman, his business partner”—he tilted his head toward Clare—“handles the paperwork. He’s been up frequently, too, but he stays at one of those concrete-cube chain hotels along the Northway.”

“I keep telling you, Steve, if we put up some bad art and wall-to-wall carpeting, we could get that trade, too.”

“Ron…”

“Maybe if you put in an ice machine down the hall?” Clare offered. Handler looked delighted.

Russ cleared his throat. “Okay, it’s unlikely anyone knew Emil was going to be here last night. Which leaves the possibility we were discussing earlier.”

Obrowski looked down into his coffee cup. Handler’s dazzling smile disappeared, replaced by a wary look in his eyes.

“What?” Clare said. “What?”

“When we were walking Emil out, there was a drive-by.” Stephen Obrowski’s amiable voice turned hard. “A truck with a bunch of rednecks shouting a lot of homophobic crap. They’ve been by before a few times, but the worst that’s happened so far is a few beer cans chucked on the lawn.”

“And they continued east toward Route One twenty-one?” Russ asked.

“We asked him if he wanted to wait. I was worried about him heading in the same direction as the pickup.” Obrowski shook his head. “I wish to God I had insisted. If he had waited until the police arrived, we wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation.”

Clare looked at Russ.

“They called in a report right after,” he said. “We had an officer up to Cossayuharie who came down to check things out. It was when he was headed back into town that he found Emil’s car.”

“You think it was a hate crime?” Clare put down her coffee mug. “Somebody beat him half to death because he’s gay?”

“It’s not like it hasn’t happened before,” Handler said.

“They might not have even known Emil was gay.” Obrowski turned toward his partner. “He might have been attacked because he was leaving our inn. Have you thought about that?”

Russ held up his hands. “Let’s not speculate too wildly here. We—and by ‘we,’ I mean law enforcement and the business community—want to be real careful not to start unsubstantiated rumors about a bunch of punks targeting gay-owned businesses. I also don’t want to be telling one and all that that this was a gay-bashing episode.”

Ron Handler looked outraged. “We’re supposed to ignore the fact that we might be killed because of who we are? That our friends and customers might be in danger? That’s—”

“That’s not what I said.” Russ took off his glasses and rubbed them against the front of his shirt, the steel edge clinking faintly when it tapped the badge over his breast pocket. “If you call something a hate crime, you glamorize it. You make assault or vandalism sound like a political statement, and political statements have a way of attracting imitators. I’ve seen it happen. There’s big play in the newspaper about somebody painting a swastika on a bridge, and next thing you know, every asshole in the county with a can of spray paint and pretensions of grandeur is doing the same thing. Scuse my french.”