Julia Spencer-Fleming - To Darkness And To Death

“Hey, everyone. How’s it going?” The source of the mouthwatering odor was a huge baking tin crammed with tiny quiches. “This smells amazing. Can I have one?” Her hand was almost on one of the miniature tins when Courtney pinned her with a coolly arched brow.

“Only if you want to risk running out at the reception tomorrow.” Courtney’s nose wrinkled. “What is that smell?” She peered into the sink. “Judy, did you put something rotten down the drain?”

Clare made a tactical retreat. “Anything in the fridge?” She wrenched open the professional-sized refrigerator. “Holy cow, you’ve been busy.” Crustless, quartered bread towered next to mixing bowls filled with tuna salad and thinly sliced ham. Scallops enveloped in bacon strips awaited the broiler. Tiny, perfect strawberry cheesecakes bumped into miniature shish kebabs ready for reheating. And in pride of place, Clare’s own suggestion for the lunch: deviled eggs. Her favorite. Could she appropriate one or two? To taste-test? She glanced over her shoulder. Courtney was watching her.

“Uh-uh-uh,” the woman singsonged. Clare shut the door with a sigh.

Sabrina Campbell stuck a spoon into the pot she had been stirring and lifted it to her mouth, blowing on it. It was, Clare saw with a dizzy yearning, chocolate. “Where have you been?” Courtney asked. “We expected you hours ago.”

“I thought you’d be done by now. I mean, I’m really headed home to take a shower.” Clare realized that this statement didn’t cast her in the best light. She hesitated, not wanting to go into too much detail. “I got an early morning call from the search and rescue team. There’s been a young woman lost in the woods. I filled in until one of their more experienced volunteers replaced me.”

“Well, I won’t even begin to tell you what a nightmare it’s been here,” Courtney said. Judy Morrison, her face hidden from the younger woman’s view, grimaced; whether in exasperation or solidarity, Clare couldn’t tell. “First there was this awful mix-up with the crusts for the individual quiches. Then we had to go back to the store because the kiwi and the strawberries weren’t fresh.”

“There weren’t that many that had gone bad,” Judy said under her breath.

Courtney rolled on as if she hadn’t heard her. “And then we had a terrible time making the crème fraîche. I suspect the fat content wasn’t all it could have been.”

Judy mumbled something that sounded like “… if we had settled for whipped cream…”

“Anyway, we’re well sorted out now. D’you want to come upstairs and see how the setup is going? I was just headed up.” Courtney whipped off her apron. “Sabrina, you can keep an eye on my rémoulade, can’t you?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Sabrina said, tucking a strand of silvered blond hair behind her ear and tasting the now-cooled chocolate.

“Reverend?” Courtney was holding the kitchen door open. Clare tore her eyes away from Sabrina Campbell’s now-clean spoon and trotted after the fast-moving brunette.

Courtney strode down the dank hallway, passing the boiler room, the sexton’s supply closet, smelling of disinfectant, and the shuttered doors to the undercroft, the church’s subterranean attic. She pounded up the narrow steps, Clare following on her heels, and burst through into the sunlit parish hall.

Noise assailed them. Three women and two men snipped stems and chattered loudly across the room. A tropical forest of blooms and branches was spread out on a plastic-sheeted table. Terry McKellan and Tim Garretson wrestled folding round tables off an enormous dolly and rolled them into place, rumbling like Ezekiel’s chariot wheels. A phone was ringing in the office. From the church, Clare could hear the music director and the choir, going over a particularly difficult section of the choral evensong they’d be singing tomorrow at four.

“God of love and God of power, Make us worthy of this hour,” the basses thundered down, only to be cut off by a shrill “No! No!”

The members of the floral guild spotted Clare first. “Thank heavens you’re here,” Laurie Mairs said, dropping her intertwined stems of roses and stephanotis and hurrying toward Clare. “The silver vases are all locked away, and Delia’s lost her spare key!” She shot a glance at the guilty woman, who shrugged her shoulders, smiling sheepishly.

“Delia, you have to let me or Mr. Hadley know if you lose one of the keys,” Clare said, raising her voice to be heard across the room. “That silver is irreplaceable. We can’t allow-”

“Clare!” Mae Bristol cut off what was threatening to become a rant with the authority only a forty-year career as an elementary school teacher can bestow. “Where have you been?” She bore down on Clare from the upper hallway, stopping only when she got within sniffing distance. “And what have you gotten into?”

“Miss Bristol.” Laurie Mairs, like many of the other parishioners aged forty-seven and under, seemed to find it impossible to address Mae Bristol by her first name. “I was just about to have Reverend Clare open the-”

“This will only take a moment, Laurie.” Mae peered up at Clare with her black-currant eyes. “Mr. Hadley has brought every banner ever sewn up from the undercroft. We need you to help us select which ones to hang. Some of the older ones are quite lovely, but I’m not sure they’ll take the strain of being hoisted up to the ceiling.”

“Reverend Clare!” Clare swiveled, following the alto voice to the hallway, where Karen Burns was waving a sheaf of pink message slips. Clare stared at Geoffrey Burns’s wife.

The Castles. “Excuse me for just a sec,” she said, shouldering her way past Miss Bristol, Laurie Mairs, another member of the floral guild who had arrived to press their claim against Mae Bristol’s, and a miffed-looking Courtney Reid. Courtney, lovely, chestnut-haired, perfectly shaped, should have resembled Karen Burns, who was also all these things, but Karen wore her self-confidence and her simple, expensive clothes with an effortless style, while Courtney always seemed to be trying too hard. There was no love lost between the women.

“Have I rescued you?” Karen said, baring her perfectly white teeth. “Has Courtney spoken to you about making her the events coordinator at St. Alban’s?”

“What on earth do we need an events coordinator for?”

Karen shrugged. “Well, you know, she was the cruise director aboard one of those ships before she snagged Shaun Reid.” Her eyes glittered. “I understand she was ‘Kourtnee’ before the marriage.”

Clare tried to smother her smile. “That’s not very nice, Karen.”

“We first wives have to have some fun at the expense of these youngsters stealing away husbands twenty years older than themselves.”

“Somehow, I can’t imagine any twenty-four-year-old stealing Geoff away.”

“He knows what would happen.” She held up one hand and made a snipping motion.

Clare quickly stifled her laughter. No need to give the cluster of ladies glaring at Karen any ammunition. “Speaking of your husband, where is he?”

“He should be here any minute with the booze for the postevensong reception.”

“Oh, God, I’d forgotten about that.”

“How on earth could you forget the fifty biggest donors to the church meeting the bishop for an intimate cocktail party?”

“Do we have to serve drinks?”

“If you want to hit people up for money, believe me, it helps to liquor them up first.” She rustled the pink slips in her hand. “I’ve been calling everyone who’s RSVP’d to the evening reception. I’m reminding them that we’re asking everyone to bring a nonchurchgoing friend to enjoy the beautiful music in our stunning Gothic Revival sacred space.”