Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

She couldn't help it. The thought of Hugh's face, confronted with the temporary sexton and the guest room, made her laugh. "Poor Hugh," she said. "That certainly would not be what he was expecting."

"No one expects the Spanish Inquisition," Russ quoted, which made her snort, which was how Hugh found them.

"Vicar," he said, taking her hand and kissing it. "You look like the proverbial long cool woman in a red dress." He glanced at Russ. "Chief Van Alstyne. Imagine my surprise at seeing you here."

"Mr. Parteger."

"Isn't all that unrelieved polyester hot on a night like this?"

"You sure notice a lot about clothes. I bet you're real good at home decorating, too."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Russ's face was bland. The jitterbug ended, and the band segued into "Step-pin' Out with My Baby."

"Gosh," Clare said pointedly. "I love this song."

Hugh redrew his expression into something more pleasant. "Of course, Vicar. By all means, let's dance." He paused, as if a thought had just occurred to him. "Unless," he said to Russ, " you'd like to escort Clare onto the dance floor." He swept one arm toward the low wooden platforms that had been bolted together over the largest wedge of the park that afternoon. "After all, you're free to ask her now, aren't you?"

Clare would have killed Hugh, except that she was caught, stomach clenched, wondering what Russ would say. Loathing herself for hoping like a girl at a middle-school dance.

He stood very still. Finally he said, "I'm on duty." He nodded to her. "Enjoy yourself." Then he walked away, leaving Hugh looking triumphant and Clare wishing she were a lesbian. Maybe then she'd never have to deal with male idiocy again.

That damn skimpy red dress drew his eye all night long. He patrolled the edges of the park, exchanging hellos and commenting on the weather and answering the few folks brave enough to ask questions about the so-called Cossayuharie Killer. And all the time, he kept spotting her, like a flame in the dark. He saw Parteger begging and begging hard after that stunt he pulled, following her around like a dog while she flitted from parishioner to parishioner. The Brit eventually hit on the right apology or wore her down, because she let him dance with her.

She wasn't a great dancer, not like some of the older women on the floor who had learned to swing and foxtrot back in the white-glove days, but damn, she looked like she was having fun with it. Between dances with Parteger, she partnered Norm Madsen and Robert Corlew and even Geoff Burns, who managed to look semihuman, twirling Clare past the gazebo.

She started smiling-really smiling, not just being polite-and then she started to laugh, and he swore he could hear her laugh over the music and the talk and the dull rumble of the traffic, rerouted through streets a block away.

Linda would have liked this. She would have laughed like that and danced like that and pushed her hair off the nape of her neck like that -such a tender, intimate gesture in a public place, and then he realized he was thinking about Linda and about Clare, holding them both in his mind at the same time, and he waited for the bitter black weight to come over him and it didn't. He felt a lingering sadness, like the clarinet line, but he also felt the excitement of the brass, and he caught a glimpse of a realization, that something of Linda, in some way, survived in Clare, but he couldn't get a handle on the wisp of a thought and his concentration was busted by the growl and crunch of one of his patrol cars, slipping up the street and pulling in next to the park's fire hydrant.

His deputy chief stepped out of the cruiser. "Hey," he said.

"What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? What're you still doing here? You were scheduled to go off duty an hour ago. I figured you forgot to call in."

"Huh. Guess I lost track of the time."

Lyle shoved his hands in his pockets as he joined Russ. "Bucking for overtime won't do you any good, y'know. You're on salary. That's why you wouldn't catch me taking your job."

"You wouldn't take my job because you might actually have to show up for work during hunting season."

"Yeah, well, there is that." Lyle looked between the trees to where the dancers were going around to "Begin the Beguine." "How're things goin'?"

"Nobody dragged off to a shallow grave yet. Although the night's still young. What's happening out there?" He gestured with his chin toward the rest of the town and beyond.

"Quietest damn Sunday night I've ever seen. I think the Cossayuharie Killer's keeping everybody home. Or headed down to Saratoga. Paul called in, said he's given out a few tickets on the Schuylerville Road."

"Jim Cameron's not going to like that."

"What, tickets? Sure he will. Paul's scoping out the cars from away. No skin off his voters' noses."

"I meant, people taking their money out of Millers Kill."

"On a Sunday night?" Lyle blew a raspberry. "The only things to spend money on in this town are those idiot arcade games at Alltechtronik and a couple ounces of grass. You have to go to Glens Falls to bet on bingo."

"I dunno about that. I think Geraldine Bain's running a floating canasta game around here. Penny a point."

Lyle laughed. Russ grinned. They stood side by side, watching the dancers, and for a moment it was like it used to be. The music slid smoothly into a new song, the bandleader's voice sweet and melancholy. I can see, no matter how near you'll be, you'll never belong to me -

"Who's the fellow with Reverend Fergusson?"

Russ blinked. "Hugh Parteger. Forty. Unmarried. He's an investment banker from the city. Resident alien. One DUI, got it bargained down to DTE. No other record."

Lyle looked at him sideways. "It was more in the line of a social question."

He felt his cheeks heat up and hoped the light from the streetlamps wasn't enough to give him away. "Guy comes dropping into my town for no good reason every couple of months, why shouldn't I run him? Forewarned is forearmed, or however the saying goes."

"Mmm." Lyle turned back to the dancing. Anne Vining-Ellis and her husband blocked Clare from view, but as the Ellises twirled out of the way, Russ could see her, locked up tight in Hugh's arms, the overdressed bastard sliding one hand all up and down her half-bare back.

"Looks to me like he's got a perfectly good reason for coming to town."

But I can dream, can't I?

"Whyn't you go over there and ask her to dance?"

He rounded on Lyle. "Why don't you mind your own business?" He turned back toward Clare and her date, determined to poke the knife in himself a little deeper. "You're the last person who oughta be handing out advice."

Lyle was still a moment. "You're right," he finally said. "I've managed to ball up every relationship I ever had. Includin' our friendship. But you know what? That means I can recognize when someone's making a dumb-ass mistake." He waited, as if inviting Russ to chime in. Russ kept his mouth shut. "Whatever." Lyle sighed. "I'm gonna take a turn around the park and check in with Kevin. See ya around." He strolled off beneath the trees.

The song ended to a clamor of applause. Russ turned on his heel and strode across Church Street without looking, headed for his truck, parked in the lot across from St. Alban's. He unlocked it and stripped off his gear belt, dropping the whole thing into his lockbox along with his pump-action shotgun and.40-.40. There. Officially off-duty.

He climbed behind the wheel and fired up the truck. Wondered if his mother was still out at Cousin Nane's. Probably not. He wished he had someplace to go where he could be alone.

How about your own house?

He shook his head. He had been back to the house on Peekskill Road several times since Linda's death, but he was never, he realized, going to spend the night there again.