He walked away from the streetlamp to meet her. A couple sat on the bench facing the church, the woman rifling through her purse. The Campbells, crossing from the parking lot, passed her. "Great auction!" Sabrina said. Clare waved an acknowledgment.
"Reverend Fergusson," Russ said.
"Chief Van Alstyne." She wrapped her arms around herself and inhaled.
Before she could launch into her apology, he settled into parade-rest posture and cleared his throat. "I shouldn't have gone off on you like that, when you told me about the men at Mike and Janet's. I realize… she put you in an impossible situation. It wasn't your fault."
She paused, knocked off-kilter by his preemptive apology. Although, she noticed, he never used the words I'm sorry. She decided to supply them. "I'm sorry, too. I should never have agreed to go along with a lie in the first place. And I'm sorry I lost my temper. It was very…"-undignified? unprofessional?-"… childish of me."
They stood there, face-to-face, not quite looking at each other. At the center of the park, the band swung into "String of Pearls."
"Reverend Fergusson!" The voice was lilting and Swedish. Clare turned to see Lena Erlander and her husband, Jim Cameron, approaching. Clare pasted on a bright smile. Lena 's husband was the mayor and had signed off on the use of the park, the street closing, and the police protection. Over, she had heard, the objections of some of the aldermen. "How good to see you again," Lena said, shaking Clare's hand. "And how wonderfully clever of you to put on this dance."
Jim Cameron grinned at Russ and Clare and beamed at his wife. His expression said, Isn't she the perfect politician's partner? They'd been married two or three years, and the honeymoon was evidently still on. Maybe it was true, what they said about Swedes.
"Thank Elizabeth de Groot and Karen Burns, not me," Clare said. "They put the whole thing together."
"Perfect timing, either way," the mayor said. "Proof positive there's nothing to fear in Millers Kill, no matter what trash the reporters like to throw up."
"I saw your handsome friend from New York over by the refreshments table," Lena said. "He was looking for you." She smiled at Clare as if the two of them shared a secret. "I think you were smart to have the old-fashioned band. Dancing close, it gives a man romantic ideas, right, alsking?" She wrapped her arm around her husband's.
Mayor Cameron's smile glazed over. He looked from Russ, to Clare, then back at Russ. "I think it's smart to attract the right sort of people. Older couples who want to spend money and then go home at a reasonable hour. Not like the god-awful crowds we get at the Riverside Park on the Fourth of July, eh, Russ?"
Russ looked over the mayor's head at the well-heeled dancers swinging to Glenn Miller. "I don't think we'll have any broken beer bottles or fistfights with this group, no."
Lena tugged on her husband's arm. "Come on, I want to dance. Oh, and tell Chief Van Alstyne he can't just stand like a stuffed bear. There are never enough men to go around. He must dance once or twice." She smiled up at Russ. "You must dance with some of the single ladies." She winked at Clare. "Since I don't think you'll be loaning out your date for the cause."
Mayor Cameron dragged her away in what was either a passion to dance or a fervor of embarrassment.
"String of Pearls" ended. The crowd clapped. "So," Russ said. "Hugh's here."
"Thank you very much!" Curtis Maurand said. "This next one's for all you guys and gals who were in the armed services. It's called 'American Patrol.' " The band blew out a full-fledged jitterbug.
"He's staying at the Stuyvesant Inn," she said, then mentally kicked herself. She didn't have to explain anything to Russ.
He made a rumbling noise in his chest. It sounded to her like disapproval.
Pricked, she said, "Of course, if it gets too late, I could always put him up at the rectory. I'm sure I have a spare toothbrush somewhere."
Russ slanted a look at her. "Why not? He could room with Amado."
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.
II
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.