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“I’m the only paid staff,” Roxa
“Are you full time?” Clare asked, her daydreams of solitary, monastic-like cataloging shredding before the raw energy of Hurricane Roxa
“Oh, no, no, no, they can’t afford me full time. If I actually had to live on what they pay me, I’d be destitute. I work twenty hours a week here, that’s for love, and the rest of the time, I’m a Realtor, for the money.” She stopped on the landing in front of an oil of a dyspeptic-looking gentleman in black judge’s robes. “Jacob De-Weese. This was his house. His daughter bequeathed it to the historical society.” She tickled a mauve-lacquered fingernail beneath his painted chin. “They called him ‘the Hanging Judge.’ ”
“He looks the part.”
“It always surprises people when they hear what I do,” Roxa
“I can believe it,” Clare said.
Roxa
Clare nodded.
“Well, tell them if they ever want to raise money, I can take it off their hands and get a sweet price for it. I could find a nice little condo for you, not too far out of town. And it’d be a lot easier on your budget than ru
Clare pictured St. Alban’s leaking roof, which might as well be plugged with twenty-dollar bills for what it was going to cost to repair, and resolved to never, ever bring up to the vestry Roxa
“Here we are,” Roxa
“This was originally the nursery,” Roxa
Clare leaned against the long refectory-style table to look out the windows. The ice-shrouded garden stretched out below, culminating in a green-roofed carriage house opening onto the back alley. She could see part of the clinic next door as well, shotgu
“What you’re going to do is very simple. You open a box, tag everything inside, and enter the descriptions into our electronic catalog,” Roxa
“Ephemera?”
“Papers, letters, photos, that sort of thing. We’ve got three-hundred-year-old handbills touting the southern Adirondacks as the place for hardworking Scotsmen to get rich, we’ve got canal-era advertising calendars, we’ve got playbills for the Millers Kill opera house-”
“Millers Kill had an opera house?” Clare couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice.
Roxa
Clare thought of the confrontation between the doctor and Debba Clow. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I think it’s still a very lively town. You just have to know where to look.”
Chapter 5
Friday, March 10
Clare’s 10:30 counseling session with the Garrettsons was ru
Finally ushering them out of her office with a promise to put them in touch with Paul Foubert, the Infirmary’s director, Clare cocked an ear for any sounds of conversation or argument drifting down the hall. Nothing. She opened the meeting-room door and stepped into the underheated splendor of a wood-paneled, Persian-carpeted gallery that appeared to have been assumed bodily from Oxford. No one was there.
“Lois,” she said, sticking her head into the church office, “I’ve lost the vestry.”
The church secretary tilted her head, allowing her razor-cut strawberry blond bob to swing just so, against her jaw. “And this is a bad thing… how?”
“Lois.”
“They’re in the church. Taking a look at the indoor waterworks.”
“Everybody here?”
“Even the newbie. Let’s hope they don’t chew him up and spit him out.”
Clare glanced over at the pink message slips accumulating on a lethally sharp spike. “Anything urgent?”
“Yes. You had a call from Hugh Parteger.” Lois’s British accent was devastatingly accurate. “ ‘Lois, love, tell the vicar to give me a call sometime soon. She can’t spend all her time in prayer and good works. She has to be naughty sometimes.’ ” Lois looked at her significantly.
Clare laughed. “He’s really a very nice guy.” She had met Hugh last year while he was summering in Saratoga. Since he worked for a merchant bank in New York City, they had developed a very long distance relationship, which suited her just fine. She had seen him three or four times since August, and spoke with him every other week or so.
“He’s got money, ma