A Carol for a Corpse

by Claudia Bishop

  “I can tell you something about the accident.”

  “What?” Meg asked suspiciously.

  “It wasn’t one. Zeke Kingsfield was murdered.”

  Meg’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

  “I am not.” She told her about Mike. “And he’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that the tree trunk wasn’t there when he finished grooming the trail just before dark yesterday.”

  Meg did a jig in the snow. “This is great! This is terrific news!”

  “I would like to remind you,” Quill said repressively, “that the poor man is dead.”

  “But it’s not our fault!” She stopped in mid-jig. “What about the fence post? Did the murderer loosen the fence post, too?”

  “He’s less sure about that,” Quill admitted. “That thaw we had a few weeks ago might have loosened the dirt around the Sakrete. But he’s sure that couldn’t account for the post coming all the way out of the hole the way it did. So my guess is that the murderer took advantage of that.”

  “So we’re okay.”

  “Not totally. They could bring a civil action, Meg. I mean, that’s what Nicole Brown Simpson’s parents did. But the lawyers would have a much tougher time collecting anything from us above and beyond what our insurance limits are.”

  “Did you tell Davy? That it’s murder?”

  “Of course I told Davy.”

  “And does he have any leads? Is he going to investigate?”

  “He did a little more investigation than he would have if it’d just been an accident. I had to goad him into it, but he did. He found some evidence that suggests someone strung a trip wire across the trail.”

  “Well, there you are, then!”

  “It’s circumstantial. At best. And even I know enough about the law to know it’s too feeble to be called a case. And Davy’s not eager to follow it up. I can’t say as I blame him. I mean, just think of the tabloids. They’re going to have a field day as it is.”

  “I can see the headlines now,” Meg said glumly. “Murder Inn. This is just awful. This is a calamity.”

  Quill stopped and put her hand on Meg’s arm. “It’s not the end of the world, surely.”

  “Lydia’s going to pull out of the lease. The whole thing’s going down the tubes,” Meg said dejectedly.

  “Not if we find out who did it.”

  Meg stuck her forefinger in the pistol’s trigger guard and twirled it like a top. “Qulliam and Quilliam, PIs,” she said. “I like it. I really like it.” She came to a halt, and Quill stopped beside her. They were at the church. “So the deal is, we sort of nose around and ask questions?”

  Quill nodded. “Who had a grudge against Kingsfield?”

  “I don’t know. Who?”

  “Will Frazier, for one,” Quill said promptly. “And maybe even Charley Comstock, if what Marge says about the Gorgeous Gorges deal is true. We’ll just have to devise discreet but pointed questions. You take Charley, I’ll take Will. We need to find out what kind of alibis they had last night.”

  “And if both them have alibis?”

  “Zeke Kingsfield,” Quill said soberly, “was the kind of man who had lots of enemies. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”

  “Well, I’m no quitter. And neither are you. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.” Meg stamped up the broad steps of the church with a determined air. Quill followed her inside.

  The church was almost full. Quill stopped just inside the door, startled at the mob of people. Most of the Chamber members were there. And there was a confused mix of towns-people, reporters, and most of the residents of the Gorgeous Gorges trailer park. But many in the crowd were totally unfamiliar to her. And over the year, she’d met just about everyone who lived in Hemlock Falls.

  “I’ve never seen some of these people before,” Meg said. “Where do you suppose they’re from?”

  Quill shook her head. “They have to be from Syracuse. Or even Ithaca. I suppose they’re here just for the notoriety of it.”

  “It’s the money,” Marge said bluntly from behind them. “That forty-three million dollars Zeke claimed he was going to spread around. Go on and sit down, you two. I saved us a couple of seats near Dookie.”

  Dookie Shuttleworth, the Hemlock Falls Church of the Word of God’s gentle, absentminded pastor, turned to wave a welcome as Marge and Quill came up the aisle, although he frowned in a puzzled way at the orange paint on Meg’s hat. He made a space for the three of them. Quill sat down next to his wife, Wendy. Marge sat on Quill’s other side. Meg sat next to Dookie himself.

  The pews in front of them and behind them were filled with Chamber members, like lambs huddling together in a field of wolves. In the pew in front of them, Howie Murchison and Miriam Doncaster sat next to Harland Peterson. In the pew behind them, Charley Comstock sat next to Adela Henry. Esther, Nadine, and the others filled the remaining seats in the pew.

  “It is nice to see you here, Quill,” Wendy said in her gentle voice. “Although I’d hoped to see Myles, too. Will he be home for Christmas?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I heard he was somewhere in the Middle East,” Wendy said sympathetically. “Worrisome for you.”

  Quill nodded. She looked around, a little puzzled. “I thought we’d missed the start of the meeting. The mayor isn’t here yet?”

  Wendy shrugged. She was a slender woman, with a wispy sort of fragility that reminded Quill of a dandelion after the petals had blown off. “Adela said he was taking an important phone call. He’ll be here as best he can. I hope it’s sooner rather than later. This is a very odd sort of crowd, don’t you think? They seem restless. More like a mob than a congregation.”

  Quill had to agree with her. Most of the faces she knew looked disturbed, or angry, or a combination of the two. The faces she didn’t know looked avid.

  “Who are all these people?” Adela asked suddenly. She turned around and looked accusingly at Quill. “Where have they all come from?”

  “Well, I don’t know, exactly.” Quill glanced at Marge. “Some of them may be here as a result of the announcement yesterday. The news that that amount of money was to be dropped on a town like ours could attract . . .” Quill wasn’t sure how to end the sentence.

  Marge did it for her. “Shysters. Crooks. Con artists,” she said bluntly. “She jerked her chin at the frail old lady Quill had seen at the trailer park yesterday. Mrs. Huston, the woman who’d been taking care of Melissa’s Caleb. A man who was clearly her son, his hard-looking wife, and three sullen teenagers surrounded her. “Jean Huston, for example. Hasn’t seen that no-good son of hers for years and surprise, surprise, he got here as fast as his beat-up Toyota could carry him as soon as he heard the news about her million bucks.” Marge pointed at a thin, ferrety-looking man slumped inconspicuously in the corner of a pew. “That’s Dieter Jacoby. The National Association of Realtors kicked him out of the group last year because he was shafting his clients. And a lot of the rest of these?” Marge’s gaze swept the crowd contemptuously. “Gawkers,” she said contemptuously.

  Adela was dressed in a vivid green pantsuit. A fist-sized pendant of amber and silver rested on her considerable bosom. She fiddled with it nervously. “I wish Elmer would get here,” she said fretfully. Her eyes swept past Meg, then back again. “Why does Meg have orange paint all over her hat?” she demanded.

  Meg felt the top of her head, then took her hat off and stuck it in her parka pocket.

  “Have you been by to see my Christmas decorations lately?” Adela asked in a dangerous tone.

  Quill asked, without a blink, “At your house, do you mean? I haven’t had a chance to, yet, no. I’m sure they’re quite beautiful.”

  Adela frowned at Meg. “Not any more they aren’t. I had an elegant Santa’s workshop in the front yard. New this year. It was quite impressive. Somebody shot it.”

  “Shot it?”

  “With orange paint. There was orange paint all over the place.”

  Quill bit her li
p. “Hm.”

  “That is such a shame,” Meg said brightly.

  Adela leveled a long, thoughtful look at Meg. There was a stamping of feet from the back of the aisle, and she turned her head a little. “The mayor has arrived,” she said. “And not a moment too soon. You will excuse me.” She huffed her way out of the pew and followed Elmer up the aisle to the front of the church.

  Elmer went to the lectern. Adela sat in the deacon’s chair, folded her hands in her lap, and glared at Meg. Meg wriggled her fingers in a cheerful salute.

  “Will you cut that out?!” Quill hissed at her.

  “Friends,” Elmer said uncertainly. “I welcome you all to this special meeting of the Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce. I know that you were all looking forward to the real estate seminar of the late . . .” He stopped and mopped his brow. “Mr. Kingsfield. But as you know, Mr. Kingsfield met with a trag—”

  “Where’s the body?” someone shouted.

  “They took it on down to the coroner’s office, fathead,” somebody responded.

  A thin, elaborately made-up woman in the front pew sprang up and waved her hand. “Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. I want to know what’s going to happen to my uncle’s million dollars, now that Zeke’s dead. I heard that the money’s here in the bank at Hemlock Falls. Is that true?”

  “Yeah!” Mrs. Huston’s son shouted. “We want our money!”

  The crowd began to chant, “Money! Money! Money!”

  “Well,” Elmer gasped. “I don’t know a thing about this. Not a thing.” His desperate gaze swept the audience. “There! The guy you want to ask about that is right over there.” He pointed at Charley Comstock. “That man Charley Comstock’s on the board at the bank. That’s a question you want to ask him.”

  “Elmer, you fathead,” Marge said fiercely. “Shut the hell up!”

  There was a surge of people toward the pew behind Quill, where Charley Comstock had risen to his feet.

  Meg turned and looked at the Chamber members. “Are you all thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That we need to get our little keisters out of here?” Marge said. “You bet. Grab hold of Dookie, Meg. Quill, you take Wendy. As for you, Charley, keep your head down and follow me.”

  Marge let nothing stand in her way. She shoved, pushed, stamped on a foot or two, and bulled her the way out of the church and onto the relative safety of the lawn, “Like Moses leading the children of Israel,” Dookie gasped. “Thank you all, my friends.” He drew Wendy apart from the crush flowing down the steps, his arm over her shoulders protectively.

  “Didn’t help Charley all that much,” Marge observed dispassionately.

  And, in fact, Charley had been waylaid by a small mob. People pulled at his sleeve, blocked his way, pushed at him, and shouted.

  “Do you think we should do something?” Quill said. “Maybe we should give Davy a call?”

  “Nah,” Marge said. “He’s handling it. Look at him.”

  With little ceremony, and even less courtesy, Charley knocked aside the people in his path. He made his way steadily toward his Buick Park Avenue, elbowed a woman away from the car door, got in, and slammed the door. He gunned the engine three or four times, and the remnants of the crowd fell back.

  A few moments later, and it was all over. Groups of two and three people clustered together, their voices loud and indignant, but the violence that had simmered just below the surface was gone. Cars roared out of the church parking lot, one after the other.

  A half-empty Coke can sat in the snow piled up by the church steps.

  Dookie bent and picked it up; the kindly minister looked infinitely sad. Wendy took his hand and folded her own over it in comfort.

  “That’s it,” Quill said. She was so furious the words came out in a strangled whisper. “I’m calling a council of war.”

  “The thing about people with red hair,” Meg said in an undertone, as they sat around the largest table in the Tavern Lounge, “is that when they lose their temper, they really lose their temper.”

  “I’ve never seen Quill so mad,” Dina said in simple admiration.

  “She’s been like that since we were little,” Meg said proudly. “You can push her pretty far, but one step over that line and foom!” She mimed an explosion.

  “That musta bin some meeting,” Doreen said. “I’m sorry I missed it. I heard somebody pushed the Rev’rund right into a snowbank.”

  “Nobody pushed anybody into a snowbank.” Quill carried a tray of drinks over from the bar and set them on the table. “A ginger ale for you, Marge. A Coke for Doreen. A Diet Coke for Dina, coffee for Meg,” she said as she handed them out, “and I am having a glass of wine, since you guys insisted.”

  “Keep your blood pressure down,” Marge agreed.

  “Mellow you out a little,” Meg said.

  “Settle your stomach.”

  Quill took a sip. It was a red zinfindel and quite good. “Okay. Here’s the deal. The town’s gone crazy. The Inn is about to be sued for more money than our insurance policy offers. That’s two compelling reasons why we have to solve this murder . . .”

  “. . . If it is a murder,” Dina said. “Davy says . . .”

  “Davy can say what he likes, Dina. It’s murder. There’s a pile of evidence. But it’s all circumstantial. But our problem is bigger than that. We have no credible leads. No tangible clues. Nothing to give us the faintest indication of who did this and why.”

  “The ‘why’ isn’t hard,” Meg muttered. “Zeke Kingsfield was a jerk.”

  “Exactly,” Quill said. “And the fact that he was a jerk gives us our first lead.”

  “It does?” Marge said. “I know a lot of jerks. And nobody’s murdering them.”

  “You’re exactly right, too,” Quill said. “So let’s take a look at his particular brand of obnoxious behavior and see where it takes us. With luck, we’re going to end up with a list of questions. If we get those questions answered, we’ll be well on our way to finding out who did this.

  “First, it’s clear that Zeke rode roughshod over the people living at Gorgeous Gorges trailer park. Will Frazier is a man who feels responsible for their welfare. And both Marge and I saw Will Frazier run out of the church about seven o’clock last night, vowing to find Zeke and call him to account. Not twenty minutes later, somebody hit me over the head, when I was walking in an area not five hundred yards from the spot where Zeke went into the gorge. So the first question is: where was Will last night between the hours of seven, when he left the church, and six o’clock this morning, when whoever it was sent Zeke tumbling into the gorge?”

  Doreen raised her hand. “I think I might be able to find out some of that. Will’s girlfriend sent me an app to work as a maid last month. I didn’t follow up, because we were layin’ people off instead of hiring. But I can start with her. And I don’t mind walking up to Will and askin’ him straight out if he can prove where he was last night.”

  Quill had her sketchpad in front of her. She made a note. “Good. Next, and this is critical, what happened to the trip wire?”

  “Do we know for sure it’s a wire?” Dina asked. “Did you actually see the cut it made in the tree and the post?”

  “Those are two good questions,” Quill said. “I suppose it could have been a rope.”

  “It’s easy enough to tell.” Dina rummaged in her backpack. “You know what I can do? My cell phone has a camera function.” She pulled it out of a side pocket and brandished it. “I’ll go down to the murder site and take a couple of pictures. Maybe we can get a better grip on what we’re looking for.”

  “Seems like a long shot to me,” Marge said. “Whether it’s a wire or a rope, it’s probably long gone by now.”

  “It might not be as easy to dispose of as you think,” Quill said. “Zeke went out at first light. Mike found him forty-five minutes later. It takes at least twenty minutes to get to that spot in the trail from the departure point by the vegetable garden. Whoever was hidden in the woods had to gat
her up the wire and get out fast.”

  “Maybe they hid in the woods all day,” Dina suggested.

  “I doubt it. It was twenty degrees out there. And it was risky, once the police and the emergency crew showed up.”

  “The police searched the area and didn’t find anything or anyone,” Meg said. “I agree with Quill. The murderer had to take the wire with him.” Then she added conscientiously, “Or her. And it had to be at least forty feet long to run from the tree to the fence post. That’s a lot of wire. Or rope.”

  “Dumpsters,” Dina said. “I’ll check Dumpsters. I’d better make a note of all this.” She tapped at her cell phone with one finger. “I’m text messaging myself,” she explained.

  “Now,” Quill said. “Let’s take another look at motive.”

  “I’ll give you something interesting for motive,” Doreen said. “That Lydia’s got a motive. Kingsfield didn’t sleep in his own bed.”

  “Really?” Meg said. “Now that’s interesting.”

  “How can you be sure he didn’t sleep in his own bed, Doreen?” Marge asked skeptically. “You see him in somebody else’s?”

  Doreen looked at Marge pityingly. “You don’t know much about innkeepin’, do ya?”

  “It’s like this,” Dina explained carefully. “When you, like, work at a place like this, you end up knowing a lot more about people than they might want you to know.”

  “It’s inevitable,” Quill apologized.

  “Comes with the territory,” Meg said.

  Doreen shrugged. “Only one side of the mattress was laid on. Only one pillow was wrinkled. Only one set of towels used in the bathroom. And before you wonder how I know it was that Lydia that was there and not him, there was makeup all over the towels and Opium perfume all over the pillow. Some kinds of perfume,” Doreen added ruminatively, “leave an awful stink.”

  “Do you know where Kingsfield did sleep?” Marge asked.

  “That LaToya’s,” Doreen said. “Both sides of the bed slept in, and as far as the sheets . . .”

  Quill cleared her throat. Doreen clamped her mouth shut.

  “Hah,” Marge said. She looked a bit flummoxed. “I never thought about it before, but if you run a hotel you see a lot. I’ll bet you get some kind of divorce lawyers nosing around here.”