“Fabulous dinner, sweetie.” Benny drained the last of the cappuccino. “You’re a genius with lamb, Meg. A positive genius.”
“We should consider it for the spring show,” Lydia said. “I mean, lamb, asparagus, new peas, young lettuce. Classic. Simple. Brilliant.” She tapped a few notes into her BlackBerry. “The mint chutney in particular, Meg. It’s wonderful. I think it should be part of the product debut. And we certainly want to spotlight it on the spring show.”
Meg had prepared the first of ten menus she’d selected as candidates for the Good Taste program. It was for the debut program, in the spring, and she’d gone to a great deal of trouble to get fresh ingredients shipped in and taken her time over the meal itself.
Quill hadn’t said much during dinner—which had been spectacular. She was preoccupied with the very risky chance she was going to take.
Did she have a choice? There was no way to bring Davy and the sheriff’s department in on this, not legally. And Howie had been very clear about the scarcity of evidence. It was almost certain that the murderer would go free even if what Quill was about to do actually worked.
Doreen had grasped the problem immediately. She’d turned Caleb over to Quill for the afternoon and gone to work. Quill looked at her watch. Past nine o’clock, and the dining room was almost empty except for the Good Taste party. Caleb was asleep in his crib upstairs, under Dina’s watchful eye. And Doreen still hadn’t signaled her yet.
“We’ve been neglecting meringue,” Lydia said. She poked her spoon delicately into the remains of the dessert. “I have to admit, Meg. This is a work of near genius, just like the chutney. Do you have a name for it?”
“Christmas Angel,” Meg said a little doubtfully. “I’m not very good at that part of menu planning. Names, I mean. But it’s a meringue whipped with peppermint. I was afraid the peppermint chocolate mousse in the middle might overwhelm it.”
“The only thing it overwhelms is me,” Bernie said blissfully. “It’s perfect.”
“I have to agree,” LaToya said. “Although if you ditched the mousse, it’d be a terrific dessert for anybody with an eye on the scale. Like me.”
“Exactly,” Benny said enthusiastically. “Now, if you’d given me much more than a demitasse-full, it would have been too much, given the delicate nature of my digestive system. And think of the changes we can ring on this. I love the idea of flavored meringue. I can see a whole show designed around flavored meringues.
“Is there any reason why the meringues have to be sweet?” Ajit asked. “Eggs whites are neutral. Why not curry-flavored meringues? Or dill?”
Lydia’s eyes glowed. “Now this,” she said with excitement, “is exactly what I was hoping would happen with the show. Innovation. Creativity. Food used in ways it hasn’t been used before. Isn’t this wonderful, Meg?”
Meg glanced at Quill. “Yes,” she said dryly. “It is.”
“Are we boring you, Quill?” Lydia asked somewhat acidly. “You keep staring off in the distance.” She turned around and followed Quill’s gaze. “Your foyer is just as overdecorated as it was the day before yesterday. Oh. There’s your whosis. Your housekeeper. She’s waving at you like mad.”
Doreen gave Quill an abrupt nod.
Quill took a deep, shaky breath. It was now or never. “Everybody? I’ve arranged for liqueurs in the conference room. Would you all come along with me?” She rose from the table. Except for Lydia, the others got automatically to their feet. Quill waited. With a snort of exasperation, Lydia pushed herself away from the table and got up. “Lay on, Macduff.”
“The conference room?” LaToya said. “What about the Tavern Lounge? It’s so cozy there. So Christmassy with that big tree in the corner and the pine scent in the air and the fire burning cheerily away. I love it.”
“Have you noticed,” Benny whispered to Quill as they trooped down the hall, “how cheerful everyone is now that you-know-who is out of the picture?”
“Yes,” Quill said. As she passed Doreen, she gave her hand a brief squeeze. “I have.”
A few moments later, she opened the door to the conference room and stepped aside so that they all could file in.
“You have our monitor in here,” Ajit said with displeasure.
“Yes,” Quill said. “I have to apologize for taking it without telling you. But I discovered that your tape wouldn’t work in our machine. The commercial equipment is quite different.”
“I would really prefer that you not borrow my equipment,” he said testily. “And what tape are you talking about?”
Kathleen and Nate had set up an array of brandies and liqueurs on a trolley under the whiteboard and set out crystal and napkins at seven chairs. Quill waited until everyone was seated, then wheeled the trolley around to let everyone serve themselves.
She turned the video monitor on, and then faced them all. “Zeke Kingsfield was murdered this morning. This was a clever murder, committed by an organized person with a great deal of daring. But it was a murder.”
No one else noticed Davy and Nate slip into the back of the room.
“Sometime just before seven thirty last night, this person left the kitchen by the back door and went outside to set a trap on the ski trail. The Christmas lights illuminate the field that lies between the Inn and the drop over the gorge, so this person went over the rise and into the woods that lead down to the gorge; it was here that this person ran into me. I was stunned. The killer continued on to the drop. The six-by-six log was rolled into place. The fence post was rocked back and forth to loosen it still further, and Zeke’s killer returned to the Inn undetected.
“Except for one important clue.”
Quill looked into a sea of staring faces. At the door to the conference room, Nate and Davy stood with their arms folded.
Dina’s photographs lay on the trolley in a manila envelope. Quill took them out one by one and held them up. “The next morning, the killer returned to the drop, strung a cable between the loosened fence post and this tree, and waited for Zeke to come around the bend at a pretty good clip. He tripped on the tree trunk and fell into the wire. The impact was enough to tear the post out of the ground completely and he fell heavily into the chain-link fence.
“Did Zeke fall to his death as he spun out of control? Or did the killer push him over the edge as he lay stunned in the snow? We’ll never know for certain. I’d lay odds, however, that the killer provided the last bit of assistance needed to assure Zeke’s death. The killer returned to the Inn, leaving the wire in the same place it’d been found. It was a perfect crime.
“Except for another important clue.”
Quill flipped the video monitor on. “This is the tape of the dancing elves Ajit laid down yesterday morning. It’s hard to tell who is who, isn’t it? All we know is that the feet belong to LaToya, Bernie, and Melissa Smith.”
Quill fast-forwarded. “And this is the tape Ajit laid down after dinner. Look at the feet. See the shoes on the left? They don’t fit. This elf has unusually tiny feet. Now, Melissa Smith left the Inn late yesterday afternoon taking everything with her but her elf costume and her baby.”
Quill switched the tape recorder off. “Shall we check to see who among us has a size-five shoe? It’s you, Lydia. You didn’t go to Syracuse with Zeke last night. You stayed here.”
“That’s absurd,” Lydia said hoarsely.
“And here is the ski tag that was caught in the cable as the murderer detached it from the tree and wound it up. It’s from your jacket, Lydia.” Quill held it up. “It’s only half of the tag. The other half is on your silver jacket.” Quill looked at the other faces around the table. “It’s absurd to think that none of you suspected that it was Lydia under that clown makeup and belled hat and not Melissa Smith. It was a safe bet that no one in Meg’s kitchen would mark the difference. It was too chaotic. The costumes were exactly alike. The gentleman behind you,” Quill continued in a conversational way, “is Sheriff Kiddermeister. Sheriff, what’s the penalty for an a
ccessory to premeditated murder in New York State?”
“Lethal injection,” Davy said tonelessly.
“No!” Ajit exploded. “That’s too much to ask of anyone, Lydia. I will not keep quiet anymore. Of course I knew that Lydia had taken Melissa’s place.”
Lydia leaped to her feet, her lips drawn back over her teeth. She hissed like a cat at bay. Ajit stood up slowly, both hands held out, palms up, as if in supplication. “It’s too much to ask of me,” he repeated quietly.
Quill looked from Ajit’s handsome, perfectly proportioned face to Lydia and back again. “The two of you aren’t having an affair,” she said. “It isn’t that. So what is it?”
“To tell you the truth,” Benny said. “I knew it was Lydia, too.” He raised an eyebrow in Bernie’s direction. His partner ran his hands over his face, then nodded, resignedly.
“You all knew about this?!” Davy asked. “You were going to let her get away with murder?”
“Zeke’d been getting away with murder for years,” Bernie said wryly. “It only seemed fair.”
Davy looked revolted. Quill felt revolted, too.
“He was disgusting,” Lydia said.
Quill, looking at her, was struck with a sudden hallucination. It wasn’t Lydia standing there. It was a huge snake. Coiled, head drawn back to strike.
“Disgusting,” Lydia said, her voice sibilant. “He was a blot. That cocky smugness. That arrogance. That oily self-regard. You only had to look at him to want to smash his head like a rotten pumpkin. He polluted everything. Ruined everything. All he had to do was touch it, and it was tainted, destroyed. That hundred-pound thumb of his on my magazine was the last straw. I did the world a goddam service.”
It was, Quill thought, the first time she’d come across that particular motive for murder: Zeke Kingsfield just didn’t fit into Lydia’s elegant design.
“You don’t think I’ve done enough community service by tracking down and capturing a murderer?”
Meg looked so pathetic Quill’s heart was wrung. She patted her sister consolingly. “It could be worse. Howie could have sentenced you to salting municipal parking lots instead of a couple of hours out with the Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce caroling group.”
“At least Harvey dropped the Angel-ettes idea,” Meg muttered. “I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies.”
“You should be just as thankful that I’m going to be noble and spare your feelings. I am not going to remind you that I’m the one that tracked down and captured the murderer.”
“And I’m going to be equally noble and not say that getting Lydia Kingsfield hauled off to the pokey means we’re going to go bankrupt for sure.”
“No, we won’t. There’s a bit of a hitch in our proceedings that’s true. But the leasing agreement is still in place, and we’re still going to get a check every month from Kingsfield Publishing, so we’ll manage.”
“What about him?” Meg rolled her eyes in Albert McWhirter’s direction. He stood gravely next to Mark Anthony Jefferson, his knitted hat placed precisely on top of his head. His gaze met Quill’s. He looked very tired. It had been four days since Melissa’s disappearance. Caleb’s fate was hanging over them all.
“I don’t know,” Quill said truthfully. She looked down at Caleb, who was tucked safely next to her in the pew. Her beautiful borrowed baby. “It’s Christmas Eve, Meg, and Albert’s let Caleb stay with us for now. I’m just going to trust that this all turns out for the best.” Quill adjusted the knitted cap on Meg’s head. The cap was one of twenty knitted by the Hemlock Falls Ladies Auxiliary. The wool was a sprightly combination of red and green and stitched across the front of each one was the legend: H. F. CAROLERS. Meg’s hat was missing an L.
“Are you ready, Meg?”
“I suppose so. You know that I sing off-key. Harvey thinks I’m doing it on purpose.”
Quill gestured at the rest of the singers. “It’s the spirit that counts.”
It was Christmas Eve, and twenty of the twenty-four membersof the Chamber of Commerce were assembled at the Hemlock Falls Church of the Word of God. Adela Henry was passing out the rest of the knitted hats (and accepting the compliments on them as her due). Dookie and his wife, Wendy, each held flutes. Howie Murchison carried a guitar, and Miriam, with one hand on his coat sleeve in a proprietary way, carried a tambourine. Outside, the snow had started to fall in big, fat flakes.
Harvey clapped his hands together and said, “Carolers! Are you ready?! Let’s all line up at the door. The bus is warmed up and ready!”
Quill tucked Caleb in the baby carryall at her breast, and checked that he was well wrapped up against the cold. His lamb was clutched in one tiny fist. Quill had tied a red-and-green plaid ribbon around its neck. He waved the lamb with a chortle, then gummed the ribbon with a contented squeal.
Marge, Dina, and Doreen edged their way through the crowd toward them. Dina bent and stroked Caleb’s cheek, “And how’s Mr. Cutie this evening?”
“Gah!” Caleb said.
It took some time for the hopeful carolers to sort themselves out, get into line, and trickle onto the bus. Quill and Meg were near the back, Caleb between them. Albert took the seat ahead of them and sat alone, staring out the window. Marge and Harland sat across the aisle, and Dina sat shoulder to shoulder with Doreen.
“Well, at least you didn’t end up with the flu,” Meg said philosophically. “And Ajit’s going to run the Good Taste show past the new editor of L’Aperitif, who, as it turns out, is the old editor, Lally Preston, so there’s a chance she’ll at least consider it. So I suppose it’s not such a terrible Christmas after all.”
“Really?” Quill said. The snow on the window blurred the Christmas lights of Hemlock Falls to a celestial blur of color. Beside her, Caleb crooned to himself. “It seems a little sad to me.”
Harvey, his knitted cap rakishly askew over his ear, strode up the aisle, a pitch pipe in his hand. “People! Our first stop is the Gorgeous Gorges trailer park. We’re going to bring some Christmas cheer to those poor souls.”
“Wonderful,” Meg muttered. “What are the chances that if they recognize Marge and the two of us; they’ll dump eggnog all over our heads? I mean, we’re the ones that put the kibosh on their million-dollar jackpot finally and forever.”
Quill made a small movement of protest.
Harvey skidded to a halt beside their seat. “Meg!” he said accusingly.
“The very same,” she said agreeably.
“I’ve changed my mind about you humming instead of singing. You go right ahead and sing.”
“Thank you, Harvey.” She smiled impishly at him. “Merry Christmas!”
“And Merry Christmas to you.” He clapped his hands. “People! Let’s limber those voices up!” He blew into the pitch pipe. “Let’s have a nice, upbeat version of ‘Jingle Bells.’ ”
“Gah,” Caleb said.
This was followed by “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” On the second verse of “Frosty the Snowman,” the bus bumped down the end of the path to the Gorgeous Gorges trailer park and came to a halt, and the choristers, for the most part, were in a merry mood. They all filed out of the bus and lined up in front of the single-wide trailer marked OFFICE. Caleb waved a delighted fist at the inflatable Santa’s workshop.
“I see these ornaments escaped the Christmas massacre,” Adela said as she passed by them. “Huh!” She stopped at the sight of the baby in Quill’s arms. “Well,” she said. “And who’s this then? Who’s the nicest little baby?” She patted his head.
“Would you mind if I held him a bit?” Albert said shyly at Quill’s elbow.
“Of course not,” Quill said. “You’re his grandfather, after all.” She extricated Caleb from the carryall. “Here, cup your right hand under his head and your left under his bottom.”
Albert held him, but the expression on his face was so terrified, that Quill laughed despite herself. “Just think of how warm and solid he is,” she suggested. “Think of how safe
you want him to be.”
Albert relaxed a little. He looked down at the baby tenderly.
“You seem an old hand at this, Quill,” Adela said with heavy jocularity. “You sure you don’t have another one of these at home?”
Quill blinked at her. “What?”
“I said, are you sure you don’t have another one of these . . .”
“Yes,” Quill said. “Yes, I heard you.” She clutched at Meg’s arm. “Meg? Meg!”
“Not now, Quill. We’re getting ready to sing.”
“People!” Harvey shouted. “I want you all to line up in three rows now. Shortest singers in front. Tallest singers in back! First carol is: ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas!’ ”
As the voices rang out, twenty strong and accompanied by guitar, flute, and tambourine, the doors to the trailers of Gorgeous Gorges opened up and the residents came out to listen. Will Frazier stamped down the path to the circle of lawn where the singers stood and joined in. The large blonde with the curlers and the pink bunny slippers came out with a tin of cookies in her hand. The Mexican family from number 43 came out with mariachis, a stack of paper cups, and a large pitcher that sent steam into the air.
And from number 36, Mrs. Huston came out. She was well wrapped in a down coat.
There was a slight, brown-haired figure at her side.
Meg saw her before Quill did. “Oh, my,” she whispered. “Oh, gosh.” She took her sister’s hand and held it.
“Melissa,” Quill said. She closed her eyes against the sudden tears and bit her lip, hard. “She was with Mrs. Huston all the time. Some detectives we are. We should have guessed.”
Meg didn’t say a word, just held Quill’s hand all the tighter. And she was the one who tugged at Albert McWhirter’s sleeve and pushed him toward his daughter.
“Well, that wasn’t too bad, as community service stints go,” Meg said cheerfully. She swung her feet up on the oak chest that Quill used as a coffee table. “And Myles said he’ll be home when?”
A Carol for a Corpse Page 20
