Quill carried the photograph into the kitchen. Nadine stood at the sink, staring out the back window.
“Nadine, I just wanted to say goodbye. If there’s anything at all that you need, please call me.”
“Thanks for coming, Quill. I’ve been telling everyone I don’t know when the funeral’s going to be held. Myles said maybe a week or two.”
“That long?”
“He wants to complete the investigation. There’ll have to be an autopsy. Howie Murchison says that’s standard in an accidental death. He won’t be able to probate the will until the inquest is done, so I hope Myles is quick about it.”
“Will you be … all right… until then?”
This was local code for money matters. Wealthy farmers were said to be doing “all right.” Marge Schmidt was said to do “all right” out of the diner. Betty Hall, a junior partner, was held to be doing not so well.
“Things weren’t going so well,” Nadine said, confirming the commonly held belief that Gil’s money troubles were real and not the grousing of a Hemlock businessman who felt it unlucky to look too successful. “Mark Jefferson at the bank said there’s a couple of outstanding loans that have to be paid off, but Gil had a lot of life insurance. That’s the one thing he kept up. Now Marge Schmidt” - spite made Nadine ugly - “had better have some damn good proof that Gil borrowed money from her. If she doesn’t, she can whistle for it.”
“Meg and I could probably find something to tide you over,” said Quill.
“Thanks. But I can always call on Tom. He’s been a good brother, by and large. Been supporting Gil for all these years.”
Quill shifted uncomfortably. “By the way, Nadine, I found this dropped on the floor of the living room. Is it yours or Gil’s?”
Nadine glanced at the photograph. Her expression froze. “My sister-in-law,” she said shortly.
“Your sister-in-law?”
“John Raintree’s sister, yes. She was married to my brother Jack. We don’t talk about her or him, so just forget it, I okay?”
“Sorry,” said Quill. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t?” Nadine lit a cigarette and slitted her eyes through the smoke. “John never told you?”
“No!”
“Then I’m not about to.” Nadine crushed the cigarette into a used coffee filter in the sink.
Quill went back to the living room. She made idle conversation with the remaining townspeople, but the visitors were clearing out. She wondered if she’d ever know all the town’s secrets, or if she’d always be treated like a flatland foreigner.
Quill looked at her watch. She needed to get back to the Inn and she still had Tom Peterson to tackle about the meat. Perhaps he might tell her about John’s sister. She fingered the photograph. She should either leave the photograph here, or take it to Myles as evidence in the case. And if she did that, she’d have betrayed John, perhaps, to the inexorable machinery of the law. If she could just talk to John first, show him the picture.
Her bad angel, a handy scapegoat for childhood crimes and misdemeanors, and little-used until now, whispered, “Swipe it!” She did.
After a hurried exit from the Gilmeister living room, she drove to Peterson’s Transport, wondering if the penalty for theft increased relative to the viability of the victim. “He’s dead, he won’t care,” sounded like a practical, if graceless, defense. On the other hand, phrases like “impeding an official investigation” had an ominous ring to them. So did, “concealing the evidence in a crime.”
I am hunted, beleaguered, and driven by time, Quill thought as she turned onto Route 96. It was four-thirty; she had to be back at the Inn before six for the Chamber dinner. Maybe she could just toss the spoiled meat in a convenient dumpster rather than talking face to face with Tom Peterson. But Meg would have a fit. Peterson would want to send the meat back to the supplier, who in turn would dispose of it, and process, thought Quill, will be process.
Petersons had owned much of Hemlock Falls at one time or another; as the family’s fortunes declined, bits and pieces of their property had been sold off. Tom had leased the parcel on the comer of Route 96 and Falls River Road to Gil when they had gone into the car dealership together. The land abutted the warehouses and dispatch offices from which Tom ran his trucking business, a location convenient to Syracuse, Ithaca, and Rochester. Gil’ s hopes of a customer base far beyond Hemlock Falls had never materialized, but the dealership managed somehow from year to year. Quill wondered who, if anyone, would take it over now that Gil had passed on.
Quill pulled into the driveway to the dealership. The Buick flags were at half-mast, and a black-bordered sign had been posted on the glass doors: CLOSED OUT OF RESPECT FOR GIL, which Quill thought had a better ring to it than “Drowned, but not forgotten.”
She drove the car around to the converted house trailer that served as a dispatch office for Peterson Transport. It was placed outside the chain-link fence that surrounded the warehouse. She parked the car, got out, took the smelly cardboard box from the trunk, and carried it to the trailer door. Freddie Allbright, whom Quill knew from his occasional appearances at Chamber meetings as a substitute for Gil and Tom, opened the door partway and greeted her with a laconic snap of his gum.
“Hi, Freddie. Is Tom in?”
Freddie jerked his head toward the inside of the trailer. “Mr. Peterson!” he shouted, not taking his eyes from Quill. “Compn’y.”
“Quill.” Tom rose from his desk and came forward to welcome her. “Come in. Sit down.”
Quill sat down in one of the plastic chairs that served for office furniture and set the cardboard box on the floor next to it. The scent of raw meat filled the air. Freddie hulked in the doorway, snapping his gum.
Tom stared at him. “Freddie, I want you to go out and find that dog.”
“Just dig hisself out again.”
“Then find him and chain him up,” said Tom deliberately. “He’s the best security system we’ve got.” Freddie slouched out of the trailer. Tom shook his head. “You never seem to have trouble keeping good help, Quill. Want to pass along your secret?” Since this didn’t seem to be anything more than a rhetoncal question, Quill didn’t reply. Tom settled himself behind his desk and smiled. “What can I do for you?”
“Two things. One’s kind of a pain in the neck, the other’s more of a question.”
“Bad news first,” said Tom. “Then we can end on a positive note.”
“This last shipment of beef was spoiled,” Quill said apologetically. “I haven’t brought the whole side, of course, just the fillets.”
Tom blinked his pale eyes at her. “It’s been awfully warm, Quill. Are you sure your cooler’s working properly?”
“This was delivered yesterday,” said Quill, “and your guys are great, Tom, they always bring it straight into the cooler. Meg takes the beef out to let it get to room temperature about three hours before the dinner crowd shows up. Anything that isn’t used is disposed of that night. She said this stuff is tainted.” Quill rummaged in the box and unwrapped a pair of fillets. “See the graininess at the edges?”
Tom raised his eyebrows and gave the beef a cursory glance.
“Meg and I both thought you might want to check the whole shipment.”
Tom nodded. His hands fiddled impatiently with a piece of paper on his desk. Quill, exasperated at Tom’s indifference, said tartly, “Can you give us credit for this, Tom? And we’re going to need another delivery.”
“I’ve got one coming in from the Chicago slaughterhouse in about twenty minutes. We’ll have it up there within the hour.”
“That’ll be fine.”
He smiled at her. “And the second request?”
“Oh.” Quill, not entirely sure why she was uncomfortable demurred a bit. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am that Gil’s gone.”
“Yes,” Tom nodded. “Nice guy. Lousy business partner That it?” He rose, clearly prepared to show her out. The piece of paper he’d been pla
ying with fell to the floor. It was a matchbook. A full one. The cover was folded in threes.
Quill picked it up.
“Nervous habit,” said Tom, “ever since I quit smoking.”
“I’d like to have a pack with me. Just in case.” Quill slipped the matchbook into her skirt pocket. “There was one thing I wanted to ask you, about your brother’s wife?”
“Jack’s wife?” Tom’s eyes narrowed. With his thin lips and prominent nose, he looked more like a lizard than ever. “She’s no longer with us, I’m afraid.”
“They divorced?” said Quill sympathetically. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Jack’s dead,” said Tom. “I don’t know where that little bitch is, and I don’t care.”
Quill’s face went hot with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to intrude,” she said, “but…”
“None of your business, Quill. The past is past. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to check on Freddie. He’s supposed to retrieve that damn German shepherd and plug the hole in the chain-link fence where it dug out. Has trouble remembering orders. I have to keep tabs on him every minute.” Still talking easily, Tom had her out the door and in front of her car before she knew it. He opened the driver’s door and waited for her to get in. “Any more trouble with the deliveries, you call me directly, Quill. See you tonight at the meeting.”
Quill drove back to the Inn, the matchbook and the photograph safely in her purse. Something, she told herself darkly, was definitely afoot.
She parked in her usual spot by the back door to the kitchen, turned the ignition off, and thought through the events of the past few days. John, the ready recipient of all her confidences over the past year, her true partner in the sometimes harrowing responsibilities of innkeeping, had to be protected somehow. Quill knew there was an explanation of the picture, of Tom Peterson’s matchbook, of Gil’s death, if she could just buy a little time for John. She had to talk to him.
But first she had to find him.
The dashboard clock said six-seventeen. The Chamber was in the middle of a costume rehearsal, followed by dinner at six-thirty. She and Myles had a standing date Saturday nights - subject to various Tompkins County or Hemlock Inn emergencies - which started about ten. The rest of the evening left very little time to search John’s room for further clues - such as, a nasty voice whispered in her head, the bolt from Peterson’s John Deere tractor. Quill bit her lip hard, and pushed the thought away.
She couldn’t talk to Meg; the presence of L’Aperitifs critic coinciding with a dining room oversold to History Days tourists would already have her bouncing off the walls. As it was, with John still missing and unable to serve as sommelier, Quill would have to scrape her off the ceiling.
Myles could help, of course - with an All Points Bulletin. But exposure to official questions raised by the presence of that photograph in the wallet of a drowning victim could only endanger John, at least until she knew the facts.
No, Myles was out of the question. Besides, she’d interfered with his investigations before. The wrath of Moses on discovering the defalcations of the Israelites was nothing to it. She would just have to handle this herself. There was one advantage to half of Hemlock Falls stuffing the Inn tonight - somebody must have seen John. If she kept her inquiries discreet, she might find him before anyone other than she and Meg knew he’d gone missing.
“Did John show up yet?” Meg thrust her head in the open car window. “Did he tell you where he’d been? Is he sober? Did you get the meat? And what the heck are you doing sitting in here doing absolutely nothing! Do you know what’s happening?” Meg raked her hair forward in irritable bursts.
“What’s happening?” asked Quill, calmly getting out of the car. “Are the sous chefs all here?”
“Yes!”
“And the wine and fruit deliveries okay?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“And the Inn’s not on fire.” Quill steered her sister back to the kitchen.
“No! Don’t be such a smartass, Quill. We need John! Look!” Quill pushed the right half of the dining room door open and peered around it. Edward Lancashire, dressed in an elegant charcoal-gray suit, was talking to an equally elegant blonde by the windows overlooking the gorge. His wife, Quill bet. The dining room was filled with chattering tourists for the Early Bird specials. Quill squinted at a tuxedoed figure seating guests. Not John, but Peter Williams, the young graduate student who worked as headwaiter on weekends. Peter circled the room, quietly observant of the quality of service. Quill let out a small sigh of relief; Peter could pinch-hit as sommelier cum maitre d’. All she had to do was distract Meg long enough to get her back to the kitchen. Once absorbed in her cooking, Meg would be oblivious to Armageddon and stop plaguing her with questions she couldn’t answer.
“I’ve seen the woman with Edward somewhere before,” Quill said mendaciously. “Is that one of the editors, do you think?”
“Oh, God,” breathed Meg: “I’ll bet it is! Where’s John, dammit. They’ll need an aperitif.”
“I’ll tell Peter to take care of them.”
“Don’t tell him they’re from L’Aperitif They’re supposed to be incognito.”
“And you go back into the kitchen.”
“Right.”
“And cook like hell.”
“Right.” Face as tense as any Assyrian coming down like a wolf on the oblivious Sennacharib, Meg flexed her hands and returned to the Aga.
Quill looked at her watch and dashed to her room to change. One of these days she’d get organized enough to leave time for a real bath, but two years at the Inn had honed her fast-shower technique. The desire for a leisurely soak fell prey to necessity more and more often.
Quill’s rooms were simply decorated, designed as a refuge from the demands of her day. Natural muslin curtains hung at the windows. A cream damask-stripe chair and couch sat under the mullioned south window. A cherry desk and armoire stood in the corner. Beige Berber carpet covered the pine floor. The eggshell walls held two paintings, both by friends from New York, and a few pen-and-ink sketches she’d done as a student. Her easel stood in the southwest window, a half-finished study of roses and iris glowing in the subdued light. She spared the roses a perplexed frown, then showered quickly, subdued her curly red hair into a knot at the top of her head, and slipped into a teal silk dress with a handkerchief hem. The Saturday night before the start of History Days was traditionally fancy dress. The costume rehearsal was an excuse for the actors to parade their elaborate outfits for the admiration of the tourists and those citizens unlucky enough to be merely bystanders.
By the time Quill clattered down to the dress rehearsal, the Inn was filled with the low hum of guests.
Quill slipped into the conference room unnoticed. Two of the salespeople from Esther’s store had spent the afternoon cataloging and tagging the costumes in the conference room and Quill walked into a room transformed. Portable clothes racks filled with gold silks, pink taffetas, green velvets, and enough ecru lace to choke the entire flock of Marvin Finstedder’s goat farm lined the walls. All twenty-four cast members of The Trial of Goody Martin (eighteen whose participation was limited to the repetition of the phrase “Sink or swim !”) squeezed together cheek by jowl. Esther laced Betty Hall into a fuschia chiffon townswoman’s costume; Elmer Henry stood in front of a full-length mirror on wheels adjusting the gold lace on his cuffs; Howie Murchison paced gravely around the room, and flipped the lapel of his skirted coat forward to reveal a hand-lettered button that read “Colonial Intelligence Agency” at anyone who’d stop long enough to read it.
“What do you think?” he asked Quill.
“It’s just as nifty as the Empire costumes,” she said diplomatically. The confusion would be an excellent cover for a few discreet questions concerning John’s whereabouts. Howie was as good a person to start with as anyone else. “John had to run to Ithaca, and said he was going to drop off some stuff he picked up from the drugstore for me at your office, rath
er than take the time to come back here. Did he get there?”
“Haven’t seen him all day,” said Howie. “Sorry. Do you want me to call Anne and see if she can pick it up for you?”
“Oh no, Howie. Thanks. It’ll keep until Monday.”
All Quill learned in the next twenty minutes was that practically everybody in Hemlock Falls would be happy to send somebody else to the drugstore for her, which made Quill grateful for the neighborliness exhibited, but left her unenlightened as to John’s whereabouts. Nobody had seen him all day.
Quill surveyed the crowded room and wondered what to do next. Pointed questions of both Mavis and Marge concerning their activities last night would give her a better grip on what had happened. Had they seen John after they left the Croh Bar? Was he driving or walking? Was anyone with him?
Mavis, face pink with excitement - and, Quill hoped, nothing else - was being stuffed into her costume with the aid of a heavy-breathing Keith Baumer. Any interruption there would be fruitless. Marge was busy organizing the removal of the clothes racks to Esther’s van outside with a verve to rival General Patton’s drive to Berlin. Mrs. Hallenbeck stood proudly in the comer, dressed in the black cloak and broad-brimmed hat of A Member of the Crowd. “I have practiced ‘Sink or swim,’ ” she said when Quill stopped to admire her costume. “Miss West seemed to feel that I would add verisimilitude to the mob scene. I shall shake my walking stick, like this.”
“You were at dinner with Mavis and Marge last night, Mrs. Hallenbeck. What time did you come back to the Inn?”
“About nine-thirty. I retire every evening promptly at ten, and I insisted that they bring me back here well before that time.”
“Everyone came with you?”
“Mavis had to go see Gil’s partner, Tom Peterson. Keith Baumer, Marge, and Gil took me home. I left them at the lobby entrance. I believe Marge said something about going to a place called the Croh Bar afterwards.”
“You didn’t see my manager, John Raintree, with them at all?”
“The Indian? No. I did not. Do you think he could be involved with the accident last night?”
A Taste for Murder Page 10
