A Taste for Murder

by Claudia Bishop

  Meg sat down on the stool. Her eyelids drooped. She yawned again, prodigiously.

  Quill set the phone receiver on the counter and put her finger into the coffee grounds, then tasted them. She picked up the phone. “Very alkaline. Very bitter. What?”

  She heard the sound of a body falling. She whirled and shouted into the phone. “Andy! Get here right away! She’s passed out!”

  -15-

  Hair flatter than Quill had seen it, Meg lay prone in the hospital bed.

  “I’m fine!” she insisted. “I am just bloody fine and I want to get out of here!” Her voice was hoarse from the esophageal tube that had been stuck down her throat. An IV drip ran into her left forearm. Quill was convinced that as soon as Myles, Andy, and the nurse were out of the room, Meg would detach the IV and escape out the hospital window. The Hemlock Falls Community Hospital was small, a single-story building tucked modestly behind the high school. The sounds of an evening baseball game came through the open window; to get back to the Inn, Meg would have to cross the field. Quill had taken Meg’s jogging clothes and put them in the car, doubting even her sister would have the nerve to stalk across the diamond in an open-backed hospital gown. But she wasn’t absolutely sure.

  “Just for observation. One night. That’s all. Then you can bounce out of here in the morning,” said Andy Bishop.

  “I didn’t swallow enough of that stuff to kill a cat, much less an adult human being,” said Meg angrily.

  “The mineral water had a four-grain solution of Seconal dissolved in it,” said Andy patiently. “You don’t weigh much more than one hundred pounds, Meg, and you were dehydrated from running. That’s why you passed out, and a patient who’s been unconscious has to stay twenty-four hours for observation. Them’s the rules.” He hung her chart at the foot of her bed. “Why don’t you settle down and go to sleep? We’ll be right outside, in the hall.”

  “So you can discuss who dunnit without me? Not on your life.” She sat up in bed. Quill folded one of the pillows in half and stuck it behind her back.

  “You did not,” Meg informed her, “save my life.”

  “No,” Quill said. “But I thought I did at the time.”

  Meg squeezed her hand. “Were you scared?”

  “I was scared.” Quill squeezed back. “Not on your account. The paramedics were, guess who?”

  “Not Maureen and Doyle?”

  “Who else? Maureen’s tickled pink. Guaranteed this woman will never ever eat in our dining room, but this is the most attention the Department of Health has paid her in years.

  She loves us. Oliver kept making noises about how this call interrupted him and his girl friend and giving me hopeful looks as we passed the Croh Bar.”

  “It was the volunteer firemen you sent to the Croh Bar,” said Meg. “You gave the volunteer ambulance a straight donation.” She yawned. Quill glanced at Andy, who smiled reassuringly.

  “Quill, Myles. You know the thing that strikes me about these murders?”

  “What?” Myles sat calmly in a green plastic chair near the open window, his arms folded across his chest.

  “That they were so inept.”

  “Yes. There’d be no guarantee that the front loader would actually kill Mavis. The Pavilion was jammed with four hundred people, anyone of whom could have noticed a live body on the sledge before the barn door was lowered on to her.”

  “And the balcony.”

  “Yes. If Mavis had gone over, she would have landed in I five feet of water. Enough to break her fall, not enough to drown her.”

  “So you agree with me.” Meg yawned again, hugely. “And as for me, that Seconal wasn’t enough to stun a pig, much less Mad Margaret.” Her eyelids drooped.

  Myles smiled a little at Quill. “Mad Margaret?”

  “We were Gilbert and Sullivan fans as kids. You know Mad Margaret.”

  He nodded. “From Ruddigore.”

  “Myles?” Meg forced her eyes open. “I’m not going to sleep until you tell me I was right. About who dunnit.”

  “You were right, Meg.” Myles got up and drew the pillow from behind her back.

  “Meg was right!” demanded Quill. “What do you mean? Who is it? I thought that I was doing the investigation!”

  Meg slid down flat on the bed. She smiled seraphically at Quill. “Mrs. Hallenbeck, stupid.” She closed her eyes and was almost instantly asleep.

  “Mrs. Hallenbeck?” said Quill stupidly. “You said that just so she’d shut up and get some rest, didn’t you?”

  “Let’s go out in the hall,” said Andy.

  They left the hospital room and went into the corridor. Quill could see the front lobby from where they stood. Mrs. Hallenbeck, who’d insisted on calling a taxi and accompanying Quill to the hospital, sat upright in one of the green plastic chairs. She was reading a magazine. From this distance, Quill couldn’t tell what it was.

  Myles leaned against the wall and regarded the elegant figure. “Meg’s right.”

  “You’re telling me that an eighty-three-year-old widow who’s richer than all of us put together killed Gil and Mavis Collinwood?”

  “She’s got it right on the third try,” said Myles. “And she’s not richer than all of us put together. She’s living on the three hundred thousand dollars she took from Mavis, who basically stole it from her in the first place.”

  “You mean because she was part owner of Doggone Good Dogs?”

  “No. Because Mrs. Hallenbeck was ripping the company off by selling inferior quality meat to third-world countries. Mavis started her blackmail routine with the couriers, first Jack Peterson, and then, when he was killed, Tom Peterson; she had no idea what she was up against. When the couriers reported Mavis’ attempts at blackmail to our lethal widow, Mavis didn’t have a chance. Mrs. Hallenbeck swooped in, took the money, and convinced her she’d be jailed for blackmail. The two of them had a brief career bilking various hostelries across the country of insurance monies. That was confirmed this afternoon, too.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Quill. “What about the money from the black market sales?”

  “Leslie Hallenbeck made restitution before he killed himself. Eddie thinks he knew his wife was involved, and so do I. We talked to John this afternoon, and he helped us confirm it. Hallenbeck didn’t have much of an alternative. He couldn’t turn his wife of sixty years into the police. But he could give their personal fortune to the parents and relatives of the people who died after eating that meat. And he could take his own life. Which he did.”

  “But none of this is a reason for her to kill Mavis. They’re all reasons for her to keep Mavis alive,” said Quill.

  “Oh, she needed Mavis to take care of her. But she found a replacement. And when Mrs. Hallenbeck wanted something, she didn’t let much stand in her way.”

  “Oh, no. No, Myles. No.”

  “Let’s go into this examining room,” said Andy. He craned his neck; the elderly figure was still there. “She’ll wait for you.”

  Quill walked blindly into the examining room, Andy and Myles behind her. Myles leaned against the wall with a sigh. “There were three things that stood in Mrs. Hallenbeck’s way to having you substitute for Mavis. Mavis herself, the Inn, and the two people you most cared for, John and Meg. That first night, she summoned Tom Peterson to her room. We don’t know what they discussed, but we can guess that it had something to do with the shipments. Peterson left the matchbook there. It’s funny about nervous habits. At any rate, after he left, Mrs. Hallenbeck made her first attempt at murder. I had my suspicions then.”

  “You didn’t say anything to me,” Quill said indignantly.

  “You noticed the scratches on Mrs. Hallenbeck’s cheek? She sent Mavis down to find sulfuric acid in the storeroom. John saw her near the kitchen, remember? Mavis poured it around the wrought-iron balustrade. But when the time came to stage the accident, Mrs. Hallenbeck pushed her. Eighty-three’s pretty frail, and that ended the first unsuccessful attempt.”

 
; “But why didn’t Mavis say something?” Quill demanded.

  “Because Mrs. Hallenbeck could send her to jail. She knew all about Mavis’ blackmail schemes. And Mrs. Hallenbeck was right, you know. Mavis was a stupid woman.

  “The second attempt you know about. Motive’s the most important thing in a murder investigation, Quill - even more than the facts. You were right again - Baumer, Tom Peterson, and Marge all had the opportunity to remove that bolt from the front loader, but their motives were nowhere near strong enough. Mavis was a petty thief, and a small-time blackmailer. Mrs. Hallenbeck herself would have been a more likely candidate for murder. Baumer denies Mavis was blackmailing him - but I have a strong hunch she summoned him here, just like she contacted John. Baumer makes enough money so that the two or three hundred dollars a month Mavis demanded wouldn’t have proven a strong enough motive to kill. And Marge is just plain too smart to have made an attempt that wasn’t one hundred per cent sure. Now, if Marge decided to commit murder, I wouldn’t bet on my being able to prove it, but I’d bet a lot on the surety of the victim’s demise.

  “Mrs. Hallenbeck did get Mavis, of course. The day of the play, Mavis walked from the Inn to the Pavilion with Mrs. Hallenbeck. They’d been in their room drinking mint juleps. Mavis’, of course, were laced with the Seconal Mrs. Hallenbeck takes to sleep.”

  “She said she never takes drugs,” said Quill.

  “She’s a pretty good liar. Consistent, and with an excellent memory ,” said Myles.

  “I checked the prescription register,” said Andy. “She’s had a refillable prescription for years.”

  “The barn door. Why did Tom Peterson try to bum the barn door? When Harvey told me that, I was sure…”

  “Edward planted that idea, when the four of you were walking back to the Inn the day of the murder. Guilt’s an odd thing, Quill. There could be all sorts of logical explanations about why a shred of clothing was caught on a splinter. But Mrs. Hallenbeck wanted no clues. So she ordered Peterson to burn it.

  “So Mavis’ death took care of obstacle number one,” Myles continued. “Obstacle two was the Inn itself. You leave your guest register out for everyone to see far too often, Quill. She noticed it the morning they checked in. She always gets up early to walk every day. Saturday morning, she got up, took the register, and had time to make enough phone calls to clear the Inn’s business for the rest of the summer.”

  “But a man claiming he was John Raintree made those calls,” said Quill.

  “You didn’t listen carefully to what Dina said, or question your agents closely. Each of the guests who received the call got a message from someone calling on behalf of John Raintree. I checked with several of them, and each confirmed it’d been an elderly woman.”

  “I thought it was Baumer. I was sure.”

  “Nope. Although you’d given him enough reasons to do it by that time. Then Doreen’s latest craze provided another opportunity to wreck the business; Mrs. Hallenbeck got a note shoved under her door, too, of course. All the guests did. And each of the notes listed the 1-800-PRAY toll-free line. Mrs. Hallenbeck called that one right from the fun. You’ll find it in the telephone records.”

  “And John?”

  “She planted the bolt and the Seconal in his room, once you explained to her that this was the evidence the police needed.”

  “Ouch,” said Quill.

  “And of course, she knew about Meg’s private stock of coffee. While she was waiting in the kitchen for you to show up for tea, she dosed the spring water.”

  “And Meg figured it out?”

  “It was Meg who pointed out that Mrs. Hallenbeck had fixated on you,” said Andy Bishop. “And she, of course, found the attempts at destruction both clumsy and ineffectual. The work not only of a rank amateur, but of the kind of pathology that may come with great age.”

  “You can’t tell me that she’s senile. Or has Alzheimer’s,” said Quill.

  “No,” said Andy. “We don’t really understand what age does to the individual, Quill. But there’s sufficient research to establish that in some kinds of personalities, age strips away the normal inhibitors to sociopathic behaviors. Mrs. Hallenbeck was undoubtedly as autocratic and self-focused in her youth as she is now; she just doesn’t have the barriers to acting out that she had while young.”

  Quill took a moment to absorb this. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Eighty-three’s pretty old for a trial,” said Myles. “And our hard evidence is slim to nonexistent. We have the bolt, which has been wiped clean of fingerprints, but the chain of evidence has been broken. We can’t establish for certain that it was in her possession, or even that she was at the park. We have a better chance with the Seconal; she’s refilled the prescription a sufficient number of times to have the quantities on hand needed to drug Mavis and Meg’s jug of spring water. Again, a good defense attorney would make mincemeat out of the evidence chain. It’s all circumstantial.”

  “The phone calls to the Inn’s guests? The call to Willy Max? Those aren’t crimes?”

  “Malicious mischief,” said Myles. “A misdemeanor.”

  “So what now?” Quill looked at the two men.

  “Eddie’s client is Mrs. Hallenbeck’s son.” Andy Bishop cleared his throat. “He’s agreed to commit her to a very comfortable institution. She’ll be taken care of, confined, of course, and I will see to it that a complete record of what’s happened here is in the psychiatrist’s file.”

  “Have you met him, the son?”

  “Just talked to him on the phone.” Myles’s expression didn’t change much, but Quill knew he’d found either the man or the conversation distasteful. “He’s made the arrangements to have her picked up. Refused to come himself. There’s a secure room here at the hospital. Andy’s arranged to have her checked in. I’ll have Davey at the door until the morning. Just as a precaution.”

  “Does she know?” asked Quill.

  “We were hoping,” said Myles, “that you would tell her.” He put his arm around her. She leaned into him and closed her eyes.

  Quill walked down the hall and sat in the chair opposite Mrs. Hallenbeck.

  She set aside the magazine. Vogue, Quill saw. “And how is your sister?”

  “She’ll be fine. She wants to go home now, but hospital rules say she has to stay. She’s asleep.”

  “We’ll go back to the Inn, then? I would like some dinner. It’s late. But I suppose someone on the kitchen staff can be gotten up to make something.”

  “Dr. Bishop is a little concerned about you,” said Quill carefully. “He’s arranged for you to stay here tonight, too.”

  Mrs. Hallenbeck smiled. “Such a nice young man. I always find it easier to get along with men than with women, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Quill truthfully. “I think it’s about the same.”

  “I appreciate Dr. Bishop’s concern for my welfare. I don’t know how it is, but young physicians always seem to take the greatest care of me.” She laughed girlishly. “I’ve been frequently complimented on my state of preservation, I suppose you’d call it. But I would prefer to go back to the Inn. You take such good care of me, my dear.”

  Quill took a long moment to reply. “The sheriff would like you to stay, as well. He called your son earlier this evening, and your son has made some very comfortable arrangements for you. The…” Quill stumbled, “hotel where you will be staying will send a limousine for you in the morning. He’s concerned for your comfort now that Mavis isn’t here to see to you.”

  Mrs. Hallenbeck’s eyes clouded. Her lips trembled. The light from the lamp at her elbow strengthened the lines in her cheeks and forehead. She leaned forward and hissed, “You have no idea what it’s like, being eighty-three. But it will happen to you, dear. Just like it’s happened to me.”

  Once again Quill thought of her own mother, her loving : spirit still strong in a body fine-honed by the years.

  “No, it won’t,” she said.

  -16-

/>   A July thunderstorm was brewing in the west when Quill brought Meg home from the hospital. It just goes to show you, Quill thought, the perversity of nature. After four days of hell, things were looking up. Doreen had seen to the discreet and tactful (she claimed) removal of Mrs. Hallenbeck’s luggage and Mavis’ effects. The American Association of Swamp Reclamation Engineers had called and fully booked the Inn for a week in August, which would help offset the fiscal consequences of yesterday’s guest exodus. Best of all, Keith Baumer was checking out. Quill, heretofore neutral on the topic of religion, sent a prayer of thanks skyward, toward the thunderheads boiling over the top of the Falls, followed by a promise of a healthy donation to the American Association of Retired Persons, whose members had proved the exception to Mrs. Hallenbeck’s homicidal tendencies, and who would undoubtedly be back, like the perennials, next spring.

  “A trial would have been tough,” she said to Meg as they sat in the kitchen watching the rain lash the windows.

  “They came to get her while I was waiting for you in the hospital lobby.” Meg poured white vinegar for the third time into her expresso machine in an effort to remove all traces of the Seconal. She was not, she’d informed Quill tartly, over her sister’s protests, going to dispose of a perfectly good piece of equipment just because an inept murderer had used it in an attempt to kill her.

  “Not so inept, with two deaths on her conscience. Did she seem…” Quill trailed off.

  “Seem what? Remorseful? No. Upset? No. Tell me goodbye and thanks for the best meals she’s ever had for free? No.” The expresso machine hissed, and Meg fussed with it, not meeting Quill’s gaze. “I’ll tell you what you ought to do, though. Give Myles credit for calling in as many favors as he could to avoid prosecution and a trial. He knows how bad you feel, Quill. A trial would really do you in.”

  Quill rubbed the back of her neck. She’d dreamed, the night before, of Mrs. Hallenbeck soundlessly screaming her name, over and over again, and of long-nailed fingers shredding the canvas of the Chrysler Rose.