A Steak in Murder (Hemlock Falls Mystery Series)

by Claudia Bishop

  Marge got to her feet and dusted the seat of her plus-size khakis. "She'll get used to me, Royal. I like cows. And they like me."

  "Maybe Royal could finish up here, and we could go into the Inn and talk for a minute," Quill said. "There's just a couple of things . . ."

  "You okay with that, Royal?"

  Royal nodded slowly. "Sure am. Nice day to be cleaning the pens."

  "See you for an early supper, then. Got some of that Kielbasa lying around, made it with that sauerkraut you like."

  "Sounds good to me."

  They smiled at each other. Quill cleared her throat. Twice.

  "All right, already," Marge said. "Let's go into the Skipper's Schooner."

  "The what?"

  "The Skipper's Schooner." Marge glowered impatiently. "The Tavern Lounge, you used to call it."

  "But this isn't a ship, Marge, it's an Inn. The nearest ocean is three hundred miles due east."

  "So?" Marge stumped across the grass to the flagstone terrace that led to the bar. An arrangement of garden gnomes, windmills, and small plastic mushrooms flanked the right side of the French doors. Inside, it took Quill a moment to adjust to the dark interior. Fishnet hung in great swathes from the tin ceiling. The votive lights on the bar tables were encrusted with seashells. A painting of a bare-breasted mermaid smiled invitingly from behind the bar.

  "Hey, Quill!" Nate the bartender raised a hand in greeting. When Quill and Meg had laid him off, in the dark debt-ridden days before they'd sold the Inn, he'd gone down to work at the Croh Bar on Main Street, swearing he would never work for the notoriously stingy Marge. Her management style, he claimed, was a direct descendant of how the Wermarcht ruled over Poland, and she, Quill, and her sister, Meg, had been the best bosses he'd ever had. All other women were terrible bosses. Terrible. Most of 'em thought that employees should dress up in silly uniforms that all matched each other and wear stupid hats.

  Nate shoved his sea captain's hat to the back of his head and smiled ingratiatingly at Quill. The brow band read "Cap'n Nate." "Can I get you a glass of wine?"

  "Yes," Quill said firmly. She made a point of ignoring the hat. She settled herself at the bar next to Marge. "So. Marge. First about those cows in my rose garden."

  "It's my rose garden, and it's good business," said Marge. Her brow lowered. "You tell that Davy Kiddermeister there's no law against the temporary pennin' of show animals on the grounds of a commercial establishment like the Dew Drop Inn. I checked it with Howie Murchison, on account of that Doreen of yours called the state and complained. You should keep a better eye on that Doreen."

  Nate set a glass of red wine in front of Quill. She took a sip. Gallo, and zinfandel to boot. She coughed and glared at Nate. Nate blinked innocently. "Best we've got, Quill. Not like the old days."

  Quill sent him a fierce mental message—Will you take off that damn hat!—which he ignored, and another—I can't drink Gallo!—which he didn't, because he blushed, and took the glass away. Quill said, "She is not 'my Doreen,' Marge. And if she's complaining to the state about cows in the garden, there is nothing I can do about it. Doreen never listens to me. Or anybody else, for that matter."

  Marge grunted in acquiescence. Doreen's stubbornness was well-known in Hemlock Falls, and had been, town opinion had it, the death of her second husband. Or maybe her third. "So what is it you wanted to see me about? If it's the boxes in storage, I told you, they're not a problem. Least not until I clear up the downstairs room to put in the games arcade."

  "Games arcade," Quill said. "Good. Fine. Marge, I'm reconsidering this sale. I'm thinking that perhaps I might talk to you about buying the Inn back."

  "Oh?" Marge folded her arms under her considerable bosom and tipped her stool backwards. This posture made Quill extremely nervous. "You and what mortgage bank?" She laughed: Ha, as if this were a particularly funny joke.

  "Well. I was thinking." Quill took a deep breath. She hadn't thought about it at all, actually. At least not the financing part. But she had thought that Bjarne was doing a terrific job as the master chef, and that Meg could continue with her trips to New York and that perhaps she and Doreen and Dina and Kathleen could run the Inn themselves. "I was thinking that maybe we could just kind of do the exchange again. You know, we've put quite a bit of work into the restaurant, I mean, your diner, and honestly, Marge, we have people coming in all the time wanting to know if we're going to serve the same delicious food that you and Betty did, and of course it's terrible to disappoint them . . ."

  "You send 'em right up here."

  "And of course I send them right up here, but I know that you couldn't have paid down that debt load we were carrying, and we could just swap. Back."

  "Of course I did," Marge said.

  "Of course you did what?"

  "Paid off that three hundred grand you owed Mark Anthony Jefferson down to the bank. You were carrying that sucker at nine percent." Marge lowered her chin to her chest and looked upwards, shaking her head. "Damn dumb."

  "You made enough money in two months to pay off that three hundred thousand dollar mortgage?"

  "Not all of it," Marge admitted. "But I wasn't about to carry that kind of interest, so I dipped into some other funds." (Marge, one of the wealthiest residents of Tompkins County, had a number of other funds.) "And of course, I got a good price in advance for the bookings for the summer."

  "Bookings for the summer?"

  "We're full up through the summer."

  "There were a lot of years when we were full up through the summer, too," Quill said defensively.

  "Yessir. But you were full up renting the rooms at one hundred and eighty per. Can't get anywhere doing that. Way too expensive."

  "But you and John Raintree and everyone else told me that we couldn't run the Inn at that price because it was too cheap!" Quill said. "And don't you sit there and tell me you're making more money by lowering the room rates, Marge Schmidt, because it makes no sense at all."

  "Sure it does. Rent the rooms for seventy—"

  "Seventy dollars!"

  "And charge a booking fee of ten grand."

  "A what?!"

  "Sure. Take these Texas fellas." Marge's round cheeks flushed a shade deeper. "Like this here Royal. Rossiter. You know who Royal Rossiter is, don't you?"

  "I haven't the foggiest."

  "Only the richest Texan in Texas."

  "One the richest married men in Texas," Quill said. She immediately regretted her ill temper and muttered,

  "Sony," but Marge either hadn't heard or chose to ignore her.

  "And that's saying something. And the friends he's got here for this Longhorn Association meeting? Well, they're the second, third, and fourth richest guys in Texas. You give 'em the room for seventy a night, and the rest of the inn for five thousand a day, and it don't make no never mind to them."

  "Don't make no never mind?" Quill said faintly.

  Marge wriggled a little. "Well, you know, you hang around those guys and you start to pick up the language, like. And," she added somewhat irrelevantly, "Royal's gettin' a divorce. Anyways. You just kind of fiddle with what people think things should cost. Get it? Take these Russkies—"

  "Russkies? You mean Russians?"

  "That's right. Got a whole mess of 'em coming in for a big sales meeting tomorrow. Figure they ought to get along with the Texans just fine."

  "Texans and Russians?"

  "Of course Texans and Russians. Since that whole Commie thing collapsed you can't find a more motivated bunch of guys to find out about the capitalist way of life. Figure those Texans'll teach them a thing or two. And, of course, we get another booking fee for the Inn from the Russkies. So. That's how I sort of got the cash to pay off that mortgage, and like I said,! shook out a few old overcoats to pick up the rest. You were payin' far too much, Quill, in interest."

  "I should have listened to John."

  "You should have listened to John. Good business manager, that boy. Too bad he had to take it into his head
and leave for that job in Long Island." Marge's beady little eyes narrowed shrewdly. "If that was the reason he left," she added carelessly.

  Quill didn't want to think about the reasons why John Raintree had taken the job in Long Island. She'd called him once, after he had gone, after the Inn had been sold, after she'd realized how much she'd hurt him. The call had gone well, considering. She fiddled with a glass of ginger ale Nate had left on the bar for her. "I don't know what to say, Marge. You've done a great job here."

  "It's what I do."

  "But. Now that you've done it, don't you want to rescue something else? Take on a new challenge?"

  "Got enough of a challenge right here."

  Quill drew a circle on the mahogany bar with her thumb, then another. She lifted her head and looked up at the tin ceiling. She knew if she went outside, crossed the green grass to the Falls and looked at the water, she'd cry. "It's a great place, isn't it?" she said after a long moment.

  "It'll do."

  "Would you at least think about it? About trading back, I mean? I was just thinking—"

  "Yeah, I know what you were thinking. You were thinking now that I got this place up and running and profitable, given it a little pizzazz, you could waltz right in and grab it back." Marge shook her head. "No way, cookie. NO way."

  "If you were to consider it," Quill said, picking her words with care. She should know better than to plunge right in with a bald-faced offer. You didn't get a darn thing accomplished in Hemlock Falls that way. You had to negotiate, step sideways, walk away and stroll back again. It'd be days before she could even get a dollar amount out of Marge. "Let's just say we're—ah—blue-skying it, here. What would a ballpark figure be?"

  "Half a million," Marge said bluntly. "Bottom line. All cash."

  Quill's mouth dropped open. Nate sucked his teeth in sympathy. The phone rang. In the days to come, Quill was to consider that phone call the start of the whole sorry mess. Nate picked it up. "Dew Drop Inn," he said. Then, "Ahuh. Ahuh. Yep. Got it. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. I'll tell her that." He held the phone away from his ear with a grimace.

  "Sounds like that Adela," Marge said, loud enough to be heard. The indignant chatter from the receiver stopped abruptly, then resumed. Nate put the phone back to his ear. "She's right here."

  Marge put her hand out to accept the phone with a resigned air. Nate handed the phone to Quill. "It's for you."

  Chapter Two

  It was inevitable, given the nature of small towns, the arrival of strange horned cattle, and the interest that the Inn held for most Hemlockians, that the call would be from Adela Henry, convening an emergency Zoning Board meeting. There had been, Adela said, numerous complaints about the odor, the hazard to voters' health, the welfare of the cows themselves. The mayor felt that a quick review of the ordinances applying to the keeping of farm animals was in order. ASAP.

  Quill decided not to tell Marge about the meeting. If there was going to be trouble, Marge would hear soon enough. And she didn't want Marge to think that she, Quill, would even consider contributing to the fuss in her capacity as a (temporary, until the elections) Zoning Board member. After all, Quill had an Inn to buy back.

  She made her excuses and drove back to Main Street. Zoning Board meetings were held in the municipal courthouse only, Quill suspected, because it increased the sense of authority fundamental to the well-being of CarolAnn Spinoza, tax assessor. Quill hadn't encountered CarolAnn Spinoza before she was nominated to fill the board seat left vacant by Anton Havecek's sudden demise. Quill liked the Zoning Board, which consisted of herself, Freddie Bellini, the funeral director; and Harland Peterson, a taciturn, heavyset farmer who wielded almost as much power in Hemlock Falls as Marge Schmidt. What she didn't like was the fact that the Zoning Board meetings were public, and that a whole lot of political issues tended to end up there. And where there was politics and public meetings in Hemlock Falls, there was CarolAnn, even though technically she wasn't supposed to be there in her capacity as assessor unless asked. So far, she was only in attendance at those meetings when the general public was invited. But Quill had a feeling that this emergency meeting was courtesy of CarolAnn herself, and that she'd be there no matter what.

  When Quill and Meg bought the Inn nine years ago, the tax assessor before CarolAnn had been second cousin to the publisher of the Hemlock Falls Gazette, and an old-line Hemlockian. Permits, tax grievances, and requests for zoning variances had been few; the settling of the issues acrimony-free.

  The old assessor retired to Florida to the same condo complex as his second cousin, where he became a prolific contributor to the Notes from Florida column in the current Hemlock Falls Gazette. He left the tax assessor job open. An election was held. CarolAnn Spinoza produced an associates degree in bookkeeping and a perky charm to sink the only other candidate for the position, a notoriously bad-tempered pig farmer. CarolAnn was an outsider, a flatland foreigner from a suburb of Syracuse who'd moved her hapless husband and three quarrelsome children to Hemlock Falls for "country quiet."

  She was tall, CarolAnn was, with an out thrust bosom like the prow of a bellicose frigate. The toothy smile and bouncy blond hair concealed the soul of a Pol Pot and the heart of a cannibal. She was possibly the single most horrible human being Quill had ever met in her life. She was certainly the most inquisitive. CarolAnn's pert proboscis (Meg's term), snout (Doreen's), long, ugly nose (Quill's) was into every possible corner of the village, all of them officially unrelated to tax values.

  Quill was terrified of her.

  So was all of Hemlock Falls. Even Marge. The power of the assessor to affect the lifestyles of Hemlockians for generations to come was awesome. It was widely believed (but not substantiated) that CarolAnn had a lover highly placed in the state General Accounting Bureau, so even your personal income wasn't safe from a thwarted (and thus vindictive) CarolAnn.

  It was tacitly—not overtly as CarolAnn's spy network was efficient, omnipresent, and practically invisible—understood that come next election, CarolAnn's impressively sculptured behind was to be booted out of office. Until that time, she held the village in an iron grip.

  Mindful of CarolAnn's power, Quill was careful to park in a metered spot, and stick in several quarters. She entered the courtroom just as Harland Peterson and Freddie Bellini took their seats at the long oak table in front of the judge's stand. She barely glanced at the high ceilings, the carved paneling, and the old-fashioned oak pews of the cavernous room. She'd been in this courtroom before, defending a traffic ticket, and the memory wasn't a happy one.

  " 'Lo, Quill," Freddie said. Quill always felt guilty that she was a little wary of Freddie Bellini. He was a very nice man and came from a long line of morticians.

  "Hi, Freddie." Quill sat next to Harland. He smelled of cows, in a nicely homey way, and she patted his arm. "How are you, Harland?"

  "Good." Which meant he was. Harland was a man of few words, unless roused to a pitch of emotion.

  "Isn't that a new tie? And a new shirt?" Harland's wife had died three years ago of what Quill darkly suspected was overwork. Farmers' wives in Tompkins County had a hard life of it, almost as hard as their husbands. In the time since then, Harland had stuck to his John Deere coveralls, laundered twice a week by his youngest daughter, Susan. The shirt and tie were quite a departure.

  "Yeh."

  "Going somewhere after the meeting?"

  "Yeh."

  "That's nice."

  "The Ladies' Auxiliary's meeting at the Croh Bar about eight o'clock," Freddie offered. "The bowling banquet." He winked.

  "Oh," Marge was president of the Ladies' Auxiliary. Quill hoped Marge didn't really have her eye on Royal Rossiter. She'd make Harland an excellent wife. "That's even nicer." Quill looked around the courtroom and dropped her voice. "Does CarolAnn know we're having an emergency meeting?"

  "She demanded it," Freddie said glumly. "Called up the mayor and got on his case about those cows in your garden, Quill. He called me. Or rather, Adela did
. Same thing."

  "Nothin' wrong with a few cows," Harland said.

  "I agree," Quill said, who, much as she wanted to whack Marge over the head with Doreen's broom on occasion, was not about to betray her to the terrible CarolAnn. "Did anyone get hold of Howie? He ought to have the ordinances on this sort of thing."

  "Adela called," Howie said, appearing from the hall, which led to the judge's chambers, to sit with them. "And here I am." He looked annoyed, which was unusual for Howie. He was a nice silvery sort of fifty, with a comfortable stomach and lines in his pleasant face, exactly the sort of lawyer old-line Hemlockians trusted with probating their estates. He sat down next to Quill, pulled a stack of Xerox copies out of his briefcase and distributed them. The top paper was titled "Zoning Ordinance 7.1: The Keeping of Farm Animals on Commercial Property."

  "What is it that's so urgent?" Quill asked. "I mean I hadn't really thought that emergency sessions of the Zoning Board would be a part of this job."

  No one answered this. It didn't need an answer. When CarolAnn called an emergency meeting of any kind, property owners snapped to.

  Howie looked at his watch and sighed. "We'll wait fifteen minutes," he said, "and if no one shows up, I think we can discuss the violation of ordinance 7.1—the keeping of farm animals in an area zoned commercial— and pass a temporary variance. The damn cows aren't going to be in your rose garden for more than a week, Quill. I checked with Marge. Ordinance 7.21 deals with fairs, exhibits, and festivals, and allows for the temporary pasturing of—"

  "I'm so sorry I'm a little late," CarolAnn said, jogging down the aisle to the front of the courtroom. She was wearing her usual attire: jogging suit, two-hundred-dollar Michael Jordan athletic shoes, and a sweatband holding back her aggressively dyed blond hair. The sweatband was blue. As usual, she was scrubbed squeaky-clean.

  CarolAnn had an entourage of two. One was a round little woman in a bright caftan with dangling wood earrings and unbound gray hair to her waist. The second was a tall thin man with a wispy brown beard and a pained expression. Something about him reminded Quill of Hudson Zabriskie, former manager of the Paramount Paint Factory. CarolAnn tossed her hair. Quill caught a whiff of shampoo. "Is the mayor here yet? This concerns him, as well."