A Steak in Murder (Hemlock Falls Mystery Series)

by Claudia Bishop

  Quill slammed on the brakes at the foot of the long driveway leading to the Inn, jerked from her reverie. She ignored the screech of tires from the car behind her, and peered out the windshield. A giant black and white cow stood smack on top of the curved brick wall that used to bear a discreet bronze sign: The Inn At Hemlock Falls. There was a banner draped over its flanks that read: WELCOME, COWBOYS! Someone had wound Christmas tree lights around the cow's horns and they blinked on and off.

  "The poor thing," Quill burst out.

  The cow nodded its head and emitted a "moo" that sounded as if its entire diet consisted of beans.

  And then, Quill said, "It's fake!"

  "Of course it's fake," said a voice into her right ear. "You city kids don't know a dang thing about a thing, do you?"

  Quill drew back and inadvertently released her foot from the brake. The Olds bucked and stalled. "Hello, Harland."

  Harland, president of the local Agway co-op and the biggest dairy farmer in Tompkins County, tugged his Butter Is Better cap more firmly over his forehead. "You gotta watch them sudden stops, Quill."

  "Sorry, Harland."

  "You can't drive out here in the country the way you do in the city, now, can you?"

  "Nope," Quill said.

  "Every time I see a cop chase on World's Scariest Police Accidents, I'm reminded of you, Quill. Seein' you drive that taxi in New York City when you was a youngster musta been something."

  "It was, Harland," Quill said humbly. "Is your truck okay?" She craned her neck over her shoulder. Harland's teal and white dually was the pride of his life, now that Mrs. Harland was gone.

  "Just had her washed. You goin' to the Chamber meeting?"

  Since Quill was (a.) secretary of the Chamber and (b.) had never missed a meeting since she'd joined eight years ago and (c.) was widely known to avoid showing up at the scene of her business failure except when absolutely necessary, she didn't feel she had to reply to this. "Are we late?"

  "I ain't. You might be if you gotta go back to the diner to get the minutes. You didn't forget this time, did you?"

  "It's the Palate now, Harland," Quill said patiently. "And I left the minutes book with Miriam Doncaster to transcribe. She's inputting them into permanent storage in the database."

  "Waste of a couple of megabytes, far as I can see." Harland straightened up and stepped away from the Olds. "And if you could learn to use that little dingus I showed you all last month, you wouldn't have to input twice. Just write on the pad and whammo, translates your handwriting into regular print and everything. Carry mine with me all the time. Use it for the dairy herd. If Mrs. Peterson could of seen what computers can do for dairy farming, she would have been amazed. S'pose them Texans know a thing or two about computers?" He nodded toward the mechanical cow, who blatted obligingly, as if in response to what Quill considered to be a totally trivial question.

  "Well, I wouldn't know, would I?"

  "Sort of thing you should know, if you're going to invest in the program."

  "What program?" Quill asked suspiciously.

  "You wait and see. Gonna tell you all about it at the meeting. I'm on the agenda after the Hemlock Falls Street Daze committee report." He pulled his cap all the way off and repositioned it. "Tell you what, though. Marge is buying more than a few shares. More than a few. And she's no dummy, Marge isn't. You could do worse than follow her around, Quill. Might learn a thing or two."

  Quill released the brake and accelerated up the drive. Learn a thing or two from a person who put a ten-foot plaster cow smack in the way of one of the most elegant old Inns in Upstate New York? Follow around a human version of a Sherman tank who renamed one of the most elegant old Inns in Upstate New York The Dew Drop Inn? "I don't think so," Quill said. She parked right next to the sign that read Don't Even Think About Parking Here (she'd always parked in that spot, before) and marched into the foyer. She'd especially loved this part of the Inn, the place where guests were first introduced to the hundreds of years of charm that lay sprawled on the lip of the Falls. The polished oak floors shone as mellow as ever. The cobblestone fireplace held a neatly stacked pile of white birch logs. The cream and celadon Oriental rug had been replaced by a square of blue indoor/outdoor carpeting, but it was an inoffensive blue, and it didn't clash with the two blue-and-white-striped love seats that flanked the reception desk.

  "Hey, Quill."

  "Dina?" Quill squinted, as if to bring her former receptionist into better focus. "Is that you?"

  "It's me." Dina closed her textbook (The Life Cycle of the Cephalopods in a Florida Freshwater Pond) and smiled. "How have you been?"

  "Since you saw me last night, just fine. What are—" Quill stopped. What are you doing here? sounded rude. Gone over to the other side? was snide. "Fine," she said. She was beginning to hate that particular adjective.

  Dina twisted a forefinger into her long brown hair and tugged thoughtfully at it. "It's not that I don't love waitressing at the Palate," she said. "I do. It's just that reception work lets me study for my orals and waitressing doesn't. So I . . . I kind of asked Marge for my old job back."

  "Oh," Quill said.

  "And it's only part-time." Dina said anxiously. "I'm still putting that two days in at the Palate."

  "You said you didn't want to work more than two days," Quill said. "We would have given you as much time as you wanted, Dina."

  "But I've got grad school," Dina said in a tone approaching a wail. "And besides, I'm learning a lot about the business side of things. It's going to be kind of hard to find a job in freshwater pond ecology, Marge says, and she thinks I have a real head for numbers. And," Dina added proudly, "Marge says I'm exceptionally effective on the phone. Of course, Marge doesn't really talk like that, you know. What she said was, 'You give good phone, kid. Lot better'n me.' " Dina blinked her big brown eyes. "And then she said I have a real way with the guests. Isn't that sweet?"

  Since Quill found Marge about as sweet as month-old grapefruit, she didn't bother to answer this. "Meeting's in the conference room?"

  "It's always in the conference room, Quill. You know that. Oh, hello, Mr. Peterson."

  " 'Lo, Dina. See you got your old job back. Better pay, too, I hear." He winked at Quill. "Mayor here yet?"

  Dina nodded. "Everyone's here, now that you and Quill have come. Except for Harvey."

  "Advertisin' guys are always late. Something to do with how much they think of themselves, I expect. C'mon, Quill. We got a lot to cover this afternoon."

  Quill stamped down the hall to the conference room with a little more force than necessary, Harland rolling along ahead. The Chamber hadn't met since she'd sold the Inn, and she wanted to see the conference room again. She bet Marge had covered the plank flooring with linoleum. Paneled the walls in fake oak. Or nailed oil paintings on the wall from the Starving Artists show at the Marriott the week before.

  She walked into the conference room to a chorus of hellos, and immediately felt ashamed of herself. The conference room was exactly the same as it had always been, and the faces just as welcoming. There were two unfamiliar ones: Royal Rossiter, who had walked his bull up the hill, and a stout pale man in a black Stetson. Marge sat between them, her leathery cheeks tinged with either an artificial blush, or a natural one, Quill wasn't sure. Marge had abandoned her manure-pen-cleaning khakis and sloppy pink T-shirt for a denim skirt and a cheerful, Western-style shirt with silver conchos on the cuffs. A red bandanna was twisted around her neck. This demonstration of feminine vulnerability made Quill feel like a spiteful wretch.

  Suddenly she felt awful. She sat down at her accustomed place next to Miriam Doncaster, drew her sketch pad from her purse, and made remorseful doodles in the margins: Quill the Bad Sister, with a booted foot on poor Meg's neck; Quill the Resentful Meanie, biting Marge Schmidt's hand with long sharp teeth; Quill the Arrogant Bitch, back turned to a baffled-looking Myles.

  "My goodness!" Miriam Doncaster said, looking over her shoulder. "You have had a bad time
since you bought that restaurant. And I thought things were going so well."

  "They are." Quill flipped to a fresh sheet. "It's just me. I'm behaving like an ungrateful wretch. Everything feels so different, Miriam. I feel as if my entire world has turned upside down. Nothing's the same."

  Miriam patted her hand sympathetically. "There's a marvelous new self-help book in, Managing Change: Ten Tips to Avoid Self-immolation. There's a tip per chapter. It's the case history approach, you know, like "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" in Ladies Home Journal. I'll set it aside for you, if you like."

  "Does it have a case history on a painter turned inn-keep turned totally confused?"

  Elmer Henry, who, in addition to being mayor of Hemlock Falls, was president of the Chamber of Commerce, rapped his gavel authoritatively on the mahogany table. Miriam gave a disgusted "tcha" and said, "Use the rest, Mayor. You'll dent that table yet."

  Marge Schmidt said, "Get on with it, Mayor. I got things to do." Just like every Chamber meeting she'd been to in the last nine years, Harvey Bozzel, president of Hemlock Falls' best (and only) advertising agency, rushed in late, his briefcase bouncing off his pin-striped trousers, and breathlessly sat down, patting his blond hair with a manicured hand and muttering greetings. Dookie Shuttleworth, minister of the Church of the Word of God, raised his hands for silence and everyone bent their heads in prayer. Quill glanced up from her folded hands and looked around the table. Most of the core Chamber members were there—Howie Murchison, town attorney, Davy Kiddermeister, county sheriff, Freddie Bellini, the mortician—and they all waited obediently for Dookie's invocation . . . Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

  Dookie stared sweetly at the ceiling. Quill hoped he'd abandoned his current enthusiasm for Christian Mentalism (C-Ment), which involved telepathic messages to the Almighty rather than verbal sermons, but with Dookie you were never sure if he was transmitting, or simply being absentminded. "Amen," Dookie said aloud, which didn't answer Quill's question at all. Dookie might be under the impression he had already said the opening prayer aloud.

  Elmer cleared his throat. "Well, thank you, Padre. It's been a while since we've had a meeting—not since that bad business with the fire here some months back, and it's good to see everyone again. Norm? How's 'bout that football team of yours? Them two seniors you got on the defensive line been recruited for PAC-10 yet?"

  Since Elmer saw most of the village every day at the Croh Bar for coffee (now serving inexpensive breakfasts, with the closing of Marge's Diner), and since the topic of Norm Pasquale's coaching abilities were thoroughly discussed each day, this was met with less interest than might have been expected. Harland Peterson smacked his knee with one callused palm and enjoined Elmer to get on with it, for God's sakes. "And let's skip the old news, anyhow."

  "It's not 'old news,' Harland," Esther West said patiently, "it's old business. It's part of the agenda, every time we meet. You'd think you'd know that by now. Old news. My goodness." She patted the spit curl over her left ear.

  "Yeh, well. I want to talk about investing in this cattle business before the day gets much older, Esther. And I want the rest of you folks here to get in on the ground floor."

  "What cattle business?" Quill asked. "I haven't heard anything about a new. cattle business." What she meant was that Doreen—who knew everything that went on in Hemlock Falls, and who had an entrepreneurial spirit of the highest order—hadn't mentioned anything about the cattle business to her.

  "Y'all been pretty busy setting up the restaurant," Elmer said kindly. "So it's not surprisin' that you haven't heard a thing." What he meant was that no one had yet told Doreen about it, since everyone thought the Quill was wholly uninterested in investments of any kind.

  "Hm," Quill said. "What about it?"

  "We'll get to it," Elmer said tolerantly. "But first, like Esther said, we got the old business to go over. Any old business, Quill?"

  Quill accepted the minutes book from Miriam and flipped back to the notes she'd taken at the last Chamber meeting several months ago. It had occurred just before the resolution of what she mentally called "the crafty ladies case," and since her mind had been on the investigation of a series of particularly brutal murders, her meeting notes were sketchy, at best. "Aug dog," she read aloud doubtfully. "FWD. America." She blinked. "Forwarding something? Did I promise to forward something? A dog to America?"

  "Hemlock Falls Celebrates America Days," Harvey said briskly. "My idea of how to make some tourist money in the dog days of August. I mean, why stop with the Fourth of July? America is America three hundred and sixty-five days of the year."

  "Amen," said Colonel Calhoun, startling Dookie out of his reverie.

  "And with the addition of Mr. Rossiter's fine herd of that true American breed, Texas longhorn cattle, to our little town, my ideas for America Days are going to knock your socks off."

  "Calhoun cattle," said the pudgy man in the black Stetson. "Royal's foundation stock is from my herd. So you'd want to say the Rossiter-Calhoun herd. Or words to that effect." He shifted in his seat with the confidence of a man deserving of attention. His voice was both high-pitched and resonant. There was a slight twang to his speech that Quill couldn't place. It wasn't a Texas drawl, nor the slur of the deep South, but something altogether different. Quill's notion of geography was a little fuzzy (she'd spent most of the eighth grade discovering that she could draw, to the detriment of both geography and algebra), but she placed the accent south of Washington State and north of California. Calhoun turned to Elmer with a pleasantly expectant air. "May I introduce myself and Mr. Rossiter to these good folks? Give them a little background on the fine opportunity that may be waiting here for us all?"

  Elmer rose halfway, nodded vigorously, and sat down again. "Please Colonel Calhoun. Y'all take all the time you need."

  Quill looked at her watch. Twenty after four, and if, as she suspected, Doreen had taken her orders to close the Palate with her usual indifference, the kitchen staff would be gearing up for dinner. She should be there. Besides, the track record for the Chamber of Commerce in municipal investment had been problematic, at best. There'd been the mini-mall fiasco, rescued from bankruptcy by a retired Japanese tycoon, not to mention the endless harebrained civic celebrations cooked up by Harvey Bozzel that ended up costing the town its tax money, rather than bringing it in. The infamous Jell-O Architecture Contest. Hemlock History Days and the witch squashing. Quill was pretty sure she didn't want to listen to any more of the same stuff.

  She slid the notepad with the minutes in Miriam's direction and tucked her head near Miriam's ear.

  "No," Miriam said firmly, before Quill could speak. "N. O. No. I'm not taking minutes for you."

  "I take awful minutes."

  "Don't you know?" Miriam smiled. She had huge blue eyes and attractively styled gray hair which somehow combined to give her a perennially youthful expression. "That's why we keep voting you in as secretary. If you kept really great minutes, we'd all realize how incompetent we are."

  Quill made a face.

  "It's true."

  "Ladies?" Elmer knocked his gavel lightly on the table, then tucked it hastily into his breast pocket at Miriam's minatory look. "If we could have your attention, please."

  Quill stood up with what she hoped was a firm air of authority. "I'm really sorry, Mayor, but I've got to get back to my restaurant. We're fully booked for dinner, and Meg's in New York."

  "Meg's in New York, all right," Marge said. "I seen her get on the train myself. But that restaurant of yours has a great big whacking sign on the front door. CLOSED FOR REMODELING, it said. What are you remodeling now, Quill? You about gutted that place already. Totally unnecessary, I might add, in case you folks think I left her with a crumbo kitchen."

  "It was a very nice kitchen," Quill said. "We didn't need all that freezer space, and Meg had to have an oven that hit six thousand degrees."

  "Only need an oven that hot if you're doin' pizza," Betty Hall said. "Thought Miss G
ore-may Chef Meg wouldn't touch pizza with a ten-foot pole. You put anchovies on it?"

  "No," Quill said.

  "Smart move. People that don't like anchovies would surprise you. There's a positive prejudice against anchovies."

  "I like a good anchovy pizza myself," Colonel Calhoun said. "You own that pretty little restaurant on Main Street? I didn't know you had pizza. Would have stopped in, maybe."

  "We don't sell pizza at all," Quill said desperately. "We sell gourmet food. My sister is Margaret Quilliam. She's a master chef."

  Betty Hall went "Huh!"

  Colonel Calhoun nodded with a serious expression. "Y'all ever think about selling Texas longhorn beef?"

  "We only have a few beef entrees, actually. A lot of our customers are too conscious of fat and calories to invest in it very much. There's always a few die-hard beef eaters, though."

  And they tended to die hard and early. Quill slung her bag over her shoulder. "Well, everyone, Miriam's going to take minutes and I really—"

  "No, I won't." Miriam tugged firmly at her sleeve. "Sit, Quill. Sit. You might learn something of advantage to the Palate."

  Quill, knocked slightly off balance by the tugs on her sleeve, sat down with an ungraceful thump. "Do you know," Miriam whispered urgently in her ear, "how rich this guy is? And he's a widower."

  "I don't care," Quill whispered back.

  "Well, I do!" Miriam batted her eyelashes at the colonel. "It's your civic duty to listen to the colonel, Quill. I feel it's my civic duty to learn all I can about this great opportunity for Hemlock Falls."

  Quill sat. And she learned more about Texas longhorn beef than she had ever wanted to know. That the beef was lower in fat and calories than turkey. That the taste rivaled Black Angus for juiciness and flavor. That Dr. Michael Debakey, famous heart surgeon, believed so strongly in the health benefits of this beef that he had a whole herd at his Texas ranch and very probably refused to eat any other kind of beef, although he, Colonel Calhoun, couldn't tell for certain.