Murder Well-Done hf-4

by Claudia Bishop

  "Joseph is a young member of a law firm that has represented my family's interests for years," Tutti said.

  "Then you absolutely need another law firm, Tutti. This man tried to run me off the road last night. In the storm."

  "Why in the world would he want to do that?" Tutti cocked her head. One white curl fell charmingly over her left ear. She patted it back into place. "If Joseph was following you, and I say if, it was because perhaps you had something that belongs to me."

  "Belongs to you?"

  "What are those little things called, dear? You know, they stick them into those machines all the young people have these days."

  "Computer disks?" Quill, perhaps because she'd had a late night, was feeling a little faint.

  "That's it. Computer disks." She turned to Joseph, who had resumed his seat next to Quill on her couch. "Now, Joey. What's the number of that New York State statute you were telling me about?"

  "The breaking and entering statute? Or the fraudulent impersonation statute?"

  Tutti turned her blue gaze onto Quill. There was a scene in Jaws that had scared the dickens out of her as a little kid. The one where Bruce the shark pulls along the boat, and his flat black eye hypnotizes Robert Shaw. "Either one," said Tutti, with a click of her white teeth. "Either one."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about." Quill kept her hands still and her voice steady.

  Tutti pulled out a jeweled compact, a lipstick, and frowned at herself in the mirror. Then she reapplied the lipstick, put the compact away, and said, "Rita the security guard does. The boy from the pizza parlor who stuck the flyer under the windshield of that battered Oldsmobile of yours does. On the other hand -if you said that you'd met Joseph on Interstate 81 headed north - there wouldn't be anyone who could gainsay that - or prove it, either. You see, dear." She leaned forward. "No witnesses." She sat back. "We'll wait here."

  "It's not going to do you any good." Quill stood up. "You know about computers, Mr. Greenwald."

  "Some."

  "What type did Nora Cahill use?" He shrugged.

  "I can give you a hint. Those software disks you found in the box of her office equipment? It was the latest edition of Microsoft Word. Practically every PC with the power to run that software automatically backs up files. Even if Nora erased it, the likelihood of one of those disk doctors being able to recover it is pretty high. And you know who has her laptop?"

  "Who?" Tutti demanded.

  Joseph Greenwald rubbed his forehead. "Mrs. McIntosh, ah, McHale's got it."

  "The local sheriff?" she asked sharply. "How much trouble can we get from a local sheriff?"

  "He's not just any local sheriff."

  Quill got up. "If you two will excuse me, I have some work to do."

  Tutti jerked her chin at Greenwald.

  "If you don't mind, Ms. Quilliam, we'd like to recover our property despite the - er - circumstances."

  There was a long silence.

  "They're in my room," Quill said finally.

  "Go with her," snapped Tutti. She got to her feet with a groan. "This arthritis is acting up again. I'm going to have a hot bath before the dinner." She patted Quill's arm. "I hope we see you there, my dear. In one of those lovely velvet gowns like the one you wore last night." She patted Quill's cheek. Quill had to restrain herself from biting her.

  "And you gave them to her?" Meg asked, several hours later. She was standing at the Aga, an egg whisk in one hand and her copper saut‚ pan in the other. A brown sauce was bubbling in the pan. It smelled rich, earthy and winey. Quill, dressed for the evening in bronze silk, nibbled at a piece of sourdough bread.

  "What else could I do? I can just see poor Howie trying to defend me on felony charges of breaking and entering."

  "It's a misdemeanor, I think. Depending on what you swiped. Whatever. Tell me I was right. She is the murderer."

  Quill cut a piece of Stilton from the wheel Meg had set out for the rehearsal dinner. She added it to the bread.

  "Will you stop?" Meg said testily. "You're wrecking the display."

  "Okay. You were right. But you were right for the wrong reasons. I can't believe you care about the quality of the food you're going to serve to a family whose business is organized crime. And a sweet little old lady who's capable of knocking off six people before breakfast."

  "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game," Meg said obscurely. "And you don't know that they're members of organized crime."

  "Ha!"

  "Or that Tutti's the Godmother."

  "Ha, again. It should be obvious to the meanest intelligence."

  "What's obvious to the meanest intelligence is that you're still no further in discovering who killed Nora and Dorset and why."

  "If we could just find some hard evidence," said Quill. "The videotape. Or my coat. Even my hat, which has got to have blood on it."

  "Whoosh." Meg shuddered. She dropped the whisk, startled. "Darn it, do you hear that? You don't suppose it's those idiots from S. O. A. P. again?"

  Quill listened: muffled barks and equally muffled curses, followed by the crash of a mop against the floor. "Tatiana," she said. "From the dining room. Maybe she caught another mouse. And that's Doreen whacking along behind her. She seems to have taken a liking to Doreen."

  "That'll shorten her life." Meg dipped a spoon into the sauce, tasted it, scowled, and dumped it down the sink. She rinsed out her copper bowl and began to reassemble the sauce. Tatiana's barks came closer, accompanied by the thump of tennis shoes against carpet. There was the skritch-skritch-skritch of canine claws against the dining room doors. Quill pushed them open. Tatiana burst in, barks at an hysterical pitch.

  "You did catch a mouse," Quill said. "Ugh. Good girl."

  Doreen stamped in behind her. "That ain't a mouse. It's a hat. Your hat. And there's blood allover it."

  -11-

  "Catch that dog!" Meg screamed.

  "I'm tryin'!" Doreen thwacked the mop on the floor. Tatiana raced around the kitchen, the rabbit hat flapping in her jaws. Bjarne jumped, cursed in Finn, and leaped out of the way, a serving of squash souffl‚ held high above his head.

  "Wait!" Quill commanded. She grabbed a leg of potted rabbit (despite Meg's agonized cries of "My dinner!") and crouched down on the floor. "Here, doggie, good doggie."

  "Don't you dare give that dog my good food, Sarah Quilliam!"

  Tatiana came to a halt next to the boot box at the back door. She sat down, the hat dangling from her jaws. Her little black eyes glared malevolently over the bedraggled rabbit fur. She growled. Doreen growled back.

  "Don't, Doreen." Quill inched forward, the roasted rabbit held temptingly in one hand. "Gooood dog."

  The back door opened. Tatiana whirled. John walked in. Tatiana leaped past him and into the night.

  "No!" Meg, Quill, and Doreen yelled simultaneously.

  "Good grief," John said.

  "The hat!" Meg shouted.

  All four of them dove out the back door.

  The sun was setting in a modest blaze of pink. Shadows crawled across the snow-covered garden. The air was damp and still. The dog spun in circles on the snowy path, apparently chasing its tail. The hat sat in a sodden lump near a stalk of Brussels sprouts, on top of a pile of cow manure. Quill snatched it up. "My hat," she mourned. "It's a mess."

  "You shut up," Doreen said to the dog. "Get in there. Now!"

  Tatiana considered this command for a long moment, her head cocked t one side, then followed the four of them back to the kitchen. Quill put the hat on the butcher block counter.

  "That is a bad thing to do to a hat," Bjarne observed over Quill's shoulder. "Shall I give the little dog a treat?"

  "You can give the little dog a kick in the butt," Doreen growled. `Here. Gimme that." She snatched the scrap of fat from Bjarne and held it out. "C'mere, you."

  Tatiana sat down, scratched her neck ruff furiously with her hind leg, stretched, grinned, then accepted the piece of fat with a contemptuous air
.

  "Where did she find it, Doreen?" Quill took a long-handled fork and turned the hat over. "It's a mess."

  "Outside somewheres." Doreen took a Kleenex from her apron, sneezed, and wiped her nose. "We went out for walkies..."

  "For what/" asked John.

  "Walkies," Doreen said impatiently, "so she could do her business. We went on down to the park and she run off in the woods and come back with this."

  They stared at it. The hat was fashioned after the style affected by World War II Chinese generals. The inside of the crown and the earflaps were lined with rabbit fur. The flaps could be drawn up over the top of the hat and fastened together with a button, or worn down over the ears and fastened beneath the chin.

  It shed rabbit hair, continually.

  "Why d'ya ever buy the durn thing?" asked Doreen.

  "It's warm," Quill said defensively. "And I've never been all that fashion conscious."

  "I know corpses more fashion conscious than you," Doreen agreed. "It sure is some mess." Snow, blood, cow manure, and dog saliva matte the hat from crown to chin strap.

  "There's blood all along the inside," John observed. "the murderer was wearing this hat on the videotape, Quill? And in the cell block, when he knifed Dorset?"

  "Yes. And I agree with you. There shouldn't be any blood inside the hat. At least, I don't know how it could have gotten there."

  "Maybe it got knocked off in the cell block in the struggle with Dorset," Meg suggested. "You said he was bleeding pretty badly."

  Quill shuddered at the memory. "It's possible. I couldn't see all that much. I didn't want to see all that much. But it's possible."

  John threw a glance at the kitchen clock. "I've got to get to the dining room to seat the McIntosh party." He shrugged himself out of his parka, pulled off his sweater, and put on the tweed sports coat he normally wore throughout the day. "The van from the Marriott's out front with the overflow guests. I told the driver to come in here for some food." He poked at the rabbit hat with a tentative finger. "You might want to put this somewhere before he comes in to eat."

  "I'll give Myles a call and tell him the dog's found it." said Quill. "Let's stick it in the storeroom, in the meantime."

  "I've got a crazy suggestion," Meg said irascibly. "Why don't we try serving this meal in the meantime."

  "Murders come and murders go, but food goes on forever?" said Quill. "Okay. Okay! You're right. John and I will get out to that rehearsal dinner and grin, grin, grin at the horrible senator."

  Meg eyed her potted rabbit with satisfaction. "At least the condemned is getting a hearty meal. If you two are going to serve it, that is."

  "You go on ahead, John. I'll just give Myles a call." Quill dialed the familiar number from the kitchen phone. The sheriff, Deputy Dave informed her, was out, talking to some computer guy at Cornell about Nora Cahill's laptop. He'd be back around seven-thirty.

  Quill left an urgent-please-call message with Davy, who said that he hoped there were no hard feelings over her recent incarceration. Quill said certainly not, and Davy, emboldened, offered the information that Bernie Bristol had resigned his justiceship in the wake of the unfortunate publicity surrounding Nora Cahill's death. The mayor, Davy told her, was practically on his knees to Mr. Murchison to return as justice, who had told him, the mayor, to go fly a kite.

  "So there's a bare possibility," Quill said to John a few moments later in the dining room, "that Adela will get that justice job."

  She smiled as Claire and Tutti walked in, and said out of the corner of her mouth, "And if she is elected, I hope her first job is to arraign Senator Santini. For murder."

  Having caught at least her fianc‚'s name in this murmured speech, Claire said, "A-al's not here yet," in her nasal whine, and slouched over to the table by the window. Quill pulled a chair out for her and commented on the beauty of the rose garlands as Claire sat down.

  "They're all right, I guess," Claire said listlessly. "Where's Mummy?"

  "Still getting dressed, dear." Tutti beamed at the tablecloths. "Sarah, you have an eye. What do you think?"

  "They're wonderful," Quill said sincerely. For whether or not Tutti was, as she suspected, the head of a large criminal organization of Italian (and Scot) descent, she clearly had taste. If not on her own, at least taste that she was willing to purchase. The tablecloths shouldn't have worked with the natural flowers and the mauve carpeting, but they did. The print was of brilliantly colored roses. They splashed across the tables; the pattern was tiny, the colors vivid. The heavy linen napkins were aquamarine, the china a creamy white rimmed with platinum. Claire sat in the middle of this splendor with a sallow face and a discontented mouth.

  Meg came out of the kitchen and toward the party. She was dressed in her chef's coat, a specially made tunic that had been a present from Helena Houndswood, the celebrity chef who had visited the Inn two years before. The tunic was made of fine white wool, with full sleeves that ended in neat narrow cuffs at Meg's wrists. Her cheeks were pink from the heat in the kitchen and her gray eyes serene. Quill was swept with affection and then wondered, briefly, at her own emotions. She jerked a little in surprise: despite everything, the two bodies, her night in jail, the discontented bride in front of her, she realized that she was happy.

  She took Meg's hand in her own and brought her to the table. "For those of you who haven't met her yet, this is our chef, Margaret Quilliam."

  Polite applause swept the table.

  "I'd like to welcome you to the Inn," Meg said. "Our partner, John Raintree, will be serving chilled champagne in a moment, so that Quill and he and I, in fact all of us here at the Inn at Hemlock Falls, can toast Claire and the senator, and wish them the very best."

  "Hang on a second," said Marlon. "I want to get this on tape!" He took a mini-camcorder from the case sitting by his chair, then circled the table, the camera whirring. Meg straightened her collar uncertainly. Quill ducked out of camera range.

  "But AI's not here yet!" Claire said.

  Quill exchanged a glance with Meg. "Why don't I go upstairs and see if he's still in his room. I do know that he went out skiing fairly late. He may just have gotten back."

  "Tell Elaine and Vittorio to come down, too, will you, dear?" Tutti, who was looking especially grandmotherly in pink lace over gray satin, gave Quill a decisive little nod.

  "I'd like to tell you what we'll be serving tonight," Meg went on. "For the first course, I've developed a clear game soup seasoned with a combination of herbs we grow right here at the Inn."

  Quill went into the foyer. The chair behind the reception desk was empty. Dina had left that morning to go home for the holidays. Mike had filled the Oriental vases near the cobblestone fireplace with fresh pine, and the scent filled this small area. Quill drew a deep breath. It was like being in the woods. The fire was low in the fireplace, and she bent to put a fresh log on it. The odor of burning apple wood joined that of the pine.

  "It smells wonderful in here." Myles came in the front door. Snow powdered the shoulders of his heavy anorak and the heels of his boots. His face was red with cold. Quill went to him and put her warn hands on his cheeks. He kissed her. She put her arms around him, inside his jacket. She could feel his heart beating against her hands.

  "Davy said you called. Is anything wrong?"

  "We found the hat. Or rather, Tatiana found the hat. My hat."

  His eyebrows drew together.

  "Oh, it's Tutti's little dog. Apparently, Tutti dragooned Doreen into taking it, I mean her, for her constitutional in the park. The dog ran off and came back with the hat. I stuck it - the hat, I mean - in the storeroom." She looked around vaguely. "I don't know where Tatiana is. Doreen's stuck with her, I suppose. Anyway, the hat's there whenever you need it. How did the interview with Greenwald go?"

  Myles's gray eyes narrowed. "The guy's slick. You're sure that no one saw him after you on the interstate?"

  Quill shook her head. "positive. The snow was awful."

  "Greenwald
didn't come right out and say it, but he intimated that a couple of witnesses could place you at Cahill's apartment."

  "He's right. I wasn't very careful, I guess."

  "Quill, you shouldn't have gone there in the first place."

  "True, true, true. Sorry. I'll know better next time. It turned out to be useless, anyway. Greenwald practically blackmailed me into giving him those computer disks. As a matter of fact, he did blackmail me. He threatened me with impersonation and breaking and entering. So I gave him the computer disks."