“If it’s DeMarco behind the murders, Hedrick’s next in line to be killed, isn’t he?” said Meg. “Which, I admit it, gives us the more reason to turn this book over to Myles, Quill.” She paged through it. “Sheesh! How did he get all this stuff?! Here’s something about poor Marge’s affair with Gil Gilmeister. Now, that was a sad thing. I’ll tell you what I’m curious about. Who’s nasty enough to dump all this ancient dirt into the lap of a newspaperman?”
“Beats me.” Georgia, eyeing the cooling eggs Florentine with a wistful look, said in an abstracted tone, “Meg.” She rolled her eyes pathetically. “Those lovely, lovely eggs are getting cold!”
“Oh, rats. There’s grapefruit, too. Hang on.” She bounced to the counter, served the eggs, and began peeling grapefruit. Georgia tucked her napkin into the V of her caftan and began to eat.
Quill picked up the red notebook and said thoughtfully, “The final suspect is, of course, Hedrick himself. And the notes about the neurobenzine are very suggestive. Very.”
Georgia swallowed and nodded. “Hedrick gets my vote as the murderer. He’s got the best motive of all. All that cash.”
“We don’t know that for sure, do we?” asked Meg. “There’s been talk ... but there’s always talk. Have you ever noticed how people want to believe that other people are rich? They nod at you in this significant way and say something like, ‘Oh, yes, she’s doing all right,’ based on no evidence whatsoever.”
“Men especially,” said Georgia. “No, thanks, honey, no grapefruit. I don’t want to ruin my record for highest amount of healthy food not consumed in a day. As a matter of fact, those crumpets are wonderful. Could I have one plain, with just a bit of jam? Well. I can maybe help there, too. As you know, I’m loaded. I’ve got a couple of banker friends who can maybe help us out. It’ll take a few days to get the info back.”
“Do we have a few days?” asked Meg. “There’s a much shorter way. There’s an emergency Chamber meeting this morning, and Howie Murchison will be there. He handled the Conway closing on the Nickerson building. Quill can pin him to the wall about Hedrick’s finances. Believe me, those baby hazel eyes and curly red hair of hers conceal a steely mind. Howie’ll talk, and not even know he’s talking. And there’s the local OSHA office.”
“The local OSHA office?” Georgia stopped with a crumpet halfway to her mouth.
“They can tell us where Hedrick is likely to buy neurobenzine, what it’s used for, how much is on hand. They’ll have copies of the MSHS.”
“And what’s that when it’s at home?”
“Materials safety handling sheet,” said Meg offhandedly,
“She’s showing off,” said Quill. “We had a case last year... anyway, Meg, I don’t know what the local OSHA office could tell us that Andy couldn’t. Why don’t you put him, in your own inimitable way, onto neurobenzine as a possible murder weapon. Without letting him know how we know, of course.”
“I can’t do that unless I know what the heck it is, can I? I mean, how do I introduce it casually into a conversation? ‘Andrew. Speaking of neurobenzine ... or Andrew, I was wondering a lot about the properties of neurobenzine.’ “
“Meg, you can do it more subtly than that.”
“Okay, okay! I’ll try my wiles on Andrew. Are you going to try your wiles on Howie to see if Hedrick really does have any cash?”
“Sure. But I’ll bet that Gee will have better luck with the bankers. Howie takes confidentiality stuff seriously.”
“And what do we do about this?” Georgia tapped the red notebook.
“We copy it,” said Meg smugly, “on the office copier. And we put it back where you found it, Georgia. Myles’s men had the chance to discover it last night. They’ll have a chance again today, if Hedrick doesn’t come looking for it first. So we are not interfering with an investigation at all.”
Quill frowned. “And if Myles doesn’t find it before Hedrick?”
“We’ll give the copy to him. This is Monday, right? How much time do we need to pursue our leads and solve the murder?”
Quill threw up her hands. “How the heck should I know? A couple of days to answer the question we’ve raised. You know Myles’s resources—he’ll probably solve this before we do anyway.”
“Hah!” said Meg. “But we are going to give him a run for his money. If we don’t turn up anything significant by Friday, I vote we give the goods book copy to him then.”
“Agreed. Georgia?”
“Fine with me!” She spread a third crumpet with blueberry jam. “Just as long as I continue to get to play the Nero Wolfe part, and not the Archie Goodwin part. Wolfe never left his house, he ate terrific food, and somebody else did all the running around. Archie?” She wiggled her eyebrows at Quill. “When you get back from the Chamber meeting, report. And Fritz, this crumpet?” She burped. “Satisfactory.”
Quill picked up the red notebook. “Shall we reconvene after the Chamber meeting at Marge’s diner? It’s for lunch, so why don’t we meet in my office about three o’clock and compare notes. In the meantime, I’ll copy this off, then put it back where you found it, Georgia. Are you going to make those phone calls?”
“Wrote ‘em down and will do.”
“I’ve got to go down to the sheriffs office and give Deputy Dave a statement about how I prepared last night’s dinner,” said Meg. “I’ll bring some of that sour cream pastry with me. If Myles isn’t there, maybe I can drop tidbits into Dave’s mouth like Bathsheba with the grapes and charm him into letting me know what’s going on at the official end. Quill? You’ll put that copy in the safe?”
Quill, reading, answered her absently. “Sure. If you think we need to take precautions.”
“Georgia? Did anyone see you pick the book up this morning?”
“Just that little fellow, Stoker.”
“Well, act ignorant if he asks you anything. And Quill? Quill!”
Quill, her hands icy, had come to the end of the goods book.
Meg nudged her. “Make sure no one sees you slip the book back into the sweet peas. I think we should be careful.”
Quill looked up. Her voice was distant to her own ears. “You didn’t get all the way through this, Gee, did you?”
“No. Wanted to bring it up to you guys. Why?”
“Hedrick’s been trying to find evidence that the mall’s been built over a toxic waste dump. There’s a note here: ‘Check DeMarco Toxic Waste Disposal, Inc. Relative?’ And another set of notes from an OSHA Materials Safety Handling Sheet. About mercury poisoning.”
“Oh, my God,” said Meg. “Oh, no! If it’s true, this is even worse than the murders!”
“Then you’ve lost all your money,” said Georgia soberly. “And so has half the town.”
“It’s worse than that. Don’t you see,” said Meg, perfectly white. “If it’s true, that mall will be killing people. Lots of people. Just like the Love Canal in Niagara Falls. It took years for them to stop the dumping. And in all that time people died, and died and died.”
CHAPTER 10
“Let me see that.” Georgia grabbed the note book and frowned. “This is ridiculous, Quill. DeMarco with a brother in toxic waste disposal? I don’t think so.”. She threw it onto the breakfast table. “More muckraking.”
“It doesn’t say brother. The note says ‘relative.’ It might be a father or an uncle or a sister.”
“Didn’t you say DeMarco was from New Jersey? I’ve been to New Jersey. It’s filled with Italians. And De-Marco’s a common enough Italian name.”
“Do you think it’s true?” Georgia shook her head in disgust. “I’ve seen and heard what this little newspaper of Hedrick’s is doing to the Falls. It’s my guess that the little bugger is thinking of going big time. Creating more of those stories in which the adjective alleged is in little tiny type and the noun coverup in huge letters on the front page.”
“It would explain a lot,” said Quill soberly. “Except that I haven’t had a chance to tell you about the guns, Gee.”<
br />
“The guns!”
When Quill explained the near riot that Meg had quelled with off-key renditions of movie theme songs, she threw back her head and laughed so hard her whole body shook. “Oh, my.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. It isn’t funny. From what you’ve said, it could have a real disaster. But, oh, I wish I’d seen it!”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Meg said. “We’ve got to turn this over to Myles.”
“He’ll take it public,” Quill warned. “You know him, Meg. He’ll call in the DEC and the EPA, and if Gee’s right, Hedrick will have exactly what he wants.”
“Quill’s right, Meg. It seems to me that you have a very delicate situation here. If there’s any truth at all to these allegations Hedrick’s alluded to in this notebook, your little town’s in trouble.”
“It’d explain the mayor’s nervousness,” said Quill. “It makes no sense at all that he’d contacted Mr. Sakura to buy out the mall unless he’d discovered... this.” She set the notebook on the table. “Everyone’s excited about this project. Why sell out? Unless there’s a rumor about toxic waste disposal that’s making the rounds, and frightening people. It frightens me, that’s for sure.”
“We would have heard about it. And if not us, then John,” Meg said. “We’re investors, too.”
“Would you?” Georgia asked shrewdly. “Quill said herself that you two wouldn’t participate in a coverup for one minute. And neither would John. If most of your investors have their life savings tied up in this, it’d make a great deal of sense to sell what they could and get out, and let Mr. Sakura handle the hassle with the EPA and the DEC. What you two should think about, or rather the three of us, is whether or not there’s anything in this. I still think it’s just another sleazy idea of Hedrick’s to sell newspapers.”
“Louisa was killed at the excavation site for the septic tank,” said Quill. “And she had a camera around her neck. The film had been removed. What if she found cylinders containing mercury under the tank? And DeMarco saw her, hit her with the hammer, and dumped her body in the river? It would explain the boldness of the crime, too. I mean, the woman was killed in broad daylight, in an area where fifty or more people were potential witnesses.”
“You’re going to go down there, aren’t you?” said Meg.
“I think one of us should. It’d be unusual for you to take the time from the kitchen to go visit the site, but it’s totally logical for me to be there to check on the progress of the boutique restaurant. And we have to find out what we can, Meg, before we turn this over to Myles. I agree with you. It wouldn’t be right to sit on it for long. But what if Georgia’s right, and there’s nothing to this but Hedrick’s vivid imagination?”
“Even if it isn’t true, it doesn’t mean that DeMarco didn’t find it easier to knock Louisa and Carlyle off than deal with a fraudulent claim that the place is a toxic dump,” Meg warned. “It could be dangerous to be alone with him. Why don’t you take John with you?”
“He’s in Syracuse, checking on the delivery of the kitchen unit. He’s due back at the Chamber meeting at noon. I don’t think we should hang around waiting to see if everyone in town begins to develop central nervous system disorders. I think I should go look right now. Besides, the fewer people who know about this, the better.”
“Hey, I’ll go with you,” Georgia said.
“No.” Quill grinned at her. “You hate legwork. You said so yourself. And running like heck from DeMarco and his revolver-wielding minions could be real legwork. I’ll just go down there, poke around in an innocent way, and see if I can pick up enough sinister vibrations to justify blowing the whistle on the whole project.”
“Quill, I don’t like this.” Meg ran both her hands through her hair.
“I promise you, Meg. I’m not going to do anything silly. I’ll admire the progress on the mall, bat my eyelashes, and see if I can discover whether the septic tank was set before or after Louisa visited the site. If it was after, the probability that she found something suspicious in the hole is higher. I’ll also ask DeMarco directly if he knows of anyone to handle our toxic waste. If he gives me the name of his uncle Frankie, we’ve got another reason to turn the goods book over to Myles.”
“And I’ll include a background check on DeMarco Disposal in my phone calls this morning,” said Georgia.
“I might as well leave right now, then.” Quill got up.
“Sounds reasonable,” Meg admitted. “Just as long as you remember not to go in the basement.”
“The basement?” said Georgia.
“All those gothic novels we read when we were kids,” Quill explained. “The dumb heroine always went into the basement. Alone. At two in the morning. With the homicidal first wife lurking near the freezer with an ax. Meg, I’ll be very careful to run like heck at the first sign of suspicious behavior.”
“I’ll just bet. Quill? If you don’t call here by eleven thirty, I’m going to get Myles and those Norwegian cousins of Harland Peterson’s and come out to get you.”
“Deal,” said Quill, and went to change her clothes into something more appropriate to sleuthing than shorts and a cotton T-shirt.
Quill drove through the summer morning. She’d copied the goods book, tucked the copy in the office safe, then dropped the original unobtrusively among the sweet peas by the gazebo. There had been no sign of Hedrick. She let her mind drift for the few miles it took to get to the mini-mall site. The less she concentrated on the possibilities ahead (kidnapping? being whacked in the head with a hammer? maybe it wasn’t mercury but plutonium packed in Baggies, and she’d fry like a potato in hot fat?), the cooler she could be. As fond as she was of fictional detectives who welcomed the rough stuff, she much preferred a more civilized approach to bringing miscreants to justice, like policemen and courtrooms.
The countryside was drenched in green, and the air sweet with the smell of cut grass and ripe corn. She and Meg had chosen this spot at a time when Meg had been recently widowed and Quill dried up as an artist. The decision had been made in haste, but neither had truly regretted it. The town and its surrounding countryside were too beautiful for regrets.
Hemlock Falls was located in the middle of the path of glaciers which had moved through the region tens of thousands of years before. Farther south, toward New York itself, the countryside recalled the English Cotswolds in spring and summer, with gentle hills, meadow-covered, and stands of ash and birch. Central New York was harder country. Granite poked its rocky knuckles through the soil, leaving land too thin for intensive farming. The glacier’s chief legacy here was water, for which Quill felt a passionate affinity. It fell in clear ribbons from the lips of gorges; wound in streams through grasses thick with clover, timothy, and red fescue; and formed an occasional ribbon wide enough to be called a river.
It was on such a river—the Taughannock—that the Hemlock Falls Investment Group (Ltd.) had selected the site for its mini-mall. Harvey Bozzell (Bozzell: The Agency That ADS Value!) had named it The Mall At The Falls, even though the nearest real waterfall was three miles upstream near Trumansburg, in a rare burst of professional reticence.
In far too short a time the familiar and soothing landscape gave way to construction and Quill approached’the mall with increasing trepidation. The sounds of Carlyle’s death, the memory of her face, were a rising accompaniment to the distant hum of tractors cutting hay and the occasional birdsong.
Quill parked the Olds on the newly asphalted parking lot, turned off the ignition, and thought hard for a moment. How would she know what she was looking for when she saw it? She really doubted that if DeMarco was dumping, it was in canisters labeled illegal disposal. On the other hand, neither Carlyle nor Louisa Conway appeared to be the sort of women who would know more than Quill would about building sites, much less toxic waste disposal. If the late Mr. Conway had made his fortune in construction, then it was remotely possible that Louisa had been a forewoman on a job site, but somehow, recalling the creamy skin, the lazy, sensual
bodies of both women, Quill didn’t think so. Louisa’d probably picked him up in line at a bank. She made a mental note—”Find out how Conway made his fortune”—and decided that if either Louisa or Carlyle had come across something at the mall that was suspicious— and been killed for it—Quill could figure it out, too.
Except if that were true, wouldn’t one or more of the other investors in the project have noticed it? The thought of a vast village-wide conspiracy flashed through her head, and she shivered in the heat. Louisa had been killed near the site of the leach fields, a spot which didn’t particularly interest anyone, unless they’d been tipped off to a problem, as Louisa may have been. No one else would have been especially interested, except Petey Peterson, out of professional curiosity, and he’d have been the first to cry an alarm, since he’d been vociferous about his failure to get the contract to install the leach field.
She got out of the car and surveyed the new mall.
Like the village itself, the mall had an American Colonial air, with white clapboard storefronts, cobblestone paving in the open-air atrium, and flower-filled planters painted black. At forty thousand square feet the mini-mall had been designed to accommodate six small retail stores, the Inn’s boutique restaurant, and a McDonald’s. The six stores and the two restaurants formed a horseshoe around a small paved court. The mall entrance had four thick pine doors, ten feet high, with a span of sixteen feet. They were painted in a cross between robin’s egg and teal blue with Paramount Exterior Latex Paint, obtained at cost from the local Paramount Paint factory.
The large doors were open to the warm summer air. Quill passed a hand-lettered sign that read: grand opening !!! with a date two days away in bright red paint. Beneath it, someone had taped an old New Yorker cartoon that read “Watch this space” and featured a hill with three empty crosses on it. Quill stopped and looked at the cartoon with a frown.
“Can I help you?”
A Puree of Poison Page 16
