Dread on Arrival

by Claudia Bishop

  Edmund held his gaze steady and looked directly into the lens. “Hemlock Falls, home to some of the most stunning waterfalls and natural gorges in the world, is located in the heart of the Finger Lakes wine region … ooof!” Abruptly, he bent over, as if somebody had whacked him in the stomach, which indeed Ida Mae had.

  Ida Mae’s outthrust chin and determined lower lip mashed up against the lens of camera number three. “All you viewers out there?” Ida Mae scowled. “You turn this third-rate show off and go straight to PBS. Let’s hear it for the real deal instead of this cruddy guy: the Antiques Roadshow!”

  “Cut,” Edmund wheezed.

  The camera panned back, to reveal Ida Mae with her purse dangling from her right hand.

  “Dammit! I said cut!” Edmund lunged at the grip running camera three. Ida Mae swung her purse wide, clipped Edmund over the head, and thrust her pink-cheeked face close to the lens. “Phony!”

  Belter Barcini hit the off button on the remote, just as Your Ancestor’s Attic cut to black. He reconsidered and clicked the TV back on. It wasn’t every day he got the chance to see that skinny nose-wipe Eddie Tree get his butt kicked by a little old lady, but nope, a dog-food commercial danced across the screen and if good old Fast Eddie was getting his clock cleaned, the TV audience wasn’t about to see it.

  Belter hit the off button again and scratched meditatively under one armpit. His office was in the rear of his pawn shop, and it was littered with a couple of days’ take that he hadn’t gotten around to cataloguing yet. He swept one meaty arm across his desk, dislodging a Colt .45 which had (probably) been Buffalo Bill Cody’s favorite shooter. He kicked aside a samurai sword that had (almost definitely) been owned by the late Japanese emperor Hirohito. He mounded his hands over his substantial belly and thought hard.

  The clip of Ida Mae’s assault with a non-deadly weapon was going to be all over the Internet faster than Belter could down a Molson Golden, which was pretty damn quick. Which would bump Ancestor’s ratings. Which—if you counted the highest-ranking used goods reality shows, Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars—would make Barcini’s own Pawn-o-Rama number four in a four-horse race.

  Barcini scratched the other armpit. He hated the odds. He hated being last. Most of all, he hated Ed Fancypants Tree, or whatever the hell his mamma named him. He’d like to knock that man’s block off his skinny little neck.

  It might just be the time to take a little trip to Hemlock Falls, New York.

  1

  ∼Clarissa Sparrow’s∼

  Tartes Sucre

  1 lb all-purpose flour

  8 ounces chilled unsalted butter

  3 ounces chilled white vegetable shortening

  1 large egg plus iced water to make a total of 2 cups

  2 teaspoons salt

  ¼ teaspoons sugar

  Using a large fork, combine flour, butter, and shortening into an oatmeal consistency. Add salt, sugar, and liquid. Work lightly with hands into a ball. Roll out. Cut into a circle sufficient to cover a nine-inch tart pan. Sprinkle with one-half cup coarse unprocessed sugar. Bake in a preheated 425-degree oven until evenly browned.

  “Of course, both Edmund and I have been married before, Quill,” Rose Ellen Whitman said in her soft, whispery voice, “so we don’t want a really white sort of wedding, if you understand me.”

  “I think so,” Sarah Quilliam said.

  Somebody must have told Rose Ellen Whitman she looked like Audrey Hepburn. Quill thought she did, sort of. She had very dark hair, drawn into a simple bun. Her eyes were dark, doe-like and long-lashed. The illusion was enhanced by Rose Ellen’s preference for elegant sheath dresses, high heels, and a string of very good pearls. Rose Ellen’s boutique Elegant Antiques was the newest addition to the Hemlock Falls shops on Main Street. The prices had astonished the village. The fact that her first shipment flew out of the store purchased by hordes of eager tourists had astonished the village even more.

  Quill, her sister Meg, and Clarissa Sparrow, the newly appointed director of the Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy were in a meeting to help Rose Ellen with her wedding to Edmund Tree. The wedding would be held two days after Edmund taped an episode of Your Ancestor’s Attic, which was going to be produced in the Hemlock Falls High School auditorium, for the first time ever.

  The wedding itself was to be at Quill and Meg’s twenty-seven-room hotel, the Inn at Hemlock Falls. The Inn didn’t have enough room to handle the reception for the Tree-Whitman wedding, so the partry had to be held elsewhere. The beautiful old stone Inn sat across the Hemlock Gorge from Clarissa’s Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy. Rose Ellen had hired Clarissa Sparrow, and the academy’s vast dining room, to cater a reception for three hundred guests.

  The four women sat at a round table made of aged oak, in the lavishly appointed wine cellar that housed the academy’s collection of New York State wines. After the death of her husband, in that same wine cellar some weeks before, Madame LeVasque had decided the best way to keep the ghoulishly curious hordes out of the wine cellar and back in the gift shop spending money was to assign another function to the space. So it became the conference room.

  Quill, who was sensitive to atmosphere, had been a little unnerved throughout the planning of the wedding, and not just because the wine cellar had briefly housed a corpse. Meg was her much-loved sister. Clarissa was her best friend. And no matter how you looked at it, two young, ambitious gourmet chefs in the same small town were bound to be competitive.

  So far, the discussion between her volatile sister and Clarissa had been edgy, yet polite, but Quill wasn’t about to relax just yet. Rose Ellen was a natural born nitpicker and the meeting was running on way too long. The monthly meeting of the Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce would start in less than an hour. She’d been Chamber secretary for more years than she wanted to count, and she hadn’t been on time to a Chamber meeting yet. It wasn’t a record she was particularly proud of.

  “Nothing truly formal, but elegant, if you see what I mean,” Rose Ellen continued, “which is why I’ve arranged for the wedding itself to be at Quill and Meg’s Inn, Clarissa.”

  Clare’s nostrils flared, but she didn’t rise to the inference that the Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy was short on elegance.

  “The Inn’s kitchen is far too underequipped, of course, which is why I’m having the reception here.”

  Meg scowled. Quill dropped her pencil on the floor so she would have an excuse to duck under the table and take a look at Meg’s socks. The socks were a fair indicator of her sister’s temper. Today’s pair was black, with a four-color Mickey Mouse pattern, which might be a reflection of Meg’s opinion of Rose Ellen Whitman. But maybe not.

  “I think you’ve made very smart decisions,” Clarissa said, with a set smile. She hadn’t been Bonne Goutè’s director very long—only a few weeks—but the job clearly suited her. Clare wasn’t a pretty woman, but her high cheekbones and aquiline nose made her striking. She had a natural, easy air of command and even Meg agreed that Clare was the best pastry chef in the Northeast, if not the whole country.

  “Not hiring us for the reception was the only sensible decision you could have made,” Meg pointed out. “As much as I’d like to, there’s no way the Inn’s kitchen could do a sit-down dinner for three hundred.” She rather spoiled the graciousness of her comment by adding, “We keep the kitchen small in order to be as selective as possible. Just so you know.”

  Quill glanced at her sister but didn’t say anything. Clare flushed, but kept a smile on her face. The Inn at Hemlock Falls and the Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy had been rivals in the not so distant past, and its late (unlamented) director Bernard LeVasque had been a master at fomenting ill will, bad feelings, and downright hostility. When Madame LeVasque appointed Clarissa director in place of her late husband Bernard, Quill had crossed both fingers for luck. Clare was a good friend. Meg was a good sister. Both women were fiercely proud chefs. Both were trained in the classical French tradition. Neither one of them could take
refuge in being resident experts on exotica like Asian fusion or Guatemalan charcuterie. The potential for tantrums was awesome.

  “Besides,” Meg added airily, “we’ll be pretty busy with the media crowd from New York.”

  “What media crowd?” Clare asked suspiciously.

  “I warned Meg that the juxtaposition of the Attic episode so close to the wedding is bound to attract attention,” Rose Ellen said. “As you all know, any kind of publicity is abhorrent to me, but one must be prepared.”

  “One must,” Meg agreed solemnly.

  Clare put her hand to her mouth and coughed. Quill realized both chefs were suppressing giggles, which made her grateful to Rose Ellen for providing a bonding moment. “Well,” she said rather vaguely, “it’s all very exciting, I think. There’s such a lot to get through. Perhaps we should move on.”

  “Let’s take a second to recap,” Clarissa said. “I want to make sure my menus don’t conflict with the items Meg plans to serve at the rehearsal dinner and the engagement party.” She smiled, suddenly, a genuine smile this time. “Can you just hear the sneers if I tried to palm off our pâtés on guests who’d already tasted Meg’s?”

  “It’s why I’m staying away from pastry,” Meg admitted. “Just in case Clare decides to do tartes sucre. As a matter of fact, Rose Ellen, you should insist that Clare give you her tartes sucre. She’s internationally known for her pastry. And your petit choux pastry, Clare, is to die for.”

  Clarissa’s thin cheeks turned attractively pink. “Meg’s even better known for her pâté.”

  “It all sounds lovely,” Rose Ellen said, her voice just this side of boredom.

  When the conversation turned to food, Quill knew to leave it to the experts. She sat back as the discussion flowed around her. She looked at her small, dark-haired sister with affection. Clare, who was almost as tall as Quill, was dark-haired, too, but she wasn’t nearly as decided and determined a character as Meg. Rose Ellen Whitman, who was not only the most beautiful woman in the room, but probably the most beautiful woman between Hemlock Falls and New York City, didn’t draw the eye the way Clare and her sister did. The three women made an interesting study.

  Quill flipped to a fresh page in the sketch pad she used to take meeting notes and reached for the charcoal pencils she always kept in her skirt pocket.

  “Are you sketching us?” Rose Ellen asked. “Now that would be a fine wedding present. A genuine Quilliam.”

  Quill blushed. She always did, when somebody mentioned her work as an artist. She’d had a brief, nerve-wrackingly successful career in the arts community before she and Meg had purchased the Inn twelve years ago.

  Rose Ellen smiled faintly and got to her feet. “Let’s leave these two and take a walk.”

  “You don’t want menu approval?”

  Rose Ellen shrugged. She was slim and tall, taller than Quill, who was five foot eight in her bare feet—but she also wore the highest heels Quill had ever seen. Her calves twinged just looking at Rose Ellen’s shoes. “I’ll fax the menu to Edmund tonight. He’ll have opinions of his own. He always does. It doesn’t matter all that much to me.” She made a face and glanced over her shoulder at the two chefs, who were huddled over the menus. “Not what those two want to hear, certainly. The look of the wedding is very important, of course. What with Edmund’s position in the world of antiques, and my own high profile, it’s essential that it look just right. That it conveys the right message to the people who matter. So I wanted a word with you about the décor.”

  Quill glanced at her watch. “Actually, I have a Chamber of Commerce meeting in about twenty minutes. So I won’t be able to stay with you too long.”

  Rose Ellen drew her beautifully plucked eyebrows together. “The Chamber of Commerce? Isn’t that the village organization run by that funny little man? The one with the dreadful wife?”

  “Mayor Henry,” Quill said. “And his wife, Adela.” Quill’s first rule as an innkeeper was “don’t belt the guests.” Sometimes it was a hard rule to keep. “We’re very fond of them in Hemlock Falls.”

  “Well, the funny little man can wait, for the moment. I do want your opinion on my color scheme for the ceremony. I’ve made some sketches of my own I’d like you to see.” She held an oxblood Hermès portfolio in one hand and raised it slightly.

  “A few minutes, then.” Quill led the way out of the wine cellar and into the academy’s large atrium.

  Bernard LeVasque hadn’t spared a penny of borrowed money to build the academy. The atrium was the center of the vast building. The floors were wide-planked cedar. The tasting room, directly across from the wine cellar, had ceilings that soared to twenty feet and the antique wine racks that covered the walls had come from LeVasque’s own vineyards in France. And the kitchens … Quill paused, thinking of the kitchens. Clare and her staff could handle eighty students at a time. There were twenty dual-fuel Viking ranges, arranged in blocks of four each. Each four-range station was equipped with a prep sink and all the bowls, graters, knives, spatulas, spoons, pots, and pans any cook could dream of. The academy’s splendor certainly overwhelmed the two-hundred-year-old Inn at Hemlock Falls. But, Quill reflected, Meg had had her chance to run the academy and had turned it down to remain the master chef at the Inn’s small kitchen. Old, well-loved things were definitely the best.

  “I certainly agree with that,” Rose Ellen said.

  Quill’s eyebrows rose.

  “About old things definitely being the best. I’ve made a lot of money out of old things.” She tapped her foot. “Are we headed somewhere? Or are you just going to stand there looking at nothing in particular?”

  “I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud.” Quill rubbed her cheeks briskly. “Sorry. My little boy Jackson just turned three and both his grandmother and his father are away from home right now. Well, actually, Doreen isn’t really his grandmother and she got back from visiting her sister in Omaha this morning, because my husband Myles and I had been away for a month, and Jack is just delighted …” She stopped. She was babbling. “Anyhow. Between managing the Inn and him, I’m a little short on sleep.” She gave herself a mental shake. The Attic taping was in a week’s time, the wedding was in ten days, and everybody in both parties was staying at the Inn. She had a lot to do.

  The first, and most important, was to get this annoying woman out of her hair. She said, too heartily, “And of course you’d know that old, well-loved things are to be treasured. How is the antiques business these days? You’ve settled into the village so well, Rose Ellen. I hope you’re happy with the new shop.” She touched Rose Ellen’s shoulder to guide her toward Clare’s office.

  “I really prefer not to call it a shop.” Rose Ellen’s tone was brusque. “It’s a high-end boutique catering to the select customer and it’s going beautifully.” She shrugged off Quill’s hand. “Where are we going?”

  “Just in here. This is Clarissa’s office.” Quill opened the door and stepped aside. Bernard hadn’t spared a penny in here, either. Area rugs the color of café au lait covered the cherrywood floors. Tall filing cabinets out of the same wood flanked a counter with a bronze bowl sink, an undercounter refrigerator, and a slate countertop. A long cherrywood conference table sat in front of tall windows overlooking shaved green lawns.

  Rose Ellen looked around and slung her portfolio onto the conference table without regard for the finish. “It’s too corporate,” she said. “Not an ounce of charm. Very nouveau riche. Clarissa could use some advice about her taste, I think, but I’ll have to put that off until after the wedding. Now, Quill. I’ve a photograph of my dress, and drawings of the flowers to be shipped in, but I’d really appreciate it if we could do a little bit of a floor plan, so that everything shows to the best advantage.”

  “So you made the sketch of the floor plan, I suppose,” Meg said almost an hour later. They were in Quill’s Honda, headed back to the Inn. “I’ll bet she asked you to sign it, too.”

  “The sketch?” Quill smiled. “She did as
k me to sign it, as a matter of fact.”

  “What do you want to bet you find the thing matted, framed, and for sale in that shop of hers two seconds after the wedding?” Meg stretched out in the passenger’s seat and ran her hands through her short hair. “That woman doesn’t miss a trick, and a signed Quilliam, even of a wedding that’s bound to bore everyone out of their skulls, is worth a couple hundred bucks, easily.”

  Quill made a noncommittal noise and slowed down as they passed the entrance to Peterson Park. She took the curve into the village at a sedate thirty miles an hour and drove down Main Street into the heart of Hemlock Falls. She, Jack, and Myles had spent the last four weeks in a cabin in the Adirondacks, and she hadn’t had time to look at any changes in the village since they’d been back.

  The old cobblestone buildings glowed in the warm September light. The flower boxes under the lampposts overflowed with Oriental lilies, English ivy, and pale green hydrangea. Nickerson’s Hardware had substituted topiary for their usual display of wheelbarrows, rakes, and fall flowers on the sidewalk in front of the store. The trim on the building that housed Marge Schmidt’s Realty and Casualty had been freshly painted, and a brand-new hunter green awning hung over the plate-glass window. Quill blinked. Somebody had put a bucket on top of the parking meter directly in front of Marge’s office. She rolled down the car window to get a better look.

  “Marge,” Meg said, following Quill’s glance. “She’s still mad about those new parking meters Elmer Henry put in.”

  “They’re a good source of revenue for the town,” Quill said absently. “I haven’t had time to pay attention to things lately. But isn’t the village looking—sort of spiffy? What happened to the usual geraniums in the flower boxes? What’s with all the topiary? We’re starting to look like a high-end tourist trap.”