Dread on Arrival

by Claudia Bishop

  “The punch!” Quill shouted. She did her best to make her way through the mob. “Don’t throw out the punch!”

  The grip kept the cameras rolling. The tech sat at the monitor his mouth agape. Most of the audience crowded around the doors to the hallway, struggling against the tide of people trying to get in.

  Everyone stayed clear of the body.

  “The punch!” Quill shouted again. “Don’t touch it!” She felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket, and took it out with the feeling that all of this was unreal, but that she’d known something was going to happen. She’d known it from the beginning.

  She looked at the screen.

  Myles.

  She held her phone to her ear. “Not the punch, Quill. The zabaglione. Make sure that no one throws out Edmund’s zabaglione.”

  13

  ∼Bonne Goutè’s∼

  Between-Course Punch

  Clears the palate of 8 diners

  6 cups grapefruit puree

  Juice of 1 lemon

  1½ teaspoons grated ginger

  Dash of grenadine

  Combine puree, lemon, ginger, and grenadine in a bowl. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Place in a glass thirteen-by-eleven pan and put in freezer until mixture is slushy, about one hour. Divide into cups and serve with mint leaves.

  GRAPEFRUIT PUREE:

  2⁄3 cup fine sugar

  Zest of 2 well-scrubbed grapefruits

  8 grapefruits, peeled and sectioned

  Place sugar in blender and puree with zest. Add the grapefruit sections and puree until the texture of oatmeal.

  “You’re sure Myles wants all that pudding sent to forensics?” Davy Kiddermeister asked.

  “It’s a cream, an Italian cream,” Quill said automatically. “And yes, he does. Everything Edmund tasted. All of it. If he tried the Brunswick stew, you’ll have to test that.”

  “He didn’t eat any stew,” Davy said. “I checked.”

  They were seated in Quill’s office. The late morning sunshine spilled through the window, illuminating the patterns on the Oriental carpet. Quill was as tired as she’d ever been in her entire life. “He said to put it in separate batches. Labeled with who made which batch. You did do that last night, didn’t you?” Quill said anxiously.

  “In a manner of speaking. We kept the pots in the same places on the stove. Two of them tipped over, you know. There’s pudding all over the floor. Stew, too.”

  “I know.” Clare’s kitchen was a mess. It looked like a riot had been staged there. Actually, Quill thought, there had been a riot staged there.

  Davy brightened. “We’ve got Dina’s digital tape of the whole thing plus the footage from the shoot. I haven’t had a chance to go through it yet. I can’t believe we got the whole murder on tape. So if anybody switched the pots’ positions, it might have been recorded.”

  “Dina doesn’t have much. She jumped up when the rest of us did and forgot all about the laptop.”

  “We’ll see,” Davy said optimistically. “She got a good record of Tree drinking the punch. Myles wants the punch sent to forensics, too, you said.”

  “I was the one who told you to save the punch. It’s because strychnine …”

  “We don’t know that it was strychnine.”

  “I’ll bet you one of Meg’s meals it was.”

  Davy scratched the back of his neck with his pen. “The ME tends to agree with you. Provisionally, of course.”

  “Anyhow, strychnine isn’t necessarily instantaneous. If you’ve had a meal beforehand it can take up to twenty minutes to take effect in your system.”

  “How do you know all that? Oh. There was that newspaper guy that bought it here, years ago.”

  “His sister,” Quill said. “And I learned more about strychnine poisoning then than I ever wanted to.” She ran her hands through her hair, and then re-knotted it on the top of her head.

  “Any idea where the perp got hold of it? If it is strychnine?”

  “I have a very good idea. Rose Ellen Whitman cleans and restores paintings on the second floor of Elegant Antiques. Strychnine compounds are used in cleaning old oils sometimes. You need to check that out.”

  “The widow, huh?” Davy smiled a little and made a note.

  “They were to be married soon. And yes, we all know that murders are usually committed by a close relative, but she isn’t a relative yet. She never will be, given the circumstances.” Quill shivered. Dina had brought coffee and scones in on a tray. She’d had two cups of coffee already, but wasn’t able to touch the scones. Davy had eaten three. She waved the coffeepot in Davy’s direction and refilled his cup when he nodded yes. “I don’t think finding the murderer is going to be that easy. Maybe the burglar was the murderer and stole the stuff from her inventory. Which opens the suspect field way up. Anybody can wander through that shop and does. Maybe you can charge her with keeping a poisonous substance on hand without due regard for security or whatever, but I doubt you can charge her with murder.”

  “You know, strychnine compounds are still used in a lot of products found on farms hereabouts,” Davy said. He made another note. There were dark circles under his eyes and his skin was pallid. “I don’t even know why I’m writing this down. We don’t even know what killed him.”

  “Strychnine,” Quill said glumly. “You can count on it. Are you going to call in the state investigators? You look exhausted. This case is getting major attention and it’s got to be a strain on department resources, Davy. Not to mention on you.”

  He hunched his shoulders defensively. “I can handle it.”

  “Yes, well, let me know if I can help.”

  “There is one thing.”

  This was so uncharacteristic that Quill sat up, her own fatigue forgotten. Davy had been even more intransigent than Myles about accepting amateur help on cases.

  “Motive isn’t something I can take to the DA’s office—but you know that already.”

  “True. Cases are all about hard evidence these days.” She’d wondered about that. She didn’t have much time to read her favorite mysteries anymore, but times had certainly changed. Nero Wolfe would be laughed out of the courtroom. Perry Mason would receive a letter of censure from the American Bar Association. Belgium would suspend Poirot’s police pension for improper evidence gathering before all the suspects gathered in the library.

  “But motive does have everything to do with why somebody’s been offed. You know these people pretty well. Is there anything you know that could point me in the right direction?”

  Quill smiled at him. She couldn’t refuse a direct request from the sheriff’s department, could she? Myles couldn’t possibly get upset over that. “I’ll make a list. I’ll ask some questions.”

  “Thanks. The sooner you get it to me, the better. You know, don’t you, that everyone here at the Inn is going to have to stay on for a bit. At least until we get the underbrush cleared away.”

  Quill pinched herself on the knee, so she wouldn’t scream. “Yes. I’d thought about that.”

  Davy eased himself off the couch with a grunt and a creak of his leather belt. “By the way, I had Delores Peterson fiddle with those burglary statistics for you. Actually, she had her son Tim do it. He’s a programmer and she says he’s faster than a speeding bullet at this stuff. I’m trying to get the department to take him on as a consultant.” He worked at his shirt pocket and handed her a crumpled printout. “I’m putting the B and As on the back burner for the next week or two while we get this case sorted out. If you include the stolen wedding rings, there’s zero crossover. If you take ’em out, there’s maybe three. They all have the same homeowners’ insurance, that being Schmidt Realty. But Marge insures sixty percent of the homes in this area. Plus, she’s been turning down every claim she can. You know Marge. So that’s meaningless. There’s nobody that hasn’t lived here for a while, but newcomers don’t usually haul their attic and basement junk with them, so that’s meaningless, too. Couple other things, but
they’re more coincidences than not. Like, everybody on the list is a member of the Hemlock Falls Historical Society. Meaningless.” He took a deep breath. “I did send that darn lightbulb into the lab to check for prints, but I’d say the chances of getting anything other than Mike’s prints on it are zero to none. So.”

  “So,” Quill echoed. She tucked the printout under her desk blotter. The burglaries were the least of the problems on hand.

  “You’ll get that list of motives for me?”

  “I’ll start right on it.”

  He went out the office door just as Dina came in. She twined her hand in his for a brief moment. “I can download the final ten minutes from last night onto a CD if you let me have my laptop back. Then I can email the file to you.”

  “DA’s office told me no. The laptop’s entered in evidence and it’s not coming out soon.”

  Dina looked at him coldly. “Is that so? My whole life is on that laptop, David Kiddermeister. I want it back.”

  “You’ll get it back. Just not yet.”

  “Oh yeah? Fine. Fine.” She sat down on the couch with a flounce. “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

  Davy’s face was bright red. His jaw jutted out at a stubborn angle.

  “We can find you another one, Dina,” Quill said hastily.

  “Where? Where are you going to find an extra computer? All my lab notes are on my laptop. All my thesis notes.”

  “C’mon,” Davy pleaded. “You know as well as I do all that stuff’s backed up. The thumb drives are in your bedroom.”

  “A place you’ll never see again, if you don’t get that laptop back to me.”

  Quill didn’t think it was possible for Davy to get any redder, but it was. He muttered under his breath, and banged out the door.

  “You were kind of harsh just now, I think,” Quill protested. “Last night was hard on him, too.”

  “Last night was hard on me,” Dina said flatly. “And yes, I know all that stuff about how you have to make concessions when you’re involved with a cop, but really. I’ve never seen such a horrible thing in all my life.”

  “It was pretty bad.”

  “Did you see how that poor man just lay there? All of his so-called friends and coworkers left him to die alone. Nobody went to help him, Quill! By the time we got there, he was …” Dina shuddered. “Ugh, I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

  “All the more reason to let poor Davy back in your bedroom,” Quill said sadly. “It’s nice to have somebody there for you in the dark.”

  “He knows I didn’t mean it.” She sat up straight, her face alive with interest. “So. Are we investigating the case?”

  “We aren’t investigating anything. You are going to do your job and your schoolwork. I am going to make a list of suspects for Davy.”

  Her face fell. “Why did I expect to hear anything different from you? You never let me in on the cases.”

  Quill deliberately avoided looking at the scar on Dina’s neck, a terrible consequence of the last murder investigation at the Inn. “It could be dangerous. There’s a murderer running around loose, don’t forget.”

  “I’ll bet that’s all they’re talking about at the Croh Bar and Marge’s diner.” She smiled, and Quill softened at the sight of her dimples. Jack had dimples, too. “Which is better than arguing about who’s going to be elected mayor, I guess. So there’s a murderer running around loose and we’re going to nail him.”

  “Or her.”

  “Or her.” Dina’s eyes widened. “Do you think it’s Rose Ellen?”

  “First rule of investigation, dating all the way back to Cicero …”

  “Cui bono.” Dina jumped up, took two yellow pads out of the filing cabinet next to the couch, and handed one to Quill. “Rose Ellen inherits the big bucks, right? Perfect motive for murder. Direct and unambiguous.”

  “Let’s find out.” Quill took out her cell and speed-dialed Howie Murchison. Their conversation was brief. She shut the cell phone off.

  “Well?”

  “Rose Ellen, Edmund, and Howie had a preliminary conversation about setting up a will, but nothing’s drawn up yet. Howie said Edmund has a half sister somewhere but he hasn’t seen her for years. Everything was to go to Rose Ellen. Now it goes to the half sister.” Quill had jotted her name on her yellow pad and she looked at it. “Devora Watson.”

  “Is it a lot of money?”

  “Howie doesn’t know. But Marge was going to check into that for us. Me, I mean.” Quill bit her lip. “Howie’s not sure, but he guesses it’s north of twenty million.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Yep.”

  “Jeez.” Dina closed her eyes for a minute.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out how much my weekly paycheck would be if I had twenty million dollars invested at four percent.”

  “Too much,” Quill said firmly. “I guess the timing lets Rose Ellen out.”

  “Unless there’s something we don’t know, but I can’t imagine what it would be. I mean, why not wait until the will’s signed? I would.” Dina blushed. “If I were a murderer, I mean. Which I’m not. Okay. Who else?”

  “There’s a certain ruthlessness to Jukka Angstrom.”

  “The big guy?” Dina tapped her teeth with the point of her pen. “I know what you mean. He’s got a tough sort of face.”

  “He’s in a tough sort of business. We had a talk at the engagement party. He was … tied, I guess is the best way to express it, to Ancestor’s Attic until Edmund decided to let him go back to Sotheby’s.”

  “That doesn’t seem like much of a motive for murder,” Dina protested.

  “It does if you look at the financial facts. Jukka was extremely successful as Sotheby’s rep. Which means he enjoyed an annual income of seven figures, at least.”

  “A million dollars a year? Selling antiques?”

  “Probably closer to two. Now he’s reduced to scouting out the leavings from people’s attics and basements. I’d say a dramatic cut in your lifestyle would be a motive for somebody like Jukka. I wonder if we can get some background on him. Marge might help.” She set her own pen down. Her conscience was pricking her. “Ugh. I feel like such a snoop.”

  “These people deserve to be snooped on,” Dina said dismissively. “I’ll tell you what I think of all this. It’s not snooping. It’s justice. I think we’re just like those investigative reporters seeking out crime and administering justice.”

  “We’re snoops,” Quill said rather gloomily. “Okay. I can live with it if I don’t think about it too much. I’ll ask Marge to check on Mr. Angstrom’s financial well-being.”

  “Who else? Wait. That Melanie. She’s a pretty good suspect.”

  “Clearly in love with her boss,” Quill agreed. “But don’t you think her preferred target would be Rose Ellen?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Melanie figured if she can’t have him, no one can. Maybe she figured Rose Ellen would suffer more alive and missing out on that twenty million dollars. Wait! Maybe Melanie’s really his half sister and she’s just waiting to inherit.”

  “Good idea, but it’s a no-hoper. She comes from a nice Upper West Side family in New York. Jukka said Edmund knew the family.”

  “I still think we should keep her on the list.”

  “All right. But very far down. It’d take a real psychopath to kill for those reasons. She didn’t strike me as a psychopath. More of a Mean Girl.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Dina said, rather obscurely. “I’ve known some psychopathic Mean Girls in my time. Okay. What about Belter Barcini?”

  Quill threw her pen on the desk. “The obvious suspect. But I’m beginning to see why motive is such a nonstarter in the court system. He had everything to gain, apparently, from the airing of this TV show and keeping Edmund alive so they could snipe at each other. On the surface, he doesn’t really have a motive—other than that he and his family hated Edmund Tree. And it never struc
k me as a hatred grounded in who Edmund was so much as what Edmund represented.”

  “Class war,” Dina said. “Belter hated the suits, the attitude, the first-class degree from Cambridge, but not Edmund the person so much. Yeah. I can see Belter as revolutionary, getting hot over ideas rather than individuals.”

  “This strikes me as such a personal murder. Somebody wanted Edmund himself out of the way.”

  Dina raised her eyebrows. “On the other hand, just look at what the French did to Louis the Sixteenth. Chopped his head right off. There’s a guy that was murdered for an idea.”

  “You might be right. I don’t know. We certainly have to move him close to the number one spot, if not at the top. Myles is convinced the poison was in Edmund’s zabaglione. We don’t know that for certain, and we won’t until the lab gets through testing all that stuff. But if it was—Belter had the best opportunity to drop whatever it was into the chafing dish. More important, Belter set this whole thing up. The Slap Down. The challenge. And whoever did this, Dina, had to plan for it ahead of time. The murderer had to get the poison and know for certain that there’d be access to the chafing dish just as Edmund prepared it. Otherwise, the murderer would be risking killing whole piles of innocent—or relatively innocent—people. On the surface, Belter’s motive looks thin. But the hard evidence may point to him after all.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Wait until the forensics come back. If we have any luck at all, we’ll be able to narrow down the source of the poison itself. If, for example, it has the same chemistry as the solvents in Rose Ellen’s shop, we can talk to her about who might have had a chance to steal it.”

  “So we leave Belter with a big fat star next to his name.”

  “I think so.”

  “Anybody else?”