“An excellent policy,” Albert McWhirter said as he came through the doors from the dining room. “Miss Quilliam? It’s past one o’clock. You are late for our meeting.”
Quill leaped to her feet. “Mr. McWhirter, so it is. I’m so sorry.”
“Now, elves,” Quill heard Benny say as she followed McWhirter back into the dining room, “I want everyone to line up to get measured tout de suite. Elizabeth? Peter? And Melissa. Now, where did Melissa get to?”
CHAPTER 5
Albert McWhirter pointed a bony finger at one of the two chairs at the small conference table in Quill’s office. She sat down in one; he sat down in the other.
“I do not appreciate the misuse of my time, Miss Quilliam.”
Actually, he didn’t sit, so much as perch on the chair opposite hers. His beaky nose and wattled neck increased his resemblance to a buzzard.
“I’m afraid staff concerns are of more immediate concern to me than you realize,” Quill said loftily. “Although I regret the inconvenience to you. Of course.” She glanced at the clock on her desk. “It is a whole ten minutes after one. Golly. What an inconvenience.”
McWhirter seemed unperturbed by the sarcasm. He lifted his briefcase to his knees, opened it with precise swipes of his thumbs (Click. Click.), and removed a small, elegant laptop.
“That computer,” Quill said with enthusiasm. “is perfectly adorable.”
“It’s an adequate machine,” he acknowledged. He tapped the keypad with his forefinger. “This is a preliminary to the in-depth report that I shall forward to the bank just after the Christmas holidays,” he said. “First, (tap) efficient deployment of your workforce. Second, (tap) appropriate use of available cash. Third, (tap) management’s grasp of key issues.” He leaned back in his chair and regarded her with icy gray eyes. “Shall we begin?”
“I wanted to tap his little pea brain right out of existence,” Quill said with warmth of passion she didn’t know she had. “I wanted to wring his scrawny little buzzard’s neck!”
“Whoo-ee.” Meg shook her head and took a swig of the red zinfandel Quill had brought up to her room after a late dinner. “Have another glass of this stuff. It’s terrific.”
“I’d better not.” Quill glanced at the clock over the mantel in Meg’s rooms. “Myles usually tries to call about eleven. I don’t want to be three sheets to the wind.”
Meg reached forward and filled Quill’s glass. “You’re perfectly coherent when you’re two and a half sheets to the wind. And listen to me, it’s either that or large doses of Prozac.”
Meg occupied a third floor suite of rooms overlooking the falls. There was no kitchen. She’d told Quill the last thing she wanted to do at night was look at any kind of appliance. There was a bright rug on the living room floor, piles of pillows in red, yellow, and green on the black chenille couch, and at least 300 cookbooks piled in precarious stacks all over the floor. Quill settled her heels on the stone slab Meg used as a coffee table and continued her rant.
“He wants me to lay off half the staff.”
“Impossible,” Meg said shortly. “I’m stretched to the limit in the kitchen as it is. If I worked those guys any harder, they’d fall over dead from stress.”
“Not the kitchen staff. He says that’s the one place where ‘labor appears to approach maximum efficiency.’ ”
“Appears to approach?” Meg shrieked. “We damn well are efficient.”
“He says that it’s due in part to one of the owner-operators contributing directly to the success of the operation.”
“He means me?”
“Yep.”>
“ ‘Owner-operator’? Did he talk like that the whole two hours?” Meg demanded.
“Yes. He did.”
“And wait a second. What was that stuff about my contributing directly to the blah blah blah?”
“It’s because you cook. As opposed to us hiring a chef. As opposed to me, who doesn’t do anything. He thinks I waste too much time in frivol.”
“Frivol?”
“He doesn’t call it frivol. He calls it being an indirect. In-directs are bad. Very bad.”
“ ‘Indirect’ isn’t a noun,” Meg said.
Quill heaved a sigh. “Apparently a business like ours doesn’t have enough money to support indirects.”
“What part of speech is ‘indirect,’ anyhow?” Meg gazed in a puzzled way into the depths of her glass of wine.
“An adjective,” Quill said. “I’ve been reduced to an adjective. And apparently it’s an adjective the Inn can do without.”
Meg gasped, inhaled her wine, coughed, and shouted, “He wants you to fire yourself?”
Max, who had been curled asleep by the small fire in the grate, awoke with a start and began to bark.
“Is he crazy?” Then, in a calmer tone, “Hush up, Max. There’s a good boy. Now let’s get serious about this, Quill.”
“I am serious,” Quill said testily. “He’s not crazy. He’s probably right. He said I’m spending far too much time in ‘activities ancillary to profitability.’ ”
“Such as?” Meg said in a dangerous way. Then, to the ceiling, “The nerve of this guy.”
“Oh, being secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. He doesn’t see that as a useful civic contribution. As a matter of fact,” she added, in a burst of honesty, “the Chamber probably doesn’t find it very useful, either. I’ve never taken very good minutes.”
Meg patted her on the shoulder. “I am going to put something very nasty in his oatmeal tomorrow morning.”
“And the breakfasts and lunches with people like Marge. He says those don’t contribute a thing. And he asked to see my appointment books for the past few years, and, of course, I handed them right over. And he took exception to the time I’ve spent investigating cases.”
“You keep our murder cases in your daybook?” Meg said in an awed sort of way. “Like, ‘break into Ro-Cor construction, eleven p.m.’?”
“Of course not. But there’s a lot of unaccounted-for time, naturally, and I explained that our murder cases took up a certain amount of it. Then there was the week I spent in jail, and the time I was buried in the basement for two days, and the couple of trips I took to Syracuse and wherever to look for clues.”
“So, once you explained it, what did he do?”
“He turned pale. And then he looked aghast. And then he asked if we did all this for free, which, of course, we do. We can’t charge anything for our detective work. We don’t have a license.”
“Hm.”
“And I must admit we’re usually detecting by default, as it were.”
“Hm.”
“Of course, there are those who think we’re just plain nosy, but I told him we had a sincere dedication to justice.”
“True. What did he say to that?”
“He said that I should get a real job.”
“Wow.” Meg thought about this for a minute. “You mean, like take over the bookkeeping, instead of farming it out to Blue Man Computing in the villages? And maybe answering the phones and booking guests, instead of having Dina do it? And doing our own business plans, instead of getting advice from Marge and John? That kind of job? Not a real job like at, say, Kmart.”
Meg appeared to be asking this in all sincerity. Quill looked at her for a long moment, then swung her feet to the carpet and grabbed the wine bottle. “How much of this stuff have you had, anyway?”
“I did have a drink with Ajit in the Tavern Lounge,” Meg said with dignity. “Vodka. Neat. You know how I like vodka. Neat.”
“You haven’t had more than three ounces of vodka at one time in your life,” Quill said. “I’ve never seen you drink much more than a half bottle of red wine at a time, either. You are remarkably abstemious for a chef. You know what? You’re blotto!”
Meg waved her hand airily over her head. “I feel great.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“So,” Meg said, her hand still suspended in the air over her head, “what else did McWhirly ha
ve on his little pea brain?”
Quill gently guided Meg’s hand to a more comfortable position and debated her answer. In her current condition, if Meg did throw anything, she was liable to miss what she was aiming at. She decided to go for it. Just in case, she moved the wine bottle well out of her sister’s ambit.
“His next suggestion was that we buy in bulk.”
“Bulk? We already buy in bulk. Toilet paper, tissue paper, dishwashing powder. We buy all that in bulk.”
“We don’t buy food in bulk.”
Meg shook her head and laughed. “No, no, no, no, no.” “He thinks we should . . .”
“. . . Sure, I get it. Buy sides of beef and freeze them. Whole hogs. Those liquid eggs. I know what you’re talking about.” Meg took another sip of wine and winked. “He’s an idiot. He’s a dope. He just doesn’t get it. No, no. No. No. No.”
“Meg, you don’t understand the power this guy seems to have. If we don’t take at least some of these recommendations to heart, he’ll tell the bank to call the loan. And then we’ll be in the soup. I suppose we can borrow against the lease that we have with the Kingsfields, but the interest rates would be ruinous.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Meg patted Quill on the knee, and kept on patting. “The Inn at Hemlock Falls is famous for the quality of its food. The fineness of its linens . . .”
“. . . And that’s another thing,” Quill said. “No more six-hundred-count sheets.”
“. . . the excellence of its chef. Nope. This guy doesn’t get it. It’s not possible. No, no, no, no, no.”
“I had hoped,” Quill snapped, “that you’d have more constructive comments than ‘no, no, no, no, no.’ And stop patting my knee!”
“I do have a constructive comment. It’s more than a constructive comment. It’s a solution! Wait here.” Meg heaved herself up from the couch with an “oof” and disappeared into her bedroom. She reappeared moments later with a pistol.
Quill felt all the air rush out of her lungs. When she did speak, it was in a whisper. “Where did you get that thing?”
“It’s a paintball pistol!” Meg said gleefully. “A little teeny derringer that shoots little balls of paint! Jerry Grimsby gave it to me as a Columbus Day present.”
“A Colum . . . a what . . . a . . . Meg!” Quill clapped her hand over her mouth. Then she said, very quietly, “You’re the Christmas vandal! You’ve been shooting inflatable Christmas ornaments all over Hemlock Falls!”
“I hate those inflatable thingies. But who says I’m the Christmas vandal? It could be one of hundreds of right-thinking people.” She waved the gun, steadied, and pointed at the wall.
Quill yelled, “Don’t shoot!”
A large splotch of orange paint knocked the clock off the mantel, and then dribbled down the brick.
“Pow!” Meg said. She swiveled the gun around.
Before she could change her drapes from cream to orange, Quill wrestled the little pistol away from her. “Jerry Grimsby has a lot to answer for.”
“Jerry Grimsby,” Meg said dreamily, “is my sweet patootie.” She opened her eyes and said, “So that’s what we’ll do to McWhirter. We’ll turn the bugger orange. Or purple.”
“What a good idea,” Quill said cordially. Meg reached for the gun and Quill, who was at least four inches taller than her sister, kept it out of reach. “Oh, no, you don’t. I think I’ll keep this with me.”
“I think you won’t. Give it back.”
“You promise not to shoot Mr. McWhirter?”
“No.”
“You promise not to shoot Mr. McWhirter tonight?”
“Yes.”
Quill gave her the pistol. “Good night, Meg.”
“G’night, Quill.”
“Good grief, Myles,” she said into the phone some half hour later. “What am I going to do?”
“Is anybody dead?”
“Nope. Nobody’s dead.”
“Then it’ll wait until I get home.”
“You are coming home for Christmas?”
“I’ll do my best, my love. You know that.”
“I do know that. I love you, Myles.”
“I love you, Quill.” He paused. Quill was sure she could hear the sounds of gunfire in the distance. She bit her lip to keep from asking him where he was. She knew he couldn’t tell her until he did return to Hemlock Falls, and then it would be information for her ears alone. “Quill. You will keep that paintball gun out of your sister’s clutches?”
“I will.”
“And get that ulcer looked at.” There was a world of amusement in his voice. “If it is an ulcer. You could always try Maalox.”
“I put a call in to Andy Bishop. He says it sounds like the start of an ulcer. Maybe.” Actually, Andy, too, had advised Maalox, which made Quill feel quite old and subsequently, quite cross. She patted her stomach. “Myles? If you’re on your way home, I’m feeling better already.”
CHAPTER 6
Zeke Kingsfield slapped his hand on the table and said loudly, “There’s nothing like an early morning cross-country run to set up the appetite.”
“You enjoyed the skiing, then?” Quill moved the small tray containing the raw sugar and the brandied raisins closer to his bowl of oatmeal.
“It’s quite beautiful out there over the gorge,” Lydia said. “The view from the crest is fabulous. Just fabulous. I don’t know how you stay in business with that beautiful hotel perched right on the river. I hear it’s doing quite well?”
“Very well,” Quill said. “There were some problems at first, but I understand they’re running close to full capacity now.”
“Shame about that little trailer park downriver, though,” Lydia said. “Quite spoils that wonderful view. Don’t you think?”
“It’s affordable housing,” Quill said, trying hard not to sound defensive. “And the residents keep the grounds up. Several of our housekeeping staff live there.”
Lydia looked at her husband and smiled in a secretive way. “Do they? Now, Quill, do tell me why it took you so long to decide to fix up that cross-country trail.”
Quill shrugged. “No real reason, I guess. Although we did think that it might attract guests in the winter. We put the run in last year. The property extends for some way down the gorge, and it’s really lovely out there any time of year. But especially in the winter, I think.”
“It’s supposed to snow later this afternoon and tonight,” Lydia said. “If the forecast’s reliable, that is. The trail could use another couple of inches.” She frowned at the raw sugar and dumped several spoonfuls of wild blueberries into her yogurt. “How many miles did you lay out?”
“You saw how twisty it is,” Quill said. “Our land runs to about half a mile, but Mike was very clever about the design. There are two trails. One goes by the gorge. That’s a mile round-trip. The course you took this morning is three miles one way.” She looked at Lydia with unfeigned admiration. “And a lot of it’s uphill. If you both got around that at six o’clock in the morning, I’m truly impressed.”
Zeke leaned over and smiled into her eyes. “You want to be truly impressed, you should take a little trip with me this morning.”
Quill drew back a little. Zeke smelled of soap, toothpaste, and a men’s scent so expensive she had no idea what it was called, although it’d been in the air at the men’s counter at Bergdorf’s the last time she was in New York City. “Thank you, Zeke. But I have a pretty full schedule this morning.”
“Cancel whatever it is,” Lydia advised. “You have people, don’t you?”
“People?”
“People to take care of whatever.”
Not if Mr. McWhirter has his way. Aloud, Quill said, “Maybe another time.”
Zeke scowled and hunched a little closer. If she backed up any further, she’d be in the lap of the couple at the adjacent table. “My guess is there’s been a few rumors about the old Zekester floating around town.”
“A few,” Quill admitted.
“Then
you’ll be one of the first to know.” His eyes narrowed in an assessing way. After a long moment, he leaned back and said casually, “It’s big, Quill. What I’m planning is big. And it’s going to affect every single person in the town of Hemlock Falls.”
“I see,” Quill said coolly. “And this—big—plan is to be announced at the special meeting of the Chamber tomorrow afternoon, I take it.”
He struck the table with the flat of his hand and shouted, “Yes! So, you ready to rock and roll?”
“Let me take care of a few things first. I’ll meet you at the front door in twenty minutes?”
“Make it ten. I’ll have the car brought up.”
Quill turned to Lydia. “And you’ll be coming with us?”
“Not a chance. They’re bringing in your new kitchen this morning. I want to be ready to start this shoot this afternoon.”
“This afternoon?” Quill said, astonished.
Lydia folded her napkin and rose. “It’s all in the organization, dear. See you at lunch? There are a few things about the Christmas decorations we need to discuss.”
“Certainly.” Quill’s spirits, which hadn’t been all that high to begin with, sank a little lower. “About one o’clock?”
“See you then!”
Quill excused herself, promising to be at the Inn’s front door in ten minutes’ time, and escaped to her office. She left a note for Dina and a message on Meg’s cell phone, and rescheduled a meeting with Jinny Peterson, who had another job candidate to interview. An impatient horn sounded outside her office window. She went to the window and drew the drape aside. A large limo idled in the circular driveway. Zeke must have rented one from Ithaca. Quill sighed, pulled on her wool coat, wrapped her muffler around her neck, and promised herself no matter what, she wouldn’t give in to the temptation to smack the Hammer right over the ear.
“Sorry about the fact it’s a Cadillac,” Zeke said as the chauffeur settled her into the passenger seat opposite him. “We’re too far upstate to have easy access to a Bentley.”
He was perfectly serious. Quill looked at the rosewood bar, the Bose sound system, and the calfskin seats. She wished she’d worn her knitted hat. She could have pulled it over her face as they drove—slowly—down Main Street. Kingsfield waved out the window with the genial affability of Idi Amin in a hometown parade as they rolled past Nickerson’s Hardware, Blue Man Computing, and Harvey’s advertising agency. People swarmed out on the sidewalks to watch the limo passing by.
Prime Crime Holiday Bundle Page 112
