“Whatever. Anyhow. I’m not a villain. And I didn’t kill anybody, and even though I think anyone can be driven to murder under the right circumstances, I haven’t met those circumstances yet. Although God knows I’ve thought about it. Paul and LeVasque both.”
Quill was suddenly very aware that they were alone in the house. All that stood between Clare and a bolt for freedom was Quill herself.
The door to the bedroom opened with a thud and both women jumped. Bismarck walked in. He looked around the room with approval. (Cats, Quill knew, couldn’t see most colors.) He shoved his head under Quill’s hand, purred loudly, then jumped on the little double bed and settled himself like the Sphinx. Clare sat down and ran her hands over his ears. “I know why Sheriff Kiddermeister didn’t arrest me. It’s too soon for the lab work to come back from forensics, that’s why. But as soon as it does, I think I’m a goner.”
Quill’s breath caught in her throat. She turned the gasp into a cough.
“No, no! This isn’t a belated confession! But, Quill, I used that knife yesterday to chop scallions. I’m almost sure of it. So my fingerprints are going to be all over the damn thing.”
It was seeing the tears in Clare’s eyes for the second time that day that got to Quill. “I’ve never broken a promise to Myles in my life. At least, not without a really good reason. But I can’t see any other way.”
“Sorry? I’m not tracking very well at the moment.”
“Meg and I have got to solve this case. We’ve got to find out who murdered LeVasque.”
“You and Meg?!” Clare burst into laughter. “Oh my goodness. I’m sorry. It’s just that . . .” Clare bit her lip. “Hang on a second. Okay. I’m under control. I think. What’s that line from the movie? You know, the little guy who’s the accountant and the big fat guy who’s the play producer? ‘I’m hysterical!’”
“The Producers,” Quill said a little coldly.
“Oh, dear. I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings. But what can you do that the police can’t? I mean, they’re trained investigators with equipment and labs. Not to mention they’re the law and you guys aren’t.”
“Myles says much the same thing,” Quill admitted. “And we aren’t the police, of course, or even private eyes. But think about this: who knows the people and circumstances involved in this case better—the three of us? Or Davy? Or, God help us, the exceptionally horrible Harker, who’s in Hemlock Falls maybe once a year? Do either of these guys have the time to find out what we can find out on our own? This isn’t a drive-by shooting, or a domestic or a gang incident, or even some complicated financial riddle. This is a domestic murder and the reasons for it lie with the people we know. We’ve a unique perspective, and we’re going to use it to find out what really happened in that wine cellar. And then we’ll turn all that knowledge over to the police and let them take it from there.”
“Wow,” Clare said. “Good grief. Maybe you’re right.”
“I hope so. And I’m sorry I got nettled when you became hysterical.”
“And I,” Clare said generously, “am sorry I laughed.” She gave Bismarck a final pat and got off the bed. “So where do we start?”
“We pool all our information, which means a meeting among the three of us.”
“Okay. When?”
“I’ve got to make an appearance at the Chamber meeting, and Meg’s in charge of lunch today while you’re sitting down with Justin. My time with Jack is at four. Let’s say three o’clock in Meg’s room. Nobody will hassle us there.”
“I can’t believe you guys are riding to the rescue like this.”
Quill sighed and looked at her watch. “We haven’t rescued you yet. If I don’t show up right at three, come down to the conference room and rescue me, will you? Elmer seems to have a bee in his bonnet about something.” She made a face. “At least I don’t have to worry about people hollering at me over seats for LeVasque’s Welcome Dinner. Thank goodness that’s been cancelled.”
13
~Brochettes de LeVasque~
For four personnes
4 beef kidneys in 2-inch cubes
1 beef heart in 2-inch cubes
½ cup chopped salt pork
4 very small onions, peeled
18 small Moonlight mushroom caps, cleaned and
peeled
4 underripe tomatoes, cut into fourths
2 green peppers, in 2-inch cubes
2 teaspoons rosemary
2 teaspoons thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
8 stems of rosemary
Place all ingredients in a bowl and let sit for one hour. Select four sharp skewers. String the brochettes, al- ternating vegetables and beef. Broil one side for five minutes and the other side for fifteen minutes.
—From Brilliance in the Kitchen, B. LeVasque
She drove to the Inn in a cheerful frame of mind that lasted until she ran into Adela in the hallway that led to the conference room. “Of course we’re going ahead with the Welcome Dinner,” Adela Henry said majestically. “The mayor absolutely refuses to cancel.”
Quill paused. She wanted to point out that the guest of honor was dead but decided against it. She was sure Adela knew that. Adela, who was nothing if not forceful, gave her a nudge between the shoulders. Quill forged ahead. They had permission to use the room from Mrs. Barbarossa, who generously agreed that since WARP was picnicking, they would have no immediate need for it.
Miriam Doncaster was already there, seated at the end of the long mahogany conference table that took up most of the space. The mayor stood in front of the whiteboard. He gave a nervous start at the sight of his wife. Since Elmer always started when he encountered Adela, Quill didn’t take particular notice of this. She did take a quick moment to check out the room. She hadn’t been in it for a while as the WARP members seemed to be fond of meetings. The ceilings were low, since the space had been a keeping room back in the early nineteeth century. The floor was covered in a practical gray Berber. Whiteboards lined three walls of the room. A long credenza sat at the front. Quill saw that the coffee urn was on and the cups neatly stacked.
She sat next to Miriam and greeted her with a smile. Miriam gestured toward the empty seat on her other side with a nod. Her tote bag was on it. “Howie will be here in a minute. He’s sitting in on the meeting with your young suspect.” The librarian admitted to her mid-fifties (Quill didn’t buy that for a minute). She had large blue eyes and ash blond hair. She had a raffish sort of sexuality that had kept Howie interested for the twelve years that Quill had known them.
“She didn’t do it,” Quill said, flatly. Miriam had many virtues, but she was unable to pass up on a piece of gossip. And she and Howie spent a fair amount of time at the Croh Bar most afternoons. So maybe she would pass that on. “Clare’s innocent.”
“Howie thinks so, too,” Miriam said. “Your sister, on the other hand . . .” She rolled her eyes expressively. “Really, Quill. Assault with intent to do bodily harm? My goodness.”
“You know Meg.”
“We all know Meg. It’s a good thing she was hiking with young Martinez.”
Quill refused to speculate about her sister, so she said, “I just ran into Adela.”
Miriam, effectively diverted, gave Adela an appraising look. She had settled next to the hapless mayor. “Where does she find those outfits?” Miriam whispered.
Adela was a tall woman, and more than well-proportioned, so she was noticeable to begin with. She had a fondness for dramatic colors, big jewelry, and bouffant hairstyles. Today’s outfit was a pantsuit in deep mauve with a peacock blue blouse.
“She’s gone online,” Quill whispered back. “And it’s all your fault, you know. Your introductory computer program at the library was a big hit.”
“It’s time this village was dragged into the twenty-first century,” Miriam said proudly. “I’m happy about the new computer service, too. You’d be amazed at who comes in to use it. And it’s not just our people.”
�
��No?”
The room was filling up. Almost everyone had come to the meeting: Harvey Bozzel (Hemlock Falls’s best—and only—advertising executive) walked in with an A-frame rolled up under his arm. Mark Anthony Jefferson strolled in from the bank. Old Mrs. Nickerson from Nickerson’s Hardware hobbled in on her stick. Esther West, who had closed her dress shop and reopened it as a craft store came in wearing her latest creation, a long skirt made entirely of quilting squares. Her new shop was named West’s Best Kountry Krafts! Nobody was sure where the “Ks” had come from. Quill suspected they had been Harvey’s idea. Most signs with an exclamation point were.
Even Nadine Peterson from the Hemlock Hall of Beauty had shown up. Marge and Harland Peterson were there, of course. Quill had never known Marge to miss a Chamber meeting, unless Harland’s cows were calving. And tucked in the corner, her candid blue eyes looking for something to wreck and destroy, was Carol Ann herself. Quill counted the members up. They had more than a quorum.
Miriam’s voice was low and attractive, and since it was almost lost in the rising din, Quill bent her head toward her when she thought she heard the academy mentioned.
“I’m sorry,” Quill said. “Who did you say comes in to use the computers?”
“A couple of people from the culinary academy come in to use the library computer service. That crabby one, especially.”
“Crabbiness seems to be a prerequisite for hiring over there,” Quill said wryly. “Which crabby one in particular? Not Madame herself.”
“She’s got the hatchet nose, doesn’t she? No, it’s the other one. Jellies,” Miriam added vaguely.
“Mrs. Owens.”
“That’s it.”
Quill wrote that down in her minutes book. She knew Clare was innocent. She was just as sure that someone at the academy had killed LeVasque. She was after all the information she could get. She nudged Miriam. “How often does she come in? Mrs. Owens. To go online.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Quite a bit when the academy started up. Then she asked me for advice on what to buy. She comes in once in a while when she’s having problems with her own PC. She’s not very expert. Why do you care?” She caught herself. “Oh. Of course. You and Sherlock are at it again.”
This was the second time today someone had slighted her detective abilities, and Quill bridled a little. “I wouldn’t call it ‘at it again,’ as such.”
“I thought you promised Myles you’d butt out of this stuff.”
“I agreed to temper my activities.”
“Temper, huh.”
“And besides. Meg’s Watson.”
“What?”
“I said, Meg’s Watson. I’m Sherlock.”
Quill looked up to see the Chamber members staring at her. Marge Schmidt winked, very deliberately.
Elmer scowled and brought the gavel down on the mahogany tabletop. Esther moved the gavel rest under his hand and went “tsk!”
Things were off to a familiar start.
“I call this emergency meeting of the Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce to order.” Elmer whacked the gavel again, for emphasis. “Can we have a reading of the minutes?”
Quill flipped to the page labeled July Mtg Mins. Her chief flaw as secretary was forgetting what her contractions meant. She was relieved to see that the heading at least, was clear. The rest of it was problematic. “Hm!” Quill said, as if she were deciding where to start first.
Miriam rolled her eyes and raised her hand. “I move that we forgo the reading of the minutes.”
“Seconded!” Marge boomed.
Elmer got to whack the gavel again. “So moved. We have old business now, Quill, so we’ll get right on to that.”
“Those parking meters in front of my restaurants,” Marge said. “That’s the old business we have to talk about. I move we rip ’em up and send ’em to the dump.”
Elmer’s lower lip jutted out. “Now, look here, Marge.”
Harland jerked awake (Marge had jabbed him in the ribs). “I second the motion,” he said.
“All in favor?” Marge said.
All who had a business on Main Street raised their hands. Quill counted them off. Nadine, of course, and the Nicker-sons. Esther West had her hand raised, too. “This is an illegal motion!” Elmer said. He began to whack the gavel with monotonous regularity; Esther moved the rest every time he banged it down. It looked like a particularly manic version of Whac-A-Mole. Tickled, Quill began to sketch it.
“You gonna count these votes, or what?!” Marge shouted. She leaped to her feet, her right arm straight up in the air. “I’m counting, so shut up, you all.” She stopped, momentarily, to whisper under her breath.
Then she sat down again.
“I guess that means the motion’s defeated,” Elmer said with ill-concealed satisfaction.
“We’ll see about that.”
Quill sketched a pissed-off Marge, out for revenge on a hapless Elmer.
“Now, if we can just get to the real old business. About this Welcome Dinner.”
Carol Ann Spinoza raised her hand. “There’s some old, old business before this Welcome Dinner,” she said in her icky little voice. “And if we had a secretary who took the right kind of minutes, we would know that we have to take the old business in the proper order.”
“That’s all you wanted to say?” Elmer asked. Even though Carol Ann was no longer tax assessor, everybody Quill knew was still afraid of her. The woman had some evil power that no one could quite put a finger on.
“Of course that’s not all I wanted to say. We have to vote on the most-wanted list for the post office.”
Elmer looked confused, then extremely anxious. “You’re with the FBI, now?”
A ripple of unease went through the room.
“The animal offenders list, Carol Ann means,” Adela said with a tight smile. “Isn’t that right?”
“That is exactly right. We agreed that the most dangerous animals should be posted so that the citizens of our village could be made aware at all times of the dangers.” She paused, as if to reconsider the number of times the relevant word had appeared in her sentence. “Danger,” she said precisely. “That is the term.”
Elmer shrugged. “Okay, I guess. You want a vote on whether or not to put this list up?”
Carol Ann’s eye turned a very dangerous shade of blue. “We voted in a special ordinance two and a half months ago. I would think that the post of mayor in a town like ours would have some sort of intelligence testing before a person was allowed to run for office. Hm!” Carol Ann stopped herself in mid-stride. Her eyes brightened. She unclipped the notepad from her weapons belt and made a note. “That is a very good idea. An IQ test.” Then she swept on. “The post office is part of the federal government and you can’t just post anything there. So it was voted in. I made the sign.” She smiled a blindingly white beauty-queen smile at Harvey, who winced. “With some help. Harvey?”
Harvey smoothed his gelled hair back with both hands and stood up. Harvey was tall, willowy, and favored pastel-colored shirts. His advertising agency was mainly concerned with the layout and distribution of the local PennySaver, but anytime anyone had any product to promote, Harvey was the go-to guy. Quill let him handle the advertising for the Inn (although she did the layouts herself).
He set the A-frame he’d carried into the meeting onto the table and unrolled it. The sign was in black, white, and red and the biggest word was DANGER, which was in red. Under that, in black type was MOST WANTED (BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE HEMLOCK FALLS DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL CONTROL). Underneath was a series of blurry pictures. The first one said, RABID FOX, the second RABID RACCOON. Quill followed the rest of the titles until the second to the last one, which was Max (GARBAGE RUMMAGER), and the very last one, which was Esther West’s little poodle (ANKLE BITER). The final sentence was: IF YOU SEE ANY OF THESE ANIMALS THAT ARE MOST WANTED, CALL 1-800-DAN-GERS.
Esther West smoothed her spit curls and said meekly, “I’d like to register a protest.”
&n
bsp; “Me, too,” Quill said. “Esther’s poodle is not an ankle biter. And Max hasn’t rummaged in a Dumpster for years.” (This wasn’t true.) “Anyway, doesn’t an animal have to be convicted, or something, before it goes onto that list?”
Esther nodded vigorous agreement. “You can’t just smack any poor pet you want to onto that poster, Carol Ann. They have to be convicted.”
Miriam raised her hand. “I move we table the discussion of this poster until we determine the legality of the listings.”
Quill raised her hand. “I second that.”
The motion was passed, although nobody’s hand was raised very high and Carol Ann sat down with a poisonous grin.
Elmer sighed, as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Carol Ann had a long, long memory and a taste for revenge. “Can we get to this dinner, now?”
Miriam raised her hand.
“The chair recognizes Miriam Doncaster. What about it, Miriam?”
“I move we cancel the Welcome Dinner.”
“I second,” Marge shouted.
Elmer ran a finger around his shirt collar and coughed nervously. “Now, Margie, Miriam, that would be an idea, for sure, but I think we should have a good, old-fashioned discussion about this. That’s what these meetings are all about, anyways.”
A discussion, of sorts, took place. Marge shouted. Miriam protested in a ladylike way, and Harland kept asking why they wanted to welcome a fellow who was dead, which was Quill’s own take on the matter.
She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and drew a battlefield with land mines in it. Then she sketched Marge’s face on one mine, Miriam’s on another, and Adela’s on a third. Then she put in a little Elmer tiptoeing through the field.
“. . . Because I already paid him, that’s why!” Elmer said. “And I tried to get the money back from the widow herself, and she said a contract’s a contract.”
There was a shocked silence. (Which had to be a first for a Chamber meeting.)
Toast Mortem Page 13
