The room had that indefinable atmosphere of a room immediately after a disruption. The patrons seemed to be settling back down to their drinks.
The lounge itself was a well-designed place to have a glass of wine. Quill had round tables made from a reclaimed gym floor and spaced them widely enough so that guests were comfortable talking to each other but didn’t feel isolated. The long, highly polished mahogany bar was a relic of the Inn’s early days as a genuine tavern, as was the cobblestone fireplace. Over the years, Quill had changed her mind about the walls—initially a teal blue, now a creamy coffee. She’d gone through what she privately called her Georgia O’Keeffe period, and five of her flower studies hung near the French doors leading to the flagstone terrace outside.
This time of night, the lounge was about half full. A few people cast sideways glances at the table nearest the end of the bar, where Jeeter Swenson sat with a middle-aged man and woman at a table for four.
Dina gave her a little nudge. “That’s who Mr. Swenson was whacking. The guy in the blue blazer.”
Quill walked over and sat down in the fourth chair.
Jeeter was thin and wiry, with a head of bright white hair. Great age had been kind to him; his skin was mottled with age spots, his gray eyes were filmy, and his hands were knobby with arthritis, but there was an alert, merry spitefulness to his expression and he greeted Quill with a wide smile. “The innkeeper,” he said with satisfaction. “Mrs. McHale to you, Portly. She’s come to throw your portly butt out of here. Didn’t you, Mrs. McHale?”
The man next to him nodded, and extended his hand. “Porter Swenson, Mrs. McHale. And this is my wife Melbourne.” Porter was portly, in a modest way, but he looked very like his father. Melbourne had the figure of a fiercely dedicated dieter. Her carefully applied makeup and unnaturally taut jaw didn’t do much to conceal her age, which Quill estimated to be in her mid-sixties.
“Please call me Quill. And no, I haven’t come to throw anyone out of anywhere. But I would like to offer assistance if you need it.”
Porter rose and put his hand under Quill’s elbow. “If you wouldn’t mind, could we step over here for a moment?”
Quill glanced at Jeeter, who winked at her. “Go on. Just remember that I’m footing the bill, here. Not him.”
Porter drew her to the end of the bar. “I hope you mean that offer of assistance.”
“Of course.”
He put his hand inside his blazer and pulled out a business card. He was a lawyer, with an office in Syracuse. “You can reach me here, or through Howie here in Hemlock Falls.”
“Howie Murchison?”
“Classmate of mine from Cornell. He understands the situation. You can see how it is.”
Quill glanced back at Jeeter, who was playfully poking Melbourne with the tip of his cane. There was a smile on her face, but her eyes glittered in a way that only could be described as homicidal.
“My father’s ninety-eight. He is clearly suffering from dementia. I’m going to need your help to get him out of here and into a safer place.”
“A safer place? You mean a nursing home or something like that?”
“Something like that.”
Melbourne shrieked, grabbed the cane, and threw it on the floor. She took a deep breath, and then called to her husband. “I’m going to sit in the car, Porter. Can you wrap it up, please? I’d like to get back to Syracuse before the damn sun comes up.” Then, between gritted teeth, she said, “Good-bye, Dad. You stay well, now.”
“Never been better,” Jeeter cackled. He bent over and picked up his cane with an effort. He waved it at Melbourne. “Scoot!”
Melbourne scooted.
Jeeter chuckled to himself, and then raised a finger in Nate’s direction. “Cup of coffee here, Nate, if you please. Just black.”
Porter shook his head in spurious sorrow. “You can see for yourself what we’re dealing with here.”
What Quill saw was a guy who was taking full advantage of his age to torment a daughter-in-law he didn’t like very much. But she said, “He’s been seen by a doctor? Your father, I mean?”
Porter’s gaze shifted sideways. “Well, the thing is, he’s very clever with it. The dementia, I mean. To talk to him, in a clinical setting, you’d never guess that the chandelier’s shy a few lightbulbs. And the damn doctors buy it. He’s clever, Dad is. Always has been.” Porter widened his lips in a grin. His teeth were too white. He smelled like wine and sweat. “Look. It’s important, for his sake, that we get him to a…a safer environment. And to do that, we’re going to need outside verification of what Melbourne and I have seen all along.”
Quill raised her eyebrows politely.
“Aggression. Inappropriate behavior in public.” Porter rubbed his elbow reflectively. “Assault.”
“You think he has dementia because he pokes people with his cane?”
“That’s it,” he said eagerly. “That’s it in a nutshell. Now, if you could just talk to your maids, and the waitstaff, and keep an eye out yourself and report on his behaviors, we will be very, very grateful. We will be happy to reimburse everyone for their time, of course. Handsomely.”
Quill stared at him for a long moment. Then she said, “Mr. Swenson checked in a week ago, and we haven’t seen any evidence that he’s…umm…demented. Quite the reverse, as a matter of fact. He’s made some friends here, including my son and his grandmother—well, his honorary grandmother—and our receptionist Dina Muir.”
Porter dropped the smile and stepped in close to her. “So it’s going to be like that, is it? You figure the money you’re getting for the next three months is more important than my father’s health?”
Bullies made Quill lose her temper. Pious bullies were even worse. “It’s not like anything, Mr. Swenson. If there’s nothing else, I have a meeting to get to.”
“I warn you, Mrs. McHale, that if anything happens to my father while he is under your care here at the Inn, you are leaving yourself wide open to legal action. You might think about booking that suite he’s in to someone else. The sooner the better.”
Quill was standing with her back to the fireplace, facing the door to the Inn proper. She saw with relief that Linda Connelly, Dina, Marge, and Linda’s two assistants had come into the lounge. Nate waved them to a table for six by the French doors. She slipped past Porter, with a murmured “You’ll excuse me, please,” and went to join them.
“What’s put your knickers in a twist?” Marge demanded.
“Nothing.” Quill scowled at Porter, who’d gone back to his father and was leaning over him. Jeeter glared back up at him, poked him a good one in the shins with his cane, and hobbled out of the lounge. Porter stared after him, and then slammed out of the French doors into the night.
“What was that little drama all about?” Linda asked.
“That’s Jeeter Swenson,” Dina said. “The sweet old guy, that is. The creep is his son, who’s a lawyer from Syracuse, and who wants to get his hot little hands on Jeeter’s lakeside mansion. It’s a gorgeous place, right smack on Seneca Lake and he’s trying to get Jeeter into some nursing home and Jeeter doesn’t want to go. So Jeeter came here, to get away from them and guess what, they tracked him down and showed up here about an hour ago. It’s awful.”
“Now’s not the time, Dina,” Quill said firmly. “We’ll discuss this later.”
“But it’s not right!”
“All he has to do is refuse to go,” Linda said, with a clear lack of interest.
“If they get him declared demented, he can refuse all he wants and they’ll haul him off like a forgotten teddy bear,” Dina said emotionally. “It’s all because of what he saw in the lake.”
Quill was pretty sure she was going to regret the answer, but she asked, “What did he see in the lake?”
“The Loch Ness Monster,” Dina said. “Or more accurately, the Seneca Lake Monster. Of course it’s unlikely that there are monsters in Seneca or any other lake, and if anyone knows that, it’s me, and I told J
eeter that, but he’s got a what d’ycall it. An idée fixe. A harmless one. He is not demented.” She pushed her spectacles up her nose and added thoughtfully. “Of course, there’s more things under heaven and in earth, Horatio and all that, and I’ve always had my suspicions that there really is a relic of aquatic dinosaurs in Loch Ness, so why not Seneca, too?”
Linda blinked at her. “What?”
“Dina’s a graduate student in limnology,” Marge said. “That’s freshwater pond ecology. I suppose she’s more likely to know about aquatic dinosaurs than anyone else around here.”
Linda shrugged. “Freshwater pond ecology. Aquatic dinosaurs. Interesting, I guess. I can’t see it affecting the fete, however. Let’s move on. I’m sure we’re all tired after what’s been a very long day.”
“Sure,” Dina muttered, “of course. Sorry.”
“Good. So let’s get the ball rolling here, shall we?” She swung her briefcase up on the tabletop and opened it up. “I’ve learned something that distresses me a little, and before we get any further down the road with this project, I’d like to talk it over. It may be that Presentations can’t tackle this for you after all.” She looked at Quill, Marge, and Dina in turn. “Do any of you know a Carol Ann Spinoza?”
~
“Linda Connelly’s going to be very effective, if she doesn’t up and quit because she thinks we’re all crazy or crooked or both,” Quill said to Myles’s computer image some hours later. “Between Dina’s lake monster and the Citizens for Justice she must think she’s fallen in with crazies. What’s more important is that Elmer didn’t tell her why Adela had to withdraw from the fete when he recruited Presentations. Linda didn’t have a clue about the missing money until Carol Ann tracked her down. She’s concerned about her company’s reputation. She doesn’t want to be in the middle of what might turn out to be a case of fraud or theft or whatever.”
“Embezzlement,” Myles said.
“Right. Embezzlement. Anyhow, Marge and I convinced her that it’s all under control, but she’s skeptical. She’s going to go to another one of those dratted meetings at Brady’s to get some idea of what we’re up against. I can’t blame her, really. No one wants to be associated with a public relations disaster. She wants to talk to Adela, too, of course, even though Elmer’s turned over all her fete files, which is going to upset Adela to no end. Anyhow. I’ll tackle all that tomorrow…” Quill yawned. “What else? Oh! And what shall I do about that horrible Porter Swenson? I mean, I ask you! Isn’t there some law against attempting bribery of an innkeeper? Aren’t there laws against tormenting the elderly? Although, I suppose to be fair, Jeeter was doing most of the tormenting.”
“I don’t think I’d be looking on the Internet for a Taser cane to give him, no.”
“It’d be great if there were such a cane. I’d Taser that Porter within an inch of his life. I’ll talk to Howie tomorrow, too. I can’t imagine that he and Porter are buddies, but you never know.” Quill yawned again. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry. I think the day is catching up with me. Maybe I’m just getting old, Myles. I used to be able to handle this stuff with one hand tied behind my back.”
“Thirty-nine. A dangerous age. I’m sure that’s the reason.”
Quill bent closer to the screen. “You’re not laughing at me, are you?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“It was,” she admitted, “an unusually odd series of events all in one day.”
“Not for Hemlock Falls,” Myles murmured.
“What?”
“Get to sleep, dear heart. It will all look better in the morning.”
“I doubt it,” she said. “But I can always hope.”
She told him she loved him. She didn’t tell him she missed him. They had an agreement about that. Then she signed off and went to check on Jack.
Quill cracked the door to Jack’s bedroom and looked in on her sleeping son. The light fell across his bed. Max the dog lay curled at the foot of the bed, and Jack lay curled on top of Max. Gently, she lifted Jack’s solid little body and tucked him properly into bed. Max yawned, scrabbled to his feet, and slouched into the living room to her front door. He cocked one lopsided ear at her.
“You want to go out?”
The tip of Max’s tail waved. Quill wasn’t sure how old he was; well over ten at least. Their vet, Dr. McKenzie, thought there might be some retriever in his ancestry, and maybe some standard poodle. Whatever his background, Max’s coat was a shambly mix of ochres, gray, off-white, and black.
He whuffed a little, which meant he was serious about going out. Doreen’s room was right next to hers, and Doreen would be up like a shot if Jack called out, so Quill collected Max’s leash and resigned herself to twenty minutes outside before she could get to sleep.
Her rooms were at the west end of the building and it was a short trip down the fire escape to the gardens in back. Max poked around the rosebushes, then, being a modest dog, disappeared around the front corner of the Inn. Quill leaned back against the fire escape and looked up at the sky. The moon was huge and soft, a gigantic plum of a moon nested in wispy silver clouds. The air was soft, peaceful, and quiet until Max barked and howled like a banshee when he discovered Jeeter Swenson’s body on the lip of Hemlock Gorge.
9
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” Andy Bishop tucked the business end of his stethoscope into the top pocket of his lab coat and shook his head, marveling. “Mr. Swenson’s a vigorous old bird. No evidence of a concussion. He has a surprisingly thick skull for his age, and no evidence of a seizure or a heart attack. He may have tripped and fallen and hit his head as he fell. There’s a nasty contusion on his right temple.”
Quill and Meg sat close together on the couch in the Family Room at the Village Hospital and Clinic. It was three o’clock in the morning, and Jeeter Swenson wasn’t dead.
Quill let out a long sigh.
Meg yawned heartily and poked her sister in the side. “Good. Now we can go home.”
“Can we see him?” Quill asked.
“Sure. Just don’t make it too long. I gave him a little clonazepam, just to help him settle down. He’ll be falling asleep pretty quickly.”
Meg got to her feet, grumbling a little. Andy’s eyes drifted over her rather wistfully. There had been a time, not long in the past, when Quill was sure her volatile sister would make a match of it with the attractive Dr. Bishop, but it hadn’t gone anywhere. “We won’t be long, Andy. Meg and I are dead on our feet.” She paused on the way to the patient rooms down the hall. “Did you call his relatives?”
Andy rubbed his hands over his face. “Yep. I talked to the son, what’s his name.”
“Porter Swenson.”
“Yeah.” Andy’s grin was cynical. “Didn’t seem all that relieved that his dad was going to be okay. Said he’d be by sometime tomorrow. Watch yourself with that guy, Quill. He started asking me all kinds of questions about security at the Inn. You don’t want to find yourself in the middle of a lawsuit.”
Quill nodded.
Hospital rooms diminish everybody, and Jeeter was no exception. He looked smaller, paler, and infinitely fragile. A neat bandage circled his head. He lay back against the propped-up frame of the hospital bed, eyes closed, his skin a grayish yellow. An IV drip was attached to one skinny arm. Meg caught Quill by the elbow and whispered, “Maybe we ought to let the poor guy sleep.”
Jeeter’s eyes popped open. Quill was glad to see that the malicious sparkle was still there. “It’s mine host,” he rasped. He cleared his throat with an effort. “Hostess, I should say. The hostess with the most-ess.”
“We just stopped by to make sure you’re all right,” Quill said quietly. “We’ll be back to see you in the morning.”
“Hell, I’ll be out of here by morning.” He cackled. “Nothing wrong with me that a good slug of Scotch wouldn’t cure. Doc says he’ll be happy to prescribe it once I’m back in my room.” He patted the bed. “Take a load off, honey.”
Q
uill sat at the very edge of the mattress. Meg wandered around the room, which was small, spotless, and smelled like Pine-Sol. “Meg and I are really glad you aren’t hurt.”
“Me, too. Gonna make it to a hundred and seventeen, you know. Can’t let a little thing like a fall set me back.”
“You fell?”
His eyes clouded. He worked his lips. “I must’ve, I guess.”
“Were you out for a walk last night?”
He yawned. “I was out to meet somebody. On account of the note.”
Meg and Quill looked at each other. “The note?” Meg said. “What note?”
“From those guys. You know, the guys against the conspiracy.”
“The Citizens for Justice?” Quill said, astonished. “You got a note from Carol Ann Spinoza?”
“She the one who smells like shampoo? Nah. Not her.” Jeeter’s eyes began to close and he fought it. “Nope. Nope. Nope. The other…” His eyes closed and his mouth dropped open. Quill’s heart turned over. Asleep, he looked as vulnerable as her own child.
Meg drew the thin blanket up over his chest. “We’d better let him rest,” she whispered. “And we’d better find that note.”
~
“If there’s a note, it’s either at the bottom of the river or in the old guy’s pockets,” Doreen said over coffee and brioche at ten o’clock the next morning. “I figgered you two might of missed something last night when you searched his room, so I got housekeeping to go over it with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing.”
“We should have looked at his laptop,” Meg said.
The three of them sat in the dining room at the table nearest the kitchen doors. Outside, it was another fine August day. Quill almost never tired of the sight of the water cascading over the falls; today she watched the plumes of green water without really seeing them. She shook her head. “The laptop would have been a real invasion of his right to privacy. I’m okay with checking out his room. I mean, housekeeping is in there every day to clean. But I’m not okay with taking it further.”
Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) Page 10
