Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138)

by Bishop, Claudia

  “Harland and I have been looking at Florida property,” Marge said. “We’ve been thinking about getting out of these winters. That’s Miami, for sure.” She clicked rapidly through the photos once again, then shut down the laptop and closed the cover. “Now what do we do?”

  “What possible reason could Brady Beale have to take sneaky photos of Sophie Kilcannon?”

  Marge snorted. “You’re kidding, right? Do I need to remind you of the crud on that guy’s browser? Hot Chicks in Cool…”

  Quill held her hand up. “Ugh.”

  “The guy’s a voyeur, at best. At worst—well. Maybe we don’t want to know the worst.”

  “I should take this to Davy.” Quill reached for the computer.

  Marge pulled it out of reach. “And what, have Brady charge us with petty larceny? Of course, you could tell him that Althea Quince was really the one who stole it, so we can get her into trouble, too. No, here’s what we do. We go talk to this Sophie Kilcannon. And then,” Marge cracked her knuckles. “We have a couple of Harland’s linebacker cousins have a talk with old Brady.”

  16

  Quill and Marge left the office at close to four o’clock. Quill suggested they drive separately up to the academy, “because,” she said to Marge, “this is when I spend time with Jack. We can make this quick, can’t we? I took a blood oath that I wouldn’t let anything interfere with Jack’s afternoons. I spend little enough time with him as it is.”

  Marge paused in the process of snapping on her seat belt. “Tell you what. I’ll tell Sophie I took the laptop. You go on home.”

  “No, no. I can’t let you do that.” Quill looked at her shrewdly. “And you don’t want to, anyway. It wouldn’t be fair. I started this mess—well, Althea started this mess—and I’ve got to see it through. Just let me give Doreen a call to tell her I’m going to be late.” She speed dialed Doreen, who went “t-cha!” then talked to Jack, who didn’t seem distressed at all that he might not see his mother until bedtime.

  “He’s a well-balanced kid,” Marge said stoutly. “And that Doreen may be a little crusty tempered with adults, but she’s a wizard with kids. I’d be proud of any kid of mine that wasn’t clingy. Of course,” she added, “it may be his mamma that’s clingy.”

  “Any more words of wisdom you want to share?” Quill asked crossly. She put the car into gear and reversed into the street, narrowly missing a flat of begonias. Alice Nickerson, who was putting the last of a pot of baby’s breath into a planter, waved her trowel and shouted. Quill was pretty sure she wasn’t telling her to have a nice day.

  The drive to the academy was short, less than two miles from Marge’s office, which was at the heart of downtown. They passed Peterson Park, where the grandstands for the fete were already going up.

  “Slow down a bit,” Marge ordered. Quill, who hadn’t been going faster than thirty, slowed even more, to the frustration of the two cars behind her. “Ignore the horns. Look! See that purple blob where the entrance sign is going up?”

  “Adela!”

  “Hot damn!”

  Quill raised her right hand and Marge slapped it. “I’m so relieved, Marge. Dookie must have talked her into coming back on board.”

  “My money’s on Dolly Jean Attenborough,” Marge said cynically. “She’s been pushing to have Harvey take over. I’d like to see the day Adela took a backseat to Harvey.”

  Quill speeded up, just as the car behind her began to pass. The driver shouted out the window. It was Nadine Peterson. Quill decided to wait a few weeks before she got her hair trimmed at the Hemlock Hall of Beauty.

  “Slow down, darn it. You almost went past it.”

  “Do you think I should pull into the annex or the employee parking lot?”

  “Where’s Sophie likeliest to be?”

  “The kitchen, I would think, at this time of day. Oh, my goodness. She’s jogging in the field. Look, Marge.” Quill braked at the edge of the field. “How beautiful.”

  Sophie raced around the edge of the field, effortlessly avoiding the piles of dirt and gravel put there by yesterday’s bulldozers. The grass was the deep rich green of late summer. The trees were touched with russet. The sunlight was silver gold. Sophie herself was a slim, vibrant figure, her long legs flashing in a graceful rhythm.

  “Now I suppose we have to wait while you do one of those sketches of yours,” Marge said with rough affection.

  “No,” Quill said absently, “no sketch.”

  “Really? You just said it looks beautiful. Don’t you want to draw it or something?”

  “She’s happy. You can’t draw plain old happy, Marge. I can’t anyway. There has to be some tension.”

  “Wait until we tell her Brady Beale’s been playing Peeping Tom. She’s not going to be happy about that.”

  Sophie raised a hand in greeting as she flashed around the back of the field, and then slowed down as it became obvious that Quill and Marge were waiting for her. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and jogged up to them.

  “Hi. You’re Meg Quilliam’s sister, aren’t you? And?” She looked at Marge with an inquiring smile.

  “Marge Schmidt.”

  “Of course. You’re married to that nice dairy farmer, Harland Peterson.” She wiped her palms on her jogging shorts and shook Marge’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you. And nice to see you, Quill. Clare’s in class right now, but if there’s anything I can help you with, just ask.”

  “Actually, it’s you we came to see. I’m sorry to interrupt your run, but Marge and I have something to tell you. It’d be better if we could find a place to talk.”

  “That’s okay. Why don’t we go to my place?” She grinned happily. Her eyes were very blue in her tanned face. “Doesn’t that have a great ring to it? My place.” She stretched her arms wide, as if to embrace the field itself. “And isn’t this a gorgeous spot! I can’t believe I lucked into this job. This place is paradise.”

  Marge snorted. “That’s true enough. It’s even got the snake. You want a ride up to the annex?”

  “Ah…sure.” She checked the pedometer on her wrist. “I only logged six miles, though. If this is important, that’s enough for today, I guess.”

  “Six miles? Heck,” Marge said, “that’s enough for a week. And yeah, it’s important. Hop in.”

  Quill pulled into the driveway that led to the annex and parked in front. It was a pleasant building, constructed in the same style as the three-story academy. Sophie led them through the foyer, which was carpeted in an unobtrusive hunter green, and down the hallway. “I have one of the middle apartments, so there are only windows on the one side. They all have sliding glass doors out to the field, though, so I don’t feel too claustrophobic.” She unlocked the door and stepped back to let them precede her. “Come in. Can I get you some tea? Or something cold to drink?”

  “Not right now, thank you.” Quill had been in the annex apartments before. They were equipped like a pleasant, middle-grade hotel; durable wall-to-wall carpeting, unpretentious furniture in dark wood; a small, efficient kitchen with a four-burner electric stove and an apartment-sized refrigerator. A Mason jar of daffodils sat on the bookcase. A five-string guitar was propped in the corner. Sophie had made the place less anonymous with pictures of sailboats, collections of seashells, and movie posters. The posters were of American movies in a variety of foreign languages. After a moment, Quill realized that all the posters were of an old James Cameron movie, Terminator 2, with a middle-aged Arnold Schwarzenegger and a young Linda Hamilton. Quill walked over and looked at them closely. “What an interesting collection.”

  Sophie giggled. It was a delightful sound and infectious. She shoved her hair back with both hands. “Yeah. That’s from Bombay, the one there’s from Tokyo, and the others are from Amsterdam, and Paris and Rome. I try and pick one up whatever country I’m in. I loved Arnold Schwarzenegger from the neck down. Gorgeous, just gorgeous. Of course, in real life, he’s old as the hills, not to mention that from the neck up he’s a
complete and utter doughhead. Some men should just shut up and pose, don’t you think?”

  Quill bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh.

  “You sure travel a lot,” Marge said warily.

  “Well, yeah, of course.” Sophie blinked. Her eyes were very blue. “I mean before I got this gig here, I was a chef for hire. On yachts. You know, have sauté pan, will travel.”

  “That must have been a lot of fun,” Quill said a little wistfully.

  “Well, it depends,” Sophie said judiciously. “I was cool with the bigger boats, but not so much on the small ones. Anything under sixty feet I spent most of my time in the galley tossing my cookies.”

  “You get seasick?”

  “It kind of monkey wrenched my career plans,” Sophie admitted. “So when I ran into Clare Sparrow at the Miami Food Fair last November, I asked her to let me know if she had ever had an opening. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think I had the stuff to get a job here—I mean Bonne Goute is famous and I haven’t been cooking all that long. But here I am!” She looked from Quill to Marge and back again, her face glowing. “So. Before we talk about stuff, can you give me five minutes to shower and change?”

  Quill made an effort not to look at her watch. “Sure.”

  “Just have a seat then. I’ll be right out.” She disappeared into the bedroom and moments later, Quill heard the shower go on.

  Quill sat down on the couch and rested the tote with the laptop in it at her feet. The couch was positioned so that Sophie could look out onto the field, and beyond that, the trees of Peterson Park. Marge wandered around the apartment, stopping at the bookshelf. “Lot of books about cooking here.”

  “That’s not surprising.”

  “Lot of books about sailing ships, too. Oh, my Lord.”

  “What?”

  “The girl’s a lefty. She’s left of Attila the Hun. Look at these books on social justice.”

  “You don’t mean Attila the Hun. You mean left of a humanist’s humanist. I can’t think of a role model for humanism at the moment, but it’d be to the left of that.”

  Sophie emerged from the bedroom, dressed in white shorts, sandals, and a baggy T-shirt that read Port of Palm Beach on the back and There’s nothing better than messing about in boats on the front. She grabbed a bottle of water from her refrigerator and sat down next to Quill. “Okay, guys. Shoot. You said something about a snake in my Eden? Now what does that mean?” She turned pale. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness.” She pulled on her lower lip, sighed, and said in a very small voice, “Clare sent you here to fire me, didn’t she? I knew it was too good to last. I just knew it. I mean, I’m really sorry about the pasta.” Then, with an air of painful honesty, “I wasn’t at the time. I admit it. I was just so ticked off at the guy that I didn’t stop to think.”

  “Of course Clare didn’t send us to fire you,” Quill said. “If Clare were going to fire you, she’d do it herself.”

  “She would?”

  “Of course she would.” Then, more kindly, she said, “We’re friends, but the businesses aren’t connected at all.”

  “Of course they aren’t.” She bit furiously at her thumbnail. “It’s just that I still can’t believe I’m here. I wake up every morning thinking Clare’s going to knock on my door and say it was all a mistake. You know all the other chefs have these homogenously fabulous résumés. Jim Chen was a sous chef at Arnaud’s in New Orleans. Raleigh Brewster’s been written up in Bon Appétit like a billion times. I’m nobody compared to them. But I’m not getting fired.” Sophie beamed. “Well, yahoo and hooray! Then, carry on, ladies.”

  “What is it about the pasta?” Marge said.

  “It sort of ended up in a guy’s lap. It wasn’t anything, really.”

  “About the pasta…” Marge said stubbornly.

  She waved her hand airily. “Nothing. Nothing. The nice thing about Clare is that she doesn’t lose her temper like a lot of chefs. I mean she does, but there’s not a lot of yelling and screaming. More like, icy annoyance. What time is it?”

  “Six o’clock,” Quill said. Jack would be eating his dinner now. Without her.

  “Since I’m not fired, then I’m due back in the kitchen in thirty minutes. Is there something I can help you with?”

  Quill picked up the laptop with a grimace. “Do you know Brady Beale?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you buy a car at Peterson Automotive recently?”

  “Nope. I don’t have a car. I don’t drive. I have a bicycle.”

  “You didn’t go to any of the Citizens for Justice meetings at the auto dealership, did you?”

  “You mean that protest group run by Carol Ann Spinoza? Heck, no.” With a certain amount of admiration, she added, “You don’t meet all that many sociopaths in the traveling chef business. More than a few filthy-rich capitalists that deserve to be keelhauled for greed, of course, but you have to be relatively sane to make big bucks these days. That Carol Ann’s a case study for somebody.”

  “And what’s wrong with capitalism, young lady?” Marge asked in a dangerous way.

  “That’s exactly what my parents want to know!” Sophie said delightedly. “I’ve got a few books you might like to read, Marge. But.” She swiveled that very bright blue gaze back to Quill. “That’s not what you’ve come about.”

  “No.” Reluctantly, she opened up the laptop, booted it up, and handed the laptop to Sophie. “These were apparently taken by Brady Beale.”

  “Ick.” Sophie clicked rapidly through the photos. “Ick. Ick. Ick. Where the heck did the little bugger get these pictures of me in Miami?”

  “Trade show?” Quill hazarded. “I know he was there for an international car show recently.”

  Sophie shuddered. “Ugh.” She looked thoughtful. “The big question, of course, is why me?”

  Marge and Quill glanced at each other. Sophie couldn’t be that oblivious to the way she looked in a bikini.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Quill said. “We came to you as soon as we came across them…what are you doing?”

  Sophie tapped rapidly at the keyboard. “Seeing what else the little peckerwood has in here.” She paused and demanded sharply, “Who’s this?” She pivoted the laptop. The photo file was in slide-show format, and a series of pictures showed a small dark-haired woman walking briskly along the streets of a crowded city. She wore dark glasses, a gray hoodie, and cargo pants. The people around her were Asian. Chinese, Quill thought, rather than Korean or Japanese. There were a lot of palm trees, and the streets were broad.

  “Linda Connelly,” Quill said. “Where is she, do you suppose?”

  “Singapore,” Sophie said. She caught their looks of surprise. “I was there earlier this year. A hedge-fund banker with twenty of his closest friends. Big boat, thank goodness, although I was a little urpy in the bay. You say this woman calls herself Linda Connelly?”

  “The village hired her to manage the fete in Adela Henry’s, ummm…absence. But she was killed yesterday afternoon. Didn’t you hear about it?”

  “Sure. Sure I heard about it. Who didn’t?” Sophie stared at the screen, and then began biting her other thumb.

  “Do you know her?”

  Sophie looked up, and for a moment, Quill saw what the girl would look like in twenty years. “No,” she said after a long moment. “I don’t know her. Not personally, thank goodness.” She clicked the photo file closed. “As far as this creep Brady Beale…” She shook her head. “All I can say is what I said before. Ick. Thanks for the heads-up. I guess I’d better keep my drapes drawn from here on in.”

  “I think you should do more than that. I’d like to take this to Sheriff Kiddermeister. I was hoping that you’d swear out a complaint. We should be able to get Brady arrested. Or at least make him stop.”

  “It’s not that big a deal.”

  “It’s a very big deal.” Quill touched Sophie’s shoulder. “This is a total invasion of your privacy. And if he’s stalking you, he may be stalking other wom
en.”

  “Gosh. I doubt that.”

  “If you’re afraid of reprisals,” Marge said, “all I can say is you don’t need to worry about a thing. One way or another, we got resources.”

  Quill shook her head. “Really, Marge. We’ve got enough on our plates as a village without jumping into vigilantism. The best possible thing is for us to take Sophie to Davy Kiddermeister and let the law take care of it the right way.”

  “Did this Peterson let you use his laptop? I mean, how did you guys get hold of it?”

  “It fell into our hands in a roundabout way,” Quill said vaguely. “The person that borrowed it from Brady’s office intended to put it back.”

  “And you borrowed it from the original thief?” Sophie raised her eyebrows. “Sounds to me like there’d be a whole lot of hoopla falling on you guys if I went down and made a complaint.”

  Quill shook her head. “We can handle that. Your safety’s more important.”

  “Oh, I can take care of myself.” Sophie looked perfectly blank. “Let me think about this. Okay. I’ve got a great solution. You guys are gonna love it. We wipe this baby down so there’s no fingerprints, and we stick it in a ditch outside or somewhere, and one of us calls the sheriff’s office in a very anonymous way and tells him where it is. We maybe put a sticky note on it, to send the sheriff right to the place where my photos are.”

  “An anonymous sticky note?”

  “Sure.”

  “The forensics,” Marge said heavily. “They can trace anything these days.”

  “Phooey,” Sophie said. “No government office I ever heard of is going to waste department resources on anything more than a fingerprint check. Nope. I say sneak this into evidence.”

  “We could do that, I suppose,” Quill said unwillingly. “I’m not big on being sneaky.”

  “She would have jumped on this before she had her kid,” Marge said to Sophie. “She got a lot more law-abiding since she became a mother. Quill, I think young Sophie’s got the right idea. We drop this off to Davy, unobtrusive-like. We’ll let the law take its course.” She cracked her knuckles for the third time that day. “In the meantime, I’ll give Harland’s linebacker nephews a heads-up.”