Ground to a Halt
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Go-for-a-ride, Max.”
This Max understood very well.
The road to the Inn took her directly through the village, so the Croh Bar was on the way. She pulled into the parking lot, wondering what Marge had to say.
For years, Marge and her partner Betty Hall had run
the All-American Diner (“Fine Food! And Fast!”), and
for years, it was the most popular place in town. But not,
Marge was heard to grumble more than once, the most
profitable. The most profitable place in town was the
run-down, seedy joint known as the Croh Bar. And
when Leonard Croh finally decided to retire and move
to Florida, Marge and Betty bought it. Like the All
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American Diner, the Croh Bar opened at six o’clock in
the morning; unlike the diner, no one under eighteen
could set foot in the place, so the patrons tended to be
older, or single, or both.
It was a great place to get up-to-the-minute news of
the goings-on in Hemlock Falls.
Quill glanced at the clock over the bar as she walked
in. Just before seven, which meant that the truckers
would have cleared out, but that those farmers who’d
finished morning chores would be eating breakfast. She
scanned the booths that lined both walls and found
Marge alone at her usual spot in the back. Quill waved
and joined her. “Hey, Marge.”
“ ’Lo, Quill.”
“You’re in here early this morning.”
Marge raised one gingery eyebrow. “I’m always in
here ’bout this time.”
And usually with Harland Peterson, Quill thought.
But she said aloud, “Shall I sit down ?”
“Nobody else is planning to sit there, far as I know.”
Quill slid onto the bench across from her.
“You want coffee?”
Quill nodded.
“Bit of the special? Betty’s cooking here today.”
Quill nodded a little more vigorously. Betty Hall
made the best diner food in upstate New York. Maybe
the whole of New York. Meg claimed she could make a
case for its being the best diner food on the continent,
but noncompeting chefs tended to support each other
with enthusiasm.
Marge leaned out into the aisle and hollered. A faint
response came from the general direction of the
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kitchen. Marge settled back into her seat. “Be out in a
minute. Heard from the sheriff lately?”
Quill knew Marge didn’t mean Davy Kiddermeister.
Whenever old Hemlockians referred to the sheriff, they
meant Myles. After taking early retirement from the
NYPD, he’d held the post for eight years.
“Last night,” Quill said, “and briefly again this
morning.”
“When’s he due back?”
Quill shook her head. “I wish I knew. I wish he
knew. Soon, I hope.”
“You tell him about this Lila Longstreet business?”
“Ah. Hm,” Quill said noncommitally.
“Not too happy about it, was he? He kicks up something fierce when you and Meg stick your noses in.”
He did, indeed. “You didn’t say a word yesterday
when Elmer demanded that we solve the case and solve
it quickly,” Quill protested.
Marge made a “what’s-it-to-me?” face. “So you and
Meg got any idea who killed her, yet?”
“No. But we have a list of suspects. We think the list
is pretty sound. I mean, no one in town knew Lila from
before, did they?”
Marge shook her head. “Not as far as I’ve heard.
She’s from some place out West, isn’t she? Karnack
Corners, Iowa. Where Kittleburger’s plant is. Talked her
up one night this week, before she got bashed over the
head like that. This was her first time up East. She liked
it here just fine. But she was really chomping at the bit
to get to New York City. Said she’d dreamed about it
since she was a kid.”
“So my suspect list is pretty reliable,” Quill said. She
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explained how she and Meg had decided whom to investigate. “And it doesn’t look as if this was an accident.
Or a random killing.”
“Wasn’t raped and she was run over twice, deliberately,” Marge agreed. “I can see how you’re thinking that the only people around here that would have a motive for her being dead are that bunch up at your place.”
“Makes sense.”
Marge nodded. Betty whipped down the aisle and
placed a plate of scrambled eggs, hash browns, rye
toast, and pancakes in front of Quill. She added a
smaller plate of crisp Virginia-style bacon. “Juice?”
“No thanks, Betty.”
“You and Meg find out who killed that Longstreet
person?” Betty asked.
“Not yet.”
“You can take your own sweet time about it, as far as
I’m concerned.” Betty wiped both hands on the front of
her red-checked apron, gave an abrupt “so there” sort of
nod, and whipped back to the kitchen.
Quill looked after her in mild surprise. Betty was
taciturn to a fault. And as good-natured as she was taciturn. She turned to Marge.
“No use asking me,” Marge said. “Not sure why Bet
didn’t take to Lila. But I didn’t take to her myself. She
was a real pain in the ass the night she dropped by here.
She had the worst kind of big-city, snot-nosed attitude,
thank you very much.”
“She surely did,” Quill said a little ruefully. Lila’s
preferred method of getting Quill’s attention had been
to snap her fingers. The snap was followed by a list of
really stupid demands: there were too many pillows in
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her room; housekeeping had to be summoned instantly
to remove them. The wine was corked. (As if! Their
sommelier Peter Hairston kept the finest cellar within a
hundred miles. And that included the prestigious Finger
Lakes wine region nearby.) The specious complaints
had gone on and on. The entire staff had been heartily
sick of Lila within hours of her arrival. “I was ready to
whack her over the head with a blunt object myself.”
“The men, now,” Marge said darkly. “If I was about
to investigate, I’d start right there with the men. You
know that hair was straight out of the bottle. And those
big purple eyes of hers? Contact lenses.”
“Really?” Quill said. “Are you sure?”
“Lost one right here at the bar Monday afternoon,”
Marge said. “Found it myself. As for those boobs . . .”
She snorted.
“Fake,” Quill said succinctly.
“As a three-dollar bill,” Marge said with satisfaction.
“So she was in here Monday afternoon?”
“That she was.”
“Was she with anyone?”
Marge scowled. “That primped-up bit of sticky
Southern swamp.”
Quill took a moment to work this out. “You mean
Pamela.”
Marge’s lips were a thin line of peevishness.
“Was
she with anyone else? Lila, I mean,” Quill
added hastily. “Not Pamela. I know that Pamela was
with . . .” she stopped herself in mid-sentence. “Could I
have another cup of coffee, please?”
Marge glared at her and jerked her chin at the
carafe.
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“So that’s when you had a chance to talk with her,”
Quill mused. “Did she talk to anyone else?”
“She bossed Betty around some, or tried to. Basically she and Her.”
“Pamela,” Quill supplied.
“Gabbed away on those two bar stools up front. Then
She . . .”
“Pamela.” The venom that Marge could put into a
capital letter was pretty amazing.
“. . . took off to get ready for a date, She said.”
Marge paused, sighed heavily and continued. “Then
Lila knocked back the rest of her beer and left. Didn’t
leave a tip. Figures.”
“Did Lila tell you what she did for the IAPFP, Marge?”
“Whined a lot about how bad the pay was. Trashed
each one of the members, one by one. But she was
secretary-treasurer of the association,” Marge said.
“And if it’s incorporated . . .”
“It is. I checked.”
“Then it’d be the standard stuff. All incorporated
businesses have to have four elected positions: president,
vice-president, secretary, treasurer. No one person can
hold more than two positions, and the president can’t
be the vice-president. At least in the state of New York.”
“IAPFP’s incorporated in Iowa,” Quill said through a
mouthful of hash browns. “What does Betty put in
these, Marge?”
Marge grinned. “If I tell ya, I have to kill ya. Anyway, most rules of incorporation are the same nationwide, more or less.”
“So as secretary-treasurer, Lila signed off on the
bookkeeping.”
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“Although she might not have actually done the
bookkeeping, but, yeah.”
“And kept the minutes, et cetera, et cetera,” Quill said,
just like the King of Siam. She was beginning to feel as
baffled as that stage character, too. “I’ll tell you, Marge,
try as I might, I can’t think of a motive linked to the
IAPFP business to save my life. I mean, this is a professional association, but all they do is put out a newsletter and go to meetings once a year. They listed a lobbyist on
their website, but what kind of huge political issues are
you going to run into over pet food? They can’t even have
that much of a budget. The annual dues are pretty hefty,
but we’re not talking millions here. Just enough to pay an
office worker and some modest overhead expenses.”
Marge rubbed her chin reflectively. “If it isn’t money
or power, it’s gotta be sex.”
“Sex,” Quill said, “or something else that’s up close
and personal. Maybe she was blackmailing one of the
others?”
Marge shrugged. “Who knows?”
“You said she trashed the members. Did she say anything that might be a lead?”
Marge frowned a little with the effort of recollection.
“Victoria Finnegan’s a shark.”
“She’s the IAPFP attorney of record.”
“And she cut off her husband’s balls a long time ago.”
“Oh, dear.” Quill tugged at the curl over her left ear.
“Robin’s been disbarred. Do you think I should find out
about that?”
“Couldn’t hurt. Anyway,” Marge sighed, “let’s see.
She said Kittleburger’s an old crook. Olivia Oberlie’s a
fraud. And the Barnstaples are idiots.”
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Quill had withdrawn her sketchbook from her pocket
and was scribbling frantically. “All of this has a lot of
potential, Marge. Crook. Fraud. Except the part about
the Barnstaples being idiots.”
“Well, now, maybe not. The reason the Barnstaples
are idiots is that Millard is the one raising Cain about
vegetarian pet food.”
“That,” Quill muttered as she scribbled some more,
“is a reason for Rudy Baranga to knock off Millard
Barnstaple, maybe. It’d cut into his meat business big
time. But I’ll put it down anyway. Right next to the argument Millard and Priscilla had yesterday.”
“And that was about?”
“Buying something.”
Marge grimaced. “Everybody’s always buying
something these days. You notice that? Nobody keeps
anything. It’s just grab, grab, grab.”
Marge, although the richest woman in Tompkins
County, was probably the cheapest. “This was about
buying something worth less than twenty million.”
“That so?” Marge considered this. “House, maybe?”
“Some house.”
“Not if you’re in Palm Beach or Marin County, California.”
“Maybe,” Quill said doubtfully. “Robin Finnegan
was sitting right there and Priscilla kept pulling him
into the conversation. Would you want a relative
stranger’s opinion on whether you should buy a
house?”
“Thin, Quill. It’s thin. But I suppose it all helps.”
“It sure does,” Quill slammed the sketchbook shut.
“This is terrific, Marge. When I left the house this
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morning, I didn’t have a really focused idea of where
this investigation was heading. Now I’ve got a couple of
great leads. Crook. Fraud. Although it’d be nice if we
had some actual evidence.”
“Evidence,” Marge agreed with a fair degree of
irony, “is a little hard for your basic amateur detective to
come by.” Then she said rhetorically, “So what have you
got so far?” She drummed her fingers on the table.
“Meg was in here late afternoon, yesterday, bending
Davy’s ear. My guess is you have at least some idea of
how the murder was committed. He was so ticked off
that Kittleburger called the troopers in, Davy was.”
“We’ve got the time of the murder,” Quill said with
some pride.
“So you’re going to check on where all your suspects
were at the time? Just what was the time?”
“Eight-ish. Monday night.”
Marge’s face fell. “She’s out of it?”
There was no need to ask who She was.
“Um, yes.” Quill said. “So that does let Pamela out
of it.”
“Well, blast it all to kingdom come anyway.”
Quill was shocked. She thought about why, for a moment. Because Marge was making it personal, that was why. Oh, dear. “You didn’t really think Pamela Durbin
smacked Lila Longstreet over the head with a blunt instrument, did you?”
“I was hopin’,” Marge said bluntly.
“But you can’t let cases like this become personal.”
Quill let it go. “This is so frustrating. We have some excellent leads. But they’re all oriented to establishing motive.”
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“It’d help to have that forensics report,” Marge suggested.
“You bet it would. I know that the sc
ene of the crime
guys were there. They must have taken a cast of the tire
tracks. And I’ll bet they went over the body with a fine-
toothed comb. I’d give a lot for a copy of that forensics
report.”
“No go with Myles, huh? He won’t get it for ya?”
Quill grinned reluctantly. “I didn’t really come right
out and ask, you know. I did hint. But he hates calling in
favors. And he doesn’t really . . .”
“Think you should be sticking your nose in,” Marge
said. “Well, what if we figured out how to get hold of
that forensics report ourselves?”
“You and I?” Quill blinked at her. Marge had been
drawn into a case they’d had several years ago. But
she’d been a pretty reluctant partner. “That’s why you
invited me to breakfast?”
“Thought you would have figured that out by now,”
Marge said very crossly. Her face was bright red.
“Oh,” Quill said. “Well, I hadn’t.” And now that
Pamela’s in the clear, Marge didn’t want anything to do
with the case, being a basically law-abiding person. But
if she backed out now, she’d look as if she only wanted
to help hang Pamela Durbin. (Which she had.)
So Marge was stuck with giving them a hand.
Quill’s first instincts were usually merciful. “Golly,
Marge. Meg and I can handle this just fine ourselves.
We have before.”
“Huh,” Marge said skeptically. “So you had a plan to
get hold of the forensics report?”
“Not as such, no.”
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“Not at all,” Marge said rudely, if accurately. “But I
do.”
“How would we do it?”
“Bound to be at the barracks, isn’t it?”
Quill stared at her. “Break into the state trooper barracks? Are you kidding me?”
“Not break in, exactly.” Marge rubbed her nose in a
reflective way. “You see the ads about my new business
yet?”
“No,” Quill said apologetically. “I haven’t. Another
one, Marge? You’re amazing. Meg and I have trouble
enough with just one business. But you’ve got the realty
company and the insurance company and all sorts of
stuff. And now what?”
“Tech support.”
“Tech support?”
“For computers. Computer systems, is what it is. For
big users. Like the state troopers.”
“You mean you can fix those big mainframe things?”
“There’re no mainframes anymore,” Marge said. As