Quill pushed the rocker into motion. She loved this
kitchen. Bundles of dried herbs and flowers hung from
the old oak beams. Meg’s favorite copper-bottomed
pans swayed above her head as she vigorously chopped
squash.
“And it always smells good in here,” she said aloud.
Meg raised her head and smiled. “It does, doesn’t it?
So. Kittleburger must have gotten the best of Marge in
some business deal, or tried to, at least. I can’t think of
anything else that would make her madder. But I still
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can’t see how this relates to poor Lila. Although,” she
paused, the chef’s knife suspended in mid-air, “it says a
lot about—what she’d call him? Mad Max? I’ll tell you,
Quill, from what we’re hearing about this guy, it sounds
as if he could be the number-one suspect based on his
character alone.”
“Wait’ll you hear the rest of what she told me.” Quill
summarized her early morning discussion with Marge.
“And you’re going to disguise yourself and sneak
into the trooper barracks?” Meg rolled her eyes. “Good
luck. Better have Howie Murchison on hand to bail
you out of the clink.”
“It’s quite legal,” Quill said. “All of it except taking a
look at the forensics report.”
“At least it’ll give us some hard information.” Meg
dumped a few handfuls of brown sugar into a sauté pan,
threw in a large spoonful of butter, and turned up the
Aga. “At the moment, question number one is where is
Maxwell Kittleburger?”
Dina shoved open the double doors that led to the
dining room. Quill took one look at her face and jumped
out of the rocking chair. “Dina! What’s happened? Are
you all right?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “But Mr. Kittleburger isn’t.
He’s upstairs in his room. And I don’t think he’s going
to be coming down anytime soon. At least not on his
own. Somebody’s killed him.”
CHAPTER 7
“Great Jumping Jesus,” Doreen said. “I can’t keep maids
on staff for love nor money. And for why? ’Cause of the
corpses. You do realize that this Kittle-whosis . . .”
“Kittleburger,” Quill said glumly.
“Was in the same room where we found that Mavis
person ten years ago?”
Meg scrubbed at her face with both fists. “Mavis
wasn’t found dead in her room. She was found dead outside her room. Somebody pushed her off the balcony and into the gorge.”
“Well they mighta had the same consideration for
Enid’s nerves. Does it matter all that much to a murderer where the body’s laying? Could’a pushed him over the balcony easy as pie instead of laying him out
on the bed like that.”
Meg put her head in her hands. They were sitting in
the dining room. They’d been sitting in the dining room
since eleven o’clock that morning, when what looked
like the entire Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department
descended on the Inn after Quill had called first, the am
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bulance, and second, Davy Kiddermeister. It was now
after three o’clock.
“At least Davy had his head screwed on right for
once,” Doreen grumbled. “Called the county before that
trooper Harker could nose in.” She shifted uncomfortably in the cushioned chair Quill had insisted on bringing in for her. Although she fiercely denied it, Doreen had a mean case of arthritis.
“I don’t know about that,” Meg said. “These guys
closed the Inn. Harker at least didn’t close us up.”
“We weren’t a scene of the crime at the time,” Quill
pointed out.
Meg got up and crossed the deep blue carpeting to
the archway that led to the reception area and peered
around the corner. “There’s only one room up there
that’s the scene of the crime. So why close up the rest
of the place?” She crossed back, swinging her arms
restlessly.
“We’re not closed, really. Just nobody new in and nobody old out. And the kitchen’s open.”
Meg sat down and stretched her legs in front of
her. “So you think the person who killed Lila killed
him?”
“I think it was poison. You saw it. The poor guy was
blue. And he’d thrown up all over . . . never mind. Why
don’t you give Andy . . . never mind that, either.” Andy
Bishop, whom Meg had jilted the day of their wedding,
was rapidly becoming the best-known pediatrician in upstate New York. He was pretty good at poisons, perhaps because little kids tended to stick things in their mouths
they shouldn’t. “Murderers mostly stick to the same MO,
don’t they? So I’m not sure of anything right now.”
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“I’d just like to know how we’re going to get the
forensics report on this crime,” Meg said in a near
whisper. “All the guys in the Tompkins County Sheriff’s
Department love Myles. Do you think . . .” There was
the rustle of many people coming down the front stairs.
Quill nudged her silent. “Whoa,” Meg said. “Here they
all come.”
The remaining live members of the International Association of Pet Food Providers came into the room one by one.
Meg lit up with excitement. “Now that we’ve got all
the suspects in the same room, maybe we can grill the
guilty party into confessing. Just like Nero Wolfe.”
Olivia Oberlie led the way. Her caftan today was bright
pink. “She’s changed her tote, too,” Meg hissed. Little
Bit, her head hanging over the edge of another brightly
striped tote, regarded them all with weary forbearance.
Olivia saw Quill and turned with the slow deliberation of a cruise ship headed into port. The rest trailed after her like so many tugs. One by one they settled at
the tables around Meg and Quill: Robin and Victoria
Finnegan, Millard and Priscilla Barnstaple, Pamela
Durbin and Pookie the Peke, Rudy Baranga, and Olivia
herself.
“We are much diminished in number,” Olivia said,
settling into the chair opposite Quill.
“I am truly sorry,” Quill said sincerely. “This whole
experience has been just awful for you.”
“So I told the investigation officer. Lieutenant
Provost. Simon, his name is. His headquarters are in
Ithaca.”
“The county seat,” Quill said, “yes.”
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“Did he bug you with a lot of questions?” Meg asked
innocently.
“He was, of course, interested in my Prophecy. He’d
caught the eleven o’clock news last night.” Olivia’s
turquoise eyes darkened a shade. “I believe he thought I
may have had a hand in Max’s death. I soon set him
straight,”
“You did? Well, that was lucky.” Meg drummed her
fingers on the table. “So how did you?”
“How did I what?”
“Set him straight?”
“We were all at a meeting at Pamela’s at the time of
the
murder,” Victoria Finnegan said. She looked at her
husband with dislike. “Except for Robin. He says he
was hiking down Hemlock Gorge.”
“Which can absolutely be verified,” Robin said. He
ran one skinny, long-fingered hand through his hair,
which was dirty blond and lank. “I told you. There was
an informal search party out for a missing camper. I
walked along with them for a while. There’s at least six
Cornell co-eds that will swear I was mucking around in
that bloody stream at nine forty-five this morning.”
“Nine forty-five?” Quill said, startled. “How in the
world can the police be that accurate?”
“He was on his cell phone when he was stuck,” Millard said, “he was always on his cell phone. I gave him article after article about the research they’ve done linking excessive cell phone use and brain tumors, but did he listen to me? No.” He smirked, “Guess he doesn’t
have to worry about brain tumors now.”
“Stuck with what?” Meg asked.
“They don’t know what the poison is as of this mo
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ment,” Priscilla said crisply. “But they know it was an
injection because they discovered the syringe in the
bedclothes. Whatever it was sent him into convulsions.
It must have been quite unpleasant.” She curled her lip.
“And you, Millard, might at least make some effort to
be civilized about this. The man is dead, after all.”
“The man, as my dear wife so mincingly calls him,
was a complete jerk.” Millard tossed his head back. His
ponytail curled like a snake over his left shoulder. “And
any of you that pretends to grieve can shove it where the
sun don’t shine.”
Pamela took a small lace handkerchief from her
sleeve and began to sob gently into it. “Any death is
horrible,” she said somewhat indistinctly. “I don’t believe that y’all are as tough as you’re makin’ out.”
Meg regarded her unsympathetically. “Would you
like some tea?”
“I surely would.”
“I,” Olivia said, “would like a gin. Neat.”
“Wait a minute.” Quill bit her lip. At 9:45 that morning, Maxwell Kittleburger had been harassing poor Harvey Bozzel. Hadn’t he? Quill rubbed her neck. She
was starting to get a headache.
A guy with a potbelly and a bald spot in the middle
of greasy black hair and chomping a big cigar.
That described Kittleburger, all right.
It also described Rudy Baranga. She looked at him.
He sat with his left ankle balanced on his right knee. He
winked at her, waved his cigar, and said, “If the bar’s
open, Nate knows my usual.”
“I’ll go and tell Nate to send in that Cassie to take the
orders,” Doreen grumbled. “Maybe that nosy lieutenant
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will let me go home now. I already answered all of his
questions.”
“As far as I know, he wants us here all night,” Millard
whinnied. “Ha ha. Just kidding! But man, did you all
look rattled for a second.”
Doreen said, “t’uh” in disgust and stamped out of
the room.
Meg said sunnily, “It was a good thing you were all
in that meeting together this morning.”
“Except for Robin,” Priscilla said. Then, in response
to his look of active dislike, “I like to be accurate.”
“What sort of meeting was it?” Meg sat relaxed in
her chair, ankles crossed, arms folded.
Pamela dabbed at her eyes, folded her handkerchief,
and put it away. “I called the meeting,” she said. “I was
hopin’ that the association would kick in more money to
support the dog and puppy show.”
“Hm.” Meg accepted this with bright interest. “And
what did you all decide?”
“It degenerated into a quarrel over the vegetarian
movement, as it always does these days,” Priscilla said
with an expression of distaste.
“I jus’ don’t know how you people can eat anything
with a face,” Pamela said hotly. “And how you expect
our poor dumb friends to do it either is just beyond me.”
“They are not dumb,” Olivia pronounced solemnly.
“I didn’t mean dumb like stupid,” Pamela protested.
“I mean dumb as in they can’t talk.”
“They talk to me.”
“Well, the Lesser Beings, then.”
“Do you all support vegetarian pet food?” Quill
asked.
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Priscilla tilted her head in a considering way. “It’s
much healthier, you realize.”
“Bullshit,” Rudy said.
“I don’t like to hear that language used in my presence, Rudy,” Olivia said.
“Well, get used to it,” he said rudely. He jerked his
chin at Quill. “You getting the drift of this, cookie?”
“No,” Quill said. “I don’t understand why it’s such
an issue.”
“Some pet owners are concerned about contamination of the food chain,” Victoria said. “Or at least, Pamela here’s been trying to convince them of the
dangers.”
Pamela fluttered her false eyelashes against her
cheek. “In my own small way . . .”
“In her own small way,” Victoria said with a malicious smile, “Pamela’s been writing her congressman, hiring a lobbyist, sending out articles, trying to get the
state of New York to ban meat-based pet food. And of
course with Olivia’s TV show having such influence . . .”
“It is nothing less than cannibalism,” Olivia pronounced.
Meg yawned, blinked, and said sorry.
“You two don’t seem to get what’s at stake here,”
Victoria said contemptuously. “Max had just contacted
an investment banking firm, well, actually, I’d contacted
it for him, to begin the process of going public.”
“I get what’s at stake here,” Meg said. “I just don’t
care very much. Quill? I’ve got stuff to do in the
kitchen.”
Quill’s attention was on Victoria and she barely acknowledged her sister’s exit. She’d received an exhaus
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tive lecture from Marge about the advantages of IPOs.
Initial Public Offerings, that was it. “There’s a lot of
money in an IPO,” she said intelligently. And a lot
of money was the best possible motive for murder.
Victoria gave her a glance of qualified approval.
“Under certain circumstances, yes, there is. But if the
circumstances are that the second-highest populated
state in the union is going to ban meat-based pet food,
and your company is the third-largest provider of meat-
based pet food in those same fifty states, the profit
prospects go way, way down.”
“Way down,” Priscilla said with a pleased air.
Victoria smiled thinly. “And of course, Priscilla was
supporting this, not out of conviction . . .”
“Vegan Vittles is committed to the healthy minds and
the healthy bodies of our dogs and cats,” Millard said
angrily. “You can say what you like about Priscilla . . .�
�
“Thank you, Millard,” she said dryly
“. . . but my company is absolutely founded on vegetarian principles. Our furred and feathered friends can get adequate protein from many sources. It doesn’t have
to be meat.”
“Of course, there is that lawsuit from the Great Dane
owner creeping up on you,” Robin said with a sly grin.
“Bullshit. Capitalist crap,” Millard said heatedly. “If
the damn dog starved to death it wasn’t because of my
food.” He added viciously, “You know what we need to
do here in this U.S. of A.? We need to disbar more of
your kind.”
“May I take your order, please?” Cassie said into the
silence.
“Nate knows what I drink,” Rudy said instantly.
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119
“I’ll have a martini,” Victoria said. “Now, Quill,
you’re missing the most important piece of information
here, because, of course, it’s about money. It’s always
about the money.”
“No, it isn’t,” Quill, said.
“I beg your pardon?” Victoria, startled out of her
self-congratulatory rant, looked at Quill directly for the
first time that day.
“I said it’s not always about the money.”
“Listen to the woman, Vic,” Robin said meanly.
“Might make a human being of you yet.”
“Shut up, Robin,” she said pleasantly. “At any rate,
Priscilla here has been trying to buy Pet Pro for
months, now.”
“Two months,” Priscilla said. “Vegan Vittles needs
Pet Pro’s manufacturing capacity.”
“And anything that keeps the price down is just fine
with her.” Victoria leaned over and scrabbled in her
purse. “Can I smoke in here?”
“I’m afraid not,” Quill said.
“He’s got a cigar.” She nodded at Rudy without looking at him.
“It ain’t lit,” Rudy said.
“Then I’m going outside for a minute. Can I go
through the kitchen?”
“Sorry,” Quill said, who didn’t feel sorry at all. “New
York State says no.”
Victoria walked to the archway with quick, nervous
strides, turned right, and disappeared.
“Was Pet Pro actually for sale?” Quill asked
Priscilla. “Or were you making an unsolicited offer?”
“With Max it was all about the money. He was either
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going to take it public or sell it to me. If somebody
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