Ground to a Halt

by Claudia Bishop

  through the dark until she found a cooler. What kind of

  offal had to be handled with discretion? She eased the

  cooler open, switched on the penlight, peered inside,

  and stuffed her hand in her mouth so she wouldn’t

  scream.

  Rats.

  Thousands of dead rats.

  Thousands of dead, frozen rats.

  Quill ran the penlight over the neatly stacked bodies.

  She switched it off. She waited until her breathing

  slowed to more or less normal.

  A bribed official from New Your City’s Pest Control

  Office.

  Harvey’s logo of a cat with a mouse in its jaws.

  Vegan Vittles. Guaranteed to be free of beef, lamb,

  chicken, pork, and goat.

  But not of rattus rattus.

  Rudy’s markup was pretty good, indeed. Quill bet

  that he was getting paid at both ends: to dispose of the

  New York City rats, and to provide rat meal to the pet

  food people.

  Poor Harvey. Rudy had seen that logo and leaped to

  the totally wrong conclusion.

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  There was a sound of a door hastily pulled open, and

  a shout, “Mr. B!”

  “What?” Rudy demanded.

  “You see that other car out front by the office?”

  “What car?”

  “Somebody’s here?” Millard’s voice rose to a

  squeak. “I’ve got to get out of here, Baranga. My reputation’s at stake. Anybody finds out about this . . .”

  “Cool it, Bumbottle,” Rudy said. “What kind of car

  is it, Miguel?”

  “Honda?” Miguel said.

  “Honda,” Rudy said. “Shit. Silver Honda?”

  “Silver, yes.”

  “Goddamit. That good looking broadie’s too much

  of a snoop for her own good.”

  “Who are you talking about?” Millard stuttered. “Do

  you know who’s here? Is it the USDA?”

  “Get inside the warehouse, you two, and check everything in the place. You’re looking for a tall redhead.

  Good figure. Her eyes are sort of tea-colored.”

  “You’re talking about Sarah Quilliam?” Millard’s

  voice spiraled from anxious to panic. “She’s married to

  that investigator McHale. The one that used to be a cop.

  She’s a famous artist. Priscilla bought one of her paintings for twenty thousand dollars.”

  From where? Quill thought indignantly. How come

  she never saw that kind of money for her paintings? It

  all went to the galleries, that was why.

  “We don’t want her on our tails, Rudy. You’ve got to

  do something.”

  The doors slammed. Cautiously, Quill stuck her head

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  out the door of the cooler room. The hall was empty.

  She raced down the corridor as if all the bats of hell

  were at her heels. If she was wrong about the office being at the end of the hall . . .

  She wasn’t. Who would have thought she’d want to

  kiss a door that had an OFFICE sign on it? There was a

  small waiting area around the corner that faced the outside door. There was a chair in it. Quill sat down, took two deep breaths, leaped up, unlocked the outside door,

  and was sitting with one leg crossed over the other when

  Rudy and Millard dashed in.

  “Well, there you are, Rudy,” she said pleasantly. “I

  thought I heard voices. I was just about to come and

  check. And Mr. Barnstaple, I didn’t expect to find you

  here.”

  “This door was supposed to be locked,” Rudy said

  suspiciously.

  “Was it?” Quill blinked innocently at him. “It was

  open when I got here.”

  Rudy explored a molar with his tongue, sucked his

  teeth, and said, “You want something?”

  She was in a quandary. She now knew Rudy was

  bribing the pest control officer Monday night, and not

  driving over Lila Longstreet. And since his whereabouts

  that evening had to do with the load of sewer rats in his

  coolers, any questions about an alibi for the murder

  were going to inflame Rudy’s suspicions. “You left the

  Inn without paying your bill, Rudy. I’m sure it was an

  oversight. But I’m here to collect.”

  “You drove all the way to Syracuse to collect on a

  bill I already paid?”

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  “I had a few other errands to run here,” Quill said

  carelessly, “but it’s a substantial charge. The bill for the

  Johnny Walker Blue alone is several hundred dollars.”

  “I didn’t know you were a skip artist, Baranga,” Millard snickered.

  Rudy’s flat little eyes never left her face. “Bullshit.

  All that little receptionist of yours had to do was process

  my credit card. You already had the number.”

  “It was rejected,” Quill improvised. “And she’s not

  my little receptionist. She’s a . . .”

  “Bullshit.” Rudy jingled the change in his pockets.

  “You were maybe looking for my checkbook in my

  cooler?”

  “I beg your pardon,” Quill said frostily. “I know

  nothing at all about your so-called cooler.”

  “She knows, doesn’t she?” Millard blurted suddenly.

  “She’s found out about us.”

  “Shut up,” Rudy said. He extended one forefinger

  and touched Quill’s sleeve. She was wearing her usual

  combination of long wool skirt and fisherman’s knit

  sweater, the latter in a warm bronze. “So where’d this

  come from?” He uncurled his fingers. Quill shrieked.

  “That’s a bit of rat tail, isn’t it, Rudy?” Millard said

  anxiously.

  “I really ought to be going.” Quill half rose from her

  chair. Rudy pushed her back down. “I have no idea

  where that came from.” Quill half rose again. Rudy’s

  response was firm and immediate, “Siddown or I’ll

  make sure you don’t get up again.”

  Quill sat down.

  “She’s going to rat us out, Rudy,” Millard tittered.

  Rudy whirled. “One more word out of you, sport,

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  and you’ll wish you’d never been born.” He rubbed his

  chin thoughtfully, and then sighed. “It’s a darn shame,

  that’s what it is.”

  “Look,” Quill said steadily, “I know this is a cliché,

  but everyone knows where I am.”

  “Is that so?”

  Quill nodded vigorously.

  “I’ll tell ya something, sweetcakes, you got no body,

  you got no case. We’re going to have to feed you to the

  kitties. Sorry.”

  The thing was, Quill thought, he really did look

  sorry, an emotion that fled as quickly as it had come

  when all three heard the shouts outside.

  CHAPTER 11

  “I’m sorry, Quill,” Howie Murchison said patiently. “Intent to inflict bodily harm does not carry the same penalty as actually inflicting bodily harm. Neither does

  menacing.”

  “Well, that’s what he did to my sister,” Meg said indignantly. “He menaced her with grinding her up into kitty chow!”

  “I don’t think he’d actually have done it,” Quill said

  uncomfortably. She move
d the cloisonné bowl on her

  desk from one side to the other and back again. “On the

  other hand . . .”

  “On the other hand, if Jerry and I hadn’t pulled into

  that parking lot when we did, you very well could have

  been divided into forty-four cans of Mousee Morsels.

  Just like that time in Palm Beach.” Meg bounced off the

  couch and glared horribly at Howie, who was slouched

  in the guest chair, “I asked you to come over here so

  those jerks would get arrested!”

  Howie, the least litigious lawyer of Quill’s acquaintance, was also the village justice. He looked at Meg

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  over his clear-rimmed spectacles and said mildly, “They

  have been arrested. Or rather, they will be. There’s an

  APB out for both of them. They won’t get far, Meg. Our

  law enforcement has gotten pretty efficient about fugitives these past few years.”

  “Yeah, but is there a huge priority on capturing

  crooks who’ve mislabeled cat chow?” she scoffed. “I

  don’t think so.”

  Howie coughed. He got to his feet. He pulled on his

  ancient sports coat and smiled at Quill. “I’m glad nothing worse happened today. When the time comes to take your statement, give me a call if you feel the need.”

  “Thanks, Howie. And thanks for dropping by. Meg

  didn’t need to wig out, but she did.”

  “Any time.” He nodded amiably at them both.

  “You’ll both be glad to know that Harvey’s back.”

  Quill’s eyebrows rose. “Already?”

  “He was staying at that little Motel 6 over on Route

  353. Soon as the word went out over the police scanner,

  he drove back into town and took down the FOR SALE

  sign on his house. He’ll be open for business as usual

  tomorrow morning.”

  “Well, that’s one good thing to come out of this anyway,” Meg grumbled. She resettled herself on the couch.

  Howie paused on his way out the door. “I suppose it’s

  too much to ask of you two—but can you at least try

  stay out of trouble?”

  “We always try,” Meg said. “Bring Miriam in for

  dinner sometime next week, Howie. I’ll create something fabulous.”

  “You always do.”

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  Howie left a small silence in his wake.

  “So,” Meg said. “Do you need another inch of Grey

  Goose vodka?”

  “Nah. I was menaced, not actually bumped off.” She

  looked at her sister with deep affection. “But I’ve never

  been so glad to see anyone in my life.”

  “We were the cavalry, weren’t we?” Meg said with a

  pleased air. “I don’t know why you decided to go to

  Syracuse by yourself, Quill. It doesn’t show a whole lot

  of common sense.”

  “I wasn’t a complete idiot,” Quill said. “At least I left

  the address with Devon.”

  “Devon?”

  “Didn’t Devon call you and tell you where I was? I

  was going to do it myself, on the cell phone, but I figured you’d come dashing after me, and that would,” she hesitated, and then went on a little dryly, “get you in hot

  water with Jerry.”

  “What do you mean get me in hot water with Jerry?”

  Meg said indignantly. “I make my own decisions,

  here.”

  “He didn’t want you to hare off to Syracuse.”

  “So?” Meg said belligerently. “I would have gone

  with you if I’d wanted to.”

  “Right. So if Devon didn’t tell you where I was,

  who did?”

  Meg flushed. “Olivia.”

  “Olivia Oberlie?”

  “The one and the same.”

  “But how?”

  “She started prophesying away in the dining room.

  Cassie Winterborne ran and got me out of the kitchen.

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  And you should have seen her, Quill. It was actually

  quite eerie. She was in this sort of trance . . .”

  “That’s hooey.” Quill drummed her fingers on her

  desk. “The woman is no more psychic than I am.”

  “True,” Meg admitted. “But she scared me enough

  that I grabbed Jerry and came after you. And you should

  be glad I did.”

  “People like Olivia have a very sophisticated way of

  gathering information they aren’t supposed to have.”

  Quill mulled this over for a minute. “Did she know exactly where I was?”

  “She said she saw rats. Thousands of rats. And she

  saw Rudy and he was chasing you down a long concrete

  hallway. She convinced me that you really were in danger, and, of course, I knew immediately that you’d gone to Syracuse.”

  “How did you get the address of the warehouse?”

  “It was on Rudy’s bill.”

  Quill smacked the desktop decisively. “We need to

  find out just how Olivia got this information.”

  “Why? It couldn’t have been all that hard to guess

  where you were. Elmer’s been walking around the village telling people he promised to give you a medal if you accosted Rudy and lambasted him for running Harvey out of town. Half the people in Hemlock Falls could have prophesied that you were in Syracuse.”

  “It’s not that. It’s the rats.”

  Meg’s face changed in sudden enlightenment. “Of

  course! How did Olivia know about the rats? That

  wasn’t something that either Rudy or Millard wanted

  made public, was it?”

  “It’s also a pretty good motive for knocking Lila and

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  Kittleburger off. What if Kittleburger threatened to expose the racket? What if Lila found out about it and was blackmailing Rudy?”

  “I thought you said Kittleburger knew about the

  rats?”

  “That’s what I inferred from what Millard said,”

  Quill said. “I could be wrong. We could find out.”

  “How? The two of them took off and headed for

  timber.”

  “According to Howie, it won’t be long before the two

  of them are in custody. We can find out then.” Quill

  leaned back in her chair. The ceiling in her office, unlike the ceiling in Myles’ house, was a fine example of cast tin squares. She could spend hours looking at the

  intricate detail.

  “This is not the time to contemplate that ceiling,”

  Meg said sternly. “You still haven’t told me everything

  you learned before Rudy nabbed you.”

  “I was so sure that Rudy was behind the killings,”

  Quill sighed. “But his alibi for Monday night seems

  pretty solid. There’s no way he could have driven round-

  trip to New York from Hemlock Falls in anything less

  than six hours. And he said that he met this pest control

  guy at nine. And the time of Lila’s death . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Meg grumbled. “Could he have hired

  somebody?”

  “Maybe. He’d have the connections, if anyone would.”

  Quill felt quite encouraged. A hired hit man was going to

  solve all the niggling problems about time. Except that it

  was notoriously difficult to catch hired hit men, even for

  the police. She and Meg didn’t have a chance. “We’ve

  never actually failed to solve a case before, have we?
”

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  “Not so far.” Meg sighed. “Doesn’t mean it can’t

  happen, though.”

  “I’m not ready to give up yet. There’s too many leads

  to follow. The Barnstaples were the source of the five

  hundred thousand dollars that showed up in Lila’s bank

  account on Monday, by the way. Priscilla wasn’t quite

  honest with us, was she? According to Millard, they’d

  already made the deal to buy Pet Pro. That payment was

  the last of the earnest money.”

  “Why do you suppose Priscilla would lie about

  that?”

  Quill shrugged. “Why do people lie about anything?

  But I think we should find out. Maybe someone didn’t

  want the sale of Pet Pro to go through as planned.

  Maybe that’s why Priscilla lied about it. Do you know

  where she is?”

  “Half the Chamber of Commerce is over at the high

  school getting ready for the puppy show tomorrow. My

  guess is that she’s there.” Meg looked at her narrowly.

  “You sure you don’t need a nap or anything?”

  “We investigators are tough. And if Olivia’s over

  there, too, I’ll have a chance to find out how she knew

  about the rats.”

  “Good luck on prying anything out of her,” Meg said

  glumly. “I think she actually believes that she’s psychic.”

  “Maybe. And maybe we’ve been looking at this case

  all wrong, and we should be after Olivia after all.” Quill

  got to her feet with an effort. In the melee that occurred

  after Meg and Jerry had burst into the warehouse office,

  Quill had thrown her share of punches.

  “And you’re sure you don’t mind that I’ll be over at

  Jerry’s tonight?”

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  Since Jerry’s arrival in her life, Meg had been taking

  Friday nights off to give Jerry a hand at his restaurant in

  Ithaca.

  “I’ll be fine. Just give him an extra hug for me.”

  “He’s pretty bummed that Rudy punched him out.”

  “Rudy’s a professional thug. And Jerry didn’t do so

  badly in that particular scuffle. Rudy’s going to have

  one heck of a black eye tomorrow. Wherever he is.”

  Meg left with a cheery wave. Quill looked at her

  watch, surprised to see that it was only three thirty. It

  felt as if several days had passed since her foray into

  Rudy’s warehouse. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more

  than to curl up under an afghan and sleep for the next