“Yeah?”
“Nothing like embarrassing a guy in front of his buddies,” Quill said with satisfaction. “And did you hear him? He said, ‘Tell Marge I’ll see her around.’ ”
“Hm.” But Marge looked a little more cheerful.
“So. The motives for murder seem to be flying thick
and fast, Marge. Once we find out who moved that
money out of Lila’s account, we’ll have the murderer!
And I can pretty much tell you who it’s going to be. It
had to be someone who had access, one way or another,
to the financial records of the company.”
“Robin Finnegan,” Marge said flatly. “He was the
lawyer for Pet Pro before he got disbarred. He’s broke
and not happy about it, and he was having an affair with
Lila Longstreet.”
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“We’re thinking absolutely along the same lines. The
problem all along has been the time of Kittleburger’s
death. But Marge, the cell phone on Kittleburger’s body
wasn’t his.”
“Huh?” Marge looked blank.
“Wait a second. The police checked the phone records. There was a call to Pamela at the right time. But Robin could have made that call from anywhere. He
was close to the Inn on that hike. He could have gone
up the fire escape—we don’t keep it locked, you
know—gotten Kittleburger to open the door and then,
whack.”
“And Lila?”
“He could have conned Lila into giving him the
acess numbers to her account, killed her, and moved it
to his offshore account.”
“That I can see. But he didn’t have time to kill her.
You said Nate saw him leave the bar for half an hour,
maximum.”
“Time enough to arrange to meet Lila at Horndean
Gorge, drive down to the Croh Bar here, take Harland’s
dually, and then . . .” Quill leaned back. “He left her
there. There’s nothing to say when the body was moved
after her death. It could have been hours. No one’s
checked alibis for the middle of the night. And Marge,
we threw away that note!”
“Harland’s dually?” Marge said in dismay.
“He leaves his keys in it,” Quill said. “We all do.”
“If Robin’s done all that, then why hasn’t he left
town yet?”
Quill waved both hands in the air. “I don’t know.
Maybe he thinks that it’ll look more suspicious if he
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takes off in the middle of this investigation. The person
that did this has to have nerve, Marge.”
“But there’s still a bunch of stuff here that isn’t
adding up.”
“That’s just because we haven’t sat down and put
events into a logical order,” Quill said confidently. “If
we do, what doesn’t make sense at the moment will fall
into place. It’s pretty clear that something very funny is
going on with the purchase of Pet Pro.”
Marge’s attention had been caught by something
over Quill’s left shoulder. She was staring, totally indifferent to the conversation.
“Marge?” Quill said with some exasperation. “I
said . . .”
“Hush.” Marge swiveled her head like the turret on
a tank. Quill knew that look. Someone was about to
get the full force of Marge’s considerable artillery.
“C’mon.” She slid out of the booth, and crouching,
grabbed Quill’s hand and pulled her out of the booth.
“Down, darn it!” she snapped. Quill obediently dropped
to a crouch, too. The surrounding diners paused briefly
in their consumption of Betty’s pot roast, and then
continued eating.
“Follow me!” Marge crouch-walked down the narrow aisle between the booths. Directly ahead was the bar, crowded with the usual Friday night custom. Quill
saw a lot of feet. Marge jerked her to the left and
through the swinging doors to the kitchen. Quill recognized Betty’s feet, which were shod, as usual, in nurse’s shoes. (Betty’s bunions troubled her, she said, something fierce.)
“Hey, Betty.”
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“Hey, Quill.”
Marge got to her feet with a groan. Quill followed suit.
“Bet,” Marge said. “I’m goin’ out for a while. You
can handle things here okay?”
Betty nodded. “Comin’ back?”
“I’ll be late.” Marge grabbed Quill’s hand and
dragged her toward the back door to the parking lot.
“Where are we going?”
“You saw her following Harland like a cat in heat?”
“You mean Pamela?”
“Ssh!” Marge pushed the exit door open slowly and
peered out. “Coast is clear. C’mon.”
Quill followed her into the lot, which was filled to
overflowing with parked cars. Marge ducked down behind her Pontiac. Quill ducked down beside her.
“Marge, are you thinking of following Pamela to her
house to see if Harland’s there? Because, believe me,
this is not . . .”
Marge clamped one meaty hand over Quill’s mouth.
Pamela came around the corner of the building, the
Peke at her side. Both were trotting, the dog scrambling
to keep up. Pamela tossed the dog into a Dodge Caravan. Quill was facing the passenger door, which trumpeted the name of Pamela’s shop in foot-high pink letters. Pamela hustled around to the driver’s side.
There was something different about her. Quill frowned
in concentration. It was her walk. She’d dropped the
rather languorous Southern belle shuffle.
The van rumbled to life. Pamela backed out of the
lot—rather erratically—and pulled into the street.
Marge shoved Quill toward her own passenger door,
jumped into her car on the driver’s side, and before
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Quill knew it, they were out on Main. Pamela’s taillights
were three blocks away. Her left turn signal was blinking. Marge put her foot on the accelerator and followed.
“Marge,” Quill said firmly. “This is not a good idea.
Believe me, you don’t want to see Pamela and Harland
together.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Marge said between her
teeth. “Miss Molasses-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth is
up to something. And we’re going to find out what it is.”
By the time Quill had exhausted the reasons why
they should be calling Provost to arrest Robin Finnegan
for the murders of Lila Longstreet and Maxwell Kittleburger instead of chasing after Marge’s rival in love, she and Marge were parked at the lip of the junction between Hemlock and Horndean Gorge, staring down into the darkness. Pamela’s taillights had disappeared down
the narrow road that led to the foot of the gorge. Far below, Quill saw the steady glow of lights from a house or a barn.
“She’s up to something,” Marge repeated stubbornly.
Quill had a lot of sympathy for women who had
been dumped. She’d been dumped herself, not all that
long ago, and the memory still stung. So instead of
jumping out of Marge’s Pontiac and marching down to
the Inn—which was only a mile and a half away—she
said in a
reasonable tone,” By ‘up to something’ do you
think she has the brains to pull off two fairly complicated murders?”
“Course she doesn’t,” Marge said abruptly.
“Well, do you think that Robin, who does have the
brains to pull off a theft like that, has Pamela as a partner?”
“Course I don’t.”
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“Well. Gee. Nuts.” Quill tugged at her hair in exasperation. “So why are we parked at the edge of the gorge in the dark instead of getting Robin arrested? I
know, I know. Because she’s up to something.”
Marge opened the driver’s door. “You comin’?”
“Sure. Of course.”
Neither one of them had taken the time to pull on a
coat, and the air was frosty. Shivering, Quill followed
Marge down the rutted gravel. Many of the smaller
country roads in Tompkins County were unpaved. This
helped maintain the delightfully rural feel, but the roads
were a pain to drive on, and Quill was discovering an
even bigger pain to walk on in the dark. Especially in
her good boots. On the other hand, the effort to stay upright was warming her up, so that the autumn chill was welcome.
The lights they had seen from the top of the gorge
proved to be those of a large house trailer. Two house
trailers, Quill realized, as she stood in shoulder-high
brush next to Marge. The first was clearly occupied.
Light shone from the kitchen windows. Quill made out
a figure moving behind the thin plastic blind that covered it. The other trailer was a rusted hulk. Quill could see very little of it. It loomed ominously in the shadows.
Marge sniffed. “You smell that?” she whispered.
Quill nodded.
“That dog poop?”
Quill nodded again. The door to the first trailer
opened. Pamela emerged with a five-gallon pail in each
hand. The Peke danced around her feet. “Back inside!”
Pamela kicked out sideways. The Peke yelped and raced
back up the shaky aluminum steps. A torrent of barks
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and howls from the rusted trailer responded either to
the sound of Pamela’s voice or the injured Peke. Perhaps both.
“My god,” Quill breathed. “It’s a puppy mill. She’s
running a puppy mill!”
“I could use some help out here!” Pamela waddled
awkwardly forward. One pail seemed to contain water,
the other smelled of raw meat. Quill suddenly thought
of the twenty pounds of pork loin missing from the
Inn’s refrigerators. “Goddamit,” Pamela shrieked, “come
and give me hand before I spill all this stuff.”
A second figure came down the steps. The light from
the trailer illuminated silver-blonde hair, and silhouetted a voluptuous figure.
Lila Longstreet.
CHAPTER 13
The Peke charged down the steps, raced across the
scrubby excuse for a yard, and planted itself in front of
the stand of scrub pine where Marge and Quill stood
flattened against a tree. It yapped with monotonous,
high-pitched regularity. Lila Longstreet whirled and
raced into the trailer. Pamela set the pails down and
walked toward the brush.
“Pookie? You find a skunk in there, Pookie?”
Marge raised herself on tiptoe and whispered in
Quill’s ear: “We can take her.”
Quill shook her head, and backed carefully away
from the tree, deeper into the brush. She tugged Marge
along with her.
“Scat, you!” Pamela stamped her foot on the ground.
“It’s just a polecat, or a woodchuck, or something, Lila,”
she called out. She bent down, grabbed the dog by the
scruff of the neck, and hissed, “Just shut up!” The Peke
stopped barking, mostly because Pamela had a choke
hold on its neck. The volume of barks from the trailer
increased.
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A door slammed in the distance. The howling
stopped. The silence was immense.
Quill held her breath and stood absolutely immobile.
Marge was just as quiet and still, although she stared
steadily at the clearing where Pamela stood with the
Peke dangling from one hand.
“You give them all that pork?” she called out. “It’s
too rich for them, Lila. They’re going to vomit it up all
over the pens, and I’ll be damned if I’ll clean it up.”
She hauled the now-silent Peke to the trailer steps,
tossed the dog inside, and returned to the five-gallon
pails. She picked them up and headed for the
makeshift kennel, water sloshing over the top of the
one in her left hand. “Lila? Where the hell you get to,
anyways?”
“Right here,” said a breathy voice in Quill’s ear. Quill
felt the cold muzzle of a gun in the back of her neck.
Instinctively, she ducked away from the gun. Lila’s
long nails dug into her arm. Quill stumbled forward,
tearing away from Lila’s grip. She tripped and went
down, crashing against Marge’s sturdy hip. Marge cried
out. A tremendous roar in her ear sent her rolling desperately into the brush. Deafened, she struggled to her feet. Lila’s eyes were wide, staring straight into hers.
The light from the trailer turned her silver-gilt hair to
orange. She looked demonic, and Quill, the least superstitious of women, flung her hands in front of her face as if to protect herself from a devil. Lila swung the gun
up and trained it at Quill’s chest. Her lips drew back
from her teeth in a snarl. Then she swung the gun down
and trained it on the ground at Quill’s feet. Confused,
dazed by the gunshot, Quill looked down. Marge lay
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there, curled up in a ball, her hands folded into her
stomach.
“Don’t move!” Lila’s voice was a mere thread of
sound in the roar of silence in Quill’s head. Quill knelt.
She put her hands over Marge’s eyes, as if to keep her
from the sight of Lila and the gun. She became aware
that someone was screaming, and hoped it wasn’t she,
herself. Pamela, her mouth open, her eyes glazed and
mindless, ran to Lila and simply stood there. Lila
gripped the gun with her left hand, and slapped Pamela
with her right. The screaming stopped.
“. . . Kill her,” Lila said. She turned the gun sideways
with a rapid, competent flick of her wrist, jammed the
magazine home, and pointed it at Marge’s head. Quill
nodded comprehension. She rose to her knees, slipped
one arm around Marge’s shoulders, and tried to tug her
to a sitting position. Her hands were wet and sticky. She
looked down, and in the dim light from the trailer, she
saw dark splashes across her palms.
Quill was rocked with a sudden, consuming rage.
“Help her!” she shouted. “Help her!” Her voice was
muffled and dim to her own ears.
Lila jerked her head curtly at Pamela. The slap
seemed to have brought her back to her surroundings.
She squatted next to Quill. Together, they tugged Marge
upright. Marg
e groaned. Her eyes opened, shut, and
opened again. The lack of awareness in them struck
Quill to the heart, and the reckless rage swept over her
again. Somehow, they got Marge to her feet. Once upright, Marge seemed less vulnerable, more present, Quill thought, and the dread that Marge was mortally
hurt ebbed a little.
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Lila and the deadly gun in her hand directed them to
the house trailer. But by the time Pamela and Quill got
Marge inside, Quill’s hearing had come back, and her
own adrenaline-fueled rage had crystallized into a cold
anger.
“Put her on the couch,” Lila said.
“She’ll bleed all over it,” Pamela complained.
“Shut up!” Quill said fiercely. One arm supporting
Marge’s back, Quill lowered her onto the couch with as
much care as she could manage. She sat down next to
her, aware that her legs were trembling so hard that she
couldn’t have stood up any longer. She took several
deep breaths.
“What in the Sam Hill?” Marge said huskily. She
cleared her throat and tried again. “What’s going on,
here?”
“You’ve been shot, I think.” Quill kept her voice
calm. “If you’ll just let me see where you’re hurt?”
Marge nodded in a bewildered way. That, too, cut
Quill to the heart. In all the years she’d known her,
Marge had never lost that bluff self-confidence that was
such an appealing—and occasionally aggravating—part
of her personality. She ran light fingers over Marge’s
arms and chest. Her chinos were soggy with blood;
Quill patted her legs lightly and Marge said in surprise,
“There, I guess.” She moved her right leg with difficulty. Quill looked carefully. There was a hole in her chinos, in the middle of her thigh.
“It’s not really bleeding much,” she said. “But we’ve
got to get help.” She looked up at her friend. “Does it
hurt much?”
Pain was replacing shock in Marge’s face. Her
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lower lip was between her teeth. Her face was pale.
“Guess I didn’t feel it all that much at first,” she said
with difficulty.
Quill turned and snapped at Pamela, “Get me a
towel. And a wet cloth.”
Pamela looked at Lila, for permission, and Quill
fought down the impulse to slap her silly. Lila kept the
muzzle of the gun trained steadily on Quill, and said,
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