A Touch of the Grape

by Claudia Bishop

  "Can he wait tables?"

  "I'm serious, Meg. What do I do with this darn dog?"

  "Beats me. He's your dog, you figure it out. All I know is that I don't want him in my kitchen, I don't want him in my rooms, and I'm pretty sure he'll bite the guests. So as long as he isn't on the grounds or in the building, or near me at any time, I don't mind him at all."

  "The garden shed?" Quill said to the dog. "No, you'd hate being locked up all day. What if you just go OUT, Max. And come back when you're hungry again. Got that? Go OUT. Keep away from people, other dogs, and Selena Summerhill, the dogcatcher." Max cocked his head, got up, turned and nosed his way through the dining room doors. They heard the click of his feet on the hardwood floor, and then nothing.

  "Where's he going? Don't tell me, I can guess. He's going to sit in Doreen's mop closet and delight her with a savage attack when she gets her bucket."

  "He's a very smart dog, Meg. I'll show you where he gets in and out later. Which reminds me, Meg. I have a clue."

  "Yeah?"

  Quill told her about the hole in the wall, and added, "Ellen didn't want anyone to know she'd been out. Do you find that strange?"

  "That's supposition, Quill. Who's to say that Max didn't push himself in? What proof do you have that it was Ellen?"

  "The bottle cap."

  "Phut! She could have dropped that anytime. You'd better tell Mike to fix it, or we'll get wood rot or something."

  "Don't you think I ought to let Davy Kiddermeister know?"

  "Know what!? That you've got a burrowing dog? Your detectival instincts are getting the better of you."

  "There's a mystery here, Meg. I'm sure of it."

  "The only mystery is how we're going to survive the next couple of weeks," Meg said irritably. "This was a terrible accident, Quill. Let's not borrow trouble."

  "I'm not so sure."

  Meg muttered something rude and busied herself with her pots.

  Quill went up to her room to shower and change. It was without surprise that she discovered tomato juice didn't lather. It also made her feel sticky. By the time she was (relatively) tomato juice-free, it was after seven and the dining room would be open and the Crafty Ladies (who rose early) banging their forks and knives on the table like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat.

  The Crafty Ladies were seated and waiting for service, but they were in no mood to be assertive. "We called Ellen's family this morning," Robin said in a subdued voice. "It was horrible. Horrible."

  "I'm very sorry." Quill hesitated. "It's a cliché, of course, but if there's anything I can do, I wish you'd let me know."

  "Seems to me you did quite a lot already." Mary Lennox, in a yellow twinset this morning, gave her a short, approving nod. "Not everyone would have dragged Ellen from that room."

  "I didn't stop to think," Quill said truthfully. "If I had, I probably wouldn't have done it."

  "We talked to that young sheriff," Fran Grimsby said. "About releasing the body."

  "Davy Kiddermeister. He's the brother of our waitress here, Kathleen."

  "If you ask me, I don't know if that young man knows whether he's coming or going," Fran said tartly. She was wearing the same hand-painted muumuu she'd had on the day before. The yoke had a bright orange sun which warred with pink surfers under a bright blue sky. The skirt was splashed with red hibiscus. "Do you know he actually warned us not to leave town before the inquest?" She snorted. "Can you believe it?! What do you think the chances of that boy finding out what caused that fire are, anyway? Sounds to me like he's learned all his investigative techniques from the television. That's all young people today know about anything. From television."

  "Do any of you know …" Quill began, then stopped. "That is. Is there any reason Ellen would have wanted to meet someone here at the Inn secretly?"

  The Crafty Ladies looked at her, clearly at sea.

  "I beg your pardon?" said Mary faintly. "Secretly? What in the world are you talking about?"

  "There's this dog," Quill began again.

  "I told you," Fran said to the others. "Small towns. Small towns. This is terrible. Terrible. Poor Ellen's horribly dead and look. People are talking already. And it's not even true!"

  Tears filled Mary's eyes. She blinked them back. "I can assure you that we never met anyone before in this horrible place. Any of us!"

  Quill began to feel like a rat. "I'm sorry. Truly. It's just that when something like this happens, your imagination begins to run riot."

  "Small towns," Fran said darkly. "It goes to show."

  "Maybe we need a lawyer." Mary nervously fingered the pearls at her neck. They were genuine, at least eight millimeter. Quill was glad to see her surmise about the profitability of the craft business had been correct. "Don't you think we need a lawyer?"

  "A lawyer?" Quill said, startled. "Whatever for?"

  "Shipping the body," Mary said simply. "All that sort of thing." The tears brimming in her eyes spilled over. Quill felt awful. "A man is so useful at times, don't you think? I mean, it's not very nice to say so these days, but there's a time when a girl just needs some protection. At our age, I guess you just have to buy it."

  "I see," Quill said, who did, in a way. "There's a very good one in town. Howie Murchison. Would you like me to give him a call for you?"

  The four women exchanged glances. "We'll see how it goes," Fran said. She seemed to have been elected spokesperson since Ellen's death. "We haven't had too much experience with lawyers."

  "I want to go home," Freddie Patch said. "This has been too awful to even think about. I want to see my grandchildren. There's nothing that'll cheer a person up more than grandchildren."

  Robin Robinson, who'd replaced her sequined sweatshirt for a more seemly hand-crocheted sweater, patted Freddie's hand comfortingly. "We can't leave yet, anyway." She turned to Quill, her eyes gray and watery behind her spectacles. "Our president's been delayed again. We got a fax this morning. It'd be foolish to leave until we get our little business plans settled."

  "What about Ellen's funeral?" Freddie wailed. "We can't miss Ellen's funeral."

  "The sheriff won't release her—ah—the remains for a few more days yet. Not until the investigation's complete." Fran sat back in her chair with a "that's that" sigh, and picked up the menu. "Now. Who's for breakfast?"

  Freddie, who couldn't have been more than four feet eleven standing, and seemed even smaller in the dining room chair, beckoned Quill to come closer. She bent down, and Freddie whispered, "We did want you to know that we don't believe for a moment you or your sister set that fire."

  "Of course we didn't!" Quill said.

  "And that insurance money? There wouldn't have been enough to cover your losses at the Inn—so that's not a motive."

  Quill straightened up and looked at her, astonished. "Who told you that?"

  "That nice Marge Schmidt," Robin said. "We ran into her after that informal meeting the Chamber had here yesterday. She came into the Tavern Bar where we were all having our little—you know—drinkies before dinner, and she was asking us all kinds of questions."

  "Questions like what?" Quill asked grimly.

  "You know, were the rooms comfortable? Did we like the highfalutin food, or did we prefer plain old American cooking? That kind of thing."

  "We told her we liked the food," Mary volunteered. "That World's Biggest Cream Puff was just delicious. Except there was some liquor in it."

  "Brandy," Quill said.

  "Right. Brandy! In a dessert! Anywise, I liked it a lot." This was said with a small air of defiance, as though there were those at the table who clearly had not "Not every day, of course. I mean, gourmet (she pronounced it goremate) is so rich, don't you think?"

  "I like a nice Jell-0 ring for dessert myself," Fran said. "I've got a recipe with Cool Whip, cottage cheese, and pistachios if you'd like to pass it along to the cook."

  "What else did Mrs. Schmidt want to know?"

  Mary thought for a moment. "How comfy the beds were. Whether
we missed not having a TV in the rooms. Whether maybe it'd be better to have, like, video games and an arcade out on the flagstone terrace for the kiddies. I told her it would be nice to bring my grandchildren to someplace like this, but I didn't much like arcade games. You get too many young people that way. You know, the kinds with tattoos and rings on their bodies."

  "My grandson Jeffrey has a ring in his ear and it's perfectly acceptable!" Fran said with a huffy glare.

  Mary twinkled. "Of course, dear. But Quill knows what I mean. Some of those nice brightly colored plastic swing sets for the kiddies. That'd be the thing. Out by the gazebo."

  "We'll think about it," Quill said, forcing a big smile. "Have you decided what to have for breakfast?"

  "Marge Schmidt was talking about her Breakfast Bake. Do you have a Breakfast Bake?" Freddie asked. "Ever since she gave me the recipe, I've been dying to try it."

  "I'm not sure. Maybe Meg would like to try to make it. What's in it?"

  "Condensed milk. Three cups shredded wheat. Eggs. That Kraft cheese, you know …"

  "Velveteen?" Quill said.

  "Velveeta. And you mix it all up and bake it for thirty minutes in a 350 oven."

  "It sounds …" Gruesome. Repellant. Disgusting. Quill pinched her knee hard and said smoothly, "… as though it would take too long to bake today. But we'll see. In the interim, is there anything on the menu you would like?"

  "The Omelet Suzette," Fran said. "With none of the sauce on it, please. Just plain. And a side of bacon. And toast. And some hash browns."

  "That sounds good, Fran." Mary smiled at Quill. "I'll have that, too."

  "I'll have the omelet, except I don't want the eggs beaten up and I want them over easy. And the rest of the sides Fran ordered," Freddie said. "Do you have wheat toast?"

  Robin, on discovering that the Crepes a la Quilliam were flamed in cognac, shuddered, and asked for plain crepes, with syrup: Mrs. Butterworth's, if that was okay.

  "I don't even know how to price this stuff," Meg complained when Quill handed the breakfast orders over.

  "Call up Marge," Quill said. "I told you, didn't I? Can you believe it? She went to the Tavern yesterday after all that support she offered us and tried to snatch our customers right under our noses! They were happy enough with our menu yesterday. They were perfectly willing to try new stuff. Now look at this: It's diner food. We can't charge gourmet prices for diner food!"

  "Well, charge diner food prices."

  "Great, then we'll be broker than we already are. Where are you going?"

  Meg took off her apron, removed her chef's toque, and beckoned to Bjarne, the Finnish sows-chef. "Two on a shingle, a stack of cakes, a side of the hog, and three hashed." She raised her eyebrows at Quill and said loftily, "I don't mind having this cooked in my kitchen. I don't mind my sous-chef cooking this in my kitchen. The one thing I am not going to do is cook it myself!"

  "This is delicious!" Freddie Patch said. "I've never had hash browns like this before. There's just a little bit of—urn—what is there just a little bit of?"

  "Garlic, parsley, a pinch of onion, paprika," Quill said. "The secret's in the potato. You need a firm white potato, shredded fine and chilled in ice water. Not a baking potato, not a red, and for goodness' sake, not a Yukon Gold."

  The Crafty Ladies blinked at her. Now, Quill thought, that they are relatively settled and eating good food, is the time to do a little investigation. There had to be a really good reason why Ellen Dunbarton was crawling into the Inn two nights ago. And despite what Meg said, she knew Ellen had been crawling into the Inn two nights ago. "Would you mind if I sat with you a little bit? As you can see, we don't have anyone else in the dining room at the moment."

  "Make yourself at home," Mary said. She frowned to conceal her pleasure. "We've been wanting to have a little talk with you ever since we arrived."

  "You have just a beautiful place," Freddie said.

  Robin nodded vigorous agreement. "Ideal. Just ideal. The flowers. The waterfall. The decorations! You know that Mrs. Stoker?"

  "Doreen, yes. Our head housekeeper."

  "She said you're more famous than we thought. As a painter."

  "I suppose so," Quill said cautiously.

  "So you're the perfect person to talk to," Freddie said. "Just perfect. As an artist yourself, you'd be the first to sympathize."

  "It's our crafts," Robin said. "That Mrs. Schmidt.

  "Um," said Quill darkly.

  "She said that there's going to be big changes around here. Really big."

  "What did she mean, big?" Quill asked, alarmed.

  Robin blinked at her. "Why, the winegrowers' association. And the plans for a huge summerlong festival."

  "Oh, yes. That."

  Robin beamed. "It sounds wonderful, doesn't it?"

  "It sounds like an opportunity," Fran broke in bluntly, "and we thought we'd see about getting a piece of the action ourselves."

  "Fran," Freddie said gently, "don't be quite so aggressive, dear. It's hardly feminine."

  "It's hard to be feminine these days and make a buck," Fran said. "It's hard to be feminine anytime and make a buck."

  There was a soft murmur of agreement from the other ladies.

  "Anyways, Marge told us about this Esther West and how she's thinking about importing some nice things for tourists."

  "What? Oh. Yes. Esther runs a retail store in Hemlock Falls. West's Best Dress it's called. She's the logical choice to order tourist items; she's had a lot of experience with clothing and I shouldn't think it'd be too much of a stretch to order wine goblets and whatever."

  "We're the logical choice to do it," Fran said with belligerent firmness. "Talk about experience. Ellen here worked at Tracey's in Housewares for thirty years. I saw all kinds of stuff as a customs agent in New York City. I remember where to get it, too. Those cute little telephone dolls, for instance, come right from Korea, eight cents a piece, F.O.B."

  "Freight on Board," Mary explained kindly.

  "All kinds of stuff." Fran took a breath. "Robin was in the law."

  "Really?" Quill asked.

  "Just a paralegal, but I learned a lot about contracts," Robin said modestly. "It was a real estate lawyer's office, actually."

  "And there you are. She can look at the contracts and read them if anyone tries to cheat us. We've got talent coming out of our ears, haven't we, girls?"

  Modest giggles greeted this sally.

  "What was Ellen Dunbarton's husband like? What did he do?"

  "Ellen? She was married to a travel agent. Darn good one, too. He got us some great deals on trips, let me tell you. We've seen some terrific places." Mary was animated in her excitement. "Hong Kong, Mexico."

  "That's enough, Mary. Quill here doesn't want to hear all about our trips. Next thing, you'll be hauling out those danged slides and we'll all need a nap before lunch." Chuckles, this time, from the group. Fran turned earnestly and said, "Quill, if you've got some time today, we'd like to show you what we can do. And you'll want to see the whole magilla, all the products we got. What we can't get, we can make."

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa." Quill held up her hands. "I'm sure that all this is true. But I'm not the person to talk to. Hugh and Selena Summerhill are the chief organizers behind the wine festival, and Selena mentioned yesterday that the State is sending an advisor in to talk with us about the restrictions that come with this grant money."

  "Money," said Fran. "That's it. Show me the money."

  A louder burst of laughter greeted this daring foray into current movie slang.

  "Did you talk with Ellen about this—um—before she … well …"

  "Passed on?" Freddie suggested. "How could we? We didn't know about it ourselves until yesterday afternoon."

  "Oh. That's right, isn't it?" Quill bit her lip. Now what? "I meant to ask, before, when you mentioned you talked to her family this morning. Are they coming to get her? Her husband or someone else?"

  "Richard's in the hospital," Mary said. "Bad ar
teries, they say. Hasn't been good for a long time."

  "No, he hasn't been good," Freddie agreed sadly.

  "Her daughter, maybe. But she's a no-good."

  "Mary!" said Robin. "It's not right to speak ill of the dead."

  "That daughter's not dead. She's just a waste of time. Big fancy lawyer in Detroit." Mary sniffed. "Hasn't spoken to her ma in five years," she explained. "Ellen worked herself to the bone all those years to support Richard's travel agency, and Richard being so sick all the while, and what does she get for it? Kid that won't even send her a Mother's Day card."

  Quill, suddenly, felt the fool. The idea that this wholly normal lady with a normal set of problems would be crawling in and out of the Inn in the middle of the night was suddenly ridiculous.

  "It's kids today," Freddie said with regret, jerking Quill back to the moment. "Poor Ellen wasn't the only one to have problems. We've all had them one way or another. Your boy, Fran …"

  "That's enough about Jeffrey," Fran said curtly. "There's nothing wrong with my Jeffrey."

  Drugs, Freddie mouthed silently. Then chirpily, "Let's not talk about that now. Let's talk about the happy things. What do you think. Quill? Would you introduce us to Mr. Summerhill, did you say? Is that the man in charge?"

  "He and his wife Selena, yes. You met her day before yesterday, when we were out by the garden shed trying to catch the dog."

  "That Mexican?" Fran said doubtfully.

  "Fran! Move into the nineties." Freddie rapped Fran's arm with her table knife. "Honestly, you'd think that one of her closest friends wasn't a perfectly nice Mexican, Rosa Marguiles. Would you want Rosa to hear you say 'that Mexican' like that, Fran?"

  "Besides, she's Spanish," Quill said.

  "That's what they all say," Fran said.

  Freddie shook her head. "She doesn't mean those things. Quill." She sighed. "So what do you think. Quill? Will you help us?"

  "I'd love to help you, yes. I mean, not only do I think I owe you something to make up for this terrible fire and Mrs. Dunbarton's … um …"

  "Passage," Freddie said helpfully.

  "Yes, passage. But I think you guys have a great idea and a lot of talent, and of course you can do well. But you don't need me to talk to Selena and Hugh. You can drop by the Summerhill Winery anytime and talk to them yourselves. You wanted a wine tour, too, didn't you? That might be a perfect time to sit down and talk about your proposal."