"Naiads," Dina muttered.
"Nekkid gnomes," Doreen said flatly.
"Why don't you both take Mr. Kierkegaard into the
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rose garden for a walk," Quill said. "We'll join you in a moment, Horvath. And then we have a delightful lunch for you. Meg's prepared one of her best summertime meals."
"C'mon, you." Doreen opened the outside door then stood there, arms folded belligerently over her bosom. She was wearing a battered Buffalo Bills hat and a rather shapeless print dress; somehow, she invested these homely items with a guerrillalike air. Meekly, Horvath and Dina followed her into the garden.
Nobody said anything for a moment. Then Dina stuck her head back in the door and whispered, "Quill!"
"Not now, Dina."
"But, Quill!"
"Later, okay? Maybe after lunch. Go bat your eyes at Horvath. He likes it" Reluctantly, Dina disappeared, and Quill turned to the others. "Horvath's being a basic peach about the cash. But we've got to settle the menu issue before he gets back."
Meg began to hum under her breath. It was "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road." Not a good sign.
Meg was almost a head shorter than Quill. Her dark hair was cropped at the neck. In summertime, her skin turned an olive gold (Quill herself freckled in the sun) which made her gray eyes stand out. She took a deep breath and said in a deceptively calm way, "No way is some bozo banker from Helsinki going to tell me what to cook."
"Stop," Quill said. "He can hear you." Not to men-don, she added to herself, the implied insult to their very own banker, who was biting appreciatively into
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Meg's brioche not three feet away. "The rose garden's only twenty feet from here."
"I hope he does hear me!" Meg jumped to her feet. Her chair fell over with a crash. "I hope the son of a—"
"Meg!"
"Pizza! Burgers! Fries! In a gourmet kitchen? I don't care who's cooking for you. Me or Anatole Supinsky or any other chef worth a bucket of warm spit." She leaned across the table and continued with remarkable calm. "I have three words to say about junk food. For. Get. It. And that's final!"
She smiled angelically and banged out of the office through the inner door.
"It could have been worse," John said. He brought his chair to all four legs and rubbed his forehead. Quill wondered how exhausted he was. He'd been writing and rewriting the deal language in his office over his rooms in the converted carriage house. John's coppery skin—a relic of his Onondaga heritage—didn't change much no matter how he felt.
"You mean she's not really mad?" Mark Anthony said. "What's she like when she's mad?"
"She hasn't thrown anything," Quill said a little defensively.
Mark frowned. He buttoned the last button on the vest of his very elegant three-piece suit. "Quill, she may have to compromise on the food issue."
"She won't," Quill said. "But I can't believe Hor-vath's serious, Mark. The Inn at Hemlock Falls is famous for Meg's food. It's part of the value of the purchase price."
Mark Anthony shook his head. He'd let his hair
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grow into an Afro, and the retro look definitely suited him. His smooth dark face was sympathetic. "I know, Quill. I've never in my life seen anyone as hooked on junk food as Mr. Kierkegaard. Corn dogs, McDonald's hamburgers, Taco Bell. The guy's arteries are going to explode before he signs if he keeps it up. On the other hand, I don't need to remind you that he's our chief and only investor. If the guy wants some input into the menus, he should have it."
"Not possible," Quill said. "Meg's one of the greatest chefs in the east, Mark. She's an artist. She's committed to great food. It's in her soul." Her voice rose. She waved her hands in the air. "You can't ask her to serve pizza and corn dogs. Anybody can serve pizza and corn dogs. There's no challenge in piz—"
"Quill." John let his hand rest briefly on hers. "Mark's got a point. The Finns are ready to put half a million dollars into the Inn. They aren't even asking for a majority interest. It's reasonable for them to expect to have a little influence."
"I thought that the motivation was to establish an American base for other business," Quill said. "Half a million dollars is peanuts to these guys. Why, I read somewhere just a few days ago that foreign investors like the Finns have billions to put into American business. They're going to use the Inn's corporate status to diversify into areas where there's real profit, like farming and grapeseed oil and goodness knows what."
"Perfectly true, perfectly legitimate, and very good business," Mark said. "I've got an idea. What if we set up a separate kitchen? Turn the Tavern Lounge into a snack bar."
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"Mark! This is a five-star hotel with a three-star chef!" Quill walked up and down in her agitation. "Well, it was, before we sold it to Marge Schmidt and she turned the rose garden into a cow corral. But the rose garden's back to being a rose garden and the Inn's going to get its gourmet rating back."
"I'd love a three-star hamburger myself," Mark said innocently. "I know, I know. The food snobs would have a fit. You'd never get your stars back."
"Exactly." Quill smiled at him. If the banker got it, Horvath had to get it. It was all a matter of time and diplomacy.
Mark put the general ledger and the balance sheet into his briefcase. "Look. You go talk to Meg. I'll go schmooze with Horvath. Besides, I want to see those naiads. We'll meet for lunch in half an hour, you said?"
"I did not tell Dina to order naiads," Quill muttered indignantly. "One naiad, I told her. To replace the one in the fountain Marge took out. And yes, we'll meet at lunch. We'd better make it an hour, Mark. Can you keep Horvath busy until then?"
"Sure."
"Well"—she got up with a sigh—"I'll go talk to Meg now." She looked at John in appeal. "I don't suppose you'd come with me?"
John shook his head. "You two need to talk. It's a couple of weeks past due. Take your time. I'm going to change clothes and take a run. And Horvath's perfectly fine on his own."
Quill made her way out of her office, across the foyer, and into the dining room. The fine old building was looking a little sparse. The pair of antique Oriental
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vases that used to flank the mahogany reception desk had been sold when Quill and Meg bought the Palate Restaurant. The gumwood desk looked lonely without them.
Marge—with an eye to the practical—had replaced the Axminster rug at the front door with a strip of indoor-outdoor carpeting. The Axminster was still in storage. And the leather couch in front of the cobblestone fireplace had suffered mightily from the two-day visit of a Cub Scout troop. Quill poked tentatively at a long scar in the leather.
She went through the archway into the dining room, then stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows facing Hemlock Gorge. At least the view was immune to changing owners and managers with wildly different decorating tastes.
It had been an unusually wet summer; although it was August, the waterfall was in full spate. The Hemlock River rushed over the lip of the Gorge. The sun made diamonds of the water drops, and a pale rainbow glimmered through the spray. Poplar, maples, and locust trees in full leaf spilled down the rocky slopes. In a few weeks this almost tropical richness would edge into autumn's melancholy sweetness.
Quill's fingers contracted slightly, as if she were already holding a paintbrush. She'd never tackled a landscape before. Her art had always focused on the depths of things: the irony of roses; the humid/icy heart of iris; an occasional foray into portraiture, if there was enough dissonance in the subject. Perhaps she could try to paint the Gorge in early autumn, a looking-forward-backward kind of thing.
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She spread her hands and looked at them. Her fingers were long and capable. In fact, she was feeling capable all over. The Inn was theirs again. They were back where they belonged, she and Meg.
She'd walk r
ight into their kitchen. Meg would be happily banging around her familiar pots and pans. She'd consider the addition of a snack bar without throwing too much food or denting more than one or two of the new copper pans they'd purchased
Quill felt right about the world. Even the suspiciously cheerful Horvath Kierkegaard would recognize her competency and sign on the dotted line, seeing the wisdom of sticking to the Inn's haute cuisine in the main kitchen.
The rose garden spread before her, spilling down the lawn to the lip of the Gorge. Quill eyed the rosebushes, which were still a bit shell-shocked from Dina and Do-reen's transplanting. She glanced at the stone pond (still minus the naiad). Mark Jefferson was nowhere in sight. Dina and Doreen flanked Horvath Kierkegaard. Doreen loomed over him, jaw outthrust. Horvath spread his arms wide with a self-deprecating shrug, then patted Dina's posterior with a maddeningly condescending air. Quill winced. Dina's cheerleader good looks were deceptive. She was a Ph.D. candidate in freshwater pond ecology, and earned her pocket money as the Inn's receptionist. She didn't like getting groped.
Dina rolled up her sleeves. She swung. She connected. Horvath toppled into the pond. His little feet kicked feebly in the sunshine.
Quill tugged thoughtfully at her hair. She should probably go out there and explain to Dina that Euro-
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peans were woefully undereducated about certain forms of civility. She should tell Horvath that access to such American treats as corn dogs, cotton candy, and caramel popcorn required a certain amount of pol-itesse not generally understood on the other side of the pond.
On the other hand, Meg probably had finished making the cold cantaloupe soup and would want an opinion on the quality of the sherry that she used.
Quill entered the kitchen in a thoughtful frame of mind. Meg flourished a wooden spoon at her. "Did you knock some sense into Horvath the Horrible?"
"Dina seems to have. He patted her posterior in a highly familiar way."
Meg smiled for the first time in a week. "What'd she do?"
"Socked him in the jaw. He fell into the pond. I came in to tell you lunch will probably be delayed."
Meg's smile broadened, which nettled Quill for reasons she couldn't quite explain. "It's not funny if it wrecks the deal."
"It won't wreck the deal. The guy's committed."
This was patently untrue. Quill's irritation with her sister surfaced. In the past week Meg hadn't mentioned once how hard Quill was working to accomplish the buyout, and she was beginning to resent it. "How do you know that, Karnak?"
"He bought an RV from Peterson's. On time payments."
"He did? Well, you're right. Silly me. The purchase of an RV is highly significant. Of course he's hooked." Quill sat at the worktable, immediately sorry for her
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bad temper. She rubbed at a spot on the stainless steel. The birch table they'd used for years had been destroyed in a terrible accident just before Marge had taken over the Inn. Its replacement was aggressively utilitarian. "Maybe we should look for a nice butcher-block counter."
"Pretty expensive," Meg commented.
"If the deal goes through, we can afford it. And I wouldn't be at all sure that this deal is solid, Meg. This guy could walk out anytime if he gets annoyed. So let's talk quietly about his lust for hamburgers."
"No." Meg picked up a whisk and began to whip an orange-colored mixture into froth. "No, I am not putting pizza and tacos on the menu."
"What about the swimming pool?"
Meg stuck out her lower lip. "I hate it when you do that. Okay. What does a swimming pool, which we don't have, have to do with hot dogs and bottled chili sauce?"
"We can have a swimming pool. A nice big one, just off the terrace. And if we have a swimming pool, we need a snack bar."
"Snack bar." Meg whacked the whisk against the copper bowl. Cantaloupe soup sprayed in the air. It didn't have half the attraction of the jewellike spray of the waterfall. Quill grabbed a terrycloth towel and dabbed at the spots of pale orange on her shirt. "Okay, Meg. Not a snack bar. A pool bar. Does that sound better? Even the Breakers has a pool bar. And they serve hot dogs and hamburgers and gourmet pizzal And it's almost the best hotel in the world!"
Meg jumped a little. She poured the soup into a glass
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bowl nestled in ice, then sorted through a pile of mint
leaves and selected a few sprigs. "A pool, huh?"
Horvath hadn't said a word about a swimming pool. And he wasn't going to be in a frame of mind to talk about swimming now. But the right time would show up—probably just after he'd taken his brand-new RV for a drive in the wine country surrounding the village; Hemlock Falls was hard to resist in summer.
Quill's confidence rose. Her annoyance with Meg diminished. "You know, Meggie, as long as we stick together, we can get anything done here. A pool would be perfect. How many times have guests asked about a pool? Ten? Twenty? Hundreds? Those TV cartoonists who're checking in this afternoon? First thing they asked about was a pool."
"They're from L.A. People from L.A. exercise all the time, when they aren't getting face-lifts. Normal people don't necessarily need a pool." Meg opened the door to the huge Sub-Zero and pulled out a bowl of fresh strawberries. They'd come from the Inn's own beds out back. She picked over the fruit with a frown, shrugged, then moved to the sink and rinsed them under the tap. She selected about a dozen of the fruits and placed them in the colander, ready to use.
Quill felt the first stirrings of genuine alarm. Doreen had picked the strawberries, a late-blooming variety that they'd experimented with a few years before. Meg flatly refused to use them for anything but jelly. "Meg?"
"What?"
"How are you using the strawberries?"
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"Whipped cream. Cointreau. The usual variation on a Romanoff."
"You don't do Romanoff in August. You only do Romanoff in June for a week or two, when the berries are perfect."
"It's no big deal."
Quill could practically hear the sirens go off. "So," she said casually, "what's really up?"
Meg gave her a sidelong glance. She closed the door to the Sub-Zero, then drew a stool to the opposite side of the workbench and sat down facing Quill.
"I've set a date with Andrew. We're getting married next week."
CHAPTER 2
Quill blinked at her. "And you didn't tell me?"
Meg shook her head. She bit her lower lip, hard.
The Sub-Zero hummed. The clock on the wall over the sink clicked rhythmically. The back door slammed. The lunchtime kitchen help was here. Quill put her hand on Meg's arm. "Let's go outside for a bit."
When they'd bought the Inn the first time around— almost nine years ago now—Meg had demanded a garden. It was out back, a half acre, with raised beds and gravel paths. The strawberry beds surrounded the vegetables and herbs. The tomatoes were ripe and the eggplant bloomed purple. The air was a marinade of scents. Quill stopped at the small plot of nasturtiums and automatically bent down to pull up the latest crop of weeds.
Meg shifted from one foot to the other. She was
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wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of a duckling on it. The duckling had a delighted smile plastered over its face and a bubble over its head that read: i'm bad!
She said, sulkily, "I didn't talk about the wedding too much because you were so busy with the deal."
'Too much?" Quill heard the defensiveness in her voice. She kept her own response mild. For the moment. "You haven't talked about it at all."
"Who had time?"
"We've always made time to talk to each other."
"Look, Quill. We sold the Inn to Marge Schmidt because of the debt. We ran the Palate Restaurant for what—three months? I started cooking in New York midweek. I've done a couple of stints on Lally Preston's TV show. I'm on my way to becoming rich and famous. Well, not rich
and famous. Wealthy and notorious. Okay, maybe just better off and better known. Anyhow ... anyhow ..." Her voice trailed off uncertainly. Sunshine caught the diamond on her left hand. "You and I talked about what would happen when I got married, we talked about it a lot."
"When you were six years old and I was twelve!"
"Oh, be reasonable, Quill."
"You're kidding me, right?" Quill clutched her hair. "This is your wedding, Meg. Your actual 'till death do us part' wedding. And you didn't say a word to me!"
"Of course I want you to be matron of honor."
"Maid of honor," Quill corrected her. "I'm not married."
"You've been divorced."
"But I'm not married now."
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"You're supposed to be a virgin to be maid of honor. I don't think so, Quill. Now, maybe you didn't sleep with Daniel when you were married to him, which wouldn't surprise me one bit, if you want the truth."
Quill straightened up indignantly. "What!"
"He was such a jerk." Meg waved her arms. Her face was red. There were tears in her eyes. "I told you not to marry him, but no, you went ahead and did it anyway. So yeah, I'd buy the maid-of-honor bit if it weren't for Myles."
The sensitive subject of Myles McHale, Hemlock Falls's sexiest (and only) sheriff, was the absolute last straw. Quill flung the handful of weeds she'd pulled at the duckling on Meg's T-shirt.
"Hey! What the heck are you two doin'!" Doreen stepped between them. She brushed the dirt off Meg's shirt and scowled heavily at Quill.
"Did you know about this wedding, Doreen?" Quill demanded.
"You finally told her, then?" Doreen nodded approvingly. " 'Bout time. If we gotta find a new chef..."
Quill felt precisely as if someone had hit her in the stomach. "Find a new what?"
Doreen's stern eye found Meg's. "You didn't tell her everything?"
"I was going to," Meg muttered. "But she doesn't want to hear it."
Quill fought an urge to sit down and put her head between her knees. When she spoke, her voice was unnaturally calm. "So, I want to hear it now."
"I was going to, until you started throwing dirt at
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