CHAPTER 12
"So, Max. We've made it home without getting dive-bombed by a cruise missile, broadsided by an army tank, or shot at by duck hunters."
Max whined. He sat in the front, as he liked to do, and had kept his head out the window all the way home. His coat was brushed, he'd obviously been well fed, and he smelled like herbal shampoo. Quill couldn't tell if he was happy to be home or not. She parked behind the Inn and turned off the ignition. "This whole business is creeping me out, Maxie." He whined in sympathy. "It's Bland who's behind this. It has to be. But why? And what does he want?" The dog pawed at her knee. "So we're home. Are you glad to be home?" She opened the driver's-side door. Max pushed past her with a thundering bark. Tail wagging, barks cranked to optimum decibels, he took off across the
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lawn and disappeared over the lip of the Gorge.
"Max!" Quill hobbled after him as fast as she could. All she saw of him was the tip of his dun-gray tail. Two men in hiking gear trudged along the riverside. One of them looked up in alarm at the barking.
"It's all right!" she shouted. "He's harmless!" Max bowled out of the brush and raced circles around the hikers, barking his fool head off. Quill resisted the impulse to shout various four-letter words and muttered them instead. The hikers waved at her. Quill hoped that their fists were merely clenched and not—oh no, a backpack lay near the water. Max grabbed it and shook it. Maps, clipboards, and what looked like instruments of various kinds tumbled onto the ground. The owner danced with rage, then bent and picked up a large stick. Max knew about sticks, but not, fortunately for the hiker, the way he knew about umbrellas. He swung the emptied backpack and let it fly. It fell into the stream, where it bobbed gently just out of reach. One hiker waded into the water. The other stormed up the Gorge toward Quill.
"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man dies but one," Quill muttered. "Oh, dear." She braced herself against the Olds.
The man coming up the Gorge was in his late thirties. He was heavily tanned, with thick dark blond hair, a neatly trimmed mustache and beard, and eyes that were as blue as ... Quill couldn't think of anything to compare them to. But he was drop-dead gorgeous. And madder than ... again, she couldn't think of anything. But he was furious. He leaped over the stone wall that protected the parking lot from the incline below.
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"Hey," he said, his face thunderous. He looked at her foot, then back up at her face and hair. "Gee, he got you, too. Are you okay?" He came closer. He was wearing jeans slung low around his lean hips, a madras shirt, and an orange hard hat. "Who owns that bloody hound? Have you got a dog warden around here?"
"Urn," Quill said cautiously. "Not right around here, anyway." Which was true. Flick was out on Route 15, which wasn't anywhere near around here, or not very. "I'm Sarah Quilliam." She extended her hand. He shook it briefly and well. "Did your friend get his pack back?"
"That's the trouble with words like backpack. Did you get your backpack back when you lost it on the track?"
Quill burst out laughing.
"Yeah, well, I hope so. The Palm Pilot's in there and all our data for today is on it."
"Data?"
"Survey data. We've been in this area all week. Pretty place, upstate New York."
"What are you surveying?"
His face closed down. He shifted slightly away from her. "Well, our clients aren't real happy if we bruit their names about. I'm Simon Cranshaw."
"Simon Cranshaw. Simon Cranshawl From Donovan Engineering?"
"Yeah. Look, I think somebody ought to do something about the dog. Do you know the people who run this place?"
Quill stared at him. This was Sherd's boyfriend. It had to be. No wonder she'd been making out with him
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in the gym. Quill wouldn't have wanted to wait to go upstairs either.
"Hey! Do you know who owns this dog?"
He would have recognized her. So he wasn't the one who had rear-ended her. But he'd rented five vehicles from Frankie. It must have been one of his men. Quill was gleeful at her good luck. "Yes. Yes, I know who owns the dog."
His glance rested sympathetically on the Oldsmo-bile. "You work here, huh? Waitress?" He didn't wait for her reply. "I've heard it's owned by a pair of crazy sisters. And of course, they had that poor slob kick off in the gorge this week, so maybe I'll just ask you to take a message to them. They've got more problems than I have."
"Did you see anything the day the man in the gorge died?" Quill asked eagerly.
His gaze flicked over her. Obviously he thought she was the kind of person who would watch shows called The World's Most Bloody Car Crashes for the sheer bloodiness of it. "We were on the south side of the village that day. But we saw the damn dog, of course. Look, just tell your boss, or bosses, to keep the dog tied up. All right? If they can't keep him under control, I'm going to have to call animal control."
Quill had a short debate with herself, and won. There was a code among women. You didn't flirt with other women's lovers. On the other hand, it had surely been Simon in the gym. Quill hadn't really seen his face. And she badly wanted more information about why an engineering company was tramping around Hemlock Falls. "Would you and your friend like to
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come in for something cold to drink? The bartender's a friend of mine. It's got to be awfully hot out here. And it's headed toward quitting time, isn't it?"
"Hey, sure! Your bosses won't mind?"
"Miss Margaret's not back from New York yet. She's the one you have to watch out for."
"What are they, geezer refugees from the nineteenth century? She makes you call her Miss Margaret?"
"She's got a temper, Miss Meg," Quill said humbly. "I'll meet you in the bar. Just follow the building around until you get to the flagstone terrace. Tell Nate that Quill said to take care of you. And your friend's name?"
"Norm."
"Great. I'll come in to see you and Norm my next break."
She slipped in the kitchen, said "hey" to Bjarne, who asked her gloomily if that was Max he'd heard barking his fool head off, and went upstairs to her room. Andy had given her a plastic bootie thing that protected the walking cast, and she took a fast, hot, and very welcome shower. She sprayed on some Tea Rose, pulled on a gauzy summer dress (it was hot! she told herself), and combed out her hair. When she limped into the Tavern Bar, she was feeling a lot better. And she was very curious about the surveying.
Something was up. Something was definitely up.
Simon sat at the bar with his back to Quill, his friend at his side. The backpack was on the floor, dripping water. Quill slid onto the stool next to Simon. "Hi, guys!"
Simon's jaw dropped.
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"Glad to see you retrieved the Palm Pilot," Quill said in the tone of one who knows. She leaned across Simon in a cloud of rose-scented perfume. "Norm? Did you save the north-end data?"
Norm, a sturdy Chinese with black horn-rim glasses, looked at Simon with confusion. "I thought we weren't going to tell anyone about the resort."
Quill froze. Resort?
"And so you got Max out of dog jail twice," Meg said later that evening. They all sat at the kitchen prep table eating dinner, just as Quill had envisioned on her way to the Tompkins County courthouse: Doreen, John, Meg, and herself. Max lay on the slate floor near her stool, nose buried in her cast foot. He'd been brought home by an unusually cranky Davey Kiddermeister, and was in disgrace.
Meg craned her neck to look at him. "So Norm the hiker got his backpack back..." She blinked. "What did I just say? Anyhow, clever old you discovered somebody may be surveying unknown portions of Hemlock Falls for a resort of some type, you don't know which or what."
Quill suspected her sister of sarcasm. "I thought I had a pretty great day! Max is free. And we've got a great clue."
"What is this great clue? That somebody may�
�"
"Oh, shut up, Meg. Don't you see? What is it that you always say, John? Follow the money."
"It's 'show me the money,' " Doreen said. "From that movie."
Quill refused to be distracted. "Didn't you wonder
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why all this high-powered lawyer was bothering with a dinky little civil suit against the Inn?"
"No!" Meg said crossly. "I'm a fairly well-known chef, you know. He would have gotten a lot of visibility suing me. Well, maybe not. But he probably wanted me to end up as his pet chef."
Doreen and Quill exchanged glances. Then they both looked under the table at Meg's feet. "Uh-oh," Doreen muttered. "Yella socks." Meg's moods could frequently be inferred from the color of the socks she wore. Yellow was not a good sign.
"But Bland is such a fool that he's not all that interested in the food," Quill said soothingly. "When people come because of you, Meggie, as they always have done and always will do, they book months in advance and they're really fussy about the menus, and they talk their way into the kitchen so they can see you cook!"
"A resort in Hemlock Falls," Doreen mused. "What kinda resort? Disney World? Like that?"
"I couldn't get any more out of them. Once Simon realized I was one of the 'crazy sisters,' he hauled Norm out of there, and his backpack, too." She took a bite of red snapper and swallowed it thoughtfully. Meg had grilled it with fresh lime and cilantro. "This is fabulous, Meg."
"Yeah," Meg said listlessly. She nudged Max with her foot. "So you're going to tackle Bland about this resort when he gets back from his trip?"
"Yep. I think we're onto something, here. I think the mysterious something that Mort had on Neil Strickland had to do with this project. I did get out of Norm that
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JoyMax is their client." Quill, unsettled by Andy's question of less than two hours before, kept looking at her sister, then looking away again. Was it her imagination, or were those shadows under Meg's eyes? And was she pale beneath her summer tan? "Anyhow, money's the best motive for murder."
Meg wiggled her eyebrows. "This mysterious something that Mort may or may not have known about Strickland doesn't get us any further toward determining who killed Mort. Or why."
"Bland killed Mort," Quill said confidently. "He slipped something into his drink."
"What kind of a something?"
Quill stuck her hand into the pocket of her gauzy dress. "This!"
"That's one of Sherri's herbal powders." John took it and turned it over. " 'Vital Life Herbal, a multiple vitamin, mineral, herbal, all-vegetable food supplement.' Good grief, there's at least a hundred ingredients to this."
"They're listed alphabetically. Look under N."
"Nicotina flower."
"And C."
"Cocoa bean." John raised one eyebrow. "Nicotine and caffeine. Enough to kick off a heart attack?"
"The nicotine doesn't have an RDA dose, but the caffeine does."
"Six thousand six hundred and sixty-seven percent of the daily requirement." John whistled. "This stuff isn't regulated by the FDA."
"Not yet." Quill folded her arms and sat back. "So, I gave Davey a sample of this to send to the forensics
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lab in Albany. What're the odds we find it in poor Mort's bloodstream?"
"Was Bland even around when Mort was swilling gin that morning?"
"He didn't have to be. That was Mort's private supply. He could have doctored it anytime."
"And Mort killed Neil. How?" Meg demanded. "Why? All that John and I have come up with so far is stuff that substantiates this wild theory about the resort. Both men were involved with mega-real-estate deals. And JoyMax has got enough bucks to invest. And the Finns have some connection with this whole deal because Horvath was in L.A. and knows Bland. But none of this ... this"—Meg flung her hands up in exasperation—"marinade of deal making has anything to do with the dead bodies."
"It's a marinade all right," Quill said in a thrilling voice, "but it's a marinade for murder!"
"Let's change the subject," Meg said flatly. "This investigation into nothing is stupid. Let's talk about Max. I think Max liked being at Flick's. How did Flick like him? He didn't offer to keep him, by any chance?"
"Forget it. Max is home. And he's learned his lesson. Haven't you, Max?" Quill bent over and ruffled the dog's ears. "He didn't jump the guy with the stick, you know. He ran off. Good boy."
Max groaned, yawned, and shoved his muzzle into Quill's instep.
"Reason he's got his nose stuck on your foot is that blood," Doreen said. "Never known a dog yet that didn't like the smell of blood."
Quill wiggled her toes.
"It's amazing all it is, is broke," Doreen continued
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in a ruthless way. "It coulda been took right off. And as far as I'm concerned, Meg, this investigation's back on. Your sister coulda got killed, too. You sure you didn't get any part of that license number?"
Quill finished the rest of her strawberry soup and reached for a slice of carrot cake. "Not enough."
"And no idea who might have tried to run you over?" John's mouth had grim lines at the corners.
Quill shook her head. "If someone actually did try to run me over. It sounds crazy, but it may have been the way I was driving."
Doreen opened her mouth, then closed it firmly. Meg looked up at the ceiling and hummed a few bars of "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena."
"That's not funny," Quill said crossly.
Meg raised her eyebrows. "It's your driving that's funny. Honestly, Quill, I'm amazed every time you come back intact from a trip to the grocery store. It's not that you're a bad driver, it's that you're a terrible driver. Remember all those tickets you got when you drove the cab in New York?"
"Everybody gets tickets driving cabs in New York. And besides, nothing got dented except the bumper."
"Just your foot!"
"That wasn't a result of my bad driving. That was because the other guy couldn't drive. I have a lot of questions about this case that don't have a thing to do with driving skills. Why was Everett Bland following me?"
"Are you sure he was following you?" Meg asked skeptically.
"I don't know. But it's a suspicious coincidence,
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don't you think? When I left the Inn, he was supposedly on his way to Sherri's gym. And he asked Dina where I was; she told me that when I went to let Max in after his little sojourn into the Gorge just now. And she told him where I was. Bland, I mean. And he left right after I did. He's got a cell phone. Did he call the driver of the red minivan? I've got other questions, too. How and when did Horvath meet Neil Strickland's lawyer? Why did the Sneezer people choose this particular Inn to meet at to try to rescue their show? Mort was terrified the show was going to be canceled—so he had a motive to murder Strickland. But who had a motive to murder Mort? The only question I don't have is whether or not both men were murder victims. That seems pretty clear to me, even if it doesn't to Harris and the police."
Meg ran her hands through her short dark hair. "Andy says the preliminary autopsy report shows Mort Carmody died of a heart attack. His liver was almost completely cirrhosed. He had spots on his lungs from all that smoking. The guy was already one of the walking dead before he sat in the hot sun swilling gin."
"Someone could have put something in the orange juice to kick the heart attack off," Quill insisted.
John leaned back on his stool and folded his arms behind his head. "They should have run all kinds of tests for poisons, Quill. But they'll stop, now that Harris has closed the case. So it's possible that a heretofore-undetected poison did just that. But is it probable? Why would someone want to murder Carmody?"
"I did get a chance to talk to the hacker who's going
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to investigate all the guys," Meg said. "I pulled him asid
e for a few seconds. He should have some good information on all of them as early as tomorrow morning."
"What kinda information can a dishwasher get from a computer?" Doreen demanded.
"Bruce isn't just a dishwasher," Meg said. "He's majoring in computer science at Columbia. He said he could get into the California Department of Motor Vehicles, check on the drivers' licenses, and get their Social Security numbers. Once he has those—" She waved her hands in the air. "All kinds of information comes flying out of the Internet. Bank accounts, criminal histories, divorces and remarriages, births—you name it."
Doreen scowled horribly. "It ain't right."
"It's the twenty-first century," Meg said. "We've all got to get used to it."
"It shouldn't be all that easy, Meg," John said. "Most of those accounts have some pretty heavy-duty defenses."
"Bruce," Meg said with satisfaction, "is majoring in cryptography."
"You said he was in computers," Doreen said. "Not funeral homes."
"Cryptography is code-breaking," Quill added.
"He'll get us a lot of good stuff. I'm positive."
"This is great, guys. We should get organized, here," Quill said. "Now. I've made sort of a preliminary list of items to investigate."
"I'm organized," Meg interrupted cheerfully. "Adela Henry called and ordered a brunch for the second ses-
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sion of the screenwriting seminar tomorrow and that's at the top of my list. Bjarne can't handle a brunch for thirty all by himself."
Quill opened her mouth to remind Meg that two days earlier, Bjarne seemed to be able to cope with the brunch with no problem at all. She glanced at her sister. Meg sat in the rocking chair by the kitchen fireplace. Her thumbs drummed restlessly on her knees. She always made a few sartorial concessions when riding the train to New York; when she came home, she invariably shed whatever she'd been wearing in favor of comfort clothes. But the red bandana she had tied around her neck this morning before she left was still there, and she hadn't changed her khaki trousers for shorts, even though the temperature was still in the eighties.
Quill took a thoughtful bite of carrot cake, and promptly spit it out. "Baking soda! Meg, who made the carrot—"
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