A Taste for Murder (11 page)

Quill left Mrs. Hallenbeck and marched triumphantly to the kitchen. Meg was scowling hideously at the Specials blackboard, chalk smeared on her face.
"I am so good!" Quill said. She threw herself into the chair by the fireplace and rocked contentedly.
"What d'ya think goes best with the French onion soup?"
Quill stopped rocking. "Um. You mean the onion soup you weren't going to make because of the raw egg ban?"
"The souffl‚'s a bust. It's too humid for it. I know!" She scribbled furiously for a moment. "Potted rabbit."
"In this heat? Don't you think something lighter is better for July?"
"Lancashire's booked a party of two for dinner. And I've got fresh rabbit."
Quill rose majestically to her feet. Perhaps the improvised management tactics she'd presented to Mrs. Hallenbeck had been an inspiration; she'd never tried a firm hand with her sister before. "Meg, if you do not stop using raw egg in the food, I will dock your salary."
"You will, huh?" said Meg, unimpressed. Meg put the chalk down and looked consideringly at her sister. "I just might remind Doreen that you spend every Saturday night - all night - with a certain good-looking sheriff. She'll want to put worms up your nose, I expect."
"You wouldn't!"
"It'd be nothing less than my duty," said Meg with an air of conscious virtue. She gave her sister an affectionate grin. "So what are you good at? Not this detective stuff?"
Quill sighed. "No. Not this detective stuff."
"You agree that John's probably gone off on a toot? Poor guy, after being sober all these years, and what're you looking at me like that for? You think it's a secret? Everyone knows John goes to A.A. on Thursdays. You know that Gil's accident was just that. And you can bet that creep Baumer was probably the one who made those phone calls, out of sheer despair at your rejection of his uncouth advances."
"Ye-e-es," said Quill reluctantly.
"I thought you were going to make a courtesy call on Nadine Gilmeister," Meg said briskly. "One of us has to. And you're very good at that."
"I suppose you're right."
"So take a couple of brioches as a tribute to the funeral; get out of my kitchen and do it. Oh, Quill?"
Quill looked back.
"Stop by Tom Peterson's, will you? I stuck some of yesterday's delivery in your car. The meat's tainted."
"The meat?"
"Yes! The meat. It stinks. I can't serve it. Something must be wrong with those refrigeration units. Tell him I want fresh good stuff in the cooler now. Make him eat that stuff if he won't."
"Okay," said Quill meekly.
Gil's ostentatious white Colonial was in the town's only suburb, about four miles from the Inn. The street where the now-widowed Nadine lived was lined with cars, and Quill parked her battered Olds half a block away. Hemlock Falls citizens were conscientious about funerals and calling hours. Friends of the deceased rallied around the family, dropping by with a continuous stream of food.
The front door was partly open and she slipped in quietly. She set the brioches in the kitchen between a huge home-cooked ham from the Hogg's Heaven Farms, and a chocolate banana cream pie - Betty Hall's specialty dessert for Saturdays.
She was unsurprised to see Nadine dressed completely in black, something that was Not Done in Hemlock Falls, because it was considered a waste of hard-earned cash. ("So whattya gonna do with a black outfit anyways?" Marge Schmidt had been heard to opine. "Only place to wear it is up to Ms. Barf-your-guts-out-Quilliam's, and after a meal there, you don't have enough left to pay for the dress.")
Marge was, of course, conspicuously absent, but most of the Chamber was there, in force. Quill said hello to Mayor Henry, who nodded gravely, and waved at Howie Murchison, who was in close discussion with Andy Bishop.
A large poster featuring a close-up of Gil's grinning face usually stood by the showroom door at his dealership. Some thoughtful soul had brought it to the house, and it now stood in state by the fireplace, a black-ribboned wreath surmounting the legend "Drowned, But Not Forgotten."
"Not real creative," said Harvey Bozzel, a thick piece of brioche in one hand. "But God! What'd you expect on such short notice? And I've decided not to send a bill. Although the printer double charged for the overtime." Mementos of Gil lay scattered on a table underneath the poster. "Nice touch, don't you think?" said Harvey. "His wallet, his Chamber membership, stuff like that. I think Nadine's going to bury it with him. Except for the credit cards."
"Is all this from... ?"
"The body? Some of it," said Harvey. "Quill, now that we have a chance to talk, what about that ad campaign? I've come up with some really exciting ideas."
"Harvey, this just isn't the right time to discuss it."
"Monday, then? I could drop by around ten o'clock."
"Sure." said Quill.
"I'll bring some roughs for you. It's gonna be great."
"Excuse me," said Quill. She edged over to Esther West, who was standing by an impromptu bar set up on the credenza.
"So where do you think she got that?" said Esther bitterly, with a gesture toward the widow.
"The dress?" Quill peered at it. "Looks like DKNY."
"You'd think she'd have the manners to shop at home at a time like this," said Esther. "I have the nicest little black and white suit that's been in the window for ages that would have been perfect. Purchased in the hope of just such an occasion." Esther belted back a slug of what smelled like gin. "Now, where's she going to wear that thing after this funeral?"
Quill said she didn't know.
"Mayor asked me to write a short piece in Gil's memory," said Esther. "You know, after the opening ceremonies tomorrow." She adjusted her earring, It was mother-of-pearl, at least two inches wide. "Taste. That's what the mayor's after, I kind of like what Harvey wrote, you know? 'Drowned, but not forgotten.' But we can't just say that. I thought maybe something from Hamlet might go over well."
"Hamlet?" said Quill, "You mean Hamlet?"
"That play by William Shakespeare, There's a scene from J it on my director's video. This Queen Gertrude is very upset over a drowning. She runs into the palace and has some very nice lines about a drowning. Very nice."
"The ones about Ophelia?" Howie Murchison, occupied with refilling his Scotch, winked at Quill. "'Too much of water has thou, poor Ophelia; and therefore, I forbid my tears'?"
"You know that play, Howie? I think it's nice, And of course, that's what happened to Gil, Too much water. What do you think, Harvey?" Esther inquired of the ad man, who'd I also come to the credenza for a refill.
"Well, Gil was bashed on the head first," said Harvey. "I don't know how creatively appropriate that drowning speech would be. I mean he drowned, yes, Too much water, yes. But he was hit on the head first."
"The rest of this play Hamlet seems to be people dead of sword wounds," said Esther critically, "and I don't suppose that would do."
"There's always 'Cudgel thy brains no more about it,' offered Howie.
"Oh, no," said Quill involuntarily. She was afraid to look at Howie; she bit her lower lip so hard it hurt, "I'll just say something to Nadine. Excuse me again, Harvey."
A space around Nadine had cleared, and Quill went over to see her. "I'm awfully sorry, Nadine," she said soberly, "Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need someone to stay with you?"
"Thank you, no," she said. "I called Gil Junior, of course, and he's driving up from Alfred. He'll be here sometime this afternoon." The two women were silent for a moment. Abruptly, Nadine said, "He was a bad husband, Quill. He ran around on me, and never came home, and caroused too much, and I spent like a drunken sailor to spite him. And now everyone in the town thinks I'm awful. And I was, Quill, I was." Suddenly, she began to sob. The low murmuring in the room stopped. Quill put her arm around Nadine. Elmer Henry proffered a handkerchief. "I'll take her," said Betty Hall with rough kindness, and she led Nadine away.
Quill sighed, turned, and knocked over the table that held Gil's final effects. With an exclamation of chagrin, she bent to sort through the items that had fallen to the floor. Gil's wallet, still damp from the duck pond, had opened and its contents lay scattered. Quill picked up his driver's license (credit cards were conspicuously absent) and a few family pictures. She tucked several of Gil Junior back into the wallet, and flipped over a picture that had been folded in half. She smoothed it out.
A pretty Indian girl stared back at her. The girl in the picture on the night stand in John Raintree's room at the Inn.
-7-
Quill smoothed the photograph flat. The girl was dressed in a pink waitress's uniform, leaning across a diner counter. She smiled into the camera, black hair long and shining, dark eyes bright. Was this a girl John had loved? What would a picture of John's girlfriend be doing at the scene of Gil's drowning? Quill took a deep breath. There had to be another explanation. John couldn't be involved with this. Could she have been a waitress at Marge Schmidt's diner? Could John or Gil have met her there? If that were true, this picture might belong to Marge, and not to Gil at all. No. Marge was Hemlock Falls' most notorious employer, running through waitresses and busboys with the speed of a rural Mario Andretti. And anyone who'd tuck her aged mother into a nursing home on Christmas Eve, as Marge had done, was not someone you could accuse of sentimentality. Marge wouldn't carry a keepsake of a favorite waitress. If she carried photographs at all, they'd be of cream pies she had known and loved.
Mavis and Keith Baumer were from out of town and had never met John before. Could the picture have belonged to either of them? Was there any connection between John and Mavis? What possible connection could John have with the companion to an elderly and wealthy widow?
That left Gil himself. Gil and John were business acquaintances, hardly friends. But John, a loner, had few friends.
Quill carried the photograph into the kitchen. Nadine stood at the sink, staring out the back window.
"Nadine, I just wanted to say goodbye. If there's anything at all that you need, please call me."
"Thanks for coming, Quill. I've been telling everyone I don't know when the funeral's going to be held. Myles said maybe a week or two."
"That long?"
"He wants to complete the investigation. There'll have to be an autopsy. Howie Murchison says that's standard in an accidental death. He won't be able to probate the will until the inquest is done, so I hope Myles is quick about it."
"Will you be... all right... until then?"
This was local code for money matters. Wealthy farmers were said to be doing "all right." Marge Schmidt was said to do "all right" out of the diner. Betty Hall, a junior partner, was held to be doing not so well.
"Things weren't going so well," Nadine said, confirming the commonly held belief that Gil's money troubles were real and not the grousing of a Hemlock businessman who felt it unlucky to look too successful. "Mark Jefferson at the bank said there's a couple of outstanding loans that have to be paid off, but Gil had a lot of life insurance. That's the one thing he kept up. Now Marge Schmidt" - spite made Nadine ugly - "had better have some damn good proof that Gil borrowed money from her. If she doesn't, she can whistle for it."
"Meg and I could probably find something to tide you over," said Quill.
"Thanks. But I can always call on Tom. He's been a good brother, by and large. Been supporting Gil for all these years."
Quill shifted uncomfortably. "By the way, Nadine, I found this dropped on the floor of the living room. Is it yours or Gil's?"
Nadine glanced at the photograph. Her expression froze. "My sister-in-law," she said shortly.
"Your sister-in-law?"
"John Raintree's sister, yes. She was married to my brother Jack. We don't talk about her or him, so just forget it, I okay?"
"Sorry," said Quill. "I didn't know."
"You didn't?" Nadine lit a cigarette and slitted her eyes through the smoke. "John never told you?"
"No!"
"Then I'm not about to." Nadine crushed the cigarette into a used coffee filter in the sink.
Quill went back to the living room. She made idle conversation with the remaining townspeople, but the visitors were clearing out. She wondered if she'd ever know all the town's secrets, or if she'd always be treated like a flatland foreigner.
Quill looked at her watch. She needed to get back to the Inn and she still had Tom Peterson to tackle about the meat. Perhaps he might tell her about John's sister. She fingered the photograph. She should either leave the photograph here, or take it to Myles as evidence in the case. And if she did that, she'd have betrayed John, perhaps, to the inexorable machinery of the law. If she could just talk to John first, show him the picture.
Her bad angel, a handy scapegoat for childhood crimes and misdemeanors, and little-used until now, whispered, "Swipe it!" She did.
After a hurried exit from the Gilmeister living room, she drove to Peterson's Transport, wondering if the penalty for theft increased relative to the viability of the victim. "He's dead, he won't care," sounded like a practical, if graceless, defense. On the other hand, phrases like "impeding an official investigation" had an ominous ring to them. So did, "concealing the evidence in a crime."
I am hunted, beleaguered, and driven by time, Quill thought as she turned onto Route 96. It was four-thirty; she had to be back at the Inn before six for the Chamber dinner. Maybe she could just toss the spoiled meat in a convenient dumpster rather than talking face to face with Tom Peterson. But Meg would have a fit. Peterson would want to send the meat back to the supplier, who in turn would dispose of it, and process, thought Quill, will be process.
Petersons had owned much of Hemlock Falls at one time or another; as the family's fortunes declined, bits and pieces of their property had been sold off. Tom had leased the parcel on the comer of Route 96 and Falls River Road to Gil when they had gone into the car dealership together. The land abutted the warehouses and dispatch offices from which Tom ran his trucking business, a location convenient to Syracuse, Ithaca, and Rochester. Gil' s hopes of a customer base far beyond Hemlock Falls had never materialized, but the dealership managed somehow from year to year. Quill wondered who, if anyone, would take it over now that Gil had passed on.
Quill pulled into the driveway to the dealership. The Buick flags were at half-mast, and a black-bordered sign had been posted on the glass doors: CLOSED OUT OF RESPECT FOR GIL, which Quill thought had a better ring to it than "Drowned, but not forgotten."