A Taste for Murder (18 page)

"Really?" said Betty Hall with interest. "Marge tried that once with this smartass yuppie from New Jersey that kept sending his food back. Worked a treat. Never saw him again."
"Made him pay the bill, too," said Marge with satisfaction. "Tell Meg baking soda in the scrambled eggs works just as good. And there's no mess to clean up."
"Well, we all hope that Meg's efforts are rewarded," said the Reverend Shuttleworth. "There are certain signs about the man that are very disturbing, very disturbing. There is strong evidence that he was an instrument in the downfall of that poor creature who went to her reward this afternoon. And I have your Doreen Muxworthy to thank for first bringing them to my attention."
"The staff at the Inn aims to please," said Quill. "Mayor, if the meeting is going to go on much longer, I'll need to leave you to your coffee. I've got to see to some things."
"Yes. With John being accused of these murders, you will have many extra duties," said the Reverend Shuttleworth. "The members were telling me about this APR."
"APB," said Quill, "and John has not been accused of these murders, Mr. Shuttleworth. And I'd appreciate it very much if you all understand that. Myles just wants to talk to him. That's all. He has... evidence germane to these incidents."
Nobody would meet Quill's eye. She wondered just exactly what had been discussed while she was occupied with Baumer. "You've known him for years," she said. "He grew up in this town. He does the books for half the businesses in town. You've trusted him in the past. Has he ever betrayed that trust?"
Mark Anthony Jefferson cleared his throat. "Well, that's just it, Quill. We've been talking the matter over and - " Quill drew breath to protest, and Jefferson held his hand up.
"Please. He knew, for example, quite a bit more about Gil's car business than Tom here - his own partner - did. I'm going to go over the books tomorrow with Tom, at the bank, to see if there may have been any irregularities that Gil could have discovered."
"You have no basis for that belief," said Quill hotly. "None!"
"It's wise to take precautions," said Mark Anthony. "As for Ms. Collin wood..."
"He'd never even met Mavis Collinwood before she came here!" said Quill. "This is all - There's a word for it. Howie?"
"Supposition?" said the lawyer.
"No!" Quill knew her face was red with anger. "Slander!"
Howie looked at Marge and raised his eyebrows.
"I'll tell her," said Marge gruffly. She rocked back in her chair. "Mavis told me something about John that you have to know, Quill. I'm sorry to be the one to do it, too, because although I ain't sure about this fancy schmancy kwee-zeen you all serve, you've been a good enough friend and neighbor over the years. And you know I'm mostly joking when I give you a little bit of hassle over stuff. The way I figure, we've got a friendly rivalry, that right, Howie?"
"You ought to get to the point, Marge," said Howie. "John was the head of the accounting department for Dog- gone Good Dogs some years back. After my time. Mavis figured he was the one who embezzled near three hundred thousand dollars from their company. Then he disappeared and nobody saw hide nor hair of him for a couple of years. Mavis was that shocked when she met him here at your Inn." Marge looked around the table. "So what we figure is, John had himself a real good motive to get rid of both of them, Mavis and Gil."
Quill left them sitting there without a word.
-10-
Quill wanted a place with no phones, no people, and no problems. When being nibbled to death by ducks, she thought, the best thing to do is leave the pond. Meg was the sort of person who'd mince the ducks into pate, and not for the first time, Quill envied her sister's direct, assertive approach. For Meg, all odds were surmountable.
Even murder. She left the Inn and walked to the gazebo in the perennial garden. Evening was coming on like high tide on a still night, the purple-blue darkness flowing over the Falls' ridge to touch the crescent moon. The dark hid the colors of the roses, but their scent recalled their names, and their names their sturdy beauty - Maidens' Blush at its peak; the damasks Celsiana and La Ville de Bruxelles in full bloom; the hybrid teas Tiffany and Crimson Glory a constant undernote, as they had been all summer. Quill's hand flexed as though it held a paint brush. She sat in the gazebo and let pictures of new paintings drift through her mind's eye. The heart of a Chrysler Imperial rose would make a wonderful painting - a man-made rose with a man-made shape at odds with the essential nature of flowers. It would give the painting an energetic irony. And the color - an aggressive, insulting, dangerous red.
Like blood seeping from under a barn door.
"Ugh!" said Quill into the dark. She asked herself the logical question: Who wanted Mavis dead? She shut her eyes and thought about the scene of the crime as a painting. The bandstand with the three witnesses - Howie, Elmer, and Tom Peterson; Dookie, in the judge's seat, the crowd immediately in front of the bandstand.
Who in this picture had the opportunity to kill? Baumer had been standing extreme stage left. If he'd looked over his right shoulder, he would have seen the sledge stop and Harland dismount. He could have waited until Harland stomped around stage right to accost Howie and tell him he wasn't going to drive anymore.
Did Baumer take the chance to pull the hood over Mavis' slack mouth and dulled eyes?
Tom Peterson had been standing at Baumer's elbow after he moved off-stage. The two men hadn't known each other, and hadn't spoken together, at least not in the replay Quill saw before her. Tom, too, could have ducked around the stage and gone into the semidarkness of the shed. Except that Quill could find no link between Tom and Mavis. And Mavis had been the target of the murderer, who had succeeded the second time, after failing the first.
Harvey Bozzel had jumped from the stage to the rescue like some half-baked Dudley Do-Right. The crowd had surged forward when Harvey made his dramatic gesture, and Baumer and Tom Peterson had disappeared in the melee.
Quill concentrated hard: Mrs. Hallenbeck, Nadine Gilmeister, Marge Schmidt, Meg, and Edward Lancashire had all been shoved back as the crowd moved forward.
There was herself, of course, sitting on a bench with two teenaged girls who'd been restless during the trial scene, and able, in the confusion, to walk away unnoticed. "And I sure as heck didn't do it," said Quill aloud.
So all of them had been close enough to slip around the bandstand and assist Mavis Collinwood down the gravel path to death at the foot of General Hemlock.
Who had been at the scene of both crimes? Tom Peterson, Nadine, Mrs. Hallenbeck, and Edward Lancashire had all been in the vicinity, but Marge and Baumer were the only two who'd been there at the time of both killings. Unless one of the others had returned to the scene.
Mrs. Hallenbeck certainly wanted Mavis alive; "Old age is lonely," she'd said. "You have no idea how lonely. And Mavis is a warm body in the house. She's nowhere to go, but to me. Do you know how hard it is to find a healthy, reasonably responsible person to take care of me?"
It was conceivable that Mrs. Hallenbeck had accomplished the murder, but there was no motive. Quite the reverse. Did Tom Peterson want Mavis and Gil dead? Had he tried three times to kill her? She knew the car business was in trouble. Had Mavis and Marge offered to buy Tom out, using Mrs. Hallenbeck's money? Was there a reason that Tom couldn't/wouldn't sell? He said he'd been home watching a videotape the night Gil died, and his wife was gone for the evening. His house was the only residence even close to the park; he could have watched the three of them mooching around in the park; he could have slipped out, loosened the bolt, watched Gil's death, and taken the bolt with him. He'd have been back home in less than ten minutes.
What was the motive? Tom would have wanted Mavis alive, and able to buy Gil out.
What about Nadine? Quill thought long and seriously about Nadine. It didn't fit. In almost any other marriage, jealousy would have been a dandy motive. But it would have been Marge, not Mavis, who Nadine would have wanted out of the way. Besides, Nadine had been shopping in Syracuse with her sister the night of the ducking-stool incident. Her parking validation from the Mall had the time on it; she couldn't have physically been there in time to do the first murder.
And finally, Edward Lancashire. Quill could see no reason why the food critic for L'Aperitif would want to kill Mavis Collinwood. But he had the opportunity. And he'd been asking a lot of questions.
Marge was a most attractive candidate for both murders. Quill scrupulously cleared her mind of prejudice. You didn't pursue a potential murderer because the potential murderer called your sister Megia Borgia, and threatened you and yours with polyester-suited employees from the Board of Health. You investigated reasons why persons of such lousy taste 'o would hate the victim.
"One," said Quill to the Sutter's Gold rosebush at her elbow. "Marge and Mavis worked together at Doggone Good Dogs. Marge claims Mavis told her three hundred thousand dollars was missing. And that John took it. What if Marge had taken it? And what if Mavis found out?" Everyone in town wondered why Marge did so well out of that little diner. She'd lent money to Gil more than once. Even Esther West had once confided to Quill that in times when the banks clamped down on lending, Marge was a good, if usuriously inclined, source of cash. Marge's behavior was definitely suspicious. She loved Gil -or did she? Gil owed her money. Her activities and motives both would have to investigated. Maybe Marge had been after Mavis all along. Gil could have hopped on that ducking stool before Marge could stop him. Quill shuddered at the thought of Marge screaming No! as Gil went drunkenly to his death.
Quill began to feel better. She was getting that l'm-really- good-at-managing-people feeling so often rebutted by the skepticism of her nearest and dearest. She jumped up and moved briskly along the gravel path, hands clasped behind her in the best Sherlock Holmes tradition.
Baumer. Another prime candidate. Quill pulled at her lower lip. She'd read with great interest various books on the personalities of murderers. Motive was frequently rooted in the character of the killers; given a variety of motives in a given number of people, only one would kill. Just considering his character, Baumer fit better than anybody. At least, he'd been positioned right; of all the members of the audience at the Trial, he was in the best position to pop backstage and hood the bird, so to speak. And he'd been with Mavis, Marge, and Gil the night of the duck pond killing. But why? No reason to kill Gil, but, like Marge, perhaps Mavis had been his target. Would he kill to keep his marriage together? Was he afraid that word of his shenanigans would get back to his boss?
"Probably not," said Quill, this time to the concrete fish pond by the French lavender. "But it wouldn't hurt to explore possibilities." She could start tomorrow, ask some tactful, discreet questions of Baumer's employers at the sales conference at the Marriott; go to the diner and confront Marge; investigate. Peterson.
Quill heard the sounds of people leaving the Inn. Car doors slammed in the distance. Voices shouted goodbye. Motors revved, taillights blinked red; the Chamber members had gone home.
Feeling it was safe to go back in the water, Quill went to the kitchen and laid her conclusions out for Meg.
Meg sipped coffee - she was immune to the effects of caffeine, and had been known to drink her special blend to put herself to sleep - and drew circles on the pastry marble with her forefinger as Quill narrowed the number of suspects to two.
"So I'm going to go to the Marriott tomorrow and start with some questions about Baumer's past. The other thing I can do is have Doreen search his room for that bolt. And I thought I'd drop by the diner. If Marge is lying about John's connection to Mavis and Doggone Good Dogs, she did it under the guise of presenting an olive branch. I'll just walk into the diner for lunch, waving my own olive branch, and asking innocent questions."
"Have you talked this over with Myles?"
"Of course I haven't talked it over with Myles. You know that Myles is practically prehistoric in his attitude towards women's ability to do certain things."
"I haven't noticed that at all," said Meg. "He's got two patrolwomen in the Sheriff's Department, he voted for our woman senator in the last campaign, and he does his own housework. Doreen's after him all the time to hire her cousin Shirlee to clean for him. He cooks for you all the time, and I remember distinctly, Quill, that he took his two little nieces to Disney World all by himself last year. Myles isn't a male chauvinist. He doesn't want you messing in his police work, because you're an emotional, biased person. His bias is not gender-specific."
"I am not an emotional, biased person!"
"Yes, you are, Quill! You're a crusader. You've always been a crusader. Remember the protest?"
"Meg, don't bring up the protest."
"I remember the protest..."
"Meg, you always bring up the protest. That was thirty years ago, for Pete's sake, and you bring it up when the least little thing happens."
"... I was four years old. Four years old! You had me protesting the Vietnam war in front of my kindergarten. Here I was, this totally innocent little kid whose big sister had this sign STOP THE WAR with the R backwards, and we made the six o'clock news. Mom was so embarrassed she didn't go out of the house for weeks afterward. The neighbors thought she put us up to it."
"Dad thought it was great," said Quill stiffly. "He sneaked me a Mars bar when he came to get us at the police station."
"You never told me that," said Meg. "I never got any of it, either." She regarded her sister with exasperation. "Your analysis of the situation is clean, cool, and precise."
"Thank you," said Quill. "It's also bogus. You're ignoring one screamingly obvious set of facts which bring the whole house of cards to the floor, Hawkshaw."
"And what's that?"
"John," said Meg. "John appears to have the best motive of all. What about that picture!"
"Why should the fact that Nadine and Tom's sister-in-law was John's sister have anything to do with anything?" said Quill crossly.
"Because you were the one that 'deduced' the picture really belonged to John, and Gil had it! Honestly, Quill. It makes perfect sense to me that if Gil saw it lying on the ground, he'd pick it up and put it away so he could return it to John later.