A Taste for Murder (19 page)

It also makes perfect sense that the Gilmeisters knew about John's prison sentence and never told anybody. You know what Hemlock Falls is like. Nadine would be embarrassed to the tops of her ears to have everyone know they'd had an ex-con in the family. I love you, Quill, but there's caramel where your brains should be. You're letting your friendship with John get in the way of the facts." She shook her head. "I'm beat. I'm going to bed. I'll see you in the morning."
There was a mass of telephone messages under her door. Quill flipped on the overhead lights and sank into the Eames chair in front of the fireplace and riffled through them. The insurance adjuster would be by in the morning to examine the balcony. She could hand off the task of showing him around to Peter Williams. Myles had called; he was in Ithaca until Tuesday. The forensic lab tests on Saturday had been positive for sulfuric acid, which meant, thought Quill, that it was highly possible there'd been a first attempt on Mavis' life. She paperclipped that message to the three from Mrs. Hallenbeck, inviting her to dinner, to a cup of late-night tea, and then to breakfast tomorrow morning. "We must talk," each message read.
"That we must," Quill said to herself. "About our bill, about Mavis. About what you discussed at dinner with Mavis, Marge, and Gil."
She scrawled a short list. "Things To Do -- Monday: Hal; Pet; Mar; Baum," and muttering the names HalPetMarBaum like a charm against disaster, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The phone rang. Quill jerked awake. The digital clock radio blinked two-thirty. Quill regarded it with baleful eyes and picked the phone up. "This is Quill."
"Is Myles with you?"
"John!"
"He's not there?"
"No. He's in Ithaca and won't be back until Tuesday. John, I've been so worried about you. Where are you?"
The line went dead. Quill jiggled the cutoff button. Two quiet taps sounded at the door. Quill jumped up and flung it open. John stood there, white shirt rumpled, tieless, his sports coat filthy. The gray shadows under his eyes made his cheeks gaunt and his expression haunted.
"Come in and sit down," said Quill. She ushered him into the room and shut the door. John slumped on the couch and rubbed his hands over his face.
"You look exhausted, John. Have you had anything to eat?"
"A Big Mac, this afternoon."
"Meg will have a fit."
He chuckled. "Actually, it tasted pretty good. Sometimes you just get a craving for junk food, you know?"
Quill paced restlessly around the room. John watched her for a moment, forearms on his knees. "I want to tell you about my prison sentence."
Quill sat in the Eames chair, relieved.
"I went to my rooms first, before I came to see you. I wanted to show you a picture I have there, but the police..."
"Yes, I know."
"Then you know about my sister?"
"I didn't know who she was, John, until I showed it to Nadine. Myles found the one of her in the waitress uniform at the scene of... where Gil drowned."
"By the pond?"
"Yes. I matched it with the one you had in your room."
"Gil was going to put it in the family album. He never had much sense. So, that explains the APB. Myles thought it connected me to the scene of the crime."
"Yes, John. Where have you been all this time?"
"I made some - acquaintances in prison. There's a network, if you know who to talk to, where to look. That's one of the things I did while I was gone. I spent a lot of time trying to find out why Mavis came here, what she was after, what she'd been doing since I saw her last at the company."
"So you did work together, then?"
"For about six years. It was just after I got my MBA from RIT." He shook his head. "I really thought I was going places, then." His face shuttered closed. Quill waited patiently.
"We were a close family, growing up," he said. "My dad worked the high steel and was gone a lot. My mom stayed home. My sister Elaina was quiet, shy, never dated much in high school." John stopped, sighed, then went on. "I was a rowdy kid in high school, ran around with a bunch of guys who got into stupid small-time things. Lifting cigarettes from drugstores, joy-riding in other people's cars. I straightened up my senior year, and left all of it behind me when I got the scholarship. All but friends, one in particular, who married my sister. Tom Peterson's brother, Jack." He looked at Quill, the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones.
"My dad died in a fall from a high beam. My mom passed on soon after that. Cancer. Elaina had no one but me. And Jackie, of course. Jackie who got into the booze every Saturday night, then every Friday and Saturday night, then every day of the week and came home from the bars and beat her.
"She never said a word. Not for all the time I was in school, not for the years I started working my way up to D.G.D.'s headquarters. I'd drive in from headquarters in Syracuse. We'd get together now and then, and I noticed things, as you will, in passing. A black eye. A fractured elbow. A cracked rib. Falls, she said, or clumsiness. Anyone of the million transparent excuses you hear from battered women."
John stared at his clasped hands. "I was into the booze pretty good myself. Earning good money. On my way up. Ignoring all the signs that told me I was in trouble, refused to believe I was another alcoholic Indian. I'd beat the stereotype, right?
"I dropped by Elaina's one Saturday afternoon. Hadn't seen her for a couple of months. I'd been to a sports bar with some of the guys from the company and we'd gotten into the Scotch. Somebody had called me at the bar. Said there was trouble. I knocked on the front door and waited. Nobody answered for a long, long time. I went around to the back. I looked in the kitchen window. The place was a mess; pots and pans allover the floor. There was a huge smear of chili on the ceiling, from where a pot'd been thrown off the stove, I guess.
"Elaina lay face down in the middle of the kitchen floor. I kicked in the lock. Went to her. Called her name. I turned her over." A shiver went through him. It didn't reach his face. Quill swallowed, and dug her nails into her hands.
"Tomatoes get hot. He'd thrown the chili into her face, after hitting her with the pot, I guess. She was burned, from her temple, here" - he touched his own - "to her chin. Later, we found out that she'd lost the sight of one eye. That pretty face. Gone.
"I shouted. I shouted again. I could hear the TV yowling from the living room. I ran in. Jackie was passed out on the couch. His mouth was open. He was snoring. There was tomato sauce down his shirt, on his hands. I beat him to death. And they sent me to prison."
Quill was cold. She couldn't speak. "Why don't I make you something to eat?" She went to her small kitchenette and busied herself. When she returned, she brought a small bowl of soup.
John sipped it, then said, "It didn't make a big splash in the papers. But everyone in the company knew, of course. And that included Mavis. "Mavis had a nice little sideline going."
"She was Human Resources Director, wasn't she?" Quill's voice was rusty. She cleared her throat.
"The employees had a joke. That she directed the resources into her own pocket. Nobody knew how much money she made, but she was in a position to find out things. And she did. Have a little problem with your former employer? Mavis would approve your hiring on the condition that ten per cent of your pay check be turned over to her, every Friday. Swipe a few cartons of frozen meat from the storeroom? Same deal. You couldn't turn her in without turning yourself in. And nobody complained, of course. Nobody in management knew, or at least I like to think they didn't. I sure didn't find out until I came to work here. She tracked me down and gave me a call."
"She was blackmailing you?"
"Mavis was blackmailing everybody. By that time, she'd weaseled herself into the old lady's back pocket, and when the old man was alive, you couldn't touch her. Mavis had something on the guy who took over the accounting after I left - I don't know what it was, but it gave her access to the books. And she cooked them. Three hundred thousand dollars were missing soon after I went to jail. After I got out, she called me, and sent me documents that "proved" I'd been systematically bleeding the company during my time as head of accounting. A small monthly stipend, she said, would keep this news from my current employer."
"I wouldn't have believed it for a second," said Quill indignantly.
"No? How well do you know me? I've been here less than a year, Quill. And if you'd been approached by a woman with proof of my prison trial, my alcoholism, and 'proof' I'd diverted three hundred thousand dollars for my private use, what would you have done? What would anybody have done? I would have stopped you from hiring someone like that myself."
"I would have asked where the three hundred thousand went," said Quill. "The way you live it's obvious you haven't got it."
"Mavis had that covered, too. Elaina is... not right. She's been in a hospital down in Westchester for a long time. The state pays a part of it, but it's not enough." He reddened. "Gil and Marge and most of my clients pay me in cash. My income from my business is unrecorded, and I pay it directly to the institution. It'd be a bit of a job to prove where that money came from - and get a lot of other people into tax trouble."
"So between Mavis and your sister, it must be quite a stretch to make enough money to live."
"I live pretty well, Quill. Except for the lack of junk food. I think we should try to convince Meg to add potato skins to the appetizer menu."
"The kind loaded with Baco-s," said Quill. "No problem."
"You want to tell her, or shall I?"
"Flip you for it."
The lighthearted game wasn't working. Quill set her coffee cup on the end table. "So you must have been pretty upset when she showed up here."
"Quite a motive for murder," John agreed. "Quill, on my sister's life, I didn't kill Mavis. And I didn't kill Gil."
"Then we'll have to figure out who did."
"The woman of action," mused John. "I haven't seen you like this before, Quill."
"Well, there aren't that many crimes to solve in Hemlock Falls."
"Just put one in front of you, and you drop your normally diffident manner and charge?" John asked. "I mean, I have heard the story about the kindergartener's protest march, but I thought it was apocryphal, at least until now."
"Hah," said Quill. "Let me bring you up to date."
She summarized the discovery of the photograph among Gil's effects, the conversations with Tom, Nadine, and Myles, and Marge's disclosure at the Chamber meeting. Her review of the deadly conclusion to The Trial of Goody Martin was succinct but accurate.
"So you believe that Baumer and Marge are the likeliest suspects, with Tom Peterson running a poor third just because he had the opportunity."
"Don't you? I mean, that matchbook's pretty significant."
"There's an old saying in the audit business, Quill: 'Follow the money.' When I left here Friday, I was in a panic." He smiled slightly. "Not usual for me, I know. But I thought if I could find out what happened to that three hundred thousand three years ago, I might be able to discover who was being squeezed by Mavis badly enough to kill her."
"It did occur to you, didn't it, that Mavis took it herself?"
He hesitated. "It's possible. But I don't think so. I have a friend who's pretty good on the computer. We got into Mavis' financial records this morning. If she did have it, she doesn't have it now. Mavis is just about broke. She needed that job with Mrs. Hallenbeck."
"But what about the money you sent her?"
He shrugged. "A couple of hundred dollars a month. I found that, all right, along with a few other contributors to Mavis' nest egg, who are more than likely in the same position I am myself. She appeared to be taking in about eight hundred a month. That's enough to keep her in red lipstick and mid-range designer clothes, but that's it."
Quill hesitated to ask the next question. Somehow, theorizing in the perennial garden was a lot different than a cold discussion of facts with your accountant. "What about Marge? Was she being blackmailed, too?"
"I don't know. I was reviewing records of deposits, Quill, and they don't list the origin of the money in any bank I ever heard of. If I have a little more time, I can take a look around Marge's accounts." He shook his head. "I have a hard time believing it, though. Two hundred a month is a pretty slim motive for murder. Then there's the fact that I like Marge. I've known likable murderers in the joint, but I can't believe she'd have to resort to killing Mavis to get rid of her."
Quill explained her theories. John, unlike certain sheriffs she could name, listened with interest.
"Baumer's a possibility. The guy dresses like he's on the edge. Tom Peterson? I don't know. The partnership..." He stopped.
Quill waited. "What? What about the partnership, John? Don't stop now. We may solve this, just sitting here!"
"You mustn't repeat any of this, Quill. When people hire me to handle their books, they trust me with a fundamental part of themselves."
"You're worried about my finding out about Gil Gilmeister's financial affairs, when you're being hunted for murder?" Quill said. "Oh, for goodness sakes, John. That's absurd."
"Not to me."
Quill bit back her laughter, figured she never in this world would figure out why men behaved the way they did, and promised never to reveal to anyone the state of Gil Gilmeister's general ledger. "Plus," she said dramatically, "I hereby absolve you of the least little suspicion that You Did It. No one with that kind of honor system could possibly have swiped that bolt. And since you weren't even here when Mavis was... you know... you're totally in the clear."
John looked at her gravely for a moment. "Let's get back to the partnership. Gil and Tom have a fifty-fifty partnership in the business, not ideal for a number of reasons, because they had to agree jointly on every decision they made, and sometimes the interest of one partner conflicts dramatically with the needs of another. This was very true in Gil's case. Nadine was quite a consumer, and Gil's drinking problem didn't help matters either. Towards the end, Gil was drawing heavily against the equity in his part of the business; and business isn't all that good to begin with."
"The cash loans came from Marge?"
"Yes. And I'll say this for her, Marge Schmidt is a hell of a good businesswoman. She didn't let her affection for Gil stand in the way of liens against the units."
"You mean Gil borrowed money from Marge against the cars he hadn't sold?"
"Against the cars he sold. You know most of the profit from that business comes from the car loans."