Dread on Arrival (31 page)

“What do you want to do then, Esther? Appoint an understudy?”

“It should be somebody stageworthy. Somebody with presence. And good-looking. The execution is the highlight of
The Trial of Goody Martin.
It’s what everyone comes to see.” Esther’s eyes glinted behind her elaborately designed glasses. “When the actors pile the stones on the barn door, the audience should be moved to enthusiasm as Clarissa’s blood spews out. Most years, as you’ve observed, the tourists join in.”

“Well, they’ll more likely laugh if fat ol’ Marge is supposed to be under there,” said Harland Peterson, the president of the farmer’s co-op. A large, weatherbeaten man, Harland drove the sledge that carried “Clarissa Martin” from the pavilion stage to the site of the execution. “No offense, Marge,” he said, in hasty response to her outraged grunt. “Now, the ducking stool—that’s gonna be just fine. That ol’ tractor of mine’ll lift you into that pond, no problem. But we get a dummy your size under that barn door, it’s gonna stick out a mile. What about Quill, there? She’d be great.”

Harvey (The Ad Agency That Adds Value!) Bozzel cleared his throat. “I’d have to agree.” His tanned cheeks creased in a golf-pro grin. “Try this one on, folks. ‘Quill fills the bill.’”

Quill, who so far had managed to avert Harvey’s advertising plans for the Inn (No Whine, Just Fine Wine When You Dine!), said feebly, “I don’t really think …”

“I’m not sure that Julie’s vomiting is going to continue through next week,” said Esther thoughtfully, “but you never know. And of course, the costume is black, and just shows everything.”

Myles said, “I move to nominate Sarah Quilliam as understudy for Julie Offenbach.”

Quill glared at him.

“I second,” said Harland Peterson.

“All in favor?” said Elmer, sweeping the assembly with a glance. “Against?” He registered Marge’s, Betty’s, and Gil’s upraised hands without a blink. “Carried. Quill takes Julie’s place as Clarissa Martin, if necessary.”

Quill experienced a strong desire to bang her head against the solid edge of the banquet table. This was followed by an even stronger desire to bang Myles McHale’s head against the banquet table, since he’d started the whole mess in the first place. She took a deep breath and was preparing to argue, when the Hemlock Inn’s business manager, John Raintree, appeared at the door to the Banquet Room.

“Yo, John!” said Gil. “Mighty glad to see you. Sorry I missed our meeting last night. I figured you and Tom could handle any stuff that needed to be decided anyways, and I had some things come up at home.”

Esther looked significantly at Quill and mouthed, “Nadine!” Then more audibly, “Poor Gil.”

“No problem, Gil,” said John easily, “but I won’t be able to get the audit to you until next week.”

“That’s okay with you, innit, Mark?” Gil wiped a handkerchief over his sweaty neck. “It’s not gonna hold up the loan or anything?”

Mark Anthony Jefferson, vice-president of the Hemlock Falls Savings and Loan, tightened his lips. “Why don’t we discuss this later, Gil? Your partner should be present anyway, and John’s on Quill’s time, now.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Quill. “John’s moonlighting has never interfered with our business.” She looked hopefully at him. “Do you need me, John?”

“Yep.”

Quill sprang out of her chair with relief. “I’ll be right there. Would you all excuse me? Esther, could you take over the minutes? I’d appreciate it.”

Quill made her way swiftly into the hall and closed the door behind her. “Just in the nick of time. I was about to be forced into taking Julie Offenbach’s star turn. I have no desire to be dunked and squashed in front of two hundred gawking tourists.” She frowned at his glum expression. “Any problems?”

John claimed three-quarters Onondaga blood, whose heritage gave him skin the color of a bronze medallion and hair as thickly black as charred toast. He had an erratic, whimsical sense of humor that Quill found very un-Indian. Not, Quill thought, that she knew all that much about Indians, John in particular. He’d been with them less than a year, and for the first time, the Inn was showing a profit. Despite the money he made between his job at the Inn and his small accounting business, John lived modestly, driving an old car, wearing carefully cleaned suits that were years out of date. He refused to touch alcohol, for reasons tacitly understood between them, and never discussed his personal life. He nodded. “Guest complaint. And one of the waitresses called in sick for the three to eleven shift. Doreen’s on vacation this week; otherwise she could pinch-hit. So that means we’re short two staff for the dinner trade.”

“Did you try the backup list?”

John nodded Yes to the phone calls and No to the results. “Exam week for summer session,” he said briefly.

“Damn.” Most of the summer season help came from nearby Cornell University. “All right. I’ll take the shift myself. Unless Meg’s short-handed in the kitchen?”

“Not so far.”

“And the guest complaint?” She swallowed nervously. “No digestive problems or anything like that? Meg had Caesar salad on the menu for lunch, and she just refuses to omit the raw egg.”

“Not food poisoning, no. But we’d better comply with the raw egg ban, Quill. We’re liable to a fine if we don’t.”

“I know.” Quill bit her thumb. “
You
tell Meg, will you, John? I mean, I should take care of this guest problem.”

“Tell your sister she can’t use raw eggs anymore? Not me, Quill. No way. I’d walk three miles over hot coals for you, shave my head bald for you, but I will not tell your sister how to cook.”

“John,” said Quill, with far more decisiveness than she felt, “you can’t be afraid of my sister. She’s all of five feet two and a hundred pounds, dripping wet. That makes her a
third
your size, probably.”

“You’re half again as tall as she is, and
you’re
afraid of your sister.”

“Then you’re fired.”

“You can’t fire me. I quit.”

They grinned at each other.

“I’ll flip you for it,” said Quill.

John pulled a nickel from his pocket and sent it spinning with a quick snap of his thumb. “Call it.”

“Heads.”

“Tails.” John caught the coin and showed her an Indian-head nickel, tail-up. “My lucky coin. Came to me from my grandfather, the Chief. I told you about the Chief before. You want to keep this in your pocket while you tell her no more raw eggs?”

“I’ll take care of the guest first. Is it a him or a her?”

“Her.”

“Perennial?” This was house code for the retired couples who flooded the Inn in the spring, disappeared in autumn, and reappeared with the early crocus. In general, Quill liked them. They tended to be good guests, rarely, if ever, stiffing the management, and except for a universal disinclination to tip the help more than ten percent, treated the support staff well. This was in marked contrast to traveling businessmen who left used condoms rolled under the beds—which sent Doreen, their obsessive-compulsive housekeeper, into fits—or businesswomen demanding big-city amenities like valet services, a gym, and pool boys.

“It’s an older woman,” said John. He paused reflectively. “Kind of mean.”

“I’m good with mean.” She glanced at her watch; fifteen minutes before the start of the afternoon shift. She’d just make it if John’s complainer didn’t have a real problem. “The wine shipment’s due at four. The bill of lading is … um … somewhere on my desk.”

“I’ll find it. My grandfather, the Chief …”

“Was a tracker,” Quill finished for him. “I’d like to meet your grandfather. I’d like to meet your grandmother, too, as a matter of fact—” She stopped, aware that the flippant conversation was heading into dangerous waters. John’s quiet, lonely existence was his business. “Never mind. Where is she?”

“Lobby.” He grinned, teeth white in his dark face. “Good luck.”

Quill took the steps up to the lobby with a practiced smile firmly in place. She and Meg had bought the twenty-seven-room Inn two years before with the combined proceeds of her last art show and Meg’s early and wholly unexpected widowhood. Driving through Central New York on a short vacation, Meg and Quill had come upon the Inn unexpectedly. They came back. Shouldered between the granite ridges left by glaciers, on land too thin for farming, Inn and village were fragrant in spring, lush in summer, brilliant with color in the fall. Even the winters weren’t too bad, for those tolerant of heavy snowfall, and Hemlockians resigned themselves to a partial dependence on tourists in search of peak season vacations. The Inn had always attracted travelers; as a commercial property, it proved easy to sell and less easy to manage. It had passed from hand to hand over the years. New owners bought and sold with depressing regularity, most defeated by the difficulty of targeting exactly the right customer market. The relationships among longtime residents of Hemlock Falls were so labyrinthine, it was a year before Quill realized that Marge Schmidt and Tom Peterson, Gil Gilmeister’s partner, had owned the Inn some years before. Marge had made a stab at modernizing. She installed wall-to-wall Astro-turf indoors (“Wears good,” said Marge some months after Quill removed it. “Whattaya, stupid?”) and plywood trolls in the garden.

The reception-lobby was all that remained of the original eighteenth-century Inn, and the low ceilings and leaded windows had a lot to do with Quill’s final decision to buy it. Guests were in search of an authentic historical experience, as long as it was accompanied by heated towel racks, outstanding mattresses, and her sister’s terrific food. If they could restore the Inn with the right degree of twentieth-century luxury, people would come in busloads.

Quill had stripped layers of paint and wallpaper from the plaster-and-lathe walls, replaced vinyl-backed draperies with simple valances of Scottish lace, and tore up the Astro-turf carpeting. The sisters had refinished the floors and wainscoting to a honeyed pine, and landscaped the grounds.

The leaded windows in the lobby framed a view of the long sweep of lawn and gardens to the lip of Hemlock Gorge. Creamy wool rugs, overwoven in florals of peach, celadon, taupe, and sky blue, lightened the effect of the low ceiling. Two massive Japanese urns flanked the reception desk where Dina Muir checked guests in. Mike the groundskeeper filled the urns every other morning with flowers from the Inn’s extensive perennial gardens. As usual this early in July, they held Queen Elizabeth roses, Oriental lilies of gold, peach, and white, and spars of purple heather.

The lobby was welcoming and peaceful. Quill smiled at Dina, the daytime receptionist, and raised an inquiring eyebrow. Dina made an expressive face, and jerked her head slightly in the direction of the fireplace.

An elderly woman with a fierce frown sat on the pale leather couch in front of the cobblestone hearth. A woman at least thirty years her junior stood behind the chair. The younger one had a submissive, tentative air for all the world like that anachronism, the companion. Quill’s painter’s eye registered almost automatically the lush figure behind the modestly buttoned shirtwaist. She could have used a little makeup, Quill thought, besides the slash of red lipstick she allowed herself. Something in the attitude of the two women made her revise that thought; the elder one clearly dominated her attendant and just as clearly disapproved of excess.

“I’m Sarah Quilliam,” she said, her hand extended in welcome.

“I’m Mavis Collinwood?” said the younger woman in a Southern drawl that seemed to question it. Her brown hair was lacquered like a Chinese table and back-combed into a tightly restrained knot. “Mrs. Hallenbeck doesn’t shake hands,” Mavis said, in a voice both assured and respectful. “Her arthritis is a little painful this time of year.”

Only the glaucous clouding of Mrs. Hallenbeck’s blue eyes and the gnarled hands told Quill that she must be over eighty. Her skin was smooth, shadowed by a fine net of wrinkles at eye and mouth. She sat rigidly upright, chin high to avoid the sagging of throat and jowl. Her figure was slim rather than gaunt, and Quill took in the expensive watch and the elegant Chanel suit.

Mrs. Hallenbeck fixed Quill with a basilisk glare. “I wish to speak to the owner.”

“You are,” said Quill cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”

“Our reservations were not in order.” The old lady was clearly displeased.

“I’m very sorry,” said Quill, going to the ledger. “You weren’t recorded in the book? I’ll arrange a room for you immediately.”

“We were in the book. I had requested the third-floor suite. The one overlooking the gorge, with that marvelous balcony that makes you feel as though you were flying.” She paused, and the clouded blue eyes teared up a little. “My husband and I stayed here, years ago. I am retracing our days together.”

Quill’s look expressed sympathy.

“That girl of yours. She put us into two rooms on the second floor. It overlooks the back lawn. It is not a suite. It is not what I require. I demanded to see the owner, and John Raintree said that these arrangements had been made and could not be changed.”

“Let me see what we can do.” Quill checked the booking:
Hallenbeck, Amelia, and Collinwood, Mavis.
The reservation had been made three months ago, by one of the gilt-edged travel agencies in South Carolina. Paid for in advance with an American Express Gold card. There it was:
Requested Suite
312–314. And just as clearly marked in John’s handwriting were their current rooms:
Confirmed 101 and 104.
“Did Mr. Raintree say anything at all about why the rooms were booked this way? He’s a wonderful help to us, Mrs. Hallenbeck, and rarely makes mistakes. It’s not like him to make a change like this without a reason.”