Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) (10 page)

Dookie looked up from his egg. “The mayor is referring to Sheriff McHale. Who is no longer sheriff but an antiterrorism agent. Memories are long in the country, Mrs. Quince, and many of us here view McHale as the sheriff qua sheriff, so to speak, even though he is serving his country in a much larger way at the moment. So he is, and always will be, the Sheriff. Sheriff McHale married Quill, after a long and affectionate courtship. He is a good man and naturally enough, he is concerned about Quill’s unofficial forays into detection, both as an upholder of law and order and as a loving husband. That said, I must admit that as amateur sleuths go, the village has a healthy respect for Quill’s abilities as a detective. She is quite gifted in that regard.”

Quill opened her mouth, couldn’t think of anything to say, and closed it again.

“I see. At least I sort of see.” Althea hesitated. “I thought you were a famous artist.”

“She is,” Elmer said proudly.

“I thought you retired to the country to run this Inn.”

“She did,” Dookie said, just as proudly. “Partly, we surmise, to offer a diversion to her younger sister, who had been tragically widowed. But also because the burden of increasing fame in the arts was onerous for her.”

Small towns! Quill thought furiously. I suppose everybody knows how much I weigh, too.

“And you’re an investigator, too?” Althea fanned herself with her napkin. Her bracelets clanked. “Good heavens.”

Elmer rapped the table impatiently. “Y’all need to get back to the point here. I want my wife back. I want my life back. So, Quill, can I hire you to get to the bottom of this fiasco?”

Quill glanced at Althea and away again. “Sure.”

Elmer tucked his napkin back into his collar. “You wouldn’t think of taking a fee, I’m sure of that.”

“No, indeed,” Quill said. “You can hire me for free.”

“So when can you start?”

Quill blinked at him. “Right now, I guess. I’d like to talk to Adela first, if you don’t mind. Do you know where I can find her?”

Elmer stared gloomily at his eggs. “At our house, I guess. If she’s not at the lawyer’s office. She won’t answer her phone, and she’s bolted all the doors from the inside, so I guess she’s there.”

Quill wanted to ask where Elmer had spent the night but didn’t dare.

“I’ve been putting up at Harland Peterson’s. They got that big old farmhouse and all his kids are grown so Marge said why not?”

Quill took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Then we’ll wrap up here and I’ll drop by and see her as soon as we’re finished.”

Elmer and Adela lived in a small, ferociously neat two-story house off Maple. Quill parked on the street and sat for a moment. The drapes were drawn. The morning paper sat on the porch. The house had an abandoned air. If the Hemlock Dairy still delivered milk, Quill was willing to bet the bottles would still be out and spoiling in the hot August sun. She had a sudden vision of a crowd of villagers picketing outside the waist-high wrought-iron fence yelling “Thief!” led by a gun-toting Carol Ann.

When Myles was away, at night she fell asleep to the television; as she walked up the trim brick pathway, horrific scenes from reruns of late-night crime shows kept nudging at her. Adela would be just fine. There wouldn’t be a bloody corpse on the living room floor. Nobody would be hanging from the shower rod. This was Hemlock Falls. Stuff like that didn’t happen here. At least not very often.

The front door was painted teal blue, to match the shutters. She pressed the doorbell, and didn’t hear anything, but Adela opened the front door almost immediately.

“Quill.”

“Adela.”

Adela liked pantsuits, the more colorful the better. The one she wore this morning was a cheerful yellow. She’d matched it with a flowered blouse—the blossoms resembled poppies—and coral earrings.

“May I come in?”

Adela stood taller and peered over Quill’s shoulder. “You’re alone? That man has been setting siege to the place.”

“Quite alone,” Quill said gravely. “Elmer’s back at the Inn. I’ve just come from a meeting of the fete committee.”

Adela looked pleased. “I thought one of you might be along this morning. Come back through to the kitchen. I’ll make a pot of tea. Oh! Good heavens. They finally delivered the paper.” She bent down and picked it up.

Quill followed her through the foyer, past the living room, and into the Henrys’ small eat-in kitchen. The round oak table showed the remains of a substantial breakfast. Adela gathered up her plate, rinsed it, put it in the dishwasher, and gestured. “Please sit down. Do you have a preference in teas? I have Earl Grey and a very nice herbal tea with hibiscus flowers.”

“The Earl Grey will be fine. Thanks.” Quill dropped her tote on the floor and sat down. Adela put the kettle on to boil and sat across from her. “I’ve been meaning to ask how the booths for our Furry Friends are coming along.”

For a moment, Quill went completely blank. “The booths, yes. I went to Syracuse yesterday and checked out the crates. They’ll be delivered two days before the fete opens so we’ll have time to set up. As far as the entries go, we have…” Quill fumbled in her pocket for her sketch
pad. “Let’s see. Sixteen cats in the Purrfect Pet division. Twenty dogs in the Man’s Best Friend division. Three chickens, four hamsters, one snake, and eight birds in the Exotic Expressions division. So I ordered the appropriate sizes for the crates. And a lot of wood shavings, too.”

Adela coughed delicately. “And the manure disposal?”

“Up to the exhibitor,” Quill said briskly, since she hadn’t thought about manure disposal at all. “That’s not why I’m here. Adela, we have to talk.”

Adela nodded regally and steepled her hands. “Indeed we do. I take it you have come from the Chamber with an offer of a sincere apology. I have considered carefully what my response should be. First, I will accept it, as long as it is in writing. Second, I will resume my duties as chair of the fete committee if, and only if, that person is refused admittance to any Chamber of Commerce meetings now and in the future.” She moved the sugar bowl, which was a small ceramic teddy bear, to one side of the table and back again.

“You mean Carol Ann.”

“Who else?” Adela snorted. “She should be grateful I haven’t demanded she be run out of town.” She repositioned the creamer—a ceramic cow with a spout for a muzzle. “You don’t think this sounds too much like blackmail?”

“Blackmail?”

“The fete is in two weeks. It means a great deal to this town. I would not like to force a cancellation.”

Adela’s calm was eerie. Quill’s uneasiness grew. Carol Ann’s demonstration had been all over the late-night news. Everyone in town was looking for Adela, including
all six members of the sheriff’s department. Maybe Adela had totally flipped out.

“Yesterday was stressful for all of us,” Quill began.

“P’ah! After all these years, Sarah Quilliam, I know how to handle stress. After that insulting scene at the Chamber meeting, I went straight into Syracuse. I had a massage. I went to the Pyramid Mall.” She smoothed the knees of her yellow pants. “Then I met my sister for dinner to counsel her about a problem she’s having with her eldest grandson.”

“You must have gotten home very late,” Quill ventured. “Didn’t you have a lot of messages waiting for you?”

“P’ah!” Adela repeated. “All of them from that man, I’m sure.” She waved at the landline. The red message button blinked furiously. “He banged on the door repeatedly last night, too. I ignored him. I suppose many of the messages were from the Chamber members, offering apologies, but as you know, I prefer to deal with people face-to-face. I’ll get around to listening to the phone messages later.” She frowned. “I’m quite disappointed that you are the sole emissary. A delegation would have been appropriate, I think. As I say, under the right circumstances, I could be persuaded to return.”

Quill decided that it was better to rip the bandage off fast. “The committee’s talking about bringing in a professional organizer.”

Adela’s face fell. “I see.” She cleared her throat. “I wish him luck. I doubt that he’ll be up to the challenge. I doubt anyone else could do it. But I wish him luck.”

The kettle began to whistle. Adela didn’t seem to hear
it, so Quill got up and turned the gas cooktop off and poured the hot water into the teapot. “It’s a her, actually. Someone named Linda Connelly, from Syracuse. Elm…that is, the committee’s talking to her this morning.” This was a lot easier with her back to Adela, so Quill forced herself to come back and reseat herself at the table. “There’s more, Adela, and it’s unpleasant, so I want you to be prepared.”

Adela bit her lip. She folded her hands in her lap, which for some reason made Quill feel even worse than she felt already. “First, I want you to know I admire you a great deal. I believe in you, too. So does everyone at the Inn, and Marge and Miriam—there are a great many of us.”

“I have always had my supporters.”

“Yes, you have,” Quill said warmly. “Sometimes that isn’t enough. There’s going to be an investigation into the missing money, of course. I know you’ve probably anticipated that…”

“The what?”

“The money missing from the fete account.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Davy hasn’t talked to you?”

“Davy Kiddermeister? That youngster that took Myles’s job? Talked to me about what?”

“No one’s called you?”

“I told you. That man attempted to call, of course. When I arrived home last night, I took the phone off the hook. I haven’t come to a final decision, but you may inform that man if you happen to see him, that I have consulted the finest divorce lawyer in the state. I will need
more than a written or spoken apology from him. He will have to
crawl
.”

Quill wasn’t listening. Davy must have run into a delay getting a warrant to investigate the checking account. Which meant he would be at the Henrys’ home any minute. She ran her hands through her hair and tugged at it. “How much money is in the account right now?”

“One hundred and eighty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-six dollars.”

“No. There isn’t. One hundred and eighty-six thousand is missing.”

Adela turned perfectly white.

Quill dug her nails into her palms and went on. “Elmer’s asked me to look into this, and I’m happy to do what I can.”

“Where’s the money?”

“We don’t know yet. The bank has checked their records, and they say the problem isn’t on their end. Marge has hired an expert to support the investigation. She doesn’t seem to think much of Mark Anthony’s fraud unit…”

“Fraud unit?”

“Look. All we need to do is sit down and figure out who could have had access to the checking account. Other than the committee members, I mean.”

“Somebody stole that money? It was for the literacy fund!”

“Maybe it isn’t stolen. Let’s just say we don’t know where it is at the moment.”

“A banking error. It has to be. I don’t trust that little teller Andrea Peterson. She’s careless, very careless. Perhaps she put my deposits into another account.”

“Mark Anthony is checking into that, too.”

“Or those computers! Something is always going wrong with those computers!”

“The investigators will find out, if that’s what happened. You know how good Marge’s people are.”

“Investigators!” Adela’s eyes were wild. “There’s an investigation?” She began to breathe in a big, gaspy way that alarmed Quill a lot. “Excuse me, I…” Adela got to her feet. “The doorbell. There’s someone at the doorbell. It’s Elmer, undoubtedly.” She compressed in a tight, white line. “That fool.”

Quill followed her to the front of the house feeling utterly helpless. Adela paused a moment at the front door, adjusted her earrings, smoothed her jacket over her hips, and put her shoulders back.

She opened the door to Davy Kiddermeister, dressed in his uniform and carrying a warrant.

She fainted at Quill’s feet.

“So where is Adela now?” Marge asked. “In the hospital, or what?”

Marge and Quill sat in the All-American Diner (Fine Food! And Fast!), one of Marge’s many holdings in Tompkins County. Meg claimed that Marge’s diner partner, Betty Hall, made the best diner food in the northeastern United States. With the increasing popularity of the village as a tourist destination, Marge had redecorated. Instead of vinyl, the restaurant now had pale oak floors, and captain’s chairs replaced the old vinyl stools at the counter. The sticky plastic menu was replaced by a chalkboard. Quill was glad the food hadn’t changed. She felt like everything else in her universe was upside down.