Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) (27 page)

“I need to talk to Sophie. Now.”

“Okay.” Clare looked totally bewildered.

“And you have to get hold of Davy Kiddermeister. Immediately. Find him. Give him this sketch. And swear out whatever sort of statement he needs that you know this man as Whatever Kilcannon.”

“Winston,” Clare said faintly. “Winston Kilcannon.”

“Madame will testify to his identity, too, won’t she? Davy,” Quill added, with a trace of bitterness, “has verification issues.”

“Sure.”

“It’s important, Clare. I’ve got to get Meg out of that jail cell.”

“I’m on my way.”

“As for Sophie?”

“Umm…” Clare bit her lip. “Let’s see. It’s what—nine thirty? And this is Saturday? Sorry. This has really
thrown me for a loop. Wait! I remember. She and Jim Chen went to the farmer’s market in Trumansburg to buy produce. They took the van. She ought to be back right about now. You realize, Quill, if she finds out about her father’s donation, we’ll lose it. He was adamant about that.”

But Quill was already out the door.

~

Jim Chen pulled into the employee parking lot just as Quill came out of the kitchen. Like everything else associated with Bonne Goute, the van was top of the line. The academy’s logo was picked out in gold on both sides. Sophie waved hello from the passenger’s side and bounced out onto the pavement to greet her. Her silver blond hair was caught up in a ponytail. She wore shorts and a T-shirt that read:
Fast Freight
.

“Quill! I was just devastated to hear about Meg. I left a call for you this morning. If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”

“You bet there’s something you can do,” Quill said tightly. “You can tell Lieutenant Harker what you told me about Linda Connelly.”

“Linda Connelly?” Sophie’s blue eyes looked innocently into hers. “That’s the event organizer that was murdered a couple of days ago?”

“You know very well who she is.”

Sophie shrugged helplessly. “Um. Sorry, I don’t know anything more about her than anyone else.”

Quill rarely lost her temper, primarily because she was of an equitable disposition. She was close to losing it now.
“That is
not
going to work. Marge was there. She heard you. I heard you. You told both of use that Linda Connelly is really a Russian agent. Her name is Natalia Petroskova. Or was. I’ve already started an…an…inquiry into her background.”

Sophie’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Along with everyone else here, I’d be darned shocked if a Russian agent turned up in Hemlock Falls. But if there’s anything to it, surely your inquiry will get results. Don’t you think?”

Quill was good at body language. Better than most. She was suddenly certain that Sophie knew all about Myles and his work for the government. “I can see that you don’t want to get involved, Sophie. But too bad. My sister’s in jail for murder. I’m not going to let her sit there a minute longer, do you hear me?”

“I’m positive she didn’t murder anybody,” Sophie said earnestly. “And I’m really, really sorry, but I’ve got to help Jim unload these veggies.” She turned, and Quill grabbed her shoulder. There was a lot of muscle under the T-shirt. Sophie gently removed Quill’s hand. “Look,” she said. “Everything’s going to be just fine. Please don’t worry.”

“Don’t you tell me not to worry. How do I know you’re not part of this whole conspiracy, too? It’s a little too coincidental that your father buys you a job here at the academy…”

“My father
what
?!” Sophie’s eyes blazed. She clenched her fists.

Quill took two steps back. “Your father set up a scholarship fund with Madame in exchange for your job as a chef here. Of course you know all about it. Clare just identified him, and she’s headed on over to the sheriff’s
office to tell them. He’s right here in Hemlock Falls.” She was aware, on some level, that a small circle of people had gathered around the van. Jim Chen, Raleigh Brewster, and Pietro Giancava had the look of spectators at a train wreck.

“My father…” Sophie stood as if struck by an awful blow. “My father. How do you know about my father? You mean he bribed Madame to let me have this job?” Two tears rolled down her cheeks. “Well, dammit all. Dammit all. I knew it was too good to be true.”

“I didn’t know until Clare told me.” Quill took a deep breath. She felt awful. She shot a daggerlike glance at the rubberneckers and pulled Sophie across the lot, out of earshot. “If you’re involved in whatever criminal conspiracy is going on here, you’d better tell me now. Davy’s well aware of what’s been going on, and Clare and Madame’s statements are all he’s going to need to arrest your father. It’s pretty clear he didn’t kill Mickey Greer, but Linda Connelly’s another matter.”

“Daddy? Daddy didn’t kill Linda Connelly. But I just might kill
him.
Oh, I am so humiliated!” Sophie drew the backs of her hands across her wet cheeks. Quill dug into her skirt pocket and handed her a tissue. Sophie blew her nose.

Quill bit back the nasty comment she wanted to make—this is not all about you!—and said instead, “You’re humiliated. I’m sorry. My sister’s in jail. I want her out. Let’s get your things together and go see the sheriff.”

“Hang on.” Sophie dug into the pocket of her shorts for her cell phone, her face flushed. She speed dialed a number.

“It’s me, Daddy,” she said. “I found out what you did. About getting me the job here. I am so royally pissed I can’t believe it.” She held the phone away from her ear. George McIntyre, or Winston Kilcannon or whatever his name was, sounded distressed, but not overly so.

She held the phone close to her ear and listened for several long seconds. Then she said, “You realize Meg Quilliam’s in jail because of all of this.” Then, after several minutes, she exploded, with a violent, negative shake of her head, “I’m not doin’ it. I told you that in Miami, and I’m telling you now!”

She flipped the phone shut, stamped around three times in a circle, then opened the phone up again. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it. But I swear to God and the Twelve Apostles that this is the last freakin’ time. Where did you say it was? All right. All right. Got it. I’ll get my gear. I don’t drive, you know, so you’ll have to…what? Quill? She’s right here. She might, but that’s a big maybe. She is madder at you than I am. She wants her sister out of jail and so do I.” Sophie held the phone away from her ear and looked beseechingly at Quill. “Can you drive me and the van somewhere right now?”

Quill had never been a fan of the Gothic heroines who persisted in going into the basement all by their virginal selves. “If the sheriff comes, too.”

“Did you hear that Daddy? Okay. Fine. Oh, and by the way? Thanks for screwing up my life! Again!” She shut the phone off and shoved it back in her pocket. “Okay. I’m ready. I’ve got to go get my stuff. And you want a cop along with us? That’s fine. You make whatever call you have to make, and meet me at my apartment.”

“What stuff are you getting? Where are we going?”

“My scuba gear. We’re going to Seneca Lake to retrieve the gun that shot Mickey Greer and Linda Connelly. Daddy’s got a pretty good idea of where it went. I just hope I can find it.”

It took longer to get to Seneca Lake than it should have, in Quill’s opinion, but that was mostly her own fault. She wasn’t about to get in a van alone with Sophie Kilcannon, who might be part of some terrorist conspiracy that had resulted in the death of two people. First, she couldn’t reach Davy, who was in hot pursuit of George/Winston whomever.

When she did reach Davy, he informed her with some degree of asperity that George McIntyre/Winston Kilcannon was really an FBI agent Franklin Ruiz, who had the credentials to prove it, and to wait right there until he could accompany Sophie and Quill to Seneca Lake, himself. He hung up before Quill could tell him that McIntyre/Kilcannon/Ruiz was CIA, not FBI.

Whatever.

Confident that Sophie was at least, nominally, on the side of the good guys, she walked over to Sophie’s apartment and knocked on the door.

Sophie opened it almost immediately. Quill could see that she’d been crying.

“The sheriff says your father’s credentials check out.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “As an agent maybe. His, like, paternal credentials suck big-time.”

“The sheriff asked us to wait for him.”

“Just as well. Better to have an official witness if I can find the darn gun.” She stepped back. “Come on in.”

The living room was much the same as before, except for the pile of scuba gear heaped in the middle of the floor.

“You want anything to drink? Some wine, maybe?” She looked sympathetically at Quill. “You look like you could use it.”

“I’d rather get some information.”

“It’d be better if it came from Daddy.”

“Just in a general way,” Quill said. “I guess secrecy’s important in some types of government work but unless lives are at stake, I think secrecy is a bad idea.”

“You and me, both.” Sophie flung herself on the sofa, stretched out her long legs, and put her hands behind her head. “And lives aren’t at stake in this thing, or shouldn’t have been. And anyhow, Daddy thinks Major McHale is a pretty decent guy. And my personal opinion is that we owe you one, because of poor Meg. It’s fair to warn you that I won’t volunteer any information, but I’ll answer questions I can. So ask away.”

“What does Myles have to do with this?”

“Not a thing. Except in the intelligence community, people tend to be pretty tight.”

“Who killed Mickey Greer?”

“Brady Beale, most likely. We’ll know for sure if I can find the gun.”

“Did Brady kill Linda Connelly, too?”

“Probably. We’ll know for sure…”

“…If you can find the gun. Why? Why did
anybody
get killed?”

“Because Brady Beale is a stupid idiot. His grandfather worked at the underwater weapons depot during World War Two and talked a lot about the weapons that
got dumped there. It’s a deep lake, you know. Close to nine hundred feet at the deepest part. You could plunk the Eiffel Tower in there and just a little bit of the top would poke out.”

“Sophie, please.”

“Sure, no problem. Anyhow, Beale got convinced there was an atomic warhead down there. He’s a diver, and he spent a lot of time looking around for stuff and finally found an old submarine.”

“An atomic warhead? In Seneca Lake?”

“It’s not totally bogus. The Manhattan Project had been underway since 1940, and they were working on all kinds of methods of delivery. So it’s possible, as opposed to probable. Anyhow, as we all know, atomic weapons mean plutonium and plutonium is worth a lot of money.

“As near as Daddy can figure out, Brady met up with the Russians at this international car show in Miami and boasted about how he could sell them a pile of plutonium. It’s illegal to sell it here, of course, and naturally, it belongs to the navy anyway.”

“Naturally,” Quill said, fascinated.

“So Natalia shows up with Mickey the Muscle. It looks like Brady and Natalia couldn’t come to an agreement—she’s got quite a reputation as a double-crosser, or did. So ‘boom’ (Sophie mimed a gun blast with both hands) Natalia gets killed, and then ‘boom’ Brady meets Mickey at the lake and they quarrel and Brady shoots Mickey and throws the gun in the lake. Like I said, stupid.”

“But. Natalia shows up with Mickey? Just like that? And why did Brady have those pictures of you on his laptop? How do you know all this?”

“Daddy taped it on his cell phone. Brady’s fight with Greer, that is, and his pitching the gun. That’s how come he thinks I’ll be able to find that darn gun in the middle of the deepest lake in the entire northeast. Otherwise, I’d be diving for weeks.”

There was a fusillade of knocks on the door

“That’ll be the sheriff?” Sophie asked. “I’d appreciate it if you’d do me a favor. There’s no reason you should, except that I’m going to judge that pie contest for you even though it’s a suicide mission that rates right up there with an assignment in Afghanistan.”

“Quill? Are you in there?” Davy rattled the doorknob. His voice was ratcheted up a couple of notches with tension.

“Yes, Davy.” Quill opened the door.

Davy shouldered past her into the room, his hand on his gun. “You all right?”

“I’m fine. Just fine. I’d like you to meet Sophie Kilcannon. She’s going to save Meg.”

He looked up at her, and nodded curtly. “Agent Kilcannon.”

“I’m not an agent,” Sophie said desperately. “I’m a chef. I never was an agent. I’ve just had to step into a few things because of my father. But I’m not, not,
not
an agent with the CIA.”

Davy’s cheeks flamed red. “I thought your father was with the FBI.”

Sophie threw her hands up. “Whatever. Look. Did you get the transmission of the murder?”

“Yeah, I got that.”

Quill knew better than to grab him by the arm, but she
stepped in front of Sophie and looked Davy directly in the eye. “And did you send it on to Harker?”

“I did better than that. Or rather, George whatever-the-hell-his-real-name-is did better than that. He called in a few favors. Meg will be released from police custody sometime this afternoon. If Agent Kilcannon finds the gun, all of the charges will be dropped.”

“Chef,” Sophie muttered. “I’m a chef.”

Quill handed the air tanks to Sophie and picked up the face mask and the wet suit. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Davy’s cheeks flamed again. He was out of his depth, Quill saw, and not happy at all. “Just hang on a second, Quill. I don’t like this. I don’t really understand what the hell is going on.”

“Why don’t you follow us in the cruiser? As soon as we get that gun and Meg’s free, Sophie can explain everything.” She nudged both of them out the door. “Let’s move.”

~

“You
can
explain everything, can’t you?” Quill pulled out onto the highway. Dresden was less than ten miles away on the cross highway between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. They could be there in five minutes if the road was clear.

Sophie stared glumly out the window. “Sure. I got set up. That explains it all in a nutshell. My father’s a careful guy. He needed an extra agent in place and he knew I didn’t want to do this anymore and he also knew I wouldn’t let him down if he really needed me so he, what, arranged to
bribe
Clare Sparrow to take me on here. I suppose if things hadn’t gone flooey with the operation, I’d
still be barreling along happy as Larry thinking I’d been hired because I’m a damn good cook.”