The library was on the ground floor of the Institute, past what Linda Longstreet had called the Food Gallery. Quill went down the stairs and through the archway to this area and stopped in mild astonishment. The room was square and lined with glass display cases, much like the ones at the British Museum in London. The cases were filled with food art. One shelf was devoted to creations from spun sugar-cottages, flowers, even zoo animals. The case next to that was hung with brush paintings out of cocoa. Several large montages of seashells and driftwood were on the walls unoccupied by display cases. Quill put her hand out and touched one: spun sugar, dyed with food coloring and air-hardened. The work was clearly that of students. Quill viewed all this with bemusement. She had to bring Myles to see it. The displays were the sort of thing you had to see yourself. Like Snake World and Reptile Kingdom along the Florida Turnpike. She passed up and down in front of the exhibits for some time.
"See that," said a voice from behind the wall. "You can see that, can't you?" In a fit of manners, Quill was about to turn away when she heard, "Verger. You heard me. I think he's on to the whole thing. Why else would he have bought this place? He could have put up a chicken palace six times larger than this at half the cost."
Linda Longstreet. No longer in tears, but sounding very angry.
Quill flattened herself against the wall adjacent to the door to the administrative office. Linda's office was on the other side of the wall containing the sugared seashell exhibit. Quill peered around the archway to the corridor. Linda's office door was closed. From this position, Quill couldn't hear a thing. She walked softly back to the point where she'd first heard Linda's voice. By some trick of construction (or, Quill thought, misconstruction) her voice was clearer than ever. She was weeping. There was a soft murmur of a reply, then Linda sobbed, "I'd like to kill him. Just kill him! And you would, too, I know it!" The second voice again, in cadences of agreement. And behind Quill, in the hall leading to the stairs, the shuffling of feet. Meg's class must be out. Quill stepped back in apparent contemplation of a particularly vibrantly colored blue bird, then turned and smiled as the students from Meg's class in potted hare came flooding through the gallery on the way to Le Nozze. After the morning session, Meg was scheduled to create a working lunch for the students in the Le Nozze kitchens. They clattered through the hallway past Linda's door. Quill followed them; as she passed Linda's office the door opened, and Dr. Bob Bittern, head of Excelsior, came into the hall. He saw Quill, stopped, and folded his hands reprovingly. "Ms. Quilliam. May I speak to you a moment?"
Quill felt herself blush. He couldn't have known she was eavesdropping. He took her arm and drew her back through the gallery.
"I would like to ask you to speak to Mr. Taylor on behalf of Ms. Longstreet."
"Me?"
"She's in quite a bad state. Quite." Quill wondered if this was a psychiatric diagnosis: "quite a bad state."
"She is in desperate need of employment?" His voice rose at the end of the sentence, as though he were asking a question. "And if she is not reassured that she has a place in this new business, I cannot answer for what she may do next. She is a qualified accountant, you know."
The lights in the gallery flickered off. For a moment, Quill and Dr. Bittern were in almost total darkness. Except for the gleam of his white hair, Quill couldn't see a thing. She imagined Meg's curses floating through the air, the refrigerated units losing power. She didn't like Verger Taylor's business methods, but she had to agree that Linda was not a particularly efficient manager. "There isn't a thing I can do, Dr. Bittern. And I'd like to find my way out to the light. I need to speak to my sister."
"Come this way." His hand was soft on her bare arm. He drew her through the hall and out into the sunlit expanse of the area next to the stairs. The darkness behind them winked into light. "There we are. Light is restored. Now it would be quite neat, would it not, if you could restore some light to Ms. Longstreet."
"I'd love to help," Quill said, "but I honestly don't know what I could do. I'm not even sure how I've gotten into this position..." She trailed off. He looked at her attentively and didn't respond. It was an extremely effective tactic - before she realized it, Quill blurted, "I don't even want to be here. I don't know why Verger Taylor asked me to tell all those people they were going to lose their jobs. I mean, he came in and did it himself, anyway, didn't he? So it's clear he doesn't think any better of me than he does anyone else. I don't have any influence with him at all, really. I don't want to have any influence. I'm very, very sorry for Linda..."
"She is in a desperate way," he repeated.
"Surely there must be some other accounting jobs she can find, Dr. Bittern. Perhaps if we called an employment agency, a job would turn up. Accounting skills are some of the best to have. All businesses need bookkeepers."
He looked at her gravely. "You haven't spent much time here, in this state, that is clear. Linda could find a job, that is true. But it would pay - if she were lucky - a little above minimum wage. She doesn't have a degree, you see, only experience. She has two children and a great many bills to pay. The economy of this state is most peculiar. While jobs are plentiful, they are jobs at low wages. A great many of our senior citizens - myself among them - prefer to work part time. This keeps the competitive salary rate low. And yet, the cost of living here is quite high, again as a result of you northerners. Linda can't afford grocery money - much less housing for her family - on what she could earn at a bookkeeping job here in Palm Beach County."
"I'll speak to Mr. Taylor," said Quill reluctantly. "Although..."
"Speak to that son of a bitch," Tiffany snarled, coming down the stairs. "Why in the hell would you speak to that son of a bitch?" She reached the foot of the stairs and stretched out her hands to the psychiatrist. "Dr. Bob! Dr. Bob," she wailed. "He's wrecked everything. I knew it. I just knew it."
"He only has the power you give him," Dr. Bittern said, with what Quill thought was a remarkable lack of sense. Verger Taylor seemed to have more power than the nine justices of the Supreme Court put together. "Excelsior will survive. I have a small building for sale right off of the main boulevard on Singer Island. There is a marvelous view of the ocean, and the quiet will be perfect for our clients."
"How in the world am I going to afford that?" Tiffany demanded. She'd shed her protective apron. Her. outfit today consisted of yet another tightly fitted jacket. flared at the hips, and a short skirt. The predominant colors were black and yellow. Like a giant, discontented bee, she walked agitatedly around Quill, then into the Food Gallery. She walked along the walls, tapping restlessly at the glass enclosed exhibits with her sharp red nails. Dr. Bittern followed her - and, as if drawn by a psychic magnet, Quill followed them both. "You don't understand. I've got to abandon my precious Excelsior altogether. Verger's cut off all the funding. All of it."
Dr. Bittern's precise diction dropped away. "What do you mean? Your settlement is more than enough to carry the costs of running the Excelsior."
Tiffany's bright blue eyes avoided his. "There's this little villa in Cannes. Right next to the center of the village. I must have it, Dr. Bob. You understand, don't you? The sea air, the breezes, the vitality of the film festival in March of every year. This will be far, far better for my frame of mind than the clinic." She stopped in front of a butter sculpture of a cow. "You understand, darling Dr. Bob."
"So he's bribed you, too," Dr. Bittern snapped. The lights flickered for a second time that day, once, twice, and then out. Quill could hear his harsh breathing in the dark. He said, "Someone, at some time, is going to give that bastard his just desserts."
A shadow darkened the archway leading to the stairs. Quill heard the snap of gum. "You folks okay in here?"
Franklin Carmichael stood aside and beckoned them back toward the light. "Come on out. I'm afraid that this particular outage is permanent. Verger sent me back here to see if I could straighten things out. It's not precisely within my duties as his attorney... but, there you are."
"Mr. Carmichael?" Quill said. "Dr. Bittern and I were both wondering if you could see your way clear to help Linda keep her job."
Franklin took out his gum, folded it carefully in the little foil packet from which he'd originally taken it, and sighed. "Look, Dr. Bittern, Miss Quilliam. Come to the window here." He beckoned with one finger. Quill and the psychiatrist went to the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. A large window looked out over the parking lot. "See that truck there? That fellow's delivering three gross of paper napkins; several hundred boxes of plastic knives, forks, and spoons; and a couple gross of plastic cups. To a gourmet facility. The picnic supply company's owned by Mrs. Longstreet's cousin. Now, see that electric truck pulling out of the driveway? That's her brother, Curtis. He's the one who's been doing the electrical work on the building up until now. If you check the food stores and the inventory, you'll find a lot of items this institute wouldn't use in a million years. If you check the bills for electrical repair, you'll find a lot of money going out and very little work to show for it. Are you getting the picture here?"
"But do you know for sure that Linda's intent is criminal?" Quill protested. "I mean, I do the inventory ordering for my sister, and you'd be amazed at the weird things you have to have on hand."
"Two gross of canning jars?"
"Well, maybe, yes. That's a lot of jars, but..."
"Two hundred and eighty-eight, to be precise. Priced at four dollars each. And how many classes in canning? None. Zero. Zip. As Chef Jean Paul so elegantly put it when I questioned him - zis is not ze Betty Crock. And what about one gross of Doritos? Three cartons of Miracle Whip? Skippy peanut butter, Rice Krispies Treats, Stove Top stuffing... I don't need to go on, do I? And what have we got to show for forty thousand dollars' worth of electrician's bills this year? As you see..." He waved one hand at the dark room behind them. "She's been earning a lot more than her salary here, Miss Quilliam. Give Linda Longstreet her job back? I don't think so. At least Verger isn't going to prosecute. I talked him out of that."
"Next stop, drinks and bridge with Cressida Houghton," Meg said. She tossed her tote in the comer of the leather couch in the condo's living room and the Bloomingdale's shopping bag after that. She sat down with a sigh. "What a day. I tell you, Quill. Everything seemed to be going well this morning. Do you know who was; in my class?" She grinned. "Not only Cressida - she asked me to call her Cressida, by the way - but that; actress, Ellen Kale? It was hard to recognize her without all her makeup and stuff. She says she hates being recognized on the street. Those two, plus a couple of women whose net worth could buy a small African country. You know who else came in, after you left? Ernst Kolsacker and Franklin Carmichael. No kidding. Turns out they're avid amateurs. And Ernst was a hoot."
"Until the lights went out."
"Yep. It's going to last a couple of days - so its phhhtt to the cooking classes. But the banquet's still on. This is a great vacation, Quill. Can you believe we had time to go shopping?" She poked at the Bloomingdale's bag with her toe. "What a place Florida is, Quill. I mean, the weather's fantastic. Just fantastic. But did you see those bumper stickers in the parking lot at the mall?"
"The one that said, 'When I get old and sick I'm going to move up north and drive real slow'? Yeah."
"Or how's about my favorite: 'Florida. We love it You leave it.' "
Quill went to the French doors and opened them to the sea breezes. "There's a lot of hostility here."
"I'll say. I wanted to disguise myself as a native. Lie and tell people in a cracker accent that I was born in Okeechobee. And they shoot tourists in Miami."
"I didn't mean that sort of hostility. I meant all the hostility toward Verger Taylor."
"That's nothing new. I think the guy thrives on it."
"Do you know how many people want to get rid of him?"
"Well, Tiffany, for one."
"And Dr. Bittern. And poor Chef Jean Paul. And I overheard Linda Longstreet threatening his life."
"Linda Longstreet? She couldn't threaten a moth with a flyswatter."
"I'm not so sure." Quill curled up in the chair across from her sister. She pulled reflectively at her lip.
Meg lowered her head, raised her eyebrows, and said, "No."
"No, what?"
"I recognize that lip-pulling. It's your investigative detective mode. No corpses. We left all the corpses behind in HeinIock Falls. This stuff is just nice nasty group dynamics."
"I'm not so sure, Meg. If anyone's ever ripe for murder, it's Verger Taylor."
"You said Myles and Doreen are coming in Thursday morning, right?"
"Yes. And I'm sorry Andy's not going to make it. But why did you bring that up now? We've got a nice little murder shaping up here, Meg. I can feel it."
"When Myles and Doreen show up, you'll be too busy to think up reasons why someone is going to murder Verger Taylor."
Quill regarded her curiously. "You aren't sorry that Andy's not coming with Doreen and Myles?"
"Well, I miss him, of course. But I'm worried about the marinade. And you know what happens just before 1 have to cook big. I get a bit worked up."
"And you have to cook really, really big this time." Quill smiled. "How's the marinade going?"
"I'll know tomorrow."
"Did you bring the stuff back here with you?"
"Of course not! I'll just have to take a flashlight into the Institute. It's a good thing they have all those windows. The hares are hanging in the bread closet, because that's the airiest, driest place, and the marinade's in there, too. To tell the truth, I'm a little worried. The climate's different here, Quill. The air pressure and everything. That affects cooking. You can't tell me it doesn't. I'm afraid it's going to throw the timing off. What do you think?"
"I think that odd clock in the kitchen says a quarter past five and that we should get ready to visit Cressida Houghton."
"How long does it take to get there?"
"An hour. And I'm going to wear that new lime-green cotton dress I bought this afternoon."
"Does it take an hour by cab?" Meg asked suspiciously.
"No, Meg. By borrowed Mercedes. I looked it up on the map."