Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) (15 page)

Nolan looked at Quill. Meg gave her ankle a sharp kick under the table. Quill, who was thinking that the best place for a crook who didn’t want to be discovered was in the middle of the investigation, said, “Sure.” Then, after a long moment, she added, “I mean, I can use all the help I can get.”

“Partners in the pursuit of crime, then! Hurrah! I love it!” Beaming, she swallowed the last of her coffee and said, “So. What shall we do next?”

“Hm. As far as what next…well, did you discover anything suspicious at the Citizens for Justice meeting?”

“Just that Betty Hall is undercover, too. This village,” Althea continued sunnily, “is chock-full of undercover agents.”

“Oh.” Quill didn’t look at her sister, who was two seconds away from falling off her chair from laughter. “Yes. Well. Marge thought that maybe…”

Althea beamed at Meg. “It
is
amusing, when you think about it, Meg. I couldn’t agree with you more. Everyone running around playing detective? It’d be useful if we could all get together, don’t you think? Pool our resources? Perhaps we should add Betty Hall to Detection Unlimited, too.”

“Oh, dear.” Meg rubbed her napkin over her face and tossed it on the table. “Althea, I’m really glad you are on board with Undercover Bosses, or whatever you guys are going to call yourselves. It takes me off the hook and I can get back to my kitchen.” She patted Quill on the back. “Go get ’em, Sherlock.” She paused, halfway through the swinging doors. “So what are you going to do next?”

“There’s a meeting of the Justice people this morning at Peterson Automotive,” Quill said. “Linda Connelly is going to be there to assure herself that we aren’t going to get a raft of bad PR for the fete. Elmer thought I should go, too, to run interference.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s at noon, which is smart of Carol Ann, I guess, since it’s everyone’s lunch hour. I have to meet with the Furry Friends exhibitors in the afternoon but that shouldn’t take too long. Maybe Althea and I can sit down and make up a plan after that.”

“Over one of Meg’s superb dinners, perhaps? Excellent!” Althea said. Then, with an air of hope. “I thought perhaps I might go to the Justice meeting in disguise?”

Quill looked at Althea’s fire-red hair. “Disguise?”

“I’m going to cozy up to Carol Ann, but I don’t think
she’ll talk to me if I appear as myself. She already knows that I’m staying here at the Inn and loving it.” Althea waved her forefinger. “Mark my words. That woman knows more than she’s saying. Do you think I should get her on tape? There’s time enough for me to run out and buy a recorder at Nickerson’s Hardware. I wonder if they carry wigs.”

Quill rubbed her temples. She was getting a headache. “Sure, Althea. Whatever you think best.” The cell phone in her pocket vibrated. “Excuse me while I get this, please.” She pulled out her phone and read the text. “I’m needed in the office. Would you like to ride with me to the meeting? I can meet you back here at quarter to twelve.”

“Thank you, my dear. But undercover is undercover. I will wend my way on my own.”

Quill left Nolan and Althea with their heads together and found Dina behind the mahogany registration desk.

“You look pretty cheerful.” Dina commented. “What’s up?”

“Althea Quince would cheer up a wake.”

“So she’s off your suspect list?”

Quill shook her head. “It’s too soon to take anyone off the suspect list. But she’s slipped down a couple of notches, that’s for sure.” She chuckled at the thought of the nearly six-foot, purple-haired Althea in disguise.

“Hm. Too bad your cheeriness is doomed.”

“It is, huh. Why?”

“It’s a delegation, they said. Although is it a delegation if it’s only two people? Anyhow, it’s Harvey Bozzel and Dolly Jean Attenborough and I put them in your office since Harvey looked like he was going to burst into tears
any minute and who wants a weeping ad guy in the foyer? Bad for business.”

“Do you know what they want? It’s not about Adela, is it?”

“In a way. I think they’re, like, totally pissed off at Linda Connelly.”

Quill slipped behind the registration desk, tapped at her closed office door, and opened it. Harvey sat at one end of the couch and Dolly Jean sat at the other. Harvey looked tearful. Dolly Jean looked mad.

They demanded that the fete committee fire Linda Connelly.

“She’s rude, bossy, and cold,” Dolly Jean said indignantly. “Not that Adela, poor soul, isn’t bossy, too, but my goodness, there’s got to be a limit.”

Harvey smoothed his hair. It was blond, carefully gelled, and cut to show off his cheekbones. “There’s the expense, too. If I’d known that the village was willing to pay for a consultant, I would have pointed out that I’ve had considerable experience in running events of this sort.”

“Of course you have,” Dolly Jean said. “It’s outrageous, what the steering committee went ahead and did. Just trampled all over the expertise of our very own people without a hey-howdy to anyone else. Anyhow. That’s why we’re here. There are a lot of us who are very unhappy about this. You’re head of the steering committee. So we’ve come to you.” She fanned her cheeks with her hand, wafting a scent of lavender into the air. “You’ve got to fix this, Quill. Harvey and I have formed a
committee…Save Our Fete…and we’ve elected you to the chair.”

Quill declined the honor, figuring that would make a total of six committees she was on, and she didn’t want to be on one. She thanked Dolly Jean for her concern. She commiserated with Harvey over the fact that a contract had been signed, and the village would have to pay Linda Connelly to go away. She wondered exactly what toes Linda Connelly had stepped on, but was smart enough not to ask. “But I will,” she promised, as she coaxed Dolly Jean and Harvey to the office door, “speak to Elmer about making her a little more sensitive to village concerns.”

“You do that,” Dolly Jean said crossly. “Or somebody’s going to throw the woman right over the lip of Hemlock Gorge. Do you know what she did? No, don’t you push me out the door until I’ve finished, Sarah McHale. You sit right back down and listen to me.”

Peterson Automotive was on the outskirts of the village on Route 15, a mere fifteen minutes from the Inn. Quill, with uncharacteristic firmness, coaxed Dolly Jean and Harvey out of her office at ten minutes to twelve and got into her Honda. She put her cell phone on speaker, put the car into gear, and called Elmer.

“It’s more a matter of Linda’s style, than anything else,” Quill said, after she’d summed up the delegation’s list of vague, but loudly expressed complaints. “Harvey’s very upset that we didn’t ask him to take over the fete, so his feelings are hurt. Dolly Jean is…well.”

“Bossy,” Elmer said. “That woman’s like a bulldozer. She’s one of them that’s always right even when she’s dead flat wrong, which is most of the time. Bossy, that’s the word.”

“Linda and Dolly Jean do seem to have clashed over decision making,” Quill admitted. “The placement of the Crafty Ladies booth, in particular. Dolly Jean wants it moved closer to the entrance.”

“Hah,” Elmer scoffed. “She tries to pull that one every
year, so that she can rake in more of the tourist dollars. Adela never had any problem with her.”

Quill didn’t say that when it came to bossiness, she’d put her money on Adela any day. “Yes, well, Dolly Jean’s position is that if we hired Linda, we can fire Linda and put Harvey in her place.”

“Harvey’s a worse pushover than you are,” Elmer said. “That’s not gonna work. Here’s what I think you should do, Quill.”

Quill was getting pretty tired of hearing she was a pushover. “No. Whatever it is you think I should do, I’m not doing it.”

“All you got to do is sit down with Linda Connelly and put her in the picture.”

“She’s already in the picture.”

“Tell her not to give Dolly Jean squat.”

“You tell her. And you can tell Dolly Jean and Harvey that, too. I sent them over to you, Elmer, and I’m just calling to give you a heads-up.”

“I’m busy,” Elmer said promptly and hung up before she could hang up on him.

Quill muttered to herself, looked up, and realized that she had almost driven past Peterson Automotive.

Car dealerships were like airports, she thought as she slowed to pull into the lot. Since they were purpose-built, there wasn’t a lot to distinguish one from the other, although George Peterson, who’d owned the dealership before his death, had done his best to make his building stand out. George was fond of balloons, and there were always dozens bobbing gently around the eaves of the
sprawling one-story building. Brady—a third cousin, if Quill had her Peterson genealogy right—hadn’t seen any reason to change that. Bright globes of orange, red, purple, and green drifted above her head when she walked into the main showroom. The place smelled like new cars and hot Hemlockians.

New cars had been moved out of the way to accommodate several dozen metal folding chairs. Quill was glad to see that only about half of them were filled. Carol Ann stood near the glass-fronted offices in the back, in earnest conversation with Brady.

Quill took a seat in an empty row at the back and waited for something to happen.

Brady, arms folded, his chin sunk on his thin chest, listened attentively as Carol Ann spoke intensely into his ear. Two of his orange-suited mechanics, clearly bored, stood with their backs against the wall next to an overhead door marked service. Two women Quill recognized from the Crafty Ladies group bent over a desk and carefully inked in signs that read
JUSTICE FOR ALL
and
PUT ADELA BEHIND BARS
.

Harvey Bozzel sat slumped in a corner, biting his thumbnail. He looked up, saw Quill, and scowled. Dookie Shuttleworth and his gentle wife Kate sat quietly side by side, hands folded. Dookie saw Quill, winked, and mouthed
we’re undercover.

“All in all,” said a voice in Quill’s ear, “it doesn’t look like a real activist bunch. May I sit down?”

Quill turned slightly. “Hi, Linda.” She tried not to look as if she were looking for Mickey Greer. “Are you alone today?”

“For this? Not for long. I sent the boys out for some R and R. We just came off a pretty intense gig. But they’ll be along.”

“A wedding? The intense gig, I mean.”

“Yeah. Something like that.” She sighed.”You suppose this cockamamie demonstration is going anywhere? Or can you and I sneak out for a glass of wine? I had a run-in with a couple of your folks this morning. You’re part of the fete committee, right? So I should let you know what’s going on.”

“That’s really more Elmer’s bailiwick than mine.”

“I tried to see him this morning. He’s not taking my calls.”

She had an interesting face, Quill thought. Very strong features: decided chin, straight dark brows, and smooth olive skin. There was something a little unsettling about it.

Linda brushed at her cheeks. “I managed to grab breakfast this morning. Did I leave some of it on my face?”

“What? Oh. No.” Quill blushed slightly. “You have very interesting lines. I sketch a little, is all.”

Linda looked at her. “You sketch a little? Even I know who Quilliam was. That’s quite a compliment. Thank you. But don’t even think about it. I’d rather not have pictures of me floating around.”

Quill, stung by the past tense, subsided into confusion.

The silence stretched on and became uncomfortable. To break it, she asked, “So was the gig before this one actually a wedding? The big ones can get really intense. The last one we held at the Inn…” She trailed off. The last wedding at the Inn had ended in murder. “So,” she began again. “How do things look for the fete?”

“Fine,” Linda said shortly. “Good. It looks like something’s going to happen, here at last. Spinoza’s marching up to the front.”

“That’s probably what’s going to happen. A march, I mean. You see those signs? My guess is that Carol Ann is going to organize a demonstration down Main Street.” Then, since the enthusiasm in the room was tepid, at best, she said, “Or try to, anyway.”

“‘We Want the Truth!’” Linda read aloud. “‘Where’s Our Money! Hang the Henrys!’” She raised her eyebrows. “This is a demonstration? There’s like, twenty people here. That’s not much of a demonstration.”

“Carol Ann scares people,” Quill admitted. Then, mendaciously, “She has her good points, of course.”

“That so? Looks like a cheerleader, to me. But just in case…” She slipped her cell phone out of her tote and tapped at it.

Carol Ann bounced on her toes, clapped her hands together, and shouted, “People! People!”

The conversation in the room, desultory at best, died away completely.

“Thank you!” Carol Ann put her hands on her hips. “We are gathered here today to rip open the secrets of this town and expose the corruption…”

“Excuse me?” Linda Connelly got to her feet. She was small, but somehow, threatening. “I’d like to say something to you folks before you make decisions you might regret later on. I’m here to organize your fete. My name’s Linda Connelly. My company’s called Presentations. I had a chance to go over the numbers last night and I’m
astonished at the success the fete’s brought to this town over the years. The revenues from that week are doing a lot to keep your small businesses afloat. If you want to jeopardize that, that’s fine with me. I’m from out of town. I’ll do my job and be out of here in a couple of weeks. I don’t care. But you should. All of you. You’re dealing with an issue that’s going to attract the wrong kind of media attention. Nobody likes crooks. And these days, people
really
have it in for crooks committing crimes involving money. You guys can make a big deal of this if you want, but it’s going to cost you. Not just this year, but next year and the year after that. Get some common sense. Get real, and ditch this idea. If you don’t…” She turned her hands out, palm upward. “Makes no difference to me. But it’s going to make a lot of difference to you.” She swept her gaze around the room. To Quill’s unease, Mickey Greer and George had appeared out of nowhere. George crowded Brady against his office door. Mickey Greer had his eye on Carol Ann.