Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) (22 page)

“This tape with his password on it has been peeled off from somewhere else. I’ll bet Althea found it under a desk drawer or something. We need so many passwords to
function these days, I do it, too. Write them down and put them somewhere in my office.”

“You’re not going to win any awards for smart, either.” Marge went straight to the site history and began to scroll down. “‘Hot Chicks in Cool Coops,’” she read aloud. “‘Wild, Wet Women.’” She made a face. “Jeez. And I buy cars from this guy? I’m going to switch over to his e-mail account. What do you think? Should I try ‘old’ or ‘sent’? I’ll try sent. Aha. Ah-
ha
!” She started to chuckle.

Quill couldn’t see the screen from her position across the desk. “What? Did you find something?”

“E-mails from Carol Ann to Brady and back again. Hoo. Carol Ann sure has it in for you!” Marge scowled suddenly. “And for me. The little witch. But if you ask me…” Marge tapped rapidly, scrolling through the e-mails. “That whole protest crud is pretty well pooped out. Take a look for yourself. Carol Ann sent this after the steering committee meeting this morning.”

“Bluff and bluster,” Marge said. “You can set Althea’s mind at rest about any funny business at the fete.”

“What do you suppose she meant, ‘it’s not over till it’s over’?”

“Who knows? Who cares? Brady runs with the grumblers and malcontents and if he’s not able to get his people out to demonstrate, Carol Ann will be out there all on her lonesome.”

“And she thinks she knows who has the money?”

Marge’s face darkened. “Me.”

“You?”

“Grabbed me by the collar after the meeting”—Marge cracked her knuckles and smiled in a sinister way—“or tried to. Anyhow, yeah. She thinks I took the money in cahoots with Adela. She’s just grabbing at straws. That’s her style and always has been.” She bent over the laptop again.

“Maybe we should return this to Brady,” Quill said. “He’s got all his business accounts on there.”

“Along with the wholesale price of a pickup truck Harland wants to buy. Give me a second while I look for it.”

“Marge, I don’t think that’s quite fair of you.”

She raised one hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Then with a very different tone in her voice. “What the hell is this?”

Quill bent sideways to look at the screen.

“That’s the new girl at Bonne Goute, isn’t it? Sophie something.”

“Yes,” Quill said soberly. “Yes, it is. Sophie Kilcannon.”

There were dozens of pictures of the tall blonde. About half of them were on the beach somewhere, with Sophie in a very brief bikini. The others had been taken with a
long-distance lens. Sophie in her apartment at Bonne Goute, reading in her living room. Sophie getting ready to shower. Sophie getting out of a Ford Escort that had seen better days. It was clear she had no idea someone was taking pictures of her.

Quill rubbed her arms. “This is creepy. And bad. Really bad.”

“You got any idea where that beach is?” Marge scrolled back to the photos of Sophie on the beach. She was smiling, her blond hair caught up in a billed cap, her sunglasses in one hand.

“The days are long gone where I could wear a bathing suit like that,” Quill said wistfully.

“I never could wear a suit like that.” Marge rapped the desk. “Focus, please. Those big buildings behind the beach. That look at all familiar to you?”

“Miami, maybe?” Quill hazarded. “Didn’t Clare say she recruited Sophie from Miami? It looks like somewhere in the US, at least. It’s not tropical enough to be Hawaii and it’s too tropical for the west coast.”

“Harland and I have been looking at Florida property,” Marge said. “We’ve been thinking about getting out of these winters. That’s Miami, for sure.” She clicked rapidly through the photos once again, then shut down the laptop and closed the cover. “Now what do we do?”

“What possible reason could Brady Beale have to take sneaky photos of Sophie Kilcannon?”

Marge snorted. “You’re kidding, right? Do I need to remind you of the crud on that guy’s browser? Hot Chicks in Cool…”

Quill held her hand up. “Ugh.”

“The guy’s a voyeur, at best. At worst—well. Maybe we don’t want to know the worst.”

“I should take this to Davy.” Quill reached for the computer.

Marge pulled it out of reach. “And what, have Brady charge us with petty larceny? Of course, you could tell him that Althea Quince was really the one who stole it, so we can get her into trouble, too. No, here’s what we do. We go talk to this Sophie Kilcannon. And then,” Marge cracked her knuckles. “We have a couple of Harland’s linebacker cousins have a talk with old Brady.”

Quill and Marge left the office at close to four o’clock. Quill suggested they drive separately up to the academy, “because,” she said to Marge, “this is when I spend time with Jack. We can make this quick, can’t we? I took a blood oath that I wouldn’t let anything interfere with Jack’s afternoons. I spend little enough time with him as it is.”

Marge paused in the process of snapping on her seat belt. “Tell you what. I’ll tell Sophie I took the laptop. You go on home.”

“No, no. I can’t let you do that.” Quill looked at her shrewdly. “And you don’t want to, anyway. It wouldn’t be fair. I started this mess—well, Althea started this mess—and I’ve got to see it through. Just let me give Doreen a call to tell her I’m going to be late.” She speed dialed Doreen, who went “t-cha!” then talked to Jack, who didn’t seem distressed at all that he might not see his mother until bedtime.

“He’s a well-balanced kid,” Marge said stoutly. “And that Doreen may be a little crusty tempered with adults, but she’s a wizard with kids. I’d be proud of any kid of
mine that wasn’t clingy. Of course,” she added, “it may be his mamma that’s clingy.”

“Any more words of wisdom you want to share?” Quill asked crossly. She put the car into gear and reversed into the street, narrowly missing a flat of begonias. Alice Nickerson, who was putting the last of a pot of baby’s breath into a planter, waved her trowel and shouted. Quill was pretty sure she wasn’t telling her to have a nice day.

The drive to the academy was short, less than two miles from Marge’s office, which was at the heart of downtown. They passed Peterson Park, where the grandstands for the fete were already going up.

“Slow down a bit,” Marge ordered. Quill, who hadn’t been going faster than thirty, slowed even more, to the frustration of the two cars behind her. “Ignore the horns. Look! See that purple blob where the entrance sign is going up?”

“Adela!”

“Hot damn!”

Quill raised her right hand and Marge slapped it. “I’m so relieved, Marge. Dookie must have talked her into coming back on board.”

“My money’s on Dolly Jean Attenborough,” Marge said cynically. “She’s been pushing to have Harvey take over. I’d like to see the day Adela took a backseat to Harvey.”

Quill speeded up, just as the car behind her began to pass. The driver shouted out the window. It was Nadine Peterson. Quill decided to wait a few weeks before she got her hair trimmed at the Hemlock Hall of Beauty.

“Slow down, darn it. You almost went past it.”

“Do you think I should pull into the annex or the employee parking lot?”

“Where’s Sophie likeliest to be?”

“The kitchen, I would think, at this time of day. Oh, my goodness. She’s jogging in the field. Look, Marge.” Quill braked at the edge of the field. “How beautiful.”

Sophie raced around the edge of the field, effortlessly avoiding the piles of dirt and gravel put there by yesterday’s bulldozers. The grass was the deep rich green of late summer. The trees were touched with russet. The sunlight was silver gold. Sophie herself was a slim, vibrant figure, her long legs flashing in a graceful rhythm.

“Now I suppose we have to wait while you do one of those sketches of yours,” Marge said with rough affection.

“No,” Quill said absently, “no sketch.”

“Really? You just said it looks beautiful. Don’t you want to draw it or something?”

“She’s happy. You can’t draw plain old happy, Marge. I can’t anyway. There has to be some tension.”

“Wait until we tell her Brady Beale’s been playing Peeping Tom. She’s not going to be happy about that.”

Sophie raised a hand in greeting as she flashed around the back of the field, and then slowed down as it became obvious that Quill and Marge were waiting for her. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and jogged up to them.

“Hi. You’re Meg Quilliam’s sister, aren’t you? And?” She looked at Marge with an inquiring smile.

“Marge Schmidt.”

“Of course. You’re married to that nice dairy farmer, Harland Peterson.” She wiped her palms on her jogging
shorts and shook Marge’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you. And nice to see you, Quill. Clare’s in class right now, but if there’s anything I can help you with, just ask.”

“Actually, it’s you we came to see. I’m sorry to interrupt your run, but Marge and I have something to tell you. It’d be better if we could find a place to talk.”

“That’s okay. Why don’t we go to my place?” She grinned happily. Her eyes were very blue in her tanned face. “Doesn’t that have a great ring to it? My place.” She stretched her arms wide, as if to embrace the field itself. “And isn’t this a gorgeous spot! I can’t believe I lucked into this job. This place is paradise.”

Marge snorted. “That’s true enough. It’s even got the snake. You want a ride up to the annex?”

“Ah…sure.” She checked the pedometer on her wrist. “I only logged six miles, though. If this is important, that’s enough for today, I guess.”

“Six miles? Heck,” Marge said, “that’s enough for a week. And yeah, it’s important. Hop in.”

Quill pulled into the driveway that led to the annex and parked in front. It was a pleasant building, constructed in the same style as the three-story academy. Sophie led them through the foyer, which was carpeted in an unobtrusive hunter green, and down the hallway. “I have one of the middle apartments, so there are only windows on the one side. They all have sliding glass doors out to the field, though, so I don’t feel too claustrophobic.” She unlocked the door and stepped back to let them precede her. “Come in. Can I get you some tea? Or something cold to drink?”

“Not right now, thank you.” Quill had been in the annex
apartments before. They were equipped like a pleasant, middle-grade hotel; durable wall-to-wall carpeting, unpretentious furniture in dark wood; a small, efficient kitchen with a four-burner electric stove and an apartment-sized refrigerator. A Mason jar of daffodils sat on the bookcase. A five-string guitar was propped in the corner. Sophie had made the place less anonymous with pictures of sailboats, collections of seashells, and movie posters. The posters were of American movies in a variety of foreign languages. After a moment, Quill realized that all the posters were of an old James Cameron movie,
Terminator 2
, with a middle-aged Arnold Schwarzenegger and a young Linda Hamilton. Quill walked over and looked at them closely. “What an interesting collection.”

Sophie giggled. It was a delightful sound and infectious. She shoved her hair back with both hands. “Yeah. That’s from Bombay, the one there’s from Tokyo, and the others are from Amsterdam, and Paris and Rome. I try and pick one up whatever country I’m in. I loved Arnold Schwarzenegger from the neck down. Gorgeous, just gorgeous. Of course, in real life, he’s old as the hills, not to mention that from the neck up he’s a complete and utter doughhead. Some men should just shut up and pose, don’t you think?”

Quill bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh.

“You sure travel a lot,” Marge said warily.

“Well, yeah, of course.” Sophie blinked. Her eyes were very blue. “I mean before I got this gig here, I was a chef for hire. On yachts. You know, have sauté pan, will travel.”

“That must have been a lot of fun,” Quill said a little wistfully.

“Well, it depends,” Sophie said judiciously. “I was cool with the bigger boats, but not so much on the small ones. Anything under sixty feet I spent most of my time in the galley tossing my cookies.”

“You get seasick?”

“It kind of monkey wrenched my career plans,” Sophie admitted. “So when I ran into Clare Sparrow at the Miami Food Fair last November, I asked her to let me know if she had ever had an opening. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think I had the stuff to get a job here—I mean Bonne Goute is famous and I haven’t been cooking all that long. But here I am!” She looked from Quill to Marge and back again, her face glowing. “So. Before we talk about stuff, can you give me five minutes to shower and change?”

Quill made an effort not to look at her watch. “Sure.”

“Just have a seat then. I’ll be right out.” She disappeared into the bedroom and moments later, Quill heard the shower go on.