Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) (28 page)

Quill looked in the rear window. Davy followed along behind her. She wished she’d thought to ride with him. He could have put on the siren.

“You were about to ask me a favor?”

Sophie tugged at a strand of hair and chewed on it. “Just that you not let everybody in town know about the bribe.”

“It wasn’t a bribe.” They’d arrived at the intersection of Route 14 and 54. Dresden lay straight ahead. Quill glanced both ways and gunned across the road. Here, the highway remained two lanes, but the area was abruptly residential. The houses were mostly two-story clapboards and neatly kept with trim lawns and modest gardens. “It was more of a scholarship. And from what Clare and Madame LeVasque told me, your father was very concerned that you have a chance to settle down in one place for a while. I mean, it’s obvious from what’s happening now that he had another motive, too. But really Sophie, I’m sure that he had your best interests at heart.”

Sophie chuckled to herself. “Maybe. He always says I have a gypsy soul. Maybe I do. And maybe I would have ended up feeling like I was in jail here. But darn it…” She leaned forward. “Stop here.”

They were at the top of a steep hill that dropped directly down to the lake. To their right was an anonymous huddle of white buildings with corrugated metal roofs. To their left was a stand of sycamore trees that obscured the view of the lake. At the bottom of the hill, on the lakeshore itself, was a cluster of small lake cottages.

A long, massively built pier jutted straight out into the water.

Sophie peered through the windshield. “Okay. I’ve got it. The camera was over in the thickest part of the sycamores. They provide a lot of cover.” She flipped open her cell phone and tapped at the small screen. “Beale must have parked over there and taken cover on the low side of the berm.” She snapped the cell phone shut. “Park in front of the navy yard, if you don’t mind. It’s time to suit up.”

“The dive was pretty amazing,” Quill said to Meg and Justin late the next afternoon. “It took her a while to find the gun, but she kept going until she found it. I’m just thankful that Beale didn’t have enough time to get out on the lake and pitch it into the really deep water. We might never have found it at all.”

It was another brilliant day. The three of them sat on the patio of the Tavern Lounge. The chrysanthemums at the edge of the flagstones seemed to have bloomed overnight, and the scarlet, yellow, and purple flowers made the day a festival.

“Although it seemed to take hours, it wasn’t more than forty-five minutes before she brought it up. Davy brought George/Winston/Franklin—how do spies keep all their identities straight, anyway? Whatever. Anyhow, Sophie didn’t say one word to him. Not one. She just stared at him for a minute, then got her wet suit on and jumped into the water. But the cell phone tape helped a lot.” She took her sister’s hand and held it for a moment. “Horrible, but helpful. We could see where the gun sank. We also saw
Brady Beale shoot Mickey Greer, which was the worst part. Davy e-mailed a copy on to Harker as soon as he saw it, which is why you got out of jail so fast, thank God.” She smiled at Justin. “That, plus Sophie’s dad, and you calling in every favor you had in the justice system seemed to have done the trick.”

“Howie had a lot more to do with it than I did,” Justin said lightly. His arm was around Meg, and he tightened it briefly. His face bore the marks of more than one sleepless night. “I just camped out at the county jail.”

“He did, too,” Meg said. She shook her head. “Slept on the bench in the reception area. I don’t know why they didn’t throw him out.”

Meg was pale, and very clean. Justin brought her back to the Inn late Saturday night, and the first thing she did was shower. Then she showered again. She fell into bed and slept for ten hours straight and began the morning with a third shower. “Thank goodness for that tape, though, as gruesome as it is. Without that I might have been toast. Mickey had my blood and skin under his nails. Nobody knew where the murder weapon was. And that witness who saw us arguing was pretty believable. He owns one of those little cottages right next to the navy depot.” She shuddered.

Quill poured them all a second glass of wine. “I never thought I’d say it, but here’s to cell phones.” She raised her glass.

“Here’s to scuba divers,” Meg said. “I really ought to thank Sophie, too.”

“She’ll be along in a minute,” Quill said. “She lost her
job at the academy, you know, and she’s going back to Miami. Clare’s taking her to the train, and she’s catching a flight from New York.”

“Here’s to Sophie,” Justin said. “Hail and farewell.” He drained his glass. Meg drained hers. Quill poured them a third round, and decided that she herself had had enough. She wanted to take Jack to the park this afternoon.

Meg waved her glass merrily in the air. “And to George/Winston/Franklin, wherever he may be.”

“I’d like to toast him with the toe of my boot,” Justin said. “If he’d just alerted Kiddermeister to this operation, Meg wouldn’t have spent those days in jail.”

“Eighteen hours and twenty-three minutes actual jail time,” Meg said proudly. “I was going to keep count of the days on the cell wall, like the Count of Monte Cristo. Anyhow, thank goodness he was hiding in the bushes surveilling those guys. Otherwise…what’s the matter, Quill?”

“He wasn’t hiding in the bushes. He couldn’t have been hiding in the bushes.” Quill set the remainder of her Riesling on the table. “Things have been going so fast, I haven’t had a chance to think. Sophie’s father was at the Croh Bar the day of Greer’s murder. All afternoon. And he didn’t pay his bar tab.”

“
Somebody
took the video,” Meg said.

“Sophie said her father took the video—I mean, you saw it. Davy saw it. I personally don’t ever want to see it, but it exists.”

The French doors to the lounge swung open and Sophie Kilcannon walked onto the patio. She was dressed for travel, in khaki pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt that
read
If You Go You Can’t Come Back
. Her guitar was over one shoulder and her knapsack was over the other.

“Hey, guys,” she said. She looked tired and a little sad, but her smile was as bright as ever. “Sure glad to see you, Meg.” She gave her a friendly bump on the shoulder, and sank down in the empty chair at the table. “Any of that wine left for me?”

Justin got up. “I’ll tell Nate.”

“And maybe a couple of cheese plates,” Meg added. “Hang on. I’d better go and do them myself. Do you realize that I haven’t been in the kitchen since Thursday afternoon? God knows what’s been happening there without me. We’ll be right back.”

Quill waited until Justin and Meg disappeared inside. “Sophie, where were you the day that Mickey Greer was killed?”

“Thursday?” She frowned a little. “Let’s see. I helped Jim Chen with a seafood class from three to five, and then I did prep work in the kitchen with Raleigh Brewster. Why?” Her eyebrows went up and she was quiet for a minute. “Oh. The cell phone tape. You’re wondering who took that video, aren’t you? I have a hunch you’re a little confused about who’s who, here. See? This is why I’m a lousy spy. I blurt. I’m impulsive. I don’t think!” She pounded her head with the heel of her hand. “Next time somebody tries to pull me into one of these things, I’ve got four words for them: I’m not doin’ it.”

“Now, Sophie, dear, you don’t mean it.” Althea Quince sat down on Quill’s left. Nolan Quince sat at Quill’s right. Sophie snarled at both of them. It was, Quill noted, an affectionate snarl.

I won’t volunteer anything, but I’ll answer your questions.

Quill wanted to smack herself on the head, but didn’t. Suddenly, it all made a cockeyed kind of sense. “There are one too many federal agents in Hemlock Falls.” She slugged back the rest of her wine. “George McIntyre is really Ruiz, an agent from the FBI.”

Nolan nodded yes.

“He thought you could talk Sophie into doing a bit of undercover work if he got her a job at the Academy, so he posed as you, Nolan, and talked Clare into hiring her.”

Nolan nodded again.

Quill pointed at him. “You took the video footage of the murder at the lake.”

“Yes,” Nolan said. “I’m Sophie’s father. Retired CIA.”

He patted Quill’s shoulder. “Both Althea and I realized it wouldn’t take Myles McHale’s wife too long to start asking some uncomfortable questions.”

“Daddy,” Sophie said between gritted teeth. “Quill would make a terrific agent all on her own. She is not, not,
not
an adjunct of her husband.”

“Very true. My apologies for any apparent sexism.” Nolan turned his mild gaze on Quill. “I don’t suppose you would consider…”

Quill choked on the last of the Riesling. “No and no.” She looked at Sophie and burst into laughter. “I’m not doin’ it!”

~

“So they’re gone, all three of the Kilcannons,” Quill said to the image of Myles on her laptop. “Did my emergency message drag you away from anything important?”

“You’re important,” Myles said. “The name you sent on to me was a red flag. I was ready to order a platoon of Marines to come to your rescue, but it appears it wasn’t necessary.”

“Natalia Petroskova?”

“Althea Quince.”

“Oh.” Quill choked back a laugh. “She’s the brains behind the operation?”

“She’s quite the strategist.”

“I should say she is. You know, she was the one who figured out Brady’s scam early on. He hacked the money from the fete account to get Adela out of the picture and Natalia and Greer into town as the event organizers. The warhead, if there ever was a warhead, had to be transported in a lead-lined truck. Brady figured if Natalia and Greer were a normal part of the fete, it’d be less obvious to find a pair of strangers hauling around a tractor trailer. She had less than twenty-four hours to get Franklin Ruiz hired on as a driver. She wasn’t about to tell me how she managed that.

“Althea knew about the possibility of the warhead early on, of course. Brady’s inquiries about possible buyers weren’t as discreet as he thought they were. So they put Sophie in place as soon as they could. They wanted her to shadow Brady and find out if there really was anything under the lake. She said the navy’s records from that time were incomplete—and a lot of the documentation about the weapons testing had been destroyed. Althea admitted that she and Nolan were a bit past their diving days themselves, and Sophie’s an expert.”

“But Sophie refused?”

“She really wants a life of her own, poor girl. She loves them, that’s clear. But like a lot of parents, they want their offspring to follow in their footsteps. It’s a heck of a good life, if you don’t mind the bullets, according to Althea. And Sophie doesn’t mind the bullets, she says. Where else, she says, could you see as much of the world as she and Nolan have seen on somebody else’s expense account?” Quill tugged at her hair. “The woman’s a lunatic.”

For a moment, they were both silent.

“We won’t do that to Jack,” Quill said finally. “Try and nudge him down a path he doesn’t want to go.”

“It sounds as if they did more than nudge.”

“They did. You should have seen Sophie’s face when she realized that she hadn’t gotten the job at Bonne Goute on her own merits. She was crushed. On the other hand…” Quill put her hands lightly on the screen, framing Myles’s face. “You should have seen her diving into the lake. She was having the time of her life. And that song she sang to Marge and me. It’s called “Fast Freight” and she told me, before the three of them got on the train to head to New York, that she loves the song because it’s about living with choices. If she doesn’t make a choice, she said, she’s free.”

“Until she falls in love,” Myles said. “Until she falls in love.”

Quill sat in the Home-Cooked Foods tent of the Finger Lakes Autumn Fete and wondered if she could find a doctor who would excuse her from judging the Homemade Pies, berry and fruit division for the very sound medical reason that she was going to go stark staring crazy. She pulled a charcoal pencil from her skirt pocket and sketched a tiny Quill with wide-open mouth galloping madly off in all directions. Then she drew an even tinier Quill snatching herself bald.

She slipped her pencil back into her skirt and sighed.