Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) (5 page)

Although this was true, everyone in the kitchen knew that Meg would rather dye her hair blue than admit it.

Clare looked at her best friend and chief competitor with a skeptical eye. “There’s something going on here I
don’t understand,” she said. “This is a simple job, assigning judges to the food competition. We’ve been at it an hour or more. And it’s turning out to be not so simple. What kind of baloney are you trying to pull on me now?”

“You are the empress of pastry, Clare,” Meg added. “I’ve always said so, haven’t I, Quill?”

Quill didn’t bother to answer. If nobody cared that she was hostage to yet another committee, she wasn’t going to jump into this. Clare and Meg could work it out themselves.

Clare made a sound like “phooey.”

Meg flung her hands apart. “I concede your preeminence in pastry. You should be flattered!
You
should judge the Homemade Pies division at the fete. Besides, there’s nothing sneaky or underhanded about my preference for judging the Jell-O architecture contest. Let’s face it. Buildings made out of food are cool.”

Clare squeezed her arms closer to her chest. “First of all, neither one of us thinks Jell-O is food. Food is a perfectly balanced bouillabaisse. Or individually crafted
tartes au chocolat
. Jell-O’s processed by machines that kick out tons and tons and tons of the stuff every minute. Second, food is something you eat, not something you make bricks with. We’re both master chefs and the food part of this fete is an opportunity to get a little PR for the both of us. You’re telling me you’re happy to get publicity for judging the quality of a town hall made out of horse’s hooves flavored with lime?”

Dina looked up uneasily. “You’re kidding me, right? Not horse’s hooves.” She flipped her phone shut and shoved it into her skirt pocket. “Ick.”

“Cow hooves, anyway,” Meg said carelessly. “Whatever. Don’t be such a wimp, Dina.”

Dina resettled her red-rimmed spectacles farther up her nose. “I’m not a wimp, Meg, thank you very much. I find it perfectly disgusting that people eat the boiled hooves of animals. Anyone would. And to answer your question, Clare, Meg doesn’t want to judge the fete pie contest because it’s a suicide mission. Think about it. Every home cook in Tompkins County—and we’re still very much a rural economy here no matter what the Chamber of Commerce thinks, so there’s a
ton
of farmwives—takes pride in her piecrust. You really want to be the one who picks Mrs. Kiddermeister’s pie over Marge Schmidt-Peterson’s? Or even worse, Carol Ann Spinoza over Adela Henry, the mayor’s wife?”

Clare paled. “Carol Ann Spinoza enters the Homemade Pies competition?”

“Every year,” Dina said.

There was a moment of respectful silence. Carol Ann Spinoza was a persistent, annoying dermatitis on the village skin. When she’d been tax collector, she’d risen to the status of a lethal disease. As animal control officer, she’d posted a wanted poster in the Hemlock Falls post office that featured Quill’s dog Max as Public Enemy Number One. For a brief, horrible couple of weeks, she’d been a food inspector for the State of New York. There was a lot more that was horrible about Carol Ann, including her deceptively cheerful blond good looks, but Quill didn’t want to think about it.

“She’s unemployed at the moment,” Dina said darkly. “And you know Carol Ann. She’s power mad and
competitive. She’s probably Googled prizewinning pie recipes from the entire planet and is going to enter every single one of them. It’s going to be one heck of a contest this year.”

Clare tossed her pencil onto the prep table, folded her hands over her middle, and looked at the floor.

A minute passed, then two.

Meg couldn’t stand the silence. She leaped to her feet and yelled, “Gaah! What the heck are you doing?”

Clare smiled serenely at her. “You just can’t stand a peaceful meditative silence, can you, Meg? I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m centering.”

“Centering,” Meg said flatly.

“Some sort of yoga thing, I expect. Or maybe Zen.” Dina swung her forefinger into the air for emphasis. “You’re going to need more than yoga to get you through the homemade pies. Vodka, maybe. Lots of it. That’ll help.”

Clare settled back onto the stool. “How did you guys talk me into this, anyway? I get that the fete is an annual event…”

“A tradition, really,” Quill said.

“Right. So for the past umpty-ump years…”

“Fifteen for the Inn,” Quill said. “Ever since Meg and I bought it. The fete itself—gosh, probably since the War of 1812. Adela Henry’s been running it for years. She’s been so successful that the last five years or so we’ve had thirty thousand people show up for fete week. It’s pretty amazing, when you think about it.”

“Whatever. I’m from New York, remember? Crowds don’t bother me.” Clare, that rarest of birds, an unflappable chef, was showing signs of agitation. “I’m new here,
right? I’ve only been director at the culinary academy for a year. So of course I want to do my bit. You’re Food Booth Liaison, Quill, right?”

“Yes. I’m judging the art show, too. And I’m in charge of the Furry Friends booths.” Quill sighed and clutched her hair. “Which is another huge mistake. You think people get passionate about their homemade pies? You should see how they feel about their pets.”

“What’s that? What? Oh. Right. The pet thing. Kittens, puppies. Whatever. So are you guys still with me here? Okay, fine. Meg is doing her bit as chair of the selection committee for the food judges and asks me to be on it, too. Easy peasy, right?” She slapped her yellow pad with a little more emphasis than was necessary. “We have fifteen food contests. We have twelve candidates for judges of those self-same food contests including you and me, Meg. This should be a no-brainer.”

“It is a no-brainer, really,” Meg said in a kindly way. “You just have to remember that Dolly Jean Attenborough can’t judge cakes because she’s president of the Crafty Ladies and every single one of the Crafty Ladies puts a cake into competition. And that Nadine Peterson has to judge Pickles and Preserves because she won twelve years running and the other picklers and preservers want a chance to win, too, and if she’s judging she can’t enter anything into competition. Stuff like that. And you are the best possible person to judge Homemade Pies because you haven’t been in town long enough for anyone to hold anything against you.”

“Don’t do it,” Dina muttered. “The losers will ride you out of town on a rail.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Clare wasn’t a pretty woman, but she had distinctive features, and when she chose, a true air of command—a necessity in her job as director of La Bonne Goute Culinary Academy. “Carol Ann Spinoza? Marge Schmidt? Adela Henry? They all enter the Homemade Pies competition?”

“Berry and fruit division,” Quill said. Using her thumb, she smudged the shadow under the Meg-figure’s chin, then closed her sketch pad and slipped it under her rocking chair. “In the years before you came to take over the academy, we always got a chef from Syracuse to judge the pies. We always recommended that they beat feet out of town before the results were announced.”

Meg waved her pencil in the air. “Clare’ll be fine.”

“I’m not doing it,” Clare said firmly. “Sophie will judge it. Not me. Put that down in the notes, Dina, judge for the Homemade Pies, berry and fruit division, is Sophie Kilcannon. She’s the new fruits and vegetables,” she said in response to Meg’s questioning look, “I recruited her out of Miami and she’s starting this week. Nice kid. Eager to learn, which is good, since she’s not quite up to snuff in a couple of areas.”

“I hope she’s good at self-defense,” Dina muttered under her breath. “Okay, Sophie it is. Pie judge.”

Quill got to her feet. “Is that it? You guys settle all the food judging items? The Chamber meeting started ten minutes ago, and I promised to hand the assignments over to Adela today. The fete’s two weeks away, and she’s already antsy. If I don’t give her a list, she’ll have my head on a plate.”

Meg ran her hands through her short dark hair, which made it stand up in spikes. “I think so. Good enough for a first cut, anyway.”

“What do you mean, a first cut?” Clare demanded. “We’ve spent more than an hour picking just the right judge for the preserves, and the quick breads, and the pickles and everything else. We’re the best experts in a five-county area, if I do say so myself. Who’s going to second-guess us?”

“Adela,” Quill said. “The whole fete is Adela’s baby from start to finish. She’s organized it for thirty years—maybe more than that. She’s terrific at it, too.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m late for the chamber meeting. Does somebody have the list written up so that I can take it with me? You do, Dina? Thanks. I’ll see you all later.”

Dina followed her out the swinging doors to the dining room. “Do you want your messages before you go into the meeting?”

Quill paused to rearrange the small bouquet of Pink Lady roses at table twenty-six, partly because one of the roses drooped unattractively, but mostly so she could stand and appreciate the room. She’d given up on the wall-to-wall carpeting (something she should have done long before) and restored the narrow-plank pine flooring. Then she’d replaced the tabletops, which had required tablecloths, with natural stone instead of wood. The project cost as much as the annual budget of a small African country, but the Inn had done well over the past three years, and she was glad they’d spent the money. The dining room featured floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the
falls outside. The wood floors, the shale tabletops, and the cut-stone walls made it seem as if the falls and the Inn were a warm and natural part of each other.

Dina waved a fistful of pink While You Were Out messages in the air. “Hey, Boss? You want to take a look at these?”

Quill dabbed impatiently at the curl over her left ear. She didn’t want to take a look at a thing. She wanted to finish the sketch she’d started of her sister and Clare. She wanted to go up and take Jack down to the Hemlock River so they could play in the summer sunshine. Anything but attend to the myriad, pesky details of running her Inn.

Instead, she held her hand out for the messages. “Anything that won’t keep?”

“You might want to call the Golden Pillar travel people. They’re bummed about the Inn being booked until after Thanksgiving and they’re threatening to take us off their website as a desired destination, or whatever they call it.”

“We’re booked until after Thanksgiving?” This was good news.

“Yep. This Long-Term Let idea is turning out to be a bummer.”

Quill grimaced. “Maybe.”

Their financial guy, John Raintree, had suggested the Long-Term Let as a hedge against the ups and downs of their vacancy rate. Quill and Dina had posted reasonable monthly rates for the high-priced suites, which were usually the last to be booked by guests. It had seemed like a great idea at the time—but the suites were snapped up almost immediately, leaving no vacancies for at least six
months. There were only three: the Provencal, the Federal, and the Colonial. A couple named Quince had promptly booked both the Federal and the Colonial. A very, very old fellow named Jeeter Swenson had the Provencal. Mr. Swenson made Quill a little nervous. The Provencal Suite was on the third floor with a balcony one guest had already fallen off of. Since the apparent accident had turned out to be a murder, Quill supposed that didn’t really count.

“Maybe we should tell the Golden Pillar people that we’ve given up the Long-Term Let idea.”

“Okay,” Dina said.

“But maybe the Long-Term Let idea is a good one. This travel boom can’t last forever.”

“Okay,” Dina said.

“Maybe I should discuss it with Melody Brodie at Golden Pillar and see what she thinks.”

“Sounds like a Scarlett O’Hara moment to me.”

Quill stuck the message in her skirt pocket. “Right. I’ll think about it tomorrow—or maybe after the Chamber meeting.” She looked at her watch. The morning had started so well—and now look. She’d volunteered for another committee. The Golden Pillar people were threatening a boycott. And like the White Rabbit, she was late, late, late for the Chamber of Commerce meeting, which meant somebody had probably volunteered her for another committee.

“Grrr,” she said, to Dina’s confusion. “We’ll just see about that!” She straightened her shoulders, stiffened her spine, and prepared to go to the meeting.

The Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce meetings had been held at the Inn’s conference room since Meg and Quill had opened for business. At the time, the Inn was the only business in the village with room enough for all twenty-four members to sit down together. This wasn’t true anymore. Tourists had discovered that upstate New York—with its vineyards, boutique distilleries, local food and craft stores, and amazing natural gorges—was one of the most beautiful places on earth. And as the tourists came, so came the construction crews.

The first building of note was the Resort, a lavish hotel complex about a quarter mile downriver from the Inn. La Bonne Goute Culinary Academy followed some years later—and although its internationally acclaimed master chef had been murdered not long after its ornately carved doors opened to the public—the academy’s cooking classes attracted even greater numbers of out-of-towners under Clare Sparrow’s stewardship. So there was plenty of room to hold the Chamber meeting elsewhere. But tradition was a matter of principle in the village, and not
even Carol Ann Spinoza had the nerve to suggest a change in venue.