"And since you ki - I mean, since Dorset's dead, it's Davy that everyone's blaming, and if you sort of, you know, were publicly nice to him, maybe at the bank this Friday when everyone's in cashing their paychecks, or at the diner on Sunday mornings when everyone's in for brunch - "
"Kath. Wait a second. I didn't kill Dorset."
"Nobody cares if you did," Kathleen said warmly. "People are glad that you did. The guy was a sicko."
"I care if people think I killed him. Davy knows. I didn't even have a weapon. I mean, he searched me, the jerk, before I went into that cell."
"Bjarne said there was a paring knife and a butcher knife missing from the kitchen. And you were arrested in the kitchen last night. And Davy says Meg and Howie and John went to see you after he searched you. He took a statement from Howie, and Howie admitted that all of you went into the cell together and that Meg found an excuse to send Dorset out of the cell. Davy says anyone of those three could have slipped you the weapon and be an accessory."
"Howie admitted what? Excuse me? Meg asked Dorset to find a blanket for me. That was no excuse. It was cold in there."
"Yeah, yeah. So. Anything you can do for Davy. Without getting yourself into more trouble, of course."
"Kathleen, I am not a murderess. Murderer. Whatever."
"Yes, ma'am. Would you like your breakfast now?"
"I would. And why are you calling me ma'am? The only person who calls me ma'am is Meg, and that's when she's so mad at me she wants to throw me in a snowbank."
"Nobody liked him, ma'am. Dorset, I mean. People are glad you took care of it. You're due some respect, Esther West says."
"Aaagh," said Quill. "Bring me a lot of sausage, okay?" She crossed to Marge and Betty's table and sat down.
"You look okay," Marge said after a short, sharp scrutiny.
"I feel fine. A little tired, though." Quill reached for the carafe of coffee and poured herself a cup. "I hope you two aren't going to congratulate me on killing Frank Dorset."
Marge chuckled. "That's what everyone's saying down at the diner," she agreed. "You didn't get a look at the fella who did it?"
"Hey," said Meg. She set a platter of food in front of Quill, then sat down at the last empty place setting at the table. "Marge, Betty. Mind if I join you?"
"Not if you quit using frozen spinach in the Florentine dishes," said Betty Hall. Her thin face split in a grin.
Meg flushed. "Dang. I didn't think this crowd would notice. I didn't have time to set up the sourdough pancakes last night, which is what I'd scheduled for the special this morning, and the only thing I had on hand was frozen spinach. Let me get you some oatmeal. I got a delivery from Ireland earlier this week, and it's wonderful stuff. I created a brown-sugar sour cream seasoning for it I think you'll like." There was a brief, professional discussion between the two chefs, involving the length of time needed to really scramble eggs. Twenty minutes under slow heat seemed to be the consensus. Quill ate her breakfast. Marge watched Quill tackle the eggs Florentine and waited a bit before asking again if Quill had seen the murderer's face.
"No. I'm not even sure what gender the murderer is." Quill, who had a number of reasons for believing the murderer was male, had decided to keep those facts, and the problem of her furry hat, to herself, at Myles's request. Everyone, he'd said, should know about the coat. The more people the better.
"Male," said Betty. "Fact."
"I'm not so sure." Quill thought of the videotape from the hidden camera, with the killer dressed in her coat and hat. Dave and John had both searched the sheriff's office for it with no luck. It'd been tossed into a fire by now, she was certain. "Whoever it was, man or woman, was about my height." Quill had a sudden afterthought. "Unless he, she, it wore heels."
"He," said Betty. "Ninety-nine percent of serial killers are white males between the ages of twenty-five and forty-nine. Fact."
"What about that woman in Florida?" asked Meg. "The one who murdered six guys in a row."
"She had an extra Y chromosome. Fact."
"But this guy... woman... person... isn't a serial killer," said Meg.
"There's been more than one murder, ain't there?" demanded Marge.
"I suppose so," Meg said hesitantly. "But - "
Marge burped. "There you are. Betty's right. Adela Henry gave a whole report on this serial killer business to the committee just last week."
"What committee?" Meg asked.
"S. T. S. The H. O. W. committee for Stop the Slaps. Wimmin united against domestic violence."
"I'm all for that," said Quill. "But this wasn't a case t of domestic violence, you know. It was a case of murder for gain."
Meg cocked her head alertly. "How'd you find that out?"
Quill explained about the exchange of money on the videotape, a fact both she and Myles wanted public.
"And the tape is missing, of course," said Betty. "Dumb male bastards."
Quill pointed out that if a woman was the murderer, a woman could have swiped the tape as easily as a man, then shut up when all three of her tablemates glared at her. Betty pointed out that of course with a guy like Sheriff McHale around, it just went to show you. Quill got so indignant over the implied slur on her feminism that she shut up altogether.
"So what happened, exactly?" Marge demanded.
"I'd fallen asleep on that cot, and I think it must have been the voices that woke me up."
Marge's eyes narrowed in a calculating way, which for some reason irritated Quill profoundly. "You heard their voices?"
"Uh-huh. One was Dorset. But as soon as they came in the cell block, the lights went out. The killer stabbed him, then shoved him through the door to my cell and rolled him in next to me. Then the killer relocked the cell door and took off, taking the key with him."
"Dorset musta weighed all of a hunnert and seventy pounds," said Marge. "Musta been a man, to wrestle all that deadweight."
The Breton sausage, one of Quill's favorites, stuck halfway down her throat. She swallowed carefully, then said, "He didn't die right away."
"Hung on awhile, did he? He musta said somethin' about who killed him, then."
"He whispered for help." Quill set her fork carefully on her plate and folded her hands in her lap. "His throat was cut. I don't think... he couldn't get anything else out."
Marge pursed her lips, "Hmm." Then, "Lemme pour you a little more coffee." She did so, then pulled a small notebook from the pocket of her bowling jacket. "You got times on this? And did you get any impression at all of the murderer's weight?"
"Marge!" Meg said suddenly. "Are you investigating this case?"
Marge shifted her large shoulders and scratched her neck with an abstracted air.
So that's why I was irritated, Quill thought with guilty surprise. Petty old me. I don't like the competition. She sat back, frowning. This feeling had something to do with Myles. And she didn't like what it said about her own motives for failing him in their relationship. If she had. Marge nudged her, and she blinked, startled.
"Thing is," said Marge, "Adela dropped to the diner this morning, early, with the milk crowd, and said she'd about had it up to here with town guv'mint. I mean, she'd just heard on that police scanner she carries around in her purse about you offing Dorset - "
"I did NOT - " Quill began hotly.
"Well, I see that now, don't I," Marge said equably. "Anyways, she's all hot for me to run for mayor."
"You, Marge?" said Meg. "But Elmer's mayor. I mean, to tell you the truth, you'd be an absolutely super mayor, and I wish we'd thought of it before the November elections, but there you are. Elmer's mayor. Duly elected and sworn in."
"That's as may be," Betty said mysteriously, "that's as may be. Anyways, let Marge go on. Go on, Marge."
"Right. What H. O. W. needs is some good P.R. Public relations, like. So, I figger we find out who killed Nora Cahill and Frank Dorset, this'd be just about the best P.R. we could get."
"So all of H. O. W. is investigating this?" asked Meg. "Thought maybe you two'd give us and Adela a hand," said Betty, "seein' as how you have so much experience in the detective line."
"But," said Quill, "Myles - I mean, Sheriff McHale is back."
"Don't we know it!" said Betty. "And a damn good thing, too. Marge was thinking maybe now you'd put some of that weight back on."
Marge, whose nineteenth-century German forebears seemed to have passed on a genetic predisposition for substantial poundage, nodded judiciously, her three chins folding and unfolding.
"Thing is, Adela didn't know the sheriff'd be back when she laid out the campaign this morning." Betty hitched forward and hissed conspiratorially, "See, what we have here is Marge for mayor and Adela for justice. What d'ya think?"
"Marge would make a terrific mayor," Quill said promptly. "I'll go door-to-door for Marge anytime."
"Me, too," said Meg. "But Adela for town justice?" She rolled her eyes. "Sheeesh. Remember the year she was judge at the geranium competition and she brought in those Dutch imports and said they were hers and she tried to arrange a boycott of Esther's shop when Esther blew her in?"
"Yeah," said Betty. "I'd forgot about that."
"And don't forget what happened after the Jell-O Architecture Contest."
"Um... yeah," said Marge.
Meg swallowed most of Quill's grapefruit juice, burped, and added, "That lady is mean."
"Well, Bernie Bristol's crooked," Quill said flatly. She gazed with a ruminative air at Alphonse Santini, who was saying goodbye to his bride at table seven with a remarkable degree of indifference. Of course, practically anyone contemplating marriage with the whiny Claire the day after tomorrow was going to have to be equipped with indifference to whining. "But why do we have to choose between mean and crooked? Why can't we find a town justice who's fair and honest? Like Howie Murchison."
Marge snorted, leaned over her eggs, and rumbled, "The point of H. O. W. is, see, that it's the wimmin who are going to run this town."
"Oh," said Quill.
And Adela's right. If the wimmin find this killer and make the streets safe again, then it's the wimmin the voters are goin' to put in government."
"By and large, I agree with you," said Quill. "Except that Adela Henry's a witch."
"She's right, Marge," Betty said without officiousness. "We'll have to think about this. In the meantime, are you with us, Quill?"
"Well, sure," said Quill. "I guess so. Except that I really think Howie'd make a great - "
"Lame, girl, lame." Marge patted her shoulder with one elephantine hand. "Now, what's the next step in this investigation?"
"Me?" asked Quill. "You're asking me?"
"You solved three murders before this," said Betty.
"Who better?" asked Marge.
Meg went, "Whoop!" and finished the last of Quill's sausage. Quill, both flattered (at the tribute to her investigative skills) and annoyed (Meg had eaten most of her breakfast - and who was it that had spent a sleepless night with a corpse, anyway?), looked over her shoulder. The Mclntoshes had gone. More important, Alphonse Santini had gone.
"Okay, guys, I'll tell you my theory. I had a lot of time to think about it last night, while John was looking for Davy to get me out of that cell. In the videotape of Nora's murder, a figure dressed in my coat waited for her by the intersection. The figure was tall for a woman, short for a man. That coat was down and really huge. I don't know if you remember seeing me wear it."
Betty hooted. "Everybody in town knows that coat. That's the ugliest winter coat I've ever seen in this life. I dunno how many times I seen you walking into the bank in that coat and wonder why the heck - oof!"
Marge, who'd given Betty a substantial poke in the midriff with her elbow, rumbled, "Go on, Quill."
"So if you had a little potbelly, it wouldn't show when it was zipped up."
"A nine-months pregnancy wouldn't have shown with that coat," Meg remarked. "I know you loved that coat, Quillie, but, honestly, it was an ugly coat. I'm glad it's at the bottom of the Gorge, or wherever it is that the murderer put it. Same for the hat." Meg yawned.
"Shut up, Meg. Now this is mere supposition at this point, because that tape has disappeared, but I think the only person it could have been was Alphonse Santini."
"The senator?" gasped Betty.
"Of course," said Meg. "You said the person dressed in your coat gave Nora a fistful of money."
"And took it back," Quill reminded them. "And I'll get to what happened to the money in a minute. Nora Cahill told me the day before she was murdered that she had 'more dirt on that guy,' meaning Santini, and that she'd love to publish it, but she didn't yet have enough proof. And she told me she was close to finding out something that would really nail him. Finally, I know for a fact that Santini hated her anyway. He blamed that whole H. O. W. fund-raiser debacle on her. I saw him reading her the riot act right after H. O. W. stopped throwing forks and spoons at him. I think what happened is this: Nora was blackmailing Santini, and he'd been paying her off right along. She said herself she was the only media person to get invited to his wedding - and she was just a Syracuse anchor. I mean, if he's going to "invite anyone, why not Sam Donaldson? Or Barbara Walters? He could have cried all over Barbara Walters and it would have given him an enormous advantage in the next election. He's a national figure. One of them would have come."
"But Nora showed up at the courthouse when you were arrested for running over that little kid," Marge objected. "Why should she do that?"
"I didn't run over a little kid," said Quill.
"But it was the start of his 'national' campaign to rescue small towns." Meg said. "Nora wouldn't want to miss that. Although it was so clearly phony."
Quill smiled gratefully at her. "Just so."
"I get it," said Marge. "There's no reason why Nora'd pass up a good news story, even if she was blackmailing Santini."
"We probably," Quill said a little stiffly, "will always disagree about whether my little traffic ticket was a good news story. Anyway, I think that Frank Dorset recognized Santini in that tape and wanted that money for himself. He went right along with that trumped-up disguise that Santini meant to look like me, and put me in jail on bogus charges."
"That makes sense," said Meg. "I mean, Howie was raving all the way to Ithaca about the high-handed way Dorset was handling due process. He didn't see why or how Dorset was planning to get away with it. But, of course, he was trying to blackmail Santini, too. He was probably planning on taking that blackmail money and hightailing it out of town."
"And Santini showed up at the sheriff's office..." said Quill.