Toast Mortem (18 page)

Miriam rolled her eyes and raised her hand. “I move that we forgo the reading of the minutes.”

“Seconded!” Marge boomed.

Elmer got to whack the gavel again. “So moved. We have old business now, Quill, so we’ll get right on to that.”

“Those parking meters in front of my restaurants,” Marge said. “That’s the old business we have to talk about. I move we rip ’em up and send ’em to the dump.”

Elmer’s lower lip jutted out. “Now, look here, Marge.”

Harland jerked awake (Marge had jabbed him in the ribs). “I second the motion,” he said.

“All in favor?” Marge said.

All who had a business on Main Street raised their hands. Quill counted them off. Nadine, of course, and the Nicker-sons. Esther West had her hand raised, too. “This is an illegal motion!” Elmer said. He began to whack the gavel with monotonous regularity; Esther moved the rest every time he banged it down. It looked like a particularly manic version of Whac-A-Mole. Tickled, Quill began to sketch it.

“You gonna count these votes, or what?!” Marge shouted. She leaped to her feet, her right arm straight up in the air. “I’m counting, so shut up, you all.” She stopped, momentarily, to whisper under her breath.

Then she sat down again.

“I guess that means the motion’s defeated,” Elmer said with ill-concealed satisfaction.

“We’ll see about that.”

Quill sketched a pissed-off Marge, out for revenge on a hapless Elmer.

“Now, if we can just get to the real old business. About this Welcome Dinner.”

Carol Ann Spinoza raised her hand. “There’s some old, old business before this Welcome Dinner,” she said in her icky little voice. “And if we had a secretary who took the right kind of minutes, we would know that we have to take the old business in the proper order.”

“That’s all you wanted to say?” Elmer asked. Even though Carol Ann was no longer tax assessor, everybody Quill knew was still afraid of her. The woman had some evil power that no one could quite put a finger on.

“Of course that’s not all I wanted to say. We have to vote on the most-wanted list for the post office.”

Elmer looked confused, then extremely anxious. “You’re with the FBI, now?”

A ripple of unease went through the room.

“The animal offenders list, Carol Ann means,” Adela said with a tight smile. “Isn’t that right?”

“That is exactly right. We agreed that the most dangerous animals should be posted so that the citizens of our village could be made aware at all times of the dangers.” She paused, as if to reconsider the number of times the relevant word had appeared in her sentence. “Danger,” she said precisely. “That is the term.”

Elmer shrugged. “Okay, I guess. You want a vote on whether or not to put this list up?”

Carol Ann’s eye turned a very dangerous shade of blue. “We voted in a special ordinance two and a half months ago. I would think that the post of mayor in a town like ours would have some sort of intelligence testing before a person was allowed to run for office. Hm!” Carol Ann stopped herself in mid-stride. Her eyes brightened. She unclipped the notepad from her weapons belt and made a note. “That is a very good idea. An IQ test.” Then she swept on. “The post office is part of the federal government and you can’t just post anything there. So it was voted in. I made the sign.” She smiled a blindingly white beauty-queen smile at Harvey, who winced. “With some help. Harvey?”

Harvey smoothed his gelled hair back with both hands and stood up. Harvey was tall, willowy, and favored pastel-colored shirts. His advertising agency was mainly concerned with the layout and distribution of the local PennySaver, but anytime anyone had any product to promote, Harvey was the go-to guy. Quill let him handle the advertising for the Inn (although she did the layouts herself).

He set the A-frame he’d carried into the meeting onto the table and unrolled it. The sign was in black, white, and red and the biggest word was DANGER, which was in red. Under that, in black type was MOST WANTED (BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE HEMLOCK FALLS DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL CONTROL). Underneath was a series of blurry pictures. The first one said, RABID FOX, the second RABID RACCOON. Quill followed the rest of the titles until the second to the last one, which was Max (GARBAGE RUMMAGER), and the very last one, which was Esther West’s little poodle (ANKLE BITER). The final sentence was: IF YOU SEE ANY OF THESE ANIMALS THAT ARE MOST WANTED, CALL 1-800-DAN-GERS.

Esther West smoothed her spit curls and said meekly, “I’d like to register a protest.”

“Me, too,” Quill said. “Esther’s poodle is not an ankle biter. And Max hasn’t rummaged in a Dumpster for years.” (This wasn’t true.) “Anyway, doesn’t an animal have to be convicted, or something, before it goes onto that list?”

Esther nodded vigorous agreement. “You can’t just smack any poor pet you want to onto that poster, Carol Ann. They have to be convicted.”

Miriam raised her hand. “I move we table the discussion of this poster until we determine the legality of the listings.”

Quill raised her hand. “I second that.”

The motion was passed, although nobody’s hand was raised very high and Carol Ann sat down with a poisonous grin.

Elmer sighed, as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Carol Ann had a long, long memory and a taste for revenge. “Can we get to this dinner, now?”

Miriam raised her hand.

“The chair recognizes Miriam Doncaster. What about it, Miriam?”

“I move we cancel the Welcome Dinner.”

“I second,” Marge shouted.

Elmer ran a finger around his shirt collar and coughed nervously. “Now, Margie, Miriam, that would be an idea, for sure, but I think we should have a good, old-fashioned discussion about this. That’s what these meetings are all about, anyways.”

A discussion, of sorts, took place. Marge shouted. Miriam protested in a ladylike way, and Harland kept asking why they wanted to welcome a fellow who was dead, which was Quill’s own take on the matter.

She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and drew a battlefield with land mines in it. Then she sketched Marge’s face on one mine, Miriam’s on another, and Adela’s on a third. Then she put in a little Elmer tiptoeing through the field.

“. . . Because I already paid him, that’s why!” Elmer said. “And I tried to get the money back from the widow herself, and she said a contract’s a contract.”

There was a shocked silence. (Which had to be a first for a Chamber meeting.)

“Her husband was killed yesterday and she wants to go ahead with this thing on Friday?” Mark Anthony Jefferson looked as if he might be reconsidering the Bonne Goutè mortgage.

“That widow is
not
behaving in what I would call a respectful way,” Nadine said, finally.

“That’s right,” Elmer said.

“We could turn it into a memorial,” Harvey suggested.

“You mean all that money’s lost, that’s what you mean,” Marge said. “Just to be clear about this. That woman took the check and whether or not we have the dinner, she’s going to keep it?”

“That’s right.”

A look of admiration passed over Marge’s face and was gone. “Then Harvey’s right. We have to have the damn dinner. So we’ll make it a memorial. With lots of dancing.”

“I could do a banner,” Harvey said. “Very tasteful.
Rest In Peace, Bernard LeVasque
, with maybe the most famous of his dishes drawn in the borders.”

“That’d be some kind of turkey recipe, then,” Marge said. “Well, this is just peachy. What the heck, the food’ll be good.”

“They don’t have a head chef,” Miriam pointed out. “And their pastry chef is working somewhere else.” She glanced sideways at Quill. “What they have left is vegetables, fruits, seafood, and jellies. Not what I’d call a well-balanced menu.”

“They’re all cooks. Let ’em cook,” Elmer said.

“At a hundred dollars a plate?” Miriam shook her head. “I’m not happy with that. Not at all. If we’re paying a hundred dollars a plate, we ought to get the best chef in the northeastern United States.”

Everybody looked at Quill.

Quill tucked her charcoal pencil away. “Okay. I’ll ask her.”

Miriam leaned over and hissed in her ear, “Go get ’em, Sherlock.”

Rub the salt and herbs over the goat meat. Sauté the goat with the salt pork and the olive oil. Put all ingredients together and simmer for one hour in a covered pot. Garnish with mint.

—From
Brilliance in the Kitchen
, B. LeVasque

“They want me to take charge of the kitchen?” Meg ran both hands through her short dark hair, so that it stood up in spikes.

“It was Miriam’s doing. She approves of our investigation. Which means Howie’s worried, I think, that maybe Davy’s going to come to the wrong conclusion.” Quill squared up her minutes pad onto the tabletop. They were squeezed around Meg’s miniscule table. One of the first things the sisters had designed when they remodeled the old inn was their own quarters. Quill made her own rooms into a refuge; Meg made hers into a retreat. Meg’s didn’t have a kitchen. And since she didn’t have a kitchen, she didn’t need a table except to heap cookbooks on. Quill had stacked them all on the floor.

“Miriam,” Meg said. “Well, well.”

“Who’s that?” Clare asked.

“Howie Murchison’s girlfriend,” Meg said.

“The town librarian,” Quill said at the same time.

“Howie is the senior partner in Justin’s law firm. He has a girlfriend?” Clare looked a little disappointed, which would please Howie enormously.

Quill smiled. “I see you’re on first-name terms already.” Howie hadn’t turned up at the Chamber meeting after all. Quill guessed that he’d sat in on Clare’s interview with Justin for the whole time.

“He’s a nice guy.” Clare shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Very reassuring kind of guy.”

This was true. Even if he hadn’t been a very good lawyer, which he was, Howie looked the part. He was of middle height, with a noticeable bald spot and a small belly. Quill knew for a fact he’d worn the same pair of expensive loafers for ten years, before Miriam threw them out in exasperation.

“Did he give you any opinions?”

Clare bit her lip, but she said steadily, “He thinks I might be arrested. Certainly taken in for questioning. He told me up front that he was the judge for this county, and that he’d have to recuse himself if there was any possibility of a trial. I said, okay.”

“But you were here helping me all afternoon the day LeVasque was murdered!” Quill said. “You have an alibi.”

“They’ve come closer to the actual time of death. LeVasque was killed between one and two o’clock.”

Quill sat back and said, “Damn.”

“Right. I volunteered to go down to Peterson’s liquor and pick up those cases of cheap wine.”

“You weren’t gone more than half an hour,” Quill said. “And you came back with six cases of red and six of white. I can swear to that.”

Clare looked away. “Can you really? You were all over the place. Kitchen, restaurant, your office . . . Howie said a decent prosecutor could make mincemeat of your testimony.”

“Harry Peterson can say that you came right in, picked up the order, and came right out!”

“And where was I before I got to the store? Where did I go right afterward?” Clare took a deep breath. “There’s worse to come.”

Neither Meg nor Quill said anything.

“I did go up to the academy. Just for a minute. I was so furious at that little sh . . . that jackass, for pulling that dirty trick that I did want to kill him. I wasn’t really going to kill him, of course. I just wanted to give him what for.”

“And somebody saw you?”

“Somebody did. Mrs. Owens.”

Quill digested this very bad news for a moment. Then she said irritably, “Doesn’t she have a first name?”

“If she does, no one’s heard it before. I suppose it’s on a birth certificate somewhere.” Clare attempted a smile. It didn’t work.

Quill wrote
Mrs. Owens???
in big caps on her pad. “What did you do exactly? When you got there?”

“I walked in the front door. Somebody’s usually on reception, but there wasn’t anyone there. I walked up to the tasting room doors. They were closed. That means a tour group. I walked back to the reception desk. Mrs. Owens came down the hall . . .”

“From where, exactly?” Quill was drawing a map of the first-floor layout.

“Right there.” Clare put her finger on the east side of the building. “The washrooms.”

“Then what?”

“I asked her where LeVasque was. Actually, what I said was, ‘Where is that little shit?’”

“And what did she do?”

“She said she hadn’t seen him. I looked at the clock over the desk, realized I had to get back here and I left. And no, I don’t think anyone else saw me. Just Mrs. Owens.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “I was just so
mad
.”

Quill doodled for a minute. Then she flipped to the last page in her sketch pad. “Do either of you recognize this recipe?” She laid it on the table.

“Six eggs,” Meg read aloud. “Two and two-thirds cup canned coconut. Three cups puffed rice cereal. One package mars . . .” She sat back. “Mars? Mascarpone? What?”

“I don’t know. This was on a scrap of paper in LeVasque’s hand.”

“You pried his cold dead fingers open and got it out?” Meg grinned. “That’s my sister.”