Toast Mortem (9 page)

“Hey!” Meg said into the cell. “Dina? Yeah. It’s me. No, I’m not mad. No, it’s okay. Really. I know how sorry you are. More to the point, I know how foggy you get when you’re studying your copepods. Look. You’ve got to give Davy a call and get him down here right away. Huh? Oh. The culinary academy. The annex. M. LeVasque’s in the process of breaking and entering into a private residence. Huh? Just do it. Please. He’s doing it right now!” She snapped the cell phone shut and stuck it back in her purse. “Where’s Clarissa?”

Quill looked in the rearview mirror. The Escort’s headlights were distinctive, mainly because one was dimmer than the other. “Right behind us.”

“That jerk isn’t after us, is he?”

“Meg! It’s dark out there!”

“Well, look for Mercedes headlights!”

“I have no idea what Mercedes headlights look like.”

“Put on your turn signal and wave Clarissa over. Where are we?” Meg peered out the window. “Right next to Peterson Park. Pull in next to the kiosk. Right here. Good.”

The Escort grumbled to a stop behind them, and Clarissa poked her head out the driver’s window. “What’s up?”

Quill stuck her head out the window, too. “My question, exactly.”

“I created a distraction,” Meg said proudly.

The squeal of the Hemlock Falls sheriff’s department cruiser siren made the evening hideous. Quill flinched as the black-and-white flashed by them, red lights whirling. “You certainly did. But why? You aren’t . . . oh,” she said in a voice of doom. “I see where you’re going.”

“Well, I don’t,” Clarissa said.

Quill gave her sister a look she knew to be pitiful. “I can’t, Meg. I’m a mother now.”

“Pish-tosh,” Meg said cheerfully. “She probably has a key, and it’s her own apartment and we’ll just go in the patio doors, but it won’t work if we don’t get going
right now
.”

Clarissa sat up so fast she bumped her head on the driver’sside door frame. “Wait. You mean I should go in the back way while the sheriff is out front arresting LeVasque?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Meg said. “But if we don’t get on the stick . . .”

“Jump in the back, ladies,” Clarissa said. “There’s a way through the back fields that will take us right to my back door.”

“It’s not going to work,” Quill said, and she let Meg pull her into the backseat of the Escort. “And I’ll end up in jail again, and I will never forgive you, Meg, because if I’m not there when Jack wakes up in the morning, I personally will
pitch a fit the likes which you’ve never seen
!”

“It’ll work,” Meg said confidently.

And it did.

“Told you,” Meg said smugly, some twenty minutes later. They were seated out on Quill’s balcony on the third floor of the Inn. Quill’s old rooms looked out on the herb garden. The kitchen was directly below her, if you didn’t count the floor in between, and they had a good view of the back parking lot. Clarissa clutched her laptop in one hand, and a glass of red wine in the other.

“Fastest B and E we’ve ever done, sis. Give me a high five.” Meg leaned over the arm of her wicker chair and held her hand up. Quill slapped it with less than enthusiasm. “I swore off this stuff when I had Jack,” she said. “And I’m not going to get all tangled up in it again.”

“You two make a habit of this?” Clarissa sounded anxious.

“Of course not,” Quill said. “But you get all kinds of people coming in and out of a place like ours, and over the years, there’ve been a few corpses and the two of us got drawn in accidentally. Mostly accidentally,” she amended, after turning over their prior cases in her mind.

She sipped her red wine. All through her pregnancy, and for the eight months while she was breast-feeding, she’d had to give up wine. It wasn’t a hardship at all, when you considered the miracle that was her little boy. But it was nice to be able to drink a glass or two with her sister.

“Corpses?” Clarissa said, even more anxiously.

“We didn’t commit any of the murders,” Meg assured her. “And we’ve never been convicted of a thing . . . well, Myles would tell you we should have been convicted of meddling, but that’s not a crime, it’s not even a misdemeanor. So please don’t worry. You’re perfectly fine.”

There was a short silence. And for some reason, it was an uncomfortable one. Quill, a little at sea, looked at her sister, who in turn was looking out at the gardens in a self-satisfied way, and then looked at Clarissa, who seemed miserable and determined, both at once.

“Look!” Clarissa said a little too loudly. “There’s something you need to know about me.”

“You’re not Clarissa Sparrow,” Meg said. “You’re Clare Robbins, and you’ve just gotten out of jail for tax fraud.”

Quill froze. Then she said, “Oh, dear. Oh my gosh.”

“That’s my sister,” Meg said affectionately. “Super speedy with the amazed expletive.” She patted Quill on the knee. “That’s one of the reasons she’s been so anxious about our detective activities. You’re on probation, right?”

“Right,” Clare said, faintly.

“And parolees get into a lot of trouble if they associate with known felons. But we aren’t. Known felons, that is. So you can rest easy.”

“Good grief,” Quill said.

Clare made a sound that might have been a laugh. Then she set her glass of wine down on the little table that sat between the wicker chairs. “Did LeVasque tell you?”

Meg shook her head. “Nope. It was the shortcake.”

“My shortcake?”

“For the blueberries in that dessert you made tonight. I stopped in at your restaurant when I was in New York last year.”

“Le Tartine,” Quill said suddenly. “I remember. You raved about it, Meg.”

“You made the best pastry I’ve ever had. And that shortcake tonight . . . well, if your shortcake’s anything to go by, you’re the best baker I’ve ever met, too. So . . .”

Quill knew what was coming next. She’d never actually been tied to a set of railroad tracks with a train coming; at the moment, she felt a lot of sympathy for people who had. But she loved her sister, and if this was a way to get people back into Meg’s dining room, she’d support it. Although she’d probably have to keep a closer eye on the accounts and the cash drawer. “You’re thinking that she’d be a terrific draw for the kitchen, Meg. And you’re right.”

“You mean you’re offering me a job?”

“Why not? We could use a great pastry chef.”

Clare set her wineglass down next to Quill’s and started to cry.

“I’d like to try it out for a month or so,” Meg said. “What do you think?”

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” Clare said. “Hang on a minute, will you?” She put her hands over her eyes, went very still, and counted backward from ten. She sighed heavily, sat up straight, and wiped her eyes with the bottom of her T-shirt. “Okay. It’s under control. I’ve just been on edge for so long, and you’ve been so great about this, Meg, that I kind of lost it.”

Quill began to get out of her chair. “I’ll get a tissue.”

“No, no. Sit back. I’m okay now. Thanks. And I want to tell you what happened. I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time in your kitchen, Meg, but it was long enough to see that you guys are really tight together. You know what I mean? You all seem to take care of each other. Look at the way you handled the thing with Dina, Quill. And your waitstaff loves you. And those kids in the kitchen think you walk on water. Anyway.” She took another deep breath. “I couldn’t take a job with you all if you weren’t able to trust and like me in the same way. So.

“This is what happened.

“I met Paul in Paris. We were both students at the CB.”

“Cordon Bleu,” Meg said.

Quill scowled. “I know that.”

“Yes. Well. Paul had just gotten his CPA.”

“That’s certified public accountant, Meg.”

“I know that, Quill.”

“Wasn’t sure. Sorry, Clare. I’m still a little ticked about Meg’s trip to jail.” The two of them also had decided, without a word, that the atmosphere needed lightening. Clare’s tears were still very near the surface.

“Paul wasn’t thrilled at the idea of spending his life totaling up numbers for other people. So we decided to come back home to New York and open a restaurant. He’d handle the entrees. I’d specialize in the pastries.”

“Your pastries are brilliant,” Meg said. “You should have seen the reviews in
Gourmet
and
L’Aperitif
, Quill.”

“Thanks. I worked hard at them. Well. Paul took over raising the money. He’s a Harvard business school grad, so he hit up a bunch of his loaded buddies for the cash for the start-up. It was a lot,” she said soberly. “A couple of million. I found the space. We took over a restaurant that had gone belly-up. I found this wonderful architect who remodeled the whole place, and we opened La Tartine two springs ago.

“I don’t know when we began to run into trouble. Business was great. We were lucky with our reviews and at one point, we were booked four months in advance. Then . . .” Clarissa stopped and struggled for composure. “Then we hired a maitresse d’. A friend of Paul’s from his accounting days, and they took off. For the Seychelles, it turned out. No extradition.

“I started handling the finances myself, of course. And I found nothing had been paid. Not the architect, not the builder, no one. Just the food suppliers and the wine guys.”

All three of them knew how alert food suppliers were to defaulting restaurants. It was pay on delivery or no delivery.

“Then the investors started calling. And I couldn’t find the money.”

“In the Seychelles, was it?” Meg asked. “The rat.”

“It was worse than that. I’m still not exactly sure how he did it—I just blanked out when the lawyer tried to explain it to me, and to tell you the truth, I don’t think he quite got it himself.”

“Public defender?” Quill said.

“Just some very nice guy from Albany Law School. He tried his best. Anyhow, it looked as if I’d helped steal it. Paul had gotten my signature on a bunch of transfers. I never looked at . . .” Clare stopped again. “Anyhow. It was in all the papers. You know what happened. I was sentenced to jail for fraud for two years. I got out early on parole. Mainly because Bernard LeVasque vouched for me and guaranteed me a job. But it was a job with a contract. I can’t quit. I mean, I can, but there’s this huge financial penalty if I do. And if I’m fired . . . there’s a good chance my parole will be revoked.”

She folded her hands in her lap. “So that’s it. You still want to hire me?”

“Not to do the accounts of course,” Meg said. “But we’re awfully glad to have you.” She patted Clare’s back. “You’re going to love it here.”

—From
Brilliance in the Kitchen
, B. LeVasque

Jack banged his spoon into the middle of his bowl of granola, hopped off his booster chair, and took a running leap onto the foot of Quill’s bed. Max barked and jumped up to join him. Quill slid her charcoal pencil into the nightstand drawer and turned her sketch pad face out.

“Who’s this?” she asked in the voice she used just for Jack.

“Me,” Jack said. Then, with simple immodesty, “I’m gorgeous.”