A Steak in Murder
A STEAK
IN
MURDER
Claudia Bishop
www.spectrumliteraryagency.com/stanton.htm
Copyright © 1999 by Mary Stanton
Books by Mary Stanton
Heavenly Horse novels
THE HEAVENLY HORSE FROM THE OUTERMOST WEST
PIPER AT THE GATES
Beaufort & Company - Paranormal Mystery Series:
DEFENDING ANGELS
ANGEL’S ADVOCATE
AVENGING ANGELS
ANGEL’S VERDICT
ANGEL CONDEMNED
Unicorns of Balinor Series
THE ROAD TO BALINOR
SUNCHASER’S QUEST
VALLEY OF FEAR
BY FIRE, BY MOONLIGHT
SEARCH FOR THE STAR
THE SECRETS OF THE SCEPTER
NIGHT OF THE SHIFTER’S MOON
SHADOWS OVER BALINOR
YA Magical Mysteries
MY AUNT, THE MONSTER
WHITE MAGIC
NEXT DOOR WITCH
Books by Mary Stanton writing as Claudia Bishop
Hemlock Falls Mystery Series
A TASTE FOR MURDER
A DASH OF DEATH
A PINCH OF POISON
MURDER WELL-DONE
DEATH DINES OUT
A TOUCH OF THE GRAPE
A STEAK IN MURDER
MARINADE FOR MURDER
JUST DESSERTS
FRIED BY JURY
A PUREE OF POISON
BURIED BY BREAKFAST
A DINNER TO DIE FOR
GROUND TO A HALT
A CAROL FOR A CORPSE
TOAST MORTEM
DREAD ON ARRIVAL
A FETE WORSE THAN DEATH
A PLATEFUL OF MURDER (combo volume of A TASTE FOR MURDER and A DASH OF DEATH)
DEATH IN TWO COURSES (combo volume of A PINCH OF POISON and MURDER WELL-DONE)
The Casebooks of Dr. McKenzie Mysteries
THE CASE OF THE ROASTED ONION
THE CASE OF THE TOUGH-TALKING TURKEY
THE CASE OF THE ILL-GOTTEN GOAT
Anthologies
DEATH DINES AT 8:30 (with Nick DiChario)
A MERRY BAND OF MURDERERS (with Don Bruns)
DEATH DINES IN (with Dean James)
For Les Stanton
from his loving daughter
Acknowledgments
No Hemlock Falls novel ever gets completed
without the patience of my editor Natalee
Rosenstein, the calm of my agent Merrillee
Heifetz, and the support of the people I love:
Helen, Les, David, Sarah, Julie, Jason, John,
Lyn, Harry, Jenn, and as always, Nick.
And special thanks to Jason Schwartz
for the Naming of the Wines
CAST OF CHARACTERS
THE
PALATE GOURMET RESTAURANT
Sarah "Quill" Quilliam . . . owner, manager
Margaret "Meg" Quilliam . . . owner, chef de maison
Doreen Muxworthy-Stoker . . . owner, facilities manager
Bjarne Bjornson . . . master chef
Various waiters and waitresses, including Kathleen Kiddermeister, Dina Muir, and Peter
THE INN AT HEMLOCK FALLS
Marge Schmidt . . . owner
Betty Hall . . . the cook
Royal Rossiter . . . a guest, owner Royal Land and Cattle Company
Colonel Calhoun . . . a guest, owner Calhoun Cattle Company
Jack Brady . . . cattle manager
Leonid Menshivik . . . a Russian emigré, member of R.I.C.E.
Vasily Simkhovitch . . . a Russian emigré, member of R.I.C.E.
Alexi Kowlakowski . . . a Russian emigré,
member of R.I.C.E.
CITIZENS OF HEMLOCK FALLS
Myles McHale . . . a private investigator
Andrew Bishop . . . the town internist
Harland Peterson . . . president, Agway Farmers Co-op
Elmer Henry . . . the mayor
Adela Henry . . . his wife
Dookie Shuttleworth . . . minister, Hemlock Falls Church of the Word of God
Howie Murchison . . . town attorney
Davy Kiddermeister . . . town sheriff
Harvey Bozzel . . . president, Bozel Advertising
CarolAnn Spinoza … tax assessor
Miriam Doncaster . . . librarian
Esther West . . . owner, West's Best Dress Shoppe
MEMBERS OF Q.U.A.C.K.
Sky . . . a vegetarian
Normal Norman Smith . . . another vegetarian
A STEAK
IN
MURDER
Claudia Bishop
It was early summer in Hemlock Falls. The fresh, green gold light of a rising spring sun washed slowly over Hemlock Gorge. The silver spray of the waterfall hung
mist in the air like a gauzy blanket. Sunshine crept across
the rocks, touched the newly mown lawn in front of the Inn, struck light off the metal pen surrounding the rose garden.
The dog sniffed at the three-bar gate. He was an ugly dog. His coat was a muddy mixture of grays, browns, and tan. His ears were floppy, and his head was too big for his clumsy body. But the disgracefully colored fur was clean and shiny. His eyes were a deep, alert brown. The expression on his doggy face was a happy one. He
sported a leather collar with a large tag that clanked when he trotted briskly through the village on his morning constitutional. The tag read:
My name is Max. When you find
me, please call Sarah Quilliam at the Palate Restaurant
and listed a phone number. Underneath in very small type
was the message:
Please don't call the dogcatcher.
Max was a gypsy and an escape artist. Where he'd come from before he'd wriggled into Sarah Quilliam's life, the god of dogs only knew. And where he went on his early morning rambles was the despair of his owner. Nothing seemed to keep Max inside when Max wanted to be outside. And he wanted to be outside on this astonishingly lovely morning.
He sniffed thoroughly around the metal pen. None of his mark was on it. His mark was all over the little stone
pond with the statue of Niobe, the brambly thicket of the
Queen Elizabeth roses, the tidy length of brick pathway. If Max had been able to deduce, he'd have known that the pen was new. But he was just a dog, so he sprayed two of the metal posts, lifting his leg with an intent, faraway expression. That finished, he trotted briskly down the path to Peterson Park. Breakfast was in order, and soon.
There was a lot to distract him in the park. The trail leading to a woodchuck den. The statue of General C. C. Hemlock. A Hershey's chocolate bar wrapper, with no chocolate in it. A man lying folded in a shallow grave behind a stand of huge oak trees. Max, a friendly soul, spent some time sniffing the man. The clothes smelled of laundry soap and fabric softener. And cows. Max was fond of cows. The blood pooling on the man's chest was drying but not dry. The man himself was breathing in a way Max thought of as
not there
in the same way that
other human beings in Max's uncomplicated life were
not there
when they breathed at night on the beds where Max
was not allowed to jump, or even bark, since humans wanted to be
not there
until the sun came up.
The breathing slowed. Stopped. The murmur of the beating heart jumped and bounced. Max barked twice.
The man's heart went thumpty-thumpty. He began to breathe, slowly, deeply.
Not there, then.
Well. A lot of important jobs awaited him at home in the village. They were planting tomatoes today (Max knew this because the flats had been set out the night before), so there was a lot of digging to do. And he was hungry. He sniffed at the body one more time. Wagged his tail. The man sighed in his different sleep.
So Max went home to breakfast.
It was Saturday afternoon, and hot for July.
"Cows." Doreen Muxworthy-Stoker leaned over the picket fence and regarded her employer and the scruffy dog at her heels with disapprobation. "That Marge Schmidt's settin' up a corral fulla cows right where the old rose garden used to be."
Sarah Quilliam slammed the spade into the tomato bed.
Max the dog snapped lazily at the clump of dirt that flew past his nose, then curled up and went to sleep. "Why are you yelling at me, Doreen? I didn't book the cow people at the Inn. And who cares, anyway?"
"Whole town's gone cow crazy. You oughta see what Nicholson's Hardware Store has on the sidewalk. Fake cow. Big as life and twice as natural. You oughta care about cows. There's a big deal going on about cows."
Quill gave up. "Why cows?"
"Texas longhorns," Doreen said. "Them are cows with horns. Big ones."
"And?"
"And some association's having their annual meeting right here in Hemlock Falls in two days, and you don't even care."
"I don't have to care, do I?" Quill said mildly. "I mean, after all, it doesn't matter who eats at the Palate, does it? Although," she added doubtfully, "I suppose I could talk Meg into scheduling some sort of beef thing on the menu."
"Marge'll have beef on the menu up to our Inn. You can bet on that."
This got to Quill, as Doreen knew it would. "If I have to remind you one more time that we don't own the Inn anymore and Marge's business is none of our business, I am going to scream." Quill punctuated the verb with a vigorous jerk of her arms and brought up a shovel full of earthworms. One of them was cut right in half. Max
woke up, looked at the worm, and rolled his eyes at Quill.
Conscience-stricken, she let the dirt slide back in the
hole. Maybe it was true that you could split an earthworm
in half and it would go on its way. Maybe she'd just cloned something.
"It's gonna look like bloody Jehoshaphat," Doreen said. "Buncha cows running all over that backyard. And the mess. I'm here to tell you cow manure's the sloppiest manure this side of a chicken with the runs. Not to mention the stink. We get a north wind off'n the Gorge and that stink's gonna blow right through the dining room after it stinks up the kitchen, of course, and after stinkin' up the dining room it's gonna stink up the foyer and after it stinks up the fo—"
"Stop," Quill said.
"I know about cows," Doreen said. Her frizzy gray hair haloed her face in the June heat, making her look like an obstinate cockatoo. Quill glanced at her with ex
asperated affection, then wiped her forehead. The garden
at the back of their new restaurant was hotter than it should be, despite the breeze. At home—at Marge's Inn, she corrected herself—the breeze from Hemlock Gorge
was cooled by the waterfall. Their new restaurant was in
the village, at the foot of the hill where the Inn at Hemlock Falls had sat for over three hundred years, and the breezes from the Gorge blew right over Main Street and the old stone house that contained the Palate Restaurant. (Sarah Quilliam, manager.
Maître
Margaret Quilliam,
chef de maison.)
Quill wiped the sweat from her neck. She, Meg, and Doreen had exchanged the Inn, with its load of debt, for Marge's Diner two months ago. There'd been enough cash on hand to make some necessary renovations to the kitchen and the small dining area, but there hadn't been a reason to keep on Mike the grounds-keeper. There weren't any grounds to speak of at the Palate. The backyard was sixty feet wide and eighty feet long. Not nearly enough room for an outdoor patio and a vegetable/herb garden, too. And they needed a garden. There were some essentials Meg couldn't do without. Fresh dill. Chives. Oregano. Tomatoes. Quill looked at the flat of unplanted tomatoes and sighed. It was late to plant.