A Steak in Murder (14 page)

That night, late, she heard a faint tap at her bedroom door. Or thought she did. She didn't open it.

"Gee," Laura Crest said, "this is really nice." She stood awkwardly at the ma
î
tre d' station, the faint odor of Betadyne surrounding her like Marge's Chanel Number Five. "Are you having a lot of people at this menu-testing thing?"

Quill and Doreen had pulled all the dining room tables
into a large circle, preparing for that afternoon's test of Meg's Longhorn beef recipes. The tablecloths were bright yellow, the napkins a cheerful cadet blue. Quill had splurged on a large sheaf of freesia and maidenhair fern, and arranged the flowers to trail down the centers of the tables. The whole thing made the room look smaller.

"I'm sorry you missed lunch the other day," Quill said. "The room looks a lot better with everything in the proper place. Was it a real emergency?"

"It wasn't too bad. A pony with founder. You get a lot of it this time of year, with the grass being so rich. Sometimes no matter how careful you are grassing out,
the pony will founder anyway. This was one of the here-
we-go-again ones."

"It's worse than Andy Bishop. At least he has some backup. You have to be on call all the time, don't you?"

"There's just a few of us this far south of Ithaca," she said. "Meaning vets, of course. The closer you get in to
Cornell, the more there are. But right now, I pretty much
handle forty farms and probably three hundred horses alone. Not to mention the cats and dogs. There he is." She bent forward as Max came loping into the dining room. He took one look, whirled, and disappeared back into the kitchen. She laughed ruefully. "That happens a lot. It's really bad when you go into being a vet because you love animals and you end up having most of your patients flee at the mere sight of you. Except Tye, of course."

"Where is she now?"

"In the truck."

"Max has a nice run outside. Why don't you put her there? Then we can go have a small sherry at the bar," Quill suggested. "I expect everyone will come drifting in about four."

"And that's your nice way of handling the fact that I'm early. It's a great idea about the dog, if you don't mind. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Quill went into the bar, set out the sherry bottle, and was waiting when Laura came back. "I'm glad you're a
little early. I'd like to get to know you better. There aren't
that many . . ." She stopped and floundered a little.

"I know what you mean. Tompkins County is paradise
as far as working conditions and the animals, but it's a little thin on people. And no, there aren't a lot of women our age around without three kids and a full-time job managing tired husbands." She sighed and sank into the one booth the bar space permitted. "Whoosh. I'm beat. I was up early with a case of mastitis at Harland Peterson's. Did you know he's registered for a permit for an . . . um . . . abattoir on the south side of his farm?"

"A slaughterhouse?"

"Yep. One of the reasons longhorn cattle aren't more widely distributed in the meat-eating population is that no one's really set up to handle horned cattle."

"I don't think I want to know a lot more about this," Quill said.

"You don't?"

"I don't. And don't ask me to give up my shoes either."

"Your shoes?" She grinned suddenly. "I see. We'll leave it at that. But you should think about a couple of things, Quill. Cattle are pleasant sorts of animals most of the time, but they are bred for a purpose. And most of the facilities . . ."

"Slaughterhouses," Quill said, in the mood to call a spade a spade.

"Right. Most of them are humanely run. The cattle
aren't brutalized, rarely know what's happening, and they
don't suffer."

"And if I don't believe it, I should stop eating beef . . ."

"Give up your shoes . . ."

"And generally move from hypocrite to hypercritic."

Laura applauded.
"Nicely
done. I'll have to see if I can top it."

"Let me pour you a small sherry. Dry?"

"Please. Thank you. Well, I got the information Meg asked for from my old sweetie professor at Cornell. These cattle are really neat." She dug into her chinos pocket with one hand, holding the sherry aloft with the other, then thrust the crumpled sheaf of papers in Quill's direction. "There it is. Now, some of the studies have
been sponsored by I.T.L.A., that's the International Texas
Longhorn Association, so you take those with a grain of salt if you like. But I've never known anyone at Cornell or Texas A&M in those departments to fudge data, and it looks as if the colonel's claims might be true. The beef is good for you."

Quill flipped through a stack of Xerox copies of articles titled "Percent Ratings of Back Fat in Longhorn Texas Cattle Carcasses" and "Hyperlipidity of Fats in
Foreign and Domestic Cattle." She suppressed a shudder, and remembering her vow to focus, focus, focus, read as
intelligently as she could for a few minutes. "Meg's interested in the taste tests. From these ratings, it looks as
though the beef is pretty competitive with Angus and that
lot."

Laura shrugged. "As a scientist, I can tell you that's subjective data. I plan to make up my own mind with this afternoon's . . . what is it, exactly?"

"You could call it a taste test, I guess. We've invited some of the people who're associated with the International Night dinner to try the beef with Meg's marinade. She doesn't want to risk a super public failure."

"I might be able to give her a little help with how to prepare the marinade if I can borrow the lab facilities at
Cornell for a bit. Getting the right enzyme to break down
the tougher meat fibers can go a lot faster if I can target the type of striated muscle in this beef."

"Hm," Quill said brightly.

"Now, papaya enzyme is one of the best organic tenderizers you can use. Has Meg had a lot of experience with that? Oh, hi. Who's this?"

"This is John Raintree," Quill said, sliding out of the booth. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself." He tossed a folder onto the stack of Xerox copies. Quill's stack of reading was now three inches high. "I ran some numbers for you. The lowball plan is A, the high end is B. All of it's predicated on the beef tasting as good as the usual supermarket stuff." He sat down next to the vet. "You must be Laura Crest, the vet. I talked to Royal Rossiter this morning about the hows and whys of shipping his beef from Texas. Can I verify a few things with you?"

Quill set a glass of club soda in front of John and took up his business plan with a resigned sigh. She'd let herself in for this. She'd demanded a plan to buy the Inn back and now here it was. Rows and rows of boring numbers, with jargon-filled labels to decipher like "5 yr. deprec. sched." and "debt carried forward." After a few minutes she said, "Hey."

"Hey yourself," John said.

"Sorry to interrupt, Laura, but John, none of the num
bers at the bottom of the pages are in little parentheses."

"That means all these numbers in the profit and loss column are, like, profit," Laura said with an intelligent air.

"Positive profit," John said, "as opposed to the notorious negative profit. A term," he added, for Laura's benefit, "with which we at the Inn at Hemlock Falls are disconcertingly familiar."

"Don't I know it," said a familiar, truculent voice. "Well, John. How's Long Island treating you? We've missed you around here."

John held Marge's hands in a warm grasp. "You look just terrific. I'll bet that's a new dress."

Quill realized this was the second time she had ever seen Marge in a dress; the first had been just yesterday.
And she recognized it. It was the polished cotton number
from the front window of Esther's shop. Marge pounded John on the back. "I have to say I missed ya." She gave his shoulder an affectionate punch. "Here. I came by because I want you to meet someone. Phil Barkin? John Raintree." John stood up and shook Barkin's hand. He wasn't from Hemlock Falls, Quill would have bet her best tube of cerulean on that. He was in a three-piece blue suit and looked like a banker. It would be just like Marge to bring a banker, uninvited, to a private party to which she hadn't been invited in the first place.

She said pleasantly, "How do you do, Mr. Barkin? I'm Sarah Quilliam. And this is Laura Crest."

"He knows who you all are," Marge said rudely. "Now." She rubbed her hands together briskly. "You got some beer for me, Quill? And maybe a martini for Mr. Barkin?"

"I'll get it," John said. "With an olive, Mr. Barkin?"

"Call me Phil," the banker said. "No olive." And, as
far as Quill could determine later, when she reviewed the
events of the afternoon, that was all that Phil Barkin had to say for the rest of the day. He settled back in the farthest corner of the booth, sipped his martini, and for all she knew, took a nap.

Quill sat down next to Laura Crest and beamed a men
tal message to Marge to go away.

"See you've got the tables set up for a party," Marge said. She accepted the dark beer John set in front of her, took a long drink, and wiped the back of her mouth with a satisfied burp. "You know," she said, apropos of nothing in particular, "I like beer. I like to burp. So what about the party, Quill?"

"It's just a few people, Marge, from the International Night Committee. We're testing a couple of Meg's recipes."

"Sounds good," Marge said. "Harland and Royal? Both of them sort of let it drop that they were invited. Told 'em I'd probably be there, except that Phil here was comin' in to talk over a few things. So I wasn't sure I could make it."

Quill bit her lower lip firmly, so she wouldn't ask Marge and her silent pal to come to the menu testing.

"Sounds kinda exciting. Phil, here, he's only in town for a few days, and he asked me this morning: Where are all the Texans and Russians going, Marge? Some event in the village I don't know about?"

"Have you tried the wine tours, Mr. Barkin?" Quill asked.

"Wine!" Marge snorted. "I guess Phil knows enough about wine."

Quill refused this offer to inquire further into the mys
terious Phil's knowledge of wine, and from there, his
undoubted preference for spending the afternoon drinking
it at her expense.

Marge turned her beady little eyes on the vet. "You goin', Dr. Crest? To this menu-testing thing?"

Laura shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Well, Marge. I may get called away suddenly. You know how it is in early summer."

Marge nodded. "Harland got the mastitis up to his farm, I hear."

"Just a touch," Laura said, unsuspecting. "One of the older heifers."

"So if you go, there might be a place or two extra at the table?"

Laura looked alarmed. Quill gave up. "There's more
than enough room, Marge, for you and Mr. Barkin both."

"Oh, I don't know," said Marge, suddenly affable. "I wouldn't want to put you out."

"In that case . . ."

"But seein' as how you insist, we'd be happy to come. When's the feed?"

"Four o'clock. I thought," Quill said with a determinedly innocent look, "that you knew that already."

Marge swallowed the rest of her beer and cocked her head alertly. "Sounds like they're filing in. I'll go get 'em seated for you, Quill. C'mon, Doc, Phil. I'll put you right by the kitchen door. Meg always serves that side first."

"Marge! There're name tags . . . oh, never
mind!"
Quill rolled her eyes helplessly at John, then followed him into the dining room. Everyone seemed to have arrived at once, and Marge, with the temerity of a Mac-Arthur to Quill's unwilling Truman, began reorganizing the seating arrangements to her own satisfaction. "Harland, you sit over here, on this side of me, and Royal, you sit here on the right. Brady, you get on the other side of Royal." Peter, in the best tradition of Cornell School of Hotel Management trained waiters, was unperturbed by the extra two guests, and placed the extra settings with deft efficiency.

Quill, focusing hard on resisting the impulse to run her hands through her hair and scream, jumped when Colonel
Calhoun touched her arm.

"Would you have a few minutes to escort me into the
kitchen, Miss Quilliam? I wanted to ask your sister a few things." He had removed his Stetson for the occasion but added a bolo tie and a red brocaded vest to his black suit.

Quill assumed this was cattleman-formal, and told him
he looked very nice. "And I'm afraid I never take guests into the kitchen when Meg's cooking. You've probably heard how temperamental she is."

"No, ma'am, I have not. But I have some ideas about the marinade that I wanted to ex—"

Quill took him by the elbow. "Now, I think you mentioned to the mayor that you're going to try out a version of your speech, so that Lally Preston can hear it before the dinner. Is that right? So I placed you right here, at
the head of the table." She drew out his chair and pushed
him firmly into it.

He rose back up, like a sea lion through sheet ice, with
purpose and oblivious to Quill's icy glare. "I have visual aids," the colonel said. "Where can I use my visual aids?"