A Steak in Murder (16 page)

"I told you," Colonel Calhoun said after a minute. "I told you I wanted to know what was in this stuff."

Meg huddled in a chair in the corner of the kitchen, her back to the crowd of people there. The state police were in the dining room; the trooper in charge, a surly man in
his late thirties with a beer drinker's potbelly had directed
the guests into the kitchen, leaving only John to answer questions. Since he'd refused to let anyone else leave, either, Quill felt as if she was waiting for the subway at rush hour.

Between the guests at the menu testing, the kitchen
crew, and the wait staff, she counted eighteen people. No
one was eating or drinking anything except Bjarne, who was finishing a plate of bracciole with a defiant expression on his face. Marge, her face set, her cheeks pale, stood by the window and looked at nothing. Outside, Quill heard Max bark once in his pen, then fall silent. Tye was too well-trained to bark at all.

Quill edged her way past the Russians and over to Meg. She put her hand on her shoulder.

"Go away," her sister said in a small voice.

"Meg . . ."

"This is the second person to die after eating my food." Her whisper was urgent, flooded with tears.

"He didn't die after eating your food. He choked to death. And that other case was murder." Quill's voice
was pitched low, but she felt the word reach out and float
around the room. The Russians muttered and moved closer together. Brady, arms folded, backed against the sink, jerked his head back like a startled horse.

The door to the dining room opened and John looked in. "Quill?"

"Over here."

"Bring Meg out here for a moment, will you?"

"Mr. Raintree!" Adela Henry's voice was commanding. "How long are we going to remain in here?" She
was standing between the mayor and Leonid. In her effort
to keep physical distance between herself and the Russian, her considerable bosom was pressed into the mayor's ear.

"That's up to Trooper Harris. But I don't think it will be long."

"The poor man choked to death," Adela boomed. "If there are any questions to be asked about the death, it would seem that you should be the one to answer them. After all, you were the one with your hands around his throat."

"That's enough, Adela," Quill said, her voice deadly.

John's face was impassive. "Never mind, Quill. Bring Meg out here, will you?"

Meg shoved her chair violently, got up, and pushed her way to the door. Doreen detached herself from the space between the refrigerator and the ice machine and plowed after her. Quill followed them both.

Royal Rossiter's body was still in position over the table where he'd been sitting. His hands and feet were in plastic bags. Andy Bishop, Hemlock Falls best-looking
(and only) internist, was kneeling at his side, peering into
Royal's throat with a scope. The Tompkins County forensics team was busy photographing parts of the dining room that didn't hold any bodies at all, as far as Quill could see. Trooper Harris stood in the middle of the room, thumbs hooked into his belt. He jerked his head at John. "Bring the women over here."

"I'm gonna call Mr. Murchison," Doreen said loudly. "I don't like the look of this bozo."

"That your lawyer, Miss Quilliam?" Trooper Harris had muddy brown eyes and a mottled nose. He smelled of dry cleaning fluid. "Heard his name before."

"He's the family lawyer," Quill said a little nervously. "I could give him a call, if you think it's necessary."

The brown eyes slid over her like a water moccasin. He shrugged. "Up to you."

"Well," Meg said tightly. "What happened?"

"Massive heart attack," Andy said. He got to his feet and came over to stand by Meg. They didn't touch, although his gaze rested on her face like a caress. "I won't
know for certain until the autopsy, of course, but it looks
like a heart attack at this point."

Harris's eyes moved from Meg to Andy and back again. "I want it done by the Tompkins County coroner, Bishop. Heard about you two."

Meg adjusted the diamond on her ring finger. "If Dr. Bishop says it's a heart attack, you can bet it's a heart attack." She shrugged off Quill's cautioning hand with an angry jerk of her shoulder. "How dare you, you . . .
you
. .
. slime."

Trooper Harris snapped his gum and raised an inquiring eyebrow. Quill had never seen such an insolent expression on anyone's face. "Slime," he said amusingly. "A-huh." He turned his back to them. "Burton?"

A young trooper with lank brown hair jumped a little. "Yessir?"

"Team about finished in here?"

"Yessir."

"Move the body on out, then. You get all the names of the witnesses?"

"Yessir."

"Get statements. Then let 'em all go." Without looking around, he added, "You run background checks on these three, Raintree and the sisters." Then he swiveled his head halfway round. "Stick around, folks. Especially you, Raintree."

Doreen carried the news back to the kitchen that Royal's death had been a natural one. With the others, Quill gave her name, address, phone and social security numbers, and a brief statement of the activities that had led up to Royal's death. By midnight, the Palate was empty except for Quill, Meg, John, and Doreen. Andy had accompanied the body to the coroner's office in Ithaca. Quill sipped a hot cup of chamomile tea and closed her eyes. She was exhausted.

"You called him yet?" Doreen demanded.

"Called who? Myles?"

Meg yawned. With Andy's assurance that Royal's death had been a natural (if untimely) occurrence, she'd cheered up almost immediately. "It was a natural death,
Doreen. I mean, I'm really sorry the poor old duck passed
away here. It was a frightful end to the dinner."

"And Marge's hopes," John said quietly. He avoided Quill's quick glance.

Meg didn't seem to hear this. "But Myles is in the middle of a real case. You can only call him in an emergency, Quill, right?"

"He'll call me at some point," Quill said. "He always does. I'll talk to him then. I'll see you guys in the morning."

"What I wanta know is, what good is somebody when
he ain't around when you need him, anyways?"

"Good night, Doreen," Quill said firmly. She went up to her room, showered away the day, and got into bed. Her suite at the Inn had been large compared to this, and
at first she'd been delighted with the small, self-contained
space. The room was only sixteen by sixteen. Two narrow windows fronted Main Street. Two windows on the adjacent wall looked out at the narrow side yard and the garage. The phone didn't ring.

What good is somebody who ain't around when you need him, anyway?

Quill was up early, despite the fact that Trooper Harris had kept them all till almost midnight. She'd left a mes
sage for Myles on his voice mail, telling him briefly what had happened, then sat in the rocking chair at the window
and looked out at Main Street. She could see a few pick
ups parked in front of the Croh Bar. The breakfast crowd,
loyal to Marge's Diner for years, had finally settled on
the new place to drink coffee, gossip, and generally hash over events past and to come in Hemlock Falls. She won
dered if Marge missed it, the gossip, the liveliness. Breakfast at the Inn was an altogether quieter affair. Royal Rossiter's death would be a hot topic at the Croh this morning.

Max nudged her knee. "No early escape this morning. Good boy." She thought a minute. There wasn't a great
deal to do. Breakfast was in the hands of the kitchen staff,
and there were at most a few tourists late in the morning. She was too tired to paint. "What I ought to do, Max, is reward you for staying in last night. Do you want to go for a walk?" Max barked. "If we walk, we might run
into Andy. He could tell us a bit more than he was willing
to tell that trooper last night. What do you think, Max?"

Max really wanted to walk in Peterson Park. Andy usually jogged there around six o'clock, and she wanted to ask him what he really thought about Royal Rossiter's death.

Apple blossoms scented the air around the statue of General C. C. Hemlock, and late flowering peonies attracted a few enterprising bees. Summer mornings like this one put a favorite hymn in her head, and she sang, "Morning has broken, like the first morning, blackbird has spoken, like the first bird," over and over again (she
couldn't remember the rest) until Max sat down, flattened
his ears, and barked. "It's not nearly as awful as Aunt Meg's singing, is it?" she asked the dog.

"It's pretty enough. Just repetitious." John rose from his seat at the foot of the statue and joined her on the sidewalk. "Is anyone else in your family tone-deaf? Or is it just Meg?"

"Our father was. He always told us he got kicked out of the choir when he was a kid for doing it on purpose. He couldn't even tell a major from a minor key, much less the difference between two notes. Are you out for a walk?"

"I thought I might run into Andy Bishop. I've got a couple of questions to ask him."

"Me, too. He usually does the circuit, so if we keep going, we're likely to run into him." They walked in silence for some time. The air was fresh, with a hint of the heat to come. Quill took a deep breath; she caught the faint odor of cows. "Did Meg tell you about the Zoning Board meeting?"

John nodded.

"You want to know the unworthiest thought I've had all week?"

He shot her a glance and grinned.

"That CarolAnn gets these dolts from Q.U.A.C.K. to
picket the cows and Marge is so embarrassed by the pub
licity that she
begs
me to buy the Inn back." She sighed happily. "I'm going to sit down and go over that business plan right after breakfast, John."

"Have you talked to Meg about it? Are you really sure
she wants to take all this back on?"

"Of course she does," Quill said. "She's all excited."

John didn't say anything.

"Well. Okay. She's happy because I'm happy."

"What did she say?"

"She said it didn't matter where she cooked, as long as she wasn't cooking for people who preferred McDonald's, or words to that effect. What did she say to you?"

"That you were using the Inn as an excuse to hide from getting on with your life. And that touched off the worst quarrel you two ever had. Which," he added reflectively, "must have been some fight, given the way you two wrangle with each other. She said you haven't talked about it since. That she's going along with what you want to do because, as you say, she can cook anywhere. And," he added reflectively, "we've got a real treasure in Bjarne."

Quill noticed the "we" and smiled at him.

"Do you want to talk about it now?"

Max veered off to investigate the leg of a park bench. From there, he cocked his head alertly and charged into the stand of old oaks which were the pride of Peterson Park. Quill whistled. Max ignored her, scrabbling frantically at something in the dirt. She watched the dog for
a long moment then asked, "What do you think? Do you
think I'm avoiding real life by wanting the Inn back?"

"That depends. On how you handle it this time." He sighed. "You don't have to let everyone in, Quill. You spend a lot of time responding to the guests, the employees, to whomever plants himself in your path. That hasn't changed since you've downsized to the Palate. In
stead of using your free time to paint, or spend time with
Myles, you joined the Zoning Board, which has given
you a whole new set of people and causes to worry about.
I agree with Meg that you're neglecting your own life so you can live someone else's. But I don't think your desire to repurchase the Inn has anything to do with that."

"So you think I'm a cuckoo?"

John seemed unaware of how icy her voice was. "You
mean as in the bird that borrows someone else's nest?"

"That's what you said, isn't it?"

"It's not what I said at all. I said that for whatever complicated reasons, you're putting off making decisions about your own life by becoming involved with other people's. Here, let's sit down." He pointed at the bench. Quill sat, her temper ebbing as fast as it had come. He stood in front of her. His gaze was direct, unchallengingly friendly. "What did you like least about running the Inn?"

"Worrying," she replied promptly.

John waited a bit. Then he said, "About the food?"

"Meg took care of that."

"About the rooms?"

"Doreen took care of that. And you generally booked the guests, and Mike took care of the gardens—and, come to think of it, what
was
I worrying about?"

She needed to move. She got up, walked around the bench, and sat down again. Max cocked his head in a puzzled way. "Well, I worried about money when we didn't have any."

"That was a legitimate concern."

"I told you on the phone what Marge was doing.
Charging a booking fee. Why didn't we think of charging
a booking fee?" She held her hand up and said hastily, "That may sound as if I think you did a bad job. You know I don't mean it that way."