A Steak in Murder (3 page)

She took a deep breath. Time. She had some time. She would stroll up to the Inn, retrieve the last boxes of clothes, and stroll on back. She didn't care what Marge
may have done to her carefully tended bushes of Scented
Cloud, Apricot Nectar, and Kordes Perfecta. Not a bit.

The air was fresh, rainwashed from the night before, and Main Street was cheerful with geraniums. Max was sitting on her feet. She bent down and patted him.

"Walk?" she said, which brought him to his feet with a joyful leap.

They walked briskly past Esther's dress shop (the window theme was heavy on denim, sagebrush, and fake turquoise jewelry), the bank (with a banner reading
WELCOME CATTLEMEN) and turned onto the path to
the Gorge by Nicholson's Hardware (pitchforks, Western
saddles, and a life-size acrylic cow on the sidewalk). Do
reen was right The village of Hemlock Falls was mad for cows. Why, she couldn't begin to imagine. Everyone she knew was backing off beef, conscious of the spate
of mad cow disease terrifying Europe, which, she remem
bered suddenly, was the whole point. Who was it who had been telling her that native American cattle were totally free of that disease? Howie Murchison, that was who. When he and Miriam Doncaster had been in for dinner two nights ago.

She realized she was standing still, gazing thoughtfully
at a clump of early wild iris. Her hand went to her skirt pocket, where she kept a small sketch pad. She'd been letting her painting go, as well. And with Myles off on a fairly long job for General Electric, with the Palate running as smoothly as it could under the circumstances . . . why not? This is why they'd sold the Inn, wasn't it? To give herself a chance to work, to get more time for Myles, to free both herself and Meg from the endless, frustrating details of running a twenty-seven-room Inn buckling under the weight of too much debt and too little custom.

"It was the right thing to do," she said aloud.

Max jerked to attention.

"Oh, Max," she said. "It was the wrong thing to do."

Max stiffened, nose pointed toward the brush. Maybe she ought to sketch Max instead of the iris. She cocked her head at him. Could she do a dog without being sen
timental? Or without the kind of sarcasm that made Wil
liam Wegman's work so repellent? She hadn't been sure about having a dog. They demanded a lot of attention.
They were smelly. They had to be taken to the vet. They
loved you without question.

Nope. She was too fond of Max to do him well.

Max barked.

Quill bent forward and rumpled his ears affectionately.
Max barked again, furiously. "Good old Max. You don't have to listen to every word I say, but you do, don't you?" The iris rustled. Max dashed forward, knocking her flat into the mossy base of the tree. He leaped over
her and flung himself at the iris, forepaws extended, ears up, growling. Quill looked up at the canopy of oak leaves
overhead and sighed. She could feel damp moss seeping into the back of her neck and mud seeping into her sandals.

"You don't think you're a person Max, you think I'm a dog. That's the whole trouble. I've just figured it out." She rolled over and propped herself on her elbows. Max dashed toward her, teeth snapping, then dashed back to the iris. Two black eyes rimmed with white stared at her from the brush. The eyes advanced. The brush parted. A furry white face with a black muzzle stared at her. Quill stared back. It was a cow. A very large cow. With horns that must have extended two feet on either side. Foam dribbled from the muzzle. A stray gleam of sun caught at the ring in the cow's nose and made it twinkle. Quill closed her eyes tight, then opened them again. She didn't
know a whole lot about cows, but she did know that they
didn't put rings in female cows' noses. They put them in bulls' noses.

"Don't move." The voice was low, curt, masculine. And very Texas. "Ma'am."

"Not for the world," Quill whispered fervently. "You tell that bull I'm not moving an inch. I'm not even going to breathe."

"He ain't gonna do anything. We're just out for a walk."

"You're walking your bull?"

"And you're gonna get a nice mess of dead raccoon on that pretty skirt. Hang on. You stay right there. And you," this apparently addressed to Max, "you shut up and sit."

Max shut up and sat. Quill, philosophically, remained where she was, frozen into position, right hip elevated, left elbow digging into the ground. The brush parted and
a tall, middle-aged, bowlegged man in jeans stepped onto
the path. He held a red leash in one hand. Behind him walked the bull. The leash was attached to the ring in his nose. "Name's Royal," he said. "This here's my bull, Impressive."

"It certainly is." Quill bit her lip, swallowed hard, and extended her hand. "My name's Sarah Quilliam. People call me Quill. How do you do?"

Royal, who had bright blue eyes, heavily tanned skin, and a nice brown mustache in approved cowboy style, grasped her hand and pulled her gently to her feet. She and Impressive looked at one another. Up close, she could see that his eye was mild and that the foam on his nose was more like drool.

" 'S the heat," Royal said laconically. "He drools when it's warm." Impressive lowered his head and swung his horns from side to side. Max chuffed in a warning way.

"Just wants you to scratch his nose," Royal said. "See here? Like this." He scratched hard behind Impressive's ears. The bull half closed his eyes in pleasure. "The missus called him Impy. But that," Royal said severely, "ain't no name for a prizewinning bull. If you get my drift."

"I do," Quill said. "Are you from, ah . . ."

"The Dew Drop?"

"The what?"

"The Dew Drop Inn. Marge Schmidt's place up yonder?" He waved his arm in the direction of the Inn at Hemlock Falls. "Got some of my prize stock up there. Ms. Schmidt fixed up a terrific corral. Tore out a bunch of brambly ol' roses to do it, too."

"She did what? She's calling it what!?"

Impressive opened his eyes and began to swing his horns, this time in a decidedly less friendly way than he had before. He snorted. Max pulled his lips back from his teeth and growled.

"Now, ma'am," Royal said nervously. "Now, ma'am, begging your pardon, but you don't want to go a-shriekin' round this bull."

"I was NOT—" Quill made a determined effort to lower her voice. "I was not," she continued in a calm and dispassionate tone, "a-shriekin'."

"There, now, see that?" Royal grinned at her, his teeth tobacco-stained. "He goes nice and easy when he hears that pretty voice of yours. You headed up thisaway?"

Quill smiled, hoping she didn't look as outraged as she felt. The Dew Drop Inn? The Dew Drop INN!! That did it. That just did it. She was going to march up there, confront Marge, and demand to buy her home back. Royal? You bet your cute little cowboy butt I'm headed that way. Aloud she said, "Yes. Are you going back yourself?"

"We'll walk right along with you."

The progress up the hill to the Inn was no odder than
the Women's Auxiliary Float at the Hemlock Home Days
Parade—a version of the musical
Showboat
with baby
pigs dressed as the main characters known as
Shoatboat
—
perhaps even less odd. If Quill hadn't been plotting ways and means to get her old home back she would have
enjoyed it. Impressive ambled along amiably enough, and
Max, notoriously phlegmatic about everything except mailmen, trotted at the bull's heels with a pleased expression. Royal didn't say much, except to cluck encouragingly when Impressive stopped for a bite of a willow shoot or timothy grass. And the weather was splendid.

"There's the rest of the herd," Royal said as they topped the hill.

Quill came to a halt, dismayed. In one form or another the Inn at Hemlock Falls had sat over the lip of Hemlock Falls for close to three hundred years. First a log cabin run as a makeshift bar for trappers, then as a mansion
during the Revolutionary War period, then as a home for
General C. C. Hemlock after the Civil War. Built of stone, with a copper roof, the Inn sprawled elegantly in front of the waterfall, surrounded by stone terraces, shaved lawn, Quill's carefully landscaped gardens . . .

. . . and six Texas longhorn cattle. Eight, Quill corrected herself, if you counted the two little red calves. Marge (or somebody) had created a pen of six ten-foot-long metal gates, of a type she'd seen in dairy farms all over Tompkins County. Unlike the dairy cows Quill was familiar with, these cattle were all different colors. One was black and white, like an Indian pony. Two more
were white with big red splotches, one was dun, and two
were speckled like a rampant case of measles. All the adults had horns ranging from four to six feet, end to end.

Quill realized why Marge (or somebody) had selected the rose garden; the stone Niobe in the middle of the fishpond recirculated the water, which meant it could be used as a watering tank. All sorts of cow-y equipment
was scattered around: bright blue plastic buckets, bags of
feed, bales of straw and hay, and pitchforks.

"Do cows eat fish?" she asked after a long moment.

"No, ma'am. They do not," Royal said.

"I mean, we have a dozen koi in there. Had, I mean."

"I eat fish," Royal said with a helpful air.

"They weren't fish to eat, they were fish to look at," Quill said crossly. "Where is Marge, anyway?"

"Said she was bringing the spreader up to the pens. Had to go down to Harland Peterson's to get it, and she left before I took Impressive for his constitutional. So she oughta be back by—yep, there she is."

"Spreader?"

"Manure spreader." Royal unlatched one of the metal
gates, led the bull inside, then took off the leash. Or lead.
Or whatever it was. Then he leaned over the fence and watched Marge drive up on a huge green tractor with a spiky metal trailer attached to the rear.

"Yo, Quill."

Quill nodded but didn't say anything. Marge rotated the tractor wheel with careless ease, then began to back the trailer up to the pen. She was a short, stocky woman in her late forties with a determined chin and sharp gray eyes. Her gingery hair was newly cut in a more or less fashionable style that owed a lot to hair spray. Quill saw with surprise that she was wearing lipstick.

"Yo, Royal," Marge said. She blushed and smiled. "You want I should help you pitch?"

"Help yourself," Royal said with a generous air. Marge shifted the tractor into neutral, hopped off, and let herself into the pen. She and Royal each took a pitch
fork and began to toss cow manure over the gate and into
the trailer. Quill noticed that Royal puffed in the heat. His face was red with effort. He obviously didn't want Marge to notice.

"Just where are you going to—um—spread it?" Quill asked. She ought to help. Whenever she saw anyone working, especially an older person like Royal, she felt as if she ought to help, but she absolutely did not want to. Even though the cows looked rather nice. Even if
there was cow manure all over her rosebushes that would
probably burn the heck out of them. "I feel as if I . . . Marge?"

One of the cows with a calf at her side, the largest and the blackest, began to swing her horns and moo. She nudged her calf behind her and advanced slowly on Marge, nose lowered to the ground. Then she tossed her head in a semicircular motion.

"Marge, maybe you should let Royal finish . . ." Quill took a deep breath and shrieked, "RUN!"

The cow sprang forward with an astonishing burst of
speed. Marge was just fast enough. She swung herself up
and over the fence and sat down hard on the other side. Royal stuck his pitchfork in the ground, leaned against it, and chuckled in a tolerant way. "That Faithfully. I warned you about that Faithfully. Don't want anyone near that calf except me and Impressive."

Marge got to her feet and dusted the seat of her plus-size khakis. "She'll get used to me, Royal. I like cows. And they like me."

"Maybe Royal could finish up here, and we could go into the Inn and talk for a minute," Quill said. "There's just a couple of things . . ."

"You okay with that, Royal?"

Royal nodded slowly. "Sure am. Nice day to be clean
ing the pens."

"See you for an early supper, then. Got some of that Kielbasa lying around, made it with that sauerkraut you like."

"Sounds good to me."

They smiled at each other. Quill cleared her throat. Twice.

"All right, already," Marge said. "Let's go into the Skipper's Schooner."

"The what?"

"The Skipper's Schooner." Marge glowered impatiently. "The Tavern Lounge, you used to call it."

"But this isn't a ship, Marge, it's an Inn. The nearest ocean is three hundred miles due east."

"So?" Marge stumped across the grass to the flagstone terrace that led to the bar. An arrangement of garden gnomes, windmills, and small plastic mushrooms flanked the right side of the French doors. Inside, it took Quill a moment to adjust to the dark interior. Fishnet hung in great swathes from the tin ceiling. The votive lights on the bar tables were encrusted with seashells. A painting of a bare-breasted mermaid smiled invitingly from behind the bar.