A Steak in Murder (6 page)

Quill looked around the Palate's kitchen. It was at least
a third the size of Meg's old kitchen at the Inn, if not even smaller. They'd opted for utilitarian stainless steel, and to Quill's eyes, it seemed like every undistinguished professional kitchen she'd ever been in, and Meg had dragged her into quite a few. Stainless steel worktables stood parallel to one another between the double-size refrigerator and the eight-burner gas stove. The wash sinks
and dishwasher were banked against the north wall. Pots
and pans hung from chains suspended from the ceiling. Meg's knives were stored in a pullout tray under a workmanlike butcher block. Rubber mats cushioned the old oak flooring. Meg's kitchen could never smell like hamburgers and French fries—as a matter of fact, the air was filled with mint and the scent of fresh strawberries—but to Quill, it looked no different than a Burger King or a McDonald's. "I can't believe you don't miss those birch cabinets."

Meg shook her head.

"Or the open shelving and the cobblestone fireplace?"

"Nope."

Quill took a deep breath. "Well. I do, dammit. And I asked Marge to sell the Inn back to us."

Meg's mouth opened. Then shut. She waited a long moment and said, "You did not!"

Quill walked from the steel storage shelves to the sinks
and back again, her sandals noiseless on the rubber matting. "I can't stand it. I miss it all. Everything. The gardens. My room. The dining room. The Tavern Lounge. Did I tell you that Marge has Nate working behind the bar? And that she's got him in a sea captain's hat?"

"A what?"

"She's renamed the bar the Schooner, or something. There's fishing nets all over."

"But there isn't a shipyard within three hundred miles of here, much less a fishing boat."

"I told her that. Meg, the minute I signed that sale contract, I knew we'd made a mistake, and then when I left the place just before we turned the keys over to Marge I knew it for certain. I never told you, did I? I sat right down and called John that day."

"John our former business manager? John
Raintree?"

"Yes. I told him I was sorry he was gone. That I missed him more than I thought I would. I asked him to ditch that job in Long Island and come back. I told him we could be friends for life, that we could work out all that"—Quill waved her hands in the air—"all that other stuff."

"By all that other stuff, I assume you meant the fact that he said he was in love with you?"

"I apologized for being insensitive—"

"Good. Very good. 'All that other stuff,'
very
sensitive."

Quill ignored the sarcasm. ". . . and irresponsible and muddleheaded and for taking him for granted. Meg, I groveled!"

"Hm. What did he say?"

"He said that he . . . never mind. Just that I'd made the right decision, that I should marry Myles and get on with my painting, that I should leave enough time for myself and not get trapped by that sinkhole."

"He meant the Inn."

"Our
Inn."

"But, Quill . . ." Meg trailed off, scratched her head with both hands, and sighed. She closed her eyes for a long moment, then said, "We were going broke."

"We don't have to go broke, Meg. Marge's figured out this way to not go broke. She told me a little bit about it, but I'll bet you we can figure out the rest of it somehow."

"You were going crazy with that place. You never had time to paint. You never had time for Myles. Every guest
that walked through that door you took on as your per
sonal responsibility. The Inn was taking the place of your life, Quill. You were using it to hide." Her eyes searched
Quill's for a long moment. She flushed at the outrage there, and murmured, "And thus my refrain, 'thrust home.' Sorry."

Quill was so angry her jaw hurt. She smiled coolly. "I do feel a little like that poor guardsman Cyrano skew
ered in Act One. Spare me the cheap psychoanalytic crap,
Meg."

"I said I was sorry."

"Fine. Just fine. I take it this means you aren't interested in moving back to the Inn."

"I can cook anywhere, Quill. I'm happy cooking anywhere, as long as I'm not cooking for people who eat lard sandwiches and deep fried pickles. As a matter of fact, I'm going to be late for the train to the city where I am going to cook in a perfectly cramped and horrible kitchen in one of the nicer parts of town for people who think corn dogs are an esoteric breed of hound."

Quill held up one hand. Some part of her was surprised
to see it trembling. "So, go. Leave a couple days early, what do
I
care? Did I ever tell you you were a terrible snob, Meg?"

"Me?! Go chase yourself."

"So, fine,"
Quill repeated. "This is just fine."

"Of course it's not 'fine.' Don't say 'fine' to me in that nasty clipped sort of way. If you want to buy back the damn place and have me cook there, I'll cook there. But you'd be making a big mistake."

"It wasn't that damn place when I took you there after Daniel was killed in that car crash. It saved your sanity, you said, if not your life."

Meg turned so pale that the light dusting of freckles on her nose stood out "So it's
my
fault," she said between her teeth.
"'Well, fine!"
She turned on her heel, wheeled out of the back door, and slammed it so hard the eight-inch sauté pan fell to the floor with a clang. A second later, she came back in and hauled her duffel bag out of the closet where she'd stored it preparatory to this trip. When she left this time, she closed the door with studied care.

Moving carefully, Quill walked over, picked up the sauté pan, and replaced it on its hook over the counter.

"What in the heck was that rumpus all about?" Doreen came in from the front dining room, a load of tablecloths folded over her arm.

"Nothing." Quill grabbed a broom from the corner rack and began to sweep the spotless floor.

"Pretty loud kind of nothin'. I could hear you two all
the way down in the basement. And that's a sixteen-inch-
thick stone wall."

Quill didn't answer. Doreen set the tablecloths on the prep table and counted the stack. "This here primrose color stinks," she offered after a moment. "Shows all the stains and you can't bleach it worth beans. Told ya when you picked it out. Shoulda gone with the white. Meg thought the primrose stunk, too."

"White's boring. People respond better to color."

"People respond real good to a nice clean lookin' tablecloth."

"So?"

"So maybe you want to think about listening to certain people. When they know what's what. Like, I know laun
dry, if you see what I mean. So you shoulda listened to me about the white. And Meg knows you."

"Stop right there," Quill said. She set the broom into the rack. "Do you have the list of reservations for this evening?"

"It's on the maître d' stand out front."

"You call all those numbers and tell the customers we're closed for today."

"You're kidding."

"Oh, no. I'm not kidding." Quill smiled sweetly. "Are you listening to me, Doreen? Have I ever told you you should listen more? Well, you should. It'll do you good. Lock the door, put the CLOSED sign up, and then GO HOME!"

The sauté pan fell back on the floor. Quill, shaking
with rage, walked slowly out the back door, sat down on
the back steps, and put her head in her hands. She felt the door open behind her, and then Doreen's rough palm on her head. She leaned against Doreen's hip and caught the scent of starch, freshly ironed cotton and pine disinfectant. "I'm sorry."

"Never mind." Doreen stroked her hair for a moment.

"Whyn't you go tidy up a bit before the chamber meetin'."

Quill sat up straight and looked at her watch. "Oh, Lord, is it that late already? It is. Damn it. Oh,
damn
it. Marge will be there, too, Doreen. Suppose she tells everyone at the meeting I asked to buy the Inn back."

"Suppose she does?"

"I'll just tell her to go soak her head, that's what I'll tell her."

"Don't you go gettin' into a scrape with Marge Schmidt, Quill. People think a lot of her in this town. 'Course, that's partly because she's one of the richest
people in Tompkins County, and partly because she holds
a pile of loans for half the village, but
why
they respect her don't matter half so much as the fact that they do. So don't go borrowin' trouble."

Quill was in the mood not only to borrow trouble, but
to take out a high interest mortgage. She washed her face,
threw on a few strokes of blusher and some lip gloss, and decided to take the Oldsmobile to the Chamber of Commerce meeting. If she floored it and made the light on Main Street, she might even be a bit early. Not as early as Miriam Doncaster, the town librarian, who arrived twenty minutes before every appointment she made, but early enough to forestall a snide remark or two from Betty Hall, Marge's head cook and junior partner, about how some people were always a day late and a dollar short.

Except in the final months of last year's economic re
cession, the Chamber of Commerce meetings had always
been held at the Inn. Marge's acquisition hadn't affected a thing. Quill liked living in a small town—Hemlock Falls was less claustrophobic and inbred than the New York City art world, where she'd moved before she'd come to the village to stay—but there were times when the reluctance of its citizens to change direction (or, in fact, change anything at all) was very frustrating. No, frustrating was the wrong word. Bummed. That was the right word. She'd been bummed when the Chamber members had failed to rise in common loyalty and refused to darken the Inn's doors with That Person as the owner. When she'd broken the news of the sale in May there'd been a few clucks of sympathy, one or two brusque pats on the arm, and a couple of sorrowful head shakes. She had been prepared (even mentally rehearsed) a noble speech of demurral when the Chamber members demanded to have the monthly meetings at the Palate. It was almost as if the village had expected her to lose the Inn. And although people could fear Marge or resent her success, no one actually disliked her. She was a blunt, decent, shrewd, hardworking businesswoman. And a heck of a cook in her own right Just the sort of Hemlockian who would be commemorated with a bust in Peterson Park after her demise.

Quill slammed on the brakes at the foot of the long driveway leading to the Inn, jerked from her reverie. She ignored the screech of tires from the car behind her, and peered out the windshield. A giant black and white cow stood smack on top of the curved brick wall that used to bear a discreet bronze sign:
The Inn At Hemlock Falls.
There was a banner draped over its flanks that read:
WELCOME, COWBOYS! Someone had wound Christ
mas tree lights around the cow's horns and they blinked on and off.

"The poor
thing,"
Quill burst out.

The cow nodded its head and emitted a "moo" that sounded as if its entire diet consisted of beans.

And then, Quill said, "It's fake!"

"Of course it's fake," said a voice into her right ear. "You city kids don't know a dang thing about a thing, do you?"

Quill drew back and inadvertently released her foot from the brake. The Olds bucked and stalled. "Hello, Harland."

Harland, president of the local Agway co-op and the biggest dairy farmer in Tompkins County, tugged his Butter Is Better cap more firmly over his forehead. "You gotta watch them sudden stops, Quill."

"Sorry, Harland."

"You can't drive out here in the country the way you do in the city, now, can you?"

"Nope," Quill said.

"Every time I see a cop chase on
World's Scariest Police Accidents,
I'm reminded of you, Quill. Seein' you
drive that taxi in New York City when you was a young
ster musta been something."

"It was, Harland," Quill said humbly. "Is your truck okay?" She craned her neck over her shoulder. Harland's teal and white dually was the pride of his life, now that Mrs. Harland was gone.

"Just had her washed. You goin' to the Chamber meeting?"

Since Quill was (a.) secretary of the Chamber and (b.)
had never missed a meeting since she'd joined eight years
ago and (c.) was widely known to avoid showing up at the scene of her business failure except when absolutely necessary, she didn't feel she had to reply to this. "Are we late?"

"I ain't. You might be if you gotta go back to the diner to get the minutes. You didn't forget this time, did you?"

"It's the Palate now, Harland," Quill said patiently. "And I left the minutes book with Miriam Doncaster to transcribe. She's inputting them into permanent storage in the database."

"Waste of a couple of megabytes, far as I can see."
Harland straightened up and stepped away from the Olds.
"And if you could learn to use that little dingus I showed you all last month, you wouldn't have to input twice. Just write on the pad and whammo, translates your hand
writing into regular print and everything. Carry mine with me all the time. Use it for the dairy herd. If Mrs. Peterson
could of seen what computers can do for dairy farming, she would have been amazed. S'pose them Texans know a thing or two about computers?" He nodded toward the
mechanical cow, who blatted obligingly, as if in response
to what Quill considered to be a totally trivial question.