A Carol for a Corpse (11 page)

“A bread hearth!” Meg said. She ran her hands through her short dark hair, making it stand up like a porcupine’s quills. “I always wanted a bread hearth.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Quill said.

“I didn’t want to upset you when I knew we couldn’t afford it,” Meg said with a noble air. “Do you have any idea how that’s going to affect the baking? There’ll be a line down Route 15, begging for the peasant breads.”

“And with the stove in the middle of the kitchen, we’ll have room for the elves,” Benny said. “The bread hearth’s going to give us a perfect backdrop.”

Quill closed her eyes and opened them again. “The elves?”

“Just for the holiday show, sweetie,” Bernie said. “We don’t like to encourage Herself to take things too seriously.”

“Herself?”

“Pssht!” Benny poked Bernie in the ribs. “They were best friends in high school,” he hissed.

“No, we weren’t,” Meg said. “Lydia was a cheerleader. Lydia was cool. We hated Lydia’s guts.”

“Meg!” Quill, exasperated, began to rock furiously back and forth.

“Okay. We didn’t hate her guts,” Meg said. “We didn’t even know her all that well. It’s now that I hate her guts.”

“She’s rich, she’s gorgeous, she’s the editor of one of the most successful magazines in America, and she’s in love with her successful husband,” LaToya murmured. “What’s not to hate?”

“It’s not that,” Meg said sunnily. “If somebody’s going to be rich, gorgeous, and successful and it’s not you, why not somebody you know and like? Nope. I hate Lydia’s guts because she’s a snob. She’s got lousy taste. And she’s a bully. Other than that I can’t think of a thing wrong with her.”

“She’s been in your kitchen recently.” Quill guessed.

“She was in this very kitchen before she even got checked in,” Meg said in an agreeable tone. “And I escorted her right out of this kitchen this morning.” She gave her eight-inch sauté pan an affectionate pat.

“Let me guess. She said the kitchen design was so over, she couldn’t believe it.”

“She did,” Meg agreed cordially.

“But you’re totally fine with Benny and Bernie remodeling it?”

“They love it the way it is right now,” Meg said earnestly. “But they did think it’d be more efficient if we moved things around. And once we got talking about how much ground I cover during the day, I told them we needed a change.”

Benny gave Quill a tremendous wink. Quill decided the two of them needed to sit down for a nice long talk. Anyone that could handle her volatile sister in the course of a single morning had a magic Quill wanted to borrow.

“So Meggie ran into the Wicked Witch of the gourmet trade a little sooner than expected,” Benny said. “Which makes it easier on us, because Meg knows what she’s dealing with right off the bat and we don’t have to make like little hypocrites and pretend we like the . . . witch.”

Quill found herself feeling sorry for Lydia. “And the elves?” she said, hoping the change in topic would give Lydia’s reputation a rest.

“The elves,” Ajit said. “Yes. We were hoping that you could give us a hand with that, Quill.”

“You were?”

“Lydia is going to have help in the kitchen when she cooks, of course. This is a professional cooking show, and we’ll have a complement of sous-chefs and dishwashers on the show on a regular basis. Bernie’s going to see to it that the actors are well choreographed. But we haven’t had time to cast it, you see. And we want to get as much background work done here as possible. So we’re short one elf.”

“One elf,” Quill said. “But he or she won’t be the same person in subsequent shows.”

“Not to worry.” Benny swept to the prep table. With one hand, he held aloft a red jerkin with a green pointed collar and a black belt. With the other, he held up an elaborate belled hat with a point that came low over the nose. “Ta-dah! And the makeup’s not to be believed, clown white with rouged cheeks and cute little Rudolph noses.”

Quill decided, suddenly, that she needed a nap. Things were very confusing. “I suppose,” she said after a moment, “I could call the high school and see if the cheerleading squad is available.”

“Phuut!” Meg said. “We’ve got real kitchen assistants right here. Let’s make one of them the elf.”

Quill looked at the five members of the kitchen staff that had been on the lunch rota when Ajit and company had descended on the kitchen. She raised her eyebrows interrogatively. “What do you all think about that?”

“It’d be a hoot,” Elizabeth Chou said. “I’m a sous-chef, by the way, Ajit. So if Lydia needs anything sautéed, I’m your woman.”

“And I can cut up a chicken in ten seconds flat,” Mikhail Sulaiman said eagerly. “But only if the elf’s nonsectarian.”

Peter Hairston, their sommelier, pulled a face, rolled his eyes, and responded reluctantly. “Sure. Fine. I’m in, if you can’t find anyone else.”

“I’d be privileged,” Kathleen Kiddermeister said. Her face glowed. Her job as head of the waitstaff didn’t offer many opportunities like this one. “Wait till my kids hear about this!”

“And how about our pot girl?” Bernie said brightly.

“What about you, Melissa?” Quill said kindly. “You haven’t been with us very long, but I think you’d enjoy it.”

“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “I don’t think I should.”

“It’ll be fun,” Elizabeth said, “and goodness knows we can all use a little of that.”

“It isn’t a job requirement, Melissa,” Quill said, “So please don’t feel you have to.”

“We’d be all made-up?” Melissa said. “And dressed in those cute costumes?” Timidly, she reached forward and gave the belled hat a little shake. The chimes rang cheerfully through the kitchen.

Ajit clapped his hands. “Good. I choose Melissa. And that has to be a record time for recruiting an elf. Okay, everyone, we’ve got a ton of work to get through in the next four days. I want to begin to lay tape tomorrow, so let’s not waste any time.”

“An excellent policy,” Albert McWhirter said as he came through the doors from the dining room. “Miss Quilliam? It’s past one o’clock. You are late for our meeting.”

Quill leaped to her feet. “Mr. McWhirter, so it is. I’m so sorry.”

“Now, elves,” Quill heard Benny say as she followed McWhirter back into the dining room, “I want everyone to line up to get measured tout de suite. Elizabeth? Peter? And Melissa. Now, where did Melissa get to?”

Albert McWhirter pointed a bony finger at one of the two chairs at the small conference table in Quill’s office. She sat down in one; he sat down in the other.

“I do not appreciate the misuse of my time, Miss Quilliam.”

Actually, he didn’t sit, so much as perch on the chair opposite hers. His beaky nose and wattled neck increased his resemblance to a buzzard.

“I’m afraid staff concerns are of more immediate concern to me than you realize,” Quill said loftily. “Although I regret the inconvenience to you. Of course.” She glanced at the clock on her desk. “It
is
a whole ten minutes after one. Golly. What an inconvenience.”

McWhirter seemed unperturbed by the sarcasm. He lifted his briefcase to his knees, opened it with precise swipes of his thumbs
(Click. Click.)
, and removed a small, elegant laptop.

“That computer,” Quill said with enthusiasm. “is perfectly adorable.”

“It’s an adequate machine,” he acknowledged. He tapped the keypad with his forefinger. “This is a preliminary to the in-depth report that I shall forward to the bank just after the Christmas holidays,” he said. “First,
(tap)
efficient deployment of your workforce. Second,
(tap)
appropriate use of available cash. Third,
(tap)
management’s grasp of key issues.” He leaned back in his chair and regarded her with icy gray eyes. “Shall we begin?”

“I wanted to tap his little pea brain right out of existence,” Quill said with warmth of passion she didn’t know she had. “I wanted to wring his scrawny little buzzard’s
neck
!”

“Whoo-ee.” Meg shook her head and took a swig of the red zinfandel Quill had brought up to her room after a late dinner. “Have another glass of this stuff. It’s terrific.”

“I’d better not.” Quill glanced at the clock over the mantel in Meg’s rooms. “Myles usually tries to call about eleven. I don’t want to be three sheets to the wind.”

Meg reached forward and filled Quill’s glass. “You’re perfectly coherent when you’re two and a half sheets to the wind. And listen to me, it’s either that or large doses of Prozac.”

Meg occupied a third floor suite of rooms overlooking the falls. There was no kitchen. She’d told Quill the last thing she wanted to do at night was look at any kind of appliance. There was a bright rug on the living room floor, piles of pillows in red, yellow, and green on the black chenille couch, and at least 300 cookbooks piled in precarious stacks all over the floor. Quill settled her heels on the stone slab Meg used as a coffee table and continued her rant.

“He wants me to lay off half the staff.”

“Impossible,” Meg said shortly. “I’m stretched to the limit in the kitchen as it is. If I worked those guys any harder, they’d fall over dead from stress.”

“Not the kitchen staff. He says that’s the one place where ‘labor appears to approach maximum efficiency.’ ”

“Appears to approach?” Meg shrieked. “We damn well
are
efficient.”

“He says that it’s due in part to one of the owner-operators contributing directly to the success of the operation.”

“He means me?”

“Yep.”>

“ ‘Owner-operator’? Did he talk like that the whole two hours?” Meg demanded.

“Yes. He did.”

“And wait a second. What was that stuff about my contributing directly to the blah blah blah?”

“It’s because you cook. As opposed to us hiring a chef. As opposed to me, who doesn’t do anything. He thinks I waste too much time in frivol.”

“Frivol?”

“He doesn’t call it frivol. He calls it being an indirect. In-directs are bad. Very bad.”

“ ‘Indirect’ isn’t a noun,” Meg said.

Quill heaved a sigh. “Apparently a business like ours doesn’t have enough money to support indirects.”

“What part of speech
is
‘indirect,’ anyhow?” Meg gazed in a puzzled way into the depths of her glass of wine.

“An adjective,” Quill said. “I’ve been reduced to an adjective. And apparently it’s an adjective the Inn can do without.”

Meg gasped, inhaled her wine, coughed, and shouted, “He wants you to fire yourself?”

Max, who had been curled asleep by the small fire in the grate, awoke with a start and began to bark.

“Is he
crazy
?” Then, in a calmer tone, “Hush up, Max. There’s a good boy. Now let’s get serious about this, Quill.”

“I am serious,” Quill said testily. “He’s not crazy. He’s probably right. He said I’m spending far too much time in ‘activities ancillary to profitability.’ ”

“Such as?” Meg said in a dangerous way. Then, to the ceiling, “The
nerve
of this guy.”

“Oh, being secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. He doesn’t see that as a useful civic contribution. As a matter of fact,” she added, in a burst of honesty, “the Chamber probably doesn’t find it very useful, either. I’ve never taken very good minutes.”

Meg patted her on the shoulder. “I am going to put something very nasty in his oatmeal tomorrow morning.”

“And the breakfasts and lunches with people like Marge. He says those don’t contribute a thing. And he asked to see my appointment books for the past few years, and, of course, I handed them right over. And he took exception to the time I’ve spent investigating cases.”

“You keep our murder cases in your daybook?” Meg said in an awed sort of way. “Like, ‘break into Ro-Cor construction, eleven p.m.’?”

“Of course not. But there’s a lot of unaccounted-for time, naturally, and I explained that our murder cases took up a certain amount of it. Then there was the week I spent in jail, and the time I was buried in the basement for two days, and the couple of trips I took to Syracuse and wherever to look for clues.”

“So, once you explained it, what did he do?”

“He turned pale. And then he looked aghast. And then he asked if we did all this for free, which, of course, we do. We can’t charge anything for our detective work. We don’t have a license.”

“Hm.”

“And I must admit we’re usually detecting by default, as it were.”

“Hm.”

“Of course, there are those who think we’re just plain nosy, but I told him we had a sincere dedication to justice.”

“True. What did he say to that?”

“He said that I should get a real job.”

“Wow.” Meg thought about this for a minute. “You mean, like take over the bookkeeping, instead of farming it out to Blue Man Computing in the villages? And maybe answering the phones and booking guests, instead of having Dina do it? And doing our own business plans, instead of getting advice from Marge and John? That kind of job? Not a real job like at, say, Kmart.”

Meg appeared to be asking this in all sincerity. Quill looked at her for a long moment, then swung her feet to the carpet and grabbed the wine bottle. “How much of this stuff have you had, anyway?”

“I did have a drink with Ajit in the Tavern Lounge,” Meg said with dignity. “Vodka. Neat. You know how I like vodka. Neat.”

“You haven’t had more than three ounces of vodka at one time in your life,” Quill said. “I’ve never seen you drink much more than a half bottle of red wine at a time, either. You are remarkably abstemious for a chef. You know what? You’re blotto!”

Meg waved her hand airily over her head. “I feel great.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

“So,” Meg said, her hand still suspended in the air over her head, “what else did McWhirly have on his little pea brain?”

Quill gently guided Meg’s hand to a more comfortable position and debated her answer. In her current condition, if Meg did throw anything, she was liable to miss what she was aiming at. She decided to go for it. Just in case, she moved the wine bottle well out of her sister’s ambit.