A Carol for a Corpse (17 page)

Quill nodded as if this made sense to her and sat down in her rocking chair. She sighed rather loudly, put her hand to her forehead, and gently rubbed her bump.

“So how was choir practice?” Meg asked as she briskly swabbed down the stove.

“I didn’t stay.”

Meg laughed. “The hip-hop version of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ get to you?”

“Harvey seems to have changed his mind about that.”

“Thank goodness.”

Quill sighed more loudly. “Do you have something I could use as a bandage around here?”

“Of course we do. The first aid kit’s under—oh, no, it isn’t, we moved it.” Meg reached under the sink and brought out the white plastic box. “Did you cut yourself?”

“I got whacked on the head.”

Meg looked up, startled. “You what?”

“I walked back through the park and someone hit me on the head. I was out cold,” Quill added rather pitifully, “for quite some time.”

Meg was at her side in seconds. “Where did you get hit?” she asked anxiously. “There, on your forehead?” She touched the bump lightly with two fingers. The tension ran out of her shoulders and she straightened up. “Well, for heaven’s sake. It doesn’t seem like too much of a bump. And what happened?” She stiffened. “Were you mugged?”

“Of course not,” Quill said, “this is Hemlock Falls.”

“What happened?

Quill explained. Meg rubbed her nose and said skeptically, “Are you sure you just didn’t slip and fall? I mean, it must have been quite a smack, and that’s a shame, but why would anyone hit you on the head?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you’re just a little disoriented,” Meg said kindly. “I’ll get you some hot tea. You get a good night’s sleep, and you’ll have forgotten all about it in the morning.”

“I was sure I saw a third set of footprints there.” Quill closed her eyes trying to remember. “Well, maybe I did. And maybe I just knocked myself out. Do you think?”

Meg patted her shoulder. “One way or another, sister dear. You always do.”

Myles didn’t call.

Quill refused to worry. There could be all kinds of reasons why. But when she slept, she dreamed of footprints and moonlight and kept waking in the night, reaching across the mattress to him.

She fell into a heavy, restless sleep just as the dark began to lighten into day.

A loud, imperative banging on her door jerked her awake. Max was curled at the foot of the bed. The knocking jerked him awake, too. He jumped off the bed and began to bark. Quill rolled out of bed. Her head was fuzzy, her unsettled stomach was back, and her muscles ached from the fall she’d taken in the woods. She pulled on a bathrobe and stamped to the door. “This,” she snarled as she pulled it open, “had better be good.”

“It’s not good at all,” Meg said. She stepped into the room. Her short dark hair was tangled, as if she’d been trying to pull it off her head altogether. “Mike found Zeke Kingsfield’s body at the bottom of the gorge.” She stepped inside the door and pulled it shut behind her. “I can’t believe it, Quill. He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Quill stared at her sister in horror. “Zeke Kingsfield’s dead? How? Why? Do we know what happened?”

Meg shouldered past her and went into the Quill’s little kitchen. “Have you had coffee yet?”

“I haven’t even been to the bathroom yet,” Quill said indignantly. “Just tell me what’s happened, okay?”

“He went out for his cross-country ski run about seven this morning, just as it was getting light. He’s usually back by eight thirty to have breakfast with Lydia . . .”

“She didn’t go with him this morning?”

“She said they got back too late from Syracuse last night. At any rate, she sent Mike out to look for him in the snowmobile. It looks like he went over the edge of the gorge where we put in that little fence. Dammit! We put that fence there to prevent stuff like this from happening.”

“Good grief.” Quill sat down on the stool at her kitchen counter. “Poor guy.”

Meg dumped coffee beans into the grinder, pushed the button, and waited until the beans had been reduced to a fine powder. She filled the electric teakettle with water and plugged it in. “Mike jumped off the snowmobile and climbed down the slope to the river. He said it looked as if Kingsfield’s neck was broken, but, of course, we won’t know for sure until the autopsy’s done.”

“I hope it was quick,” Quill said with a shudder. “It’s awful. Just awful. How is Lydia taking it?”

Meg didn’t answer. She put the filter in the Melitta cone, added the coffee, then the hot water.

“She knows, doesn’t she?” Quill said. “Don’t tell me no one’s told the poor woman.”

“Of course she knows. Mike came back and went straight to her after he told me. He wanted to wake you up, but I said I’d take care of it, which is why I’m here.” She poured out a cup of coffee and handed it over. “I haven’t seen her, so I don’t know how she’s taking it. Mike called the sheriff’s office and the EMTs and then he took Lydia back to the site on his snowmobile.”

“So she’s down there with the body?”

“Yep.”

“One of us should be there.”

“Yep.”>

“And you’ve got to get breakfast out.”

“I should be there right now.”

“Okay. Go back to the kitchen. I’ll go down myself. It’ll take me a few minutes to get dressed.” She paused on her way back to her bedroom. “Mike put those fence posts in with concrete, Meg. And the fence was made of chain link. I don’t understand how he could have gone through it.”

“Kingsfield apparently hit a boulder under the snow and veered into the fence. Mike says he was probably clipping along at a pretty good rate at that point. Anyhow, the freeze-and-thaw cycle we had a few weeks ago must have loosened the posts. One was pulled right out of the hole.” Meg spread her hands in a “that’s it” gesture. “I’m off. Call me if you need me.”

Meg let the door bang closed behind her. Quill showered, then pinned her hair back with a clip. She pulled on a silk turtleneck, a heavy sweater, and wool pants. Her boots were still wet from the night before, and she rummaged in the back of her closet for an old pair of acrylic-lined pull-ons.

She sat on the edge of her bed, put on a heavy pair of socks, and paused with one boot in her hand. She
had
been hit over the head. She was sure of it. Which meant that someone had been in the woods surrounding the gorge the night before Zeke Kingsfield fell to his death in an accident that shouldn’t have happened. Somebody who didn’t want her to see . . . what?

Quill frowned, visualizing the spot where Zeke had gone off the cliff into the gorge, and its relationship to where she had been last night. The ski path Mike had created fell away from the west side of the Inn, curved around the edge of the gorge, and then circled back to the east side of the Inn. She’d been struck—she was positive she’d been struck—at a point about an eighth of a mile from the curve. If someone had come up to that point from the park, they would have been concealed all the way. If they’d come down from the Inn, they would have been visible the length of a football field before reaching the seclusion of the trees.

And they reach the curve and do what?

Quill shook her head, remembering the advice Nero Wolfe always gave Archie Goodwin: Never theorize ahead of the facts.

Quill left the Inn by the front door several minutes later. A helicopter hovered over the gorge. A cluster of police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck were parked every which way in the parking lot. Beyond that, at the spot where the ski trail curved around the gorge, she could see yellow-coated firemen, police in dark blue anoraks, and a small crowd of lookers-on.

Quill followed the short trail left by snowmobiles and booted feet across the field to the far lip of the gorge. She looked first for Lydia. The widow stood next to an empty collapsible gurney, about forty feet away from the remains of the chain-link fence. LaToya and Ajit stood a few strides away huddled together as in the middle of a storm.

“Lydia?” Quill asked quietly.

She turned at the sound of Quill’s voice. Quill’s first reaction was one of slight shock. Lydia’s hair was a mess. She wore no makeup. She’d thrown on somebody else’s parka, which was too big for her. Her small feet wallowed in a pair of boots at least three sizes too big. Quill recognized those boots; it was an old pair she kept by the back of the kitchen door. “Quill,” she said blankly. She turned away again, to stare down the cliff. Quill walked up and stood next to her.

Down below, a group of men had placed the body on a portable stretcher. It had been placed in a black body bag. Artie Guttenwald, the head of the Hemlock Falls Volunteer Ambulance Corps, was carefully zipping the body bag closed. Then Davy Kiddermeister, who had been promoted to sheriff when Myles resigned the position, picked up the front end of the stretcher. Artie and another EMT picked up the rear. They began the slow struggle up the shale rock to the top. Two other figures in jackets marked TOMPKINS COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPT. crouched at the wrecked remains of the skis.

The helicopter swooped lower and continued circling. Quill looked up; a cameraman leaned out of the passenger-side door, his camera aimed at the action below. Lydia followed her glance. “I can see that offends you, Quill. But Zeke would have loved it.” She gave Quill a faint smile. “He wasn’t afraid of going broke. Or of any of his businesses going bust. He was mortally afraid that he wouldn’t be remembered. He wanted to be able to walk into a McDonald’s anywhere in the world and have somebody point and say, ‘It’s the Hammer!’ ”

“McDonald’s?”

Lydia shrugged. “You get the idea. He always saw himself as the quintessential American entrepreneur. And he believed that this is the age of the businessman, that four hundred years from now, even a thousand years from now, people would remember him the way we remember Julius Caesar.”

Or Boss Tweed or Jack Abramoff, Quill wanted to say, but didn’t. What she did say was, “I’m sorry.”

Lydia sighed. “I’m sorry, too. And I’m afraid you’re going to be even sorrier, Quill. This whole area belongs to the Inn, doesn’t it? And you directed Mike Santelli to set up this very dangerous ski trail. My lawyers will be in touch with your insurance company.”

Davy and the others reached the top of the cliff, struggled up and over, and set their burden down. Lydia walked up to the stretcher, crouched down, and pulled the body bag open.

Quill looked away. When she looked back, the bag was zipped shut again. Lydia had risen to her feet and was headed toward the ambulance. Davy and the others picked the stretcher up and followed her. Davy looked over his shoulder and nodded. Everyone watched in silence as the awkward parade proceeded the hundred yards across the field to the parking lot. The helicopter increased the circumference of its circle. With an unwelcome intrusion of her imagination, Quill could almost hear the hushed, smarmy excitement of the TV reporter’s narration. “And now the widow, head bowed, hands clutching the borrowed coat across her chest, follows the body of her dead husband across the wild expanse of this remote upstate village.”

Or something like that. Quill said, “Ugh,” to the surprised disapproval of those within earshot. She debated a long moment, then walked over to LaToya and Ajit, who were dry-eyed, but somber. “Is there anything I can do for you two right now?”

Ajit put his arm around LaToya’s shoulder. “I think coffee’d be a good thing.”

“With maybe a little brandy in it,” LaToya said with a shudder. “That’s the first dead body I’ve ever seen. And it’s somebody I knew.” Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears.

“Now, now,” said Ajit. “Now, now.”

“Take her on back to the Tavern Lounge,” Quill suggested. “Ask Nate to make both of you a hot toddy. I’ll be down in a moment.” She waited until they’d gotten halfway across the field to the parking lot. Beyond them, the ambulance took off, sirens silenced, red lights flashing. Most of the crowd of gawkers surged forward. Overhead, the helicopter turned and flew off after the emergency vehicle.

Either the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department or Davy himself had strung a yellow police tape around the spot where Zeke’s skis had apparently hit a large tree trunk hidden beneath the snow and been thrown into the fence. A police photographer crouched in the snow, taking pictures from every angle. Quill walked down the ski trail, attempting to trace the Zeke’s path. A substantial portion of the trail had been obscured by snowmobile treads.

“I didn’t think about leaving any evidence for the police to find when I went looking for him this morning,” Mike said from behind her. “Until I saw the busted fence. Then I stopped and got right off.” He pointed at the snowmobile parked under the trees at the edge of the trail opposite the gorge. “She’s still parked there.”

“I’m so sorry about all this, Mike.”

Mike shoved his orange Arctic hat further down his forehead. “Yeah, well, I can tell you this, Quill. I was out here to groom this trail yesterday and there’s no way that the tree trunk was there.”

“Oh?”

“No, sir,” he said firmly. “And I told the police that. Somebody put that tree trunk there, and dug up the posts to my fence, and then let the snow last night cover all of it. I swear to God that’s what happened. You know what? Some bas . . . that is, some jerk’s setting me up.” Mike had a pleasant, unexceptional face, the kind that got lost in a crowd very easily. He was in his midforties now; he had a wife and two kids who were a junior and senior at Hemlock Falls High School. He was the kind of guy that did his job, did it well, and went home to Monday Night Football and a comfortable, contented wife.

It was rare—unsettling—to see the anger in his face now.

Quill put her hand on his shoulder for a brief moment. Mike had worked for them for years, ever since they’d brought in enough money to pay for his landscaping skills. Actually, Quill thought, it was before they were making a profit. The beauty of the woods and gardens surrounding the Inn were an inextricable part of their success. A large part of that was due to Mike.