A Touch of the Grape: A Hemlock Falls Mystery (Hemlock Falls Mystery series) (18 page)

"We have to try to find out. And your cream teas, Meg, would soften up Attila the Hun."

Quill was as baffled at the conclusion of the cream tea as she had been at the beginning. Spring was softening into summer, and the afternoon air was a gentle
bath of warm gold light. The gardeners would be out in
full force all over the village, Quill thought. She caught a scent of burning in the air, one of the Petersons in the Gorge, getting rid of the dead wood. The Falls were in full flood and the water sprayed high; for a short time,
the sun was at just the right angle, and a rainbow arced
over the Gorge.

"This is one of the most beautiful places we've ever been," Freddie said. She set her teacup down on the little table inside the gazebo. The five of them just fit
around it. "And that was one of the most delicious teas
I've ever had."

"Fran is going to be so sorry she missed it," Mary
said regretfully. "She left to get those signs down almost
two hours ago. I wonder where she got to."

"There were a couple of wonderful shops in the village," Freddie said practically. "I'm sure she got caught up in those. She'll be here. Quill, are those sweet peas planted around the base of this little hut?"

"Yes." Quill finished the last sip of her tea and absently picked up another scone. "They'll be out in July."

"I don't think so," Mary said. "Not if you don't stop
that dog from peeing on them. Dog pee simply wrecks
shrubbery." She leaned over the railing and said, "Shoo! Go away!"

"Max!" said Quill. "What color is it?"

"What color?! It's a sort of a grayish-brown dog."

"No, the—um—dog pee."

"Why, yellow, of course."

"Good," said Quill. John had been right. His injury was healing itself. "Hey, Max!"

"Woof!" Max said.

"That is the ugliest dog I've ever seen," Meg said.

"Whose dog is it?" Freddie looked disapproving. "It's very dirty."

"I've been meaning to give him a bath." Quill got up and looked down at her dog. "Hey, Max. What have you been up to? Don't tell me, Mr. Peterson's chickens. Did you thank Selena for dropping you off?"

"Woof," Max said again, more urgently. "Woof!" He ran backwards, toward the Gorge, and looked over his shoulder at Quill.

"Did you find something cool?" Quill asked in a voice even she felt to be too syrupy.

"Is that the dog that saved your life?" Freddie asked in a hushed voice.

"Yes."

Max began to bark in a "come here right now" sort
of way. He ran to the edge of the lawn, and disappeared
over the lip of the Gorge.

"Max!" Quill went down the steps and across to the edge of the lawn. The Gorge plunged steeply down to the river here. Quill saw the gray-brown flash of Max's
back plunging through the brush. A thin spiral of smoke
drifted over the river. Max's barks scaled into hysteria.
Quill took a deep breath and started to go after him. She
inhaled again. Her head swam. She forced herself to stand still. She breathed shallowly, but the terrible odor
carried on the smoke seemed to cling to her like grasping
hands.

It was familiar, that smell, and she trembled. She'd washed herself again and again, scouring it away the night before.

"Meg," she said quietly. "Give the sheriff a call, will you?"

"We can't leave," Robin sobbed. "Our president's due any day now."

"Can't you call her?" Quill asked gently. "You must tell her what's happening here."

"We've sent her a fax. If it is a her. We think it's a him."

"You think it's a him?"

"We're going to meet him for the very first time!"
Robin made a determined effort to keep her tears at bay.
Quill felt her own eyes fill in a sympathetic response. "He's so proud of what we've accomplished. Fran
thought he might look like Richard Gere." She lost the
battle. Tears rolled down her face. "Now she'll never see him."

They were in the foyer. The carpet and floor were still littered with the debris generated by the traffic from the
impromptu craft fair. Quill, Mary, Freddie, and Robin were squashed uncomfortably on the leather couch in
front of the cobblestone fireplace. The surviving Crafty
Ladies had insisted on sticking together, in full view of the sheriff, the state troopers, and the inevitable rubber-neckers who had arrived at the site of yet another murder. Quill sat back. There was some insanity at work here, and it wasn't limited to the murders. Now was not the time to probe.

The volunteer firemen had put out the flames before
Fran's body had been totally consumed. Quill had spo
ken quickly to Andy Bishop, who had told her that, just like Ellen Dunbarton, Fran's mouth had been taped shut
with duct tape, her arms bound behind her. There were a few differences, he said. He'd get back to her.

Quill got up. Freddie clutched at her. Her face was rubbed pink with tears. "Where are you going?!"

"Just upstairs for a moment. You know what? Why don't you go into the Tavern and sit down. Quite a few people are in there already. You'll be safe there. Ask Nate—" Not Nate; he'd started his job at the Croh Bar
yesterday. "Tell Kathleen I said to give you some sweet
sherry."

"Would there be any martinis?" Robin asked timidly.
"I do like a vodka martini."

"Enough to sink a battleship. Why don't you go on. now." They walked together down the hall, fear in the set of their shoulders. Quill began to make her way up
the staircase, and almost collided with Paul Pfieffer com
ing down.

"I understand a body has been discovered here on the
premises," he said with disapproval.

Quill bit back the retort that it wasn't
her
fault. "In
the Gorge. Which is actually village property." She eyed
him with a bit of disapproval herself. This gray, prim man had his hand firmly on the checking account that
could save their Inn. And he would check in in the mid
dle of the worst brouhaha they'd had for months. "We
open our doors to the volunteers when anything like this
occurs. If it does." Since murders had, in the past, occurred quite frequently at the Inn, she abandoned this attempt at lobbying.

"Community spirit is quite important."

"We do our best. Have you come down for dinner? You'll notice the sign that the dining room's closed. That doesn't apply to the guests. We have quite a bit of
trade, despite what you may have heard to the contrary,
and we didn't feel it was right to continue to entertain while all this was going on. We don't want anything to get in the way of the investigation. If you'd like to eat, just tap on the doors to the kitchen. The chef's in there."

"That's your sister, isn't it? The one who spoke up at lunch today."

"Meg."

"Humph."

"If you'll excuse me …" She edged her way past
him, and up the two flights to the third floor. The yellow tape reading police line do not cross was still in place
at the door to 310. Quill ducked under it. Doreen was on her knees, sifting through the pile of debris around the bed. "Find anything yet? I thought you were going
to do this while Meg and I were at the Summerhill meet
ing."

"I woulda missed the craft show."

Quill looked, but there wasn't any place to sit down. She leaned against the wall instead. "We won't find anything of use anyhow."

"Might. Give me a sec." She gave Quill a sharp look, filled with affection. "How you holding up?"

"Oh, fine," Quill said bitterly. "Just fine. I'm becoming as oily a manipulator as Harvey, as good a liar as a used car salesman, and as greedy as Marge the Barge herself. My character's in
good
shape."

Doreen chuckled. "You'll be all right. Big difference between lyin' for a livin' and fibbin' a little to live."

"There is, huh?"

"Don't be too hard on yourself, missy. You're just tryin' to keep body and soul together. You might recall that all you have to do is give the sher'f a call …"

"If you mean Myles, I keep telling you, he's not sher
iff anymore."

"More's the pity. Anyhow, he'll come right home and
take you away from all this. All you gotta do is call."

"And what about Kathleen, and Mike the groundskeeper, and—"

"Me? I can take care of myself. Kathleen'll find something to do. And Meg's got the doc."

"What we have is ourselves," Quill said crossly. "You really want me to give up and let some guy pull us out of our troubles?"

"Sher'f ain't 'some guy.' "

"We are capable of handling all of this ourselves."

"You know what I think?"

"I'm about to find out, aren't I?"

"You watch your tongue, missy. I think you feel so bad about John, that you're proving we don't need him. And we do."

"I do feel badly about John. I feel awful about John."

"Guilty, too, from the look of you."

"I do?"

"Look, Quill, thing about men is, they haven't a notion. They're simple, like. They know sisters, they know their mas, they know bossy, like their fourth grade teacher, and of course, they know girlfriends and spouses, like. What they don't know is friends. You ast me, John got friendship all mixed up with the spouses and girlfriends. What I think is, you should, you know, write up a few letters, friendly, like. Then write longer ones, and longer ones, and pret' soon …"

"Was it Meg's idea or yours?" Quill asked testily.

"We kinda cooked it up together. Seein' as how it knocked you for such a loop."

"It didn't knock me for a loop. I'm handling it."

"Ahuh."

"And I don't want to talk about it."

"That sounds familiar. Far as I see it, you don't talk,
you might as well be dead and buried. What else is there but talk? You stop talking and look what happens. War,
pestilence, plague, and goodness knows what all. Now, if people just talked—"

"Doreen!"

"Ahuh. I ain't done yet. But we can talk about it later.
Look here." Doreen sat back on her heels. "Whad'ya think of that?" She extended her palm.

"It looks like a triangle. The orchestra kind."

Doreen snapped her fingernail against the blackened metal. A crystalline
ping
filled the air. "Where d'ya sup
pose it come from?"

"I don't know. Was it used as some sort of craft thing? The Ladies turn all sorts of articles into things they weren't supposed to be in the first place."

"I took me a good look at that table. They had Santy Clauses made out of old panty hose, them little fans out of plastic spoons, coffee cans made into bird feeders. But no triangles."

"Maybe Ellen kept it because she liked the noise?"

"S'odd, is all. Sher'f tolt me one thing about investigating, the odd thing might be the important thing." She rose to her feet with a grunt. In the devastation of
the room, and the half-light from the shattered windows,
she looked gaunt and tired. Quill looked at her with a flash of remorse. Doreen had never told them how old she was. She'd never filled out an employment application. She'd just appeared at the back door one day,
her appearance roosterish, her attitude prickly, taken up her mop and bucket and that was that. Quill knew that
Axminster was her third husband, and at one time or another, younger, miniature versions of Doreen had shown up at the back door and proved to be offspring. She knew Doreen's life had been hard, physical work from the time she was thirteen. But Doreen had never volunteered much, and Quill respected her reticence.

"Doreen, when's your birthday?"

"August twelth. I'm a Leo. You know that."

"I meant the first one," Quill said softly.

"Oh." She scratched her chin. "You won't tell Stoke?"

"No."

"He's sixty-four, ya know. Might make a difference. Does with some men. Did with my second, as a matter of fact. Thing is, we go gray late in my fambly."

"And?"

"And I'm seventy-two."

"Seventy-two?" Quill kept her voice well under control. "Wow. You'd hardly know it."

"Always been that way with the Muxworthys. Gramma Muxworthy died at a hungry and six, and Ma still raises and cans her own beans. What do you think of that?"

That instead of scrubbing floors and toilets, you should be sitting in the sun among flowers, Quill thought. That I should be making your bed, and ironing your skirts. That, dammit, a younger, stronger person
should be on her—or his—knees, getting wine stains out
of the dining room carpet. She wouldn't say it now;
Doreen was shrewder than a banker and sharper than an
L.A. divorce lawyer. But there would have to be more changes at the Inn.

"You think this might be important?" Doreen turned the triangle over curiously.