Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) (7 page)

“Not a shred,” Miriam said promptly. “What she did is call for an investigation.”

“Just like the Republicans plugging up the senate. That’s Carol Ann all over,” Dina said, with a surprisingly objective tone. “Mean as a snake.” She caught, too late, the scent of Prell shampoo, and clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Thank you so much, Miss Dina Muir.”

Carol Ann’s poisonously sweet voice came from
somewhere behind Quill’s left shoulder. She turned around. “Hello, Carol Ann.”

Carol Ann ignored her. “I see you ended that Chamber meeting pretty darn quick, Marge Schmidt. Is it maybe because you know something about Adela Henry? You want to let the rest of us in on your sneaky little secrets?”

Quill discovered she was furious. “Sit down, please. There are a couple of things we’d like to discuss with you.”

Carol Ann’s perfectly arched eyebrows rose. “Like what?”

“Like what kind of proof you have Adela’s involved in anything at all.”

“Love to, Quill. But I haven’t a minute. I came to fetch Marge and you, too, since you’re on the committee.”

Quill took a moment to sort this through. She was on too many committees. Booth committee. The Furry Friends committee. The arts committee. And now this committee to keep the Craft Guild ladies from whacking each other to pieces. “Which committee?”

“The steering committee, of course.” Carol Ann sat down next to Marge, picked up a fork, and poked at Marge’s hamburger. She pursed her mouth disapprovingly. “That’s a lot of animal fat you’re gorging yourself on, Marge Schmidt. You need to sign up for my nutrition classes. I’ll give you the friend’s rate, since I know you. Best thing you’ll ever do for your high cholesterol. But first, you have to come with me.” She clapped her hands, like a particularly officious gym teacher. “Chop-chop! Right now.”

“I don’t
have
high choles—” Marge smacked herself on the forehead. “What the heck am I doing, talking to
you about anything? And I don’t have to go anywhere with you.”

“You do, too, unless you want to be in big trouble with the sheriff. It’s the sheriff that wants you. Both you and her.” She jerked her thumb at Quill.

“For what?!”

“We’re going over the fete accounts at the bank, and Mark Anthony Jefferson wouldn’t do it without a legal presence so he called the sheriff, and the sheriff can’t make head nor tails of the accounts and wants you to interpret for him. I don’t know what he wants
her
for.” This time she actually looked at Quill, as if diagnosing an insect problem.

“This is all most irregular,” Miriam said in her bossiest librarian tone. “Did anyone call the judge? And Davy’s not a legal presence, he’s a police presence. Big difference, Carol Ann.”

Carol Ann’s eyes narrowed to icy blue slits. “If by judge you mean your boyfriend, Mr. Howard Murchison, Esquire, he’s not a judge, he’s a town justice. Big difference, Miriam Doncaster.”

Quill had a pretty good idea why Davy Kiddermeister wanted her at the bank, but she didn’t enlighten Carol Ann. She squashed a cowardly desire to run upstairs to her room and hide under her queen-sized bed with Jackson and a box of chocolate-covered cherries. She folded her napkin and got to her feet. “I think we’d all better go to the bank, don’t you? Except you, Dina. I’ll need you here at the front desk.”

“That,” Dina said, with a sideways glance at Carol Ann, “is way okay by me.”

The Hemlock Falls Savings and Loan stood at the corner of Main and Maple. Like many of the buildings on Main Street, it’d been built in the boom years after the Civil War. It was a solid cobblestone building, three stories high, designed in an architectural style somewhere between Greek Revival and Georgian. There were a few modern touches; the big doors opening into the main lobby were glass and an ATM kiosk sat under the portico. The parking lot was at the rear of the building, sharing space with a 7-Eleven that had been tucked well out of the view of tourists.

At Quill’s suggestion, the three other women drove to the bank separately, and by the time she had talked to Meg and checked with Doreen to make sure Jack’s activities were covered for the afternoon, everyone Mark Anthony Jefferson had called to the meeting was there. She walked into the small conference room—which smelled like fresh paint for some reason, and had for years—and sat down in the corner.

Mark Anthony sat at the head of the table, his laptop opened in front of him. Davy Kiddermeister stood behind him. Davy had been promoted to sheriff after Quill’s husband
Myles decided to work for the government. He was well past thirty, but his fair hair, red cheeks, and mild blue eyes made him look years younger. Davy Kiddermeister didn’t look anything like a sheriff, in Quill’s opinion. He looked like he’d just graduated from high school. He blushed easily and often.

Howie Murchison sat at the opposite end of the conference table, Miriam at his side. In his late fifties, with a comfortable paunch and a fringe of gray hair, Howie looked exactly like what he was, a village lawyer who took on town justice duties once a month.

Marge stood by the room’s only window, looking out at the parking lot. Carol Ann, her ponytail restored to glossy perfection, sat upright in the chair across from Miriam. She watched Mark Anthony with the intensity of a cobra after a mouse.

“Hello, Quill,” Mark Anthony said. “Glad you could make it.”

“I’m not glad to be here, under the circumstances,” she said honestly. “I’m sure we can get this all cleared up quickly.” She looked at Howie. “And should we be doing this without Adela? I think she would want to be here, too.”

“She took off in that underpowered little Toyota and no one’s seen her since,” Carol Ann said. “She’s on the lam.”

Quill looked at her watch. “Marge adjourned the Chamber meeting at eleven thirty. It’s twelve thirty now. I doubt that she’s on the lam. She’s probably at home.”

“Crying her eyes out,” Miriam agreed. “This whole thing is shameful.”

Quill nodded. “I think so, too. Adela should be here to
answer these ridiculous charges. Besides, don’t you need her permission to access the fete account?”

“Well, no, we don’t,” Mark Anthony said. “We just need the written permission of someone on the fete committee. Everyone on the committee is signatory to the account.”

“Oh,” Quill said. She’d been afraid of that.

Mark Anthony passed his hand over his skull. He’d recently taken to shaving his head and his skull shone like polished ebony under the fluorescent lights. “You’re on the committee,” he added.

“True.” She bit her lower lip.

“So if you could just sign this?” He picked up a legal-sized piece of paper. “We can proceed. Perhaps you’d like to join us at the table?”

Reluctantly, Quill abandoned the safety of her corner and sat down at the table. She cast a quick glance over the permission affidavit, and then scrawled her name at the bottom.

Mark Anthony nodded gravely, filed the affidavit in a manila folder, and then tapped at the computer. He waited a moment, his eyes on the screen. “Any idea how much should be in this account?”

Quill patted at her skirt pockets and withdrew the sketch pad she used for Chamber meeting notes. The fete committee notes were on it, too. “I don’t know why everyone insists on making me secretary. I’m not a very good one.”

“No kidding,” Carol Ann said.

“It’s because you never say no,” Marge said. “And you shut up, Carol Ann.”

“I don’t recall making any notes about the budget.” She flipped through the pages and paused. “Okay. This is it. At the last meeting Adela reported that all of the booths had been sold and that eighty percent of the fees had been collected. So at a hundred dollars a day…” She trailed off.

“Sixty thousand dollars, give or take,” Marge said.

Quill flipped the page. “There’s ticket money, advertising revenues for the program…Aha! Here it is. I have a subtotal here of one hundred thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars and sixty-five cents.”

Mark Anthony frowned. Davy leaned over his shoulder and frowned, too.

“What’s the balance in the account?” Quill asked.

“Twenty sixty-five,” Davy said.

“Twenty thousand and change?” Marge snorted. “She could have paid the tent bill and the landscapers already. I wouldn’t call that definitive.”

“No,” Davy said. “Twenty dollars and sixty-five cents.”

The room was filled with a shocked silence.

Carol Ann shot her fist into the air in victory. “I knew it!” She whirled, her eyes glittering in triumph, and faced Davy Kiddermeister. “Sheriff, I demand you arrest that woman.”

“There could be a good explanation for this, Carol Ann,” Howie Murchison said testily. “Mark, when was the money moved?”

The banker tapped at the computer. “Late last night. The transaction was recorded at 3:14 a.m.”

“Where to?”

Mark shook his head and muttered to himself. He continued to tap at the keys.

“Right to that woman’s bank account, that’s where,” Carol Ann said. “And then into her pockets. She’s on her way out of town right now, with a suitcase full of cash in the trunk of her car. Sheriff, I demand you put out an APB.”

Davy leaned against the wall, his face a careful blank. “Mr. Jefferson?”

“We don’t have any proof that a crime’s been committed yet,” Mark Anthony said. He looked at Davy. “This is going to take a while. We’re a local, privately owned bank, as you know, and we don’t have a fraud unit as such.”

“You don’t have a fraud unit at all.” Marge snorted. “I’ve got somebody you can hire as a consultant, Mark.”

“We’ll see.” Mark moved his shoulders uncomfortably. “I’ve got to call a meeting of the board of directors. I think it would be a good idea to talk to Mrs. Henry. I’ve got some questions, certainly.”

“Questions!” Carol Ann was almost bouncing with anger. “I’ve got a question for you. Why aren’t you sending a squad car for her right this minute?!”

Mark sat back in his chair with a relaxed air that didn’t fool Quill at all. “Ms. Spinoza, Mrs. Henry has sole discretion over this account. The money was moved to a bank in North Dakota. I’ve just sent an inquiry about the balance. They’ll get back to me. Maybe it’s an interest-bearing account, and Mrs. Henry decided that the fete funds would be better served with a bank that can afford to do that. I just don’t know. To go any further than that, I’m going to need to talk to the other people signatory on the account. That’s right, isn’t it, counselor?”

Howie nodded.

Mark folded his arms across his chest. “As president of this bank, I will go so far as to say, I’m concerned enough to ask that the fete steering committee grants permission for an investigation.”

Davy nodded. “Sounds good to me. Quill? Who all’s on the steering committee?”

“Me, Reverend Shuttleworth, Elmer, and Althea Quince.” Quill pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll see if I can get them all here, shall I?”

“Cover-up!” Carol Ann shouted. “I am so sick of you people thinking that you run this town. You know what? I’ll tell you what. It’s time we fixed that.” She narrowed her eyes to a threatening glare. “There’s quite a few of us ready to change things around here. We’ve been, like, totally pissed off at the high-handed way you’ve been running things, and the theft of this money is just the tip of the corruption iceberg, the tip!”

“The what?” Miriam asked.

Carol Ann took a deep breath and smiled; the effect was a lot scarier than her threats. “You’ll see. You all might want to make a point of watching the six o’clock news.” She looked at her watch. “Pardon me. Better make that the eleven o’clock news. I’ve got a lot of phone calls to make.”

Without another word, she walked out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

Miriam threw up her hands. “The woman’s crazy.” Mark Anthony Jefferson looked uneasy. Marge rubbed her chin thoughtfully. Davy muttered, “What the hell?” and punched a number into his cell phone. Howie put his pen
into his sports coat pocket and his yellow pad into his briefcase.

Quill, who had been sending and receiving texts, slipped her own phone back into her pocket. “I reached Dookie. Althea Quince is off on a wine tour with her husband, and she’s more than an hour and a half away, but they’ve turned around and headed back. Harland is bringing Elmer back here right now. That’s three of us, Mark. Is that going to be enough to authorize whatever we need to authorize?”

“Sure. I’ll just need you to agree to remove Mrs. Henry from the account and maybe file an official request to move the inquiry forward.”

“We can do that,” Quill said sadly. “Davy?”

“Yeah,” Davy said. “I’ll go out and talk to her.”

~

“I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more awful afternoon, Myles,” Quill said into her computer screen. “The whole village is in an uproar.”

It was late, well after midnight, but Myles had e-mailed her the only time he was available for his call, and they were both hostage to his schedule. “That’s not the worst thing. I told you Carol Ann said she was going to make the eleven o’clock news? Well, she did. She and Brady Beale have started something called Citizens for Justice. They managed to organize some of the people who’ve been unhappy about having the fete here in Hemlock Falls all these years. The first meeting was out at the car dealership and Carol Ann talked the anchor from Channel 11 out of
Syracuse into covering it. They’re claiming corruption, cronyism, and all kinds of inflammatory things. Oh! And conspiracy. That’s what caught the attention of the TV people.