Toast Mortem (10 page)

“And who told you that?”

“Gram!” Jack shouted. Then one fist full of Max’s ear, he demanded, “Where is she?”

“Out for a walk.”

“Without me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because mornings are our time, Jack.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you,” Quill said.

“Why?”

When she was pregnant with Jack, Quill had abandoned her business management classes at nearby Cornell University (to the silent but heartfelt relief of her employees) for classes in Child Development, Know Your Toddler, and Excellent Parenting. The teacher in Know Your Toddler had been very clear about the pitfalls during Terrible Twos. The “why?” Quill gathered, was like the zucchini plants in the vegetable garden: endlessly productive of yet more “whys.”

A familiar rat-a-tat sounded at her door. “Do you hear that knock at the door?”

Jack cocked his head. “Yes.”

“Whose knock is that?”

“Would you tell her to come in, please?”

“All by myself?”

“Yes.”

“Then, no. I will not.” His smile was seraphic.

“Okay. I will.” Quill threw the duvet aside and started to get out of bed.

Jack shook his head. “No. No. No. This is my job.”

The door opened, and Meg poked her head inside the room. “You guys up already?”

“She did it herself, Mommy,” Jack said. “Ha-ha!”

Meg bent, scooped him up, and gave him a kiss. “Hey, pumpkin face.”

“Hey, cereal face,” Jack said. “Hey, dog face. Hey, Meg face.”

“Jeez.” Meg dumped him next to Max, then perched on the bed herself. “The kid’s turning into a terror.” She tickled his tummy. “A terror.”

What with the dog, her sister, her son, and herself, Quill figured it was a good thing she had a queen-sized bed. She drew her knees up to her chin to give everyone more room and said, “Have you been down to the kitchen yet?”

“Tuesday’s my day off.”

Quill waited expectantly.

“Of course I’ve been down to the kitchen. She’s doing fine. She was up at four to set the bread rising, which was very cool. And she didn’t say a thing about getting a brick oven, although we’ve got to think about that, Quill, if we’re going to get serious about breads.”

“Okay.” They were having a good year, for once, despite the low attendance in the restaurant. Of course, it helped a great deal that Myles’s earnings meant she didn’t have to worry about her own draw. “I’ll run it by John when we do the quarterly accounts. If she’s still here.”

“I hope this works out. She sure has an awful story. That ex-husband sounds like a total jerk. Lied to her, stole money, forged her signature, cheated the government, set her up for the fall, and then ran off to the Seychelles with the hostess. Yuck!”

“Yuck doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“What this country needs,” Meg said, “is tort reform.”

“Hah?” Quill said.

“Here’s this poor woman, no money, no friends, just a lot of pissed-off creditors, and what does she get? Some overworked schmuck from the public defender’s office who doesn’t know a general ledger from General Motors. If she’d had better representation, she wouldn’t have served those eighteen months in the slam.”

“Meg, I don’t think tort reform has anything to do with criminal acts.”

“No?” Meg said in a superior way.

“No.”

“I suppose I could find out,” Meg said reflectively. “Justin would know.”

“I can see that you’re dying to.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I see that the very capable Justin Whosis is about to get a phone call from my sister.”

“Martinez. Justin Martinez. And he’s more than just capable. He’s gorgeous.”

“Wow,” Quill said, startled at the vehemence in her sister’s voice. “He must be. Are you going to bring him by for dinner?”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

“And Jerry?”

Meg picked up Jack’s hands and started a game of patty-cake.

“Okay. We have a ‘no comment, Your Honor’ in regard to Jerry Grimsby. While we’re on legal subjects, so to speak, what’s the status of this alleged assault you committed? You’ve what? Been released on your own recognizance? Is that the right expression?”

Jack snatched his hands away and began to hum tunelessly to himself. Meg leaned back against Quill’s knees. “That’s the right expression. Next step is a hearing, and Justin says once Howie gets to meet LeVasque up close and personal, the court will give me a medal instead of a sentence. LeVasque was,” Meg said with sudden intensity, “absolutely foul. Dina saw it all, and she’s incapable of saying anything but the absolute truth, so I’m not worried one little bit. Besides,” she added, in a more practical tone, “Justin thinks we should meet with LeVasque and his lawyers and work something out so that the civil complaint is dropped. Justin says if the civil complaint is dropped, the criminal charges should go away, too. Justin says so, anyway.”

Quill wondered if she was going to get very tired of the phrase “Justin says.”

“Mommy!”
Jack said. “There’s a rat-a-tat-tat at the door!”

“And whose knock would that be?” Quill said.

“Would you tell her to come in, please?”

Jack tilted his head to one side while he considered his options. The first was appealing: No. No. No. But then Mommy would tell Gram to come in, and Jack would have missed his chance, or worse yet, Gram would come in all by herself, so he shouted,
“Come in, Gram!”
and Doreen walked in the door.

“Hey, Doreen,” Meg said.

“Morning, Meg. Morning, Quill. Morning, young Jack-a-rooty. You got your walkin’ shoes on?”

“No,” Jack said, who in fact did have his shoes on. “I put them on Max.”

Doreen hefted Jack onto one hip. “We got a playdate at the park,” she said. “See you later. And, Quill? That big old orange cat’s tramping around downstairs and that Miz Fredericks’s takin’ on something fierce. And Dina said don’t forget you got that talk.”

Quill stared at her. “Talk?”

“To them WARP people. About running a bed-and-breakfast?”

Quill flopped back against the pillows and pulled the duvet over her head. “Oh, shoot! I forgot!”

“I don’t know what you know about running a bed-and-breakfast, anyway,” Doreen said. “This is an inn. We’ve got twenty-seven rooms . . .”

“I know that, Doreen.”

“And a full restaurant. We even”—Doreen took a breath—“have a gol-durned beach. This bed-and-breakfast stuff is for amateurs.”

“True,” Quill said. “Dang.” She felt her forehead. “I may be coming down with something.”

“Well, I sure as heck hope not,” Doreen scolded, “because if you got it, Jack’s gonna get it. And if you are sickening for something, it’d better wait until noon, because your talk is at ten with coffee and time for Q and A.”

“I was just sort of guessing about being sick,” Quill said meekly. “I feel fine, really. Tell Dina I’ll be there as soon as I get dressed. Ask Clare to put Bismarck in the garden shed or something, will you?”

“That the skinny brunette in the kitchen? Thought her name was Clarissa.”

“She’s Clare,” Meg said. “And she can put Bismarck in the pantry.”

“Got it.”

Quill shoved Max onto the floor and waved them all out. “Whatever. Bye-bye, Jack.”

“Come with us, Max! Bye-bye, Mommy! Bye-bye, Auntie Meg. Bye-bye, room! Bye-bye, rug.
Bye, bye, bye!
” Jack’s shouts trailed him down the hall and finally died away.

“How to run a bed-and-breakfast?” Meg said. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re much better qualified to give a talk on how to raise a toddler without going totally insane.”

Quill sighed. “They asked and I said yes, in a weak moment.” She looked at her watch. “But it’s not until ten, and it’s only nine, now. I’ll think of something. But first, I’ve got to get Clare onto the payroll. I’m listing her as a temp until we see how this works out. Which reminds me, is she Robbins or Sparrow?”

Meg shrugged. “Sparrow’s her maiden name. The divorce isn’t final yet, so legally she’s still Robbins but if I’d been married to that fathead, I’d go back to my maiden name so fast you couldn’t see me for spit.” Suddenly, she jumped off the bed. “The day’s a-wasting! I’m gone! Call me if you need me.”

The door shut behind her before Quill could ask her (a) if she was going to give Jerry the standard “it’s not you, it’s me” farewell speech or (b) if she was planning on hedging her bets and dating both guys at once. Then she figured it wasn’t her business anyway, but going downstairs to smooth Muriel Fredericks’s ruffled feathers was, so she got up and went into the kitchen to get dressed.

In the old days, before she’d married Myles, her rooms at the Inn had consisted of a bedroom, a small kitchen, and a living room, and she’d loved them. It was quiet, up on the third floor, and she’d used low-keyed neutral colors throughout. It’d been her refuge against the long days handling the usual furors at the Inn. And she’d had plenty of closets.

When she’d married Myles, she’d moved to his cobblestone house and her old rooms became a suite, much in demand by those guests who stayed for more than a long weekend. And she still had plenty of closets.

Jack’s arrival, and her return to the Inn while Myles was away on assignment, had demanded yet another set of changes. Mike had installed a window in her large walk-in closet and turned it into a bedroom for Jack. When Doreen was widowed, Mike had built a connecting door to the adjacent room, and Doreen rented out her house in town and moved herself in. The only real problem with this arrangement was that there weren’t any closets.

So Quill kept her clothes stashed in a variety of places. Underwear, nightgowns, and other lingerie went into the oak chest she used as a coffee table. Shoes, jeans, T-shirts, and shorts went into the cupboards over the tiny stove. And her skirts and silk tees hung in the broom closet.

Quill didn’t have time to decide what to wear every morning, so she kept it simple. Three calf-length cotton skirts and six silk tees in the summer, and three fine wool skirts and six silk sweaters for the winter. All of her clothes were in shades of bronze, amber, peach, and celadon. (Dressing in black made her feel like Mrs. Danvers in the old Gothic horror story
Rebecca
. Dressing in white was a stain waiting to happen.) So she kept to colors that suited her red hair and hazel eyes and only occasionally yearned for more choices.

She took a fast shower, dressed, and came down the big staircase to the foyer to find Dina pink-faced and exasperated behind the mahogany reception desk.

“
There
you are,” Dina said fiercely. “Quill, I know what you’ve said about not beating up the guests but I am like, up to here with that Fredericks person!”

“Oh, dear.”

“That woman,” Dina said darkly, “is allergic to everything. Plants, animals, carpets . . .”

“Some people are very allergic, Dina. We have to be sympathetic.”

“. . . Cloth, fur, wood, smells . . . Let me just ask you one tiny thing, Quill. Just one tiny thing.”

Quill waited a bit, then when nothing more was forthcoming said, “And the one tiny thing is what?”

Dina leaned forward and dropped her voice to a fierce whisper. “Have you ever seen her actually
sneeze
!?”

Quill thought back. “No. Come to think of it, I haven’t.”

Dina leaned back in her chair and tossed her pencil onto the desktop with a satisfied expression. “There you are. Just a BFW.”

This was Inn-speak for Big Flipping Whiner.

“Hmm. Where is she?”

“She’s in the Tavern Lounge, with the rest of them,” Dina said glumly. “A big FedEx package came for one of them this morning, and they all lit out together with it. Wait a minute. You have a couple of messages.” She picked up the pink stack of While You Were Out slips and handed them over.

Quill paged through them one by one: the Golden Pillars Travel Agency wanted to book a party of fourteen at Christmastime. That was good. The rest of the calls were from villagers: Harvey Bozzel, Hemlock Falls’s best (and only) advertising executive; Nadine Peterson, owner and chief hairdresser at Hemlock Hall of Beauty; the Reverend Mr. Shuttleworth. Quill looked up in bewilderment. “Most of these are from the Chamber of Commerce members.”

“They sure are,” Dina said fervently.

Quill waited a moment, and then said, “Do you know what it’s about?”

“Is it gossiping to tell you that everyone’s in a huge flap over the Welcome Dinner?” Dina adjusted her red-rimmed spectacles with her forefinger. “I know how you feel about gossiping. It’s number whatever on your Innkeeper’s Rules List.”

“I’m looking at my watch,” Quill said, doing just that. “And the reason I’m looking at my watch is that it’s 9:45 in the morning and you hadn’t started to drive me bananas yet. I was starting to get worried.”

“So it’s not gossiping.” Quill’s expression must have r eflected her feelings—well beyond exasperation at the moment and verging into annoyance—because Dina flung both her hands up and said, “It’s because I’m so contrite over blowing Meg in to the cops. I’m trying to do everything exactly by the book.”

“Why is there a flap over the Welcome Dinner?” Quill smacked herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand. “Oh my gosh. Everyone wants an invitation.”

“It would seem so.”

“And there’s only what . . . thirty spaces?”

“That’s about it.”

“And twenty-four Chamber members, which doesn’t account for the spouses and significant others.”

“Bingo.”

“And the mayor’s using town funds to pay for it, so everybody . . .” Quill stopped herself. “Why is everyone calling me?”

Dina took the pink slips out of her hand, flipped through to the bottom one, and gave it back to Quill.

Congratulations! I have asked the mayor to appoint you host for the Welcome Dinner! You are now in charge of the guest list. Warm regards, B. LeVasque
.