Toast Mortem (16 page)

“I’m not forcing anybody to do anything.”

“That cat loves Jack!” Dina said indignantly. “Have you ever actually seen that cat attack anybody?”

“No,” Quill admitted. “Wait. It attacked Carol Ann Spinoza’s boots.”

“It’s not an it, it’s a he. And you’ve felt like attacking more than Carol Ann Spinoza’s boots. You know what I think? I think that cat gets a bad rap because it’s so big. It’s just like Muriel Fredericks’s allergies. Illusory.”

“We’ll find a good home for him, I’m sure,” Quill said feebly.

“I really, really doubt that Clare’s going to give up her cat. You know who’s going to find a good home? Clare, that’s who. And how she’s going to afford it with all those bills to pay off, I’ll never know. She’ll end up in a tent in Hemlock Gorge.” Dina slapped her textbook closed with an air of I-am-never-speaking-to-you-again.

“Did she tell you about the debt?”

“No,” Dina said in a tone just short of rude. Then, with a slightly abashed look, she said, “I was nosy. I Googled her. Once I had her real name, of course.”

“But how? Oh, of course. You filed her employment contract.”

“I made out her employment contract,” Dina corrected her. “And boy, did she get a bad rap. That husband of hers. What a jerk! And she must have had the world’s second-worst lawyer, Quill.”

“Meg thinks so, too. Or rather, Justin thinks so, from what I gather.”

Dina, normally incurably curious about one’s love life, let this pass without a blink. “So she’s gone through all that and you’re going to force her out into the cold?”

“It’s August.”

“Even so.”

Quill wanted to go upstairs and take a long nap, which wouldn’t do, because everybody and her brother would be knocking on her door in twenty seconds or less. That was the only real drawback to her move from the house she and Myles owned back to her rooms. The lack of priv . . . “Oh, good grief!” she said.

“What?”

“My house. Clare can move into my house.”

“With Bismarck!” Dina said. “That’s brilliant.”

“It’s empty. It’s just sitting there. And why the heck didn’t I think of it before?”

“Meg’s been in jail,” Dina said. “There’s been a murder. Half the town showed up for free food yesterday. The DEC called to close the beach.”

“There’s that,” Quill admitted. “I’ll go let Clare know right now.”

“Thank you for not making her get rid of her cat. And Quill?”

“What now, Dina?”

“I’m sorry I spoke rather rudely.”

“Yes, well, please try not to do it in front of the guests.”

She went through the dining room, followed by the curious gaze of the breakfast guests and found Clare sitting in the pantry with Bismarck. The cat was on her lap, purring like a berserk two-stroke engine. Her face was solemn and Quill suspected that she’d been crying. A tray of kitty litter was tucked under the shelf of Meg’s preserves (Quill was fervently glad that Carol Ann Spinoza hadn’t seen that). Dishes of water and kibble sat next to the fifty-pound bag of bread flour. Quill crouched down and held her hand out for the cat to sniff.

“I think it’s his size,” Clare said. She tickled Bismarck under the chin. “And he’s a little wary of new faces. And he hates to be bullied. Like I said. He has issues.” She firmed her shoulders. “I’ve been thinking, and of course you’re right. I can’t believe he’d ever harm Jack, but it’s a worry to you, and we can’t have that. So I’ve decided . . .”

Quill held her hand up. She didn’t want to know whether Clare had decided to give up her job or her cat. She suspected the former. “I’ve got a house for you.”

Clare stared at her. “A what?”

“A house. My house. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, except, there’s been a lot going on. Anyhow, my husband’s on assignment for several more months, and when he comes home Jack and I will move back to be with him, and then you can have my old rooms here, and I don’t care if Bismarck steals the crown jewels if the queen of England is a guest as long as I don’t have to worry about Jack.”

“Oh my God,” Clare said. “Oh, thank you. Thank you.”

“It’s a very pretty place,” Quill said. “Although the kitchen’s a disaster. We’re working on it.”

“I don’t care if it’s a tent!”

“And there’s a second bedroom where you and Bismarck will be very comfortable, I think. In the meantime”—Quill got off the floor with a slight groan and glanced at her watch—“we’ve Davy coming to take our statements about finding M. LeVasque in the wine cellar. And then we’ll take your stuff over to my place and get you settled.”

The pantry door was half open, but Meg tapped on the door anyway to attract their attention. “You guys having a meeting, or what?”

“Clare’s going to move into my house. So your sofa bed’s up for grabs again.”

Meg leaned over and scratched Bismarck under the chin. “Why didn’t you think about that before?”

“Because you were in jail, we almost got arrested by the DEC, we had one hundred and twenty-six unannounced people for lunch yesterday . . .”

“And we ended up with a murder.” Meg pulled the door all the way open. “Davy’s here. I told him we’d meet him in your office. I told him to walk on through. He brought a couple of his uniforms with him. They’ve got a search warrant, too. I expect it’s for the copy of that recipe you swiped off the corpse.”

“A search warrant?” Quill pulled at her hair. “What are they looking for?”

Meg shrugged. “Beats me. I told them to go ahead, but to leave everything in the kitchen exactly the way they found it, or I’d brain somebody.” Then with a sublime regard for her own concerns that rivaled Jack at his best, she added, “I don’t care about anything else.”

“We’d better get the statements over with first. Let’s go around back instead of through the dining room,” Quill suggested. “In the past ten minutes, the people out there watched one cat, a weepy chef, and a policeman parade on through. Not to mention me with my hair falling over my face. It’s going to put them off their Eggs Quilliam.” She wound her hair up and refastened the scrunchie with a purposeful air. “We designed this place all wrong, Meggie.”

Davy waited for them by her office window, with a beignet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Any hope Quill had that he’d be open to nosy questions about the course of the investigations was stilled by his serious expression.

“How’s the case going?” Meg asked brightly.

“This shouldn’t take long,” he said, rather than answering her question. “You were right, Quill. The victim had been dead long before the body was found. And the two of you”—he pointed the eraser end of his pencil at Meg and Quill—“seem to have pretty good alibis.”

“
Seem
to?” Meg said, belligerently. “What? That creep Harker suspects us?”

“Harker’s off on a planet of his own,” Davy said dismissively.

“You’ve established a time of death already?” Quill asked. The Tompkins County coroner’s office was fast, but it’d been less than five hours since the body had been removed from the wine cellar. And she was uneasily aware that Davy hadn’t said a thing about Clare’s alibi.

“The time of death’s not been officially established, no. Why don’t you ladies sit down?”

“Ladies,” Meg muttered between her teeth. “Sure
thing
.”

The three of them sat side by side on the peony couch. Quill thought if they clapped their hands over their mouths in the appropriate ways, they’d look just like the See-No, Speak-No, Hear-No monkeys.

He took them over the events of the night before. They’d each made a statement separately, and Quill was a little surprised to discover that Clare hadn’t seen the body.

“That’s not exactly true,” she amended. “I peeked over Meg’s shoulder . . .”

“Which isn’t too hard, given the disparity in our heights,” Meg said.

“. . . I saw enough.” She paled a little and swallowed. “Then I went back into the tasting room and put my head between my knees.”

Davy turned to a fresh page in his notebook. “That seems to cover Tuesday. Now. Just a few preliminary questions about Monday.”

“Monday night,” Meg said, as if she couldn’t quite believe he was taking the time to go over something so inconsequential.

“That’s right.” Davy looked up from his notebook. Quill was suddenly reminded that he was, in fact, the sheriff, and that in the past two years he’d gotten pretty good at his job. “The three of you visited the academy that night, as well.”

“Who told you that?” Meg demanded. “That old trout, I expect. Madame.”

“He was there, Meg,” Quill said. “Remember? You called Dina and reported a break-in.”

“You never called us for a statement for that,” Meg said reproachfully.

“There wasn’t any crime committed,” Davy said. His eyes never left Clare’s face. “LeVasque was on his own property. He was within his rights to bar your door until the issue over your employment contract was settled. So I told everyone to calm down, told him not to take any of your personal property, and made an incident report. Nothing else was necessary. That’s not what I’m after. I want to hear about why you went there in the first place.”

Quill took a deep breath. It was all going to come out. Davy already knew Clare’s married name and the series of events that drove her to sign that demented contract with LeVasque. That was clear from the intensity of his expression. If he poked around much further, he was going to come up with a motive for murder that would make Clare the prime suspect.

She only half listened to Davy’s patient—but relentless—questioning. Yes, she had come to the Inn in search of her cat. No, LeVasque hadn’t beaten the cat—whoever told you that? (Quill had her money on the mean-spirited Mrs. Owens, for that.) Bismarck was perfectly fine, and while she wasn’t happy about LeVasque tossing the cat out the door, she wasn’t furious. And no, there wasn’t really a shouting match over her employment. LeVasque was upset, but he . . .

At this point, Clare’s composure failed. She put her hands over her face and didn’t say anything more.

“Is there a financial penalty attached to your defaulting on your employment contract?” Davy asked.

Clare didn’t answer.

“We’re going to be looking into this. It’s going to come out eventually. Why don’t you get it off your chest now?”

Clare took her hands away from her face. “I don’t have anything more to say,” she said quietly.

“You’re not going to help yourself by refusing to talk to me.”

Clare shook her head.

Davy’s voice got hard. “You’re out on parole, Miss Sparrow. It’s not going to take an awful lot to revoke it.”

“Stop it,” Quill said. “Stop this right now.”

There was a perfunctory tap at the door. It opened to reveal one of the uniformed officers in the sheriff’s department. She was one of the Petersons (a founding family of Hemlock Falls, and noted primarily for the proliferation of its offspring). Quill couldn’t think of her name.

“Got a match, Sheriff.” She held up three butcher knives, in graduated sizes. Quill recognized them right away. Meg kept them on a magnetic strip next to the prep table.

“Those knives are from my kitchen,” Meg said. She jumped off the couch and made a grab for them. “I told you to leave my stuff right where you found it, Dawn Peterson, and did you listen? Clearly not. Besides, you’ve only got three of the four there. Where’s the other one?”

“The other one,” Davy said, “was in Bernard LeVasque’s back.”

It is a thing most Frenchmen love,
un petit chat
in the kitchen. I myself cook most brilliantly to the sound of contented purrs.

—From the foreword of
Brilliance in the Kitchen
:
“My Incredible Life”

 

 

Clare set Bismarck down in the middle of Quill’s kitchen. The cat had a lot of confidence; Quill had to give it that. Most cats were wary of new places. She’d expected the cat to crouch and look around and then maybe run under the small oak kitchen table and peer out at his new universe for a bit. Instead, Bismarck strolled around the room with the arrogance of a sixth-grade bully in a class of kindergartners.

Quill looked at her watch. “I’m sorry we have to rush this. I want to get back for my afternoon time with Jack. And there’s an emergency Chamber meeting at one, which I’d like to avoid, but I can’t since they’re always held at the Inn.”

Clare set the kitty litter tray, the water dish, and a bowl of food around the kitchen floor. “And you’ve set up a meeting with Justin Martinez . . . I appreciate this so much, Quill. Everything. Arranging for the lawyer, talking Davy out of dragging me down to the station.” She looked around the kitchen. “And this, of course. I don’t know why you think I deserve all this.”

Quill borrowed a phrase from her sister. “Phooey.” Then, to avoid more gratitude, which made her itchy, “Let me show you the bedroom.”

Clare followed her up the stairs.