A Taste For Murder hf-1

by Claudia Bishop

  "A trial would have been tough," she said to Meg as they sat in the kitchen watching the rain lash the windows.

  "They came to get her while I was waiting for you in the hospital lobby." Meg poured white vinegar for the third time into her expresso machine in an effort to remove all traces of the Seconal. She was not, she'd informed Quill tartly, over her sister's protests, going to dispose of a perfectly good piece of equipment just because an inept murderer had used it in an attempt to kill her.

  "Not so inept, with two deaths on her conscience. Did she seem..." Quill trailed off.

  "Seem what? Remorseful? No. Upset? No. Tell me goodbye and thanks for the best meals she's ever had for free? No." The expresso machine hissed, and Meg fussed with it, not meeting Quill's gaze. "I'll tell you what you ought to do, though. Give Myles credit for calling in as many favors as he could to avoid prosecution and a trial. He knows how bad you feel, Quill. A trial would really do you in."

  Quill rubbed the back of her neck. She'd dreamed, the night before, of Mrs. Hallenbeck soundlessly screaming her name, over and over again, and of long-nailed fingers shredding the canvas of the Chrysler Rose.

  The back door slammed. Doreen stumped in wearing a yellow slicker. Water streamed off the hood. "Wetter'n hell out there," she grumbled.

  "I thought this storm hit because you prayed for rain yesterday," said Meg.

  "Thought they rnighta pumped some of that sass out of you along with the dope."

  "No," said Meg truthfully, "I think they added some."

  "Wunnerful." Doreen hung up the slicker, tied her apron around her waist, and sat down at the butcher block. "Got time for coffee," she suggested. "Only one room is still occupied. Baumer."

  "Everybody left yesterday?" said Quill.

  "Pret' near. It was the ambl'ance cornin' and goin' that done it, I think. When it come for that one" - she pointed an accusing finger at Meg - "lady in one-o-six said if they were tryin' to kill the cook now, it was time to leave."

  Quill braced herself. For the past four days, Meg had met prophecies of financial disaster with the sunny confidence of a high-caliber chef cooking for the most influential of captive audiences: the food critic from L'Aperitif.

  "John will think of something," said Meg. "If not, we can always purchase Harvey Bozzel's rewrite of "Rock Around the Park" and depend on advertising to bring the customers back."

  "That's 'clock,' " said Doreen loftily.

  "No, it's not," said Meg. "It's sung by the Chili Stompers on the Three Bean label. Quill sang it to me in the hospital. I told her I'd heard it before."

  "Sass," grumbled Doreen.

  "Wait a second," said Quill. "What about our four-star review in L'Aperitif?"

  "Now that you know who Edward Lancashire really is," said Meg airily, "I don't have to keep up the charade anymore."

  "You thought Edward was the food critic from the very beginning!" said Quill. "You cooked your brains out for that guy!"

  "You've got to be kidding." Meg scowled. "I knew the second meal I created that he wasn't any gourmet critic. The man's a peasant. I was just keeping your spirits up by going along with your delusion."

  "Admit it, Meg. He had you going."

  There was a suspicious tinge of pink in Meg's cheek, but she said obstinately, "I knew all the time."

  "You did not!"

  "I did, too!"

  "Good to be home," said John Raintree as he came through he dining room doors. Myles was with him. Both men were soaked. "Not as quiet as your jail though, Myles."

  "Has it ever been?" Myles shook the water from his raincoat and hung it on the peg near the back door. He came up to Quill and stood close.

  She looked up at him and touched his cheek. "You're soaked. Meg's got coffee on. You both should have something hot." Myles settled into the rocker, declined the expresso with a grimace, and accepted a cup of the Melitta drip.

  John sat on the stool next to Doreen. "Quill, I'm not much good at thanks..."

  "Neither is she," Meg said briskly. "What we want to know s how all this came down while I was getting my stomach pumped."

  "Marge and Doreen," said Myles.

  "Marge?" said Quill. "Doreen?"

  He shot her an amused look. "What I'm about to tell you s not true. It's a guess. If it were true, I'd have to make a few arrests, for illegal hacking, unlawful entry into private data, and violation of several interstate banking laws." He stretched his long legs in front of him. "I gather that after your visit to the diner, something clicked in Marge's brain."

  "It did?" said Quill. "I told her Mavis always referred to herself as a modern-day Scarlett O'Hara. Marge got this funny look in her eye."

  "It would have helped Eddie a lot to know about Scarlett O'Hara," said Myles. "Even her son didn't know where Mrs. Hallenbeck hid her money, although he guessed that Mavis was concealing it for her. After you left, Marge hared off to solve the mystery of the missing three hundred thousand. She walked over to Mark Anthony Jefferson's bank. The two of them got on to the phone and into the computer, and they tracked down information that turned most of Eddie's guesses into evidence. Mavis Collinwood, as Scarlett O'Hara and with a fictitious social security number, had close to four hundred thousand dollars in a checking account in Atlanta. The only authorized signatory to the account was Amelia Hallenbeck. Incidentally, six payments averaging twenty thousand dollars each had been paid into the account by various hotel and motel insurance companies over the past eight months. This cross-checks with the information Eddie had from the Insurance Index about fraudulent claims the women had been making."

  "So he knew Mrs. Hallenbeck was guilty!" said Quill. "He never said a word to me."

  "He was pretty certain she was behind the tainted-meat scandal," said Myles. "And Quill, Eddie wasn't here to solve the murders. He worked for the son. His job was to stop the trafficking in the meat. And I don't blame him for keeping undercover. Confidentiality is the core of his business. Without it, he wouldn't get another assignment."

  "Confidentiality," Meg said sarcastically. "Try deceit. Try ripping people off. Try bogus!"

  "I knew you thought he was from L'Aperitif;" said Quill.

  "Ha!"

  Myles rapped the arm of the rocker for silence. "May I continue? Then Marge and Mark turned the computer on to Keith Baumer. They called the American Express Travelers Cheque operations center in Salt Lake. Mark, in his capacity as bank vice-president, convinced the Fraud Unit there of the urgency of the situation. The Fraud Unit gave them Baumer's address, and the name of the bank where he'd bought his cheques. Marge thought there was a strong likelihood the cheques would have been purchased at the bank where he ' had a checking and savings account, and she was right."

  "And?" said Quill. "Baumer was in on it. I knew it!"

  Myles shrugged. "My guess is he's guilty of something. Just what that is, is anybody's guess. His savings account showed regular deposits of amounts varying from three to five thousand dollars, ever since he left Doggone Good Dogs. But I have no official knowledge of this. Baumer doesn't appear to have committed any crimes here. I don't have jurisdiction anyway, so there's no way for me to follow up. I did suggest to Eddie that he have breakfast at Marge's diner this morning. It may be that Baumer was a co-conspirator with Mrs. Hallenbeck - and that Eddie can prove it after he talks to Marge. But the money must have come from somewhere else."

  "What do you think, Myles?" said Meg.

  Myles hesitated. "I believe that Mavis was blackmailing Baumer, just as she was blackmailing John and Tom Peterson. I don't believe in coincidence. Baumer, Marge, John, and Tom were all connected through Mavis. There are some people who are natural catalysts. Mavis was a catalyst for disaster."

  "You put dough into the oven, and heat turns it to brioche," said Quill. "Mrs. Hallenbeck was the heat. Mavis was the yeast."

  "Come again?" said Myles.

  "Meg." Quill gestured at her sister. "She said murder's like a recipe. The same set of ingredients don't guarante
e the same dish. Everyone who came into contact with Mavis ended up with a motive to murder - but only one killed her."

  "Thank you, Dr. Watson," said Meg.

  "You're Watson," said Quill. "I'm Holmes. If I'd had a little more time..."

  "But it was Doreen, there, who provided the hard evidence in the case," John interrupted loudly.

  "You did?" said Quill. "Doreen, how clever of you!"

  "That there Willy Max," grumbled Doreen. "I din't call him."

  "She got Dina to call the phone company and check the outgoing calls," said Myles. "Tracked the call to Rolling Moses to Mrs. Hallenbeck's room."

  "Old witch!" said Doreen. "Lied and made me out a fool. Searched her room proper. Found the makin's of them stupid drinks Mavis liked."

  "The mint juleps?" said Quill. "Of course! She fed them to Mavis before they walked down to the Pavilion."

  "Tied the glasses and the bottles up in a Baggie and turned them over to Davey," said Myles. "Andy Bishop had them tested for Seconal right there at the hospital. I sent the glasses on to the state lab for fingerprinting. I expect that both Mavis' and Mrs. Hallenbeck's will appear all over them."

  "So that's the link to the murder in the Pavilion," said Meg.

  "Only piece of hard evidence we have," admitted Myles, "and it's circumstantial. There was such confusion the day of the play that no one remembers seeing Mrs. Hallenbeck going around to the back of the shed, much less pulling the hood over Mavis' face."

  "Did she confess?" asked Meg.

  Quill winced. Myles reached up and covered her hand with his. "Yes. She did."

  "What'd she say?" Meg persisted.

  Quill answered the question in Myles's eyes with a reluctant nod.

  "There's nothing wrong with her intellect. That sets her apart from most murderers I've known." He grimaced. "Almost all of them are borderline intelligence. Of course, my experience has been with street crime. But she shares one characteristic with them. She's proud of the result. Confessions are easier than the public thinks. Most killers can't wait to tell you, once they know we know."

  "So she boasted about it?" said Doreen.

  "She wouldn't talk to me with witnesses present and until she was sure I wasn't wired. When she knew, for certain, I couldn't do anything with the confession, she told me she'd decided to kill Mavis as soon as an opportunity presented itself - a decision she'd made before she met you, Quill. "That first night, she and Mavis had planned an 'accident' on the balcony, and as we suspected, Mrs. Hallenbeck tried pushing Mavis over the edge. Mavis was a lot younger, and a lot tougher, and Mrs. Hallenbeck lost that round, as we know.

  "After the rehearsal at the duck pond, she took a walk while the others were making plans for the dinner that evening, and removed the bolt from the front loader of Harland's tractor. 'No one really pays attention to the old,' she said. 'We're overlooked, ignored, discounted. I just took advantage of that.'

  "She shrugged Gil's death off as an 'unfortunate circumstance.' She knew her next good opportunity would come at The Trial of Goody Martin. She poured doctored mint juleps into Mavis. When Harland came around to the front of the stage, she nipped around the back. Mavis was passed out on the sledge. She pulled the hood over her face, hid the dummy, and came around to the bandstand in the space of three minutes."

  "It was so chancey," complained Meg.

  "She said she'd try until she did it," said Myles.

  "That ought to help you sleep better, Quill," said Meg. "Good grief."

  "Pretty single-minded," said John, "But then, she always was."

  Quill sipped at her coffee and said nothing.

  "She did give me enough evidence to convict Tom Peterson on several counts of Federal violations." He looked at his watch. "Couple of the boys should be pulling up to that warehouse now."

  "And Mrs. Hallenbeck?" said Quill. "Where is she now?"

  "It's done," said Myles, "They picked her up this morning. She'll be there until she passes on to whatever justice there is."

  "Wow," said Meg. "Now if I just had some people to eat what I cook, things would be back to normal."

  "You just wait," said Quill optimistically. "We've never been sunk for long. You the gourmet chef, me the efficient manager..."

  John cleared his throat. "I haven't had much of a chance to go over the accounts, Quill, but I understand that we've been pretty free with donations lately."

  "Donations?" said Quill. "He means the two checks to the volunteer ambulance fund, the free brandy and crŠme br–l‚e for the Chamber the night of the dress rehearsal, the full buffet breakfast on the house, for forty-two, Monday morning, the bar bill for the volunteer firemen, and not to mention the fact that we've got no hope of collecting from Mrs. Hallenbeck," said Meg. She grinned. "Maybe we can put a percentage of it on Baumer's bill. Sort of a P.I.A. surcharge."

  "P.I.A.?" said Myles blankly.

  "Pain-in-the-ass," explained Doreen. "We talk about it, but we ain't never done it, yet."

  "Baumer's a P.I.A. candidate if there ever was one," said Quill, "except that he should be charging us. I let his wife into his room so she could sue him for adultery with Mavis. Meg poisoned him with various noxious substances, and he got exorcised by Willy Max and the two Creeps for Christ. I can't believe the guy stuck it out this long."

  "Leastways Meg can still cook," said Doreen practically. "Long as the kitchen's open, we got people wantin' to eat."

  "Well," said Quill, "it could be worse. I thought maybe Marge had made that phone call to the D.O.H., but she obviously didn't, since we haven't seen anything of them."

  There was a double tap on the dining room doors. A thin, unhealthy-looking guy in a polyester suit pushed the doors open. He carried a clipboard and wore a New York State badge reading "Department of Health."

  "Until now," said Quill, feebly.

  "You!" said Meg, "get out of my kitchen." She ran her hands through her hair. It began to flatten ominously.

  "Look, lady, I get a call, I gotta show up."

  "I got rooms to clean," Doreen said, "Well, two, anyways." She trotted out of the kitchen.

  "I'll give you a call later, Quill," said Myles hastily. He disappeared out the back door.

  "Rats deserting the sinking ship," Quill yelled after them. Meg advanced on the inspector, a wooden spatula in one hand. "I've got the cleanest kitchen in Central New York," she said through gritted teeth. "I hire the best sous chef in six states. I use the finest ingredients you can buy!"

  "Meg - " said Quill.

  "GET YOUR CLIPBOARD OUT OF MY KITCHEN!"

  "Excuse me, sir," said Quill.

  She nodded to John. John took Meg by the right arm, Quill the left. They dragged her to the dining room. "Just keep quiet, Meg. Everything's going to be fine." Quill forced Meg into a chair at one of the tables and sat down next to her, keeping a firm grip on her arm.

  Meg slumped over the table and groaned. "I can't believe that Marge did this! She's a fellow cook! She's a member of the clan! I'll wring her fat little neck."

  "Maybe it wasn't Marge," said Quill. "It could have been Maureen, the paramedic. Or her pal, Doyle."

  The guy from the D.O.H. poked his head around the door. He held up a small white card. "How often do you use this recipe for zabaglione?"

  Meg threw the sugar bowl at him. The inspector ducked. The bowl shattered against the door frame and powdered the inspector with white snow.

  "I gotta lot of questions," he said severely, and disappeared once again.

  "I see you have company," said Keith Baumer.

  Quill blinked at him. He looked different somehow. Cleaner. Less shabby. More... elegant. The baggy blue suit had been replaced by a beautifully cut double-breasted blazer and cream flannel trousers, the ash-covered ratty tie by a tasteful silk cravat. His weekender dangled from one shoulder.

  "Just stopped in to say goodbye." Baumer extended his hand. Quill took it, reluctantly. Baumer clasped it and wiggled his middle finger suggestively against her palm
. "Wanted to thank you for the interesting stay."

  Quill, mindful of the courtesies incumbent on innkeepers who strove for professionalism (and of the fact that they were finally going to see the last of Baumer), shook her hand free, but said politely, "I sincerely apologize for the last few days, Mr. Baumer. I'm afraid you didn't find us at our best."