“It’s downright disgustin’!” interrupted Mavis Collinwood.
“Calm down, Mave,” said Keith Baumer.
“Dr. Bolt, maybe you could explain?” said Quill.
“It’s these messages. Little scraps of paper pushed under our doors.” He held out a piece of paper. Printed in large block letters at the top of the page was: CALL 1-800-222-PRAY! Beneath it, Quill read aloud, “The Lord sees all evil! The Lord hears all evil! Thou shalt not steal!”
The orthodontist’s ten-year-old son burst into noisy wails.
“Adrian,” said his mother. She shook his shoulder imperatively. “Stop that!”
Dr. Bolt avoided Quill’s questioning look. “We were due to check out this morning, as you know. We packed our suitcases and went down for an early breakfast. When we came back, the room had been cleaned, and we find this message.” His chest swelled with indignation. “Now, look here, Miss Quilliam. I do not condone Adrian’s appropriation of towels and ashtrays as souvenirs. My wife and I have already discussed this with him. On the other hand, I must register a serious complaint about your housekeeping staff going through my little boy’s belongings.”
“Oh, dear,” said Quill.
“And on my bathroom mirror?” said Mavis indignantly. “I jus’ stepped out this mornin’ for a walk with Mr. Baumer, and when I came back… well, I don’ want to even repeat what was written on my bathroom mirror. In soap!”
“It didn’t say anything about Detroit did it?” said Quill.
“Don’t you get smart with me, Miss High-and-Mighty,” said Mavis. “I scrubbed that mirror clean. The ol’ bat sees it, I’m out of a job.”
“Where is Mrs. Hallenbeck?” asked Quill.
“Out for a walk,” said Mavis sullenly. “Says she’s been complimented frequently on her complexion and a walk helps. Lord!”
Quill apologized to the orthodontist, the orthodontist’s wife, and gave a souvenir ashtray to the little boy, who stopped wailing and demanded a towel, too. She couldn’t bring herself to apologize to Baumer. She took ten percent off the orthodontist’s bill. She soothed Mavis, who flounced upstairs to see to Mrs. Hallenbeck, who mayor may not have returned from her walk, and advised her to destroy any messages that may have been shoved under the old lady’s door.
When the lobby was clear of guests, she took the master key, went up to Baumer’s room and let herself in. A slip fluttered from beneath the door: AND HE CURSED THEM WITH MANY CURSES! THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT ARE UPON HIM! After a moment’s thought, she checked the dresser drawers (clear of noxious items), the bathtub (ditto), and then stripped the bed. She removed two dead grasshoppers, a garden slug, and a lively cricket from between the sheets.
She marched to the kitchen. Meg was busy with a cheese soufflé, an apprentice holding a large whisk, and a copper bowl. Doreen, she said in response to her sister’s evenly worded questions, had left for a Bible class or something. “No! The egg whites have to peak before you fold in the yolks or the damn thing’ll be flatter than my chest!” She turned her attention to Quill, who had reiterated her desire to see Doreen. “Can’t this wait?”
Quill began an explanation.
“Hand it over to John,” Meg interrupted. “He’s pretty good with her.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know!” said Meg. “Quill, will you get out of the kitchen? Whatever she did can wait until after the breakfast crowd leaves.”
Quill sat in the dining room. She ate an omelette aux fines herbes, grapefruit broiled in brown sugar, and a scone. She drank two cups of coffee. She decided that she wouldn’t string Doreen up by her thumbs. She even began to find the messages funny. The second cup of coffee convinced her that all Doreen needed was a new enthusiasm. Maybe she could suggest crossstitch.
By nine, John still hadn’t shown up, and she went to look for him. None of the staff had seen him. She knocked on the door of his rooms and received no answer. She went outside, thinking that perhaps he’d gone down to see Mike, the groundskeeper, but Mike was trimming the boxwood, and admitted he hadn’t seen John at all that morning.
It was a glorious morning. The air was soft, the sun benign. The display of dahlias by the drive proved irresistible. Feeling a bit guilty, Quill took some secateurs from the gardening shed and spent a contented hour clipping dead heads, weeding, and aerating roots.
The mindless and beneficial calm that overtakes the dedicated gardener was interrupted by Dina. Quill sat back on her heels and smiled happily at her. “John show up?”
“No.” Dina, who was affecting the seventies look this year, chewed at the ends of her long brown hair.
“Not more Old Testament doom, death, and disaster? Doreen isn’t even here.”
“No. Can you come to the office?”
Quill stored the secateurs, the trowel, and the gloves, and followed Dina back to the Inn.
“I heard about last night, and the night before that,” she said, “and I thought, well, I’ll just let her garden peacefully for a bit. But, Quill, this is a real mess. Maybe I should have come to get you before this.”
“What’s a real mess?”
“These cancellations!” The phone buzzed angrily. Dina groaned. Puzzled, Quill picked up the phone and answered, “Hemlock Inn, may I help you?”
An outraged woman demanded the manager.
“I’m one of the partners in the Inn,” said Quill. “Can I help you?”
Why, demanded the voice, had her tour group received a last-minute cancellation notice this morning? Did she, Quill, have any idea how disruptive this was? Did she, Quill, have any idea of the contortions required to find a last-minute booking elsewhere? As far as Golden Years Tours was concerned, the Hemlock Falls Inn was off their promotional literature. Forever. And everybody else in the tour business was going to hear about it. Immediately.
Quill hung up the phone.
“Another one?” said Dina. “That’ll be the fourth.”
“Have you seen John this morning?”
“Nope.”
“Do you have the bookings ledger?”
“Couldn’t find it. It’s not behind the front desk, where I usually keep it, and it’s not in the desk here. I know I had it this morning. It was on the counter, because all those people were checking out.”
“There’s a copy on disk in the computer,” said Quill carefully. “Dina, I know you worked last night, but before you go, could you help me pull up the records on the PC and call everyone that’s booked for this week? Just let them know that a … prank of some kind has been pulled. Tell them to disregard any phone calls they may have had. Tell them you’re calling to confirm the reservations. If we split the list up, we can maybe salvage the week.”
By noon, Quill thanked the exhausted Dina, sent her home, and totaled up the losses for the next business quarter. The caller had been busy; a dozen calls to the major revenue-producing tours had been made between eight-thirty and ten. The message in each case had been brief: the Inn was calling for John Raintree, to cancel confirmed reservations. Very sorry, but there’s been a major problem. The Inn was closed. To those few customers who’d been loyal enough to inquire when the Inn would reopen, the message was curt: the Inn would not reopen.
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At first baffled, Quill searched the grounds, talked to the staff, and made phone calls to a few of John’s accounting clients. By two o’clock, Quill’s concern for John’s whereabouts had escalated to irritation.
Quill went to the first-floor rooms John had occupied for the past year. She knocked, received no answer, then used her master key. She’d been in the rooms no more than two or three times, and each time wondered at the Spartan quality of John’s personal life. Three suits hung in the closet; one winter, two summer. Two sports coats. A modest number of white shirts, a handful of ties, and other necessities barely filled the bureau drawer and the bathroom cabinet.
A photograph of a pretty Indian girl leaning on the hood of a car stood on the night stand; the print
had faded a little. The car was a 1978 aids Delta 88. John’s diploma awarding him an MBA from the Rochester Institute of Technology was propped on the small desk. There were books on the shelf under the TV. Aztec, by Gary Jennings; Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress; dozens of science fiction and historical novels. There were perhaps half a dozen self-help books: all of them dealt with alcoholism.
Quill addressed the photograph. “I do not believe that this man did this,” she said. “There is no way that I will ever believe John did this.” The dark eyes stared back at her.
“We’ve got three questions to answer,” Quill told her. “First one is, Where the hell is John? The second is, How did he get there? The third is, Who tried to pull the unfunniest joke in hotel history and blame it on him? Marge Schmidt? She wasn’t even near the place this morning. Keith Baumer, playing tricks on his morning walk? Maybe Mavis-out of revenge for her fall from the balcony? When I get those answers, there won’t be any more questions… just a major whack up the side of the head for whoever gets in my way.”
Quill slammed outside to the gardens in a highly satisfying rage. She collared a clearly startled Mike the groundskeeper, who said No, he hadn’t seen John; his car was gone, but he hadn’t seen John leave. Balked, Quill went to find her sister.
“You’re kidding!” said Meg. She was in the storeroom, stacking fresh vegetables in the wire bins. “Would you look at those Vidalias I got this morning? God, they’re gorgeous! I’m putting French onion soup on the specials tonight.”
“You can’t, Meg,” said Quill, momentarily distracted. “You use raw egg in the stock.”
“So? Makes it richer. Did the Buffalo Gourmet Club cancel? That’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. Remember last year when they had that food fight in the bar?”
“That was the Kiwanis from Schenectady. Are you listening to me?”
Meg breathed on a tomato, polished it with the bottom of her T-shirt, and set it on the shelf. “Yes, sweetie. I’m listening to you. John’s gone. About thirty per cent of the business is gone because somebody pulled a jerky joke. But the bank hasn’t called the mortgage or anything, has it? The business will come back. And we can get another hotel manager - the Cornell School’s filled with wannabees. I mean, look at the luck I’ve had with the sous chefs from there.”
“And salmonella hasn’t poisoned anybody - yet.” Meg grinned and bit her lip. “Okay. I’ll make onion soufflé. Or maybe just chop it up fresh with these beefsteak tomatoes. They’re the most beautiful tomato in the world, these beefsteaks.”
Quill sat on a hundred-pound sack of rice and put her chin in her hands. “So what do you think I should do?”
“What can you do? Myles is right, don’t fuss so much, Quill. John will come back with a perfectly logical explanation, and if he doesn’t - done’s done.”
“And those phone calls?”
“That foul Baumer is capable of anything, if you ask me. You turned down his gallant advances yesterday morning, didn’t you? Well, in my vast experience of disappointed harassers, it’d be right up his mean, spiteful alley.”
“You don’t think it was Marge?”
“The bookings ledger was here this morning, and Marge wasn’t. It would have taken her an hour to copy all those names and numbers. She wasn’t here long enough last night to do it.”
“And that missing bolt?”
“What possible connection could poor Gil’s accident have with John running off on a toot, most likely, and a series of malicious phone calls?”
“I don’t know,” Quill said, “but by God, there is one.”
Sitting at her desk, contemplating the display of Apricot Nectar roses outside her office window, Quill failed to find any connection at all.
She shuffled through her phone messages: nothing from Myles; one from Esther reading “The show must go on! Rehearsal at the Inn 4:00 P.M.”; a few from tour directors wanting a chance to discuss the practical joke, which she set aside for Monday during business hours; and one scrawled on a piece of the wrapper for the paper towels the Inn bought in bulk: AND WORMS SHALL CRAWL THROUGH HER NOSE. “Doreen!” said Quill. “Dammit, whose nose?”
“Whose nose?” she repeated when she found the housekeeper scrubbing the toilets in 218. Doreen had listened stolidly to Quill’s succinct summary of why she was not to impose her beliefs on the guests.
“That scarlet woman,” said Doreen, “that whore of Babylon.”
“I thought it was the whore of Detroit.”
“Don’t you laugh at me, missy. I need a little Bible study is all.” She sat back on her heels and contemplated the gleaming porcelain with satisfaction. “I joined the Reverend Shuttleworth’s Bible classes this morning. Learn me a bit more.”
“Let’s get back to this wormy person,” suggested Quill. “You haven’t whacked the orthodontist’s wife, have you?”
“They checked out. Nope. It’s that Miss Prissy butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her mouth friend of the widow lady. Mrs. Hallenbeck’s companion. A righteous woman, that Mrs. Hallenbeck, to my way of thinking. She shouldn’t have to put up with a person bound for the Pit.”
“You mean Mavis Collinwood? Where is she?”
“Bar. Acting no better than she should with that skirt-chasing salesman.”
“Doreen, I’ve just finished telling you that the guests’ behavior is no business of ours.”
Doreen got up from the tile floor with a groan, and attacked the tub. “Will be if that poor Mrs. Hallenbeck has a heart attack from the sheer cussedness of that woman.”
Quill, mindful of the alarming changes in Mavis’ personality after her ingestion of Andy Bishop’s Valium samples, went to the bar. The mystery of John’s whereabouts would have to be put on hold. Besides, she could tackle Baumer about the phone calls. Meg was probably right.
Called The Tavern in their brochures, the bar was the most popular spot at the Inn, occupying an entire quarter of the first floor. The bar’s floor and ceiling were of polished mahogany. Floor-to-ceiling windows took up the south and east walls. Quill had painted the north and west walls teal, and Meg had persuaded her to hang a half dozen of her larger acrylics on the jewel-toned walls.
When Quill left her career as an artist, she’d been heralded as the successor to Georgia O’Keeffe. “A small stride forward in the school of magic realism,” wrote the critic in Art Review. The brilliance of the yellows, oranges, and scarlets of her Flower Series leaped out from the walls with exuberance.
Some weeks, when Quill longed for the rush of her old studio in Manhattan, she avoided The Tavern altogether; at other times, she sat in the bar and took a guilty pleasure in her work.
It was early for the bar trade, but the tourists had started arriving for History Days, and the room was full. At first, Quill didn’t see Mavis and Baumer. When she did, she wondered how she could have missed them.
Mavis had bloomed like the last rose of summer. Gone were the prim collars, the below-the-knee print skirts, the spray-stiffened hair. Mavis’ full bosom spilled out of a black T-shirt with an illuminated teddy bear on the front. Quill couldn’t imagine where Mavis had tucked the batteries. The T-shirt was pulled over a pair of black stirrup pants. Mavis’ high-heeled shoes were a screaming red suede with bows at the ankles.
“Coo-eee!” Mavis called, waving her hand at Quill. Nate, the bartender, gave Quill a wry grin and a shrug. Quill leaned over the marble bartop and whispered, “How long have they been here?”
“Through two Manhattans for the gentleman and two mint - “
“Don’t say it!” groaned Quill.
” - juleps for the lady.”
“Nobody drinks mint juleps, Nate. Not willingly, anyway.”
“That’s one dedicated Southerner, I guess.”
“As far as I know, she’s still taking that Valium Doc Bishop prescribed for her,” said Quill. “Keep an eye on them, will you?”
“Hard not to,” said Nate. “I can short the drinks, if you want.”
“If yo
u do, short the bar tab, too.” Quill threaded her way through the tables and sat down next to Keith Baumer. “Did you and Mrs. Hallenbeck get a decent night’s sleep, Mavis?”
“I did, I guess. I don’t know about the old bat. She was up walking around awful early, I can tell you that.”
“Best part of the day,” said Baumer genially. “I’m up at six and out for a walk every morning. Get a head start on my work.”
“Does your business include a lot of out-of-town phone calls?” Quill asked coolly.
Baumer showed his teeth in what might have been a grin. “Lots.” He raised his hand and shouted, “Barkeep! Another round for us. And I’d like to buy you a drink, Ms. Quilliam. What’s your poison?”
“Nate will bring me a cup of coffee. Mavis, about last night - “
“Wasn’t it awful?” Mavis’ eyes filled with ready tears. “That poor, poor man. I’d only met him that day. But he was such a friendly soul. So open, so candid in his needs. I declare, it was like seeing a dear friend pass.”
Baumer gripped her knee with a proprietary air. “Comfort is what you need, Mave. And I’ve got just the ticket.”
Mavis dimpled at him. Nate set drinks and a plate of hors d’oeuvres on the table, a signal he had shorted the liquor in at least Mavis’ mint julep. “Compliments of the house, Mr. Baumer.”
“Hold it, hold it, my man. Let’s see what we have here.” Baumer poked disparagingly through the food. “Stuffed mushrooms, for God’s sake. You’d think a place with this kind of reputation would be a little more creative, eh? And what the hell is this? Liverwurst?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Quill.
“Meg’s Country Pâté,” said Quill. “And that’s pork rillette, and anchovy paste on sourdough.”
Baumer stuffed a mushroom in his mouth, chewed, and grunted, “Not bad. I’ve had better. But not bad. Here, kiddo, sink your teeth into this.” He offered Mavis a pork rillette.
Quill, contemplating Mavis, remembered that John had seen them at the Croh Bar. Was there any connection between John’s disappearance and Gil’s drowning last night? Her palms went cold. “I wasn’t very clear on what did happen last night, Mavis. Was Mrs. Hallenbeck with you all evening?”
A Taste for Murder Page 8