A Pinch of Poison

by Claudia Bishop

  Marge sat forward with a sudden thump. Her gimlet eyes narrowed.

  “Bingo,” said John under his breath. “I thought so.”

  “A new outlet mall? Our mall isn’t an outlet mall,” said Esther. “Our mall’s a mini-mall. A collection of small but select shopping opportunities for discriminating shoppers. You said so yourself, Harvey. You mean there’s another mall going up? If there’s another mall going up ... There can’t be another mall going up. There’s no way our little mall could compete with another mall!”

  “That’s right.” Hedrick’s loose, rather wet lips stretched in a grin. “Got the list of investors right here.”

  “So!” the mayor interrupted heartily. “We appreciate this information, Mr. Conway. I expect that we’ll be able to read all about it in that fine paper of yours. Harvey, maybe you want to take Mr. Conway outside and give him a few—”

  “Wait just a goddamned minute.” Marge folded her arms underneath her substantial bosom. “Who’s on that investment list, Conway?”

  “You’ll read all about it in the next issue of the Trumpet! This reporter can’t divulge his sources. You’re not going to catch me giving away a scoop, like some.” His eye drifted toward Elmer and away again. “So what’s your comment on this new mall, Mayor?”

  “I’d absolutely have to study this situation to see how it affects the people of this good town before I could commit myself,” said the mayor. “But I can tell you this. Any new enterprise that brings new faces and taxes to our fine village is to be welcomed. Unless, of course, it adversely affects jobs and raises taxes in the area. Which it won’t. I don’t think. But if it does, I’m against it.”

  “ ‘Mayor Sees New Mall as Threat,” Hedrick spoke as he wrote. “Murchison? What about you? You lawyers always have something to say.”

  “No comment,” said Howie tightly.

  “ ‘Town Justice Invokes the Fifth.’ “

  “Now, wait just a goddamned minute, Conway!”

  “Bozzel? You’ve anything to say?”

  “I think we’d do better to take a meeting over at your place, Hed. Folks, if you’ll just excuse us, we’ll go off-line with this.” Harvey placed a hand on Hedrick’s shoulder and propelled him to the front door. Hedrick turned to face them once before they left. Quill’s pen, busy with her cartoon drawings, stilled. She’d never seen such malevolence on a human face before.

  “Jeez,” said Meg. She, Quill, and Georgia were eating a late supper in the dining room. The room was dominated by floor-to-ceiling mullioned windows looking out over the Falls, and a huge cherry sideboard along the long wall facing the foyer entrance. Quill had taken a chance with the color scheme; the wallpaper border was cherry maroon mixed with sunshine yellow and celadon green; the carpet was a soft, light mauve; the tablecloths a deep pink. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Meg sighed and swallowed a bite of lemon chicken. “So it’s not a toxic waste dump, but it’s a waste. There’s no way our poor little mall can survive the competition.”

  “Mr. Sakura’s offer isn’t generous, but it’s fair,” said Quill. “At least that’s what John says. And Meg, no one can compete with your cooking. You’ve made the Inn a success, and the boutique will be a success, too, no matter where it is.”

  They’d turned more than forty walk-ins away for dinner; curiosity seekers, Quill suspected, since there was a discreet sign, plainly lettered, on the front door that read,

  KITCHEN UNDERGOING REMODELING—PLEASE COME AGAIN,

  a feat of tactful prose by Georgia. “So the mayor let the cat out of the bag. Then what happened?”

  “Elmer called a breakfast meeting of the investors for tomorrow morning, to give everyone a chance to go over the prospectus. Then he and Howie hustled out of there.”

  “Did you get a chance to talk this over with John?”

  “Meg, the poor guy’s going crazy getting the boutique restaurant ready to open. We’ve all been too busy to even think about this, this afternoon.”

  “There must be something I can do to help,” said Georgia. “I mean, this is a big deal for you guys, a new venture.”

  “Quill is actually very well organized.” Meg smiled at her sister. “Sorry, that sounded as though people don’t expect you to be organized, but if you weren’t, how would you do all that has to be done to run the Inn? Actually, all the upfront stuff was planned months ago, Georgia. We issued invitations to the opening in early June, got a good acceptance rate, ordered flowers, china, equipment, prepared the staff, all that stuff well in advance. Making sure that everything is delivered on time and put in place is something John does—which is why he’s busy now and we’re not. At least, not more than usual, when my poor kitchen’s closed because of your boyfriend.”

  “Myles is not my boyfriend. People don’t have boyfriends anymore.”

  “Then what do they have?”

  “An insignificant other?” Georgia flung both her hands out. “Sorry. Sorry. Give me another glass of that super white wine, and I won’t be rude, I swear.”

  “Because your good friend and buddy, then, closed my kitchen*. Anyhow, all we can do now about the opening is worry, and there’s absolutely no use in doing that. What we can worry about are these murders. Quill, do you think Eugene was serious? That the work crew at the mall is made up of.. . of...”

  “The recently incarcerated?” Quill suggested, rather pleased with the political correctness of this phrase. “It sounded like the truth to me.”

  “New evidence, then.” Meg put her elbows on the table with a smug air. “And Georgia, you’ve been grinning like a cat in cream since we started dinner. You’ve got something, too, don’t you?”

  “You don’t think it could be the chicken marinated in plum sauce?”

  Meg smiled. “Could be.”

  “Or the second bottle of wine?”

  Meg burped. “Nope.”

  “Well, you’re right. I’ve got something. Something big. But I want to save it. Let’s see what you guys have, first, then we’ll see how my stuff fits in.”

  “Okay by me.” Meg took a healthy swig of her wine and began to tick off each point on a finger. “We have two murders, linked by the victims’ familial and professional relationship.”

  “Gawd,” Georgia interrupted, “You’re pretty good at this. That was so ...”

  “Succinct?” said Quill. “Direct? Unambiguous? You ought to see her cook.” She drained her glass.

  “The murders occurred a month after the Conways moved into town and announced their intention of taking over the Gazette. Louisa’s murder occurred on the third day of the publication of the first issue of the Trumpet!, Carlyle’s on the very day of the second issue of the Trumpet!”

  “Maybe the murderer hadn’t seen it until Thursday?” Georgia suggested.

  “Wait,” said Meg. “We’re simply listing facts, here. We’ll extrapolate later.”

  “Then I definitely need another helping of this fantastic dessert. And another glass of wine.”

  “It’s new,” said Meg, momentarily diverted. “Strawberries, rhubarb, and raspberry tart. You’re the first to try it.”

  “It’s fantastic.” She helped herself to a third tart from the dish in front of them. “Okay, the engine’s stoked. What’s second?”

  “Louisa was killed from a blow to the head with the classic blunt instrument.”

  “How blunt is a hammer, anyway?” Quill mused, aware that four glasses of the Italian white she’d drunk were making her extremely mellow. “Some hammers aren’t blunt at all. A tack hammer, for example.”

  “Never mind. Anyway, her body was dumped in the river, presumably—and I’ll allow myself a little extrapolation here—by someone not familiar with Hemlock Falls.”

  “Not familiar?” echoed Georgia. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because anyone from around here knows the current in the river. We all swim in it, or if we don’t swim in it, we at least understand how it flows. Anyone from Hemlock Falls...”
r />   “You’re repeating yourself,” reproved Quill, and hiccupped.

  “... would know if you tossed a corpse in the river, it wouldn’t be carried away by the water’s flow. It’d stick around. We’ve got a lazy river in these parts.”

  “Hmm,” said Quill, “I hadn’t thought of it, but you could be right.”

  “Could be? I am,” said Meg with innocent satisfaction, “rarely wrong. When was the last time I was wrong, Quillie?”

  “September first, 1993,” Quill replied promptly.

  “September... oh! Ha-Ha.”

  “What?” Georgia demanded.

  “An ill-fated foray into blintzes. On September second, I repented.”

  “But, Meg, what if the murderer didn’t care if the body was discovered?” asked Georgia.

  “All murderers care if the corpse is discovered.”

  Quill offered the fact that Carlyle Conway’s death rather negated that.

  “In this instance,” said Meg, “the murderer clearly wanted to plant the murder on me.” She brooded for a moment. “And it may come to that.”

  “Meg, for heaven’s sake. You haven’t heard from Andy yet. We don’t even know—”

  “Wait. I haven’t finished my succinct, direct, and unambiguous summary of the facts.” Meg swallowed her third glass of Pinot Grigio with a flourish and poured a fourth. Quill peered at her rather dubiously. “When I, with all that time on my hands this afternoon because Evil Forces have closed my kitchen ... evil forces ...” Quill took the glass from Meg’s hand, got up, and placed it on the sideboard, then poured her a cup of coffee. Meg gave her a sunny smile, got up, retrieved her wine, and sipped it. “I wrote down who was at the mini-mall site. Then I wrote down who was near Carlyle at the party, and I compared the two.” She hiccuped, and articulated carefully, “1 excepted, of course, ourselves and the citizens of Hemlock Falls. And here it is.” She produced the list with a flourish from her shorts pocket and spread it on the table.

  “Sakura Toshiro, Mr. Motoyama, Marcos DeMarco, Hedrick Conway, Axminster Stoker, Jerzey Paulovich,” Quill read.

  Georgia frowned. “The suspect list is wider than that. Even buying the theory that no one from the Falls would throw a body in the river, which I guess I do, there’s the rest of the Kiplings, including me, not to mention the criminal construction crew. All of us were around when the murders occurred.”

  “The recently incarcerated have paid their debt to society,” said Meg mournfully. “And besides, the only one from the site in both places was Marco DeMarco.”

  “He wasn’t at the site,” said Quill. “I told you that. He was in San Francisco. I think you’ve had a little too much wine.” She considered this. “I think I’ve had a little too much wine.”

  “Deee-Marco in San Francisco? Oh, dang.” Meg frowned, then brightened. “He could have had an agent?”

  “True. But then, so could have any number of the guests at the party. And that includes the forty-eight or so current residents of the Inn.”

  “But none of them were near Carlyle on the fatal night, except DeMarco,” said Meg. “And Andy told me that whatever it was that she ate, symptoms would have appeared within seconds. Seconds. Which means that it had to be someone in that circle of guys around her.”

  “Motive,” said Georgia. “Since we’re being succinct, direct, and unambiguous, let’s talk about motive. Why would any of these six want to kill Louisa and Carlyle?”

  “DeMarco might want to keep everyone from knowing that there were ex-cons at the site,” said Quill. “But I doubt it. I mean, who would care?”

  “Lots of people, I should think,” said Meg, on whom the wine appeared to be having a sentimental effect.

  “You’re such a nice liberal, Quill, but it obscures your mind.”

  “Obscures my mind!”

  “Think about it. How would Mrs. Elmer Henry feel if she knew that the ‘formerly incarcerated’ were loose and running around Hemlock Falls? What about Esther West, bless her heart? Or any of the ladies in the Society for the Advancement of Jell-O Architecture, for that matter?”

  “Or even us, if you want to be fair about it,” said Quill wryly. “Wouldn’t be all that good for the reputation of the Inn, would it?”

  “Probably not,” Georgia agreed. “It would certainly distress Miss Kent.”

  “So we should add ourselves to the suspect list, Meg.”

  “Except that we know that a body thrown in the ...”

  “Okay, okay. Drink your coffee.”

  “Motive,” said Georgia, again, with firmness.

  “Obviously we are clueless as to motive, at this point”—Meg scowled—”which brings me to the second reason we should discount the murderer being from Hemlock Falls. If Elmer, Harvey, and Howie knew about the discount mall going up on Route fifteen—”

  “We don’t know that for certain, do we?” Quill protested. “I mean, not only do I have a hard time believing any one of those three would actually kill somebody, I can’t think that they’d knowingly—”

  “Screw their friends?” interrupted Georgia cynically. “C’mon, honey. You know what people are like where money’s involved.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Quill, with unaccustomed firmness. “I know what some people are like over money, but not the mayor. And not Howie. DeMarco told me today that Howie’s a fine lawyer, and there’s a man that should know. Howie could have gone to a big city practice any time these past years, but he didn’t. He chose to stay here.”

  “Here,” echoed Meg.

  “Sentimentality,” said Georgia, attempting the word twice, “is a surefire way to torpedo an investigation, in my view.” She laid her fork on her plate. “What about this Harvey Bee. No. Bossy. No. Bozzel?”

  “Harvey...” began Quill.

  “Harvey,” said Meg.

  They looked at each other.

  “Harvey,” said Meg, again, “could very easily be tempted by cash. But he has such a loose lip that everyone would know about it within days. I mean, he’s in advertising, for goodness’ sake.”

  “That’s true of Elmer, too,” said Quill. “He’s a small town politician. Neither one of them could keep a secret to save their little souls.”

  “Aha,” said Georgia. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” She hitched herself forward. “I’ve listened to you talk about the people in the Falls for a couple of days now. And I’ve seen how you all relate to each other. I like it, by the way, which is one reason why I very well may decide to settle here, but that’s another story. Anyway, let’s look at motive like this. The discount mall project must have been in the works for how long—several months?”

  “It took almost a year to get the mini-mall project up and rolling,” said Quill.

  “What was the period of time from project approval to the pros-pec-tus? The offer to invest?”

  “Eight months or so?”

  “And from the pros-what’s-it to the raising of the actual money?”

  “Not very long at all,” said Meg. “Howie had a lot of people he wanted to approach. I’d say it took a couple of weeks.”

  “So it’s likely that the offer for investment in the discount mall has been out—what—two weeks? Three?”

  “About the same time that the Conways took over the Gazette and turned it into the Trumpet!” said Quill slowly.

  “But—” Meg stopped herself. “Nothing. Never mind. I think I’ve had too much wine. Go on, Georgia.”

  “I can’t. I was just using deductive reasoning.”

  All three of them found this incredibly funny. Bent over with laughter, Meg shoved her chair back, went to the coffee stand, and brought back the second bottle of wine. Quill split it between the three glasses.

  “Oh, dear.” Meg wiped her eye with her sleeve. “So. Are you ready to spill the beans?”

  “You mean the grape?”

  “I mean the sushi! Oh! God! That was awful, wasn’t it?” Meg covered her mouth and rolled her eyes.

  Quill
coughed and tried to sober up. “What Meg wants to know is... what did your bankers tell you about the Conways?”

  “A-hum!” Georgia’s laughter shook the small table, rattling the glasses. “Ladies. Sit back. Listen up. Get this.” She leaned forward and said in the loudest whisper Quill had ever heard, “Now that his ma and his sister have bought the farm—’ *

  “Kicked the bucket,” improvised Meg.

  “Fell off the roof!” said Quill.

  “Fell off the roof?” Meg swayed in her chair. “Quill, what kind of metaphor is that?”

  “Listen, ladies!” Georgia stamped her foot. It made an impressive thump. “Mr. Conway is the sole inheritor of—”

  “Half a billion?” Meg sat up straight.

  “The sole inheritor of... nothing! He’s broke!”

  “That sorry piece of liver pate?!” shouted Meg.

  “That sausage!” cried Quill.

  “That pork roast... !”

  “I like pork roast!” Georgia said. “Don’t make him a pork roast!”

  “... is broke?! He has no motive? Aagh! I can’t stand it!”

  “Oh, dear.” Quill balled her napkin and wiped each eye in turn. “This isn’t funny. This just isn’t funny. What about Louisa’s supposedly rich husband, Georgia? I thought he died and left her tons.”

  “If Louisa had it, it’s gone now.” Georgia looked smug. “I found out something else, too. Hedrick and Carlyle are the offspring of a first marriage, the origins of which, my attorney tells me, are lost in the mists of time. Louisa herself has a bit of checkered past. One of those women that turns up in the pages of Town & Country magazine in the background at parties which are definitely on the fringe, or shows up in the racing news at the Saratoga sales in August, hanging on the arm of an ersatz Italian prince. Mr. Conway senior—after a marriage of some three years to our Louisa—died under very suspicious circumstances at his home in Boca Raton.”

  “What sort of suspicious circumstances?”

  Georgia looked smug. “Food poisoning. From an unidentified neurotoxin. In the hors d’oeuvres.”