A Touch of the Grape: A Hemlock Falls Mystery (Hemlock Falls Mystery series)

by Bishop, Claudia

  A slender young girl with brown hair and big eyes sidled softly up to the table. "Quill? I'm sorry to interrupt. There's quite a few people from town to see you."

  Meg leaped to her feet with a whoop. "Yes! Dina Muir, returned from the world of the laid-off, downsized, and unemployed. Returned to her job as receptionist. It's good to see you." Meg grabbed Dina in a hug. "Are you glad to be back? I'm sure glad to see you. And I don't know how long the business generated by these curiosity-seekers is going to last, but I'm sure happy to see you now. Was it horrible, being unemployed?"

  "Um," said Dina. "Not really." She was growing her hair long again, and she wound a piece around her finger. "I, like, was getting unemployment, you know? And, like, the check? Almost the same as my pay here. And I didn't have to, like, work for it. I got a lot of work done on my thesis. Anyhow." She turned to Quill. "It's the Reverend Mr. Shuttleworth? And like that? They said if you were busy or harassed or whatever, they'd come back later. I said you were eating lunch."

  "You should have asked them to come in." Quill got to her feet. "I'll go see them. Unless you need me anymore, Mr. Burke? Denny?" Rocky Burke shook his head. Denny, who had retired to the silent and efficient disposal of his lunch, shook his head and grinned. Bits of pate fell on his shirt. "Where are they, Dina?"

  "I stuck them in the conference center. It looks like it's the whole darn Chamber of Commerce."

  It wasn't the entire Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce—which numbered twenty-four—but it was the regulars, plus one new member Quill was very glad to see: Selena Summerhill. Quill smiled at them all: Mayor Elmer Henry; Dookie Shuttleworth, the Minister of the Church of the Word of God; Miriam Doncaster, the librarian; Esther West, owner of the West's Best Dress Shoppe; Harvey Bozzel, president of Hemlock Falls' best (and only) advertising agency. She was even glad to see Marge Schmidt and Betty Hall, co-owners of the Hemlock Home Diner.

  Selena Summerhill, glowing and elegant in a dark olive linen pantsuit, her black hair knotted in a smooth chignon in the back, clasped her hands and murmured, "Terrible, Quill. This is just terrible. I said that to my Hugh this morning, and he thought I should come to offer help."

  "I'm glad you did."

  They were seated in their old, familiar spots around the conference room table. When Quill walked to her own place at the far end, they all stood, and one by one shook her hand as she passed by.

  "Hey, guys." Quill accepted an embrace from Harvey, resisting the impulse to muss up his careful blond hair. She shook hands with the mayor, kissed Dookie on the cheek, hugged Miriam with genuine affection, and squeezed Betty Hall's shoulder. She exchanged significant looks with Marge.

  "Siddown, everyone," Marge growled. Even if Marge didn't have the personality of General Sherman's younger (and meaner) brother, her massive jaw, column-shaped figure, and steely eyes would have made her a commanding presence. When Marge told you to "siddown," you did. Especially Mayor Henry, who felt (not wrongly) that the moment Marge decided to run for mayor, he might as well pack up his Samsonite and retire to Zolfo Springs, Florida, where his older brother ran a trailer park. The mayor sat. Everyone, including Quill, sat, too.

  One of the most important adjuncts to the mayoral office was the gavel, which the mayor carried in a custom-made case in his sports coat pocket. With all due solemnity he withdrew it now and rapped it on the mahogany surface of the conference table. "This meetin' is called to order."

  "Use the rest, Elmer," Marge snapped. "You're going to dent Quill's table yet."

  Elmer chose not to gavel again at all. He put the little hammer back in its case and said kindly, "We're here to apologize. Quill. And to he'p you if we can."

  "Apologize? What for?"

  "Kinda let you down," Marge said gruffly. "Switching the Chamber meeting to the Legion Hall, and all."

  "I knew why," Quill said. "And I understood completely. Lunches here were getting very expensive."

  "We can find the money. You can always find the money." Marge drummed thick fingers on the table. "Thing was, I was kinda thinking maybe you didn't need the customers, know what I mean? That maybe we should give somebody else a chance at the income. And the Legion's a good cause."

  "That's okay, really."

  "Thing is, we didn't know how tough things was for you. Not that our once a week lunches dropped all that much to the bottom line."

  They helped, Quill said silently. Paid a good portion of poor Dina's salary for the day. Quill was alert, last night's fatigue gone. Marge was up to something, and she wanted to know what. She had engineered the switch to the Legion; why the change of attitude now?

  "Anyways. What's done is done. Thing is, we wanna start meetin' here again—right, folks?"

  There was general assent among those present.

  "And we thought as how you might wanna be seketary again. Although Betty don't mind it, do you, Betty." This wasn't a question, just as the decision to make Betty secretary had nothing to do with what Betty wanted. Betty, the thin, silent partner to Marge's bulky voluble one, cast Quill a look of appeal. Quill resisted it. She hated being secretary.

  "Gosh," Quill said. "Well, actually, you might as well know by now. In addition to the—the—" She searched for an appropriately diffident word. Hemlock-ians were notoriously diffident. "… ah—fuss here last night, John's had to take another job. In Long Island. With a bank. It's a great opportunity for him," she added unhappily. "He'd be crazy not to take it."

  To her surprise—although given the nature of the Hemlock Falls bush telegraph, she shouldn't have been— her announcement of John's departure didn't seem to be news to anyone at the table. "Anyway, that means I'll be taking over the accounting function."

  "You kiddin'?" Marge demanded. "Now that's a mistake. No offense meant. Quill."

  "None taken. At any rate, I'll be a little too busy to pay the right kind of attention to the Chamber minutes that they deserve. So, Betty, if you don't mind."

  "She don't," said Marge, although Betty clearly did. "So that's items one and two. We're gonna start havin' meetings here again, and Betty here stays seketary. Okay. Item three."

  The mayor pulled his gavel out of the case and whacked the table. "Who's mayor here anyways. Marge Schmidt?"

  Fortunately for the mayor's manly feelings, no one answered that question. "I am, right? So here's item three. Quill. We got a volunteer work crew lined up to do the cleanup on that room that burned, soon as that damn-fool Denny completes his investigation. So don't you worry about that. You take whatever that saves you from that insurance money and use it to tide you over, just till business gets better again."

  "Oh, my." Quill wasn't sure what to say. Cleanup was going to be an awful job, smelly, dirty, and exhausting. "I really appreciate it. It's extremely generous."

  "Phuut," Marge said dismissively. "Now. The last thing. And the biggest. We're gonna work all together to do something about the state of business in this town. And that. Quill, is gonna involve the Inn. Big time. The person who's got the best idea I've heard of in a long time is Ms. Summerhill here. Selena? You wanna give the folks a rundown on your idea." This last sentence, in typical Marge style, wasn't a question, but a command.

  Selena stood and slid both hands down the sides of her pantsuit in a nervous gesture. Her accent, which Quill almost never noticed, except in the way she selected her words, became marked. "Thank you, friends," she said formally, "for the opportunity to speak to you here today."

  "Here, here," said Harvey, apropos of nothing in particular, except, Quill suspected, Selena's undeniable elegance. The effect of this was to throw Selena momentarily off stride. She began again. "Thank you, friends. I come to talk to you today about the chance to put our town on the map. Not just the map it is already on, which is the New York State map, you understand, but the Map of Success." She sent Harvey a questioning glance.

  He nodded benign approval, then, in his Harveylike way, added, "Good. Snappy. Very snappy."

  "And so," Selena continued,
"I thank you." She sat down.

  "Huh?" said the mayor. He looked around accusingly, as though someone had swiped Selena's speech when he wasn't looking.

  Selena, flustered, stood up again. "So. I didn't say it, did I? Harvey, you will not speak when I am speaking, comprende? And I will say what I have come to say." She steepled her hands and tapped her chin with her fingertips. "I am not accustomed to speaking in public. Which is what Hugh does, usually. Mi esposo. Of course, I am not accustomed to catching wild dogs, either, and can do that, so here it is. You will excuse the nerves.

  "You all know that New York is the premier grower of wines in the United States of America. California is nice, of course, but"—she flung her hands out dramatically—"we have better whites! Now. How many people know of this? Not enough. Not nearly enough. And how many people drink wine? Many, many, many. Although not so many as in Spain. Not yet, anyway. We, the winegrowers of New York, would like all wine drinkers to know about this. White wine drinkers especially. Therefore, we are declaring this year, beginning now, the Year of the Grape!" She paused. It was an applause pause, clearly. But since Harvey's intervention had thrown her off stride before, no one wanted to discompose her again.

  Quill, finally, said firmly, "Hooray!" which Selena received with a grateful look.

  "The Year of the Grape," she repeated. "What will this mean for Hemlock Falls? First, a gala fair to celebrate the harvest in October. The place? The Inn at Hemlock Falls. The people? All the tourists who will come when we begin to advertise this oh so significant event. I have many, many ideas to celebrate the Year of the Grape. The fair is only the first of them. We have Ice Wines, to draw celebrants and wine drinkers in winter. In spring, all of the boutique wineries around our Finger Lakes will begin their testing and tasting of the year's previous harvest. I have many, many ideas. Harvey, he, too, has many, many ideas. And we have set up a calendar of events—just a proposed one—which I will distribute to you at the end of this meeting.

  "Now. The money part. Who will fund this oh so brilliant idea? I have been in touch with our governor. I have asked him, Sir, do you wish all people to leave New York because of high taxes and bad business? He does not, he says. And does he wish upstate and central New York to stop being depressed? Does he want happy voters who will drink our wines and be even happier? He does, he says. So my Hugh, he presents a request for a grant to this governor. And my Hugh—he gets it! So, my friends, on behalf of all our failing businesses here in Hemlock Falls, I say: Hola!" She grabbed her large leather purse and pulled out a number ten envelope. She turned it outward, so that all at the table could see the gubernatorial seal on the upper left-hand corner. "This letter? It promises the funds. Through this county program to which my Hugh has made application. Friends! We are in business. I thank you."

  This time, with Selena safely seated, the applause was long, loud, and even rowdy. Quill herself began to cheer.

  "Mrs. Summerhill? Mrs. Summerhill." Mayor Henry lumbered to his feet. "Thank you all, thank you. Mrs. Summerhill gave a very nice report. But I think you should all understand just what this money's for. You may have noticed in the newspaper" (Quill hadn't. She hadn't had time to read the newspaper or watch the news since their financial crises began.) "that the governor's office announced the passage of Senate Bill 172, which establishes a fund to promote tourism in Upstate New York. This fund is on account of we're in a depression, and the rest of the durn country's in hog heaven. What Hugh Summerhill did was hook up with some folks he knows in Albany and get them to cut us a pretty big piece of that pie. The State's sending some fella from the budget office down to speak to us tomorrow. He's going to explain how much money there is, and how we can get it. It appears that this money is just for businesses that will he'p promote tourism, folks. So, of course, we hope that you, Quill and Meg, will be right there along with everyone else. Because," he said with the ingenuousness that helped him get reelected every four years, "the Inn's the biggest tourist attraction around here."

  "State money, huh," Meg said. It was late at night, well after eleven. They were in Quill's suite. Quill had lit sandalwood incense against the sour smell of smoke that still hung in the air. Although the actual damage from the fire had been contained to the room where Ellen Dunbarton died, the smoke odor permeated everything. They'd opened every single window in the building during the day, and it had helped some but not much. "So that's why Marge is being so friendly. And it's why she wants to buy us out, of course. We're saved. Quill!"

  "Yes." She nursed her glass of wine. If John was right—and she'd never known John to be wrong about financial matters—it didn't matter how many tourists showed up to celebrate the grape. They still wouldn't be able to make the mortgage payment. "You can't just meet payroll and pay the bills every month," he'd explained over and over. "You have to anticipate that money buys less and less as the years go on, and that your assets are costing you more to keep as the years go by. You're not listening, are you, Quill?"

  She hadn't listened.

  Quill and Meg sat on the pale leather couch facing the French doors. They were closed against the chilly night air, but she'd left the drapes wide open, and they had a fine view of the stars. "State money," Quill said aloud. "The meeting's at Summerhill tomorrow at noon. In the tasting room."

  "How much money is there?"

  "It's a matching fund. I suppose we'll find out how much is allocated to our county tomorrow, when the man from Albany fills us in. You get fifty thousand dollars in grant money for every employee attached to a new business. Hugh's idea, apparently, is to form an Upstate Winegrowers' consortium and have each of the village businesses belong. We're ideally suited, of course, since we're the largest place available for dinners and wine tastings and the like. Esther West, on the other hand, is opening a side business specializing in wine thingies, so that she can be eligible for funds, too."

  "Wine thingies?"

  "Wine-related products. Glasses with the Hemlock Falls logo on it—did I tell you the Chamber is holding a referendum to change our town symbol to something grapey?"

  "We have a town symbol?"

  "I think it's a cow at the moment. Because of all the dairy business. Anyway, Esther wants to sell souvenirs and momentos. The kinds of touristy things people can take away with them after a festival."

  "So why am I dubious? For that matter, why are you dubious?"

  "It's the loss of control. If we join this consortium, who's going to be dictating the way we do business, Meg? And you won't let a New York State red in our cellar, and neither will John. Well, neither did John. They just aren't good enough yet for a first-class restaurant. And the tourists are coming in to drink New York product. In something like this, there are going to be a whole lot more people calling the shots. It's an awful lot like a business merger, Meg. Which means that we're going to lose some independence."

  "Better than our shirts."

  "Are you sure about that? You're the first one to scream bloody murder when somebody tries to tell you how to cook."

  Meg looked startled. "Who's going to tell me how to cook?'

  "I don't know. But I've got a pop quiz for you. Who calls the shots in the village now?"

  "Marge." Meg sat bolt upright as this sank in. "Marge Schmidt!"

  "You get an 'A.' Who offered to buy the Inn last night, before news of this fund got out? Who was as sweet as rhubarb today, organizing the volunteer cleanup of poor Ellen's room?"

  "Rhubarb's not sweet."

  "No, but it's as sweet as Marge gets."

  "Point taken."

  "What I do know is that this winegrowers' union will radically change the way we do business. So I don't know if we should leap at it. And I certainly don't see it as our salvation. Not yet. And there's something else."

  "Ah."

  "What do you mean, ah?" Quill said crossly.

  "I mean all of these objections have sounded vague. No facts. Just feelings."

  "You should have heard Selena's speech.
The facts were there, all right, but no one knew what she meant until Elmer got up and explained. She said she doesn't have the kind of brain that retains them. Her brain is more feminine, she said."

  "Oh, baloney! It's work to pin things down, Quill. And just like somebody else I know, Selena's a leetle lazy intellectually."

  "Are you accusing me of being intellectually lazy?"

  "Heavens, no."

  Quill, who was tired, chose to let this pass. It was too late (and Meg was probably too right) to go into her character deficits.

  Meg stretched her legs onto the oak chest Quill used as a coffee table. "Anyway. It sounds like an incredible opportunity to me. Just when we're really down on our uppers, along comes this fabulous idea to get tourist trade into a sinking economy. I mean, face it, Quill. Upstate New York probably wasn't the best choice to open a business. The taxes are intolerable. John's been telling us for a year that we simply can't afford to operate. Do you realize that if we were running this business in a state without a state income tax that we would have enough cash to keep John on at a livable salary? That if we didn't have to pay almost twenty thousand a YEAR in worker's compensation taxes we could keep Dina on full-time and she could finish her dissertation?!"

  Quill gazed at her, openmouthed. "When did you retain all this? Business never interested you!"

  "I haven't been completely deaf to John's warnings. Look, all I'm saying is that your life's work is in this place. I don't want to see it go down the tubes any more than you do."

  "You'll put Summerhill port in the cellar? Their table red on the wine list?"

  Meg was pale, but her voice was steady. "I don't think it will come to that. I think it's negotiable. A lot depends on how this meeting goes tomorrow. If it looks like we're going to be railroaded into compromises we can't make in good conscience, then we'll just kiss that grant money good-bye and find our way out of this mess some other way. But we can do it. Quill. We can do it!!"