"Like what?"
"Like, really good. But I want you to keep it to yourself for a while, okay?"
"Sure," she said disconsolately. "Quill, a package came for Robin, so I sent the Fed Ex guy to the hospital, okay? And David's guys found that thing you were looking for."
"You mean the third triangle?"
"Yeah."
"And the correspondence is at the hospital." Quill sighed. "Okay. It's part of the case that Myles and I are working, Dina. I'll have to go get it."
There were times when the three-mile walk to the hospital would have refreshed her and given her much needed exercise. But it was getting dark, and there was a bare possibility that Marge was right; there was an indiscriminate killer abroad, and Quill had never been fond of those heroines who persisted in going to the basement when everyone knew the killer was lurking behind the water heater.
She took her keys from the hook behind the reception desk and picked up her purse. Max, who'd appropriated a place on the hearth rug next to the cobblestone fireplace, looked very pleased at the prospect of going out.
"I think you should stay here."
He barked.
"On the other hand, if you stay here, you'll just get out again and go terrorize one of the farmer's chickens."
He looked ashamed of himself, but not enough, Quill figured, to keep him from a midnight foray.
"Okay. You're on. But there are rules to driving in the car, Max, and I expect you to follow them."
He didn't, of course, and Quill finally gave up and let him sit in her lap. It was a little hard to see over his head, but the streets of Hemlock Falls weren't clogged with traffic at any time, and especially on a night following three successive murders.
Quill parked near the emergency entrance to the hospital, left the windows partly rolled up, and told Max to "stay." He settled comfortably enough in the backseat, and after praising him lavishly, she walked through emergency into the hospital itself.
The hospital was small, with a total of twenty beds, and went under periodic review for closure by the five-county-wide hospital oversight committee. Somehow the clinic and the small O.R. managed to stay open year after year. It was located in back of the high school athletic field, and on warm summer nights, both patients and staff could hear the pleasant hum of baseball games.
Quill walked through the empty halls, her heels echoing. There was no one on duty at reception, so Quill slipped behind the desk and checked the room registry. Freddie and Robin were together in Room Six.
She was a little concerned to find the empty chair that had been set for the young patrolman. When she walked in, Freddie and Robin seemed safe enough. They were sitting in the cheap plastic armchairs that somehow found their ways into every hospital Quill had ever seen. Selena Summerhill was perched on one of the two beds in the room. She was in the middle of a dog warden story, and Quill waited until she'd finished. "… and then, of course, I said, 'I am the dog warden, NOT the pig warden, and if I were you, I would call the butcher.' "
Freddie laughed until tears came to her eyes. Quill heard a tinge of hysteria in the laughter, and saw fear in the nervous way she moved. So Andy's drugs, whatever they were, weren't helping. "Where's the patrolman, Selena?"
"Out to get some food. I am a village official, I told him. I will stay here until he comes back. But now you are here, and I can go. I must get my Hugh some supper."
"Quill?" Freddie looked at her with fearful eyes. "You'll stay with us until he comes back, won't you? I told her that Sheriff McHale said a policeman, not a dog warden, but no one listened to me. And then will you ask the sheriff if we can go home? To Trenton?"
"Why, Freddie. Of course you can go home! You're not under arrest!"
Selena looked at Quill and smiled. "Ah, Quill. I have been trying to cheer them up, but Robin, too, says now they just want to go home. I smuggled in a little Summerhill red, which is very good for the nerves. Would you like to try it?"
"Not right now, thanks. Oh! I wanted to thank you for giving Max a bath."
"And so you should!" she said with mock indignation. "I could lose my job! But it gave us some time to become friends." She slid off the bed and stood up. "I will leave you ladies to your new visitor. And I will see you, Quill." She bent down and gave Freddie a quick embrace. Freddie screamed. Poor thing. Quill thought. Poor thing.
"Bah!" Selena ruffled Freddie's hair. "We will catch this monster. Perhaps I will do it myself. Don't worry now. Have a glass of our nice wine and relax." She whirled out the door, then popped her head back in and added, "And tell all your friends about the Summerhill red!"
She left in a wave of perfume.
"I wanted to pick up that Fed Ex," Quill explained. "And I was in such a rush, I forgot to bring you anything. Do you need some fruit? I know that Dr. Bishop takes excellent care of his patients, but it's a little different when you're just hiding out."
"We don't want anything more to do with this." Freddie said. "Go away. Quill."
"NO!" Robin said. "Don't leave us alone."
"It's going to be fine," Quill soothed them. "Now where's that Fed Ex? There. It slipped under your chair, Freddie." Quill picked it up and tore open the back strip. A sheaf of poor quality letterhead was inside. She pulled the stack out and flipped through it. The letterhead, the kind that can be created on any computer, read:
Quill stared at the signature for a long moment. "Revenge," she said slowly. She raised her head. Freddie's arthritic fingers played nervously with the fringe of her hand-crocheted sweater. "Revenge for what?"
"We haven't the least idea," Robin snapped. "We didn't even know this was a setup until—" She bit the words off. Her eyes darted toward the door where Selena's perfume still lingered.
"Until what?"
"We're not saying a thing until we have a lawyer." Freddie's eyes met hers and slid away again.
Quill had an excellent memory when she needed it. Sometimes it was a curse; she knew every single bill that was overdue at the Inn, and she'd told Marge the truth: the bills gave her nightmares because she couldn't get rid of the specifics. Sometimes it was a blessing: she never forgot a guest who'd stayed at the Inn, no matter how briefly. She wasn't sure which attribute to give her memory now, because—at last—the case was falling into place.
She slipped the letter back into the Fed Ex package. "Let's put some facts in order here." She took a moment to compose herself. Her heart didn't believe it; her mind told her nothing else made sense.
"The five of you have been—let's call it colleagues for years. Ellen was in the clothing business. Fran was a customs officer. You, Freddie, were an order clerk at Tracey's Department Store in New York. Mary Lennox was married to a travel agent. Mary was also a real estate agent who did 'a lot of business' in Queens. And you, Robin, worked as a paralegal in the international transfer department of a New York bank. The five of you have taken trips together for years: to Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Mexico, all sources of illegal immigrant labor. All places where the poor would do anything, anything, to escape to America and start a new life.
"You've been running sweatshops, haven't you?"
"Nonsense!" Freddie's cheeks were pale under her rouge. "How dare you say such things to us."
"It seemed so odd to me, that none of your families showed up to help you through this," Quill mused. "But they know, don't they, Freddie? I called your daughter, the attorney, and she slammed the phone in my ear. And I thought what you wanted me to think. That she's selfish, terrified of being trapped with your care. She's terrified of having to turn to you. I was willing to buy into the ungrateful young children spiel you all gave me. I mean, the five of you are—were—sweet little old ladies with the appropriate sweet little old lady hobbies, right? It's a good front. We're bigots in America, you know. We make assumptions based on the way people look and how they dress, and how old they are. Old people are sweet, to be respected. Nobody seems to remember that old people were young people once. Maybe criminal young pe
ople. Maybe crooks. Even murderers."
"I can't believe you're saying these things to us!" Robin said. "This is cruel! You've lost your mind!"
Quill gave her a steady, level look. "There's a very high-powered security officer from the Day Company here. The Day Company is the parent organization of Tracey's, but you both know that, don't you? He's investigating deaths involving sweatshop labor in the garment industry for his employer. They are terrified, apparently, of the publicity that will be generated if it's discovered they've been selling clothing made by twelve-year-olds for a dollar a day in firetrap warehouses in New York. I know"—she leaned forward—"I know those deaths were by fire. Somewhere in those crappy buildings Ellen found for you, people burned to death. Trapped. Suffocating in the smoke. The murders of Ellen, Fran, and Mary all duplicated those deaths, didn't they? Trapped, suffocated, and burned," she repeated. "Trapped, suffocated, and burned."
"For God's sake," snapped Robin, "they were just a bunch of Mexicans."
"So the question is now, who's after you? Who's looking for revenge? That letter from the president—" She closed her eyes. The diction was familiar. The background fit.
Fran's snippy voice: "They all say they're Spanish."
Damn it all. Damn.
10
She called the sheriff's office. And then she left. It was hard to breathe in that room.
The parking lot was deserted, except for the few staff cars parked in the rear. Someone was whistling, out of sight. The tune seemed familiar. Quill walked toward her Oldsmobile. The voice broke into song. "Good-bye to my Juan/ good-bye Rosalita,/ adios mis amigos/ Jesus y Maria …"
Quill knew the rest; a Woody Guthrie song, poignant, dreadful in its message to an indifferent commercial world: They won't know your names/ when you fly the big airplane/ all they will call you will be/ deportees.
Her Olds was parked under one of the halogen lights that illuminated the lot. She stopped and unlocked her car. Her hands were shaking. She couldn't believe she'd walked into the basement. Stupid, she thought fiercely, stupid! Max panted in the rear seat.
"Hola! Quill!"
"Hello, Selena."
She emerged from the darkness and stood under the light. She held a gun. "You have talked to the bitches?"
"Yes."
Selena's eyes glittered. "They have not yet confessed."
Quill eyed the gun. "We'll get them, Selena." She edged the door open. Max leaped over the seat and nudged her hand with his cold wet nose.
"No. No. You don't understand. Dunbarton, Lennox, Grrrrimbsy." She rolled the r's with satisfaction. "They have all confessed."
This took Quill a moment. Then she said, "You mean, have they expiated their sins?"
"You do understand! Redeemed by fire!" Her voice was high, strained, intense. Quill opened the car door a little further. Max barked, demanding to be let out.
"Max!" Selena smiled. She tapped her leg with her free hand. She held the gun steady with the other. "Come, querido." Max barked again, leaped onto the pavement, and wagged his tail happily. "Good boy. Good boy." She leveled the gun.
"No! NO!"
She fired. Max dropped. Quill's breath left her.
"Come now, Quill. Into the car. The shot will bring people. In New York? Where my sister died? Clawing at the doors that had been bolted from the outside to keep her from running away? No one would come in New York. But here, yes. In Hemlock Falls, people will come."
"Selena …" She heard shouts from the hospital. A door slammed. "I called the sheriff."
"Good."
"Quill?" Andy Bishop jogged toward them. He stopped. His mouth opened slightly. "Quill? What the hell?"
"MOVE!"
Quill got into the car. Selena held the gun steady and got into the backseat. She nestled the gun barrel into the back of Quill's neck. "Start it up."
Quill turned the key.
"If you crash the car? I don't care. I died when she died. Es verdad," she murmured. "Es verdad."
Quill put her shaking hands on the wheel. She kept her voice calm. "Where to?"
"The Inn."
Quill drove onto Maple, then turned left onto Main. She glanced in the rearview mirror. Andy's Saab was half a block behind them.
Selena kept her eyes on the back of Quill's neck. "They are following? Good. They must bring the newspapers, the television, everyone."
"You want people to know you've done this?"
"You will see. Stop! Not in front, around to the garden shed. I have my things there."
Quill's stomach roiled. She recalled the burlap bag. "What things?"
"The phosphorous. The tape." Her voice turned ugly and guttural. "Stop, stop here. Open your door, but do not get out."
Selena was over the edge, but it was a cold, practical insanity that left Quill no chance to get away. Selena put her left arm around the outside of the driver's door, switched the gun to that hand, and got out of the backseat. She switched the gun back to her right hand and pulled Quill from the car. She nudged her to the garden shed, gun at the small of Quill's back. She made Quill pick up the bag, and tear off three lengths of duct tape. She taped Quill's hands tightly behind her back, then taped her mouth shut. She slung the burlap bag over her shoulder.
"Now," she said, "to the kitchen."
Quill stumbled back into the open air. The sheriff's car came up the drive, lights flashing. Quill wasn't a praying woman, but she prayed now: Get-out-get-out-get-out-get-out, all of you please, get-out.
The kitchen was empty. Quill, dizzy with the effort of breathing through her nose, almost fainted with relief. Selena dragged her by the sleeve and locked the back door, the windows, the door to the wine cellar and the pantry. She pushed her onto a counter stool and stood by her, facing the double doors to the dining room, the gun in her left hand, the muzzle at Quill's temple. "Now we wait."
Nothing happened for agonizing minutes. Then a shadow appeared at the window. Two shadows. Davy Kiddermeister and Andy Bishop.
"Come in through the dining room doors!" Selena shouted. "You hear me? That way is locked. You break in that way, I will shoot her!"
The shadows disappeared. Time passed; Quill didn't know how quickly. The blood drummed in her head, making everything dark.
There was a tap at the dining room door.
"Come in," Selena said.
The door swung open. Meg walked in. Quill cried out, the cry a groan, muffled by the duct tape. "Buenos," Selena said.
"Hey, Selena." Meg stood there, smiling, hands at her sides. "What can I do to help?"
"I want Hugh." The guttural, crazy note was back in her voice. Meg's eyes widened.
"Sure," she said briefly. "Hang on. The guys are outside, but you know that, don't you? I'll just let them know." She held both hands up, a plea, and backed through the swinging doors. She wasn't gone more than thirty seconds. Getoutgetoutgetout, Quill prayed. Meggie, please …
Meg came back. "They've got him on the phone now. It'll take about fifteen minutes. Can I fix you guys something to eat in the meantime?" She edged into the kitchen, step by step.
Selena laughed. "The dead do not eat, Margaretha. You will do this. You will call everyone. Everyone, do you hear? The TV people, the newspaper people, all of those policia hanging around out there. Everyone who will listen. I want them all in here. All, comprende?"
Quill's "NO!" was a strangled grunt.
"And then what?" Meg said.
"Then we will wait for Hugh."
"Hang on just a second," Meg said calmly. She pushed the door open and spoke to someone outside. "Did you hear what she's asking? Good." She turned back to Selena. "You haven't asked about Freddie Patch and Robin Robinson."
Selena shook her head. "They are pawns. I have made my point. It will be harder for them to live with what they have done, than die and be forgiven." She crossed herself twice rapidly.
"I see," Meg said, and perhaps she did. "I don't know about the TV people, but we can probably get Axminster Stoker here.
He's the publisher of the paper. If there's anything you want broadcast, he can see that the word gets out. That's what you want, isn't it? To make a statement."
"That is what I demand!"
"No helicopter? No million bucks?" Meg walked forward slowly, both hands extended. Quill held her breath.
"Don't be stupid! You will sit there, on the floor."
"All right." Meg sank to the floor by the fireplace, squatting on her heels.
"And you will wait. We will all wait. Until Hugh comes."
The silence was horrible, broken only by Selena's rapid breathing. Quill heard the sounds of vehicles coming up the drive, the cut-off whine of a fire truck, the slam of car doors.
People began to file in, one by one. Andy was first. He didn't speak, but sat by Meg, his hand on hers. Then Doreen came in, with Stoke. Marge Schmidt, Betty Hall, the mayor.
Tears trickled from Quill's eyes. Would she have walked into this kind of danger for friendship?
Selena broke the silence. "The police? Where are the police?"
"Surrounding the place, of course," Marge said. "Whaddaya think? We don't go for hostages in Hemlock Falls." A line. Quill thought, that would have been funny in any situation but this one.
"They are to be here," Selena commanded.
"I'll tell Davy," Betty said.
"You sit there, Betty Hall." Elmer Henry had been leaning against the wall facing the windows. He pushed himself away. "I got the authority here; they'll come in if I tell them to."
And they did. Denny the fire chief; Elmer, this time accompanied by Adela, the state troopers. Dina Muir slipped in, eyes wide.
"You are the little receptionist, no?" Selena asked. "Did they call you?"
"It was on the radio," Dina said in a hushed voice.
"Then where is Huuugh? Where is Huuugh?" Selena's howl made the hair on Quill's neck rise. Someone sobbed.
"Mrs. Summerhill?" Davy Kiddermeister walked in, holding Hugh Summerhill by the arm.
He was the most frightened man Quill had ever seen. His face was so pale it was green. His pupils were dilated. He vibrated with a fine tremor.
A Touch of the Grape: A Hemlock Falls Mystery (Hemlock Falls Mystery series) Page 20