“The money part? How broke the Bryants are? How much Edmund Tree is really worth? Yeah, I’d like to know that, too.”
Marge would tell her that finances profile a person. That you could get a good sense of who someone was by how they saved, how they spent, how they earned.
“Quill?”
Maybe a financial profile was a matter of character. Which should be private. Unless you’d murdered somebody.
“Quill?”
“Sorry. I was thinking about something else. Did you want another coffee?’
“You should have some. The caffeine would perk you up. None of us got to bed before three last night. I don’t think Davy slept at all.”
She was tired. Maybe the ugly scene with Rose Ellen wouldn’t have been so awful if she’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
“I don’t want another latte, although thank you very much for buying me this one. I see it as a sidekick perk. Balzac lived off coffee, did you know that? And he died after drinking fifty cups in one day.”
“He did?” Quill said, startled.
“It’s a fact. Which is why I’ll pass on the second one, and you should, too, come to think of it.”
Quill left two dollars on the table for a tip and followed Dina out to the car. Dina fastened her seat belt with a cheerful air, and was quiet until they reached the bottom of the Inn driveway.
“So when are we going to interrogate the Barcinis?”
“The thing about amateur detecting is that you have no official standing and you can’t appear to be interrogating anybody. I’ve got to think of some good excuse to drop in on the Barcinis in a casual way. You’d be surprised what people will tell you if you’re an interested listener without a badge.”
“If the Barcinis stayed at the Inn, that would give you a good excuse to chat them up, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, but they’re out at the Marriott, and to tell you the truth I’d rather they stayed there. Belter’s so … noisy. And Mrs. Barcini keeps whacking people with whatever’s at hand. Very disruptive. “
“They’re not at the Marriott anymore. Isn’t that their bus?”
Quill braked abruptly. Yes, that was the Barcinis’ bus, gleaming orangely right in front of the Inn and blocking all the traffic. Not that there was any traffic, but still, the bus was blocking prospective traffic.
Quill leaned her head against the steering wheel and groaned.
“And there they are,” Dina said in a pleased way. “You know what I think? I think now that the Provencal suite is free because Edmund Tree is dead, they’re going to move right in.”
Dina was right.
Quill arrived at the reception desk a few minutes later to find Mike hauling an assortment of suitcases up the staircase and the Barcinis headed on in to the dining room. Quill had a moment’s confusion identifying Josephine because she didn’t have the Steadicam on her shoulder.
“It is Signora Quilliam,” Mrs. Barcini said with a broad smile. “Finally you got our reservation right.”
There was something different about Mrs. Barcini, too. She didn’t glitter, glow, or fluoresce. She had on a navy blue pantsuit, tennis shoes, and a rather attractive print blouse. Belter was still in shorts and flip-flops, but he wore an Izod golf shirt in dark green that was almost flattering to his rubicund complexion.
Belter noticed her discreet surprise. “We’re here to kick back some. Don’t figure we’ll have to deal with my fans, like we do at the Marriott. Can’t keep up the glamour twenty-four/seven. Poops Ma out.”
“We are also here to try some of your food,” Mrs. Barcini said. She bypassed Kathleen, who ran after her with a fistful of menus, and sat down at the one empty table in the dining room. It was by the kitchen, and it was where Quill sat herself when she wanted to keep an eye on the guests. “I hope there is no poison in this food, as there was at Bonne Goutè last night,” she said loudly.
A pair of tourists at the table nearby looked nervously at their entrees.
She looked down at the pale blue tablecloth, which was clean but bare of cutlery, glasses, or flowers, and announced, “This table has no forks.”
Kathleen rolled her eyes at Quill. “We don’t usually do a setup here, Mrs. Barcini, but let me …”
“You know who I am?”
“Certainly. If you’ll just take these menus, I’ll go get …”
“It’s because I have a famous son.” She slapped Belter on the shoulder. “A very famous son. Although, as you see, we are not here in our shiny clothes, which attract the fans. We are here to relax and prepare for the tidal wave of attention that is sure to follow the airing of the TV show about the slapping down. After last night, Joey is going to be a bigger star than ever before. Do you know about last night?”
“Ma,” Belter said. “Just cool it, okay?”
“See?” Mrs. Barcini beamed. “I embarrass my boy. Good. Keeps him on his toes.”
Belter raised his arm and headed off another slap. “Okay, Ma. Okay.”
“It’s very nice of you to let us stay here, Mrs. McHale,” Josephine said.
Quill looked at her more closely. Groups always had a member quieter than the others, and Josephine was definitely quiet. Other than the indignant squawk she’d let loose when Marco the security guard had grabbed her camera at the high school, Quill didn’t think she’d ever heard her make a noise. Maybe the camera served as her voice, and without it, Josephine had to speak up.
She rubbed her forehead. Dina was right. She was overtired. She was so overtired she was hallucinating.
“She’s not letting us stay here, Sis. We’re paying her.”
“She could always say there’s no room,” Josephine said serenely. “But you didn’t. Thank you.”
“Has that hap—” Quill cut herself off. If the Barcinis had been kicked out of other inns and hotels, it wouldn’t be kind to ask about it. “I mean, what’s been happening since the tragedy last night?”
“That’s what it is, a tragedy,” Belter said, with the air of someone who’s gotten the answer to a puzzling question. “Here Edmund and me had a nice little feud going—good for market share, feuds are, and someone goes and knocks him off. Right in front of me. Oh, well.” He shook his head and opened the menu. “So what’s good to eat here?”
“Everything,” Josephine said. She smiled a little shyly. “I Googled you guys. Ma and Joey wanted to keep staying at the Marriott because of the stewardesses but I wanted to come here.” She patted Quill’s arm again. “I was pretty sure you wouldn’t turn us away like the last time.”
“We didn’t have any rooms, the last time.” Then, a little desperately, she asked, “Stewardesses?”
“Air hostesses,” Belter said. He grinned widely. “There’s a convention. Most times, we’re stuck in Trenton with the pawn show, and I don’t get out much to meet women.”
“Grandchildren,” Mrs. Barcini said. “Joey’s heading on toward forty and Josie here’s thirty-five and there are no grandchildren.”
“Order anything, Joey,” Josephine said. “Her sister’s specialty is charcuterie, which is French for really good meat with white beans.”
“Beans make me fart.”
“Me, too. So order anything with meat in it.”
“Osso buco,” Mrs. Barcini said. “I will forgive anybody anything for a good osso buco.”
Quill felt as if she was herding cats. “We don’t serve osso buco at lunch. Do you mind if I give you some suggestions?”
“Whatever,” Belter said with a wave of his hand.
Quill turned to Kathleen, who had been standing patiently by. “Bring the country pâté for starters, the steak frites for Mr. Barcini, the pasta Quilliam for his mom, and the mushroom-bacon quiche for Josephine.”
“Hot damn,” Belter said. “Steak. Tell her make it rare. If I stab it with my fork, I want it to move.”
“Will do.” Kathleen winked at Quill, then turned and pushed open the doors to the kitchen.
“Is that where she cook
s, back there?” Josephine asked.
“Yes. Would you like to see the kitchens? Are you interested in cooking?”
“That Brunswick stew recipe’s hers,” Belter said. “She makes a hell of a corn bread, too. But we figured that wasn’t flashy enough for the show. Shame about Edmund getting whacked like that, Josie. We could have made something out of that stew once the audience tasted it. Oh, well.”
“Oh, well,” Josie echoed.
“Last night was pretty awful,” Quill offered, figuring it was as good a prompt to an amateur investigation as anything, “Had you known Edmund very long, Belter?”
“Me? Never met the guy before this week. Watched his show, is all. Crook.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said he was a crook. And his ratings were higher than mine, too. Can you beat that? Just goes to show, in today’s world, it’s the crooks that get all the face time. You’d think the media would have better morals, or whatever.”
“No character, that Edmund Tree,” Mrs. Barcini said. “That one, he would steal from his grandmother.”
“I’m in the business, see,” Belter said. “I get all kinds of people in my pawn shop and all kinds of stuff comes across that counter. So you got to know a little bit about everything, right? Or you end up either cheating the customers or cheating yourself. Maybe both. So I know a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and I hear things. Basically, what Eddie does is swoop through a town like this one, full of nice folks, full of people who should be watching my show, and he creams off the top. Makes an offer on the good stuff and resells it for the bigger bucks. Now, he keeps just enough of the pricey stuff on the air, ’cause that’s what the audience is looking for. It’s a fantasy, like. That they might own something worth a million bucks and they don’t even know it.” He shook his head. “Crook. And it’s legal crookery, if you get my drift, because it’s not illegal to make somebody an offer if they don’t know what they got.”
It took Quill a moment to work this last sentence out. Then she said, “I see what you mean.”
“Now let’s take what I got on hand for a minute. I got me a guy brought in a Colt .45 belonged to Buffalo Bill Cody. I know a bit about guns. I check the firing pin. I check the grip. Colt didn’t make the kind of grip this sucker’s got till two years after Buffalo Bill bought the farm. Not touching that with a ten-foot pole, believe you me. So I tell the guy to take the gun somewhere else. I got me another guy, comes in with a whacking big sword supposed to have belonged to the emperor Hirohito. I get that checked out. Nope, not touching that, either. So I tell them what they got isn’t worth a plugged nickel and they think I’m robbin’ them blind.” He shook his head regretfully. “I tell you another thing about Fast Eddie. He likes to embarrass folks on the air. That little old lady with the Italian trompe l’oeil?” He pronounced it correctly, with just a hint of his drawl.
“I’m afraid I don’t watch the show.”
“You could tell it was a fake from ten feet away. Does Eddie give a shit? No. Just decides it be a grabber to slam her down.” Belter picked up a toothpick and explored his back molar. “’Course, an old painting like that, something else might be under it. Artists do the darnedest things. You’re broke, you need to paint, you grab an old painting out of an attic somewhere, and paint right over it. You know they found a couple of Rembrandts that way?”
“Yes, I did know that, as a matter of fact.”
“Creepola, that Eddie, definitely,” Mrs. Barcini said. “But it’s too bad he’s dead.”
“Oh, well,” the Barcinis chorused.
Kathleen brought out the pâté and the entrees all at once, accurately guessing that this particular party wanted a lot of food and fast.
Quill rose from her seat. “I’ve got to go up and be with my little boy right now. I’m sure I’ll see you all later. And we’d like to offer you the lunch as a courtesy, for … umm … confusing your registration.”
“So there it is,” Quill said to Myles that night. “The Barcinis are rude, disruptive, annoying, and I’m mortally certain they’re going to give some of our quieter guests heart attacks … but they’re the good guys, Myles. Or at least they seem to be.” She fought to keep her eyes open. She’d missed talking to him the night before and she wanted desperately to talk to him now, but she was so tired she couldn’t see straight. “So this morning I started out with five major suspects—and the two I’ve talked to in depth turn out not to be suspects at all. I haven’t seen Melanie Myers around all day—Doreen told me she’s been holed up in her room ever since Edmund died. If she doesn’t come down to breakfast, I’ll knock on her door. To see if she’s all right, if nothing else. As for Jukka Angstrom …”
“Quill.” Myles’s voice was firm. “You know how I feel about this—” He paused. She could tell he was struggling with both his temper and the right words. “This curiosity you have about this case. I don’t have to say it again, do I? You’re dealing with someone who’s taken the life of another human being. It’s dangerous. You are a mother. My wife. We need you, Jack and I. Please, please, do not continue with this. Leave it to the professionals. Wait until I come home.”
“But Davy asked me …”
“He was out of line,” Myles said harshly. “I love you. Leave this case alone. If you want me to beg, I will.”
Quill didn’t say anything. Her own temper was up. She made it a rule not to quarrel with Myles during these phone calls, not if she could help it. He was too far away. His absences stressed their marriage, as much as she liked to think they didn’t.
“Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll leave it alone. Unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I run across something accidentally that Davy needs to know.” She waited, and then asked, “Are you grinding your teeth?”
“Of course not,” he snapped. “I’ll live with that, I suppose. I have to.”
“Hey, here’s something I know you aren’t going to go ballistic over.” She got out of bed and went to her dresser, where she’d left the computer printout Davy had given her that morning. “We have the results from the cross-check on the burglaries. You want me to read it to you? Myles?”
“Yes. I’m here. Just struggling with my temper.”
“Me, too. Listen, now. The only things that the burgled homes have in common are that they were all insured with Marge, so we can discount that, and that every householder was a member of the Hemlock Falls Historical Society.”
“Run those names by me again?”
Quill read them out, beginning with the Ackermans and ending up with the Petersons.
Myles didn’t say anything for a very long minute. Then he started to laugh. He laughed so hard that Quill heard him put the phone down.
He picked it back up again, “Okay, supersleuth. I don’t have any proof. But this is what must have happened.”
16
∼Quiche Quilliam∼
3 extra large eggs blended with enough heavy cream to make 12 oz
2 teaspoons combined kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, and freshly ground nutmeg
½ cup grated Gruyère cheese
6 strips maple-cured bacon, fried crisp
9-inch baked pie shell
Blend eggs and cream with a wire whisk. Whisk in seasonings and cheese. Place fried bacon in the baked pie shell. Pour the quiche mixture into pie shell. Top with grated Parmesan or Swiss cheese. Bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes in a preheated 375-degree oven.
Quill marched into Schmidt Realty the next morning and slammed her tote down on Marge’s desk.
“Marge Peterson-Schmidt, you are a shameless woman. And a burglar. If I had any actual proof, I’d rat you out to Davy Kiddermeister so fast it’d make your head spin.”
Marge opened her mouth and then closed it. Her face turned red. For once, she was speechless.
The speechlessness turned out to be momentary.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Quill leaned over the desk. “You most certainly do. Every single burglary committed in Hemlock Falls in the last four weeks has been you rummaging around for fifteen-year-old records from the historical society. Just before Meg and I moved here, when Myles had just arrived as sheriff, the historical society put on a push to redistrict the village. They won. As it stands right now, the house you live in with your legal spouse, Harland Peterson, is within the town tax rolls but outside the village tax rolls. You are not a legal resident of this village.”
“I am, too.” Marge shouted.
“You are not! Want me to go to Albany and check the tax registry?”
Marge growled like an attack dog.
“I won’t,” Quill said mildly. “I just wanted you to know I can. You can’t run for mayor.”
“Carol Ann’s not a resident, either,” Marge said, rather feebly.
“As you pointed out yesterday. Which is what put me on to you. Why in the world would you be checking on eligibility requirements to be mayor, unless it was on your own behalf? So neither one of you can run for mayor. Ha.”
Marge ground her teeth, an activity Quill had read about but never actually witnessed. “Nobody’s going to remember that redistricting stuff.”
“Probably not. But you had to be sure that nobody would come across those old records while they were rummaging around for artifacts for Ancestor’s Attic. Certainly not Carol Ann, who wasn’t even around here then.”
Marge eyed her suspiciously, “So what are you going to do?”
Quill sat down in the visitor’s chair. “Nothing. I just wanted you to know that I know.” She added, in a prim way, “I will leave it to your conscience.”
Marge brightened. “Well, then. No problem.”
“Well, then, nothing. I’m assuming that your conscience will preclude you running for office.”
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