Dread on Arrival

by Claudia Bishop

  “But he didn’t have much of a motive,” Quill said. “He’s not back at Sotheby’s, but he didn’t lose his place in Manhattan, and he escaped bankruptcy. I can’t see that it was to his advantage to kill Edmund.”

  “He lawyered up right away,” Davy argued. “If I’d been able to get a search warrant to go through his clothes I know I would have found traces of strychnine.”

  “But there’s no why,” Quill said. “I know motive doesn’t count much in the courtroom, but it does with human beings. There has to be a why.”

  Davy slammed his fist onto his knee. “We just haven’t uncovered the why. Maybe it has to do with some painting he found that Edmund wanted. I’m thinking he cashed in on whatever it was and he’s got a slug of money somewhere. The DA over in Syracuse refuses to get a court order to monitor his bank accounts.”

  “Not enough probable cause,” Myles said, with a trace of sympathy. “Fact is, you lose one once in a while.”

  Davy nodded. He sat disconsolately at his desk. Quill felt sorry for him.

  “Daddy!” Jack shouted. “I am thinking!” He ran to Myles and threw both arms around his father’s knees. With a smile he gave to no one else but Quill, Myles bent and swung his son up in the air. “What are you thinking?”

  “I am thinking Auntie Marge knows we are very hungry.”

  “You may be right. Do you suppose Mommy is thinking that, too?”

  “Are you, Mommy?”

  “The diner sounds like a great place for lunch,” Quill said. “Why don’t you join us, Davy? There’s a Chamber meeting I have to attend at two, but there’s time for a nice relaxed lunch.”

  “Naw. Thanks. You go on ahead. I want to go over this file one more time.”

  Quill didn’t say anything until they were outside, headed toward Marge’s All-American Diner. Jack walked between them, one small hand tucked in Quill’s, the other clutching his father’s pants leg.

  It was a gorgeous day, with a beauty peculiar to early November. The pine trees were a rich, dark green against the pale blue sky. The oaks and elms were bare of leaves, and the branches spread their elegant bones with grace. November light was thin and peaceful and somehow hushed.

  Myles looked at her. “Do you want to stop and make a sketch?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You patted your pocket for your charcoal stick.”

  “Not now. Later, maybe.” She glanced sideways at him, at the profile she loved so much. “This case is really eating away at Davy.”

  “That can happen.”

  “It’s eating away at me, too,”

  “Not every case is solved, Quill. Most departments are lucky to clear sixty percent.”

  They crossed Main Street. The unexpected mildness of the day had brought some people outside. Balzac’s Café had a few customers in it. But the street was strangely deserted.

  There was a for rent sign in the window of Elegant Antiques and a young couple stood huddled at the door, peering in. Quill hoped somebody nice would rent the space. It had been repainted and the floors refinished and looked very inviting. Nickerson’s Hardware had a 10 percent off!! sign on a garbage can full of snow shovels. Esther’s Country Crafts sported a cheerful harvest display of autumn leaves, gourds, and straw bales near the front door. All the topiary was gone, thank goodness. The village was getting back to normal. Maybe Esther would put the ‘K’ back into Country Crafts. These sights of Main Street in November were familiar, and dear to Quill, with the exception of the red, white, and blue placards demanding votes for the mayor’s race. Elmer was running unopposed. Quill suspected the exuberance of signs was a consequence of his relief at having the job nailed down.

  The All-American Diner was almost empty, and Betty seated them in a booth by the window. She brought a paper place mat and a small box of crayons for Jack, jerked her thumb at the chalkboard to alert them to the specials, and trudged off to get coffee and a cup of cocoa. “With just one marshmallow,” Quill asked, “if it isn’t too much trouble, although most of it will end up on Jack’s chin.”

  “Marshmallow!” Jack shouted. “I am thinking about marshmallow!”

  “I should be thinking about too much sugar if I were an all-star mommy and not a big sucker for my lovely boy,” his mother said. “You can have one. But it will be a nice, big one, I’m sure. Shall I draw you a picture of Bismarck? You can color him orange.”

  “And Max!” Jack sucked his lower lip for a moment, which made him look like an elf. “And Daddy!”

  Quill drew an orange Bismarck and a green Max. Then she took a black crayon and sketched Myles with a magnifying glass in his hand. She turned the box of colors over to Jack.

  Myles looked at the drawing upside down. “Is that a hint?”

  “It’s horrible to have this murder unsolved. Tell me, Myles. Who did it? You’ve seen the case files. You even saw the murder happen. You must have some theory of the crime.”

  “Do you?”

  “I think Davy’s right. I think it’s Angstrom.” She frowned. “Mostly because he’s so emotionless.”

  Myles hesitated, as if he were about to launch into his theory of the case. He looked at Jack. He looked at Quill. Then he said, “Maybe.”

  “Just maybe?”

  He reached across the table and took her hands in his. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going to do my damnedest to be back by Christmas. For the rest of the day, I don’t want to talk about murder, unsolved or otherwise. I just want to be with my family.

  “Let it drop, babe. Let it go.”

  “I’ll try.” She sighed and watched her son scribble purple rings around Bismarck’s image. So far he hadn’t exhibited any particular talent for drawing. She tightened her grip on Myles’s hands. “You’re right. I should let it go. But the whole town hasn’t felt the same since this happened. Tourism is down for the first time in years, and it’s not just the economy. Unless I’m imagining things.”

  “I don’t think you’re imagining things. Murder has a fallout. This may be part of it.”

  “But if Edmund Tree wasn’t murdered by any of the people that came with him, it must have been one of us. Everybody’s just a little suspicious of everybody else.”

  “A normal consequence of a crime so close to home. The town will adjust.”

  “I hope so. But it doesn’t look as if it’s going to be anytime soon.”

  Betty had made an unusually good potato side dish as part of the specials, and Quill was in a slightly better mood when Myles dropped her off at the Inn for the Chamber meeting.

  Turnout was low. Elmer was in his usual spot at the head of the table. Adela wasn’t with him. Dookie and Mrs. Shuttleworth weren’t there, either. Mark Anthony Jefferson from the Hemlock Mercantile Bank glanced repeatedly at his watch. With an apologetic shrug, he got up and slipped out the door. Nadine Peterson and Esther West sat on either side of Clare. All three of them had their heads together, whispering. Harvey was at the far end of the table, with empty chairs on either side of him and a dejected look on his face. He was wearing a depressed-looking tweed sports coat and a henley T-shirt in an uninspiring brown. He freely admitted to being on Prozac.

  Marge—without Harland—sat a few chairs away from Elmer, arms folded truculently across her chest.

  Quill took the chair next to Miriam Doncaster. “Low turnout today.”

  “Just like last month.”

  “What’s on the agenda?”

  Miriam blinked her big blue eyes. “Quill, you’re the secretary. You have the agenda.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Quill took her sketch pad out of her tote and flipped back to last month’s meeting. “Christmas decorations? That’s it?”

  Miriam groaned. “Are we going to have that fight again? All of the merchants want the Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving. Everybody else wants to wait. We go round and round every year. I hate Christmas decorations. I hate them with a passion I normally reserve for people who vote for privatizing Social Securit
y.”

  Quill, who rather liked Christmas decorations but agreed that they shouldn’t go up anywhere near Thanksgiving, made a polite sound that might have meant anything at all.

  “Nuts.” Miriam looked up at the wall clock. “I’d leave if I weren’t here to ask for a fund drive for the library. Maybe I’ll just leave anyway.”

  “Maybe we’ll finish early. I’d like that. It’s Myles’s last day.”

  “He’s leaving again, is he?” Miriam’s voice was warm. “I’m sorry. It’s got to be hard on you and Jack. I wish he’d stick around, too. I thought when he got back two months ago that he, at least, would make some headway finding Edmund Tree’s killer, but I guess not?”

  Quill dodged the implied question. “At least Carol Ann isn’t here.”

  “Oh, but she is.” Miriam pointed toward the door. Carol Ann wafted in, trailing the scent of gardenia shampoo. “She said your tabletop is sticky and she went out to wash her hands.”

  “My table is perfectly clean,” Quill said indignantly.

  “Life’s too sticky for Carol Ann,” Miriam said obscurely.

  Elmer cleared his throat. “I suppose we’d better get started.” He picked up the gavel and whacked it halfheartedly on the table. “Before we have the Pledge of Allegiance I just want to say thank you to the good folks of Hemlock Falls for reelecting me mayor.”

  “So what? Nobody ran against you,” Carol Ann pointed out. “Not to mention that we had the lowest voter turnout in village history. If I had decided to run”—she directed a malevolent look at Marge—“you can bet this town would have sat up and voted. Nobody cares whether you’re mayor or not, Elmer, and that’s a fact.”

  “Well,” Elmer said uncertainly.

  “The low turnout wasn’t because nobody cared about Elmer,” Miriam said crossly. “Honestly, Carol Ann, I think you sprinkle mean over your breakfast cereal.”

  Carol Ann raised her voice. “I decided not to run because I can serve this town a lot better as a duly licensed food inspector for the State of New York. Which I am, now, because I got the results of my exam in the mail this morning.” She looked around, as if waiting for applause.

  Quill got out her charcoal stick and sketched a screaming Meg, running toward a bus marked alaska trailways.

  “Who cares?” somebody muttered.

  “Who’d you have to bribe to take the test for you?” Marge asked.

  Carol Ann’s blue eyes were icy spears. “I’ll remember that, Marge Schmidt.”

  Marge snorted. “You think you can take me down, young lady?”

  Carol Ann puffed up, giving her a remarkably menacing look. “You’ll be first on my list of inspections.” She rubbed her forefinger over Quill’s tabletop with a sneer. “Right after this place.”

  Marge leaned across the table and glared at her. “I’ll move my restaurants to Trumansburg before I let you in the back door of either one of them.”

  Quill drew Marge in a panzer tank, aiming straight for a prissy-looking Carol Ann.

  “Now, now, ladies,” Elmer said. “You’re exchanging hard words, hard words, and I know you’re going to regret them later. Tell you what. We’ll skip the Pledge of Allegiance and the reading of the minutes of the last meeting and move straight on to old business. What kind of old business do we have, Quill?”

  “Christmas decorations.”

  “Right!” Elmer beamed. “Now there’s a nice cheery topic to get us all thinking about the season of peace and goodwill. I’m thinking we might want to get all that nice greenery up on Main Street just a leetle bit before Thanksgiving. Give the tourists a reason to shop early.”

  “What tourists?” Esther West said. “Since that murder, I haven’t had a single tourist in my shop.”

  “Business at the diner is down thirty-two percent,” Marge said. “’Course, booze sales are up at the Croh Bar, so it’s kind of a wash.”

  “We’ve had three tours cancel in the last month,” Clare offered. “One of the booking agents told me nobody wanted to actually eat in the place where Edmund Tree was poisoned.”

  “What about you, Quill?” Elmer asked. “Business been off at the Inn?”

  “Some,” she admitted.

  Elmer drummed his fingers on the table. “You all getting any further on about finding out who did it?”

  “Myles doesn’t want her in the detecting business,” Miriam said. “For heaven’s sake, the woman has a young child. It’s not her province anyway. Let the police take care of it.”

  “Far as I can see, Sheriff David Kiddermeister isn’t up to the job,” Carol Ann said. “I think we should call the FBI.”

  The meeting descended into a squabble.

  Quill tossed her charcoal on the table.

  Miriam leaned over and whispered in her ear: “You’ve got to get to the bottom of this, Quill. The town isn’t going to be the same until you do.”

  “I’m sorry, Miriam. Myles says this happens sometimes—that you just can’t crack a case. This appears to be one of them.”

  “All I can say is, you picked a fine time to stop being a detective.”

  Myles left early, before the sky had begun to lighten, and Quill spent the rest of that morning moving clothes and toys back into her rooms at the Inn. It didn’t take long; by now, she had the routine down cold. She fed Jack, built a Lego tower with him so he could knock it down, and turned him over to Doreen for his nap. She was in the kitchen by two in the afternoon.

  “Hey, Sister,” Meg said. She stood on one leg in front of the prep sink. Her left heel was propped against her right knee. Her socks were dark blue with embroidered pumpkins. She was absorbed in making out a food order and there was nobody else there. It was clear she was relishing the quiet. “Anything you’re longing to eat? I’m trying to work up a harvest menu that doesn’t include squash.”

  “I like squash. Squash is also very locovore.”

  “Squash is boring. Squash is dull. Squash offers no competitive challenge whatsoever.” She looked up. “Clare’s having a Celebrate Squash night at Bonne Goutè. Can you believe it?”

  So the murder-induced truce with Clare was over.

  Quill settled into the rocking chair. Mike had removed the autumn flowers from the grate in the fireplace, in readiness for a wood fire when the nice November weather—as it inevitably would—turned colder. “I don’t know. What about something on a spit? Over a wood fire?”

  Meg rolled her eyes. “Go play with Jack or something.”

  “He’s down for his nap.” Quill set the rocker going with a push of her toe.

  “Are you just going to sit there, fidgeting and driving me crazy?”

  “I’m not fidgeting.”

  Meg looked up from her paperwork. Her gray eyes softened. “Myles get off all right?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “Same place as before. I just hope it’s not …”

  “It’s not Libya.”

  “How did you know I was going to say Libya? I might have said Pakistan. Or Duluth.”

  “There’s no revolution in Duluth that I’m aware of. You know what would make a great food festival? I know. Potatoes.”

  “Potatoes?”

  “I can go nuts with potatoes.” Meg picked up her pencil and started to scribble.

  “Davy thinks Jukka Angstrom killed Edmund Tree,” Quill said abruptly.

  “I know he does. I thought Jukka was going to sue the sheriff’s department for harassment before it was all over.”

  “Myles does, too.”

  Meg lifted her head at that. “He does?”

  “He didn’t actually say so,” Quill admitted, “but we were at Marge’s yesterday for lunch and he was about to say so. I think. Davy’s sure that there was something we missed, a valuable painting that Jukka and Edmund were both after, maybe. He can’t get the court to monitor Jukka’s bank accounts, but I bet Marge would be able to figure something out.”

  “I
t’s pretty awful, having a case go unsolved like that. I don’t know what else we can do.”

  “It was an odd one that’s for sure. Nothing was as it seemed, did you notice that? All of the motives that looked so solid at the beginning just sort of melted away. Like the trompe l’oeil painting. Everybody fooled the detective’s eye.”

  “The detective being you, of course.” Meg scribbled furiously for a moment, then said, “Elizabeth says everyone in town was expecting us to solve the case. They are mega disappointed. I told her I was too busy hassling over the wedding that didn’t come off to play Sherlock but even if I had, we wouldn’t have been able to solve it. It’s not solvable.”

  Quill let this aspersion on her detecting ability pass. She might even deserve it. “Everything has a solution, Meggie. We just haven’t seen it, yet.”

  The swinging doors bumped open with a bang, and Dina came in. She held her laptop in both hands. “Hey, Meg. Hey, Quill. I hoped I’d find both you guys here. Look at this.”

  She set the laptop on the prep table and bent over it. “Somebody was blogging on the Huffington Post about the Edmund Tree murder, and it led me to this news item. Look! It’s his half sister, Devora Watson. The one from California. She showed up to claim that twenty million dollars.”

  “I read about her,” Meg said. “They ran a picture of her in the New York Times. Very hippie-dippy.”

  Dina sighed. “I read about it, too. She lives near Big Sur in this remote little cabin and weaves her own caftans, or whatever. If I had twenty million dollars, I sure wouldn’t wear homemade caftans. Or if I did, they’d be out of priceless cashmere wool. Look. Here she is. Gosh, do you suppose she’ll use some of that twenty million to fix her hair?”

  Quill looked over Dina’s shoulder. The website was running a news clip. A small, shy woman dressed in Birkenstocks, wool socks, and an awkwardly wrapped turban huddled between two sleek looking guys in three-piece suits. She was pudgy, with the sort of overweight that comes from too much fatty food. Her blond hair spilled over her shoulders. It looked in need of a wash. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles was askew over her nose. Her eyes were brown and frightened. She clutched a wool shawl around her shoulders.