Dread on Arrival

by Claudia Bishop

  “In any event, Edmund’s mother didn’t keep the money for long. She married a man named Art Watson, who left her soon after she became pregnant with Devora. She made a couple of attempts to extort money from Edmund after that, but he resented her, poor man, and refused to give her a cent. She died when Devora was fifteen.

  “Devora grew up hating her half brother. She took up … um … I suppose you could call it the oldest profession …”

  “Hooking,” Belter said briefly. “Poor gal was a hooker.”

  “And put herself through UCLA. She has a fine arts degree, you know. If she’d only …” Quill sighed. “Anyway. She targeted Edmund as the man who owed her. She got the job on Ancestor’s Attic. I don’t know if she’d intended to kill him all along or not. I do know that she made a practice of skimming off what she could of the undiscovered treasures the show turned up as it traveled across the country. And I know that Edmund must have supported her in that. In any event, her acquisition of your trompe l’oeil painting, Ida Mae, was typical of the way she scooped things up. She’d disguise herself as Mary Smith, an avid fan of the show, and approach owners of all kinds of old and interesting things. Some of them she resold in her antique shop here in Hemlock Falls. Some of them she took to the big auction houses in New York and Paris and Rome. It didn’t seem to matter if she was going to make a huge amount of money, or just a couple of hundred dollars. If she thought she could make a profit from a piece, she went after it.”

  “I’ve known people like that,” Ida Mae said. “I taught sixth grade for twenty-two years in Madison, Wisconsin, and I’ve pretty much seen it all. There’s a few kids—not many—well, when you offer them a straight way to do something or a crooked way, they’ll take the crooked way every time.”

  Quill wasn’t so sure about that, so she said, “My goodness.”

  “So we’ve got Devora Watson as Rose Ellen Whitman, plotting revenge,” Josephine Barcini said. “Go on, Mrs. McHale.”

  “My personal opinion is that her plan evolved as time went on. My husband Myles isn’t so sure. Anyway, Edmund was attracted to her, Edmund asked her to marry him, and Rose Ellen decided it was time to revenge her mother. Time to revenge herself. Myles thinks she picked up the rat poison from somewhere outside of Hemlock Falls, but we don’t know for sure. She dropped it into the Marsala in the melee surrounding the slam, conned one of our less alert deputies in the matter of fingerprints, and left Rose Ellen Whitman behind.

  “She was clever about that, too. She made an attempt to sue Edmund’s estate on the basis of the promises he made to her—and who knows? If she’d been successful, she may have left her real identity as Devora Watson back in San Diego. But she wasn’t successful, so Rose Ellen disappeared, and Devora arrived at the lawyers’ door, ready to claim her inheritance.”

  “It’s like one of those TV movies,” Ida Mae said. “This is amazing. I’m amazed, Frank. Aren’t you?”

  “How did you catch her?” Frank demanded.

  “The artist’s eye,” Belter said, unexpectedly poetic. “Quill seen her on TV and looked through that disguise right away.”

  Quill cleared her throat. “That’s true.”

  “You’re a genuine artist, you see. Your eyes can’t be fooled.” Belter burped and patted his belly in satisfaction.

  “Yes, well. Devora had covered her tracks really well. There had to be some hard evidence that she was really Rose Ellen Whitman out there, but I was darned if I could figure out a legal way to get it. She sold your aunt’s painting to us, you know, and we checked to see if there were any fingerprints on that, but of course, without a set of prints we knew to be Rose Ellen’s to compare them to, we were up the proverbial creek, paddle-less.”

  “That’s when you called me!” Ida Mae exclaimed. “I didn’t win a grand prize after all!” She slapped the tabletop. “I remember that clear as clear. You called me up, said I’d won this fabulous weekend for two …”

  “And then I asked you if you were the same Ida Mae Clarkson that had been on Your Ancestor’s Attic. Yes. And what had you done with the painting?”

  “And I said I sold it to this Mary Smith.”

  “And I said, what a coincidence.” Quill turned to the rest of the table. “I’d caught Rose Ellen in a lie. She told me she’d picked the painting up at a flea market. Jukka Angstrom told me she made a practice of going to the show participants and buying items as cheaply as she could.”

  Belter raised his voice, apparently not used to being on the sidelines. “So then she calls me up and says, ‘Belter, my boy. You feel about crooks the way I feel about crooks. How’d you like to help me catch a murderer?’”

  Frank looked at Quill and then back at Belter. “She did?”

  “I did. Your wife’s an alert, capable woman, Mr. Clarkson. I saw that when she appeared on the show. Our phone conversation confirmed it. There was a good chance she could identify Devora as Mary Smith, if I could just get the two of them together in the same room. And in order to do that, I called on Belter.”

  Belter grinned and took a sip of his beer with a modest flourish. “Most folks think pawnbrokers are stupid or crooked, see. Actually they hope they’re both, especially when they have something dodgy to sell. So I call up Ms. Devora Watson, all flush with her twenty million dollars, and tell her Sarah McHale’s discovered a real sixteenth-century painting under that mess your auntie had in her attic and that she’s about to make a bundle on it. I tell her if she can get the painting back, I want a twenty percent commission on the deal. So Devora hauls out the old costume trunk, disguises herself as Mary Smith, and books herself into the Inn to see what she can do about it.” Belter looked at his empty beer bottle, signaled Nate for two more. “What she did about it was get herself arrested for murder.”

  Ida Mae fanned her face with her hands. “So I’m going to have to testify at her trial?”

  Quill nodded. “Probably. The police will want a statement from you, of course. The most important thing is that your identification has given the sheriff probable cause to look into Devora’s activities. The chances are excellent that they will find enough hard evidence to convict her of Edmund’s murder.”

  “My goodness,” Ida Mae said. She heaved a happy sigh. “Who would have thought it? The girls at the coffee club are going to be wicked jealous!” She beamed at her husband, who beamed back.

  Then he bit his lip and touched Quill’s shoulder. “Just one thing, Mrs. McHale. Did we really win an all-expenses paid trip to Hemlock Falls?”

  “You most certainly did, Mr. Clarkson. You most certainly did.”

  Turn the page for an excerpt of the

  first book in the Hemlock Falls Mysteries

  by Claudia Bishop …

  A TASTE FOR MURDER

  Now available in the omnibus

  A PLATEFUL OF MURDER

  from Berkley Prime Crime!

  1

  Elmer Henry, mayor of Hemlock Falls, swallowed the last spoonful of zabaglione, disposed of the crystallized mint leaf with a loud crunch, and burped in satisfaction. He whacked the Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce official gavel and rose to his feet. This familiar signal jerked Sarah Quilliam out of a daydream involving rum punch, Caribbean beaches, and a lifeguard. She grabbed her notebook, scrawled “HFCOC Minutes,” and tried to look attentive.

  Elmer looked down the length of the banquet table with a somewhat bovine expression of pleasure. Twenty of the twenty-four members of the Chamber looked placidly back. The imminence of the annual celebration of Hemlock History Days brought the members out in force. The corps of regulars—Quill, the mayor, Marge Schmidt, Tom Peterson, and Gilbert Gilmeister among them—was swelled considerably; like Easter, Hemlock History Days offered unbelievers a chance to hedge their bets.

  Oblivious to the command of the gavel, Marge Schmidt and Betty Hall held a sotto voce conversation concerning their mutually expressed preference to die rather than consume one more bite of suspect foreign substances such as the Italian pu
dding just served them. Quill rejected various witty rejoinders in defense of her sister’s cooking and opted for a dignified silence.

  Elmer rapped the gavel with increasingly louder thwacks until Marge and Betty shut up and settled into their seats. “This meeting is called to order,” Elmer said. He nodded to Dookie Shuttleworth, minister of the Hemlock Falls Word of God Reform Church.

  Dookie was thin, rather shabbily dressed, and had a gentle, bemused expression; under stress, input frequently vanished altogether from Dookie’s hard drive, a circumstance wholly unrelated to his vocation and met with tolerance by his parishioners. He wiped his napkin firmly across his mouth and stood up for the invocation. “Lord, bless this gathering of our weekly session, and all its members.” He paused, looked thoughtful, and suppressed a belch. “Most especially, the management of the Hemlock Falls Inn, Meg and Sarah Quilliam, for this fine repast.”

  Quill smiled and murmured an acknowledgment, which Dookie ignored in his earnest pursuit of the Lord’s attention. “Lord, if you see fit, please send us fine weather and generous folks for the celebration of Hemlock Falls History Days next week. May these men and women seek you out, Lord, particularly in Your house here at Hemlock Falls. When the collection plate is passed, may they open their hearts and more, in Your service. As you know, Lord, the church checking account …”

  Elmer Henry cleared his throat.

  Dookie concluded hastily, “All these things we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

  “Amen,” echoed the assembled members.

  “Hadn’t you ought to ask the good Lord for blessings on our stummicks so we don’t end up in the hospital after eatin’ this pudding?” Marge Schmidt demanded. A principal in the only other restaurant in town, Marge’s German heritage was evident in her fair hair, ruddy complexion, and blue eyes. The protuberance of those eyes, the double chin, and the belligerence were all her own.

  Quill straightened in indignation.

  Marge continued blandly, “Made with raw eggs, this stuff. What d’ya call it? Zabyig-something.”

  “Zabaglione,” said Quill. She pushed back her mass of red hair with one slim hand and said mendaciously, “It’s one of Meg’s eggless varieties.”

  “It’s made with raw eggs everywheres else,” said Marge. “You won’t find raw eggs in good old American food. Strictly against the New York State Department of Health instructions. Din’t you and your sister get that notice they sent out last week? Got one down to the diner if you need a copy.”

  “Salmonella,” interjected Marge’s companion and business partner, Betty Hall. “All of us in the restaurant business got that notice. Maybe that sister of yours can’t read.”

  Quill reflected that nobody, including the patrons of the Hemlock Hometown Diner (Family Food! And Fast!), got along with Marge and Betty, and a response would invite acrimony. The first law of successful innkeeping was to maintain neutrality, if not outright peace. “I can’t imagine anyone getting sick on Hemlock Falls cooking, Marge,” she said diplomatically. “Yours or ours.”

  Marge rocked back in her chair, to the potential danger of the oak. “Me, either. No, ma’am. But that’s something different from bein’ in violation of the American law with weird Italian food. Betty and me stick to pizza. And this-here pudding is a clear violation of the law. Right, Sheriff McHale?”

  Myles McHale nodded expressionlessly and dropped a wink in Quill’s direction. He was looking especially heroic this afternoon, and Quill made a mental note to ask him if he’d ever been a lifeguard. With that chest, it was certainly likely.

  Myles said, “Why don’t I just go ahead and arrest both Meg and Quill, Marge? Been wanting to do it anyhow. Locking Quill up may be the only way I’ll get her to marry me. And I’d have Meg’s cooking all to myself.”

  “Ha, ha.” Marge adjusted her blue nylon bowling jacket with a sniff and subsided, muttering, “Eggless, my ass.”

  “Let’s get to the agenda,” Elmer said. “First off, Quill, will you read the minutes from the last meeting?”

  “Shall I move to dispense with everything but the agenda for today?” Quill asked. She hadn’t translated her scrawled shorthand and wasn’t at all sure she could read last week’s notes out loud.

  “She can’t do that,” said Marge. “She’s the secretary. The secretary can’t move not to read the minutes.”

  “Then I’ll so move,” said Myles.

  “Let’s just get to the agenda for today,” said Elmer. “History Days is less than seventy-two hours away, unless everyone’s forgotten. What’s the status as of last week, Quill?”

  Quill squinted at her notes. “Booths. Four P’s,” she read uncertainly.

  There was an expectant silence.

  Four P’s. Quill tugged at her lower lip. Four P’s … “Parade. Play. Parking…” She tugged harder. “Promotion!” She smiled triumphantly. “We need a report on the status of the booths, on the parade, and on the rehearsals for the play …”

  Elmer deciphered the remaining P with no trouble; Quill had been Chamber secretary for five years. Promotion was adman Harvey Bozzel’s job. “So the first thing is the booths. How many we got registered, Howie?”

  Howie Murchison, local attorney and justice of the peace, paged methodically through a manila folder drawn from his briefcase. “One hundred and twenty-two, as of yesterday.” He peered deliberately at Quill over his wire-rimmed glasses. “I’ll go slowly so you can get the information into the minutes. Twenty-three home-crafts. Sixteen jewelry. Fifty-eight assorted pottery and painting. Six food. Seven habadashery, that is to say, T-shirts, straw hats, and other clothing items. Eleven miscellaneous, such as used books, something referred to as ‘collectibles,’ and Gil’s display of the new line of Buicks. Forty-three percent of the registration fees have been prepaid for a total of six hundred and fifty-nine dollars and forty-six cents.”

  Quill scrawled: 101. 23 ditz. 16 ? ? ? ? $659, 46 is 47%. Then, after a moment’s thought: Re. NYS memo: Meg.

  “And the parade report?” Elmer turned to Norm Pasquale, principal of the high school.

  Norm bounced to his feet. “The varsity band’s been rehearsing all week. They sound just terrific. The Four-H club has fourteen kids on horses signed up to ride. We’ve got eight floats, down one from last year because Chet’s Hardware went out of business after the Wal-Mart moved in.” He sat down.

  Elmer nodded matter-of-factly. “I told Chet he’d never get a dollar and a half a pound for roofing nails. What about the play, Esther? Rehearsals going okay there?”

  Esther West owned the only dress shop (West’s Best) in Hemlock Falls. She was director of the re-creation of the Hemlock Falls seventeenth-century witch trial, The Trial of Goody Martin, a popular feature of History Days. She frowned and adjusted the bodice of her floral print dress, then patted a stiff auburn curl into place over her ear. “I do believe that the Clarissa’s sickening for flu.”

  A murmur of dismay greeted this statement.

  “Who’s playing Clarissa Martin this year?” asked Quill.

  “Julie Offenbach, Craig’s girl.”

  “Oh, my.” Quill knew her. A wannabe Winona Ryder, Julie spent the summers between high-school semesters waitressing at the Inn. “She’ll be crushed.”

  “You got that right!” hooted Gil Gilmeister. Even Quill, a relative newcomer to Hemlock Falls, knew Gil had been a star quarterback for the high school twenty years before; like Rabbit Angstrom, he’d gone into that quintessential small-town American business—car sales. Unlike his fictional counterpart, he was filled by more Sturm than Angst, with a boisterous enthusiasm for Buicks, Marge Schmidt, and town activities not unrelated to his days on the football field. “Go-o-o-o Clarissa!” he shouted now, thumping a ham-sized fist on the table. “Splat! Splat! Splat!”

  The witch trial dramatized the real seventeenth-century Clarissa’s death by pressing. Most pre-Colonial American villages burned, hanged, or drowned their witches, and Hemlockians were inordinately proud of their ancesto
rs’ unique style of execution—Hemlock Falls witches had been pressed to death. Although any large flat surface would have done, Hemlock Falls citizens of bygone days dropped a barn door on the condemned, then piled stones on the door until the victim succumbed to hemorrhaging, suffocation, or a myocardial infarction. Julie, as Clarissa Martin, would be replaced by a hooded dummy at the critical moment, but there was a wonderful bit of histrionics as “Clarissa” was driven off to await her fate. Julie had rehearsed with enormous relish for weeks.

  “Doesn’t Julie have an understudy or something?” asked Betty Hall. “No?” She jerked her head at her partner. “Marge here. She could do it. She’s a real quick study. Memorizes the specials at the diner every night, just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  Elmer, perhaps thinking of the size of the barn door required to squash a dummy of Marge-like proportions, not to mention the creation of a new, more elephantine dummy to replace the one traditionally used for years, said sharply, “Budget,” which puzzled everyone but Quill, whose thoughts had been running along the same lines but in a much less practical way.

  “Marge’d be terrific,” said Gil Gilmeister earnestly. Since almost everyone at the table—with the possible exception of Dookie Shuttleworth—knew that Marge and Gil had been a hot item for several years, Gil’s support was discounted without any discussion. “Although,” Esther whispered to Quill, “if Nadine Gilmeister could get herself out of those Syracuse malls long enough to do right by the poor man so he didn’t have to spend his nights over to the diner, maybe more people would listen to him.” Elmer rapped the gavel loudly, and Esther jerked to attention.

  “What do you want to do then, Esther? Appoint an understudy?”

  “It should be somebody stageworthy. Somebody with presence. And good-looking. The execution is the highlight of The Trial of Goody Martin. It’s what everyone comes to see.” Esther’s eyes glinted behind her elaborately designed glasses. “When the actors pile the stones on the barn door, the audience should be moved to enthusiasm as Clarissa’s blood spews out. Most years, as you’ve observed, the tourists join in.”