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  MARINADE FOR MURDER by Claudia Bishop.

  PROLOGUE

  'This is crap." Neil Strickland threw the videotape cassette down the length of the conference table. "Do I have to spell the situation out for you? The ratings on this show sucked last season. You had all summer to come up with a new spin. And this is it?"

  The cassette spun sideways and beached on Mort Carmody's ashtray. Stubby ends of Marlboro 100s flew onto Mort's blue denim shirt and rested on the concave hollow of his stomach. He brushed the butts onto the polished hardwood floor and took a long swig from his bottle of Evian water.

  At the opposite end of the conference table, Neil leaned forward and rested on his knuckles. Mort had seen meaner expressions in his lifetime; once on a burly biker in a dive bar near Laguna Beach and again on a skeletal guy just before he mugged Mort in an

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  alley off of Sunset Boulevard. But only twice, until now. He looked nervously at Benny Gilpin. Benny was head screenwriter. He should take the heat for this shit.

  Benny chuckled in an avuncular way. This was a mistake. Strickland was young. There was nothing he hated more than avuncular. Benny rubbed his eyes with a weary sophistication Neil was bound to hate even more. The producer couldn't stand attitude. Benny was full of attitude. Benny put on his sunglasses and said condescendingly, "Look, Slick."

  Neil scowled. The nickname stung. He was tall, thin, elegantly dressed, eschewing Mort's own preference for California cool. Slick, Mort thought. Slicker than shit. He sighed. He could do with a drink. A stiff one. He swigged at his Evian again.

  Benny plastered a "we're all in this together" look on his face and adjusted his belly over his Broad Man jeans. So he was going the reasonable route. Mort shook his head, smiling a little. The reasonable route never worked with Neil. Now, an AK-47. That might work with Neil.

  "We got a problem here," Benny began in a friendly way.

  "What's this 'we' shit, paleface?" Neil snapped. "You three over-the-hill farts have a problem. Not me. If you can't get this show in shape by week after next..." He drew his forefinger across his throat. "I told the network you jerks had fourteen days."

  Mort looked down the table at Eddie Schwartz. Eddie's original hair color was anybody's guess. Right now it was a bottled red blond drawn back in a pony-tail, a look that worked only if you were a twenty-

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  two-year-old hot shit, or Robert De Niro. Like the other two scriptwriters, Eddie was in his middle fillies. And their age showed, Mort thought mournfully. No matter how much time and money a guy spent on plastic surgery and laser resurfacing, it showed. Something about the eyes.

  Neil, the executive producer of The Sneezer Show! was thirty-five but he'd already had two lifts and an eye job. Mort knew that for sure. And his Baywatch tan was out of a bottle. Mort was willing to bet the man's thick black hair was mainly extensions. Mort smoothed the bald spot on his own head and took another drink of Evian.

  'Thing is," Benny said in an explanatory tone, "there's just too many minority groups in this country ready to complain about imagined slights. But I'm telling you, Slick, with the three of us here, you've got a good sixty years' worth of experience writing for TV right in this room. You ought to count on it. It's an asset."

  Mort winced. Mentioning age was a no-no in Los Angeles. Unless you were under twenty-two.

  Benny went on in a dogged, hectoring way that made the color rise to Neil's artificial hairline. "The funniest stuff comes out of making people laugh at other people. From your banana-peel skids up to Howard Stern. But you can't take that route anymore. Not with anyone who is an American." He shook his head wisely. 'Too risky. 'Member the show when Sneezer dressed up like a Nazi for Halloween and had to go to the dentist? Got sued from here to East Jesus. The ADA got mad, the AJA got mad. Even the skinheads

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  got mad." He reflected a moment. "Thing is, that was one of my best scripts. Helped a lot of kids get more comfortable at the dentist's office."

  "Finns?" Neil said as if he'd found dog shit on his shoe. "So you think Finns are funny?"

  "I told you," Mort said. "I told him and Eddie both. Finns aren't funny."

  Strickland glanced at Mort like you'd look at snot.

  "Neil, there's not enough of them to sue us!" Benny said proudly.

  Neil smacked his forehead lightly. "Oh, gosh. Maybe you guys forgot." His eyes narrowed to bright blue slits and he screamed, "Who gives a shit if we get sued? Suits are good for business. Every little runny-nosed brat out there's going to watch the show if the parents are squawking about it. You should be on your knees that we get sued!" He looked over their heads and shook his head slowly. "Jesus," he said flatly. He looked at them sideways, managing to smirk with his entire body. It was the worst Bruce Willis imitation Mort had ever seen. "Now listen up," Strickland said softly, barely moving his lips. "Sneezer's a kids' cartoon show. You want to turn Sneezer into a guy with a horned helmet on his head and a smart-mouthed reindeer for a sidekick, you're going to get a lot more grief than a lawsuit. You're all going to get canned. Because Finns just aren't funny" He stepped away from the table and adjusted the French cuffs on his tailor-made one hundred percent pima-cotton suit. "You have two weeks to get funny. You take your fat asses and your even fatter heads on up to that retreat in—where the hell is it? Hammock Falls."

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  "Hemlock Falls," Mort said. He stubbed out his Marlboro. The ashtray overflowed onto his stomach again. "It's a three-star hotel in upstate New York. Hemlock Falls. Came highly recommended by the studio. Run by a pair of sisters, Meg and Sarah Quilliam. They're reopening after a bit of financial trouble, and we'll be the only guests there. We ought to get a lot of work done."

  "Shut up, Mort," Neil said tiredly. "I have business in Hemlock Falls myself. And you'll get a lot of work done because I'm going to be on your sorry asses from the minute you get there."

  "We'll come up with a treatment you're gonna love." Eddie Schwartz jiggled his feet up and down, up and down. He drew his wrist under his nose and sniffed. "Guaranteed, boss."

  "You don't have a choice, do you?" Neil asked coldly. He opened the Brazilian mahogany door to the outside hall. "Because if you don't..." He drew his forefinger across his throat a second time, gave them an amiable wink, and let the door slam behind him.

  "What a jerk," Benny grumbled. "That dentist show was a damn good way to get kids in the chair." He narrowed his watery gray eyes at Mort. "You still filling that Evian bottle with gin? Give me a hit, will ya?"

  CHAPTER 1

  "That cartoon's disgusting!" Doreen flung over her shoulder as she marched in the back door to Quill's office. Her gray hair frizzed behind her ears like a cockatoo's comb.

  "Dor-EEN!" Dina Muir stamped in right behind the elderly housekeeper. The receptionist's pretty face was flushed. 'Things are different from your day. Kids are much more sophisticated. Donald Duck just doesn't cut it anymore! They expect more ... well, more sophistication." There was a determined set to her jaw. She looked like a cheerleader whose boyfriend had just scored for the opposing team. "I'm not trying to defend it. I'm just trying to explain it!"

  Doreen made a noise like a cranky teakettle.

  "Hey, guys, we're having a meeting in here." Sarah Quilliam got to her feet just in case Doreen was carry-

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  ing a concealed weapon; mops and brooms were her armaments of choice. Quill didn't think the banker or the investor at her conference table would understand if the elderly housekeeper started whacking things.

  Doreen ignored the four other people around the conference table and addressed Quill as if she were the only person in the room. "
Baloney. I'm gonna write a letter to the network. The thing's so durn dumb it's a disgrace. What in heck did they want to go change Sneezer for? He was perfect right as he was. All dressed up in them little blue shorts and that polka-dot bow tie. He had the cutest sneeze. Why, he's practically nekkid now, except for that stupid helmet. And that accent makes him sound like some kind of a fool. Now I ast you, what kinda kids' show has a nekkid Fi—"

  "It's not that bad!" Dina hissed. "Pas devant I'etranger!" She cast a significant glance at the only non-Hemlockian there: Horvath Kierkegaard, prospective investor in the about-to-be-purchased Inn at Hemlock Falls. And a Finn.

  Quill, who had no idea what they were talking about, didn't want to know and didn't care. But the interruption had come at a good time. "We were in the middle of a discussion about food," she said.

  Nobody looked at Meg, Quill's sister and the Inn's master chef. Quill ran her hands distractedly through her hair, which left it even more tangled than it had been. "Which means it might be a good time for a break." Doreen gave her a surreptitious wink. Quill made a small noise somewhere between "aha!" and "aagh." Of course Doreen had timed her irruption. The

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  sound of the argument must have reached the rose garden, and if it had done that, then half of Hemlock Falls probably knew that Meg was on a rampage. Although Quill had to admit this rampage wasn't as fiery as it might have been, which, if she stopped to think about it, was very strange. At this point everyone in the room should have been cowering in fear. Nobody was cowering. The discussion was loud, but not nuclear.

  Well, Meg was being reasonable, for her. If the current meeting went well, they would own the Inn at Hemlock Falls again, and even her volatile sister had to be happy about that.

  After several nervous weeks of talks about money (not enough of it), events were falling into place. All that was left to discuss was the food.

  Two of the men around her little cherry conference table got up and stretched. Mark Anthony Jefferson, vice-president of the Hemlock Falls Savings and Loan, was clearly uninterested in a discussion about cartoon characters, naked or otherwise. He walked to the small sideboard, poured himself another cup of coffee, and stood looking with a delighted smile at the plate of pastries Meg had baked that morning. The other, Hor-vath Kierkegaard, Finnish investor, seemed to be puzzling over whether his English was good enough to understand what he'd just heard. He stuck his hands in his pockets and rolled back on his heels.

  Meg threw her pencil to the center of the cherry table and slouched into her chair, scowling ferociously. This didn't fool Quill. Meg was wearing lime-green socks. Lime green was a color Meg wore when she was in an abstracted mood. Blue socks would have

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  been ideal for negotiations (they signaled equanimity), but Quill was just glad they weren't yellow. Yellow was the "hide under the nearest solid object" color.

  "You and Doreen were watching cartoons, Dina?" John Raintree, their business manager, grinned a little and moved his long legs aside to accommodate the suddenly crowded office. It was fairly large, but Quill liked people to be comfortable. She had a long couch upholstered in red chintz scattered with pink peonies, a deceptively efficient-looking executive desk, a round conference table with six chairs, and a row of barrister-style filing cabinets, which held more art supplies than business documents.

  John tipped his chair back and clasped his hands behind his head. "I thought you two were out transplanting roses."

  "We watched the cartoon before we went out to transplant roses," Dina said sulkily. "It was while we were transplanting roses that we got into the argument. Not about the cartoon, but about whether we should ... Well, no. I'm a liar. We started arguing while we were looking for Max."

  "Where is Max?" Quill asked, immediately distracted. Her dog had a notorious tendency to get into trouble with garbage cans and chickens when he went roaming.

  "Some guys in hard hats were walking around the Gorge early this morning," Doreen said briefly. "He'll come home when he's finished chasing them off. Now, look here, Quill, you gotta do something about these guys."

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  "What guys?" Quill asked, confused. "You mean the hard-hat guys or the duck?"

  Dina said, "I'll tell them the rest of it!" She turned to Quill. "Anyhow, we were looking for Max in the Tavern Bar, because he likes to sit in there with Nate when it's hot, and Nate had the TV on, and there it was. Sneezer. We watched because the guys that write the show are checking in this afternoon. They sent a bunch of stuff ahead, and one of them was this demo tape." Her glance rested worriedly on Horvath the Finn for a moment. "Anyhow, I thought it might be, like, cool to, like, tell these scriptwriters we watched their show. Good guest relations, you know? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I'd better warn you about it..." She trailed off and looked vaguely at the ceiling.

  Horvath, who seemed to have translated Dina's ram-blings satisfactorily (which was more than Quill had done), stretched to his full height of five feet two inches and said a little nervously, "Naked is not good. This Inn is for all who come, yes? Many people are not nudists in Finland."

  "You don't need to worry, Horvath," Quill assured him. "Sneezer is a cartoon show. It's not a nudist show. We don't have nudists in Hemlock Falls."

  "None?" His eyebrows rose. "No nudists at all?"

  "Is this bozo the Finn?" Doreen demanded. She placed her hands on her hips. She looked like an irritated rooster. "I been on break this week. This is my first day back." Her voice dropped to a menacing warble. "I've heard a lot about you."

  Quill smiled reassuringly at Mark Jefferson, who re-

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  garded Doreen in fascinated horror, then said loudly, "Doreen? Dina? I'd like you to meet Horvath Kierkegaard. As you know, he's a representative of the state government of Finland here to make an investment in a worthy American business." She frowned meaningfully and said with emphasis, "How lucky for us that he's chosen to help out the Inn."

  Horvath extended his hand. Doreen sniffed disapprovingly. She owned a small percentage of their business, and had been vocal about foreigners. Dina batted her eyelashes at him, which, since she was twenty-three and extremely pretty, lightened the mood a little. Horvath beamed back at her.

  In Quill's increasingly nervous opinion, Horvath's cheeriness bordered on the neurotic. He'd been beaming when he stepped off the plane at the Syracuse airport, and he hadn't stopped beaming since. Quill's limited experience (two Finnish sous-chefs and one pastry chef) was that Finns were the Eeyores of the Scandinavian: glum, broody, and serious. They were all tall, with wintry eyes of gray or blue or pale green. A short cheerful Finn with melting brown eyes was unexpected, even disconcerting. Perhaps that's why the Finnish government had selected Horvath as chief negotiator. During the last two and a half days of negotiations Horvath had smiled a whole lot—but hadn't yet signed a thing. When Quill had told this to Doreen on the phone, Doreen had said not to trust anyone who ate herring an inch, anyways.

  Quill gave herself a mental shake. She was imagining trouble. Marge Schmidt had agreed to sell the Inn back to them as long as the right kind of financing

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  was in place. Marge had been delighted to hear about the Finns. They had a ton of money. She was so optimistic, she'd even let Meg and Quill move in early and start taking guests on a limited basis. But like all human beings with a lot of money, the Finns—or rather Horvath—seemed reluctant to give it up. That was all that was behind Horvath's skittishness about signing the agreement. Quill crossed her fingers behind her back. She hoped that was all.

  "Quill? Quill Meg yelled.

  Quill jerked her attention to the present.

  Meg cleared her throat crossly. She tapped her forefinger on the stack of preliminary notes for her menus. "Let's get on with it. I've got to get to the kitchen for lunch."

  Doreen shot Meg a b
eady glance under her gray eyebrows, then asked casually. "How's it goin' in here, anyways?"

  "Just fine," Quill said firmly.

  "We bought the Inn back yet?"

  "We're getting there," Quill said. "How're you two doing in the rose garden? You probably want to get back out there and finish before it gets too hot. Don't you? I think Mr. Kierkegaard would like to see it."

  Doreen set her jaw. "Got all the rosebushes back where they oughta be. What we really come in for is to ast you about them naked gnomes."

  "What naked gnomes?" Quill demanded.

  "You don't know about the nekkid gnomes?" Doreen asked innocently. "You all want nekkid gnomes in the rose garden, that's fine by me.",

  "It's a naiad!" Dina said. "That's another thing, Do-

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  reen. You don't know a gnome from a naiad. Quill told me to order naiads and naiads don't come with ANY CLOTHES!"

  "Nekkid gnomes is okay by me. But if Hagar here don't want naked gnomes, and he owns, say, mor'n half of the Inn, then we gotta take them gnomes out. Because if he owns fifty-one percent, he'd be the boss. Wouldn't he?"

  Quill looked at Meg, who rolled her eyes. So that's what the invasion was about. Doreen couldn't stand not knowing what was happening.

  "We did not" Meg said tightly, "give away a majority share. We are not about to give away a majority share."

  "Then you're okay, Hagar," Doreen said.

  Horvath grinned at Doreen. "Horvath," he said. "My name is not Hagar, which is the name of a cartoon character extremely offensive to my fellow countrymen. My name is Horvath. And I am so glad you wish to know my opinion on the gnomes. I say ... whatever you like is fine by me! Because, if we can settle this very small problem with the food—we have a deal!" He grasped Quill's hands in both his own and shook them vigorously. He embraced John in a bear hug. He started toward Meg, saw the glint in her eye, and backed off. "So! Perhaps we should take a short rest while Miss Meg thinks of menus. I should like very much to see these..." He waved his hands with a charmingly "see how my English fails me" air.