A Steak in Murder (Hemlock Falls Mystery Series) Read online

"It's fantastic," Quill said. "No debt for the first time in nine years, no grouchy guests. No corpses! It's wonderful. Isn't it, Doreen?"

  There was a long silence.

  "What I'd like is some lunch," Doreen said. "My stomach thinks my throat is cut."

  Meg nodded. "Come on, then. The last of the lunch trade is just leaving, so we can sit in front." She bounced to her feet. When Meg was in this kind of mood, those in her orbit frequently found themselves being pulled along in her wake, like flotsam in the wake of a speedboat. Doreen and Quill followed her into the interior of the Palate, Max at their heels.

  According to the cornerstone on the north wall, the original building dated from 1832. At some point during the turn of the century, the entire back wall of both stories had been opened up, and the space was doubled. As far as Quill knew, the Palate had been a single family home until the fifties, when one of the multifamilied Petersons slapped black-and-white linoleum all over the ground floor, paneled the wainscoted walls with fiberboard, and turned it into a Laundromat. Marge Schmidt took the space over in the early eighties and changed the color of the linoleum to hospital green. She added a utilitarian restaurant kitchen and the skilled services of her junior partner as short-order cook. The Hemlock Home Diner thrived on local business until two months ago, when Meg and Quill exchanged the Inn, with its load of debt, for the Palate.

  After a month of intensive remodeling, the ground floor, at least, had regained much of its early charm. They hadn't been able to salvage the butternut flooring, but they'd substituted maple, which lightened the entire dining area. Almost all of the original plaster and beam walls had been saved, and a dozen of Quill's acrylic paintings hung against the creamy surfaces. It was a beautiful room, as beautiful as the Tavern Lounge at the Inn had been.

  But it was small. Where the Inn had seated one hundred and twenty people in the main dining room, and twice that in the Lounge, the Palate had eight square tables seating four people each. The tables were pushed together for larger parties, but it didn't change the total.

  Doreen went to the table in front of the large windows overlooking Main Street and sat down with a grunt of relief. Quill settled next to her, and they sat without speaking while Meg went into the kitchen. She reemerged a few moments later with a tray and set it down in front of them. Cold pears, a creamy blush color, and croissants layered with a rich fig walnut dressing.

  "I think I'll pass," Quill said. She lifted the mass of hair off the nape of her neck. "It's too hot to eat."

  "The soup's all gone. So I took out chilled pears baked in red wine," Meg said. "With that cream cheese filling." She sat down with a happy sigh. "Bjarne is just terrific, isn't he? He's adding some menu items I never even thought about. Especially with the fruit. Who would have thought Finns would be as good with fruits? Try the pears, Quill."

  Quill shook her head. "I need to stretch my legs. I think I'll take a walk. I'll go up and get your shirts, Meg. Doreen's right. I think we left a couple of boxes in the basement."

  "You want I should go with you?" Doreen asked. "I can show you what I mean about them cows into the garden."

  "No," Quill said crossly. "I don't give a rat's behind about the cows, and I need the walk. So does Max."

  Max went, "Woof," in approval.

  Meg and Doreen exchanged a look that wasn't lost on Quill. It'd been a busy day already, with a full turn at breakfast and a turn and a half at lunch. Of course, full days at the Palate were nothing like full days at the Inn. Despite the line of customers waiting for tables, Quill had found herself with enough time on her hands to count the week's receipts—which had been satisfyingly healthy, more than enough to justify the two new waiters they had hired, and the under chef to help Bjarne in the kitchen. Every day was like that. She'd even found time to serve on the town Zoning Board, which, given her often-expressed desire to accomplish more in the way of civic duties, should have made her feel virtuous, but didn't. The Zoning Board dealt with even more volatile political issues than the Chamber of Commerce, where she served as secretary, and that was saying something.

  "A walk is a good idea," Meg said. "Your afternoon's free, and if you go up the back way, you can sneak in without running into Marge. And the cows."

  "I do not need to sneak into my own—I mean Marge's Inn." Quill pushed her food around with her fork. "I wonder what the Zoning Board will have to say about those cows?"

  "Why should they care?" Meg demanded.

  " 'Course they should care," Doreen grunted. "It's their job to care. It's their job to poke their pointy noses and pointy little heads in where they don't belong and drive normal folks crazy with screwed-up rules and regulations. It's their job to—"

  "Doreen," Quill said mildly. The Zoning Board had gotten a little sticky over the request they'd made for a liquor license, which was one of the reasons Quill had decided to volunteer to serve when the seat had opened up unexpectedly. Better to join them when you can't beat them. "For goodness sakes, don't bring those darn cows up at the Zoning Board meeting. I spend enough time looking at leach fields and right-of-ways as it is. Before you know it, the mayor will call an ex-whatis meeting and I'll be spending the next couple of weeks listening to Marge Schmidt try and pull the mayor's ears around his socks." She shoved herself away from the table and got up. She was feeling cross.

  Meg rolled her eyes, shook her head, and blew out with a "phut!" "You sure you're okay?"

  "I'm fine. Just need a breath of fresh air. I'll be back in a bit."

  "We booked solid for dinner?" Doreen asked. "If you need me, I can work tonight. So you take your time." She stretched the back of her neck with an air of nonchalance, a sure sign that her shoulders were aching with arthritis. "Whyn't you go see Sher'f McHale? Drive on down to Syracuse and get some dinner with him. I can take care of the cash register here."

  "He's on that job for GE, isn't he?" Meg asked. "The industrial espionage thing?"

  "And he wouldn't appreciate my company on surveillance," Quill said. "Things will be fine, Doreen. Running this place is duck soup compared to . . . I mean, I've got it all under control. You go on home to Stoke. Kathleen will be in to give Peter a hand with the tables from five to ten. And I gave Dina a call. She's going to wait tables from eight on, when we're the busiest."

  "You sure?"

  "I'm sure." She snapped her fingers for Max. "And I'm gone. You two enjoy the pears."

  She did need to walk. The past two months had sped by in a blur of floor joists, PVC pipe, cranky electricians, and Zoning Board meetings. They'd begun a limited lunch and dinner service almost immediately, and the customers had been almost genial about the construction debris and waiting for the liquor license. Between minimizing the disturbance to diners and coping with the contractors, spring had zoomed straight into summer without notice. But the work was done, except for the garden, and the Palate was profitable.

  She took a deep breath. Time. She had some time. She would stroll up to the Inn, retrieve the last boxes of clothes, and stroll on back. She didn't care what Marge may have done to her carefully tended bushes of Scented Cloud, Apricot Nectar, and Kordes Perfecta. Not a bit.

  The air was fresh, rainwashed from the night before, and Main Street was cheerful with geraniums. Max was sitting on her feet. She bent down and patted him.

  "Walk?" she said, which brought him to his feet with a joyful leap.

  They walked briskly past Esther's dress shop (the window theme was heavy on denim, sagebrush, and fake turquoise jewelry), the bank (with a banner reading WELCOME CATTLEMEN) and turned onto the path to the Gorge by Nicholson's Hardware (pitchforks, Western saddles, and a life-size acrylic cow on the sidewalk). Doreen was right The village of Hemlock Falls was mad for cows. Why, she couldn't begin to imagine. Everyone she knew was backing off beef, conscious of the spate of mad cow disease terrifying Europe, which, she remembered suddenly, was the whole point. Who was it who had been telling her that native American cattle were totally free of that disease? Howie Murchis
on, that was who. When he and Miriam Doncaster had been in for dinner two nights ago.

  She realized she was standing still, gazing thoughtfully at a clump of early wild iris. Her hand went to her skirt pocket, where she kept a small sketch pad. She'd been letting her painting go, as well. And with Myles off on a fairly long job for General Electric, with the Palate running as smoothly as it could under the circumstances . . . why not? This is why they'd sold the Inn, wasn't it? To give herself a chance to work, to get more time for Myles, to free both herself and Meg from the endless, frustrating details of running a twenty-seven-room Inn buckling under the weight of too much debt and too little custom.

  "It was the right thing to do," she said aloud.

  Max jerked to attention.

  "Oh, Max," she said. "It was the wrong thing to do."

  Max stiffened, nose pointed toward the brush. Maybe she ought to sketch Max instead of the iris. She cocked her head at him. Could she do a dog without being sentimental? Or without the kind of sarcasm that made William Wegman's work so repellent? She hadn't been sure about having a dog. They demanded a lot of attention. They were smelly. They had to be taken to the vet. They loved you without question.

  Nope. She was too fond of Max to do him well.

  Max barked.

  Quill bent forward and rumpled his ears affectionately. Max barked again, furiously. "Good old Max. You don't have to listen to every word I say, but you do, don't you?" The iris rustled. Max dashed forward, knocking her flat into the mossy base of the tree. He leaped over her and flung himself at the iris, forepaws extended, ears up, growling. Quill looked up at the canopy of oak leaves overhead and sighed. She could feel damp moss seeping into the back of her neck and mud seeping into her sandals.

  "You don't think you're a person Max, you think I'm a dog. That's the whole trouble. I've just figured it out." She rolled over and propped herself on her elbows. Max dashed toward her, teeth snapping, then dashed back to the iris. Two black eyes rimmed with white stared at her from the brush. The eyes advanced. The brush parted. A furry white face with a black muzzle stared at her. Quill stared back. It was a cow. A very large cow. With horns that must have extended two feet on either side. Foam dribbled from the muzzle. A stray gleam of sun caught at the ring in the cow's nose and made it twinkle. Quill closed her eyes tight, then opened them again. She didn't know a whole lot about cows, but she did know that they didn't put rings in female cows' noses. They put them in bulls' noses.

  "Don't move." The voice was low, curt, masculine. And very Texas. "Ma'am."

  "Not for the world," Quill whispered fervently. "You tell that bull I'm not moving an inch. I'm not even going to breathe."

  "He ain't gonna do anything. We're just out for a walk."

  "You're walking your bull?"

  "And you're gonna get a nice mess of dead raccoon on that pretty skirt. Hang on. You stay right there. And you," this apparently addressed to Max, "you shut up and sit."

  Max shut up and sat. Quill, philosophically, remained where she was, frozen into position, right hip elevated, left elbow digging into the ground. The brush parted and a tall, middle-aged, bowlegged man in jeans stepped onto the path. He held a red leash in one hand. Behind him walked the bull. The leash was attached to the ring in his nose. "Name's Royal," he said. "This here's my bull, Impressive."

  "It certainly is." Quill bit her lip, swallowed hard, and extended her hand. "My name's Sarah Quilliam. People call me Quill. How do you do?"

  Royal, who had bright blue eyes, heavily tanned skin, and a nice brown mustache in approved cowboy style, grasped her hand and pulled her gently to her feet. She and Impressive looked at one another. Up close, she could see that his eye was mild and that the foam on his nose was more like drool.

  " 'S the heat," Royal said laconically. "He drools when it's warm." Impressive lowered his head and swung his horns from side to side. Max chuffed in a warning way.

  "Just wants you to scratch his nose," Royal said. "See here? Like this." He scratched hard behind Impressive's ears. The bull half closed his eyes in pleasure. "The missus called him Impy. But that," Royal said severely, "ain't no name for a prizewinning bull. If you get my drift."

  "I do," Quill said. "Are you from, ah . . ."

  "The Dew Drop?"

  "The what?"

  "The Dew Drop Inn. Marge Schmidt's place up yonder?" He waved his arm in the direction of the Inn at Hemlock Falls. "Got some of my prize stock up there. Ms. Schmidt fixed up a terrific corral. Tore out a bunch of brambly ol' roses to do it, too."

  "She did what? She's calling it what!?"

  Impressive opened his eyes and began to swing his horns, this time in a decidedly less friendly way than he had before. He snorted. Max pulled his lips back from his teeth and growled.

  "Now, ma'am," Royal said nervously. "Now, ma'am, begging your pardon, but you don't want to go a-shriekin' round this bull."

  "I was NOT—" Quill made a determined effort to lower her voice. "I was not," she continued in a calm and dispassionate tone, "a-shriekin'."

  "There, now, see that?" Royal grinned at her, his teeth tobacco-stained. "He goes nice and easy when he hears that pretty voice of yours. You headed up thisaway?"

  Quill smiled, hoping she didn't look as outraged as she felt. The Dew Drop Inn? The Dew Drop INN!! That did it. That just did it. She was going to march up there, confront Marge, and demand to buy her home back. Royal? You bet your cute little cowboy butt I'm headed that way. Aloud she said, "Yes. Are you going back yourself?"

  "We'll walk right along with you."

  The progress up the hill to the Inn was no odder than the Women's Auxiliary Float at the Hemlock Home Days Parade—a version of the musical Showboat with baby pigs dressed as the main characters known as Shoatboat— perhaps even less odd. If Quill hadn't been plotting ways and means to get her old home back she would have enjoyed it. Impressive ambled along amiably enough, and Max, notoriously phlegmatic about everything except mailmen, trotted at the bull's heels with a pleased expression. Royal didn't say much, except to cluck encouragingly when Impressive stopped for a bite of a willow shoot or timothy grass. And the weather was splendid.

  "There's the rest of the herd," Royal said as they topped the hill.

  Quill came to a halt, dismayed. In one form or another the Inn at Hemlock Falls had sat over the lip of Hemlock Falls for close to three hundred years. First a log cabin run as a makeshift bar for trappers, then as a mansion during the Revolutionary War period, then as a home for General C. C. Hemlock after the Civil War. Built of stone, with a copper roof, the Inn sprawled elegantly in front of the waterfall, surrounded by stone terraces, shaved lawn, Quill's carefully landscaped gardens . . .

  . . . and six Texas longhorn cattle. Eight, Quill corrected herself, if you counted the two little red calves. Marge (or somebody) had created a pen of six ten-foot-long metal gates, of a type she'd seen in dairy farms all over Tompkins County. Unlike the dairy cows Quill was familiar with, these cattle were all different colors. One was black and white, like an Indian pony. Two more were white with big red splotches, one was dun, and two were speckled like a rampant case of measles. All the adults had horns ranging from four to six feet, end to end.

  Quill realized why Marge (or somebody) had selected the rose garden; the stone Niobe in the middle of the fishpond recirculated the water, which meant it could be used as a watering tank. All sorts of cow-y equipment was scattered around: bright blue plastic buckets, bags of feed, bales of straw and hay, and pitchforks.

  "Do cows eat fish?" she asked after a long moment.

  "No, ma'am. They do not," Royal said.

  "I mean, we have a dozen koi in there. Had, I mean."

  "I eat fish," Royal said with a helpful air.

  "They weren't fish to eat, they were fish to look at," Quill said crossly. "Where is Marge, anyway?"

  "Said she was bringing the spreader up to the pens. Had to go down to Harland Peterson's to get it, and she left before I took Impressive for h
is constitutional. So she oughta be back by—yep, there she is."

  "Spreader?"

  "Manure spreader." Royal unlatched one of the metal gates, led the bull inside, then took off the leash. Or lead. Or whatever it was. Then he leaned over the fence and watched Marge drive up on a huge green tractor with a spiky metal trailer attached to the rear.

  "Yo, Quill."

  Quill nodded but didn't say anything. Marge rotated the tractor wheel with careless ease, then began to back the trailer up to the pen. She was a short, stocky woman in her late forties with a determined chin and sharp gray eyes. Her gingery hair was newly cut in a more or less fashionable style that owed a lot to hair spray. Quill saw with surprise that she was wearing lipstick.

  "Yo, Royal," Marge said. She blushed and smiled. "You want I should help you pitch?"

  "Help yourself," Royal said with a generous air. Marge shifted the tractor into neutral, hopped off, and let herself into the pen. She and Royal each took a pitchfork and began to toss cow manure over the gate and into the trailer. Quill noticed that Royal puffed in the heat. His face was red with effort. He obviously didn't want Marge to notice.

  "Just where are you going to—um—spread it?" Quill asked. She ought to help. Whenever she saw anyone working, especially an older person like Royal, she felt as if she ought to help, but she absolutely did not want to. Even though the cows looked rather nice. Even if there was cow manure all over her rosebushes that would probably burn the heck out of them. "I feel as if I . . . Marge?"

  One of the cows with a calf at her side, the largest and the blackest, began to swing her horns and moo. She nudged her calf behind her and advanced slowly on Marge, nose lowered to the ground. Then she tossed her head in a semicircular motion.

  "Marge, maybe you should let Royal finish . . ." Quill took a deep breath and shrieked, "RUN!"

  The cow sprang forward with an astonishing burst of speed. Marge was just fast enough. She swung herself up and over the fence and sat down hard on the other side. Royal stuck his pitchfork in the ground, leaned against it, and chuckled in a tolerant way. "That Faithfully. I warned you about that Faithfully. Don't want anyone near that calf except me and Impressive."