Ground to a Halt Read online

  “Cool!” Quincy said.

  Quill, a little pale at the thought of Quincy in the

  same general area as her volatile sister, Meg, nudged

  him out the door and into the line waiting to board the

  van. He wriggled impatiently under her grip. “Do you

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  know,” Quill said kindly, “that you can pet the piglets at

  the farm? They have goats, too.”

  “Who cares about stupid old pigs?”

  “Well,” Quill asked reasonably, “what do you care

  about?” She nudged him into the van and guided him

  toward a seat. Quincy sat, and cocked his head in a considering way. “Killer Two,” he said, finally, Quill sat gingerly next to him. “Killer what?”

  He rolled his eyes dramatically. “It’s a Play Station

  game . . .” he paused. The word “stupid” hung in the air,

  unsaid. “They made me leave it at home. It’s supposedly not educational. Wrong! It’s very educational.”

  There was a great deal of indignation under the sugar on

  his cheeks.

  “No Play Station games,” Maria Kowalski said over

  the back of the driver’s seat. “School rules. They aren’t

  educational.” She raised her voice to a genteel shriek.

  “Everybody buckled in? Everybody snug as a bug in a

  rug?” A chorus of juvenile “yesses” greeted this repellent foray into simile. “Good!” Maria beamed. “All right, people. Here we go!”

  The van pulled away from the curb and proceeded

  down Main Street at a sedate thirty miles an hour. Quill

  who rarely, if ever, proceeded anywhere in a car at a

  poky thirty miles an hour, looked out the window at the

  village, as if seeing it for the first time. Ten years ago

  she and her sister Meg had gotten lost on their way to

  Albany from New York City and decided to settle here.

  Quill considered a moment. They’d driven into

  Hemlock Falls on June twelfth. So it was ten years and

  three and a half months, exactly. Meg had been suddenly, agonizingly widowed. Quill had been six months

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  7

  divorced. Both of them had felt, instantly, that this

  place would provide a peaceful haven from the stresses

  of the city.

  Built over one of the famous shale gorges left by the

  glaciers millennia ago, Hemlock Falls was a village the

  twenty-first century had passed by. Trappers on their

  way to Canada had settled the village itself more than

  three hundred years ago. By the early 1800s, Hemlock

  Falls had grown to a more than respectable size. Prosperous farmers erected cobblestone houses along Main Street. Wrought-iron street lamps were converted from

  gas to electricity. Each year, the Ladies Auxiliary filled

  the stone troughs in front of the stores with a spill of

  red, pink, and white geraniums. The village attracted

  wealthy summer visitors from Buffalo and New York

  City. The prosperity that began just after the Civil War

  lasted up to the Great Depression.

  When Meg and Quill first chanced upon it, the village had lapsed into the quiet decline that characterized much of upstate New York in the latter half of the twentieth century.

  But then they’d seen the beautiful old copper-roofed

  building that had become their Inn.

  Quill twisted around in her seat and looked up the

  hill. The Inn at Hemlock Falls sat glowing in the early

  autumn sun. The stone walls were a welcoming creamy

  gold. The sight of the velvet lawns sweeping to the lip

  of the waterfall and the inviting sprawl of the stone

  buildings lifted her spirits, as it always did. The yellow-

  green leaves of the surrounding trees were the first signs

  of true autumn to come; in a few weeks, the entire place

  would be cupped in a riot of red, orange, and yellow.

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  Claudia Bishop

  She became aware of warm breath on her cheek. It

  smelled of peanut butter.

  “What’re you looking at?” Quincy demanded.

  “My sister and I own that Inn up there. I like to look

  at it in the sunshine.”

  Quincy leaned over her shoulder, his sticky hand on

  her bare arm. “In what?”

  Quill blinked.

  “What’s it in?” Quincy said impatiently.

  “An Inn is a sort of small hotel. We have twenty-

  seven rooms. Guests come and stay with us. My sister is

  the chef. Cook, I mean.”

  “I know what a chef is,” Quincy said. The word “stupid” hung in the air again. “Like a cook, right? Only it costs more.” He blinked at her. His eyes were very blue.

  “Are you the big sister?”

  “Yes,” Quill admitted. “Do you have a big sister?”

  “Yeah.” Quincy settled back into his seat. “She’s

  stupid.”

  Conversation languished. The van rolled smoothly

  down Route 15. In this part of New York, wine had supplanted much of the more traditional farming. Fields of heavily fruited grapevines alternated with acres of corn

  and soybean. They passed a buggy drawn by a horse

  sweating in the mild heat, an Amish farmer at the reins.

  A clutch of draft horses drowsed outside a shabby red

  barn.

  Something in the tired posture of one of the old

  mares caught her interest, and Quill pulled the sketchbook she always carried with her from her purse and began to draw. The scent of peanut butter drew her from her absorption.

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  9

  “You draw pretty good,” Quincy said, his chin digging into her right shoulder. He gazed critically at the sweeps of charcoal. “I could do that, I bet.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Quill said equably.

  “That horse looks pretty sad.”

  “Do you think so?” Quill was mildly flattered. It was

  one thing to get insightful reviews from the critic of Art

  Today (which her paintings did, frequently), quite another to get them from a six-year-old. “You’re a pretty noticing kind of guy.”

  Quincy looked smug. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  Quill went back to her sketch.

  Quincy rose onto his knees and looked at the van

  from back to front, frowning in a challenging way. He

  poked Quill in the ribs.

  “Please don’t poke me, Quincy.”

  “I thought maybe you didn’t notice that Mrs. Kowalski has a zit on her cheek.”

  Quill took a breath, let it out, and went back to her

  sketch. She shaded the hollows under the mare’s eyes.

  Quincy resumed his eagle-eyed perusal of the van. He

  grabbed the top of the stick of charcoal and wiggled it

  back and forth.

  “Quincy.” Quill dug into her purse for her eraser.

  “Please do not do that again.”

  “I thought maybe you didn’t notice that Mrs.

  Heldegger wears a wig.” He paused. “I guess it’s on account of she’s bald.”

  Six-year-old boys have piercing voices. Quincy’s

  was more piercing than most. It cut through the general

  babble like the “wrong” buzzer on a game show. Mrs.

  Heldegger, a totally blameless school aide who indeed

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  Claudia Bishop

  wore a wig due to female pattern baldness, flushed a

  painful shade of red.

  “Stop that,” Quill hissed.


  Quincy scowled. “I was just noticing, like you said I

  should.”

  “I said no such thing.” Quill avoided Mrs. Heldegger’s reproachful eye.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you DID DID DID!”

  “For heaven’s sake, Quill!” Maria Kowalski cast a

  worried look in the rearview mirror.

  The van took a sharp right, and bumped down a dirt

  road. “Look, Quincy,” Quill said desperately, “see that

  nice big sign? With the nice bright pink pig painted on

  it? We’re here! At Heavenly Hogg’s Pig Farm. There’ll

  be a lot of great animals to notice here.”

  Quincy’s snarl was full of contempt. “Even a bad noticer can notice a big fat pig right in front of your face.”

  The van came to a halt in an asphalt parking lot. The

  lot was immediately south of a series of long, low red

  barns. A bricked pathway ran beneath a post-and-beam

  archway up to a white clapboard farmhouse. The front

  door opened, and a large weathered man in rubber boots

  stomped down the path to the bus. The wind shifted.

  Quill caught the odor of pig. Maria Kowalski waved

  both arms and hollered, “Halloo, Bernie,” and the rubber-

  booted man hallooed back and shouted, “Get them little

  guys lined right up, will ya?”

  *

  *

  *

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  11

  “This here,” Bernie Hamm said some twenty minutes

  later, “is the weaner bin.”

  Quill headed the line of curious first graders. Maria

  Kowlaski brought up the rear. There were five stops

  on the pig farm tour. The weaner bin was the fourth.

  Quill was fascinated in spite of herself. The farm was

  clean, bright, and well swept. The pigs were healthy and

  happy.

  The first stop had been a gulp-inducing view of

  Hamlet, the farm’s prize boar. Hamlet, Bernie proudly

  informed them, weighed upward of a thousand pounds.

  The animal took up the better part of an eight-by-ten

  pen, and responded with a friendly grunt when Bernie

  scratched his back with a stick. The second stop was a

  straw-filled pen three times the size of the first, occupied by three pregnant sows. A hand-lettered sign listed their names: Daisy, Maybelle, and Gloria. Gloria had a

  perky checked bow tied at the base of her tail. Next was

  the birthing pen, with three more sows lying peacefully

  on their sides, each suckling what looked like way too

  many little piglets for any mother to handle. The fourth

  was the weaner bin, filled with several dozen scampering gilts that had given up mother’s milk for mash.

  The first graders hung over the plywood wall in an

  impatiently shifting row. The little pigs scampered merrily around the pen, rooting between the slats on the floor with happy grunts. Bernie Hamm slung one

  booted leg over the low barricade, scooped up a small

  pink specimen, and tucked it under his arm. The kids

  crowded around him, scratching the piglet’s nose and

  rubbing its little ears. It made Quill feel quite sentimen

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  tal. Her sister might be right. Children could add a lot to

  one’s emotional life.

  “And this here’s the cooler.” Bernie took a left turn

  down the graveled aisle. Quill hurried to catch up,

  Quincy at her heels. The rest of the children straggled

  behind, still enraptured by the piglets. Bernie came to a

  halt, a radiant smile of pride on his face. “Just installed

  ’er last month, Quill,” he said. “Big improvement in the

  fridge we had here before.”

  “It’s a cooler.”

  “Yep. She’ll hold forty carcasses at once.”

  Quincy pushed his way between Quill and Bernie

  and flattened his nose against the glass. “Hey!” he said.

  “I’m noticing something right now!” He looked up at

  Quill with a happy sigh. “There’s a lady in there with

  the pig guts!”

  Quill gazed intently at the row of carcasses through

  the frosted glass door. She took a deep breath. Then she

  spun around and grabbed Quincy by the shoulders. She

  shoved him in Maria’s direction. “Tell Mrs. Kowalski to

  get everybody back on the bus.”

  Quincy opened his mouth to protest. Quill looked at

  him. He turned without a word and trotted back to the

  rest of the class.

  Bernie removed his John Deere tractor cap,

  scratched his head, and shoved it firmly back onto his

  skull. “Now what was that all about? Most of these kids

  are farm kids, Quill. Ain’t none of ’em not seen a carcass before.”

  Quill turned her back to the cooler and took several

  deep breaths. “Not that kind of carcass, Bernie.”

  “What?”

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  13

  “That’s Lila Longstreet lying on the floor in there.”

  Bernie paled. He turned and peered shortsightedly

  through the glass door. Then he threw the door open and

  stepped in. He stepped out again, his face the color of

  goat cheese. “Oh migosh.”

  “We need to call the sheriff,” Quill said steadily. “Is

  there any hope? I mean, should we . . . ?”

  Bernie shook his head dazedly. “Head’s smashed

  like a durn pumpkin.” He ran one huge hand over his

  face. “Oh migosh. You say you know her?”

  “She was a guest at the Inn.” Quill paused. “But she

  checked out yesterday.”

  Bernie nodded heavily. “I guess she did, Quill. I

  guess she did.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “How’d you know it was Lila Longstreet?” Meg demanded. “Nope. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. The hair.”

  “What was left of it,” Quill said with a shudder.

  “How do you suppose she got that particular shade

  of white-blonde anyhow?”

  “That’s a really stupid question.” Quill put her head

  down on her desk and closed her eyes. “She bleached it,

  of course.”

  “Sorry. I thought maybe that’d be sort of a diversionary tactic.” Meg made a face. She’d changed shampoos that morning. The new product made her short dark hair

  stand up around her face like a blown dandelion. It was

  warm for September, and she hadn’t yet given up her

  summer attire of shorts and t-shirt. Between her ruffled

  hair and her clothes, she looked about six years old.

  Quill shuddered.

  “I probably just made you think about it more. Do

  you want to talk about it? I mean, any more than you

  have already? Which was just about enough, if you ask

  me. But I’m here for you, sis.”

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  15

  “I absolutely do not want to talk about it.”

  Meg curled herself into the corner of the couch that

  faced Quill’s desk. Quill loved its fabric. It was bronze

  with splendidly bold chrysanthemums. At the moment,

  she wished the flowers weren’t so blood-colored.

  “It was awful. The worst part was keeping the kids

  from figuring anything out. No. The worst part was finding poor Mrs. Longstreet. No. It was all the worst.” Sh
e took a deep breath. It was hard to get enough air.

  “Do the pet food people know about it yet?” Meg

  asked after a long moment.

  “The pet food people,” Quill repeated. She clutched

  her forehead. “Oh, shoot. The pet food people.”

  Lila Longstreet was—had been—the executive secretary of the tiny International Association of Pet Food Providers. The IAPFP convention had occupied several

  of the suites at the Inn for the past two days.

  “Someone must have told them,” Quill said hopefully. “Davy Kiddermeister is supposed to take care of that, right?”

  Meg made another face. Davy Kiddermeister was

  sheriff of Hemlock Falls now that Quill’s husband,

  Myles McHale, had accepted an investigator’s job with

  the federal government. Davy wasn’t a bad sheriff, just

  slow to perform the more distasteful law enforcement

  duties. Since most of the police work in a village the

  size of Hemlock Falls was pretty routine, nobody held

  this reluctance against him. But there was little likelihood that he’d broken the news of Lila Longstreet’s death to the IAPFP’s president, Olivia Oberlie, a mere

  two hours after Quill had discovered the body. If he’d

  done anything at all about it, he’d sent a letter.

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  Claudia Bishop

  “Everyone knows Lila checked out yesterday, so no

  one’s expecting to hear from her right away,” Quill said

  tentatively. “Maybe I don’t need to rush out and tell

  Olivia just yet. Lila made such a fuss about leaving yesterday that even Mike knew she’d left and he,” she added a little crossly, “wouldn’t notice if we’d lost the

  roof. Even though it’s his job to notice if we’ve lost the

  roof. Which brings up another thing, Meg. We’re going

  to have a problem with the insurance inspection this

  year. I don’t think we can put off redoing the wiring any

  longer . . .”

  “Quill.”

  “. . . and the estimate from Peterson’s Roofing is just

  outsized. I was thinking . . .”

  “Quill! Could you get to the point, here?”

  “I was!” Quill, crosser than ever, shoved the stack of

  current bills into the top drawer of her desk and

  slammed the drawer shut. “Okay. Fine. Forget about the

  budget. We can forget about paychecks this month, too.

  Of course, if the wiring blows and the lights go out we

  can forget about the guests, which makes the paychecks

  moot, so who cares, anyway?”