A Puree of Poison Read online

  “You learn something new every time,” said Quill firmly, “especially on the all-day tour. You can catch that one tomorrow.”

  “I sense that you may be backing off from your leadership commitment, Sarah. 1 am disappointed. Ladies? Good day to you.”

  Quill watched him march off with dismay. “I think I hurt his feelings.”

  “I think you saved his life,” said Meg, her eye on Doreen.

  Quill turned to Doreen, “No,” she said.

  Doreen’s eyes widened in cagey innocence, which gave her the look of a startled rooster. “No terlits?”

  “You know what I mean. No mops left jammed under Mr. Stoker’s door in the morning. No slippery puddles of soapy water on the bathroom floor. No foreign substances in his food. And don’t you dare call any religious organizations to convert him. Understood? Now. What about the plumbing?”

  Doreen blinked. “Petey says we gotta pump the septic.”

  “How long will it take? When will he get here? The Kipling people are due to check in at four o’clock. And most of them are booked into the first-floor rooms.” She thought a moment. “Maybe we can move the Kipling people to the third floor.”

  Doreen brightened. “We could throw out this Stoker. He’s in the Shaker suite. Put a couple of the Kiplings in there.”

  “Mr. Stoker booked the Shaker suite for three months. And paid in advance. We can’t afford to offend a guest like that Doreen.”

  “Up the proletariat,” muttered Doreen. Quill groaned. Marx, after Amway, would be too much. “Doreen!”

  “If they’re into Kipling, they at least have pretensions to the literary,” Meg intervened. She waved the tattered Trumpet! “We can search the trashcans all over town and get them copies of this rag. They’ll be laughing so hard they won’t think twice about toilets. Come to think of it, it’d be a good investment for you, Doreen. Benny Pasquale’s dad has probably thrown most of them into the incinerator by now. They’ll be collector’s copies by next week and worth a bunch. I can’t believe the guy will have the nerve to publish another issue.”

  “Oncet a week,” said Doreen.

  “Petey’s going to have to come once a week?” said Quill, once again preoccupied with plumbing. “How much is this going to cost us? I’m seriously thinking of getting the air-conditioning people in this afternoon. And they want half of the payment for the installation up front.”

  “That thing.” Doreen pointed a callused thumb in the direction of the Trumpet! “Comes out oncet a week. Mr. Con way told me that himself.”

  Meg raised her eyebrows. “Hedrick Conway? The publisher of this piece of junk? I didn’t know you knew him. Have you met him before?”

  “You ain’t?”

  “Nobody’s met him, far as I know.” Quill thought a moment. “Howie Murchison must have. He handled the real estate closing for the Nickerson building.”

  Doreen shrugged. “He come out here to look for you a while ago.”

  “Hedrick Conway did? Then where is he?” Quill scanned the Adirondack chairs. She was familiar with all the guests and they all belonged there. Hot, but registered.

  “Right here, Mrs. Quilliam.” A very tall, banana-nosed man unfolded from behind the mass of sweet peas like a stork coming up for air. A lemon seed stuck to his forehead like an afterthought. “Ladies? Can I quote you on why you refuse to serve the President?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Meg gripped the sides of her wicker chair, threw her head back, and screamed. Judging from the cheerful look on her face, it was a satisfying scream. “And,” said Meg, “you can quote me on that.” She stood up, brushed off her shorts, and relied her T-shirt, exposing another few inches of flat stomach. Hedrick’s pale blue eyes bulged. “Quill? I’ll take this stuff back to the kitchen. Doreen and I will take care of the menu planning. I’ll turn the guest list over to Dina. That leaves you”—Meg gave her a look loaded with significance—”to handle things here.” She nodded briskly to Hedrick Conway, swept the files off the table, and marched out of the gazebo, trampling the tattered remnants of the Trumpet! underfoot.

  Quill, trying to recall just when she’d pitched the lemon seed over the side of the gazebo, had come to the reluctant conclusion that Hedrick had heard all; it had occurred far too early in their derisive discussion about the Trumpet! to make social niceties credible. With a baleful eye, she watched her sister cross the lawn: the same conclusion had obviously occurred immediately to Meg. At least, her own decision to discover what lay behind Hedrick Conway’s promised mini mall expose had been thoughtful, determined, and unvoiced. Just like Lew Archer, the least verbal of all the great detectives.

  “Quite a place you got here.” Conway shifted from one very large foot to the other, crushing a particularly vivid spray of crimson sweet peas. The heat had plastered his coarse blond hair to his forehead. He was thin, except for a round ball of stomach. A white cotton shirt laundered far past its useful life fitted badly over his sloping shoulders. Baggy pale brown chinos and soft white suede shoes made him look like a marshmallow handled by too many Boy Scouts.

  “Yeah,” said Quill laconically, in true Archer style. “I’m Sarah Quilliam. That’s Quilliam with two fs. What’s up?” This, Quill realized even as she said it, was rude even for Lew Archer. And, to paraphrase what one vice presidential candidate had once said to another, she was no Robert Mitchum, she was the manager of a public hostelry, and constrained to be hospitable. “It’s very nice to meet you. Can I offer you something cool to drink?”

  “Wouldn’t mind a glass of iced tea.” Ignoring the graveled path that ran parallel to the sweet peas, he trampled through the plants to the gazebo entrance, thudded into the shelter itself, and sat in the chair Meg had so sensibly vacated minutes before. “The glasses are dirty,” he pointed out.

  “Well,” said Quill inadequately. “This is ... is there ... I mean, did... Let me get you a fresh glass.” She turned and looked for Kathleen, who was nowhere in sight. “The waitress will be out in a bit.”

  A brief silence reigned. Quill, momentarily discomposed, and in search of a conversational gambit, remembered that Hedrick wasn’t solely responsible for the Trumpet! “Are your mother and sister with you today?”

  “Nope, nope. They went to Syracuse. Shopping. You know gals. I was just roaming the streets of the village, looking for news. Carry this with me, at all times.” He rummaged in the pocket of his chinos and withdrew a thick red spiral notebook. “It’s all in here. The goods book. Not the Good Book, y’see, but the goods book. Get it?”

  Quill got it. She eyed the book with a high degree of interest. “You keep your story ideas in there?”

  “It’s my bible.” He descended to the practical with an abrupt change of manner. “Also, I stopped by to see if you got your free complimentary issue. Thought I’d better introduce myself, seeing as how people probably would like to know the person that runs something like the Trumpet!”

  “Urn,” said Quill. Under her feet the Trumpet!’s second page fluttered in the breeze from the Falls, the picture of Hedrick’s disgraced loafer flapping back and forth like a small flag. Hedrick tsk’d in distress and picked it up.

  “This didn’t happen in delivery?”

  “The wind,” Quill improvised, “blew it under the chair.”

  “You probably didn’t read the old Gazette until now.” He smoothed the paper with a loving hand. “I told Ma, we’re going to make some changes. Time this town had a real paper, tackling real issues. Take this f instance.” He began to read aloud. “ ‘It was dark and stormy when this reporter—’ “

  “Yes,” said Quill. “The leash law issue.” She smiled in what she hoped was a winning way, and perjured herself without a qualm, something Archie Goodwin did frequently in the pursuit of justice. “I was just fascinated by the paper. This whole approach is such a departure from the way Paul Rosen used to run the Gazette. Especially the story you’re going to write about the mini-mall.”

  Hedrick smiled complacently
. “Made you sit up and take notice, huh? That’s the mark of a good story. I suppose they know who I am in this town, all right. You see the police blotter?”

  “You’re going to make that a usual practice, are you?”

  “It’s Hemlock Falls first. That sheriff, what’s his name?”

  “Myles McHale.”

  “Yeah. Gave me a little lip about printing it. But I know my rights.” He shook his head and laughed genially. “These small-town police. You gotta know how to handle ‘em.”

  “I don’t know that I’d call Sheriff McHale small town, precisely. Did you get the small-town impression because of his reaction to the story you’re going to write about the mini-mall?”

  Hedrick ignored this gambit. “Well. You been around a bit, like I have, you’d know what I mean.” He narrowed his eyes at the sprawling building. “How big is this place, anyway?”

  “This place? You mean the Inn? Twenty-seven rooms.”

  “Occupancy rate?”

  “I’d have to ask John Raintree about that,” said Quill, a little stiffly, “our business manager.”

  “Reason I asked is, with twenty-seven rooms, you’d probably want a good slug of papers every week. What can I put you down for, say, forty copies a week?”

  “Forty?” Quill decided it wasn’t the heat, but Hedrick’s goatlike leaping from crag to conversational crag that was making her dizzy.

  “Good business like this—if it is a good business, and you’re not just blowing smoke like a lot of small-timers do—you’d want a copy for each room plus lobby copies, plus one for you and a couple of the staff.”

  “Well,” said Quill cleverly, “we might think about a subscription—maybe even two—if we had an idea about upcoming features. For example, this story about the mini—”

  “Quill? Meg sent out some refreshments.” Kathleen Kiddermeister stepped into the gazebo, tray in hand. “And she said to tell you she’ll think about die sushi, but she’s got another way to impress this art critic guy.”

  Quill, normally glad to see Kathleen, was frustrated at misinterpretation of her subtle interrogation. She jumped to her feet and grabbed at the tray. “Thanks, Kath. You didn’t need to do this. I’ll take care of it.”

  Kathleen held on to the tray and dropped one eyelid in a surreptitious wink. Clearly, Hedrick Conway and his lunatic journalism had been a topic of discussion in the kitchen. “You just sit down, Quill, and let me clear this for you.” With the deft efficiency that made her one of the Inn’s best waitresses, she put the pitcher and the used glasses on the tray, folded the remains of the Trumpet! into her apron pocket, and set down a bowl of strawberries, plates, and a fresh pitcher of tea.

  “So,” said Quill. “Thanks.”

  Kathleen, curiosity all over her freckled face, said, “About the plumbing?”

  “Mr. Peterson’s here. He’s taking care of it. So. Thanks.”

  “You know the toilets in 101 and 102 are like totally backed up.”

  “Plumbing problem?” said Hedrick alertly. “Toilets, huh?” He began scribbling and muttered, “Inn at Hemlock Fall Evacuated.” He repeated this with a pleased air, then regarded the waterfall. “Any chance the sewage’ll flood the Gorge? Sure there is. ‘Will Environmental Disaster Close Inn?’ ”

  “Jeez,” said Kathleen.

  Quill raised her eyebrows at Kathleen and sent her a fierce mental message—an activity recently promoted by the Reverend Dookie Shuttleworth, who was currently experimenting with extrasensory-perception sermons—to beat feet. She braced her feet against the footer at the base of the gazebo with an assumption of careless ease. “Thanks for bringing the tea and fruit out, Kathleen. I’ll be in after Mr. Conway is finished here.”

  “Nothing else I can do for you here?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Wait a minute, there, girlie.” Hedrick took in Kathleen’s soft peach uniform, her starched apron, and the loaded tray. “You a waitress?”

  Kathleen, bridling over the “girlie,” said rather tartly that, no, she was a shortstop for the New York Jets.

  “Before you were a waitress?”

  Quill stated the obvious. “The Jets don’t take women players, Mr. Conway. Kathleen’s been a waitress for six years, ever since we opened the Inn.”

  “Thought so. Hang on a bit, Mrs. Quillam. I got something to ask this little lady.” Hedrick reopened the red notebook with a flourish. The pages were much-thumbed and filled with small, surprisingly neat writing. “Got a report I’m following up on here, ma’am, about policies regarding the serving of guests. You ever been instructed not to serve some people? You know, like some political figures?”

  Kathleen blinked at Hedrick. “Refuse to serve some people?”

  “F’instance, did Mrs. Quillam here ever tell you to kick some folks out? Not to serve them?” Kathleen’s bemusement seemed to register on him and he added in an explanatory way, “Say, f instance, the President comes to Hemlock Falls. Not that he has or anything. But say that he does. Mrs. Quillam here let you serve him?”

  Quill intervened, “Mr. Conway, you’ve misinterpreted something you overheard a few minutes ago from my sister. Meg frequently overstates—”

  Hedrick held up a fleshy palm. “No fair coaching. So, Katherine, say you got the President wanting to eat in your dining room.”

  “The President’s coming to dinner?” said Kathleen. “Our President? You’re kidding! Does Davy know?”

  “Davy?” asked Hedrick with a clever air.

  “My brother. If it’s true, he’ll need to know right away.”

  “Your brother, huh?” Hedrick licked the end of his pencil. “Local political activist? What’s his name and address?”

  “The Inn’s full,” said Kathleen with dismay. “Where are we going to put the President?”

  “So you’d let your brother know, first thing,” said Hedrick. “He’s what they call a subversive, your brother?”

  “Stop!” shouted Quill. Behind her the low murmur of the guests in the Adirondack chairs came to a sudden halt. Quill controlled her voice. “Mr. Conway, Kathleen’s brother, David Kiddermeister, is Myles McHale’s chief deputy. He’d be busy with security matters if the President visited, which, Kathleen, he isn‘t scheduled to do. Go back to the kitchen.” Kathleen began to straighten the dishes on the table. Quill ignored her. “Mr. Conway, would you like some strawberries?”

  “Strawberries?” He peered suspiciously at the bowl of fruit. “They’re not canned, are they? I never eat canned food.”

  “We’ve made our reputation on the quality of our food,” she said with determined cheerfulness. “Now. You were just about to tell me all about the mini-mall story. I read all about it in this week’s Trumpet! and I can’t wait to hear more.”

  “Well, now.” Hedrick frowned. “My information’s confidential of course, but... Quillam, Quillam,” muttered Hedrick, paging through his notebook. “Sure. Here we go. Mini-mall. Chamber of Commerce. Payoffs to Mayor.” He looked up at Quill alertly. “You’re the alleged secretary of the Chamber of Commerce? Would you care to comment on the stories circulating in town about fraudulent activity in the mini-mall project?”

  “Alleged? Alleged? I am ... Mr. Conway, there is nothing fraudulent about the mini-mall project. What are your sources of information?”

  “Quillam ... denies ... involvement...” muttered Hedrick, scribbling.

  “Involvement in what! Are you referring to something specific?”

  “I’m referring to the truth, ma’am. That’s all I’m after. You involved in this mini-mall investment all by yourself?”

  “We all are,” Kathleen interrupted nervously. “Quill and John Raintree gave all us employees the chance to invest in the new boutique restaurant. Is there something wrong? Did somebody steal our money? You know what? I’ll see if I can find John. He knows all about our new restaurant there. That sound like a good idea?”

  “No,” said Quill. “Kathleen, please—”

  “R
aintree, Raintree, Raintree ... now where did I hear that name? Aha!” Hedrick held up a minatory hand, read to himself, lips moving, then looked at them with an expression Quill found incredibly sly. “He have something to do with this deal?”

  “John Raintree is our business manager. And yes, we made the decision together to invest in the mini-mall project.”

  “Raintree? That a white name?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Kathleen coughed nervously. “Quill. John’s going over the supplier bills in the office. I’ll be back with him in two seconds.” She hurried across the grass, the glasses on the tray jingling.

  “Raintree. Doesn’t sound like a white name.” He raised his eyebrows expectantly. “It’s important for a newspaperman to be accurate. First thing they teach you.”

  “John’s a member of the Onondaga tribe. He has an MBA from Cornell and he’s been with us four years. He handles our accounting and all the finances.”

  “So you don’t have a hand on the checkbook. That’s very interesting.” Hedrick made a small finicky note in his book. “Can’t say as I blame ol’ John. Don’t like to let either one of my ladies out of hand myself.”

  Quill stared at him, open-mouthed.

  “Hello? Hello?” Hedrick rapped on the table. “Are we communicating here?”

  “We’re certainly exchanging words, Mr. Conway. But I have to say, I don’t in the least understand what you’re doing. Now, if you could just explain a bit more about this mini-mall story.”

  Hedrick leaned forward. His breath was unpleasant. “I’ve got the most important job there is. To publish the best paper I can. I’m a newshound, first and foremost. Like Eddie Murrow and Ernie Pyle, which is why I have to be on the alert for news all the time. Walking the streets of this town day and night, finding the news.” He sat back, with that wild veer into the pragmatic Quill noticed before. “And I’m a publisher, which is why I have to find out about subscriptions, at least until I can find a circulation manager. You wouldn’t know anyone who’d be interested in the job, Mrs. Quillam?”