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  “Yep.”

  “Please don’t talk with your mouth full, Davy.” There were many advantages to being the fond mother of a two-year-old. Chief among them was Quill’s newly discovered ability to make polite demands. “And ‘yep,’ it’s just Le-Vasque’s unsubstantiated word, or ‘yep,’ there’s a witness?”

  The swinging doors to the dining room banged open, and Dina Muir, Quill’s best (and only) receptionist walked in. She was followed by a slim, pretty brunette, who looked vaguely familiar.

  Dina bent a purposeful eye on the platter of blueberries and headed over to the prep counter. “Hey, Quill. Hey, Meg.” She gave Davy a pleased smile. “And what are you doing here? We’re still on for the movies tonight, I hope?”

  “Yep.”

  Quill resisted the impulse to yank the liver pâté away from Davy and dump it into the disposal, along with the fistful of blueberries Dina was cramming into her mouth.

  Dina’s long brown hair was drawn back in a jaunty ponytail. She adjusted her red-rimmed spectacles by resettling them on her nose with a forefinger and beamed. “Great. I’ve been looking forward to the movies all week. It’s been a real zoo, here. Those WARP people must have robbed a bank somewhere, and they’re trying to spend all their ill-gotten gains at once. Do you know what they’re going to do tonight? They ordered four stretch limos from . . .”

  Quill held up her hand. “Can we talk about this later? We have kind of a situation here.” She smiled apologetically at the brunette, who looked anxious. “Hi! I’m Sarah Quilliam.”

  The brunette nodded and bit her lip. “I know. I mean, I’ve heard of you. You’re the artist, right? I’ve seen some of your work at MoMA.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Clarissa Sparrow.”

  “I think I’ve seen you before,” Quill said.

  Clarissa looked even more anxious.

  “But I can’t quite . . .”

  “We’ve got to go,” Davy said abruptly. “Thanks for the lunch, Meg. It was great.” He stood up and unclipped the handcuffs attached to his belt. “You ready?”

  “For cripes’ sake,” Meg said. “You aren’t serious.”

  “A warrant’s a warrant,” Davy said. “You give Howie a call, Quill, and we’ll get her back on remand in no time, but like I said, we’ve got to go.”

  “This is not going to happen,” Quill said firmly. “I am not allowing my sister to be dragged off to the county lockup by you or anyone else. For all you know, LeVasque could have made up this whole thing? Where’s your proof that my sister threatened to kill him? Where’s the witness?”

  Davy jerked his thumb in Dina’s direction.

  Quill whirled and stared incredulously at Dina. Dina paled, bit her thumb, and said, “Oh my God.”

  “Don’t you oh-my-God, me, Dina Muir! You told Davy you saw my sister threaten this bozo?”

  “Um,” Dina said.

  “Um! That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself! Um?!”

  “I didn’t think . . .”

  “You most certainly did not think!”

  “Oh my God,” Dina repeated feebly.

  Quill turned back to Davy, who had clipped one hand-cuff around Meg’s wrist and was about to fasten the other. “You get those things off my sister!”

  “Thing is,” Davy said reasonably, “you can’t expect someone like Meg to go quietly.”

  “She’s not going anywhere!”

  Davy sighed. “Look. I don’t like this any better than you do. But what am I supposed to do here? I’ve got this warrant. A threat to commit grievous bodily harm is a major felony. I’m supposed to give you guys a break? No way, Quill. I’m sworn to uphold the law.” He glanced sidelong at Quill’s furious face and said pleadingly, “Now what do you suppose the sheriff would do?”

  Clarissa spoke up suddenly. “I thought you were the sheriff.”

  “He means Myles,” Quill said. “My husband. Myles was sheriff of Hemlock Falls when we moved here twelve years ago, and nobody seems to be able to forget it. Including you, Davy. Only now is when you should forget that you are. Sheriff, that is. As for what Myles would do.” She grabbed her hair with both hands. “I would not let him arrest my sister!”

  Davy gave Meg a gentle nudge toward the back door. “Call Mr. Murchison. As soon as I have a legal remand order, I’ll bring her right back home. Okay?”

  “Meg!” Quill shouted as her sister’s slight form disappeared out the back door. “I’ll be down to get you out in two seconds.”

  “Call up Bjarne!” Meg shouted back. “Tell him to save the tomatoes!”

  4

  ~Carottes LeVasque~

  For four personnes

  2 pounds elegantly small carrots

  4 tablespoons olive oil

  ⅔ cup water

  4 tablespoons Paysanne LeVasque*

  Parsley

  Rinse, peel, and slice the carrots. Sauté in olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt. Cook over low flame for ten minutes, shaking pan occasionally. Add my country spice mix (Paysanne LeVasque) and salt and pepper to taste. Cook covered for twenty minutes. Sprinkle attractively with parsley and serve warm.

  *Paysanne LeVasque may be purchased from my website.

  —From Brilliance in the Kitchen, B. LeVasque

  For a long moment, Clarissa Sparrow, Dina, and Quill just stood and looked at each other. The little impasse was broken by Max, who made an abortive lunge at the remains of the liver pâté on Davy’s plate. Dina hauled him off the counter by the scruff of the neck.

  “Just give me two seconds here,” Quill said. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and found Howie Murchison’s office number on speed dial. He wasn’t in. She glanced up at the kitchen clock. Well after six o’clock. Doreen would be giving Jack his mashed carrots and tofu right about now. And Howie would be at the Croh Bar with Miriam Doncaster.

  She tried his cell and got his voice mail message. Then she tried Marge, asked her to call Betty Hall and relay the message to Howie to call her as soon as possible, and set the phone down.

  “You,” she said to Dina. “You are a rat fink.”

  Dina put both hands over her face. “Do you think you should call Jerry?” she said, her voice muffled.

  “Jerry Grimsby?” Quill glanced up at the clock again. The hands hadn’t moved much. Why did she feel as if she’d been stuck in this kitchen filled with lunatics for hours? “Jerry’s restaurant opens at seven for dinner in the summer. He’ll be prepping right now.”

  “Maybe he can get somebody to take her some food or something. Or a file.”

  Clarissa Sparrow cleared her throat. “Excuse me. Jerry Grimsby? You’re talking about the guy who runs L’Esperance over in Ithaca?”

  Quill nodded. “He and Meg . . .” She fluttered her hand. “You know.”

  “He’s going to be so pissed off at me,” Dina mourned.

  “He is?” Quill muttered. “I’m not exactly swinging from the chandeliers, here.” Her cell phone shrilled the opening bars to “Rondo alla Turca.” The little window said Howie. Quill picked the phone up as she said, “Go into my office, Dina. Call Bjarne and ask him to cover for Meg here in the kitchen. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Howie, thank goodness, wasn’t a tut-tutter. But he reminded Quill that he couldn’t represent Meg himself, since he’d be the justice called upon to rule on the request for remand. “You know I’ve taken on a junior partner,” he said. In the background, Quill heard the cheerful din that meant Happy Hour at the Croh Bar was in full swing. “His name is Justin Alvarez. I’ll send him down to the clink and get things rolling.”

  She thanked him, shut the cell phone off, and pushed open the doors to the dining room.

  One of the three parties that had made dinner reservations was already seated. Quill saw with approval that Kathleen had a tray of drinks ready for them. The couple sat at the table nearest the floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the waterfall. The part of Quill’s brain that was perpetually on innkeeper alert noted that the cadet blue
carpeting could probably last another year, and that the deep cream table-cloths really looked very nice with the pale violet blue of the hydrangeas that made up the centerpieces.

  Quill waved to Kathleen as she passed by, then paused and greeted the dinner guests. At a guess, they were in their mid-sixties, and from the rose corsage worn by the woman, they had come to the inn for a celebration.

  “Welcome to the Inn at Hemlock Falls,” Quill said warmly. “Is this your first time with us?”

  They nodded. “Couldn’t get in at Bonne Goutè,” the woman said. “And it’s our fortieth wedding anniversary. Well, it’s tomorrow, actually, and the kids have this big party planned, but I said to Frank, wouldn’t it be nice if we had dinner, just the two of us?”

  “And I said, it sure would,” Frank said heartily. “Don’t mind being here at all.” He waved the menu at her. “It’s cheaper than that Bonne Goutè place, too.”

  “Well,” Quill said. “There is that. Kathleen, please see that a bottle of the good champagne’s brought to this table will you? And take your time about deciding,” she added kindly.

  “Little delay in the kitchen,” Kathleen offered. She was as sturdily built as her brother, but where Davy Kiddermeister was fair-haired and blushed at the drop of the hat, she was dark-haired and sallow. The only familial resemblance was their pale blue eyes. “Chef’s in jail for a bit. But we’ve got the backup headed this way speedy quick. I’ll see to that champagne, Quill.”

  Quill kept her smile firmly in place as she went through the archway that led from the dining room to the reception area. With luck, the promise of free champagne would keep the fortieth-anniversary couple from scooting out the front door.

  Dina wasn’t behind the desk. Quill hoped that meant she’d gone into the office with Clarissa Sparrow and called Bjarne. She noted that the daylilies in the two hip-high Oriental vases that flanked the reception desk were due for a change, looked askance at the spindle with its stack of pink While You Were Out messages, and opened the door to her office with the feeling that this particular day better end soon, or she was going to go stark staring bonkers.

  Clarissa Sparrow stood at the window, looking out at the driveway with a hopeful expression. Dina sat on the couch. She straightened up with a guilty start as Quill came into the room and blurted, “Bjarne’s on vacation this week. Until Tuesday.”

  “Oh, no!” Quill sat down behind her desk with a sigh. “I forgot. Oh, phooey.”

  “And I’m sorry about the stuff with Meg . . . you know. Ratting her out to Davy.” She paused, then offered, “Your hair’s falling all over a bit.”

  Quill’s hair was always out of control, just like everything else. She pulled it on top of her head in a loose top-knot when she got up in the morning, and by this time of day it was always halfway down her back. She twisted it back up and wound the scrunchie twice around the roots. “Well,” she said. “Now that I can actually see, things look better.”

  “I’ll quit if you want,” Dina said. “It’s just that I didn’t think! I was in the middle of going over the gestation periods for my copepods and my mind was elsewhere.”

  “Dina’s a graduate student in limnology at Cornell,” Quill said in response to Clarissa’s puzzled expression. “Limnology’s the study of freshwater lakes, which we have plenty of around here, as you know. I don’t know what copepods are.”

  “Lake organisms,” Dina said. “A freshwater crustacean of the subclass Copepoda. I keep telling you.”

  “Whatever,” Quill said. “Let’s get back to the rat-finkery.”

  “Well, Davy showed up and I thought he was just, like, asking me about some gossip he’d heard, and then he made me write it out and sign it and I thought, oh, heck. I feel just awful about this! I honestly didn’t mean to get Meg into trouble.” Two large tears rolled down Dina’s cheeks.

  “It could be worse,” Quill said kindly.

  “How?” Dina sobbed.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Quill said vaguely. “We could be in the middle of a forest fire or something. Here.” She pulled a tissue from the box on her desk and leaned over to hand it to Dina. “Look. I’ve handled the kitchen before, and Doreen is with Jack, as usual, and we only have two other bookings for dinner. So I can cope. There’s just that one anniversary couple in the dining room right now. But you’ll have to stay on at the reception desk, Dina. No date with Davy.”

  “That’s only fair,” Dina said eagerly. “And do you want me to make up a packet to send to Meg? Food and whatever? Some nice soap?”

  Quill resisted the impulse to clutch at her hair again. “She’ll be back before she needs to take a shower, I’m sure. I called Howie.”

  “I could give you a hand in the kitchen, if you like.” Clarissa Sparrow turned away from the window. “I’m a chef.”

  “Oh my God,” Dina said. “I almost forgot you were there. Quill, this is Clarissa Sparrow. Clarissa, this is my boss, Sarah Quilliam.”

  “You’re a chef?” Quill said. “Of course. Is that where I’ve seen you before? On the tour of Bonne Goutè?” She closed her eyes, trying to remember. “You’re pastry, right?” But there was something else. Clarissa wasn’t beautiful, exactly, but she was distinctive. She was slim, maybe too slim, with angular cheekbones, dark hair, and, like Meg, clear gray eyes.

  “Right. But I trained at CB . . . Cordon Bleu . . . and I can handle three entrees, no problem.”

  “That’d be just great,” Quill said. “But I hate to impose.” She hesitated. “Of course, we’d be glad to reimburse you for your time.”

  “We’ll see,” Clarissa said. “It’s my awful boss that’s put you into this situation, after all. But maybe we can talk about this in the kitchen? I’d better get started.”

  Quill led the way out of the office and almost collided with Kathleen in the entryway to the dining room.

  “Hi, Quill, hi, Dina.” Her gaze slid curiously over Clarissa Sparrow, but she said, “I’ve been looking for you guys. I gave the VanderMolens another bottle of champagne and a cheese plate, so they’re feeling no pain, but the Adriansen party just got here and they don’t drink. So they want food.” She glanced over her shoulder at the party of four seated next to the wine rack. “I think they’re serious eaters,” she said in a whisper. “You know, foodies. They asked if we had a seasonal menu. And they’re getting a little cross.”

  “You know what?” Clarissa said. “I can handle this. People like that came into my rest . . . that is, I’m familiar with this type of customer.” She smiled. Until she’d smiled, Quill hadn’t registered how sad her expression was.

  “Sure,” Quill said. “I’ll just check things out in the kitchen. We have a small staff on Mondays, but there is a staff. Kathleen will give you a menu, and we list the evening specials on the blackboard. I’ll wait for you in there.”

  Clarissa nodded and made her way gracefully past the empty tables to the Adriansens and their guests. Something, either the challenge of cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen or the chance to talk to the guests, seemed to have pulled her out of herself. In a matter of moments, she had two women in the party smiling and the men nodding self-importantly.

  “Lucky she was here,” Dina said. “It could have been a disaster. Not,” she added hastily, “that you aren’t a good cook, Quill.”

  “Why is she here, Dina?”

  “Her cat. She lost her cat. Well, she didn’t lose it, exactly; it ran away after M. LeVasque threw it out the back door of the cooking academy. She’s put up signs down in the village and they’ve got that Lost, Stolen, or Strayed thing on the radio . . .”

  Quill put her hand up. “Stop. Go back to the reception desk. Call upstairs and see if Doreen needs anything to eat. Jack should be fast asleep by now, but if he isn’t, come and get me. Answer the phones. Take messages. Book rooms. Do your job. Stay there until the dining room closes or unless Jack needs me.”

  “Okay. What if I hear something about Clarissa’s cat?”

  Quill clapped
her hand to her forehead. “The cat. Is it a big orange cat?”

  “Clarissa says it’s a Maine coon cat. I guess it’s huge.”

  “Okay. I think it’s under the hydrangea on the beach. Call Mike. Ask him to get a handful of liver bits from Doreen.”

  “Doreen has liver bits?”

  “Never mind about the liver bits. Ask Mike to get Max’s dog cage and ask him to go down to the beach and lure the cat into the carrier. And then Mike can bring it up to the kitchen.”

  “Clarissa’s cat’s under the hydrangea bush? I’ll tell her right now! She was so worried about that cat.”

  “Let’s see if it’s still there. If it isn’t, she’ll be even more worried. If it is, problem solved. Let’s check it out before we get her hopes up.”

  “Okay.” Dina sighed. “I guess this means no movie with Davy, but that’s okay. This is pretty much an emergency. I’ll let you know if Mike finds the cat.”

  “Good.”

  Dina scanned Quill’s expression and said wisely, “You want me to go away and get all this rolling.”

  “Sooner than now,” Quill agreed.

  Clarissa joined her as she walked into the kitchen.

  “Think you can handle this okay?”

  Clarissa smiled. “I’d say ‘piece of cake’ except that good cake’s never easy. This will be easy.”

  “I hope so, for all our sakes. We’ve got a dishwasher and prep person on hand at the moment. I’ll introduce you.”

  Meg recruited graduate students from the nearby Cornell School of Hotel Administration to handle the basic-skills jobs, and the two nervous kids jumped to attention as Quill and Clarissa came in.

  “We heard Meg’s in jail!” the girl said.

  “It’s Devon, isn’t it?” Quill said to the tall blond boy holding a pot scrubber. She turned to the slim girl with the tomato sieve. “And you’re Mallory. And yes, Meg’s in jail, but she’s just visiting. Like Monopoly.” Quill shut her eyes briefly. Her two universes collided all the time. Mother and manager. “Never mind.”