A Taste for Murder (15 page)

She sat down at the table to finish her breakfast. In a few minutes, Edward Lancashire joined her. "Ready for the big day?"
"It's not really a big day for me," Quill explained, "or Meg either. Everyone's checked in; the dining room, Lounge, and bar are all booked, and the staff knows what to do."
"It's the front-end preparation that's the toughest," said Edward.
"You'd know about that," Meg said cheerfully, as she rejoined her sister at the table. "You're not planning on dinner here tonight, are you, Edward?"
"No. I've booked a table at Renees in Ithaca. Opening day of History Week is a little too raucous for me."
"You're going to the play this afternoon, though," said Meg. "We're having a picnic. Nobody should miss the play. And you shouldn't miss my gravlax. The Scotch Bonnet salsa is fabulous."
"Oh, I think everyone will be there," said Edward Lancashire. "Mrs. Collinwood. Mr. Baumer. The delightful Ms. Schmidt. I've eaten at her restaurant, by the way. It's quite good for American diner food. Perhaps even Mr. Raintree will join us?
I haven't seen him around lately." "He had some personal errands to run," said Quill hastily. "But I'm sure he'll be there, too. Nobody within fifty miles of Hemlock Falls misses The Trial of Goody Martin."
Seeing the crowds that afternoon, Quill revised her estimate upward; tour buses brought day trippers from Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse. Myles and his men cordoned off Main Street, and allowed cars to park on the shoulder of Route 96 outside the central business district.
The Kiwanis beer tent did a thriving business, the Lions hot dog stand ran out of buns at two o'clock, and the Fireman's Auxiliary kiosk posted a triumphant SOLD OUT sign on the counter that had displayed wooden lawn ornaments of geese, pigs, cats, ducks, cows, and the rear ends of women in long print dresses. Gil's Buick dealership always took a booth for History Days. Quill, intent on finding out more from Tom Peterson about John and Gil, caught a glimpse of the awning over the late-model car that the dealership always planted in front of the booth. She wound her way through the tourists to it. Tom Peterson greeted her with a wave and a smile. Nadine sat under the awning, hands folded in her lap. Freddie, unexpectedly garrulous, was there, too.
"Missed you in church this morning," said Tom, who was a deacon at Dookie's church.
"John's out of town for a bit, and I got caught up," Quill apologized. "You know how it is in the summer. John's due back today, though. So I'll be sure to try next week."
"I wouldn't miss it, if I were you," said Freddie. "Something sure lit a fire under the Reverend this morning. Whoo-weee!"
Quill, intent on forming questions that would give her some clues as to Gil's relationship with the girl in John's picture, gave him an encouraging, if absent-minded, look.
"Hellfire and brimstone. Quite a little sermon." Freddie leaned forward and said in a low voice, "Just between you and me? Collections were up pretty near seventy-five per cent. The Reverend was as pleased as Punch, said the Lord was showing him the way to a resurgence of faith. And where there's a resurgence of faith, there's a resurgence of cash. Now, Miss Quill, wish we could come up with something for you that would give us a resurgence of cash. You think about tradin' in that old heap you've got for a good late-model car?"
"You're taking over from Gil?"
Freddie shot an anxious look at his boss. "Just temporarily, like. Now, about that old heap..."
"Gil sold me that 'old heap' two years ago," said Quill indignantly. "It wasn't an 'old heap' then."
"Got to have the look of success in your business," said Freddie wisely. "Now, I could show you..."
Quill laid a hand on Freddie's arm and promised to look at new cars. Then she walked up to Tom and said flatly, "Was Gil worried about the business?"
"Hell, we both were. I floated him a couple of private loans to tide him over first and second quarter. He expected business to pick up."
"Was that John's recommendation? The private loans?"
"John? He didn't have much to say about it."
"Does he audit all your books, Tom? You know, for the transport company and your private affairs?"
Tom's face closed up. "I don't know that that's really any business of yours, Quill. No offense."
Quill flushed. Great detectives of fiction were never accused of rudeness; she'd have to brush up on her technique. "I was just thinking of having John do my personal taxes, that's all. Wondered if you found him as good at that as he is at the commercial end."
Tom frowned. "Quill, you hired him. You know him better than I do."
"Just wanted your opinion," she murmured. She cleared her throat. "Will you have a new partner now? Did Gil leave key-man insurance, or do you get the whole dealership?"
"Quill, I don't know what game you're playing at. But you don't play it with me. I'm warning you." He held her eyes for a long minute. Quill gazed coolly back. He turned away from her. "Time for you to be going down to the Pavilion, isn't it? Wouldn't want to miss the play. Unless you'd rather continue to stick your oar into my personal business."
The sun was hot, but not hot enough to account for the heat in her face. Quill decided her chief irritation was with Myles, who had failed to clarify the embarrassing pitfalls awaiting inexperienced interrogators. She shoved the recollection of Myles's prohibitions against any kind of detecting firmly out of her mind, waved cheerfully at Nadine, who raised a hand listlessly back, and walked the two blocks to the Pavilion, absorbed in thought.
The open-air Pavilion was ideally situated for the presentation of The Trial of Goody Martin. Thirty wooden benches, seating three to four people each, formed a series of half-circles in front of a bandstand the size of a small theater stage. A forty-foot, three-sided shed had been built in back of the bandstand in 1943 to provide space for changing rooms, sets, small floats for parades, and band instruments. Between the shed and the municipal buildings that housed the town's snowplows, fire engines, and ambulances was an eight-foot- wide gravel path. The path debouched onto the macadam parkway that circled the entire acreage of the park. The action in The Trial of Goody Martin required that the audience sweep along with the actors and props in a path from the duck pond to the bandstand to the bronze statue of General Frederick C.C. Hemlock.
The statue of the man and his horse had been erected in 1868, two hundred years after the founding of the village. Something had gone awry in the casting process, and the General's face had a wrinkled brow and half-open mouth, leaving him with a permanently pained expression as he sat in the saddle. On occasion, roving bands of Cornell students on spring break heaped boxes of hemorrhoid remedies at the statue's base, which sent the mayor into fits. Most years the statue sat detritus-free, except for the six-foot heap of cobblestones piled at the foot and used to crush the witch each year.
The crowd was enormous, the benches jammed. Quill stood at the periphery and scanned the mass of people for Meg and Edward Lancashire.
Esther West jumped up on the lip of the bandstand, and shaded her eyes with her hands. She caught sight of Quill, pointed at her, and waved frantically.
Elmer Henry appeared out of the crush of people and grasped her arm. His face was grim. "You memorize that Clarissa part?"
Quill's heart sank. "Why?"
"That Mavis is drunker than a skunk. Esther don't want her to go on."
"Elmer... I..."
"You're the understudy, aren't you? You got to do this, Quill. For the town."
"Maybe we can do something," said Quill weakly. "A lot of black coffee?" The mayor looked doubtful. "Come on. She may not be drunk, Elmer; she may just have stage fright. I mean, look at all these people."
"That's what I'm looking at. All these people. We can't have the Chamber look like a durn fool in front of these folks. Do you know that some have come all the way from Buffalo?"
Quill plowed her way determinedly through the sightseers to the shed at the back of the bandstand, the mayor trailing behind. The shed was seething with a confused mass of costumed players and uniformed high-school band members. Harland Peterson's two huge draft horses, Betsy and Ross, stamped balefully in the comer. The sledge, the barn door, and the band instruments squeezed the space still further.
"Quill! Thank God! Do you see her, that slut?" Esther gestured frantically at Mavis, then clutched both Quill and a copy of the script in frantic hands. Sweat trickled down her neck. Mavis, blotto, swayed ominously in the arms of Keith Baumer. Her face was red, her smile beatific. Esther shrieked, "Can you believe it? Here's the script. You've got ten minutes until we're on."
Surrounded by Mrs. Hallenbeck, Betty Hall, Marge Schmidt, and Harvey Bozzel, Mavis caught sight of Quill and caroled, "Coo-ee!"
"Coo-ee to you, too," said Quill. "Esther, I can fix this. I need a bucket of ice, a couple of towels, and Meg and her picnic basket."
The ice arrived before Meg. Quill ruthlessly dropped it down Mavis' dress, front and back. Someone handed her a towel. She made an ice pack and held it to the back of the wriggling Mavis' neck.
Meg and Edward Lancashire joined them a few moments later. "Oh, God," said Meg. "Will you look at her?"
"You've got your picnic basket?" Quill asked through clenched teeth.
"Sure."
"You have those Scotch Bonnet peppers for that salsa?"
A huge grin spread over Meg's face. "Yep."
"You have your special killer-coffee?"
"Uh-huh."
"Then let's get to work."
The Scotch Bonnet had the most dramatic effect. Mavis gulped the coffee, squealed girlishly at the reapplied ice pack, but howled like a banshee after Meg slipped a pepper slice into her mouth.
"Language, language," said Meg primly. The two sisters stepped back and surveyed their handiwork. Mavis glared at them, eyes glittering dangerously.
"And Myles claims you can't sober up a drunk," said Quill. "Actually, he's right," said Edward Lancashire. "All black coffee does is give you a wide-awake drunk. I don't know that Scotch Bonnet has ever been used as a remedy for drunks before. I'd say what you've got there is a wide-awake, very annoyed drunk."
"You can write about it in your column," Meg said pertly. "Well, Esther? What d'ya think?"
"I think we've got ourselves a Clarissa," said Esther grimly. "Just in case, Quill, I want you to study that script. She'll make the ducking stool, but I don't know about the trial. C'mon, you."
In subsequent years, Chamber meetings would be dominated periodically by attempts to resurrect The Trial of Goody Martin, and it was Esther West, newly converted to feminism, who firmly refused to countenance it. "Anti-woman from the beginning," she'd say. "It was a dumb idea in the first place, and a terrible period in American history, and we never should have celebrated it the way we did. Now, Hamlet - that play by William Shakespeare? I've always wanted a hand in that."
Mavis handled the ducking stool and the swim with a subdued hostility that augured well for the artistic quality of her impassioned speech at the trial to come. Marge Schmidt, Betty Hall, Nadine Gilmeister, Mrs. Hallenbeck, and others in The Crowd, may have yelled "Sink or swim" with undue emphasis on the "sink" part, but the audience failed to notice a diminution in the thrust of the whole performance, and joined in with a will.
Elmer Henry, Tom Peterson, and Howie Murchison dragged Mavis the forty feet from the pond to the bandstand, and the trial itself began. Dookie Shuttleworth, surprisingly awe-inspiring in judge's robe and wig, pronounced the age-old sentence:
"Thou shall not suffer a witch to live."
Mavis soggily surveyed the audience, smoothed her dripping gown over her hips, and addressed the judges. "My lords of the Court, I stand before you, accushed of the crime of witchcraft..."
So far so good, thought Quill, perched on a bench in the front row. The s's are mushy, but what the heck. Half the crowd's mushy from the heat and the beer.
"A crime of which I'm innoshent!" She burped, swayed, and said mildly, "I'm not a crimin'l. lush tryin' to get along. Good ol' Southern girl in the midst of all of you" - She paused and searched for the proper phrase. "Big swinging dicks?" she hazarded.
"She's off script!" screamed Esther. Apparently finding the response from the audience satisfactory, Mavis raised her middle finger, wagged it at a blond family of three in the front row, and took a triumphant bow.
Quill pinched her knee hard, a defense against giggling she hadn't needed since high school.
Dookie thundered his scripted response, "Scarlet whore of the infernal city! Thou shalt die!" then called for the sledge. Harland Peterson drove Betsy and Ross to the side of the stage, the straw-filled sledge dragging behind them.
Mavis spread her arms wide, in her second departure from the script, and leaped into Harland's arms. He staggered, cussed, and dropped her into the straw. Responding to a harmless crack of his whip, Betsy and Ross phlegmatically drew the sledge down the path behind the shed.
As the business of trading Mavis for the hooded dummy went on in the back, Howie, substituting for Gil, read the grisly details of the sentence aloud, straight from the pages of the sentencing at Salem three hundred years before.... planks of sufficient weight and height to be placed upon the body of the witch..."
Harland Peterson appeared at the edge of the stage, scowling hideously. He waved at Howie, who ignored him.
"... and the good citizens of this town to carry out the justice of the Almighty..."
Harland gestured again, furiously.
"... and the law of the Lord is as stones, and as mighty as stones... What, Harland?"
"Barfed on my boots! I ain't drivin' that sledge! You git somebody else to drive that sledge." He stomped off. Howie looked around helplessly. The crowd sniggered.
Harvey Bozzel, teeth displayed in a wide shiny grin, jumped off the stage and reappeared some minutes later on the front seat of the sledge, reins in hand. There was a scattering of applause. "Gee!" he hollered firmly. Betsy and Ross turned obediently to the right. Meeting the wall of the municipal building, they stopped in their tracks.
Ripples of laughter washed through the audience. Quill stole a look at Elmer and Esther out of the comer of her eye and pinched her knee. She was going to have an almighty bruise.
"Haw! you durned fool. Tell 'em to haw!" Harland yelled. "Haw!" said Harvey, in a more subdued manner.
Betsy, or perhaps it was Ross - Quill couldn't tell for certain - flicked an ear, gazed inquiringly at her partner in harness, then pulled to the left. This brought the forward edge of the sledge frame into view. Failing further direction, Betsy and Ross continued to pull left, and the sledge frame hit the shed side with a thud.