A Taste for Murder (25 page)

"Marge?" said Quill doubtfully. "She could have done stuff like that any time these years past," said Meg. "There's something odd going on, Quill. None of this fits. If it were a souffl‚, it wouldn't rise more than an inch."
Quill glanced at the kitchen clock. "It's twelve-thirty. The lunch crowd will have left Marge's diner by the time I get there. It'll be a perfect time to talk."
"You're not going to eat there, are you?"
"Do you think she'll try to poison me?"
"Not on purpose," said Meg seriously. "Besides, it's too public."
Quill parked in the bank's lot, near the sign that said "For Hemlock Falls Savings and Loan Bank Customers Only! Violators will be towed," walked to the diner, and peered in the plate-glass window. Two of the Formica-covered tables were filled; the rest were littered with the small detritus of a busy restaurant after a herd of customers has left.
Marge slouched against the cash register, talking to Mark Anthony Jefferson. He smiled at Marge, teeth white in his dark face, and shook her hand with the enthusiasm of a banker happy with his deposits. Quill pushed the glass door open and went in.
"Hi, Mark, Marge."
"Hello, Quill." Mark offered her a prim smile and a genial nod. Quill wondered if bankers took affability courses. The object of this course is smile wattage: the small depositor, or the cash-poor, should be greeted with the proper degree of reserve, say seventy-five watts.
Mark shook hands with Marge a second time. "Drop by any time, Marge. Be happy to talk about that transfer. I'm sure I can get that extra point for you. Quill? I wonder if we could meet this week sometime to talk about who is going to take over from John. He's a great loss to the business, and we'll want to be sure that whoever replaces him has the same level of expertise."
Quill muttered, "It's a little soon, Mark," and both she and Marge watched him leave.
"Good fella," Marge said. "Knows his onions. What're you here for?"
"Lunch," said Quill.
"Yeah?" Marge eyed her with a certain degree of skepticism. "Betty!" she hollered suddenly. "You wanna bring out a couple of Blue Plates? Have a seat, Quill."
Quill sat down at one of the small tables. Marge swung a chair around backwards and straddled the seat, elbows on the back. She and Quill regarded each other in a silence that stretched on until Betty plunked a platter in front of each of them. The Monday Blue Plate was meatloaf and French fries smothered in gravy. A small dish of green peas accompanied the platter. Quill took a bite of the meatloaf. Her eyebrows went up.
"Marge, this is delicious."
Marge methodically cut both potatoes and meat into small squares, and just as methodically ate each fork-sized bite.
Quill tried a French fry. Both it and the gravy spooned over the contents of the plate were as delicious as the meat.
Marge swept her plate clean of gravy with a soft roll slathered in butter.
Quill started on the peas. "These aren't canned," she said in surprise. "They're fresh."
Marge burped. She held up a pat of butter; its significance was momentarily lost on Quill. "Good food is good business," she said, "but if you want to know somethin', leave this out of it."
"I'm not buttering you up, Marge. I mean it." Quill hesitated, then said, "I'll bring Meg up here, if you don't mind. She never lies about food. And you'll believe her, if you won't believe me. It's wonderful."
"Huh!" said Marge. Her cheeks turned pink. She grinned and shouted over her shoulder, "Hear that, Betty? Miss Fancy Food here likes the grub!"
"I more than like it," said Quill honestly. "I love it."
"Not everything has to be goormay," Marge drawled.
"It doesn't. Marge, can we talk a little bit about what's been happening over the last couple of days?"
"If you want. Been good for business, I'll say that for it. Everybody comes in here to talk. And when they talk, they eat. Good for Chris Croh, too. Gossip and drink are a good mix."
"How well did you know Mavis? Well enough to know her personal tastes? What she liked to eat, what she liked to drink?"
"What she liked to eat and drink?" Marge, for once, seemed at a loss for words. "I dunno. She didn't much like that French gunk you serve up there at the Inn."
Quill put this down to Marge's automatic rejection of Meg's I cooking, and waited.
"And drink? Hell, I don't know that either." Her heavy brow creased in thought. "I know she asked for some damn fool thing at the Croh Bar Saturday night. Chris had to look it up in the bar book, which always pisses him off, and then he couldn't make it because he didn't have lemon or peppermint or something."
"So you've never made a drink for Mavis?"
"Served her beer," said Marge. "What the hell is this about, anyways?"
"Did Mavis take prescription drugs? Or ever ask you for prescription drugs?"
"I don't know what you're gettin' at, missy, but I can tell you one thing right now. I take aspirin. That's it. You ask Doc Bishop, you think I'm lying. I," said Marge proudly, "barf up most anything that ain't natural. Penicillin, and that. Barf it up right away." She patted her ample stomach. "I'm that delicate, Gil used to say to me."
"Did you - correspond with Mavis on a regular basis, say once a month?"
Enlightenment spread over Marge's face like the sun coming up over the gorge. "You mean you wanna know if shewas blackmailing me as well as John?"
"You knew about that?"
"Not till she came here. But I had my suspicions. I was Northeast regional manager for Doggone Good Dogs for pretty near five years. Worked my way up from waitressin'. Heard a lot of gossip about Mavis, of course. Never could prove anything. And what the hell did it mean to me, anyways? She was a lot of fun when she came into the district to do the personnel stuff. We'd go out, have a few pops - Mave knew how to have a good time.
"I decided to come back here and open my own business. Didn't much like having to run things other people's way, wanted to do it on my own; I grew up here" - Quill caught the unspoken message: unlike you and your sister, who moved in and tried to take over - "and this is the natural place for me. 'Sides, Betty and I'd been best friends in high school, and you can't run a place like this all by yourself.
"Anyhow, Mavis came to see me just before I quit the company. Said the home office wanted to keep me, and she offered me a raise and all that. I said no thanks.
"Didn't hear much from her a-tall until she hove into town with that Mrs. Hallenbeck. You know what it's like seein' somebody from way back. You may not have been all that good buddies, but there's some stuff to talk about. That's about it."
"Did you know John well?"
"He was after my time at the company. Heard about it, of course. Not every day the company has an employee what turns out to be a murderer. He come in here on his way back from Attica, as a matter of fact." She eyed Quill sharply. "You know about that?"
"Yes," Quill said.
"Headin' on out to Syracuse to look for a job there. We got to talkin'. Don' matter to me a guy that's been in the joint, so we cleared that up right away. We swapped a couple stories about the company. Things changed quite a bit after Armour bought us out, and ol' John got a couple of laughs out of it. I needed someone to do the books once a month; not enough for a full-time job, and Gil, bless his soul, needed somebody, too, and he always liked John and felt he had to make up for his sister bein' a vegetable and all. The two of us offered him wages for a couple of hours a month work. Then you placed that ad in the paper for a business manager, and he just settled in."
"And you know about Mavis being a blackmailer?"
"Do you know that old girl wanted me to come in on it?" Marge's astonishment was genuine. "We got to swapping stories Saturday about how we each was doin', and she said she was on to a good thing. Wanted me to cut a separate deal with Tom if the old lady coughed up the investment, as kind of, what'd she call it, a fee for brokering the deal. Then we'd split it." Marge shook her head. "Mavis couldn't spit straight, much less do a good honest deal. Just wasn't in her nature."
"John said she insisted the letters with his money be addressed to Scarlett O'Hara. Some Southern belle."
"You mean like that movie, Gone With the Wind?"
"Yes. Marge? What happened when you refused?"
Marge shrugged. "Guess she talked to Tom herself. I tolt her to pound salt. I wasn't so hot on Gil gettin' out after that. I mean" - Marge colored painfully - "I wanted the old biddy to cough up the cash for the dealership. We had this idea, Gil and me. He'd get enough cash together to payoff that Nadine and he'd come into the business with Betty and me." She cleared her throat with an attempt at carelessness. "Said he'd always wanted a wife who'd help him, you know. Rather than being a drag. Didn't matter I was no beauty queen, he said; I had something better than that. I had some sense." Marge crumpled a paper napkin in her fist and blew her nose. "Said our kids would have some sense, too."
Quill bent her head and concentrated on the meatloaf. She waited a few minutes, then said, "I thought maybe you killed them, Marge."
"Me!" As she'd hoped, Marge's outrage doused the tears as effectively as a candle snuffer. "You gotta be kidding!"
"Well, it seemed logical," Quill apologized. "I mean, all this weird stuff's been going on at the Inn, and Meg and I thought you might want us out of business, and then Mavis shows up and you two are connected in what appears to be a shady deal over tainted meat and..."
"Tainted meat?" Marge demanded.
Quill, alarmed, not trusting Marge, stammered, "And I thought maybe you thought John would be a good scapegoat, because of what you knew about him."
"Jee-sus Kee-rist and eight hands around," said Marge, appearing to drop the tainted meat issue. "What the hell do you think I'm made of?"
"I didn't know," Quill said frankly. "Any more than I knew what kind of cook Betty is. She's good, Marge. I should have been down to your diner before. It's my fault that I never made the effort. But I will from now on. And so will Meg."
"Good," said Marge flatly.
Quill extended her hand cautiously. "I apologize, Marge."
Marge shook it. Her hands were callused. "Don' mention it."
Quill swallowed the last of the peas, then leaned forward and said, "I've been doing a bit of a... well... an investigation into this."
"Do tell," said Marge sarcastically. "Myles know anything about this?"
"Yes," said Quill, which was the literal truth. "Actually, he doesn't approve, but Marge, this stuff can't keep up. I mean it can't be good publicity for the town, no matter what Harvey Bozzel says."
"That boy's a bozo." Marge rubbed her second chin with one massive hand. "So now that I ain't a suspect, who is?"
"Keith Baumer."
"That one!" Marge appeared to consider this. "He's an asshole, that's for sure."
"Do you think Mavis could have been blackmailing him?"
"Hell, yes. Wouldn't put it past her. And that jerk's done enough in this life to be ripe for it."
"You remember him from Doggone Good Dogs?"
"What female there didn't!" Marge scow led. "Went after two of my girls in the region. I would have been next, excepting he finally got his ass canned. I'll tell you something, though, never met anyone with as good a taste buds. Good nose, too. Could sniff one twenty-pound pack of froze hamburg meat and tell you what kinda cow it come from."
"John told me three hundred thousand dollars had been embezzled from the company just before the acquisition. He also said you had one of the best heads for business of anyone he'd ever met. Do you know of any way we could find out if Baumer had that money?"
Marge, preening at the compliment to her business acumen, was by now as chatty as Kathleen Kiddermeister's mother, who'd been known to talk to telephone solicitors for hours at a time. "Lemme think on it. To tell you the truth, I don't know what the hell happened to Baumer after the company canned his ass. If John wasn't in the slammer, he and I could probably figure it out. Be best if we knew where Baumer carne from, and who he's working for, though."
"He's with some sales convention at the Marriott," Quill said. "His booking got messed up and that's why he landed on us. I'm going over there and see if I can find out a few facts."
"He use a credit card to pay for the room?"
"Traveler's checks," said Quill regretfully. "And Peter deposited them in the bank Friday afternoon, so we can't trace him through the registered numbers. But if I can find his boss at the Marriott, I'll bet I can get a little more information."
"Maybe I'll truck on down to the bank. See if Mark'll let me on to the computer," said Marge. "If the two of us put our heads together, we can figure out somethin'."
"Then you don't think John did it, either?" said Quill.
"Hell, no." Marge reconsidered this. "At least, if he did, he musta had a damn good reason."
"I can't think of any reason that would force John into premeditated murder," said Quill. "I understand - at least I think I understand - the reasons that drove him to the defense of his sister. But this is different."
"It's all different," said Marge obscurely. "And it's all the same."
Quill left the diner with hope burgeoning, if not exactly springing, in her breast. Marge maybe was innocent of involvement with Peterson's scam. Quill would bet a year's income from the Inn that Marge was innocent of murder.
The Marriott lay twelve miles south of town on Route 15, and served both Ithaca and the surrounding small towns. Traffic was light, and it took Quill less than twenty minutes to pull into the hotel parking lot. She knew the manager from' meetings of the local Hotel and Motel Association meetings. A big, tall, open-faced man in his thirties - and single. Completely charmed by him after they met, Quill had bullied Meg into attending the next Association meeting with her, only to discover that Sean was quite happily gay. The three of them made a point of getting together for lunch at least once a month.
She asked for Sean at the reservations desk, and the ubiquitous Cornell student trotted cheerfully away to find him. The hotel business would certainly suffer if Cornell ever decided to move to, say, Seneca Falls or Waterloo.
"It's Sarah Quilliam!" Sean greeted her with a smile.
"So it is." She raised herself on tiptoe and kissed him. "How's the hotel biz?"
"Fine. Fine." He looked at her sidelong. "I understand you're making a killing."
"Yes. It's why I'm here."
"Serious discussion? Come into my office, said the spider to the fly." She followed him into the manager's quarters, impressed as usual by the array of computers, the NYNEX phone system, and the middle-class expensiveness of the furniture and carpeting.