A Touch of the Grape: A Hemlock Falls Mystery (Hemlock Falls Mystery series) (12 page)

She was taken aback at the bitterness in his voice. "Like the furniture?!"

He took a step nearer. Max growled. Quill took a deep
breath, then another. "I was just about to make some breakfast. And coffee. We need coffee."

"Coffee? You mean you'd like to sit down and talk?"

"I think that's a good idea, don't you?" Quill was
proud that her voice was steady. The set of John's shoul
ders relaxed, and he settled onto a stool at Meg's work-table. The moment—whatever it was, and Quill knew she was afraid to guess—seemed to have passed. Quill poured them both some orange juice, started the coffee, then dumped leftover rice, two eggs, and some beef broth into a bowl for Max. "I'm not a bad hand at an omelet, you know."

"Sounds good."

She turned up the Aga, broke four eggs into a copper bowl and whipped them briskly to a froth. "I'm not used
to being uncomfortable with you, John." She got out the
omelet pan, poured a little olive oil in it, and set it on the burner.

"You're not used to talking about feelings. Quill." He smiled a little. "Unless it's squabbling with Meg."

"I think I'm more used to putting feelings on canvas." She poured the eggs into the pan with extraordinary care. She didn't want to look at him.

"You put your political views on canvas. Not emotions."

This made her indignant. "That's a rotten thing to say. And I'm not particularly political. If I were a political sort of person, I'd throw out half the people who show up at this Inn."

"Then I should have said observations, not political views. You observe life. Quill. You don't really live it. It's one of the reasons—" He stopped, perhaps, Quill
thought, because the coffee he was drinking was too hot.

"One of the reasons what?"

"One of the reasons why you won't marry Myles."

Quill flipped the omelet with a quick twist of her wrist
and set it back on the burner with a sharp bang. Her
immediate response to this was four letters, seven if you
counted the pronoun "you," and she'd never spoken it aloud in her life. Instead she said tightly, "Back off. Just back off."

"I've backed off for seven years. That's enough time served, I think." He stood up. Quill forced herself to stand still, chin up. "So all I'll say is this. I've loved
you all that time. Your hair never stays up. Half the time
you run around in a droopy skirt with your shirttail hanging out. You can't drive, you won't add up the checking account, and the rest of the time you spend avoiding doing real work, real painting. And—" He checked himself. "You're beautiful. I've loved you from
the moment I saw you. And I'm never coming back here
again."

He turned on his heel and walked out.

Max whined.

Quill let the omelet burn and cried until she couldn't stand the smoke anymore. She dumped the pan in the sink.

"Jeez-Louise, what the heck did you do in here this morning?" Meg banged into the kitchen dressed, Quill
saw, to go out. She wore her best black chinos, a lichee-
green vest, and a white cotton shirt. She'd tied a little
enameled butterfly on a rawhide string around her throat.
"Aaagh! The dog!" She eyed Max, who'd taken a position on the rag hearth rug in front of the cobblestone fireplace. "He needs a bath."

"It's not 'the Dog.' His name is Max. And I'll give him a bath later. When it gets really warm outside."

"Uh-oh. So you named him. John said once you name
an animal, you're doomed to own it for life. Looks like he's right. Doreen's going to have seven fits and a temper tantrum. That coffee?" She grabbed a cup, then sat in the rocking chair next to Max. She nudged him ami
ably with her toe. Max growled and bared his teeth. She
tucked both feet under the chair. "Jeez. Where is he?"

"Right there." Quill got up from the stool where she'd been sitting, head in hands, and went to the sink. She began to scrub the omelet pan with a wire brush.

"Not the dog. John. His car was out front when I got up this morning, and when I came down, it was gone."

"So's John."

"Gone?"

"To Long Island."

"Already?" Quill could feel Meg's gaze on her back.
She refused to turn around. After a moment, Meg added,
"I was right, wasn't I?"

"You were right."

Meg sighed happily. "I love it when you say I'm right."

"It's not funny, Meg."

"No. It's not. I'm sorry."

Quill scrubbed at the last of the burned egg, rinsed the pan, and set it in the drainer. She turned around.

"Oh, Quill," Meg said. "I'm so sorry. You look like you've been crying for weeks."

"Just cool it, will you?"

"Well, you do."

Quill felt the tears start again and she waved her hands
helplessly in the air. "Say something."

"What?"

"Anything." Quill gulped. "If you don't I swear I'll keep this up all day."

"Might be good for you," Meg said quietly.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You never want to talk about it."

"Whose business is it if I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!?"

"Yours, of course. I just want to say one thing, and then will never ever mention John again, all right? We've lost a valuable friend. We've lost a terrifically shrewd and capable business partner. If you'd talked about it, worked through it, addressed it, years ago, he might still be here. And happily married to somebody else. Okay?"

"What do you mean, happily married to someone else?"

"What? You want him to pine away for you forever?
Come on, Quill. And you accuse
me
of being the romantic. People get over things. It isn't easy. I should
know. And you should know that I know. When Simon
died, you know what happened to me. I wanted to die, too. And look. Eight years later I'm just as in love with Andrew Bishop, the best-looking—and only—internist in Hemlock Falls. Don't be so afraid of pain. Quill. It can't kill you. Not unless you let it."

"Lecture over?"

"For the moment."

"Good. Because I've had it with your blithe assump
tion that everyone can be as open and confrontational as
you can without risk. Okay?"

"Okay."

"So we're going to talk about something else. Right?"

"Whatever you want. How come you're not dressed?"

Quill looked at her T-shirt and jeans. "I'm dressed."

"I mean to go to the winegrowers' meeting. Didn't I sit in your room last night while you called a meeting with Selena and Hugh Summerhill to see about scheduling romantic wine weekends for any hapless tourists that may come our way? Wasn't this the first strike in the war against high taxes, insupportable business con
ditions, and the generally lethargic condition of the Up
state New York economy?"

"Oh, my gosh." Quill ran her hands through her hair. She'd washed it twice since the fire and it still smelled of smoke. "And the guy from Albany's going to give a speech about the fund. What time was it? Noon, right? At Summerhill. And the discussion with Selena and Hugh was at eleven …"

"Yep. Now look, it's six-fifteen. The dining room
opens at seven. I've got Kathleen coming in and one
sous-
chef,
Bjarne, but breakfast is going to be heavier than
lunch today. So you've got your choice, you can waitress in the dining room and let Kathleen help me in here in the kitchen or you can help me in the kitchen, and let Kath
leen do the waitressing. Which?" She cast a significant look in the direction of the scoured omelet pan.

"I'll help out in the dining room. It'll be just like old times, when we were starting out."

"Great. But it'd be better for people's appetites if you changed those clothes. And Quill, your hair still smells like you had a close encounter with Smoky the Bear. Did you try the tomato juice?"

"I'm not going to wash my hair in tomato juice."

"Sure you are." Meg held up a "wait a minute" finger, disappeared into the pantry, and reemerged with a forty-ounce bottle of Campbell's Tomato Juice (Not from Concentrate!).

Quill regarded the bottle dubiously, took it, splashed her face with cold water to erase the tearstains, then
headed for the dining room doors. She was accompanied
by the patter of untrimmed feet. She stopped, the juice bottle under one arm. "Dang," she said. "What about Max?"

"Can he wait tables?"

"I'm serious, Meg. What do I do with this darn dog?"

"Beats me. He's your dog, you figure it out. All I know is that I don't want him in my kitchen, I don't want him in my rooms, and I'm pretty sure he'll bite the guests. So as long as he isn't on the grounds or in the building, or near me at
any
time, I don't mind him at all."

"The garden shed?" Quill said to the dog. "No, you'd hate being locked up all day. What if you just go OUT, Max. And come back when you're hungry again.
Got that? Go OUT. Keep away from people, other dogs,
and Selena Summerhill, the dogcatcher." Max cocked
his head, got up, turned and nosed his way through the
dining room doors. They heard the click of his feet on the hardwood floor, and then nothing.

"Where's he going? Don't tell me, I can guess. He's going to sit in Doreen's mop closet and delight her with a savage attack when she gets her bucket."

"He's a very smart dog, Meg. I'll show you where he gets in and out later. Which reminds me, Meg. I have a clue."

"Yeah?"

Quill told her about the hole in the wall, and added, "Ellen didn't want anyone to know she'd been out. Do you find that strange?"

"That's supposition, Quill. Who's to say that Max didn't push himself in? What proof do you have that it was Ellen?"

"The bottle cap."

"Phut! She could have dropped that anytime. You'd better tell Mike to fix it, or we'll get wood rot or something."

"Don't you think I ought to let Davy Kiddermeister know?"

"Know what!? That you've got a burrowing dog? Your detectival instincts are getting the better of you."

"There's a mystery here, Meg. I'm sure of it."

"The only mystery is how we're going to survive the next couple of weeks," Meg said irritably. "This was a terrible accident, Quill. Let's not borrow trouble."

"I'm not so sure."

Meg muttered something rude and busied herself with
her pots.

Quill went up to her room to shower and change. It was without surprise that she discovered tomato juice didn't lather. It also made her feel sticky. By the time
she was (relatively) tomato juice-free, it was after seven
and the dining room would be open and the Crafty Ladies (who rose early) banging their forks and knives on the table like Jimmy Cagney in
White Heat.

The Crafty Ladies were seated and waiting for service,
but they were in no mood to be assertive. "We called Ellen's family this morning," Robin said in a subdued voice. "It was horrible. Horrible."

"I'm very sorry." Quill hesitated. "It's a cliché, of course, but if there's anything I can do, I wish you'd let me know."

"Seems to me you did quite a lot already." Mary Lennox, in a yellow twinset this morning, gave her a short, approving nod. "Not everyone would have dragged Ellen from that room."

"I didn't stop to think," Quill said truthfully. "If I had, I probably wouldn't have done it."

"We talked to that young sheriff," Fran Grimsby said. "About releasing the body."

"Davy Kiddermeister. He's the brother of our waitress here, Kathleen."

"If you ask me, I don't know if that young man knows whether he's coming or going," Fran said tartly. She was wearing the same hand-painted muumuu she'd had on the day before. The yoke had a bright orange sun which warred with pink surfers under a bright blue sky. The skirt was splashed with red hibiscus. "Do you know he actually warned us not to leave town before the inquest?" She snorted. "Can you believe it?! What do you think the chances of that boy finding out what caused that fire are, anyway? Sounds to me like he's learned all his investigative techniques from the television. That's all young people today know about anything. From television."

"Do any of you know
…
" Quill began, then stopped.
"That is. Is there any reason Ellen would have wanted to meet someone here at the Inn secretly?"

The Crafty Ladies looked at her, clearly at sea.

"I
beg
your pardon?" said Mary faintly. "Secretly? What in the world are you talking about?"

"There's this dog," Quill began again.

"I told you," Fran said to the others. "Small towns. Small towns. This is terrible. Terrible. Poor Ellen's horribly dead and look. People are talking already. And it's not even true!"

Tears filled Mary's eyes. She blinked them back. "I can assure you that we never met anyone before in this horrible place. Any of us!"