A Touch of the Grape: A Hemlock Falls Mystery (Hemlock Falls Mystery series) (5 page)

"So what do we do?"

"Well, we've always known that the rooms carry expenses and the restaurant makes the profit, right?"

"Right."

"And now we've come to a
point
where the rooms aren't going to carry expenses."

"We figured we'd run a seventy percent occupancy eleven months of the year," Quill protested. "You said that would work."

He was losing patience, something he'd never done before. "That was
last year.
We have been reassessed this year. The reassessment is fair. My protest didn't work. We cannot afford to run the Inn anymore. I will not borrow to put us into debt when the chance of re
payment is slim to nonexistent." He took her by both
shoulders and stared hard at her. "I told you this last month. You didn't want to hear it. I am telling you again."

"And I told you," Quill said with spirit, "the New York State Winegrowers' Association is planning a lot of large events for this region. I think you should hook up with Hugh Summerhill. He's the P.R. for the local W.G.A. this year, and there's a lot of business potential there."

He let her go.

Quill looked at him, her eyes steady. "You've already made up your mind we're going to fail." His eyes flick
ered, and Quill drew a deep breath. "You made up your
mind. And, dammit, John, you've found another job!"

John looked tired. "I've found another job, yes." He sat down on the verge of grass overlooking the Gorge. "We've been over the financials for months now. Quill."

"It's the insurance thing, isn't it?" Quill said,
stricken. "That check that bounced, and then the policy
getting canceled. I'm sorry about not writing down the amount of those checks I write, John. You know my style. Slapdash. Once in a while I stop to think about how hard it must be on you, and I feel so guilty." She
sat down next to him. He moved slightly away from her,
taking his warmth with him.

"I've made some calls about the new policy. And Prudential will cover any property casualty losses until tomorrow. When they cancel a policy for nonpayment of premium, they don't cancel it boom, like that. You have thirty to sixty days to find a new insurer. And I've found one; there's a guy coming in with the broker's banquet tonight who'll have a binder policy for you. I want you to sign it."

"Why won't you sign it? You're not leaving now, are you?"

"No. I've got a meeting in Syracuse tonight. I'll be back late. But insurance is one thing you don't want to screw around with, Quill."

"What am I going to do? What are all of us going to do?"

"We've been over this before, as well. We've cut back on everyone's hours. You and Meg are going to have to go without paychecks for a while, and it'd be best if you two do as much as you can yourselves. I've talked to Myles …"

"He's in Germany on that E.C.U. thing. When did you talk to him?"

"He hasn't dropped out of sight. I called him last night. Grounds maintenance is going to be a problem.
He can help with the larger items, but he's gone so much
and there's so much to do, it's a stopgap measure. He's willing to keep paying Mike's salary for a while, but that's only a temporary solution—"

"You asked Myles for money?"

"I asked Myles to help out a bit."

"Why don't we ask the bank for money?"

"The line of credit's gone, Quill. They won't give us any more. I told you that. I also told you I'm not going to be responsible for borrowing more. You owe enough already. Now, I've left a list of the customers we want to book this summer. You keep up the phone calls to them—just once a week, and don't let them talk you into any more discounts, okay? And there's enough in the account to keep things going through the summer. You have any questions, call on either Howie or Myles—"

"For God's sake, John. I
told
you not to involve anyone else. It's our business. It's my responsibility. Our responsibility. I can't believe you've gone behind my back."

"I've never once gone behind your back. But when you won't pay attention to the financial, Quill, this is the sort of thing that happens." He touched her arm, then withdrew his hand with an abrupt, almost angry gesture.

Quill blinked back tears. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

"Me, too. About my shares in the business …"

"I'll pay you out," she said tightly.

"There isn't anything to pay out, Quill. What we have is debt. I'll take care of my portion of the debt."

"You will not."

"You should have a C.P.A. handling the paperwork
from here on in. There's a small business on Main called
PayFor. Do you know it?"

Quill nodded her head, not trusting herself to speak.

"They have a computerized service that will handle
the General Ledger and the payroll until Labor Day. You
do what they tell you to."

"Then what?"

"Then the money runs out. If something doesn't happen this summer. But that's still not going to solve the long-term problem. You know what the solution there is, don't you?"

"I am not going to sell. You heard that. I'm not going to sell."

"You're kidding, right?" Meg's eyes, gray, nar
rowed, and suspicious, stared at Quill over a pile
of petit
choux
pastry. "More layoffs?"

Quill, delaying the really bad news, made a stab at humor. "It's a good thing I took that seminar in 'Ter
mination.' The first rule—did I tell you?—is empathize.
Tell the employee how much she or he has contributed to the job."

"How the heck are we going to operate this place with no people?"

"We'll just have to handle as much as we can by ourselves."

"Quill, I can't handle three meals a day by myself. I just can't." She ran her hands through her short, dark hair. She was half a head shorter than Quill, brunette, where Quill was red-haired, gray-eyed to Quill's hazel.
Quill wondered sometimes if they were truly blood re
lations, or if she'd been adopted as a child.

"QUILL!"

Quill jerked to attention.

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Displacing. You always go vague and think about other stuff when the stress level gets too high. It's called displacement. You must have heard of it, you do it all
the time. Anyhow, you shouldn't be displacing over lay
offs. We've had to lay off people temporarily before. It's worse, whatever's bugging you. So spit it out. Forget the termination formulas, which always sounded too grisly anyhow. What is it?"

"John's taken a job on Long Island."

"John
quit?"

"He didn't quit, exactly. He said he started looking
for another job about a month ago, when he realized that
we wouldn't be able to afford him after the first of July. Actually, we haven't been able to afford him since Christmas. He said."

"And he's going to work where?"

"For a bank. The headquarters are on Long Island. So he's going to move."

Meg punched the pastry with two vicious jabs of her
knuckles. I may displace, or whatever the correct verb would be, Quill thought. At least I don't punch defenseless pastry. "I don't believe it."

Suddenly, Quill was too tired to respond to this with
other than a shake of her head. Her feet hurt. She needed
a nap. She'd walked for hours in the land surrounding the Gorge, looking for the stupid dog, and all she had to show for it was a blister on her left heel. She'd come back to the Inn just before the dinner hour, hungry and depressed. A quick check of the dining room had de
pressed her even further. The Crafty Ladies were cheer
ful and noisy over drinks which seemed to be made of
rum and various kinds of juice at table seven; otherwise
the place was empty. She'd walked into the kitchen to find Meg, alone, working on desserts, made herself a
cup of latte, then sat at the high counter surrounding the
center island to give her the news about the current lack of money. The other news—the sell-the-Inn-because-it-will-never-make-it news—could wait for another time.

Meg stuffed the warm
choux
into a pastry bag, then
reached for the first in the pile of aluminum cookie
sheets stacked to the right of her worktable. She grabbed
the top one, set it aside with a clatter, grabbed a second, cursed, and slammed the sheet onto the marble pastry board with an exasperated "Tcha!"

"What do you mean, 'tcha'?"

"I mean 'goddammit,' that's what I mean. I said 'tcha' instead. I'm too polite to say 'goddammit' when you're under all this stress. And the reason I went 'tcha' is that the cookie sheet hasn't been prepped. You know, buttered and floured. I keep forgetting we laid off Bjarne." She bent over and searched the shelves under the counter, muttering. She reemerged with the flour shaker and cast a wild glance around for the small canister of warm butter the
sous
-chefs used to prep pans.
If, Quill thought, there had been any
sous
-chefs to prep
pans, which there weren't. At least when the chefs were
laid off, they simply went back to the Cornell School of
Hotel Management—where they all had come from in
the first place—and looked for another co-op job. There wasn't going to be any comfortable, reassuring co-op job
for Doreen. Or Kathleen Kiddermeister, their waitress. Or for Quill herself, for that matter.

"I'll get the butter." Quill got up from the stool—a little stiffly because of her long walk—and retrieved a jar of cold butter from the refrigerator. She set it carefully by Meg's elbow and sat down again. Her coffee was getting cold. She wondered what her chances were of getting some soup and several large chunks of Meg's fresh breads when her sister was in this kind of mood.

"It's not that I mind prepping pans myself," Meg said. She broke off a piece of the butter and rubbed the cookie sheet energetically. "Not a bit. Nossir. I only studied for three years in Paris, in a language I only partly understood, and took another year as an apprentice in that hellhole restaurant in New York just so I could PREP PANS!" She sifted flour over the cookie sheet with a fine disregard for her face, hands, and blue jeans, tossed the sifter aside, then took her twenty-inch stir-fry lid and used it to trace a circle on the floured sheet. "We have to lay off Kathleen, too? 'Cause if we do, forget it. I didn't study that hard, then work my buns off to be a waitress." She grasped the upper part of the pastry bag in her right hand, and, with her left, guided the tip of the bag around the circular guide on the sheet.

"That's one of the largest cream puffs I've ever seen, Meggie."

"One of?" Meg looked up with a reluctant grin. "It's going to be the biggest. As a matter of fact, that's what I'm calling it. The Largest Cream Puff in the World au Chocolat. It's for the Crafty Ladies. Sugar and a touch of the grape. Those women love both. Did you come in
here by way of the dining room? Did you see how many
Hurricane drinks those ladies have had already? If I don't get this pastry out there soon, they aren't going to remember eating it."

"What's in it?"

"The usual cream puff stuff. Just a lot more of it."

"I'm sorry we had to lay off all the
sous
-chefs."

"Well, I'm sorry that I told you I'd rather eat a rat than be a waitress. I'll waitress if we need it. I'll scrub
my own pans, scrub my own floor, and yours, too. Quill. I refuse to believe that this is anything other than a tem
porary condition." She slid the cream puff ring into the oven with a slam. "It's this business with John that has me so huffy. I can't believe he's deserted us like this. What a jerk! What kind of loyalty is it, anyway, to just go out and get another job right under our noses?"

"Slavery went out in 1862."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we don't own him. We don't own anyone. I think it's pretty remarkable that he's stuck with us this long. And when you think about it, Meg, he's always put us and his poor sister before his own needs. What kind of job is this for a talented guy with an M.B.A.? He hasn't had a date in ages, since there's no one in Hemlock Falls to date, except maybe Marge Schmidt and she's not all that keen on guys. Plus she's older. Plus she's
mean
…"

"Got all the personality of an attack tank," Meg agreed.

"He hasn't had a steady relationship with a woman in all the time I've known him here. It's more than an hour's drive into Syracuse to the theaters and the clubs and any kind of social life at all …" Quill trailed off. She told herself that it had been a terrible choice for John to make. That he loved the Inn, and the job, as
much or more than she did. That he was moving to Long
Island out of loyalty to them. "It's not the better pay that's forcing him to take this job, Meg, although it's considerably better. And I don't think it's because they're offering him better opportunities, although he'll have three employees working for him. And it's not be
cause it's a more interesting job, either. I mean, this bank
wants a strategic plan for the year 2000. John's going to visit most of the two hundred branches this bank has all over the world. A couple in Australia, if you can believe that."