A Steak in Murder (29 page)

"She knew the samples were from Rossiter's herd. She
and Neville Phillipone had done research at the lab together. He knew she wouldn't make a mistake. So I told him. I told him Rossiter had made the mistake. Or I would have had to kill him, too. Because she knew, of course. That my bull had been with Angus heifers. And I could never sell that bull once word got out. Lost half my net worth when Rossiter pulled that scam. And the shame of it. Couldn't hold my head up in the meetings again. So . . ." He raised the knife. Pushed her backwards.

Quill gasped. "Candy? What about Candy?"

"Candy!" His face twisted and he wailed, "Candy! I wouldn't touch Candy." Quill brought her knee up into
his groin. He jackknifed forward, whooping. Quill jerked
her head, but she was too late. The knife clipped her cheek. She twisted hard to the right, his heavy body pinning her so that she couldn't move. Then he jerked hard
against her, in a strange orgasmlike way that froze her in
terror.

He collapsed against her, facedown, head twisted to the side.

He coughed.

Blood spilled from his nose to the floor. She saw the
knife in his back and looked up, terrified.

"Hey," Brady said. "A man's gotta do what a man's
gotta do. Sorry, kid."

And he raised the pistol he'd brought to protect her.

Quill stared at the dying man at her feet. Brady bent forward and pulled the knife from his back with a grunt of effort. "Not right," he said, "to take him in the back. But I thought he had you."

"Meg," Quill choked the word out. A part of her registered the terror in the whisper. She fumbled at her
cheek. Her hand came away slick with blood. She pushed
herself away from the desk. She was aware of Brady's blue eyes, of Calhoun's sodden black coat in strobelike flashes of time. She ran to the back room, stumbling on legs drained of strength by fear. Her hand was wet; she fumbled with the door latch.

"Don't
push\"
came a cross, beloved voice. "I can't get
out!"

Quill stepped back. The door opened. Meg fell into the
room. Blood covered her T-shirt.

She screamed, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, Quill. Quill!"

And the room went dark.

"Just lay still. I said, lay there."

"Lie," Quill corrected the voice. "Objects lay, people lie."

"What the
hell."

She opened her eyes. Trooper Harris loomed over her. Meg's face hovered over his right shoulder. She was in
the office, on the couch. The room was filled with people.
Ambulance lights flashed red/red/red/ outside the office window.

"Get out of the way, dammit." Meg shoved Harris to the side and knelt on the floor. "Hey, you."

Quill closed her eyes again. She felt sick.

"Are you going to barf? You look pretty green. Shall I get a wastebasket?"

Quill laughed, and regretted it. Her cheek hurt like the devil. "Remember horse camp?"

"Of course I remember horse camp. I was sick as a dog from the heat, and I thought I was going to die. You
got the hut wastebasket. Worked a treat, as Doreen would
say."

"I want to sit up." Meg put her arm around her. Quill could feel her trembling. She shoved Quill upright. Quill
swung her feet off the couch and onto the floor. Her head
swam.

"Maybe you'd better lie down again."

"No. No, I feel so . . . It's too scary. Where's Calhoun?"

"Dead as a doornail, the lying snake." Meg sat next to her, her arm less shaky, her voice steadier. "Your color's coming back."

Quill blinked. Her head cleared. John leaned against one wall, his face pale, his eyes on hers. Harris and his men walked in and out of the office. A tarp partially covered the body next to the desk. Blood seeped from underneath it. Quill made out the shape of an out flung hand, the fingers curled around the handle of the boning knife. "Wow." She looked at Meg. Her T-shirt was stiff with drying blood. Her eyes were clear, her smile a little uncertain. She was okay. Quill put her hand out and touched her cheek. "What happened?"

"Just call me Vincent." Meg tucked her hair back. "Calhoun got the bottom of my left ear. It bled like the dickens."

"I thought he . . ." Quill started to shake.

"Well, he didn't. When he came at me, I just fainted. Not for long. But I was so scared, Quillie."

Quill squeezed her hand. "Where was Brady all this time? Where's Brady now?"

"We need to talk about that." Meg lowered her voice. "Don't say a thing to Harris, okay? Not until we . . ."

"You ready to talk?" Harris crossed the room with his deliberate, heavy tread. "I want to know what the hell went on here."

Meg looked at John and lifted her chin slightly. He sprang forward as if released from a heavy chain. He came to Quill and took both her hands in his. "I'm getting both of them to the hospital, Harris. Your questions can wait."

"The med tech said nothing much was wrong with either one of them. And I'm going to talk to them now." His voice was ugly.

Meg tightened her hand on Quill's shoulder, then she screamed, "John! Quill's going to pass out again! Harris, get the medic!"

"I'm not either," Quill began indignantly. Meg shoved. "I . . . oooof!" She fell against the side of the couch. "I give up," she muttered, and closed her eyes.

She kept them closed while the medics put an oxygen cone over her nose, strapped her on a stretcher, carried her from the room and into the ambulance. She felt Meg's knees against her right arm, sensed John's pres
ence on the left. She peered through her eyelashes; a med
tech was at her feet, busily snapping the stretcher into place. She heard Harris's complaining voice outside, abruptly cut off as the doors slammed shut. The siren went on, and the van took off, moving slowly for all the noise.

Quill muttered behind the oxygen mask. Meg pulled it
off her face.

"Hey," said the medic. The name stitched over his lab coat pocket read: Oliver. "You start messing with the patient, I'm leaving you on the side of the road."

"I'm fine," Quill said. "Honestly. Just a little lightheaded. I think it's the oxygen, actually, that's making me feel woozy."

"Huh." Oliver crouched forward. He took her pulse,
looked into her eyes with a penlight, then slapped a blood
pressure cuff on her arm. "Jeez," he said after a few moments. "You're in better shape than I am."

"Can you unstrap me, then?"

He shook his head. "Against regulations until we get you to the hospital."

"Can you call ahead?" Meg asked. "Make sure that Dr. Bishop's there at the E.R.?"

"Jeez, I . . ."

"Just let him know Meg and Quill are coming in. And that we're fine," Meg added hastily. "If you could let me talk to him."

The medic scratched his head. "Well, I . . ." He pulled
his cell phone from his pocket and punched the automatic
dial. He talked into it, then handed it to Meg.

"Before you say anything, I just want you to know we're fine." She listened and pulled a face. "I'll tell you when we get there. Just a little cut, Andrew. Honest. Quill's a little worse off, she has a nasty thing on her cheek."

Quill tried to smile. She did have a nasty thing on her cheek. John's hand curled comfortingly around hers.

"Just hang on, we'll be there . . ." The ambulance took a turn, then stopped. "Right now." She handed the phone back to Oliver.

Quill suffered the next hour and a half in impatient silence. Once she was in Andy's capable hands, Meg and
John disappeared. She was checked into the hospital, her cheek was stitched by a tired-looking plastic surgeon who
murmured reassuring things about scarring, and finally she was wheeled out of emergency surgery, exhausted, and increasingly annoyed. "We're going to get you right into that nice bed," the nurse pushing the wheelchair said. "You just hang on a minute." She was a large woman, about Quill's own age. Her bossy, repellently happy attitude reminded Quill of someone, she couldn't think who.

"Miss Francis," she said suddenly.

"Yes, dear."

"This perfectly horrible kindergarten teacher."

"Mmhm."

"We all hated her. Underneath that big fat smile, she was mean as a snake." Quill gave an exasperated sigh. "You haven't seen my sister?"

"Or your boyfriend, either," the nurse said cheerfully. "Heeere we are." She made a sharp right turn with the wheelchair, into a hospital room.

"He's not my boyfriend," Quill said crossly. "Where are they?"

The nurse's patience was apparently inexhaustible. So was her insufferably cheery tone. "You'll see them in the morning, I'm sure. Here, now you can walk, can't you?"

Quill quelled the urge to punch her. "I can walk."

"Then I'll just help you into this nice bed."

Quill glared at her. "Do you know how I got this cut?"

"No, dear, I don't."

"In a knife fight." Quill bent forward. "The other guy died."

The nurse's eyes widened.

"I can get," Quill said ominously, "into the bed myself." And she did. She refused a sleeping pill, asked the time, and when she learned it was well after four in the morning, gave it up and went to sleep.

She woke to sunshine streaming through the window. Someone was snoring. Doreen was asleep in the chair by her bed, head flung back, mouth open, gray hair as wild as kudzu. Quill got up and went into the bathroom. She looked in the mirror. What she could see of her face was a mess. A gauze bandage covered half her face from her cheekbone to her chin. Her hair was a bird's nest, and she saw, a lot redder than usual. She felt it. It was stiff with dried blood.

"You're supposed ta be in bed."

Quill jumped. "Doreen? Where is everyone?"

"Meg'll be here in a minute."

Quill poked at her hair. "I hope she brings some sham
poo."

"You get back inta bed."

"I don't
need
to be in bed."

"The minute you step outta this door, Harris is goin' to give you the third degree."

"I've got to tell the police what happened," Quill said reasonably.

"You talk to Meg first."

Fortunately for her state of mind, Quill didn't have to
wait very long. Meg and John came in minutes later, John
holding a paper bag that gave off a delicious smell of yeast and cinnamon, Meg with a cardboard tray of cafe lattes.

"All right," Quill said, when they were settled with coffee and cinnamon croissants. "What's going on?"

Meg, curled at the foot of the bed, looked reflectively into her coffee cup. "Some of this is what Brady told me. Some is what I deduced."

"What you deduced? Ha! Both of us thought that CarolAnn Spinoza did it."

"I never thought CarolAnn Spinoza did it. You were the one who—"

"Meg," John said quietly, "we can't put Harris off too much longer. Howie said we'll be a lot better off if you two cooperate as soon as possible."

"Oh. Right. Anyhow, there were three bodies, Quill, and three murderers. It's why you couldn't get the timing right."

"Neither one of us . . . never mind. Go on."

"Rossiter killed Candy. Over Mrs. Rossiter. So you were right about that."

"You mean Rossiter discovered they were having an affair?"

"It's not that so much as the fact that Candy wasn't going to give up Shirley unless Rossiter paid him off. They got into a squabble, and Royal knifed him and left him for dead."

"But he wasn't dead."

"Not right away. Calhoun found him."

"Calhoun?"

"Rossiter told Shirley about the crossbreeding. She told Candy. When the colonel found him, he told the colonel."

"I don't understand. Why didn't Calhoun get Candy help?"

"I don't know," Meg said soberly. "Shirley said that Candy had known about the crossbreeding for at least a year. Calhoun must have left him for dead. Out of revenge."

"So Calhoun killed Royal Rossiter?"

Meg bit her lip. "No. Brady did."

"Brady did?! Why?!"

"Because he and Candy went way back. Because
Candy saved his life more than once. Because Brady, too,
found Candy in the park. By the time Brady got to him, Candy was gone. You remember how you saw him in the park that morning? And we thought that perhaps he had killed Candy until we discovered how long the poor
guy had been lying there? Brady told me that Candy died
in his arms, Quill. And Brady swore revenge."

"And Laura. The colonel killed her."

John nodded.

"And Brady. Brady saved my life."

"When you passed out on me, I was terrified. Brady called the medics, called the cops, and told me what I've just told you before they all got to the scene."