A Touch of the Grape: A Hemlock Falls Mystery (Hemlock Falls Mystery series) (15 page)

The south wall looked out over Cayuga Lake, blue-gray under the spring sun. There were spring flowers everywhere: lilacs, apple blossom, a few branches of flowering plum.

Selena bloomed like a hothouse lily in the middle of this shabbily comfortable restraint. She wore a bright
orange T-shirt, white trousers, and sandals on her slender
feet.

"May we have some coffee, Selena?" Hugh's voice was cultivated, assured, resonant. "Meg and Quill should undoubtedly shore up their defenses against the assault from the man from Albany."

"But of course!" Selena unfolded herself from the couch. "You take a bit of cream, Quill. And, Meg? Black, as I recall." She disappeared into the kitchen, the
heavy scent of gardenia in her wake. Hugh wrinkled his
nose slightly; it was. Quill admitted, a little overpowering this early in the day.

"You've met him?" Meg asked. "The bozo from the State office?"

"No." His tone was amused. "Not this particular bozo. But I agree with you." He dropped his left eyelid in a wink. "Most politicians are bozos."

"What sort of approach to the—ah—bozo did you have in mind?" Quill asked.

"I take it there's some interest, on your part, in presenting a joint effort between Summerhill and the Inn to encourage oenoephiles to come to this area?"

"We're not sure," Meg said candidly. "A great deal would depend on the parameters we set up. Yesterday at the Chamber meeting, Selena said …"

He waved one hand in a dismissive gesture that was at once paternal and affectionate. "I drilled Selena on her delivery to the Chamber at the meeting yesterday, but I didn't have to check with Harvey to know how it went. She was scatterbrained, ineffectual, and utterly charming."

Meg coughed.

Quill pulled on her lower lip. "I thought she made a very knowledgeable speech."

"Selena doesn't have the presence to make a knowledgeable speech, much less a coherent one, do you, my darling?"

Selena, carrying a loaded tray in from the kitchen, set
it down on the coffee table and threw her arms around
Hugh's neck. "I do not,
cariño.
But you love me anyway, do you not?"

"Indeed I do." Rather awkwardly, he slipped his arm around her waist and squeezed.

Quill pulled harder on her lip. She didn't dare look at Meg.

"Sit and pour out for us, my darling."

"With pleasure,
cariño."
She sat close to him, and
served him first. He refused the cup, and nodded toward
Quill. "Ah. Of course!" She poured a small dollop of
cream into the cup, presented it to Quill, and then served Meg. She poured out for Hugh, then herself, and settled
happily back into the circle of his arm.

Meg, who was sitting at right angles to Quill, bent over and stared intently at the tip of her shoe. Quill
glanced at her, curious; Meg turned her head away from the Summerhills and mouthed. Oh,
thank
you, my dar
ling! then straightened up.

"Are you too warm, poor Quill?" Selena said with concern. "Hugh. Perhaps we should put the air-conditioning on. Quill's face is quite flushed."

"Oh, no! I'm fine. The coffee was a little warmer than
I expected." She coughed hard, then assured Selena that
no, no, she didn't want an ice cube for her cup and said, "Meg and I discussed the possibility that we might design a series of gourmet dinners in conjunction with the presentation of the Sununerhill Chardonnays, Hugh."

The discussion was leisurely but productive. They agreed to each establish a tentative joint agreement, and
reconvene the discussion later in the week. At that point
Quill suggested, they should bounce the idea off the Chamber of Commerce, to see how the town reacted to it. "It is public money," she said, "and we'll need to find some way to benefit everyone."

Hugh glanced at his watch. "The public meeting is due to start in fifteen minutes. If I know the villagers, they'll be arriving right about now. I asked Pfieffer to stop by a little early, so I could take the measure of the man. Selena, how are the preparations for lunch?"

"Very good. You will be pleased."

"Go into the kitchen and make certain everything is
in order, will you please? And then meet us in the tasting
room. The only place," he added, turning to Quill, "where there is enough room to accommodate the
hoi polloi."
The doorbell rang. Hugh rose. "That will be Pfieffer. Will you think me rude if I don't accompany you to the tasting room? I'd like a few moments alone with this man. You know your way."

Heigh-ho, dismissed. Quill thought. "Of cour—I mean, yes, we do. We'll see you there, Hugh." She raised her voice. "Selena? Thank you for the coffee!"

"De nada."

"Oh, thank you, thank you,
thank you,
my darling!" Meg cooed as they made their way down the drive to the winery building. She stopped in the middle of the
pavement, put both hands on her hips, and deepened her
voice. "Sit, Selena, my darling." Then in falsetto, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, my Hugh!"

"Meg, shut up!"

" 'Are the villagers assembled with the properly hum
ble subservient attitude before I come in?' " Meg growled. She stuck her stomach out and swaggered. " 'Are they ready for my magnifi—' "

"Meg, darn it! They'll see you." Quill grabbed her elbow and jerked her forward. "So he's a little pompous."

"So the Pope's a little Catholic. Darn, I wish Doreen had seen that."

"Zowie." Quill shuddered. "Just behave yourself in the meeting, okay? He's a dork, but he's a dork with good ideas."

"So you
are
listening for the call of the bugle, the thunder of the horses' hooves, the shouts of gleeful—" She broke off at Quill's bewildered expression. "The cavalry. You're a believer. Finally."

"Oh, that." She smiled. "Maybe I am."

Meg shrieked and clutched her. "Quill. Look at the cars! The place is jammed already!"

Quill sat squashed in the tasting room of the Summerhill Winery. Most of the area wineries built tasting rooms, and the Summerhill room was one of the most pleasant she'd seen. The floors were new oak, stained clear and highly polished. The north and south ends of
the room had large windows overlooking the vineyards. The east wall held hundreds of bottles of the Summerhill
wines: Chardonnays, Chablis, white table wines, and
some of the new ice wines that an inventive vintner created after an early frost destroyed his harvest. The fourth wall was the tasting area: a long thin counter with stools
conveniently placed for the tipsy or tired.

The area was good-sized, approximately thirty by forty, but the Summerhills hadn't anticipated village in
terest in the availability of state money to bolster falter
ing tourism, and it was very crowded. Meg and Quill had walked in to discover it was S.R.O., and not much of that available either. Selena, entering the room in a
gardenia-scented whirl, behaved with an unexpectedly decisive charm. She moved Mr. and Mrs. Freddie Bellini
(Bellini's Funeral Home) out of their seats and to the back of the room with the tactful reminder that tourists who died were generally shipped home for burial. Both Bellinis were mollified by a large glass of Summerhill Chablis. She seated Meg and Quill in their former seats. She whispered, "A dreadful year, that Chablis, if I do say so myself, but the Bellinis? They will not know the difference. Sit, sit! There will be lunch after, of course. For you and some others. Not the car dealers, of course, or the pet store.
Madre de Dios!
But, when I give the sign to empty the room, do not go!"

The Chamber was out in force. Marge settled herself squarely in the front row and gave Quill a toothy grin that she didn't believe for a minute. Betty wasn't there— Quill devoutly hoped she wasn't back at the Inn weaseling cooking secrets out of Bjarne, who'd been left in charge of the kitchen. Elmer and Adela Henry had
dressed for the occasion, Adela in a large hat that clipped
Dookie Shuttleworth under the eye every time she made a vehement comment to her husband. Since Adela was famed throughout Hemlock Falls for both vehemence and volubility, Dookie was in significant danger of a scratched cornea. Quill winced, watching them.

"There's Stoke," Meg said. "I don't see Doreen with him."

"I asked her to sift through that room before it got cleaned up," Quill said.

"Three-ten? Why?"

"In part, because Marge Schmidt volunteered to head
the cleanup crew."

"Quill, you can't think that Marge had anything to do with Ellen Dunbarton's murder!"

"I don't know what to think," Quill said frankly. "Of course I don't see Marge as a murderer. But she's one heck of a business competitor. Maybe she set that fire not knowing anyone was in there."

"Bull," Meg said rudely. "Then who tied up Ellen
Dunbarton, and why?"

"What if the two incidents aren't connected?"

Meg shook her head decisively. "No way. It makes no sense whatsoever."

"Actually, I agree. And actually, I don't think Marge
set that fire. It seems to me that Burke was partly right;
there are types of people that commit certain types of crimes. If Marge were going to murder anyone, she'd hit him over the head with a baseball bat on Main Street at twelve noon. And if Marge wants our Inn so she can cut a larger swathe in town when all this grant money comes flooding in, she wouldn't set a fire to force us out; she'd do something legal and sneaky, like buying out our mortgage. But you know what? Marge may
know something about who did kill Ellen Dunbarton. I
wouldn't put it past her to search that room herself, thinking she'll find some evidence overlooked by the police."

"We've done that in the past. And if you asked Doreen to search that room, we're doing it now."

"So?"

Meg laughed. "So? Nothing like consistency, sis. Glad to see you're in better spirits, anyway."

"I think," Quill acknowledged, "that I was more depressed by John's departure than I cared to admit."

"No kidding. You know what I think? I think you should write to John. Just a chatty little note at first, followed by increasingly expansive letters. I think it'd be good for both of you. I think—"

"I think you should be quiet," Quill said firmly. "There's Hugh. We must be about to start."

He walked to the front of the room and waited for the
babble of voices to die down. "I'd like to welcome you
all to this first meeting of the Hemlock Falls Winegrow
ers' and Tourism Association. As you may know, we
have designed this group to be a subsidiary of our parent
organization, the Winegrowers' Association of the State of New York. I see most of our fellow growers here—
the Blacks from Grape Noir, the Hutchinsons from Ver
dant Valley, and I see a lot of our Hemlock Falls business people, as well. The agenda for this meeting today is short; we are going to hear from Paul Pfieffer, the governor's representative. Mr. Pfieffer is director of this county's fund for the Revitalization of Tourism."

"R.O.T.?" said Meg. "It's called R.O.T.?"

"Musta bin named by a Republican," Marge said.

Hugh was unruffled. "Laches and gentlemen? Mr.
Pfieffer."

Paul Pfieffer was thin, gray, acidic, and very, very dull. He began by thanking the governor (who wasn't, as far as Quill could tell, within one hundred miles of the Summerhill Winery), the Democrats in the State
Legislature who had approved the appropriation of funds (Marge had been right—R.O.T. was courtesy of the Republicans, who lost the vote on how much to appropriate
but got to name the fund), and for all she knew, since the room was warm and she slipped into a doze, he thanked his sisters and his cousins and his aunts as well.
She drifted sleepily through the reading of the bill itself,
and came to attention when Mr. Pfieffer finally cut to the chase.

"In short," he said, "there is a total of four million,
six hundred and fifty thousand dollars available to those businesses of Hemlock Falls who wish to support, or are
in any way connected to, the growth of tourism in our area. Twenty percent of this money is available as an outright grant to candidate businesses; the remaining eighty percent is available as a fifteen-year loan available at two percent."

"Two percent!" Meg said.

Quill looked at Marge. She was absolutely expres
sionless, but her eyes were glittering like the night lights
on a gun turret. She thrust her fist in the air.

Paul Pfieffer twitched. "Yes, Miss … um …"

"Schmidt. Marge Schmidt. What kinda contingencies
are attached to this loan?"

"Contingencies? I don't understand."

"A politician that don't understand contingencies?"
Marge said, not at all pleasantly. "Don't make me laugh.
Contingencies. No-no's. How can I use the money and how can't I use the money?"

"It can be used for expansion," Pfieffer said primly,
"or for payroll. For remodeling. For business-related ex
penses such as advertising …"