Toast Mortem (6 page)

Quill waved to Kathleen as she passed by, then paused and greeted the dinner guests. At a guess, they were in their mid-sixties, and from the rose corsage worn by the woman, they had come to the inn for a celebration.

“Welcome to the Inn at Hemlock Falls,” Quill said warmly. “Is this your first time with us?”

They nodded. “Couldn’t get in at Bonne Goutè,” the woman said. “And it’s our fortieth wedding anniversary. Well, it’s tomorrow, actually, and the kids have this big party planned, but I said to Frank, wouldn’t it be nice if we had dinner, just the two of us?”

“And I said, it sure would,” Frank said heartily. “Don’t mind being here at all.” He waved the menu at her. “It’s cheaper than that Bonne Goutè place, too.”

“Well,” Quill said. “There is that. Kathleen, please see that a bottle of the good champagne’s brought to this table will you? And take your time about deciding,” she added kindly.

“Little delay in the kitchen,” Kathleen offered. She was as sturdily built as her brother, but where Davy Kiddermeister was fair-haired and blushed at the drop of the hat, she was dark-haired and sallow. The only familial resemblance was their pale blue eyes. “Chef’s in jail for a bit. But we’ve got the backup headed this way speedy quick. I’ll see to that champagne, Quill.”

Quill kept her smile firmly in place as she went through the archway that led from the dining room to the reception area. With luck, the promise of free champagne would keep the fortieth-anniversary couple from scooting out the front door.

Dina wasn’t behind the desk. Quill hoped that meant she’d gone into the office with Clarissa Sparrow and called Bjarne. She noted that the daylilies in the two hip-high Oriental vases that flanked the reception desk were due for a change, looked askance at the spindle with its stack of pink While You Were Out messages, and opened the door to her office with the feeling that this particular day better end soon, or she was going to go stark staring bonkers.

Clarissa Sparrow stood at the window, looking out at the driveway with a hopeful expression. Dina sat on the couch. She straightened up with a guilty start as Quill came into the room and blurted, “Bjarne’s on vacation this week. Until Tuesday.”

“Oh, no!” Quill sat down behind her desk with a sigh. “I forgot. Oh, phooey.”

“And I’m sorry about the stuff with Meg . . . you know. Ratting her out to Davy.” She paused, then offered, “Your hair’s falling all over a bit.”

Quill’s hair was always out of control, just like everything else. She pulled it on top of her head in a loose top-knot when she got up in the morning, and by this time of day it was always halfway down her back. She twisted it back up and wound the scrunchie twice around the roots. “Well,” she said. “Now that I can actually see, things look better.”

“I’ll quit if you want,” Dina said. “It’s just that I didn’t think! I was in the middle of going over the gestation periods for my copepods and my mind was elsewhere.”

“Dina’s a graduate student in limnology at Cornell,” Quill said in response to Clarissa’s puzzled expression. “Limnology’s the study of freshwater lakes, which we have plenty of around here, as you know. I don’t know what copepods are.”

“Lake organisms,” Dina said. “A freshwater crustacean of the subclass Copepoda
.
I keep telling you.”

“Whatever,” Quill said. “Let’s get back to the rat-finkery.”

“Well, Davy showed up and I thought he was just, like, asking me about some gossip he’d heard, and then he made me write it out and sign it and I thought, oh, heck. I feel just awful about this! I honestly didn’t mean to get Meg into trouble.” Two large tears rolled down Dina’s cheeks.

“It could be worse,” Quill said kindly.

“How?” Dina sobbed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Quill said vaguely. “We could be in the middle of a forest fire or something. Here.” She pulled a tissue from the box on her desk and leaned over to hand it to Dina. “Look. I’ve handled the kitchen before, and Doreen is with Jack, as usual, and we only have two other bookings for dinner. So I can cope. There’s just that one anniversary couple in the dining room right now. But you’ll have to stay on at the reception desk, Dina. No date with Davy.”

“That’s only fair,” Dina said eagerly. “And do you want me to make up a packet to send to Meg? Food and whatever? Some nice soap?”

Quill resisted the impulse to clutch at her hair again. “She’ll be back before she needs to take a shower, I’m sure. I called Howie.”

“I could give you a hand in the kitchen, if you like.” Clarissa Sparrow turned away from the window. “I’m a chef.”

“Oh my God,” Dina said. “I almost forgot you were there. Quill, this is Clarissa Sparrow. Clarissa, this is my boss, Sarah Quilliam.”

“You’re a chef?” Quill said. “Of course. Is that where I’ve seen you before? On the tour of Bonne Goutè?” She closed her eyes, trying to remember. “You’re pastry, right?” But there was something else. Clarissa wasn’t beautiful, exactly, but she was distinctive. She was slim, maybe too slim, with angular cheekbones, dark hair, and, like Meg, clear gray eyes.

“Right. But I trained at CB . . . Cordon Bleu . . . and I can handle three entrees, no problem.”

“That’d be just great,” Quill said. “But I hate to impose.” She hesitated. “Of course, we’d be glad to reimburse you for your time.”

“We’ll see,” Clarissa said. “It’s my awful boss that’s put you into this situation, after all. But maybe we can talk about this in the kitchen? I’d better get started.”

Quill led the way out of the office and almost collided with Kathleen in the entryway to the dining room.

“Hi, Quill, hi, Dina.” Her gaze slid curiously over Clarissa Sparrow, but she said, “I’ve been looking for you guys. I gave the VanderMolens another bottle of champagne and a cheese plate, so they’re feeling no pain, but the Adriansen party just got here and they don’t drink. So they want food.” She glanced over her shoulder at the party of four seated next to the wine rack. “I think they’re serious eaters,” she said in a whisper. “You know, foodies. They asked if we had a seasonal menu. And they’re getting a little cross.”

“You know what?” Clarissa said. “I can handle this. People like that came into my rest . . . that is, I’m familiar with this type of customer.” She smiled. Until she’d smiled, Quill hadn’t registered how sad her expression was.

“Sure,” Quill said. “I’ll just check things out in the kitchen. We have a small staff on Mondays, but there
is
a staff. Kathleen will give you a menu, and we list the evening specials on the blackboard. I’ll wait for you in there.”

Clarissa nodded and made her way gracefully past the empty tables to the Adriansens and their guests. Something, either the challenge of cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen or the chance to talk to the guests, seemed to have pulled her out of herself. In a matter of moments, she had two women in the party smiling and the men nodding self-importantly.

“Lucky she was here,” Dina said. “It could have been a disaster. Not,” she added hastily, “that you aren’t a good cook, Quill.”

“Why
is
she here, Dina?”

“Her cat. She lost her cat. Well, she didn’t lose it, exactly; it ran away after M. LeVasque threw it out the back door of the cooking academy. She’s put up signs down in the village and they’ve got that Lost, Stolen, or Strayed thing on the radio . . .”

Quill put her hand up. “Stop. Go back to the reception desk. Call upstairs and see if Doreen needs anything to eat. Jack should be fast asleep by now, but if he isn’t, come and get me. Answer the phones. Take messages. Book rooms. Do your job. Stay there until the dining room closes or unless Jack needs me.”

“Okay. What if I hear something about Clarissa’s cat?”

Quill clapped her hand to her forehead. “The cat. Is it a big orange cat?”

“Clarissa says it’s a Maine coon cat. I guess it’s huge.”

“Okay. I think it’s under the hydrangea on the beach. Call Mike. Ask him to get a handful of liver bits from Doreen.”

“Doreen has liver bits?”

“Never mind about the liver bits. Ask Mike to get Max’s dog cage and ask him to go down to the beach and lure the cat into the carrier. And then Mike can bring it up to the kitchen.”

“Clarissa’s cat’s under the hydrangea bush? I’ll tell her right now! She was so worried about that cat.”

“Let’s see if it’s still there. If it isn’t, she’ll be even more worried. If it is, problem solved. Let’s check it out before we get her hopes up.”

“Okay.” Dina sighed. “I guess this means no movie with Davy, but that’s okay. This is pretty much an emergency. I’ll let you know if Mike finds the cat.”

“Good.”

Dina scanned Quill’s expression and said wisely, “You want me to go away and get all this rolling.”

“Sooner than now,” Quill agreed.

Clarissa joined her as she walked into the kitchen.

“Think you can handle this okay?”

Clarissa smiled. “I’d say ‘piece of cake’ except that good cake’s never easy. This will be easy.”

“I hope so, for all our sakes. We’ve got a dishwasher and prep person on hand at the moment. I’ll introduce you.”

Meg recruited graduate students from the nearby Cornell School of Hotel Administration to handle the basic-skills jobs, and the two nervous kids jumped to attention as Quill and Clarissa came in.

“We heard Meg’s in jail!” the girl said.

“It’s Devon, isn’t it?” Quill said to the tall blond boy holding a pot scrubber. She turned to the slim girl with the tomato sieve. “And you’re Mallory. And yes, Meg’s in jail, but she’s just visiting. Like Monopoly.” Quill shut her eyes briefly. Her two universes collided all the time. Mother and manager. “Never mind.”

“Kathleen came in looking for a cheese plate with local stuff,” Mallory said. “We put together a soft/hard sort of thing, but, Mrs. McHale, there I couldn’t find anything other than the ewe’s milk cheddar from downstate and some French Brie. I hope that’s okay. We couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

“Things are fine. Meg will be out soon; in the meantime, Chef Sparrow’s in charge. Clarissa? This is Devon Mc-Allister and Mallory DiCosta.”

“You both did beautifully with the cheese plate,” Clarissa said. “Now, I’m going to need both of you to help me get acquainted with this kitchen. Devon? I’ll need you to prep a pasta dish, and Mallory, we’re going to slap together a nice starter for table thirty-two.”

Quill felt herself relax. “And I’ll be right outside, if you need me.”

Nobody looked up. After a few moments, Quill went out the back door and sat down on the kitchen porch. It was close to eight o’clock and a full moon was rising in the east. The air was cool, and a few clouds drifted across the twilight sky. A satisfying clink of pots and pans sang out from the kitchen. Two stories over her head, Jack was peacefully asleep.

And Myles?

She sighed. She wouldn’t think about Myles.

She pulled her sketch pad from one pocket and the stub of a charcoal pencil from the other. She made a quick drawing of the cat under the hydrangea bush and set it aside. Then she checked her cell phone, in case she’d missed a message from Meg. (She hadn’t.) There was a brief rustling in the rosemary bush at the front of the garden and Max emerged covered, as usual, with bits of sticks, burrs, and a variety of leaves. He sat down beside her, scratched himself vigorously, and dropped his head in her lap with a contented grunt. Quill combed his coat with her fingers and carefully teased the burrs from his ears. Her cell phone sounded.

“Hey,” Meg said.

“Hey, yourself. Are you out?”

“I’m out. Davy’s going to drive me back.”

“Are you all right?”

Meg snorted. “It’ll take a lot more than a couple of hours in stir to crack this cookie.”

“Howie couldn’t come himself, so he sent his junior associate. I hope it all went smoothly.”

“Justin,” Meg said. “Justin was great.”

Quill was familiar with that note in her sister’s voice. “Dina thought we might call Jerry, in case you needed anything.”

“Just cool it, sis.”

“Okay,” Quill said amiably. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, then.” She slipped the cell phone back in her pocket and ruffled Max’s ears. “Looks like the relationship with Jerry Grimsby is cooling off, Max. I can’t say I’m surprised. Two chefs in one household—I’d call that a recipe for disaster.” She nudged the sleepy dog. “Ho-ho. I’ll tell you the worst thing about Myles being away, Max. No one else gets my jokes.”

Max rolled one eye up at her and yawned.

“Actually,” Quill said, “that’s not the worst thing about Myles being away. The worst thing is sleeping by myself at night. And Myles not seeing the way Jack changes from day to day. Although I do make a quick little drawing of him, every morning, just so Myles can see where he’s been and where he’s going. That and the photographs.”

Somebody pushed the screen door open. Max lifted his head and thumped his tail on the decking. Clarissa came out onto the porch. “Just came out to tell you things are well under control.” She smiled down at Max. “That’s one of the nicest things about a dog. You can talk to it any time, and it always listens.”

“Cats, too,” Quill said. She handed the sketch of the cat up to her.

“Bismarck!” Clarissa sat down beside her, and angled the sketch so that she could see it better in the light from the kitchen windows. “Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?”

“He was down by our little beach this afternoon. As soon as Dina told me it might be your cat, I sent our groundskeeper down to bring him back up for you.”

“Uh-oh.” Clarissa got to her feet. “Bismarck has um . . . issues. Maybe I’d better go give your guy a hand. Oh, shoot. There’s the desserts. Table twenty-seven’s too drunk to care, but the foursome’s going to want berries.”

“I can handle the desserts,” Quill said bravely. “I’d want to be there, myself, if it were my cat.”

“It’s not Bismarck I’m worried about,” Clarissa said. “Bismarck can take care of himself.”