up her nose and regarded Quill with sparkling eyes.
“Or I could maybe get started on helping you with the
murder investigation. You know what I found online the
other day? I found this little dingus that you can use to
bug a room. They’ll ship it to us overnight, if you want.”
“No investigation,” Quill said. “We’re leaving this
one up to the police. At least for now,” she amended.
“And for heaven’s sake, don’t even think about bugging
the guests’ rooms. It’s a class D felony, or whatever.”
“Of course we’re investigating this,” Meg said
briskly. “We’ll never get rid of these horrible guests if
we don’t. Dina, I think I’ll go down to the Croh Bar and
squelch that sausage rumor and see if I can pick up any
other good rumors. You can come with me if you want.”
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27
Quill looked from one to the other in panic. “You
two aren’t really going to take off for the Croh Bar?
There’s too much to do here.”
“Bugging the rooms, for instance!” Meg said. “Dina,
how many of those little dinguses could we buy?”
“Funny,” Quill said. “As in not-at-all-funny. If we’re
going to investigate, we’ll do it the legal way. Tech-free
snooping. Well.” She rose to her feet reluctantly. “I’m
going to find Olivia Oberlie. And I would appreciate it,
Meg, if you would send some tea. Coffee’s even better.
If she’s been swilling gin for a couple of hours, she’ll
need it. And I’d appreciate even more, Dina, if you
would . . .”
“Gotcha,” Dina said cheerily. “Croh Bar it is. Just
kidding,” she added hastily. “Sorry. I forgot what a horrible day you’ve had.”
“I certainly have,” Quill said glumly. “And it’s just
going to get worse.”
CHAPTER 3
Ground into sausage
Ugh.
Quill walked slowly down the slate-floored hall that
led from the reception area to the Tavern Lounge. There
wasn’t any doubt in her mind that there’d be a murder
inquiry. Within hours, the Inn would be filled not only
with the homicide team from nearby Syracuse, but a
clutch of reporters, TV cameramen, and garden-variety
thrill seekers. She knew—from past, equally distressing
cases—that the furor would die down within days. The
wayward attention of the public would turn to other
crimes in other places.
She had learned, too, that it was a rare guest who actually canceled reservations under circumstances like the one she and Meg faced now. But there’d be an effect.
The kitchen staff would get cranky. The meals would be
late. The housekeeping staff would get wound up and
call in sick. The guests would get drunker than they usually did, and the wait staff would get harassed and threaten to quit. The inquiry would be a huge disruption.
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29
Quill hated huge disruptions. Her idea of a perfect
day was one in which absolutely nothing happened.
She and Meg had to solve this murder, and quickly,
too.
Quill stopped just short of the entrance to the Tavern
Lounge and thought it over. The IAPFP convention was
due to disband on Friday. This was Tuesday. It was pretty
unlikely that the police would get through all that they
had to do in three and a half days. The coming weekend
was fully booked with a whole new set of guests. And if
the police were going to hold over any of IAPFP’s
members for questioning, not only would other accommodations have to be found for the incoming guests but the possible suspects-in-residence would get angrier as
the investigation wore on. And Meg was right. The
members of the IAPFP made mink look like cuddly
house pets. Unless someone uncovered the identity of
the murderer pretty darn quick, it was going to be a
heck of a week.
A sweaty hand at the back of her neck startled her
back to the present.
“Gotcha!” Rudy Baranga said gleefully. “Guess I
snuck up on you, little lady.”
“Mr. Baranga,” Quill acknowledged, coldly. “Is there
something I can do for you?”
Rudy Baranga was built like a muscular pear. He had
a small, balding head with a few strands of dyed black
hair swept artfully across his scalp, and shoulders that
sloped into a substantial belly. In Quill’s private hierarchy of Horrible Guests, he was a Grabber, just one step up from the Lascivious Snickerer. He was also one of
the six members of the International Association of Pet
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Food Providers she currently had under suspicion of the
murder of Lila Longstreet.
Quill eyed him severely. He was a meat wholesaler,
she recalled, a supplier to the manufacturing members
of the IAPFP. And Pamela Durbin, owner of the infamous Pampered Puppy Palace, had intimated that Maxwell Kittleburger depended on Rudy for a lot more
than pig’s ears. “I do believe,” Pamela had said in her
gossipy way, “that the man’s connected.”
“Do for me? Other than do me?” Rudy snickered
meaningfully. “Nah. Thought I’d head into the bar for a
pop, is all. The meeting we was all at’s been postponed.”
Quill opened the door to the Lounge and motioned
him through ahead of her. She’d learned the hard way
not to let a Grabber get behind you.
Rudy lunged into the room, then stopped short and
gazed at the Lounge appreciatively. “Nice place,” he approved. “First time I been in here in the daytime. Most bars don’t show up as good in the daylight.” He gave an
approving whistle. “No crap on the floor, either.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Baranga. I’d like to catch Mrs.
Oberlie, if I can.” Quill edged around him, and scanned
the room for the pet psychic.
Rudy stepped aside, obligingly. “Great ambiance, too.
Where’d you get them?” Rudy pointed a hairy thumb
at the round tables arranged around the slate floor. The
tops had been created out of wood from a gym floor
Quill had scrounged when the old Hemlock Falls High
School had been renovated. “Those tops are pretty
damn great.”
“I designed them,” Quill admitted. “And we had a local finish carpenter make them up.”
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31
“Nice,” Rudy said. “I like that bar top, too. Mahogany, innit?”
“Yes,” Quill said in an abstracted way. “It dates from
the nineteen-twenties, when the Inn was a speakeasy.”
Olivia herself wasn’t at any of the tables. But there
was a large, wildly flowered tote bag stashed under the
table by the french doors leading to the outside terrace.
A sequined fuchsia bolero wrap hung over the adjacent
chair. There was no trace of the gin on the table, which
didn’t mean much; the waitstaff would have cleared
away the dirty glasses almost before they met the tabletop. There was no trace of the dog, either. So perhaps Olivia had taken the animal outside for a short run. Its
name, Quill recalled,
was Little Bit.
“Buy you one?” Rudy offered, with a nod toward the
long bar.
“Perhaps later,” Quill said tactfully. “Although . . .”
Rudy was not only a suspect, but a potential mine of information. She hesitated just long enough for Rudy to make up her mind for her.
“You should always make time for a pop!” He put his
hand under her elbow and steered her toward the bar.
Nate had his back to them as he restocked the
shelves on the back wall. Rudy settled himself onto a
bar stool and pulled Quill down next to him. “Barkeep!”
he said, and snapped his fingers. Finger-snappers came
above Grabbers on the Horribles list, but not by much.
Quill sighed. With luck, she could slide away as soon as
Nate gave Rudy a drink.
Nate turned around and gave Quill a good-natured
grin. No one at the Inn had a good idea what Nate actually looked like. Most of his face was concealed by a
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huge brown beard. He was almost as broad as he was
wide; not fat, but solid.
“Hey, boss,” he said.
“Hey, yourself.”
His gaze flickered to Rudy. “Mr. Baranga? The
Johnny Walker Blue?”
Rudy slapped his chubby thigh. “Hot damn. Only
been in here the once before, and lookit that. He got it in
one. I got a fin for guys like you.” He slapped a five-
dollar bill on the table. “Go ahead, sport. It’s yours. And
you can put the booze on my tab, like before.” He
beamed at Quill. “You got a classy place here, baby.
Now what can I do you for?”
Quill looked at him assessingly. Ten years of inn
keeping had taught her more about human beings than
she sometimes wanted to know. But she’d bet the sum of
the unpaid bills in her desk drawer that the man hadn’t
heard about Lila Longstreet’s death. Not even the insensitive Rudy could be that oblivious, if only because Lila was someone he must have known well.
“Nothing for me right now, Mr. Baranga. I can’t stay
long. I was just looking for Mrs. Oberlie, actually. Have
you seen her around?”
Rudy scowled. “That broad? This about replacing
those chairs? You wanna get paid for those, you’re right.
You should be looking for her.”
“Mrs. Oberlie smashed up the chairs?” Quill asked,
startled. “My goodness. I thought that was Mr. Kittleburger.”
“Nah. Good old Maxie pitched the chair at Bumbottle. Bumbottle threw it back at him and missed. That
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33
sucker lamed into the wall. Broke the chair. And the
wall, too, come to think of it.”
“Bum . . . ? Oh, you mean Mr. Kittleburger threw a
chair at Mr. Barnstaple.”
“But it was Livy stirred the whole hoo-ha up. She’s
the president, right? If we got a couple disagreements
amongst us, like we do now and then, she’s supposed to
be casting oil all over the waters, like they say.”
There were several things about this speech that bemused Quill. The first was Mr. Baranga’s grammar, which was belied by his obstreperous manner. Nobody
paid much attention to the proper use of “among” versus “between” anymore. The second was the reference to oil on the waters, which was quite biblical for a guy
who was supposed to be Kittleburger’s muscle. She
studied him. Perhaps there was more to Rudy than met
the critical innkeeper’s eye.
“And she didn’t? Calm things down, I mean?”
Rudy snorted. “Stirred ’em up, more like.”
Quill accepted a club soda from Nate with a nod of
thanks. “What broke the meeting up? Other than the
chair-flinging, I mean.”
“What breaks any meeting up?” Rudy said.
“Well,” Quill said. “I’m the secretary of our local
Chamber of Commerce, and all kinds of things break
our meetings up. A few months ago we had a pretty significant women’s rights issue over a . . . um . . . well, it was a nudie bar, to be perfectly frank.”
Rudy waved the hand that wasn’t holding his Johnny
Walker Blue. “My question was, whaddayacallit? Rhetorical. What broke this morning’s meeting up was what’s
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been breaking the meetings up all week.” He slapped his
glass down on the bar top. Nate obligingly filled it up
again.
“And that was what?” Quill asked, after a long moment.
“Huh?”
“What broke the meeting up?”
“Oh.” Rudy sipped his drink in a ruminative way.
“It’s like this, see. I ship meat. All kinds of meat. Pork,
beef, chicken, goat, whatever.” He shrugged in a mildly
defensive way. “And it’s offal, right? The leftovers, if
you get my drift. I mean, for pet food, whaddya want?
Chicken feet gotta lot a protein. Just ask them Haitians.
They make soup out of the feet, if you can believe it.”
Quill ignored this.
“So Bumsteeple . . .”
“Mr. Barnstaple,” Quill said, more for clarification
than anything else. It was useless to try and sensitize the
Rudy Barangas of this world.
“Right. See, he wants us to go vegetarian.”
“Vegetarian? You mean he wants the members of the
International Association of Pet Food Providers to manufacture vegetarian pet food?”
“You got it, cutie.”
“But, can dogs and cats survive on a vegetarian
diet?” Quill asked.
Rudy grunted. Quill didn’t know if that was a yes or
a no.
ahead and making vegetarian pet food all by himself?”
“He does already. He’s owns that Vegan Vittles.”
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35
“Surely he doesn’t want all of the members to drop
what they’re doing now?”
“Yep, he does,” Rudy said. “Matter of principle, he
says. Me, I think it’s something else.” He looked wise.
“You know how people pay a bundle for this organic
stuff? They’ll pay a bundle for organic dog food, too,
specially if it’s vegan or whatever Millard calls it.”
Rudy sighed happily. “Thing is, in America, principles
cost you, see?”
“But why should you all have to go along with it?”
Rudy swiveled around on his bar stool and pointed
toward the french doors leading out to the terrace. “Her.
That’s why. Says meat’s bad for our image. And you
know what kind of clout she’s got.”
Olivia Oberlie.
The fuchsia bolero, which had been draped over the
chair arm, was now draped across the shoulders of a
large purple-haired woman in a resplendent purple caftan. Olivia sat at the table closest to the doors. Her strange and luminous eyes—pale turquoise, and in
Quill’s opinion, a large part of the reason for her
mystique—stared unseeingly straight ahead. Rudy was
right about Olivia’s clout. Her TV show was incredibly
popular. Her face appeared with regularity in People
magazine as pet psychic to the stars. Everybody wanted
Olivia to talk to their
animals. And everybody would
believe her if she claimed that dogs preferred highly
priced carrots to eating their bovine friends.
Olivia’s flowered tote bag now sat on the table in
front of her. It was wriggling slightly. Quill hoped it was
her dog, Little Bit, in the tote, and not a member of the
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pet psychic’s more exotic fraternity of reptiles, flying
mammals, and rodents.
Rudy swung back to the bar and thumped his glass
on the bar top. Nate filled it up again. Rudy addressed
him in a cozily confidential way, “Sport? You know that
TV show she’s got?”
“Mind Doesn’t Matter,” Nate said. “Sure. I’ve seen it.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Quill said.
“It ain’t half bad,” Rudy said thoughtfully.
“It’s terrific.” Nate put his elbows on the bar and
leaned forward. “You know, there’s got to be something
to that psychic stuff.”
Rudy hunched over the bar. “You’re right about that,
partner. You see that one show where the elephant told
Olivia he had to get back to the savanna or he’d die of
loneliness? Saddest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Yuh,” Nate said huskily. His eyes looked suspiciously moist.
“Choked me up,” Rudy said. “Those elephants,
they’re great guys.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s a
crime to put ’em in zoos, that’s what it is.”
Both men stared at their feet and sniffled.
Quill wondered briefly if she’d wandered into a bar
on a planet not her own.
“Guys,” she said. “I’m missing some information
here. Are you telling me that Olivia supports the vegetarian pet food movement?”
Rudy wiped his eyes with a grubby handkerchief.
“That’d be correct.”
“And that she’s going to pressure your group members to stop making meat-based pet food and grind up what—celery, lettuce, carrots?”
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37
Rudy made a pretend gun of his thumb and forefinger and pointed at her. “You got it.”
Quill tugged thoughtfully at the curl over her left
ear. Vegetarian pet food seemed unlikely to provide a
motive for murder. It was a squabble issue, not a smack-
you-over-the-head-with-a-blunt-instrument issue. Certainly, Olivia Oberlie’s support of the movement was logical; she made her living—a highly profitable one, if
People magazine was right—by playing on her viewers’