Dread on Arrival (5 page)

“Now, Margie,” Harland patted Marge’s shoulder with a couple of comforting thumps.

“All voting against this stupid motion,” Carol Ann began.

Quill hadn’t been secretary of the Chamber of Commerce for twelve years without learning a few tricks. She raised her hand. “Point of order, Mr. Mayor.”

“Huh?” Elmer’s gaze was a little glassy. Adela poked him sharply in the side. “Yeah. Okay. The chair recognizes Quill. Ms. Quilliam. Ms. Quilliam-McHale, I mean.”

“I move that the motion be tabled for further discussion,” Quill said promptly.

The silence was short but powerful.

Howie smiled. “I second that very smart motion.”

“All in favor?” Quill said.

“Aye!” came a chorus of relieved voices.

“Against?” Elmer said.

“Nay!”
Marge and Carol Ann roared. This was the first time in Quill’s excellent memory that the two women had voted the same way on any issue at all. She put a big star next to the record she’d made of the vote.

“So moved and passed,” Elmer said rapidly. “This vote is tabled for … whenever. Now if we can just get down to some real bidness …”

“Now just a darn minute,” Marge said. “Are you going to represent the people of Hemlock Falls or not, Elmer Henry?”

“Perhaps a study would be in order,” Quill said. When crossed, Marge had the temper of a tank gunner sitting on a wasp and a taste for revenge. “I move that a committee be formed to look into the advisability of the Chamber sponsoring a political party. I mean, the Chamber’s supposed to be independent of political bias, isn’t it? Maybe we should form a committee to look into the town’s support for the parking meters. A whole party formed just to get rid of parking meters? It doesn’t make sense.” Then, apologetically, since Marge’s little gray eyes had narrowed to glittering slits, as if taking aim with an Uzi, “It seems a rather narrow platform, is all.”

“What it says here in my meeting notes,” Esther said loudly, “doesn’t only have to do with parking meters. What it says here is that the party platform is to assure free and righteous elections.”

“Elections?” Quill said.

“That’s right.” Marge settled back into her chair with the air of a woman who had her target firmly in her sights and was happy to pull the trigger. “I’m running for mayor.”

Quill came to attention. So this was what all the animosity was about. Elmer was reelected like clockwork every four years, and he usually ran unopposed.

“No! Like I said before. You’ve never done a thing for this town, Marge Schmidt,” Carol Ann said furiously. “Who’s the only person to have adjudicated fair taxes for this town? Me. Who’s the only person to have kept the streets of this town free of dangerous animals? Me. Anybody notice how many burglaries have been committed in this town the past four weeks?”

There was an apprehensive murmur.

“Exactly. Crime is up. And it’s not just burglars. Many people are in violation of important codes in this town.” Carol Anne’s big blue eyes narrowed into icy points.
“And you know who you
are.”

Dead silence greeted this alarming statement.

“So. Who can run this town better than Mr. Chubby over there? Me.” Carol Ann’s perfectly glossed lips firmed into a thin, determined line. “If there’s going to be any political party endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, it’ll be mine. This town should be headed places, moving on up. Not down. I’m running for mayor, too. And you can bet your bottom dollar when I get in, this town’s going to be run right.”

The room erupted into argument.

Early in the summer, Quill had counted up how many Chamber meetings she’d been to over the years. It was more than one hundred. In all that time, the ratio of squabbles to rational discourse was about four to one, in favor of squabble. But this time, the tone was different. Voices were higher. Bodies were tense. Faces were flushed angry-red instead of merely-annoyed-pink.

Quill leaned sideways and whispered at Miriam. “We’ve got a mayoral election coming up?”

“Where have you
been
for the last month?” Miriam said testily.

“The Adirondacks. With Myles and Jack.”

“Oh. That’s right. I forgot. How was your trip?”

“I’m beginning to wish I’d never left. What the heck is going on here?”

Miriam sighed. “I wish I knew for sure. Howie and I have talked about it some. Take a look at the table, Quill. Do you know what I see? There’s Harland Peterson, biggest dairy farmer for miles around. Farming is a growth industry at the moment. Our farmers are rich, after decades of being poor. Right next to him is Nadine Peterson, whose beauty shop customers are the workers at Walmart, the cashiers at Wegmans, the stock girls at the pharmacy. Those people are victims of the nationwide recession. They aren’t going to Nadine’s as often as they used to because they don’t have the money and she’s had to raise her prices anyway. Then there’s Harvey Bozzel, Hemlock Falls’s only advertising executive, who depends on ad income from the PennySaver and the Hemlock Falls
Gazette
. You and I both know what’s happening to newspapers these days.”

They both looked at Harvey. He was tall and slender, and paid a lot of attention to his thick blond hair. His attractive, not-very-intelligent face was glum. Quill liked Harvey, even though most of his advertising campaigns bordered on the lunatic. In a weird way, the lunacy added to his appeal.

“Next to Harvey is Frieda Arbuckle, who just opened the Balzac Café, and who is making money hand over fist because of all the tourists. Next to her is Pastor Shuttleworth—who’s talking about merging with both the Methodist and Baptist churches from Covert because attendance at the Church of the Word of God is a tenth of what it used to be.”

“I get the point,” Quill said soberly.

“So there’s Marge, our very own Croesus, fussing about the effects of parking meter charges on her restaurant customers because there’s nothing she can do about the rest of it. And she cares about this town, Quill. She really does. That’s why she’s running for mayor.

“Fear. I think that’s what we’re seeing. Fear. Half the village is getting richer and the other half is looking at living on a street corner with a coffee can full of quarters as their only hope. There doesn’t seem to be anything that anyone can do about it. So there’s a three-way race for mayor and in my opinion, it’s going to get very ugly, very quick.”

“It’s not that bad, surely?”

“You don’t think so? How long have we known about the
Ancestor’s Attic
visit?”

“You mean the show? Gosh. It was before Myles and I left for the mountains. A month at least.”

“We’ve had a couple of TV shows come here over the years. How has the village handled it in the past?”

Quill chuckled. “The Chamber forms a committee. Harvey starts an advertising campaign. Elmer tries to find an angle that will benefit the town. The usual self-interest balanced by civic pride.”

“You heard Carol Ann about the number of break-ins?”

“You mean that’s not just a Carol Ann statistic?”

“Nope. And do you know what’s being burgled?”

Quill shook her head.

“Attics. Basements. The Volunteers of America charity shop. Even the Historical Society. Me!”

“Oh my goodness, Miriam. I am so sorry! I had no idea! Was anything valuable taken?”

Miriam shrugged. “Who knows? It’s stuff I haven’t looked at for years. Old files were riffled through, old boxes were turned over, a trunk I’ve lugged around for years was pried open. I don’t know if anything important is missing or not.” She rapped her knuckles on the table, like a first-grade teacher calling the class to order. “Here’s the thing. Our good citizens are sneaking around ripping off forgotten items in the hope that Edmund Tree will tell them they’ve found a treasure. So there’s no nutty ad campaign from Harvey and no Ladies’ Auxiliary committee to set up a fancy reception for Edmund Tree and his TV cameras. Just petty theft. Or,” Miriam added with a conscientious air, “grand theft, depending. Who knows?” She shook her head. “I’m telling you, Quill. It’s a sorry state of affairs. It looks to me like greed’s got the upper hand.”

3

∼Roast Leg of Lamb Quilliam∼

Bone a leg of lamb. Flatten meat onto the prep table. Sprinkle a small handful of coarse sea salt, rosemary, and freshly ground black pepper on both sides. Roll up lengthwise, secure with kitchen twine. Bake at 450 degrees eight to ten minutes a pound. “You’re kidding. Marge is running for mayor? And Carol Ann, too? Against Elmer?” Meg paused in the middle of making a roux, egg whisk in midair.

Quill, more unsettled than she wanted to admit by the conversation she’d had with Miriam, had decided to reveal the most immediately sensational news from the Chamber meeting to Meg. “Wow. How long has Elmer been mayor?”

“Ever since we’ve been here. Carol Ann’s platform is Progress for the People. Whatever the heck that means. More Ten Most Wanted Animals posters in the post office, I guess.”

Quill had been wandering around the kitchen. Mindful of being in the way, she settled into the rocking chair by the stone fireplace. The activity around her was purposeful but peaceful. The dining room would open in an hour. The special tonight was roasted lamb, and the air was redolent with rosemary, garlic, and butter. Dried herbs hung from the old wooden beams that crossed the ceiling. Late afternoon sunlight flooded in from the large back window. Meg’s collection of copper pans glowed against the wall. So what if the prep table was battered from years of being whacked by butcher’s knives? So what if the twelve-burner stove was dulled and scratched? Who needed spiffy new Viking stoves in a multimillion dollar building like the academy? It was shabby, but it was home.

“There’ve been some burglaries, too, while I was away?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you about that.” Meg ran her hands through her short dark hair, leaving a trail of goo. “No big deal, from what I hear.”

“They may not be a big deal to you, but it sure looks like Carol Ann is trying to work up a law-and-order platform.”

“Phooey on Carol Ann.” Meg finished the roux, edged past Elizabeth Chou to put the pan at the back of the twelve-burner stove, then disappeared into the pantry. She reappeared with a pound of bitter chocolate and handed it over to Bjarne. “She’ll never get elected. Everybody hates her.”

“Everybody’s
scared
of her,” Elizabeth Chou said. “And I don’t even have a dog, like Max, that she can arrest now that she’s animal control officer. When she was tax assessor, I didn’t have a house she could tax, either. I’m still scared of her.”

“Well, don’t be,” Meg said. “Forget about Carol Ann. She’s a nitwit. Any time we spend talking about Carol Ann Spinoza is time lost forever. None of this has anything to do with us. How’s that tapenade coming along?”

Elizabeth looked at the pile of tomatoes on the cutting board. “I forgot about the tapenade.”

“See? You were way too caught up in gossiping about Carol Ann. Move, move, move!”

Kathleen Kiddermeister, the Inn’s head waitress, bustled in with her notepad held aloft. “Both dinner sittings are fully reserved,” she said. “I don’t know if we’re going to have a problem with walk-ins or not.” She bustled out again, the double doors to the dining rooms swinging in her wake.

“Jeez,” Meg said. “I hate to turn people away. Maybe we ought to think about full service in the lounge for real, Quill.” She grinned, suddenly. “Nice to have this kind of problem, isn’t it? But with the
Ancestor’s Attic
people doing the show here, we’re bound to get some major word of mouth going, and we’ve got to look to the future.” She grabbed a fistful of leeks from the sieve in the prep sink and began to peel them with manic energy. “If we go ahead with the expansion I can turn twice the number of tables we’re turning now.”

Quill set the rocker going, resisting the impulse to run upstairs. Jack was still asleep, and she’d learned to her cost not to wake him up. She’d give herself ten minutes of downtime here in the kitchen, and then she’d get back to work. And she wouldn’t think about how nice it would be to go upstairs, cuddle his warm and sleepy little body next to hers and drift off herself. “You’re already working six days a week, and half the time you don’t even take your Monday off. You’re not serious about expansion.”

“Why not?”

There was a challenging set to her sister’s shoulders.

“I mean it’s certainly a possibility,” Quill said cautiously.

“Ha. I know you too well, sister. That’s the classic Quilliam brush-off. You got it from Dad. Listen.” Meg waved a leek at her. “We give Bjarne a raise …”

“That is a very good idea,” Bjarne said from his post at the stove. “Even if we do not expand, it is a good idea to give me a raise.”

“Me, too,” Elizabeth said. “My rent’s going up next month.”

“And we hire a couple of really good people …”

Quill threw up her hands. “Where are we going to find these really good people?”

Meg glanced from side to side, then said in a whisper, “I think a couple of people at Bonne Goutè are ready to jump ship.”

Quill stopped the rocker. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. I know it for a fact. Rather,” she added with a conscientious air, “I’m pretty sure they’re ready to, if the offer’s right.”