matches. The book was full.
'Have you seen a matchbook folded like this before?'
Quill shook her head. 'Is it a clue?'
'Beats me.'
'This doesn't make any sense, Myles.'
'Not at the moment it doesn't.' He rubbed the back of his neck. 'Why don't you get some sleep? It's been a long day. I want to go back to the station and think about this a little bit.'
'You think this was just a stupid prank?'
'Beats...'
'... me,' Quill finished for him.
'I'll do some background checks. On all of them. I want to get the state lab boys in here tomorrow to run some tests on the balcony.' He put his arm around Quill, and she burrowed gratefully into his chest. He smelled faintly of aftershave and clean male sweat. 'I don't want to think about this any more tonight. I want to think about the way you smell. I like the way you smell.'
'Quill.' Myles tipped her head back. The moonlight shone into her eyes, and his face was a dark shadow behind it. 'There's a third option.'
'Yippee,' said Quill, thinking delightfully lewd thoughts.
'Malice.'
'Malice?'
'Someone could be out to put you and Meg out of business.'
-4-
Quill snatched a few hours sleep, dreaming of Mavis bobbing along the duck pond like a fat cork, Mrs. Hallenbeck yelling, 'No charge for the swim!' and Marge Schmidt nailing a 'For Sale' sign to the Inn's front door.
She overslept the alarm and woke groggily to sunshine, birdsong, and a distinct feeling of unease.
She threw open the bedroom windows and looked crossly at the scene below. French lavender grew directly under her windows. Mike, the groundskeeper, grew them as annuals; they were a lot of trouble, but worth it, he said, for the scent. Quill inhaled, held her breath, then let it out sharply. She ran vigorously in place for a few minutes. Neither lavender nor exercise cleared her brain enough to make sense of Myles's offhand comment of the night before.
Had Marge Schmidt and Betty Hall advanced from verbal slings and arrows to outright war? The more she thought about it, the madder she got at Myles, who had no business second-guessing without facts. Intuition, thought Quill virtuously, was a rotten character trait in a sheriff. How often had he lectured her about leaping to conclusions? Now here he was, driving her bats with supposition.
Harvey Bozzel had left the new brochure copy for the Inn's advertising campaign with her a week ago. Quill went into her small living room and pulled it out of the desk. She'd already blue-penciled Harvey's tag line extolling the Inn's customer service: 'No Whine, Just Fine Wine When You Dine.' But his description of Meg's cooking wasn't too bad.
Meg's art was at its peak with the breads, terrines, pates, and charcuterie of Country French cooking; for the past year, she'd been making increasingly successful forays into French haute cuisine, perhaps as a reaction to L'Aperitif's first review. 'Quilliam's coarsely ground sausages are exceptional,' L'Aperitif had commented in the review that awarded her the coveted three stars. 'A celestial blend of local pork, freshly picked herbs, and the crumbs of her excellent peasant breads. Her efforts at the more sophisticated levels of classic French cooking are reliable.'
The local pork came from Hogg's Heaven, a pig farm three miles upwind of Hemlock Falls. The herbs came from the gardens maintained by Mike the groundskeeper. The breads were made by a series of apprentice sous chefs under Meg's supervision. Meg herself was rebuilding the ramparts of 'reliable' into 'exceptional.'
The ad copy described all this in prose only slightly less purple than the lavender below her window. Quill scowled furiously at the copy, then stuffed it back into the desk. Who would want to put such a great cook out of business? She glanced at the clock. It was obviously running fast; it couldn't be past eight already. She dressed hastily and went downstairs.
Her mood was not improved after an encounter with Keith Baumer at table eight, who stopped her rush to the kitchen with a smarmy suggestion involving the length of her skirt (short) and a repulsive summation of his ideal wake-up call.
Quill held onto her temper. The Cornell Hotel School offered a night course in Customer Relations, and Quill had dutifully attended CR 101 and CR 102. 'I'm sure you'll agree your suggestions are inappropriate, Mr. Baumer,' she said. 'May I take your food order, please?' She kept a prudent distance from his sweaty hands, then stalked self-consciously into the kitchen.
Meg, humming an off-key version of 'The Gambler,' was folding shiitake mushrooms into an omelette with one hand and stirring a bearnaise sauce with the other. She looked up as her sister came into the room. 'Lancashire's ordered the works. French omelette in a bird's nest of cr-r-r-isply fried potatoes, and of course, The Sausage.'
'I didn't see him in the dining room.' 'How could you miss him? Those good looks fly across the room.' She switched to an equally off-key rendition of 'Some Enchanted Evening.'
'That's because I was contemplating unique Tortures of the World. You can order a videotape from Time-Life Books, I think.'
'Not Baumer again.'
'Baumer. Had a suggestion having to do with short-skirted uniforms and appropriate poses for waitresses over the right table height.'
