motives in a given number of people, only one would kill. Just considering his character, Baumer fit better than anybody. At least, he'd been positioned right; of all the members of the audience at the Trial, he was in the best position to pop backstage and hood the bird, so to speak. And he'd been with Mavis, Marge, and Gil the night of the duck pond killing. But why? No reason to kill Gil, but, like Marge, perhaps Mavis had been his target. Would he kill to keep his marriage together? Was he afraid that word of his shenanigans would get back to his boss?
'Probably not,' said Quill, this time to the concrete fish pond by the French lavender. 'But it wouldn't hurt to explore possibilities.' She could start tomorrow, ask some tactful, discreet questions of Baumer's employers at the sales conference at the Marriott; go to the diner and confront Marge; investigate. Peterson.
Quill heard the sounds of people leaving the Inn. Car doors slammed in the distance. Voices shouted goodbye. Motors revved, taillights blinked red; the Chamber members had gone home.
Feeling it was safe to go back in the water, Quill went to the kitchen and laid her conclusions out for Meg.
Meg sipped coffee - she was immune to the effects of caffeine, and had been known to drink her special blend to put herself to sleep - and drew circles on the pastry marble with her forefinger as Quill narrowed the number of suspects to two.
'So I'm going to go to the Marriott tomorrow and start with some questions about Baumer's past. The other thing I can do is have Doreen search his room for that bolt. And I thought I'd drop by the diner. If Marge is lying about John's connection to Mavis and Doggone Good Dogs, she did it under the guise of presenting an olive branch. I'll just walk into the diner for lunch, waving my own olive branch, and asking innocent questions.'
'Have you talked this over with Myles?'
'Of course I haven't talked it over with Myles. You know that Myles is practically prehistoric in his attitude towards women's ability to do certain things.'
'I haven't noticed that at all,' said Meg. 'He's got two patrolwomen in the Sheriff's Department, he voted for our woman senator in the last campaign, and he does his own housework. Doreen's after him all the time to hire her cousin Shirlee to clean for him. He cooks for you all the time, and I remember distinctly, Quill, that he took his two little nieces to Disney World all by himself last year. Myles isn't a male chauvinist. He doesn't want you messing in his police work, because you're an emotional, biased person. His bias is not gender-specific.'
'I am not an emotional, biased person!'
'Yes, you are, Quill! You're a crusader. You've always been a crusader. Remember the protest?'
'Meg, don't bring up the protest.'
'I remember the protest...'
'Meg, you always bring up the protest. That was thirty years ago, for Pete's sake, and you bring it up when the least little thing happens.'
'... I was four years old. Four years old! You had me protesting the Vietnam war in front of my kindergarten. Here I was, this totally innocent little kid whose big sister had this sign STOP THE WAR with the R backwards, and we made the six o'clock news. Mom was so embarrassed she didn't go out of the house for weeks afterward. The neighbors thought she put us up to it.'
'Dad thought it was great,' said Quill stiffly. 'He sneaked me a Mars bar when he came to get us at the police station.'
'You never told me that,' said Meg. 'I never got any of it, either.' She regarded her sister with exasperation. 'Your analysis of the situation is clean, cool, and precise.'
'Thank you,' said Quill. 'It's also bogus. You're ignoring one screamingly obvious set of facts which bring the whole house of cards to the floor, Hawkshaw.'
'And what's that?'
'John,' said Meg. 'John appears to have the best motive of all. What about that picture!'
'Why should the fact that Nadine and Tom's sister-in-law was John's sister have anything to do with anything?' said Quill crossly.
'Because you were the one that 'deduced' the picture really belonged to John, and Gil had it! Honestly, Quill. It makes perfect sense to me that if Gil saw it lying on the ground, he'd pick it up and put it away so he could return it to John later.
It also makes perfect sense that the Gilmeisters knew about John's prison sentence and never told anybody. You know what Hemlock Falls is like. Nadine would be embarrassed to the tops of her ears to have everyone know they'd had an ex-con in the family. I love you, Quill, but there's caramel where your brains should be. You're letting your friendship with John get in the way of the facts.' She shook her head. 'I'm beat. I'm going to bed. I'll see you in the morning.'
There was a mass of telephone messages under her door. Quill flipped on the overhead lights and sank into the Eames chair in front of the fireplace and riffled through them. The insurance adjuster would be by in the morning to examine the balcony. She could hand off the task of showing him around to Peter Williams. Myles had called; he was in Ithaca until Tuesday. The forensic lab tests on Saturday had been positive for sulfuric acid, which meant, thought Quill, that it was highly possible there'd been a first attempt on Mavis' life. She paperclipped that message to the three from Mrs. Hallenbeck, inviting her to dinner, to a cup of late-night tea, and then to breakfast tomorrow morning. 'We must talk,' each message read.
'That we must,' Quill said to herself. 'About our bill, about Mavis. About what you discussed at dinner with Mavis, Marge, and Gil.'
She scrawled a short list. 'Things To Do -- Monday: Hal; Pet; Mar; Baum,' and muttering the names HalPetMarBaum like a charm against disaster, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The phone rang. Quill jerked awake. The digital clock radio blinked two-thirty. Quill regarded it with baleful eyes and picked the phone up. 'This is Quill.'
'Is Myles with you?'
'John!'
