The mile marker for the exit flashed.
Quill bit her lip, pulled a hard right, spun, drove into the skid, and gunned the accelerator. The OIds fishtailed. Quill let it ride, keeping her hands off the wheel, her foot off the brake.
She broke through the barrier of snow at the ramp's edge.
The upward incline slowed the OIds, steadied it. She waited.
Behind her, the pickup roared and tried to turn to follow. The engine whined. The pickup bounced, the height and weight of the truck throwing it into a spin from which it couldn't recover - and she heard the squeal of the transmission. He'd thrown it into reverse. His engine screamed and died.
'Fool,' Quill said, and slammed her foot on the accelerator again.
The tires bit into the powdered snow and held.
She drove up the ramp, the OIds' rear end slamming against the guardrail, now to the left, now to the right. She clenched her hands to keep them from the wheel and braked, gunned, braked, gunned, the car rocking back and forth until she broke through onto 96....
'And thank you, God!' she shouted. The road was plowed.
-9-
Quill had approached the Inn at Hemlock Falls at least two thousand different times over the past seven years, in every season, at practically every time of the day and most of the night.
It had never looked more welcoming. Warm golden lights shone through the mullioned windows as she drove carefully up the driveway. There was a pine wreath at each window - as they had every year at holiday time - wound round with small white lights. Mauve taffeta bows shot through with gold were wired to the wreaths. Hundreds of the small white lights sparkled in the bare branches of the trees clustered near the Gorge, casting jewel-like twinkles over the snow.
Mike the groundskeeper had been busy; white snow was piled in neat drifts on either side of the drive. The asphalt was powdered with at least a half an inch. He'd be out again with the plow later, when the snowstorm finally quit.
The Olds was lugging worse than ever. Quill took the left-hand path to the maintenance building out back in low gear, with a vague idea that this would save the engine. She hit the button for the overhead door opener, then pulled in and stopped. The engine died with a cough.
'Good girl,' she said foolishly, patting the dash.
She was surprised to discover that her legs were weak. And she had trouble opening the driver's door. She got out, then turned back and opened the rear door to take the red down coat to Myles.
It was gone.
'Damn.' She punched the light switch and the garage flooded with light. The coat hadn't fallen to the floor in that hairy ride down 81 and it wasn't under the seat. The box with the contents of Nora Cahill's desk at the office was gone, too.
'Damn and damn again.' She slammed the rear door shut. Joseph Greenwald. She hoped he was up to his eyeteeth in snow. The computer disks from Nora's home office were still in her purse. Quill hoped her quota of luck for the week hadn't run out; she'd made quite a dent in it with Route 96 being plowed at just the right time. If her luck held, those disks would contain Nora's investigative files.
She marched to the Inn's back door, her adrenaline charged from annoyance, stripped off her winter clothing, and hung it on the coat pegs. She ditched her boots and walked into the kitchen in her socks. It was overly warm. There were six sous-chefs busy at the Aga, the grill, and the butcher block counters. To her surprise, Meg was seated in the rocking chair by the cobblestone fireplace, smoking a forbidden cigarette.
'Hey! I thought you'd be up to your ears in work. How come you're sitting down?'
Meg threw the cigarette into the open hearth with a guilty air and bounced out of the rocker. 'Hey, yourself! I was just beginning to worry. You're more than an hour later than you said you'd be and that storm Bjarne predicted is a doozy.'
'In Helsinki, this is spring,' Bjarne said. He whacked at a huge tenderloin with the butcher's knife, and whacked again.
'I thought you'd be run off your feet, Meg.' 'You're kidding, right? Santini's closed the dining room so that he and his eleven pals can eat tenderloin in lofty seclusion. Ten pals actually. One of them got held up by the storm. Listen. I spent the day with Tutti McIntosh, and I've got something really interesting to tell you.'
Quill interrupted, 'Santini paid the table minimum? For all twenty tables?'
'Claire's doting dad did, I think. Anyhow, everyone's eating away and they're all taken care of. The mayor and his soapy friends ordered cold stuff, except for their roasted cow which they did somewhere in the woods themselves, and I made all that this afternoon. And the H. O. W. ladies each brought a dish to pass. That's where Tutti is now, surrounded by the entire protective brigade of - '
'John's not going to like that. Guests aren't supposed to bring their own stuff.'
'I like it,' Meg said firmly. 'I've got enough to do with this rehearsal dinner for twenty tomorrow night. And then the wedding. Thank God the truck got here just before the snow. We got all that stuff unloaded. And then Tutti was with me in the kitchen all afternoon. I'll be glad when this is all over and we can put up our tree and close the place down for two days. By the way, Myles called and said he won't get here until midnight or after. The snow's caused the usual numbers of crises, including some damn fool wrecking his pickup truck at the 96 exit to 81 and you'll never guess what Tutti did - '
'At the moment,' Quill said crossly. 'I just don't give a hoot.' She settled on a stool at the butcher block counter. Exhaustion overtook her like a dam bursting. She could just sit here and go to sleep. She yawned. 'Can you tell me the fascinating news about Tutti later? I have to speak to Myles about that pickup.' She glanced casually at Meg. 'It sounds like the one that tried to run me off the road.'
'Oh, yeah? Well, you can go pound on the driver personally tomorrow. The truck's been towed to Bernie's
