lump near a stalk of Brussels sprouts, on top of a pile of cow manure. Quill snatched it up. 'My hat,' she mourned. 'It's a mess.'
'You shut up,' Doreen said to the dog. 'Get in there. Now!'
Tatiana considered this command for a long moment, her head cocked t one side, then followed the four of them back to the kitchen. Quill put the hat on the butcher block counter.
'That is a bad thing to do to a hat,' Bjarne observed over Quill's shoulder. 'Shall I give the little dog a treat?'
'You can give the little dog a kick in the butt,' Doreen growled. `Here. Gimme that.' She snatched the scrap of fat from Bjarne and held it out. 'C'mere, you.'
Tatiana sat down, scratched her neck ruff furiously with her hind leg, stretched, grinned, then accepted the piece of fat with a contemptuous air.
'Where did she find it, Doreen?' Quill took a long-handled fork and turned the hat over. 'It's a mess.'
'Outside somewheres.' Doreen took a Kleenex from her apron, sneezed, and wiped her nose. 'We went out for walkies...'
'For what/' asked John.
'Walkies,' Doreen said impatiently, 'so she could do her business. We went on down to the park and she run off in the woods and come back with this.'
They stared at it. The hat was fashioned after the style affected by World War II Chinese generals. The inside of the crown and the earflaps were lined with rabbit fur. The flaps could be drawn up over the top of the hat and fastened together with a button, or worn down over the ears and fastened beneath the chin.
It shed rabbit hair, continually.
'Why d'ya ever buy the durn thing?' asked Doreen.
'It's warm,' Quill said defensively. 'And I've never been all that fashion conscious.'
'I know corpses more fashion conscious than you,' Doreen agreed. 'It sure is some mess.' Snow, blood, cow manure, and dog saliva matte the hat from crown to chin strap.
'There's blood all along the inside,' John observed. 'the murderer was wearing this hat on the videotape, Quill? And in the cell block, when he knifed Dorset?'
'Yes. And I agree with you. There shouldn't be any blood inside the hat. At least, I don't know how it could have gotten there.'
'Maybe it got knocked off in the cell block in the struggle with Dorset,' Meg suggested. 'You said he was bleeding pretty badly.'
Quill shuddered at the memory. 'It's possible. I couldn't see all that much. I didn't want to see all that much. But it's possible.'
John threw a glance at the kitchen clock. 'I've got to get to the dining room to seat the McIntosh party.' He shrugged himself out of his parka, pulled off his sweater, and put on the tweed sports coat he normally wore throughout the day. 'The van from the Marriott's out front with the overflow guests. I told the driver to come in here for some food.' He poked at the rabbit hat with a tentative finger. 'You might want to put this somewhere before he comes in to eat.'
'I'll give Myles a call and tell him the dog's found it.' said Quill. 'Let's stick it in the storeroom, in the meantime.'
'I've got a crazy suggestion,' Meg said irascibly. 'Why don't we try serving this meal in the meantime.'
'Murders come and murders go, but food goes on forever?' said Quill. 'Okay. Okay! You're right. John and I will get out to that rehearsal dinner and grin, grin, grin at the horrible senator.'
Meg eyed her potted rabbit with satisfaction. 'At least the condemned is getting a hearty meal. If you two are going to serve it, that is.'
'You go on ahead, John. I'll just give Myles a call.' Quill dialed the familiar number from the kitchen phone. The sheriff, Deputy Dave informed her, was out, talking to some computer guy at Cornell about Nora Cahill's laptop. He'd be back around seven-thirty.
Quill left an urgent-please-call message with Davy, who said that he hoped there were no hard feelings over her recent incarceration. Quill said certainly not, and Davy, emboldened, offered the information that Bernie Bristol had resigned his justiceship in the wake of the unfortunate publicity surrounding Nora Cahill's death. The mayor, Davy told her, was practically on his knees to Mr. Murchison to return as justice, who had told him, the mayor, to go fly a kite.
'So there's a bare possibility,' Quill said to John a few moments later in the dining room, 'that Adela will get that justice job.'
She smiled as Claire and Tutti walked in, and said out of the corner of her mouth, 'And if she is elected, I hope her first job is to arraign Senator Santini. For murder.'
Having caught at least her fianc‚'s name in this murmured speech, Claire said, 'A-al's not here yet,' in her nasal whine, and slouched over to the table by the window. Quill pulled a chair out for her and commented on the beauty of the rose garlands as Claire sat down.
'They're all right, I guess,' Claire said listlessly. 'Where's Mummy?'
'Still getting dressed, dear.' Tutti beamed at the tablecloths. 'Sarah, you have an eye. What do you think?'
'They're wonderful,' Quill said sincerely. For whether or not Tutti was, as she suspected, the head of a large criminal organization of Italian (and Scot) descent, she clearly had taste. If not on her own, at least taste that she was willing to purchase. The tablecloths shouldn't have worked with the natural flowers and the mauve carpeting, but they did. The print was of brilliantly colored roses. They splashed across the tables; the pattern was tiny, the colors vivid. The heavy linen napkins were aquamarine, the china a creamy white rimmed with platinum. Claire sat
