Dread on Arrival (3 page)

When the conversation turned to food, Quill knew to leave it to the experts. She sat back as the discussion flowed around her. She looked at her small, dark-haired sister with affection. Clare, who was almost as tall as Quill, was dark-haired, too, but she wasn’t nearly as decided and determined a character as Meg. Rose Ellen Whitman, who was not only the most beautiful woman in the room, but probably the most beautiful woman between Hemlock Falls and New York City, didn’t draw the eye the way Clare and her sister did. The three women made an interesting study.

Quill flipped to a fresh page in the sketch pad she used to take meeting notes and reached for the charcoal pencils she always kept in her skirt pocket.

“Are you sketching us?” Rose Ellen asked. “Now that would be a fine wedding present. A genuine Quilliam.”

Quill blushed. She always did, when somebody mentioned her work as an artist. She’d had a brief, nerve-wrackingly successful career in the arts community before she and Meg had purchased the Inn twelve years ago.

Rose Ellen smiled faintly and got to her feet. “Let’s leave these two and take a walk.”

“You don’t want menu approval?”

Rose Ellen shrugged. She was slim and tall, taller than Quill, who was five foot eight in her bare feet—but she also wore the highest heels Quill had ever seen. Her calves twinged just looking at Rose Ellen’s shoes. “I’ll fax the menu to Edmund tonight. He’ll have opinions of his own. He always does. It doesn’t matter all that much to me.” She made a face and glanced over her shoulder at the two chefs, who were huddled over the menus. “Not what those two want to hear, certainly. The look of the wedding is very important, of course. What with Edmund’s position in the world of antiques, and my own high profile, it’s essential that it look just right. That it conveys the right message to the people who matter. So I wanted a word with you about the décor.”

Quill glanced at her watch. “Actually, I have a Chamber of Commerce meeting in about twenty minutes. So I won’t be able to stay with you too long.”

Rose Ellen drew her beautifully plucked eyebrows together. “The Chamber of Commerce? Isn’t that the village organization run by that funny little man? The one with the dreadful wife?”

“Mayor Henry,” Quill said. “And his wife, Adela.” Quill’s first rule as an innkeeper was “don’t belt the guests.” Sometimes it was a hard rule to keep. “We’re very fond of them in Hemlock Falls.”

“Well, the funny little man can wait, for the moment. I do want your opinion on my color scheme for the ceremony. I’ve made some sketches of my own I’d like you to see.” She held an oxblood Hermès portfolio in one hand and raised it slightly.

“A few minutes, then.” Quill led the way out of the wine cellar and into the academy’s large atrium.

Bernard LeVasque hadn’t spared a penny of borrowed money to build the academy. The atrium was the center of the vast building. The floors were wide-planked cedar. The tasting room, directly across from the wine cellar, had ceilings that soared to twenty feet and the antique wine racks that covered the walls had come from LeVasque’s own vineyards in France. And the kitchens … Quill paused, thinking of the kitchens. Clare and her staff could handle eighty students at a time. There were twenty dual-fuel Viking ranges, arranged in blocks of four each. Each four-range station was equipped with a prep sink and all the bowls, graters, knives, spatulas, spoons, pots, and pans any cook could dream of. The academy’s splendor certainly overwhelmed the two-hundred-year-old Inn at Hemlock Falls. But, Quill reflected, Meg had had her chance to run the academy and had turned it down to remain the master chef at the Inn’s small kitchen. Old, well-loved things were definitely the best.

“I certainly agree with that,” Rose Ellen said.

Quill’s eyebrows rose.

“About old things definitely being the best. I’ve made a lot of money out of old things.” She tapped her foot. “Are we headed somewhere? Or are you just going to stand there looking at nothing in particular?”

“I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud.” Quill rubbed her cheeks briskly. “Sorry. My little boy Jackson just turned three and both his grandmother and his father are away from home right now. Well, actually, Doreen isn’t really his grandmother and she got back from visiting her sister in Omaha this morning, because my husband Myles and I had been away for a month, and Jack is just delighted …” She stopped. She was babbling. “Anyhow. Between managing the Inn and him, I’m a little short on sleep.” She gave herself a mental shake. The
Attic
taping was in a week’s time, the wedding was in ten days, and everybody in both parties was staying at the Inn. She had a lot to do.

The first, and most important, was to get this annoying woman out of her hair. She said, too heartily, “And of course you’d know that old, well-loved things are to be treasured. How is the antiques business these days? You’ve settled into the village so well, Rose Ellen. I hope you’re happy with the new shop.” She touched Rose Ellen’s shoulder to guide her toward Clare’s office.

“I really prefer not to call it a shop.” Rose Ellen’s tone was brusque. “It’s a high-end boutique catering to the select customer and it’s going beautifully.” She shrugged off Quill’s hand. “Where are we going?”

“Just in here. This is Clarissa’s office.” Quill opened the door and stepped aside. Bernard hadn’t spared a penny in here, either. Area rugs the color of café au lait covered the cherrywood floors. Tall filing cabinets out of the same wood flanked a counter with a bronze bowl sink, an undercounter refrigerator, and a slate countertop. A long cherrywood conference table sat in front of tall windows overlooking shaved green lawns.

Rose Ellen looked around and slung her portfolio onto the conference table without regard for the finish. “It’s too corporate,” she said. “Not an ounce of charm. Very nouveau riche. Clarissa could use some advice about her taste, I think, but I’ll have to put that off until after the wedding. Now, Quill. I’ve a photograph of my dress, and drawings of the flowers to be shipped in, but I’d really appreciate it if we could do a little bit of a floor plan, so that everything shows to the best advantage.”

“So you made the sketch of the floor plan, I suppose,” Meg said almost an hour later. They were in Quill’s Honda, headed back to the Inn. “I’ll bet she asked you to sign it, too.”

“The sketch?” Quill smiled. “She did ask me to sign it, as a matter of fact.”

“What do you want to bet you find the thing matted, framed, and for sale in that shop of hers two seconds after the wedding?” Meg stretched out in the passenger’s seat and ran her hands through her short hair. “That woman doesn’t miss a trick, and a signed Quilliam, even of a wedding that’s bound to bore everyone out of their skulls, is worth a couple hundred bucks, easily.”

Quill made a noncommittal noise and slowed down as they passed the entrance to Peterson Park. She took the curve into the village at a sedate thirty miles an hour and drove down Main Street into the heart of Hemlock Falls. She, Jack, and Myles had spent the last four weeks in a cabin in the Adirondacks, and she hadn’t had time to look at any changes in the village since they’d been back.

The old cobblestone buildings glowed in the warm September light. The flower boxes under the lampposts overflowed with Oriental lilies, English ivy, and pale green hydrangea. Nickerson’s Hardware had substituted topiary for their usual display of wheelbarrows, rakes, and fall flowers on the sidewalk in front of the store. The trim on the building that housed Marge Schmidt’s Realty and Casualty had been freshly painted, and a brand-new hunter green awning hung over the plate-glass window. Quill blinked. Somebody had put a bucket on top of the parking meter directly in front of Marge’s office. She rolled down the car window to get a better look.

“Marge,” Meg said, following Quill’s glance. “She’s still mad about those new parking meters Elmer Henry put in.”

“They’re a good source of revenue for the town,” Quill said absently. “I haven’t had time to pay attention to things lately. But isn’t the village looking—sort of spiffy? What happened to the usual geraniums in the flower boxes? What’s with all the topiary? We’re starting to look like a high-end tourist trap.”

“The Ladies’ Auxiliary is all excited about the
Attic
’s road show being taped here,” Meg said. “Somebody told them geraniums looked cheap.”

That same somebody had convinced Esther West to put the “Cs” back in her sign, so it read country crafts and not kountry krafts. Esther had put topiary next to her front door, too.

She slowed even more as she passed Rose Ellen’s shop … boutique business, Quill corrected herself. The place looked exceptionally attractive. An evergreen topiary in a bronze pot stood to the right of the mahogany front door. The window display this week was an oil—a trompe l’oeil depiction of a fountain with a bunch of grapes at the foot. Right next to Elegant Antiques was the Balzac Café, a coffee/specialty cupcake shop that had opened up the week before. The coffee shop occupied the space where Meg and Quill had briefly run a white linen restaurant, and Quill had always thought the space unlucky. But a line of tourists stretched out the door and onto the sidewalk, and it looked like a hit.

The scent of fresh coffee floated through the air.

Meg sniffed appreciatively. “Jamaican Blue Mountain blend.”

Quill sighed aloud.

“What?” Meg demanded.

“We’re getting so … ‘sophisticated’ is the wrong word. So … tarted up. I miss the way it used to be. I like geraniums. I don’t care if they look cheap.” She stopped on the red at the one traffic light in town. “I was wondering why somebody like Rose Ellen thought Hemlock Falls would be a good place for stratospherically priced antiques—and I realized I haven’t been paying much attention to what’s been happening in town lately. The village has gone upscale, Meg.”

“Change is good,” Meg said, with a depressing lack of sentiment. “And the tourist traffic is even better. We’re booked through New Year’s and Labor Day last weekend was the best we’ve ever had. Clare said she’s running eighty-percent full for her cooking classes until Thanksgiving. We’re not a backwater anymore, Quill, and that’s a good thing. Why would you want to go back to the old days, when we were starving to death?”

The not being a backwater anymore part was true. The past three years in Hemlock Falls had been prosperous ones. The Finger Lakes district in upstate New York was one of the most beautiful spots in the world. The freshwater lakes formed the heart of the area. The glaciers that had moved through the land ten thousand years before had left waterfalls, gorges, and sparkling streams in their wake. The Hemlock River and the gorge that divided the village from Meg and Quill’s Inn was only one of many such beauties in the surrounding countryside.

Surrounded by lush, fertile ground, the five counties of the Finger Lakes held a hundred or more boutique wineries, apple and peach orchards, cheese makers, dairies, and even a handful of upscale distilleries and breweries. The new, large resort hotel that fronted the Hemlock River just on the outskirts of town catered to the thousands of tourists. The tourists came through the village in spring, summer, and autumn looking for hikes through the gorges that ran through the drumlins and wine tastings at the family-held vineyards. The Inn at Hemlock Falls benefited from this surge of outlanders just like everyone else.

Quill waited until she parked in the lot behind the Inn before she answered her sister. “We were never even close to starving to death.”

“Well, no. That’s true.”

“That’s not to say that we weren’t exactly successful for a bit, either. And I don’t miss the scary parts of almost being broke. I miss … I don’t know what I miss. Maybe it’s that I don’t like Rose Ellen Whitman and all she stands for. Conspicuous consumption. A sort of arrogant greediness. Phrases like ‘people who matter.’ I mean, most people love and appreciate good food, good company, and that’s how we make our living these days, but we aren’t snobs about it and that’s what’s hit the village.” Quill tugged at her hair, which was red and wildly springy. “Snobbism,” she repeated glumly.

“Pooh.” Meg opened the car door and jumped out. “You sit there and wallow in nostalgia if you want. I’ve got to put in a food order.” She halted halfway across the lot and shouted, “What about Jack? I haven’t seen the kid today.”

“Doreen took him to a playdate with Harland Peterson’s grandson.” Quill looked at her watch. “Although they should be back. She must have put him down for his nap, by now.”

“Then don’t you have a Chamber meeting to go to? Get with it, Sis. Get a move on!”

“Yikes,” Quill muttered. “So I should.” She tossed her keys in the ashtray. Nobody ever locked their cars in the village. She got out of the car, stretched, and took a moment to check out the vegetable gardens just off the back door to the kitchen. Mike the groundskeeper must have picked the last of the tomatoes and the last of the yellow squash. The nasturtiums were cheery spots of bright red, yellow, and orange among the last of the dill and the oregano. The roses that grew against the stone walls of the building were in full flower. Before long, the beds would be spaded up and the roses covered for the winter, but for now, the air was alive with the mingled odors of Quill’s favorites: Apricot Nectar, Peace, and Malmaison.

The creamy pink blossoms of the Peace rose quivered, and Max the dog emerged with a yawn. Quill bent down and rubbed his ears, which were large, floppy, and a mixture of colors as odd as the rest of his coat: black, white, gray, and a sort of muddy ochre that made him look in perpetual need of a bath.

“So where’s Jackson Quilliam-McHale, Max? Your young master. My best boy? How come you’re not with him? Is he still at his playdate? Is that how come you’re skulking in the bushes?”