"Did you try the backup list?" John nodded Yes to the phone calls and No to the results. "Exam week for summer session," he said briefly.
"Damn." Most of the summer season help came from near-by Cornell University. "All right. I'll take the shift myself. Unless Meg's short-handed in the kitchen?"
"Not so far."
"And the guest complaint?" She swallowed nervously. "No digestive problems or anything like that? Meg had Caesar salad on the menu for lunch, and she just refuses to omit the raw egg."
"Not food poisoning, no. But we'd better comply with the raw egg ban, Quill. We're liable to a fine if we don't."
"I know." Quill bit her thumb. "You tell Meg, will you, John? I mean, I should take care of this guest problem."
"Tell your sister she can't use raw eggs anymore? Not me, Quill. No way. I'd walk three miles over hot coals for you, shave my head bald for you, but I will not tell your sister how to cook."
"John," said Quill, with far more decisiveness than she felt, "you can't be afraid of my sister. She's all of five feet two and a hundred pounds, dripping wet. That makes her a third your size, probably."
"You're half again as tall as she is, and you're afraid of your sister."
"Then you're fired."
"You can't fire me. I quit."
They grinned at each other. "I'll flip you for it," said Quill. John pulled a nickel from his pocket and sent it spinning with a quick snap of his thumb. "Call it."
"Heads."
"Tails." John caught the coin and showed her an Indian-head nickel, tail-up. "My lucky coin. Came to me from my grandfather, the Chief. I told you about the Chief before. You want to keep this in your pocket while you tell her no more raw eggs?"
"I'll take care of the guest first. Is it a him or a her?"
"Her."
"Perennial?" This was house code for the retired couples who flooded the Inn in the spring, disappeared in autumn, and reappeared with the early crocus. In general, Quill liked them. They tended to be good guests, rarely, if ever, stiffing the management, and except for a universal disinclination to tip the help more than ten percent, treated the support staff well. This was in marked contrast to traveling businessmen who left used condoms rolled under the beds - which sent Doreen, their obsessive-compulsive housekeeper, into fits - or businesswomen demanding big-city amenities like valet services, a gym, and pool boys.
"It's an older woman," said John. He paused reflectively. "Kind of mean."
"I'm good with mean." She glanced at her watch; fifteen minutes before the start of the afternoon shift. She'd just make it if John's complainer didn't have a real problem "The wine shipment's due at four. The bill of lading is...um... somewhere on my desk."
"I'll find it. My grandfather, the Chief..."
"Was a tracker," Quill finished for him. "I'd like to meet your grandfather. I'd like to meet your grandmother, too, as a matter of fact - " She stopped, aware that the flippant conversation was heading into dangerous waters. John's quiet, lonely existence was his business. "Never mind. Where is she?"
"Lobby." He grinned, teeth white in his dark face. "Good luck."
Quill took the steps up to the lobby with a practiced smile firmly in place. She and Meg had bought the twenty-seven-room Inn two years before with the combined proceeds of her last art show and Meg's early and wholly unexpected widowhood. Driving through Central New York on a short vacation, Meg and Quill had come upon the Inn unexpectedly. They came back. Shouldered between the granite ridges left by glaciers, on land too thin for farming, Inn and village were fragrant in spring, lush in summer, brilliant with color in the fall. Even the winters weren't too bad, for those tolerant of heavy snowfall, and Hemlockians resigned themselves to a partial dependence on tourists in search of peak season vacations. The Inn had always attracted travelers; as a commercial property, it proved easy to sell and less easy to manage. It had passed from hand to hand over the years. New owners bought and sold with depressing regularity, most defeated by the difficulty of targeting exactly the right customer market. The relationships among longtime residents of Hemlock Falls were so labyrinthine, it was a year before Quill realized that Marge Schmidt and Tom Peterson, Gil Gilmeister's partner, had owned the Inn some years before. Marge had made a stab at modernizing. She installed wall-to-wall Astro-turf indoors ("Wears good," said Marge some months after Quill removed it. "Whattaya, stupid?") and plywood trolls in the garden.
The reception-lobby was all that remained of the original eighteenth-century Inn, and the low ceilings and leaded windows had a lot to do with Quill's final decision to buy it. Guests were in search of an authentic historical experience, as long as it was accompanied by heated towel racks, outstanding mattresses, and her sister's terrific food. If they could restore the Inn with the right degree of twentieth-century luxury, people would come in busloads. Quill had stripped layers of paint and wallpaper from the plaster-and-lathe walls, replaced vinyl-backed draperies with simple valances of Scottish lace, and tore up the Astro-turf carpeting. The sisters had refinished the floors and wainscoting to a honeyed pine, and landscaped the grounds.
The leaded windows in the lobby framed a view of the long sweep of lawn and gardens to the lip of Hemlock Gorge. Creamy wool rugs, overwoven in florals of peach, celadon, taupe, and sky blue, lightened the effect of the low ceiling. Two massive Japanese urns flanked the reception desk where Dina Muir checked guests in. Mike, the groundskeeper, filled the urns every other morning with flowers from the Inn's extensive perennial gardens. As usual this early in July, they held Queen Elizabeth roses, Oriental lilies of gold, peach, and white, and spars of purple heather.
The lobby was welcoming and peaceful. Quill smiled at Dina, the daytime receptionist, and raised an inquiring eye- brow. Dina made an expressive face, and jerked her head slightly in the direction of the fireplace.
An elderly woman with a fierce frown sat on the pale leather couch in front of the cobblestone hearth. A woman at least thirty years her junior stood behind the chair. The younger one had a submissive, tentative air for all the world like that anachronism, the companion. Quill's painter's eye registered almost automatically the lush figure behind the modestly buttoned shirtwaist. She could have used a little makeup, Quill thought, besides the slash of red lipstick she allowed herself. Something in the attitude of the two women made her revise that thought; the elder one clearly dominated her attendant and just as clearly disapproved of excess.
"I'm Sarah Quilliam," she said, her hand extended in welcome.
"I'm Mavis Collinwood?" said the younger woman in a southern drawl that seemed to question it. Her brown hair was lacquered like a Chinese table and back-combed into a tightly restrained knot. "Mrs. Hallenbeck doesn't shake hands," Mavis, in a voice both assured and respectful. "Her arthritis is a little painful this time of year."