"You're worried about my finding out about Gil Gilmeister's financial affairs, when you're being hunted for murder?" Quill said. "Oh, for goodness sakes, John. That's absurd."
"Not to me."
Quill bit back her laughter, figured she never in this world would figure out why men behaved the way they did, and promised never to reveal to anyone the state of Gil Gilmeister's general ledger. "Plus," she said dramatically, "I hereby absolve you of the least little suspicion that You Did It. No one with that kind of honor system could possibly have swiped that bolt. And since you weren't even here when Mavis was... you know... you're totally in the clear."
John looked at her gravely for a moment. "Let's get back to the partnership. Gil and Tom have a fifty-fifty partnership in the business, not ideal for a number of reasons, because they had to agree jointly on every decision they made, and sometimes the interest of one partner conflicts dramatically with the needs of another. This was very true in Gil's case. Nadine was quite a consumer, and Gil's drinking problem didn't help matters either. Towards the end, Gil was drawing heavily against the equity in his part of the business; and business isn't all that good to begin with."
"The cash loans came from Marge?"
"Yes. And I'll say this for her, Marge Schmidt is a hell of a good businesswoman. She didn't let her affection for Gil stand in the way of liens against the units."
"You mean Gil borrowed money from Marge against the cars he hadn't sold?"
"Against the cars he sold. You know most of the profit from that business comes from the car loans."
It seemed to Quill that John's admiration of Marge's business acumen was misplaced, and that the nature of business itself was perverse. Marge's stranglehold on Gil's business was a good thing? She forebore comment and said, "But none of this has to do with Tom Peterson's half."
"No. Although Tom was getting fed up, and looking actively for a new partner. Funny thing was, he wasn't helping Gil get the loan he needed from the bank. They require an audit, and Tom kept ducking me, putting me off, Gil knew this. Gil also knew that Tom could force Marge to call those loans in by threatening to take his profitable side of the business else- where, He was even talking about setting up in competition with Gil, Marge had lent Gil a lot of money, and it'd be a case of her business or his, As I said, Marge is good, She wouldn't let her and Betty's ship go down to save Gil."
"So my theory about Marge and Mavis bringing Mrs, Hallenbeck's millions into Gil's business wasn't all that farfetched."
"No. Although from the little I knew of Mrs. Hallenbeck when I worked for the company, she'd be a hard sell, She was a tough cookie right from the start. Nobody was real surprised when old man Hallenbeck locked himself into the garage and turned the car motor on."
"Oh," said Quill softly. "How terrible!"
"Yes, She's got the life, though, doesn't she? Or she did. Doggone Good Dogs was sold to Armour's, She retired with a tidy sum, to say the least. And she had Mavis to run her errands for her."
"Not anymore," said Quill.
"Will she find someone else?"
"I don't know - it's very difficult. There's very little help for the elderly these days - unless they're willing to accept a nursing home, and I can't see Mrs. Hallenbeck doing that."
"It'd be a heck of a nice nursing home, with her money."
"But none of that explains why Tom Peterson would have a motive to kill Mavis."
'There's something funny going on." John's habitual self-containment kept him on the couch; any other man would have been pacing the room. He allowed himself a slight frown, "I knew Mavis was coming, She called from the gas station in Covert to tell me that we had to discuss what she called a 'rearrangement' of the payments."
"You paid her once a month?"
"Yes. To a post office box in Atlanta, The envelope was addressed to Scarlett O'Hara."
"Good grief," said Quill. "It figures."
"She was..." - John hesitated, searching for the right word - "ebullient. Chattering." He moved his thumb and forefinger together rapidly to indicate mindless babble. "Said the money was rolling in from every side."
"She's got the wrong heroine in Scarlett O'Hara," said Quill. "Behaving much more like the rapacious Evita, don't you think?"
John dismissed this excursion into light-mindedness with a tolerant twitch of his mouth. "I guess. The point is, Quill, she chose Hemlock Falls for a purpose. Not just because I was here. I got the impression that she'd come to some crossroads."
What, thought Quill, would be considered a career milestone t for a professional blackmailer? "She must have come across something that would really feather her nest. Big money," she said aloud. "More than you could afford. And since she obviously came to Hemlock Falls for a reason, it must have to do with people she knows here. Something that Marge is involved with?" Quill guessed. "Something Tom Peterson is involved with?" She jumped to her feet. "John! The matchbook! The memo from the D.O.H. !"
"The mysterious folded-into-threes matchbook?"
Quill waved her arms excitedly. "You said that Tom was ducking an audit. That you couldn't get his personal finance statement out of him. That Gil was getting desperate, because without it the bank wouldn't give him a loan. That's fact one."
John nodded. Quill began to pace around the room. "Fact two is that the matchbook showed up on the balcony. He must have been there. He must have tried to push her over the edge."
"Wouldn't Mrs. Hallenbeck have seen him?"
"She said she was in the bathroom. He's been in our back room any number of times, delivering meat; he'd seen the drum of sulfuric acid. If Mavis called him, like she called you, he'd have a lot of time to set it up. The register's out all the time at the desk; he could have found out what room they were staying in, no problem. And he was here in the Inn while Mrs. Hallenbeck and Mavis were at dinner. And he lives right across from the pond. He said himself he was home alone. And of course, he was right there at the play."
"But what's his motive? And how would he know Mavis before she came to the Falls?"
"Did his brother work for the company?"
"For a while. He was a salesman. Most kids from Hemlock Falls end up either at the paint factory, or working for Doggone Good Dogs."
"And Mavis knew all the dirty secrets." Quill stood still, closed her eyes, and concentrated hard. "Meat..." she said slowly. "Tainted meat. That D.O.H. memo Marge was waving at me said something about tainted meat. E. coli bacteria. I went to Tom's to check on the shipment of beef that Meg said was spoiled. Tom got very weird about it. Doggone Good Dogs is a large customer for meat shipments. Help me out here, John."
Quill opened her eyes and discovered that Indians could turn pale.
"Jesus Christ," said John. "That's it. The beef is delivered directly to the franchise from the slaughterhouse. The franchise is the point of inspection. We had a real run on rejections from the restaurants just before I..." His lips thinned. "I was just about to take our inspector out to an Ohio supplier when..."