"You can't leave. You're my witness." Quill shoved her back into her seat.
"Quill, it's just a lousy ticket. I wasn't even there. You just want me here as a character witness, and Howie doesn't even think I need to be here, do you, Howie?"
"I'd like it. Just as a backup."
"And besides, you always get tickets. There's not a thing I can do about it. There's never been anything I could do about it." Meg began to edge her way out.
Howie stirred uneasily. "Maybe you ought to hang on a little while longer, Meg. This won't take long. It's a matter of routine. We'll plead Quill guilty, have her throw herself on the mercy of the court to get the fine down, and that will be the end of it."
"I didn't get a ticket," Quill said. "I told you. It's a frame. Meg? Where are you going?"
Meg paused at the end of the row. "Honestly, Quill, I'm busy. Mrs. Whosis is coming in this afternoon to begin planning the food for the reception and I told her I'd have some samples."
"Mrs. McIntosh," said Quill. "It's not Mrs. Whosis, it's Mrs. McIntosh. For the Santini wedding," she explained to Howie. "He's already here."
Howie nodded. "I've heard."
"Have you met him?"
"Mm-hmmm."
Meg jiggled impatiently. "right. I'm suggesting pork tenderloin in persimmon sauce. If Santini wants pasta, I'll black his little eye."
Quill, still feeling pitiful, gave her a woebegone look. Meg edged back along the bench and hugged her.
"You'll be fine. Howie, tell her she'll be fine."
"As long as there aren't any surprises, yes, Quill, you should be fine. You're sure about no priors?"
Quill made a face in the direction of the judge's bench. She had a sudden, passionate regret that Myles was out of her life. Then, just as passionately, she decided she could save herself.
"So, there." Meg avoided her sister's eye, edged her way along the wall to the aisle, waved, and jogged toward the back doors, looking both innocent and ingenuous in her wool leggings, scarlet knitted cap, and droopy scarf.
Quill sat back, unknotted the silk scarf at her neck, and retied it.
The courtroom was as cavernous as a church, and as sparsely populated. The jury box and the judge's bench were segregated from the spectator pews by low spindled railings. The prosecutor's desk, Howie had told her, was typically to the left in front of the raised judge's dais, the defense to the right. The desks resembled library tables; long, broad, and made of a hardwood stained an ugly coffee color. The whole arrangement was stark, putting Quill in mind of some strict and unforgiving religious sect.
Pictures of the incumbent President and the governor of the state of New York flanked an American flag on the front wall. Quill wondered where pictures of the new governor would come from in January when the new governor took office and what would happen to the old ones. Were former gubernatorial pictures destroyed thoroughly and with precision, like worn-out money sent back to the mint? Or did cartons and cartons of them get returned to the loser, who was probably in a severely depressed state to begin with and shouldn't have to deal with fading portraits of a vanished career? Quill had liked this governor, who'd forgone a presidential campaign because he didn't want a greedy, self-aggrandizing media poking around his family any more than they had already. As far as Quill was concerned, at least at this specific minute, a person's private history should remain private history.
A door to the left of the flag opened. A figure dressed in black judicial robes stumped into the room. Hemlock Falls' new justice, Bernie Bristol, was round and jowly and wore the dopey, happy look of a hound getting its ears scratched. An engineer retired from Xerox Corporation fifty miles away in Rochester, Bristol had bought a small farm south of the village in September, and run a well-financed campaign for the justiceship. Quill had met him, once, when he'd stopped by the Inn for dinner. He'd been rather endearingly innocent of enough French to order his entr‚e. On the other hand, Quill hadn't been surprised to discover he was a lousy tipper.
"All rise!" roared Dwight "Run-On" Riorden, the bailiff.
"All what?" said Howie, nonplussed. He got to his feet, muttering, "This is justice court, for God's sake, and we're all supposed to rise?" and stepped into the aisle, ushering Quill in front of him.
"Murchison?"
Howie turned, his eyebrows raised in polite inquiry. A brown-haired man carrying an expensive leather briefcase walked rapidly past the two of them, clapping his hand on Howie's shoulder in passing. It was, Quill saw in mild surprise, Al Santini.
Quill smiled and asked if he was looking for Meg. His eyes ran over her without a flicker of recognition.
"AI?" Howie's voice was wary and tinged with surprise. "What brings you out this way?"
"Good to see ya, buddy." Al grinned, revealing teeth like a picket fence in need of whitewash. He looked different. Quill looked at him carefully. He looked - almost senatorial. His scanty hair was moussed to an illusion of fullness. His dark blue pin-striped suit (cut to conceal the concave chest and his little potbelly) was so determinedly well-pressed it seemed to wear him. His watery blue eyes flicked over Quill like a pair of clammy hands. "This the perp?"
"The perp?" said Howie.
"The miscreant. The malefactor. The culprit." Al delivered a professional grin. "And a beaut she is, too, Howie." He clicked his tongue against his teeth, banged the briefcase playfully against Howie's knees, and loped up the aisle.
"What the heck?" said Quill. "Howie! He's acting like he's never seen me before! He's been a guest at the Inn for three days! He..." She subsided, muttering.
Howie frowned. "Now what the hell is he doing here?"
Santini stopped just short of the bench and appeared to be opening shop. He thumped his briefcase on the prosecutor's side of the bench, snapped it open, and spread a sheaf of legal-sized papers on the desk top. Above him, Justice Bernie Bristol polished his gavel with a spotless white handkerchief.
Quill looked around the courtroom. There were five - no, six - alleged traffic violators besides herself. At least, she assumed they were alleged traffic violators; all were probably as innocent as she was. She gave a sudden sigh of relief. "Howie. We won't need Meg as a witness after all. There's Betty Hall. I didn't know that she got pulled in, too, but I know for sure she saw me get stopped. And she knew I wasn't speeding. I mean, she's been driving school bus part-time for months and ought to know a speeder when she sees one. She'll be glad to testify to the fact that I'm a totally law-abiding citizen. She'd parked her school bus right on the side of the road where I got picked up. She even gave me this sort of sympathetic wave when Davy pulled me over."
Howie pursed his lips. "I don't like this. No, I don't like this at all. Quill, about those other tickets Meg mentioned. The ones from New York?"
"Oh, dear." Quill fidgeted with her scarf. "Um. It's like this. I thought that all that stuff would have disappeared by now. I mean, it's been seven years."
"B.T," Howie said thoughtfully, "B.T. Meg meant... Before Tickets?" he hazarded. He looked at her over his wire-rimmed glasses. "You mean you've been getting tickets since you were nineteen? How many tickets, Quill?"