Most of the stores lining Main Street were cobblestone. Marge Schmidt's diner, Esther West's dress shop, and a few other were of white clapboard with black trim. The contrast was pleasing, even, Quill thought gloomily, for this vantage point. Four inches of new snow covered rooftops and bushes and made feathery cones on the wrought-iron standards of the streetlights. The snowplows had left the curbs knee-high with pillowy drifts. Through the heavy gauge wire screen, Quill could see Esther West in a bright red ski jacket, mounting a pine wreath on the front door of her shop. Esther finished hanging the wreath and walked the three store-fronts down to Marge's diner and went in. A few cars drove by. Quill started to count he squares to the inch in the screen. Some minutes after Esther disappeared in to Marge's diner, Mayor Henry, portly in a black and green ski suit, ran out of his office, crossed the street to the diner, and charged inside. Then the street was quiet.
Quill sighed, coughed, wound her hair around her finger, and sat on the bare mattress of the fold-out cot. She debated her chances of getting a cup of coffee. She'd been in the cell before, having interviewed incarcerated suspects in several murder cases in years past, and it was as utilitarian and boring as ever. Caffeine might keep her awake.
Open bars on the cells' fourth side faced the solid door to the sheriff's office. This door was half open, and she could see Davy Kiddermeister's feet propped up on his desk. His socks were sagging. Quill's own feet were cold and bare except for her panty hose, since Davy'd taken her boots and then had been unable to find a pair of prison slippers. Quill loved her boots. They were crushed leather with a fleecy top. They'd been soaked with snow and mud on the outside, but the inside always kept her feet warm, no matter how poor the weather was. Quill sighed again, chewed on her hair, and stared at the ceiling. Perhaps she should have called Meg, although Howie had assured her she'd be out before lunch. A flash of re din the street caught her eye and she went back to the window.
Like two fireplugs on either side of a skinny poplar, Mayor Henry, Esther, and Marge stood in the middle of Main Street staring at the Municipal Building. Quill untied her silk scarf, a bright teal and gold, and wagged it back and forth. Esther clutched Elmer. Elmer pointed at the jail window, his mouth moving soundlessly. Marge socked Elmer in the arm, then all three waved together, tentatively. Quill waved the scarf in response. Esther semaphored back, knocking the mayor's knitted hat sideways and poking him in the eye. There was an excited colloquy, then Marge stumped to her Lexus, the mayor and Esther on her heels. They piled in. Marge peeled out from the curb, slush spraying from beneath the wheels.
"Coffee!" Quill shouted futilely through the barred window. "Bring coffee."
"You need anything, Ms. Quilliam?" Davy Kiddermeister stood outside the cell, his thumbs hitched in his belt loops. Davy was blond and fair-skinned. In the winter, the tips of his ears were perpetually chapped.
"No, thanks, Davy," said quill. She sighed and twiddled her thumbs. "Has Howie had any luck finding that judge? The real one, I mean?"
"Mr. Murchison's down to the courthouse right this minute, paying your fine. I told you that, twice. Not that I mind saying it more than once," he added hastily. "No, ma'am."
"Seven hundred dollars," Quill murmured darkly.
Davy shuffled. He was able to shuffle, Quill noted, because he had boots. She, on the other hand, didn't.
"I really hated to lock you up like this, Ms. Quilliam, but the law's the law."
"Then how's about my boots? Honestly, Davy, why can't I just have my boots? They aren't exactly lethal weapons."
"Sheriff Dorset'd have my guts for garters if I hadn't processed you in right, and prisoners can't have shoes or belts or anything like that. Says so in the manual."
"Where is Sheriff Dorset, anyway?"
"Out," Davy said vaguely, "with that senator."
"Al Santini is not a senator." Quill explained with restraint, "He lost the election. He's an ex-senator. Which, if I'm not mistaken, is why I'm here at this very moment."
Davy, who clearly had something on his chest, ignored this and said earnestly, "I just hope that you won't, you know" - Davy's ears turned an even brighter pink - "tell Kathleen that I treated you bad or anything like that. You want something, "I'll get it for you. Just lemme know. Unless it's your boots. Can't give you your boots."
Quill felt an attack of tartness coming on. "Kathleen is perfectly capable of deciding that her brother is a Nazi all on her own. She's not only our best waitress, she's the one with the most sense." She sat on the cot and the sank her chin in her hands. She wondered if she'd be in here if Myles had been reelected sheriff. Nobody knew much about Frank Dorset, except that he lived at the very edge of Tompkins County and farmed pigs. Myles, she thought, wouldn't have let things get to this point.
"If you think at all, David Emerson Kiddermeister," said Marge Schmidt, entering the cell area with a great stamping of feet and a rush of snowy air, "which I doubt. The men in this town have all gone crazy. Look, Esther. It's true. Every word of it. There she is!"
Esther, Marge, and the mayor crowded next to Davy and stared at Quill like owls on a fence. Esther patted a stiffly lacquered curl over one ear and chirped in distress.
"I don't know as how you all are allowed in here," said Davy. "Prisoner's only allowed one visitor at a time."
"Stuff it." Marge planted a thick palm in Davy's chest and shoved him aside. "You all right, Quill? Getcha anything?"
"Coffee," said Quill, `I'd love some coffee. And something to do. A book, maybe?"
"How long they send you up for?" asked the mayor. "Are you going to need a lot of books? I could set up a fund-raiser, maybe."
"She isn't going to be here that long," Esther said stoutly. Esther, whose taste in clothes seemed to have been formed by watching old movies starring the McGuire sisters, adjusted her patent leather belt and added, "Are you?"
"Seven day's, said Davy. "Judge says she's supposed to serve the whole time."
"He can't do that," said Marge. "I knew that little squirt Bristol never shoulda been elected. And it's your fault, Mayor. You and your nekkid friends running all through the woods like a bunch of assholes."
"Maybe the judge can do that," Esther gasped. "I mean - if she did what she did, she could be in here for years. Did you do it, Quill? I mean, we heard that you ran over a little child, but which little child? And the child couldn't have died, because we would have heard about it."
"I ran over a little child?" said Quill. "What/ What/"
"You got it wrong, Esther. You always do. She didn't run over a little kid." Elmer sighed, regret all over his round face. "She almost ran over a little kid. Came this close." He held a pudgy thumb and forefinger minimally apart.
"I passed a school bus," said Quill. "A parked empty school bus. There weren't any little kids within forty blocks of that school bus."
"Well, there had to have been little kids within forty blocks," said the mayor reasonably. "The whole of Hemlock Falls isn't forty blocks, so there must have been little kids around somewhere. But you - "