"Meg, you always bring up the protest. That was thirty years ago, for Pete's sake, and you bring it up when the least little thing happens."
"... I was four years old. Four years old! You had me protesting the Vietnam war in front of my kindergarten. Here I was, this totally innocent little kid whose big sister had this sign STOP THE WAR with the R backwards, and we made the six o'clock news. Mom was so embarrassed she didn't go out of the house for weeks afterward. The neighbors thought she put us up to it."
"Dad thought it was great," said Quill stiffly. "He sneaked me a Mars bar when he came to get us at the police station."
"You never told me that," said Meg. "I never got any of it, either." She regarded her sister with exasperation. "Your analysis of the situation is clean, cool, and precise."
"Thank you," said Quill. "It's also bogus. You're ignoring one screamingly obvious set of facts which bring the whole house of cards to the floor, Hawkshaw."
"And what's that?"
"John," said Meg. "John appears to have the best motive of all. What about that picture!"
"Why should the fact that Nadine and Tom's sister-in-law was John's sister have anything to do with anything?" said Quill crossly.
"Because you were the one that 'deduced' the picture really belonged to John, and Gil had it! Honestly, Quill. It makes perfect sense to me that if Gil saw it lying on the ground, he'd pick it up and put it away so he could return it to John later.
It also makes perfect sense that the Gilmeisters knew about John's prison sentence and never told anybody. You know what Hemlock Falls is like. Nadine would be embarrassed to the tops of her ears to have everyone know they'd had an ex-con in the family. I love you, Quill, but there's caramel where your brains should be. You're letting your friendship with John get in the way of the facts." She shook her head. "I'm beat. I'm going to bed. I'll see you in the morning."
There was a mass of telephone messages under her door. Quill flipped on the overhead lights and sank into the Eames chair in front of the fireplace and riffled through them. The insurance adjuster would be by in the morning to examine the balcony. She could hand off the task of showing him around to Peter Williams. Myles had called; he was in Ithaca until Tuesday. The forensic lab tests on Saturday had been positive for sulfuric acid, which meant, thought Quill, that it was highly possible there'd been a first attempt on Mavis' life. She paperclipped that message to the three from Mrs. Hallenbeck, inviting her to dinner, to a cup of late-night tea, and then to breakfast tomorrow morning. "We must talk," each message read.
"That we must," Quill said to herself. "About our bill, about Mavis. About what you discussed at dinner with Mavis, Marge, and Gil."
She scrawled a short list. "Things To Do -- Monday: Hal; Pet; Mar; Baum," and muttering the names HalPetMarBaum like a charm against disaster, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The phone rang. Quill jerked awake. The digital clock radio blinked two-thirty. Quill regarded it with baleful eyes and picked the phone up. "This is Quill."
"Is Myles with you?"
"John!"
"He's not there?"
"No. He's in Ithaca and won't be back until Tuesday. John, I've been so worried about you. Where are you?"
The line went dead. Quill jiggled the cutoff button. Two quiet taps sounded at the door. Quill jumped up and flung it open. John stood there, white shirt rumpled, tieless, his sports coat filthy. The gray shadows under his eyes made his cheeks gaunt and his expression haunted.
"Come in and sit down," said Quill. She ushered him into the room and shut the door. John slumped on the couch and rubbed his hands over his face.
"You look exhausted, John. Have you had anything to eat?"
"A Big Mac, this afternoon."
"Meg will have a fit."
He chuckled. "Actually, it tasted pretty good. Sometimes you just get a craving for junk food, you know?"
Quill paced restlessly around the room. John watched her for a moment, forearms on his knees. "I want to tell you about my prison sentence."
Quill sat in the Eames chair, relieved.
"I went to my rooms first, before I came to see you. I wanted to show you a picture I have there, but the police..."
"Yes, I know."
"Then you know about my sister?"
"I didn't know who she was, John, until I showed it to Nadine. Myles found the one of her in the waitress uniform at the scene of... where Gil drowned."
"By the pond?"
"Yes. I matched it with the one you had in your room."
"Gil was going to put it in the family album. He never had much sense. So, that explains the APB. Myles thought it connected me to the scene of the crime."
"Yes, John. Where have you been all this time?"
"I made some - acquaintances in prison. There's a network, if you know who to talk to, where to look. That's one of the things I did while I was gone. I spent a lot of time trying to find out why Mavis came here, what she was after, what she'd been doing since I saw her last at the company."
"So you did work together, then?"
"For about six years. It was just after I got my MBA from RIT." He shook his head. "I really thought I was going places, then." His face shuttered closed. Quill waited patiently.
"We were a close family, growing up," he said. "My dad worked the high steel and was gone a lot. My mom stayed home. My sister Elaina was quiet, shy, never dated much in high school." John stopped, sighed, then went on. "I was a rowdy kid in high school, ran around with a bunch of guys who got into stupid small-time things. Lifting cigarettes from drugstores, joy-riding in other people's cars. I straightened up my senior year, and left all of it behind me when I got the scholarship. All but friends, one in particular, who married my sister. Tom Peterson's brother, Jack." He looked at Quill, the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones.
"My dad died in a fall from a high beam. My mom passed on soon after that. Cancer. Elaina had no one but me. And Jackie, of course. Jackie who got into the booze every Saturday night, then every Friday and Saturday night, then every day of the week and came home from the bars and beat her.
"She never said a word. Not for all the time I was in school, not for the years I started working my way up to D.G.D.'s headquarters. I'd drive in from headquarters in Syracuse. We'd get together now and then, and I noticed things, as you will, in passing. A black eye. A fractured elbow. A cracked rib. Falls, she said, or clumsiness. Anyone of the million transparent excuses you hear from battered women."
John stared at his clasped hands. "I was into the booze pretty good myself. Earning good money. On my way up. Ignoring all the signs that told me I was in trouble, refused to believe I was another alcoholic Indian. I'd beat the stereotype, right?
"I dropped by Elaina's one Saturday afternoon. Hadn't seen her for a couple of months. I'd been to a sports bar with some of the guys from the company and we'd gotten into the Scotch. Somebody had called me at the bar. Said there was trouble. I knocked on the front door and waited. Nobody answered for a long, long time. I went around to the back. I looked in the kitchen window. The place was a mess; pots and pans allover the floor. There was a huge smear of chili on the ceiling, from where a pot'd been thrown off the stove, I guess.