A Steak in Murder by Claudia Bishop Read Free Book Online Page B

the database."
    "Waste of a couple of megabytes, far as I can see." Harland straightened up and stepped away from the Olds. "And if you could learn to use that little dingus I showed you all last month, you wouldn't have to input twice. Just write on the pad and whammo, translates your hand writing into regular print and everything. Carry mine with me all the time. Use it for the dairy herd. If Mrs. Peterson could of seen what computers can do for dairy farming, she would have been amazed. S'pose them Texans know a thing or two about computers?" He nodded toward the mechanical cow, who blatted obligingly, as if in response to what Quill considered to be a totally trivial question.
    "Well, I wouldn't know, would I?"
    "Sort of thing you should know, if you're going to invest in the program."
    "What program?" Quill asked suspiciously.
    "You wait and see. Gonna tell you all about it at the meeting. I'm on the agenda after the Hemlock Falls Street Daze committee report." He pulled his cap all the way off and repositioned it. "Tell you what, though. Marge is buying more than a few shares. More than a few. And she's no dummy, Marge isn't. You could do worse than follow her around, Quill. Might learn a thing or two."
    Quill released the brake and accelerated up the drive. Learn a thing or two from a person who put a ten-foot plaster cow smack in the way of one of the most elegant old Inns in Upstate New York? Follow around a human version of a Sherman tank who renamed one of the most elegant old Inns in Upstate New York The Dew Drop Inn? "I don't think so," Quill said. She parked right next to the sign that read Don't Even Think About Parking Here (she'd always parked in that spot, before) and marched into the foyer. She'd especially loved this part of the Inn, the place where guests were first introduced to the hundreds of years of charm that lay sprawled on the lip of the Falls. The polished oak floors shone as mellow as ever. The cobblestone fireplace held a neatly stacked pile of white birch logs. The cream and celadon Oriental rug had been replaced by a square of blue indoor/outdoor carpeting, but it was an inoffensive blue, and it didn't clash with the two blue-and-white-striped love seats that flanked the reception desk.
    "Hey, Quill."
    "Dina?" Quill squinted, as if to bring her former receptionist into better focus. "Is that you?"
    "It's me." Dina closed her textbook (The Life Cycle of the Cephalopods in a Florida Freshwater Pond) and smiled. "How have you been?"
    "Since you saw me last night, just fine. What are—" Quill stopped. What are you doing here? sounded rude. Gone over to the other side? was snide. "Fine," she said. She was beginning to hate that particular adjective.
    Dina twisted a forefinger into her long brown hair and tugged thoughtfully at it. "It's not that I don't love waitressing at the Palate," she said. "I do. It's just that reception work lets me study for my orals and waitressing doesn't. So I . . . I kind of asked Marge for my old job back."
    "Oh," Quill said.
    "And it's only part-time." Dina said anxiously. "I'm still putting that two days in at the Palate."
    "You said you didn't want to work more than two days," Quill said. "We would have given you as much time as you wanted, Dina."
    "But I've got grad school," Dina said in a tone approaching a wail. "And besides, I'm learning a lot about the business side of things. It's going to be kind of hard to find a job in freshwater pond ecology, Marge says, and she thinks I have a real head for numbers. And," Dina added proudly, "Marge says I'm exceptionally ef fective on the phone. Of course, Marge doesn't really talk like that, you know. What she said was, 'You give good phone, kid. Lot better'n me.' " Dina blinked her big brown eyes. "And then she said I have a real way with the guests. Isn't that sweet?"
    Since Quill found Marge about as sweet as month-old grapefruit, she didn't bother to answer this. "Meeting's in the conference room?"
    "It's always in