Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) by Claudia Bishop Read Free Book Online

falling off a clothesline.
    Harland Peterson rose to his feet and extended onemeaty hand. “Give me that damn thing, Elmer. You don’t want to be a-hitting on your wife with it.”
    Elmer was perfectly white. He gazed at the gavel in his hand in horror.
    Adela took three deep breaths. “Well,” she said in a trembling voice. “Well! The next communication you have with me, Elmer Burton Henry, will be through my lawyer.”
    She burst into tears and ran out of the room.
    The gavel dropped from Elmer’s nerveless fingers onto the table. Nobody said anything. After a long moment, the slam of the Inn’s heavy front door rolled down the hallway.
    Marge Schmidt stood up and leaned across the table. “Gimme that thing, Elmer.”
    Elmer blinked at her.
    “The gavel, Elmer. Give it here.”
    He shoved it across the table with the palm of his hand. Marge picked it up and whacked it on the table, once, twice, three times. “Meeting adjourned.”
    For a long moment, nobody moved.
    “Come on,” Marge ordered. “Meeting’s over. Get on back to whatever you need to, folks. Except you, Quill. You and Miriam come with me. We got to find Adela and pound some sense into her.”
    Minutes later, Quill stood in the parking lot at the front of the Inn with Dina, Miriam, and Marge, looking for Adela’s red Camry. The dining room opened for lunch at eleven and the lot was already full. The lot was directly across from the massive pine door of the Inn’s entrance and was a small paved area that held a total of eight cars.The Henrys’ Toyota wasn’t there. The larger lot was behind the building and it was where Quill, Meg, and the staff parked, in addition to most of the guests.
    “My guess is she took off for home,” Miriam said. “We can check around back, if you like.”
    “No, she was parked here in front,” Dina said. “She slammed out the front door and in about two seconds I heard a car peel out of here.” She slipped the rubber band off her ponytail, rewound her hair, and put the rubber band back in. “Should I call Davy, or something?”
    “Don’t be an idiot,” Marge said. “There’s no call to get the sheriff involved.”
    Dina made a sound like “huh!” Miriam nudged Marge reprovingly. Marge swung her turret-like gaze onto Dina. Marge had the steady calm of a seasoned tank gunner and she was the richest woman in Tompkins County, and for all Quill knew, the rest of upstate New York. “Sorry, I guess, Dina,” Marge said. “But this just goes to show you.”
    “Just goes to show you what?” Miriam said tartly.
    Marge shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “I
meant
,” Dina said, “that Adela might try to do something to herself, you know? I mean, she was pretty upset. Here she was assaulted by her own husband in front of practically the whole town, and like, what could be more humiliating?”
    “Now you
are
being an idiot,” Miriam said, even more tartly.
    Quill sighed. “I think we could all do with a glass of wine. And maybe a little lunch. Marge, do you think Harland would take Elmer home? The Henrys’ car is gone, and it’s likely that Adela went home and I’m sure they canwork this out. It isn’t as if Elmer’s a batterer or anything. The gavel just sort of…slipped.”
    “Huh!” Dina said, with a good deal of spirit. “That’s what they all say.”
    “What d’ya mean, ‘they’?” Marge demanded.
    “Abusers. For all we know, Elmer could have been beating up on Adela for years and years.”
    Quill thought of Elmer, who was five foot six in his elevator shoes and Adela, who topped Quill’s own five foot seven by a good two inches.
    “Adela outweighs him by sixty pounds and always has,” Miriam said. “I’d hate to have their little fracas end up as wild gossip, Dina. You know what small towns are like. And you weren’t even there! As a matter of fact, I don’t know why you’re here now!”
    “You guys all pounded past me like you were headed for a fire,” Dina said. “My