Read Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) for Free Online Page A

but attend to the myriad, pesky details of running her Inn.
    Instead, she held her hand out for the messages. “Anything that won’t keep?”
    “You might want to call the Golden Pillar travel people. They’re bummed about the Inn being booked until after Thanksgiving and they’re threatening to take us off their website as a desired destination, or whatever they call it.”
    “We’re booked until after Thanksgiving?” This was good news.
    “Yep. This Long-Term Let idea is turning out to be a bummer.”
    Quill grimaced. “Maybe.”
    Their financial guy, John Raintree, had suggested the Long-Term Let as a hedge against the ups and downs of their vacancy rate. Quill and Dina had posted reasonable monthly rates for the high-priced suites, which were usually the last to be booked by guests. It had seemed like a great idea at the time—but the suites were snapped up almost immediately, leaving no vacancies for at least sixmonths. There were only three: the Provencal, the Federal, and the Colonial. A couple named Quince had promptly booked both the Federal and the Colonial. A very, very old fellow named Jeeter Swenson had the Provencal. Mr. Swenson made Quill a little nervous. The Provencal Suite was on the third floor with a balcony one guest had already fallen off of. Since the apparent accident had turned out to be a murder, Quill supposed that didn’t really count.
    “Maybe we should tell the Golden Pillar people that we’ve given up the Long-Term Let idea.”
    “Okay,” Dina said.
    “But maybe the Long-Term Let idea is a good one. This travel boom can’t last forever.”
    “Okay,” Dina said.
    “Maybe I should discuss it with Melody Brodie at Golden Pillar and see what she thinks.”
    “Sounds like a Scarlett O’Hara moment to me.”
    Quill stuck the message in her skirt pocket. “Right. I’ll think about it tomorrow—or maybe after the Chamber meeting.” She looked at her watch. The morning had started so well—and now look. She’d volunteered for another committee. The Golden Pillar people were threatening a boycott. And like the White Rabbit, she was late, late, late for the Chamber of Commerce meeting, which meant somebody had probably volunteered her for another committee.
    “Grrr,” she said, to Dina’s confusion. “We’ll just see about that!” She straightened her shoulders, stiffened her spine, and prepared to go to the meeting.

3

    The Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce meetings had been held at the Inn’s conference room since Meg and Quill had opened for business. At the time, the Inn was the only business in the village with room enough for all twenty-four members to sit down together. This wasn’t true anymore. Tourists had discovered that upstate New York—with its vineyards, boutique distilleries, local food and craft stores, and amazing natural gorges—was one of the most beautiful places on earth. And as the tourists came, so came the construction crews.
    The first building of note was the Resort, a lavish hotel complex about a quarter mile downriver from the Inn. La Bonne Goute Culinary Academy followed some years later—and although its internationally acclaimed master chef had been murdered not long after its ornately carved doors opened to the public—the academy’s cooking classes attracted even greater numbers of out-of-towners under Clare Sparrow’s stewardship. So there was plenty of room to hold the Chamber meeting elsewhere. But tradition was a matter of principle in the village, and noteven Carol Ann Spinoza had the nerve to suggest a change in venue.
    Quill walked through the dining room to the reception foyer and turned left down the short hall to the conference room. The space had been a keeping room in the inn’s distant past, but instead of barrels of flour, sacks of apples, and huge hams, the room now held a long refectory table with seating for twenty-four. Whiteboards were fastened to the stone walls and a long credenza held the coffee and tea