Murder Well-Done by Claudia Bishop Page B

of Hemlock Falls isn't forty blocks, so there must have been little kids around somewhere. But you - "

"I did NOT run over a little kid!"

"You heard it wrong, Elmer, you hopeless little shit." Marge put her hands on her considerable hips and surveyed the cell and the shoeless Quill with a suspicious touch of satisfaction. "Just look at this. Cold, hungry, and practically bare nekkid. I'm going to go down to the library and check out a couple of books for Quill, here. Esther, you find some slippers in that shop of yours, and then give Betty a call. She can run over here with some hamburg and a thermos of coffee." She fixed a malevolent eye on Davy. "And don't you touch a drop of my coffee, David Emerson Kiddermeister. I ain't subsidizing any damn fool that had a part in this. And speaking of damn fools, where's that useless son of bitch sheriff?"

"You talking to me?"

To her fierce annoyance, Quill jumped and her breath came short. Franklin Douglas Dorset, newly elected sheriff of Tompkins County, didn't look at all like Travis Bickle, he only sounded like him. He looked, as Meg had stigmatized him at the start of his election campaign, like a canned asparagus. He unzipped his quilted winter jacket and regarded the group crushed in front of the cell with speculation. Dorset was tall; his skin, hair, eyes, and clothes a uniformly nondescript pale brown. His hair was thick, standing almost upright, and his shoulders, chest, and hips were of similar circumference, so that if you had an imagination as food-oriented as Meg's it was possible to imagine Dorset as one of the more cylinderlike vegetables. Quill thought he looked more like a bleached-out Elvis Presley than an asparagus.

Meg also claimed Dorset had the brains of a boiled onion. Quill, after one look at his flat brown eyes, wasn't sure about that.

"Deputy?" said Dorset. "There some good reason why all these people are in here?"

Marge drew breath. Quill waited confidently for the explosion. Blessed with the psychic drive of a Patton tank, Marge could flatten sumo wrestlers with a single glance from her turretlike eye.

"Guess we better be getting along," Marge said meekly. "I'm bringing her coffee and a book, Sheriff," she added. "And somethin' to put on her feet. If you don't mind."

"What I mind," said Sheriff Dorset, lifting a comer of his lip, "is you taking that intersection at Route 15 and 96 at seventy miles an hour last Sunday at 4:32 p.m., Marge Schmidt. That's a three-hundred-dollar, three-point V&T violation."

"Route 15 and 96?" Elmer asked alertly.

"Maybe it's there," Dorset said with relish, "and maybe it isn't. I'll see you folks sometime, right?" He held an imaginary camera to one eye and pretended to click it.

Quill watched Marge leave, followed by a studiedly careless mayor and a nervous Esther. She said to Dorset, "You mean you can move the dam thing?"

"The hidden camera? Bet your cute little ass. No use in a town this size if you can't."

Dorset unclipped the keys to the cell from his belt with a flourish and opened the cell door. His gaze flicked over her carelessly, avoiding her eyes, and concentrating on her breasts. He stood slouched, one hip thrust out.

"Deputy here says you want to go home. Says you're a little scared. Can't say as I blame you."

Quill thought carefully about her response to this. She probably wouldn't get much more than seven years jail time If she punched Franklin Douglas Dorset right in the nose. On the other hand, her feet were cold and she was going to die if she didn't get a cup of coffee. "Ahem," she said, in a noncommittal way.

"Tell you what. Senator out there wants to have a little talk with you, then he figures you pay the fine, you've served a little time, it's all settled, you can go back up to the Inn." Dorset smiled ingratiatingly.

Quill didn't say anything. "Well, ma'am?"

"What kind of talk?" she asked suspiciously.

Dorset jiggled the keys. "Whyn't you come right out here and see?"

Dorset behind her