A Touch of the Grape: A Hemlock Falls Mystery (Hemlock Falls Mystery series) Read Online Free PDF

still smelled faintly of the raw beef she'd tried to feed the dog earlier that morning. She shoved her hand rather guiltily into the pocket of her denim skirt. "So, what's the next round of cuts? Gruel for the staff? It'll be hard on the sous -chef. He hates gruel."
    "The next cut is me. You have to fire me. Quill."
    She stared at him, openmouthed.
    "I'm serious. If I could take a pay cut. Quill, I would. You know that." He looked away from her.
    Across the Gorge, a doe and her fawn picked their way carefully down the sheer stone to the water. Quill knew why John couldn't live on any less. His sister. Quill knew better than to ask about her. The Institution where she stayed was one of the most expensive in the state. And John wouldn't give her up. Quill would never ask him to give her up.
    "I'll take more of a pay cut," Quill said steadily. "Meg and Doreen will take pay cuts."
    "That's already in the emergency budget. And I'm afraid it won't wash, Quill. Just to keep the Inn open, the lights on, the water flowing, the taxes paid, the dishwasher and refrigerator running costs you more than fif teen thousand dollars a month. The mortgage is—"
    "I don't want to hear any more numbers," Quill said. "There's got to be a way. What is it, John? Why isn't anyone coming to the Inn anymore? It can't just be the recession. We never drew our paying customers from around here, anyway. They're all from downstate. And a lot of them are from out of state."
    "If you want to hear a why, all I can give you are guesses. The number of rooms you have is too—"
    "We," Quill interrupted crossly, "the number of rooms we have."
    "Sorry. We have twenty-seven rooms. Even if we ran at one hundred percent occupancy every single day of the year and charged two hundred dollars a night, we wouldn't make it. It was the last tax reassessment that did it. Two hundred a night is stiff, Quill, even for an internationally known inn, and you still couldn't make the budget. Do you see? You can't charge any more than you do. And there aren't enough rooms to carry the expenses of living in this state."
    "Let's get a bank loan and build an addition, then."
    "Quill, you can't manufacture pens for a dollar and sell them at ninety-nine cents, and then make it up in volume."
    "So what do we do?"
    "Well, we've always known that the rooms carry expenses and the restaurant makes the profit, right?"
    "Right."
    "And now we've come to a point where the rooms aren't going to carry expenses."
    "We figured we'd run a seventy percent occupancy eleven months of the year," Quill protested. "You said that would work."
    He was losing patience, something he'd never done before. "That was last year. We have been reassessed this year. The reassessment is fair. My protest didn't work. We cannot afford to run the Inn anymore. I will not borrow to put us into debt when the chance of re payment is slim to nonexistent." He took her by both shoulders and stared hard at her. "I told you this last month. You didn't want to hear it. I am telling you again."
    "And I told you," Quill said with spirit, "the New York State Winegrowers' Association is planning a lot of large events for this region. I think you should hook up with Hugh Summerhill. He's the P.R. for the local W.G.A. this year, and there's a lot of business potential there."
    He let her go.
    Quill looked at him, her eyes steady. "You've already made up your mind we're going to fail." His eyes flick ered, and Quill drew a deep breath. "You made up your mind. And, dammit, John, you've found another job!"

2
    John looked tired. "I've found another job, yes." He sat down on the verge of grass overlooking the Gorge. "We've been over the financials for months now. Quill."
    "It's the insurance thing, isn't it?" Quill said, stricken. "That check that bounced, and then the policy getting canceled. I'm sorry about not writing down the amount of those checks I write, John. You know my style. Slapdash. Once in a while I stop to think about how hard