The Ugly Truth

by Jill Orr

  “Thank you for the advice,” Holman said in a tone that, had it come from anyone else, I would have sworn was sarcastic.

  CHAPTER 14

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully. I called Flick on my way home from work. No answer. I left a message for him to call me back. I was worried about him, but I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t glad he was out there chasing down leads. Ever since he’d admitted he also thought Granddaddy had been murdered, it seemed we were getting closer to the truth. And the closer we got, the more risk we were both willing to accept. It felt like being high up in a tree, inching out bit by bit to grab the fruit at the end of the branch. Risky but worth it.

  Flick wasn’t much of a texter, but I tried anyway, just in case: This is Riley. All ok?

  No response.

  When the doorbell rang, even though the logical part of my brain knew it wouldn’t be Flick, the breath hitched in my throat. I rushed to the door, but Coltrane’s longing whines told me it could only be one person. Ridley. My dog, like males of all species, got inappropriately excited to see her.

  “Um, hi.” Ridley stood on my front porch and looked over her left shoulder. “I forgot to give you that stuff for your burn earlier, so I thought I’d bring it by.”

  “Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” I said, embarrassed just thinking about what Ridley would say if she knew I was enrolled in a self-care program. “It’s really nothing.”

  I opened the door wider to let her in, Coltrane eagerly circling her as she walked into my living room. She handed me a small tin. “Use a small amount at bedtime. It’ll really help.”

  I couldn’t help but notice she wasn’t making eye contact. Or smiling at me like she usually did. “Thanks,” I said. “You okay?”

  My question must have been the invitation she’d been waiting for. She looked down at her feet, then up at me. “Um, could I ask you a question? In confidence?”

  My expression froze for a second. Was this going to be about Ryan? It made me deeply uncomfortable to talk about Ryan with Ridley. “Sure,” I said, trying to sound breezy. “Of course.”

  “Can we sit?”

  I did not like the direction this conversation was going. An anxious cloud loomed over us as we settled on the couch. I offered her something to drink, which she declined. When it became clear she wasn’t going to be the one to start the conversation, I did. “So what’s up?”

  Ridley leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper even though the only one listening was Coltrane (who sat at her feet waiting for a scrap of attention, the mutinous beast). “Um, what if someone had information about a certain other someone and that first someone thought perhaps the second someone might be involved in certain activities that might be, shall we say, not strictly speaking, legal?”

  I gave her a look that said, Huh?

  She widened her crystal blue eyes and tried again, this time in an even lower voice. “I mean, what is a person’s ethical responsibility in terms of reporting something to the authorities that might shed light on an ongoing criminal investigation?”

  This obviously had to do with Rosalee, not Ryan. My relief gave way to the electric tingle of anticipation. “I’m no lawyer, but I think there are laws against withholding information about a crime.” I paused. “Do you know something about a crime?”

  Ridley looked down. “No—I mean, maybe.” She tucked a long, shiny section of hair behind one ear. “I came across some information at the restaurant this afternoon, and it raised some concerns about Rosalee’s involvement in all the stuff that has been going on.”

  “The murders, you mean?”

  Ridley nodded. “I’m not even sure it’s anything, but—”

  “Why don’t you tell me and maybe I can help you figure it out?” Something had happened in the past few hours, and whatever it was, I had a feeling it was most certainly newsworthy.

  “I don’t want to get her in trouble, especially since I’m not even sure it means anything.”

  This was big. I could sense it. I wanted it so badly, I was practically salivating, but I needed to play it cool so I didn’t scare Ridley off.

  “Maybe I can help?” I said again, feeling like the old crone tempting Snow White to take a bite of the poison apple. Not that telling the truth was a poison apple or anything—telling the truth was good—but telling the truth to a reporter could be complicated, and I wasn’t sure Ridley understood that.

  “My parents own a restaurant in Sälen, did you know that?”

  I shook my head.

  “I grew up working for them, so I know a little something about how the industry works.”

  That explained Ridley’s enthusiasm for taking over while Rosalee was indisposed. Despite my best intentions, I felt a swell of empathy for Ridley. She had just had a baby and was living thousands of miles from her family, her home. Ridley got so much attention everywhere she went, it never occurred to me that she might be lonely. Maybe running Rosalee’s Tavern was a cure for homesickness as much as anything else.

  She continued. “In preparation to open, I had to look through the books to see how she handles her accounting and to check on how she orders supplies. At first glance, everything looked pretty standard. She keeps the financials in notebooks—handwritten—with the daily total sales marked, subdivided by cash and credit card purchases. Most use computers, but some still do it old-school. That was not so unusual.”

  I waited quietly to hear what was.

  “I also found her file containing invoices from suppliers. It appears she pays some of them in cash, which could be a way to avoid paying taxes, but again, not completely out of the ordinary in the restaurant business.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I held my breath in anticipation.

  Ridley heaved out a big sigh. “It’s the butter.”

  “The butter?” That was not what I was expecting to hear.

  “Her expenditures on butter are astronomical.”

  I didn’t know much about the restaurant business, but I would think a French café would spend a fair amount on butter. And I’d had Rosalee’s pastries—they were buttery works of culinary art.

  “Could that just be because of her recipes?”

  “It isn’t the amount of butter that concerns me,” she clarified. “It’s what she’s paying for it.”

  “Like, what are we talking?”

  “According to her invoices, she orders about six thousand pounds of butter per month.”

  “Is that a lot?” Without context I had no idea.

  “More than most, but that’s not the strange part. For those six thousand pounds, she’s paying over sixteen thousand dollars, which even with the recent ‘crise du beurre’ c’est très coûteux.”

  Freaking Ridley and her multilinguality, I thought. “English, please.”

  “The great butter crisis in France.”

  I gave her another blank stare. Blank stares were becoming a theme in this conversation.

  “The French butter crisis. Surely you have heard about it?”

  I had not. A butter crisis? This had to be some sort of joke. I leaned back against the chair and laughed. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

  “No,” Ridley said, her eyes widening. “You can look it up! There is a shortage of butter in France, and it has caused the price to skyrocket.”

  “Really?” This sounded very strange. How could the French run out of butter? That’s like Italy running out of pasta or Mexico having an avocado shortage or America running out of Twinkies.

  “Anyway,” Ridley continued her story. “Those numbers just seemed odd to me, so I did some research, and even with the increasing prices, I wouldn’t expect her to pay more than twelve thousand for the amount she’s using. But Rosalee has been paying so much more for years now—practically since she opened.”

  I had to think about this for a minute. What were the implications of Rosalee overpaying for butter? “Do you think she’s, like, getting a kickback from the but
ter supplier or something?”

  “That is definitely possible,” Ridley said. “I have seen this before back in Sweden. An acquaintance of my parents was shut down by the government for a hazelnut payola scandal in 2006. It was ugly.”

  “Okaaayyyyy….” I held up my hand. Hazelnut payola? Butter crisis? I just couldn’t…. I shook my head trying to think through the absurdity. “Even if something is up with her butter, what does that have to do with the murders?”

  “Her files indicate she orders butter through a company called Colonel Mustard Enterprises. I scoured the internet looking for information on them and found nothing. There is a website, but it has no information. I couldn’t have ordered butter from there if I’d wanted to.”

  “I still don’t see what any of this has to do with—”

  “On a piece of scrap paper in one of her files, I found a phone number next to the initials CME, so I thought maybe that was it. I called the number and it just rang and rang. No one picked up and there was no voicemail. But about a minute after I hung up, the number called me back. I asked if this was Colonel Mustard Enterprises and a woman demanded to know who I was and where I got this number. When I refused to say, she told me the company had gone out of business and told me never to call again.”

  I was beginning to see why this was troubling to Ridley.

  “One other strange thing,” Ridley continued. “I’ve been going into the restaurant pretty much every day for the past few days…and maybe I’m crazy, but I swear that butter is slowly disappearing from the refrigerator.”

  Of all the unbelievable things Ridley had told me during this conversation, this may have been the most unbelievable. “Someone’s stealing butter?”

  “At this rate, I’m going to have to order more soon—and of course now I don’t even know where I will get it from.”

  I was still trying to work out how Rosalee’s expensive and possibly suspicious butter dealer was involved with the recent murders in our town, so I could hardly focus on someone stealing a nip of butter here or there. Maybe Ridley had calculated the inventory incorrectly? Or maybe she was imagining it? Or maybe, even more likely, Ryan had developed a taste for French butter.

  “Listen, I’m sure no one is after your butter—” I started to say, but as soon as the word was across my lips, a thought came to me: butter. That smell at Holman’s apartment. It was butter. And not just any butter—it was the deep, rich, buttery smell of decadence. I stood up. “I have to go!”

  Ridley flinched “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, grabbing her by her perfect elbow and hurrying her toward the door. “I just remembered something I have to do tonight.”

  “Oh, okay…” she said.

  “We’ll talk later—I’ll come by the café tomorrow, I promise!”

  After I shooed a baffled Ridley out the door, I grabbed my keys and headed out, for the second time that night, to Will Holman’s apartment.

  “Where is she?” I demanded as soon as he opened the door.

  “What? Riley, I—”

  “Save it.” I pushed past him into his apartment, and the familiar luscious aroma hit my nose. This time it took me less than two seconds to figure out where it was coming from. Atop Holman’s drab, builder-grade, Formica breakfast bar was a wire rack containing six of the most perfectly formed almond croissants I’d ever seen. I knew those croissants—I’d been eating them twice a week for nearly a year.

  Holman saw me look at the pastries, and his eyes, already almost perfect circles, widened to anime effect. He said nothing; his silence told me everything I needed to know.

  I glared at him hard, then said loudly toward the back bedroom, “Rosalee, you can come out now.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Bonjour, Riley.” Rosalee walked out and leaned against the arched wall separating Holman’s living room from the back hallway. She wore a plain white button-down shirt, dark skinny jeans, and red ballet flats. Her dark brown hair fell to just below her shoulders and was parted deep on the left side so that it swooped across her smooth, pale forehead in one clean diagonal line. Even in hiding, she looked stylish.

  “Someone better tell me what the hell is going on around here. Now.” I looked from Rosalee to Holman and back to Rosalee.

  “Let’s sit down,” Holman said, gesturing to his living room. “Riley, first you need to know that Rosalee didn’t kill anyone.”

  I’ll admit I felt a tiny bit relieved to hear Holman say that. Holman was more precise with his words than most, and he was rarely so definitive about things.

  “She came to me two days ago afraid for her life and asked me for help.”

  “Why you?”

  He thought for a moment before answering. “She didn’t think the sheriff could keep her safe.”

  “From who?” I looked at Rosalee. It was time she spoke for herself.

  “Dale Mountbatten wants me dead.” The words were incongruous with her tone, which was somewhere between uninterested and bored.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Holman jumped in. “He might just want you locked up in prison.”

  A harsh laugh erupted from Rosalee’s red-lipped mouth. “Where I will have an unfortunate ‘accident,’ no doubt.”

  There was so much information being thrown out, and I didn’t have context for any of it. “Rosalee,” I said as patiently as I could manage. “Can you start from the beginning?”

  “Yes, but first,” she said and walked toward the kitchen, “croissants.”

  The story came out over the course of one hour and four croissants (only two of which were mine). Rosalee came to America nine years ago at the age of twenty-two as an au pair. She worked for a reputable agency and was given her first assignment the summer after she finished university: the Mountbattens of northern Virginia. While working for the family, she lived in guest quarters over the garage, doing all the usual things an au pair does. She looked after the children, drove carpool, supervised playdates, arranged meals for the kids with their personal chef, and occasionally ran a non-kid-related errand for Greer. She said Greer was nice but aloof and made it clear that Rosalee was there in service to—not as an extension of—the family. Dale was friendlier. And about five months into Rosalee’s tenure on the job, he became friendlier still.

  “It was completely consensual,” Rosalee said without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. “He was unlike any man I’d known before—of course, until then I had only dated boys.” She shrugged. “Dale was different. He was ambitious and driven, he knew what he wanted, and, I suppose as a young woman, I felt flattered that what he wanted was me.” Rosalee’s green-gray eyes seemed to spark at the memory. “We became consumed with each other, stealing time away from the kids whenever we could, our desire for each other leading us both to make stupid decisions—” she broke off, “—and ultimately Greer found out.”

  “How?”

  Rosalee shrugged again. “I think there was a part of Dale that wanted to be found out…at least that’s the only explanation that makes sense to me looking back. Dale told me—told both Greer and me together—that he loved me and was planning to leave her.”

  Interesting. This was new information. “I assume she did not take that well?” I asked.

  “No, she did not.” Rosalee took a long sip of tea before continuing the story. “She threatened to call my agency and have me sent back to France. I was in clear violation of the terms of my employment agreement and would have been sent home immediately. But over the course of a few days, Dale made a deal with her: He would stay with them if I was allowed to remain in the country.”

  “Why would she agree to that?” I furrowed my brow. “Why would you?”

  “Dale was very charming.”

  “Did you keep seeing each other? And what happened with your posting with the au pair agency? And why Tuttle Corner?” There were mile-wide holes in the story she was telling me.

  “The arrangement was that the Mountbattens woul
d keep providing the appropriate payment and updates to my agency for the length of my contract, and I would ‘go away.’ Dale said he would make sure I was taken care of. Tuttle Corner was his idea. He asked what kind of work I would like to do, and I said I had been a waitress in a café back in Dijon. The next week he formed a new company, Colonel Mustard Enterprises, and bought me a restaurant.”

  Colonel Mustard Enterprises. The butter distributor. Things were getting interesting now.

  I had heard versions of Rosalee’s origin story in the form of rumors about a young French woman suddenly moving, alone, to Tuttle and opening a restaurant. But as far as I knew, Rosalee hadn’t ever confirmed or denied the gossip. She was not the sort of woman to offer more information than was asked of her—and sometimes not even that. Plus, people in Tuttle Corner never asked directly. Why risk ruining juicy gossip with the truth?

  “So the relationship continued?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited for her to elaborate, but apparently that was all she had to say about that. I pressed. “Like, for how long?”

  Holman, who had been listening quietly up until this point, jumped in. “Their relationship persisted until very recently, but it had…evolved.”

  “Evolved how?” I asked. Both Rosalee and Holman were being cagey about something. If Rosalee had essentially been Dale Mountbatten’s sidepiece for seven or eight years, did Greer know about it? And perhaps more importantly, didn’t that provide Rosalee with a pretty strong motive for murder?

  As if she read my mind, Rosalee offered an explanation. “We saw each other as often as we could get away with it. He’d say he was traveling for work, and I’d join him in a hotel for a weekend here, an evening there. And for a long while, it seemed that there might be a future for us somewhere down the road, once the children got older. But given the constraints,” she said, “our relationship was primarily a sexual one.”

  She was so matter-of-fact, I could see how she and Holman would get along. I, on the other hand, felt uncomfortable talking about such intimate things with a woman whom, until now, I had spoken to mostly about breakfast pastries.