by Avery Aames
Like a precision drill team, the women stopped near the center display table, donned their gloves, left then right, and with a nod from Kristine, they paraded deeper into the shop, fingering everything as if they were checking for dust.
I excused myself from Zinnia and approached Kristine, who had stopped at the table filled with artisanal cheeses. She removed her gloves and helped herself to an hors d’oeuvres that was one of my favorites: lavender goat cheese nested on dates, compliments of Two Plug Nickels Farm. I promised myself one before the night was through, if any were left over.
“Kristine, welcome,” I said. “So glad you could make it.”
“Charlotte, dear.” Kristine waved a flippant hand. “Isn’t this soirée a little over the top? I mean, really, the shop is so . . . crammed. Didn’t you ever hear less is more?”
I flinched. Not from her ridicule, but from the sour stench coming off her. She had spritzed on extra perfume, but she couldn’t mask the fact that she, like her husband, had been drinking. I doubted she would be able to discern the difference between one of our exquisite cheeses and Velveeta. I bit back a snarky comment and turned to her friends. “Felicia, Prudence, Tyanne, nice to see you.”
Felicia, the one with wild red ringlets who reminded me of an aging Scarlett O’Hara, scrunched up her mouth. Prudence, the skinniest, whispered something to Felicia, who in turn sniggered, then whispered something to Tyanne, a transplant from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, who was ten years younger and the stoutest of the three. She repeated the wisecrack to Kristine. All the women cackled hysterically, leaving me to wonder whether they had spent the afternoon playing Bunko and kicking back shots of hard liquor.
“Isn’t that Ed, Kristine?” Felicia wiggled her fingers.
All heads turned.
Ed Woodhouse stood at the tasting counter with the blonde tour guide from the Cleveland wine group. As if they were the only two people at the event, he dipped bread into a granite bowl filled with olive oil and fed it to the woman. She licked his fingertips then chortled.
Kristine said, “Swine.”
Prudence elbowed Felicia knowingly.
Kristine cleared her throat, threw back her bony shoulders, and beckoned her companions to follow her. She paused at the table with twenty-five-pound wheels of Gruyère, looking like she was debating whether to grab a wheel and slam her husband in the head with it.
Please don’t make a scene, I prayed.
After a tension-filled moment, Kristine and her friends headed into the wine annex, probably to make fun of the rest of our decorating choices. To settle my roiling stomach, I snagged a cube of Swiss Emmental, then continued to make the rounds.
An hour passed without consequence. The teenage sitter I had hired gathered the twins and left for home. The crowd thinned, most of the guests vowing to return often. As I tidied displays, I spotted Grandmère and Pépère sitting on the ladder-back stools by the tasting counter. His hand rested on hers, and I smiled, glad to see my grandmother had calmed down. Beyond them, near the rear entrance, Ed Woodhouse was making eyes at curly-haired Felicia. Kristine would not be pleased. Through the arch, I saw Jordan in the wine annex looking incredibly hunky. A local vintner was pointing out the red wine legs in Jordan’s glass.
I fluffed my hair and geared myself for a little flirting, but before I could get so far as the arch, someone grabbed my shoulder and whipped me around.
“You!” Kristine teetered on her high heels and glowered at me with blatant disdain. “You . . . I’m so tired of you and your family and your—”
“Hey, Kristine, let it go.” Felicia gripped Kristine by the elbow. She had abandoned Ed for her friend. Wise choice. “C’mon.”
Kristine’s other pals hustled to Felicia’s side and voiced support.
Kristine wrenched away. “Not yet. I have some unfinished business to discuss with this . . . this . . .”
I stiffened. My hands balled into fists until Grandmère’s warning to Pépère flitted through my mind: Do not rise to the bait. I drew in a deep calming breath and said, “Why don’t we discuss whatever it is tomorrow?”
“No! Now. I didn’t speak my piece earlier.” Kristine’s words slurred together. “Your niece, or whatever you want to call her, is a brute.”
“A what?” I sputtered. My composure vanished in a nanosecond, which didn’t please me, but what could I do? “Take it back!”
“It’s your fault. You let her run around unsupervised. Your grandmother did the same with you. All of you are vulgar little—”
“Stop it, Mrs. Woodhouse.” Rebecca squeezed in beside me and raised an accusative finger. “You have no right to talk to Charlotte like that.”
“Stay out of this, missy.” Kristine batted away Rebecca’s finger then refocused, with what little focus she could muster, on me. “That rugrat you are harboring hit my beautiful baby.”
“She was saying bad things about my grandmother,” I snapped.
“Sometimes the truth isn’t pretty.”
“That’s enough!” Grandmère broke into the group and gripped Kristine by the wrist. With strength bred from years of backstage theater work, she yanked Kristine toward the front of the store. “I’ve had enough of you, Kristine Woodhouse. You are no longer welcome. Go home.” She marched Kristine out to the sidewalk. Kristine’s three friends scurried after them.
“Ed!” Vivian set her wineglass on a display table and stomped toward Ed, who had taken up with a woman I didn’t recognize by the center display table. “Why don’t you take care of your wife instead of cavorting with every other female in the place?”
His eyes shot daggers at her. “Mind your own—”
“I mind mine. You should mind yours.”
He grumbled something indecipherable, whispered something to his companion, and then stormed out of the shop behind my grandmother and Kristine and her cronies, none of whom had returned. Perhaps Grandmère had taken a walk around the block to cool down. She liked to do that. Pépère had disappeared, too. He had probably gone after her.
Vivian shook her head, her cheeks streaked red with embarrassment.
I joined her. “Are you okay?”
“Ed never should have married her,” she said. “Just because they both came from money . . .” She paused. “They’re nothing alike. He used to be so . . . so—”
“Charlotte.” Jordan appeared. “That reporter is asking for you.”
Vivian squeezed my hand. “I think I’ll get another bite of that lovely ham and pineapple quiche. What’s your secret?”
“White pepper in the crust.”
“It’s absolutely scrumptious.” She strode toward the tasting counter.
Jordan said, “I heard you promised the reporter an interview.” He grinned, his eyes sparkling with humor. “Want to promise me one?”
Did I ever. I put the fracas with Kristine aside and said, “Sure, let’s—”
“Miss Bessette.” Zinnia pressed between me and Jordan. “People are raving about this place, me included.”
My momentary chemistry with Jordan fizzled like flat soda pop. He bid a quick goodbye and drifted away.
“So, let’s hear the dirt.” Zinnia tucked her camera into a pocket and flipped open her notepad, pen at the ready. “How did you get started?”
I’d rehearsed answers for days. “When I was young, my parents died in a car crash, and I came to live with my grandparents.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said, though the memory felt bitterly fresh. “As a young girl, I found solace in The Cheese Shop and became eager to learn all I could.”
“By the flavors I’ve tasted tonight, I can tell you’re a good cook.”
“I take cooking classes and attend lectures.” Grandpère said a cheesemonger should be expert at all things cheese.
“You’ve written articles for a few food magazines and websites, too. Will you pursue more of that?”
“Oh, my, I have so many plans.” I
chuckled as my mantra, one thing at a time, chimed in my mind. “I guess I—”
A shriek cut the air. From the sidewalk.
Without excusing myself, I sprinted through the crowd and burst out the entrance. On the sidewalk, just to the right of the front door, Meredith was kneeling beside Ed Woodhouse’s fallen body, her hands clutched as if in prayer, her mouth hanging open. One of my prized olive-wood-handled knives jutted from Ed’s chest. Blood speckled Meredith’s pretty yellow sundress.
I crouched beside her and slid my arm around her shoulders. “Did you—?”
She stared at me, her gaze haunted, then past me. At someone huddling in the shadows by The Cheese Shop wall.
Grandmère Bernadette. She looked dazed and her hands were drenched with blood.
CHAPTER 4
Grandmère huddled by The Cheese Shop front door, clinging to Pépère. I’d only secured sixty brief blathering seconds of her protesting her innocence in French before a siren blared and Chief of Police Umberto Urso, a linebackersized teddy bear of a man, lumbered from his car.
Fifteen minutes later, as a fine mist fell from the sky, Urso was still surveying the scene. I stood by The Cheese Shop door like a lummox, damp and unable to help the woman who meant everything to me. Why wasn’t Urso saying anything? He could be so obstinate.
I finally found the gumption to approach him, instantly regretting how close I got to his massive form, because I had to tilt my head back to look up into his hardened face—not the strongest position of attack. “C’mon, U-ey . . .” I sputtered. None of us had dared to call Urso by his nickname in public since grade school. He deserved our respect. Providence had a very low crime rate thanks to him. “Chief Urso, please, you can’t possibly believe my grandmother could have killed—”
“Charlotte, I don’t know what to believe.” Urso was the kind of guy I would want on my team for kickball or flag football. Strong, forthright, ever alert. He could probably break me in half with his sizeable hands. “Let’s move back people.” He flailed his arms. “Off the sidewalk. Back.”
I always thought Urso would go into the family business. His tidbit of a mother, no bigger than a preteen, owned Two Plug Nickels Farm. She and her husband had emigrated from Sicily. They made the best ricotta salata I had ever tasted, and their goat cheese was incredibly smooth. She claimed playing opera over a set of loudspeakers while the cheese was processing made the difference. Their son, Urso, had taken a different path. He dedicated himself to service. He became an Eagle Scout. He served as our high school class president. At one point, when he headed up the town council, I thought he might leave Providence and go into national politics. I could see him as president, albeit the largest president America would ever know. At the very least, with his resonant voice, I thought he would have considered becoming a preacher.
The emergency medical team moved the body to an ambulance while Urso’s deputy set up a perimeter with yellow crime tape.
I drummed up more courage and pursued Urso again. “Chief, please, may I take my grandmother inside?”
“Sorry, no. We’re going on the assumption that the murder weapon came from your shop. If that’s the case, the shop is included in the crime scene.”
“Then can’t you question her tomorrow? It’s damp. She’ll get sick.”
“I’d like to get all the accounts now while they’re fresh. We’re under the awning.”
“But—”
“Let’s start with you.”
Worry shivered down my arms and into my fingertips. I had not expected to be grilled on the sidewalk. What would I say? I hadn’t seen a thing. I couldn’t exonerate or condemn Grandmère.
All business, Urso tipped back his hat, then pulled a paper and pen from the breast pocket of his brown uniform. “Where were you at the time of the crime?”
I shored up my shoulders, and working hard to keep my voice calm, I explained that I was inside the shop being interviewed by the Délicieux reporter. As I said the words, I wondered where Zinnia had gone. Jordan was standing off to one side, his mouth pressed to a cell phone. I hoped he wasn’t calling the Providence Post and giving them the scoop. So far the crowd had remained thin. Matthew had appeared and handed Meredith a glass of wine. She looked as shaken as Grandmère, worrying the diamond stud on her ear with a vengeance. Vivian, her raincoat pulled tight, looked frozen in time. Kristine and her three cronies were nowhere in sight.
“See anything suspicious?” Urso asked.
“Ed was hitting on women. Did you know he’s a womanizer?” I didn’t like that gossip rolled easily off my tongue, but I was too upset to be ashamed. I kept my grandmother’s argument with Ed a secret. It wasn’t important. At least I hoped it wasn’t.
“I’d heard.”
“Any one of those women could have had enough of his . . . unwanted affections.” I hitched my thumb toward the diner. “Heck, Kristine could have killed him. She didn’t take kindly to being embarrassed in public, and with her run for mayor, she was bound to find his wanderings embarrassing, don’t you think? Aren’t you wondering where she is?”
Urso jotted my musings on his notepad. “Yeah, okay, I got the picture. What else? When was the last time you saw your grandmother?”
My mouth went dry. I had hoped he wouldn’t ask. I ran my tongue around my teeth to loosen my lips. “Around a quarter to nine, she went outside with Kristine. They were . . . having words.” He was bound to find out. “But it was because Kristine was saying bad things about my niece,” I rushed to explain.
“Anybody see Bernadette after that?” Urso scanned the crowd hovering around us. “Anyone?”
No one said a peep.
“She was upset,” I went on. “She probably took a walk. She does that.”
“Anybody see her take a walk?” Urso turned in a circle, arms spread wide.
Again, no one came to Grandmère’s defense.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Urso said.
I felt like kicking him in the shins for trapping me. I couldn’t offer an alibi to help Grandmère, but surely someone else saw her. Someone. Anyone! “My grandfather wasn’t in the shop. I think he went walking with her.”
“I asked him already,” Urso said. “He wasn’t. And he wasn’t here when you heard the scream and came out of the shop either, was he?”
I chewed on my lip. Where had Pépère gone to at the time of the murder? For that matter, where had anybody gone? Kristine, her friends, the tour group people? There had been so many at the gala opening. Any one of them could have lain in wait for Ed to leave the store. Any one of them could have pilfered one of my prized olive-wood-handled knives and used it as a weapon. Sharp, serrated, one quick thrust.
Stop it, Charlotte. Do not get gruesome. I sighed. Death is gruesome.
I refocused on the crime. Who’d had access to the knife? So many guests had circulated around that centrally placed display table. Were all the knives still there when I had tidied up an hour into the event? I had an eye for detail. I could remember the names of hundreds of cheeses, their countries of origin, and whether they were made in the morning or the evening. I could recall the crests of every farm I had ever visited. Why couldn’t I remember something as simple as the arrangement on a display table an hour before?
A thought occurred to me. “Would the plastic box that the knives were stored in hold fingerprints?”
“Might. Might not,” Urso said. “We’ve logged it into evidence. Could take months to get the results. We’re not as fast as those guys on CSI. Nobody is.”
“The murder was so . . . public. Right in front of my shop. Who would dare?”
“Someone who was mad at Ed, is my bet.”
I choked back a laugh. Lots of people in town were mad at Ed. He had wielded his power over each and every one, but none seemed guiltier than Grandmère at this very moment. I had to do something. Think, think, think!
Inspiration struck. If I had killed someone, I would have run. I thought again of Kristine. Surely she had
to know something had happened in town. The crowd had grown to twice its original size. Where was she? Why wasn’t she here mourning her husband?
I said, “Chief, would my grandmother have stayed around, huddling in the corner, if she was the murderer?”
“If she were in shock, she might.”
Dang. I hadn’t considered the shock angle.
“Charlotte, she is covered with blood.”
“She pressed on the wound to stanch the flow of blood,” I argued. Grandmère had explained that much to me in the sixty seconds before Urso arrived. During World War II, though she had been a mere slip of a girl, she had saved a soldier’s life the same way. He’d stumbled into their home.
Urso raised a hand. “Let’s give her a chance to talk, okay? You can stand nearby, but don’t cue her, got me?”
He lumbered toward Grandmère and Pépère. Grandmère clung to Pépère, her back to us.
“Mrs. Bessette, could I have a word?”
Pépère pried her from him and turned her to face us.
Grandmère’s skin was ash gray and beaded with water. Mist-soaked hair clung to her face. “I did not do this,” she whispered and clutched her hands so tightly that the blood drained from them.
Urso shrugged, as if everyone said “not guilty.” “Ma’am, where were you for the past hour or so? Your granddaughter said you left the shop with Kristine Woodhouse.”
“We . . . we . . .” She licked her lips. “I pushed her outside. She wanted to return. I told her no. She and her . . . friends . . . they were drunk. They strode across the street and disappeared into the diner.”
“The Country Kitchen?”
“Yes. I . . .” She struggled for breath. “I took a walk.”
“Which way?”
She pointed north, toward the Village Green. “I went to the clock tower.”
“Really?”
