The Long Quiche Goodbye

by Avery Aames

  Felicia must have been peering through the break in the gold brocade drapes, because she whipped open the door before I could press the doorbell. Dressed in an antique green crinoline dress and high-buttoned shoes, her curly hair swept up in a loose chignon, she looked like a lady right out of the eighteen hundreds. “Come in.” She eyed the trays we were carrying. “Ooooh, aren’t those pretty?”

  “We have another six to bring in,” I said. “And the wine, of course.”

  “Lovely. This way. Follow me.” She trotted along the hall, her heels clicking the hardwood floor with precision. “Perfect day for a garden party, isn’t it? Not a cloud in the sky. Seventy-two degrees.” She glided past four marble statues of frontiersmen and disappeared into the kitchen at the back of the house.

  As I followed, I peered into the rooms on either side of the hall with new appreciation. I had visited the museum a number of times, but I never failed to see something unique. Felicia did a nice job of moving the exhibits around with regularity. The wood-paneled study was filled with books and historical photographs. The living room was furnished with a mixed set of antique chairs and settees, its walls finished with dainty floral wallpaper. Glass cases held tomahawks and pottery and china. Much of the china had belonged to Kristine Woodhouse’s great-grandparents. I wondered whether, in the wake of her argument with Felicia, she would demand they be returned.

  Bozz and I staged the food and wine in the celadon-tiled kitchen, then set out a few platters in the rear garden. Felicia had strategically placed verdigris metal tables and chairs around the yard in shaded spots beneath magnificent oak trees. A string quartet tuned their instruments at the far end of the yard.

  Within an hour, guests started to arrive. Couples at first: Mr. Nakamura and his wife, Freckles and her husband. Felicia greeted them warmly and discreetly tucked their donations into a glitzy handbag. A frizzy-haired female photographer for the Providence Post, who had arrived minutes before the guests, roamed the grounds snapping photographs.

  I made my way to Mr. Nakamura and his wife. “Sir, a word, if you don’t mind.” I told him about Luigi seeing him entering his shop the night of Ed’s murder. “Do you remember what time it was? Luigi thought you glanced at your watch.”

  “Nine fifty, remember, dear?” his wife said. “You said, ‘Oh, my, it’s ten to ten. I thought it was later than that.’” She eyed me. “Except his watch does run fast sometimes.”

  “Do you remember seeing my grandmother?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t,” his wife said.

  “We were focused on one thing and one thing only: inventory,” Mr. Nakamura said. “You understand.”

  Mrs. Nakamura glanced at her husband and gave him a curious look. “Perhaps Vivian saw her.”

  I caught sight of Vivian over Mrs. Nakamura’s shoulder, offered my thanks, and headed toward my friend. She looked as brilliant as a spinnaker, in a white dress with bold blue stripes that showed off her shapely frame. Luigi Bozzuto, strikingly good looking in a tan linen suit, appeared right behind her. He batted Vivian gently on the arm. She turned and, to my surprise, smiled at him. Was she open to love after all? What could she not have liked about him back in high school? I chose not to intrude on the moment.

  Octavia swept in behind them, her linen jacket flapping open, her beaded cornrows bouncing on her shoulders. She scoured the crowd and her gaze landed on me. She gave a curt point of her finger for me not to move, slapped a check into Felicia’s outstretched palm, then bulldozed through the crowd to me. Grabbing my elbow, she steered me to an arbor of wisteria far from the crowd.

  “Jacky Peterson doesn’t exist.”

  “She’s got to. She’s Jordan’s sister.”

  “I’m telling you she’s buried her identity.”

  “Buried?”

  “Maybe she’s running from an abusive husband.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Hush.” Octavia wiggled her hand for me to be quiet. She eyed someone over my shoulder.

  Jordan and Jacky were approaching our huddle. Each carried a glass of wine. I had to admit that Jacky didn’t appear abused in the least. Not a scratch on her pretty face. She looked radiant in a warm yellow suit. Jordan was dashing in a rumpled linen shirt, jeans, and loafers, like something out of an Errol Flynn movie. He smelled good, too, like fresh mown hay. My heart did a little tap dance.

  I think Jordan could tell, because his mouth quirked up in a half-grin. He said, “Seeing as we were interrupted at the restaurant yesterday, let’s start this over. Jacky Peterson, please meet Charlotte Bessette, cheese shop owner extraordinaire.”

  I said to Jacky, “You must think I’m so rude.”

  She chuckled. “If I recall, you were being prodded by a woman with a flag. How do you do?”

  As we shook hands, Octavia cleared her throat.

  “Oh, sorry. Octavia Tibble,” I said, “this is Jacky Peterson. I think you know Jordan Pace.”

  “Peterson. Is that your husband’s name?” Octavia said, with all the subtlety of a bull charging a red cape.

  “I’m divorced.”

  Octavia ogled me with a knowing glance.

  Jacky smiled, unruffled. “Charlotte, please tell me the history of this place,” she said. “It’s so lovely.”

  While I filled her in about Felicia’s passion for documenting Providence’s history, I thought about ex-husbands and divorces and found myself wondering about Felicia’s personal history. I didn’t for a second believe what Kristine had said about Felicia burying bodies in her yard, but rumors did circulate about Felicia’s husband passing away while they were in Europe. Had she killed him? Would she have gone that far to finance her museum? After running through her funds, as Prudence and even Lois had suggested, Felicia could have seduced Ed Woodhouse to entice him to invest. Had she killed Ed when he opted not to keep her dream alive? I thought of the fight Felicia and Kristine had had at the diner. Perhaps Felicia had instigated it to cast suspicion on Kristine and to keep Urso from suspecting her of murder.

  A blood-curdling scream cut through the air.

  “Leave!” Felicia yelled.

  Looking as livid as I’d ever seen her, Felicia charged toward Kristine, who swept onto the rear porch with the ferocity of a tornado. She was flanked by Prudence and Tyanne. Each wore elaborate outfits—tea-length, animal print sheaths, three-inch heels with matching clutch purses, and lacy black hats and gloves. If the frizzy-haired photographer snapped a picture and sold it to Vogue, she could label it Sex in the City, the feral side.

  “What are you doing here?” Felicia demanded.

  “I have an invitation.” Kristine brandished an embossed card.

  “I thought you, of all people, knew better than to come.” Felicia’s high-pitched tone revealed her dismay.

  “You need money. I’ve got it,” Kristine boasted. “Want to beg? I hear you’re good on your knees.”

  I nearly choked. Had Kristine no shame?

  Felicia, as pale as crème fraiche, raised her chin, collected the folds of her skirt, and dashed into the museum.

  Nobody ran after her. Not Prudence. Not Tyanne.

  Though Felicia was not my friend, I didn’t think she should suffer such a humiliating experience alone. I excused myself from Jordan, Jacky, and Octavia, and chased after her.

  “Felicia,” I called as I hurried through the kitchen, but she didn’t answer. “Felicia!” I glimpsed her fleeing down the hall. I caught up with her in the foyer and gripped her by the arm.

  “Leave me alone.” She wrenched free and raced out the front door, slamming the thing so hard that it rattled.

  Meredith called, “Charlotte! Is that you?” She stood in the study by the far wall, one of the museum’s books open in her hands. “What was that about?”

  I paused in the archway and explained what had happened.

  “What a horrid, horrid woman Kristine Woodhouse is.”

  “She’s like a train wreck waiting to happen.”

  “If I didn
’t suspect she was the murderer, I’d worry she was next on someone’s hit list.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Snooping.” Meredith grinned. “Just kidding. You know me and books.”

  What she said gave me an idea. I glanced at the front door and then back at the mahogany staircase. Would something in Felicia’s ledgers show me what Ed had or hadn’t promised? Would that information confirm that Felicia had been so desperate for Ed’s donation that, when he reneged, she—not Kristine—killed him? The office where she did her bookkeeping was upstairs. I remembered taking a tour of the museum once and seeing Felicia busy at work at a handsome Edwardian rolltop desk. I had remarked on the beauty of its ornately carved side supports. Circa the eighteen nineties, she had said. Would the desk contain documents that could pin her with a motive and absolve my grandmother?

  “You won’t believe all the stuff I’m learning about Providence,” Meredith went on. “Felicia has done a great job with this place. Want to see what I’ve discovered?”

  “In a sec.” I stole to the front door and peeked out one of the stained glass panels that flanked it. Felicia was nowhere in sight. How long would she wander? If I had been as upset as she had been, I would have needed at least a half-hour walk.

  “Charlotte,” Meredith said.

  None of the party people were touring the museum yet. I had to take the chance.

  “I’ll be right back.” I tiptoed up the staircase, bypassed the Victorian costume display and the room housing an assortment of antique clocks, slipped into Felicia’s office, and pulled the sheer drapes closed.

  CHAPTER 21

  Felicia’s office was tidy and modest. The Edwardian rolltop desk and a secretary’s swivel chair stood in the center, a small round table with an antiquated dial telephone and an iron lamp to the right. Oil paintings of Kindred Creek hung on the walls. There were no file drawers, antique or otherwise. No free-standing boxes or trunks.

  I tried to open the tambour rolltop, but it wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t jostle open any of the three drawers beneath it. As much as I’d hate to ruin such a lovely piece of furniture, I needed something to jimmy the lock, or I needed a key. Preferring my second option, I ran my hand beneath the drawers. No key was attached with tape. I fingered the backside of the desk’s frieze. Nothing had been stuck there either. I groped beneath the seat of the desk chair and came up empty.

  I stood on the heart-shaped hooked rug in the middle of the floor and slowly scanned every inch of the room. Had Felicia hidden the key somewhere, or did she have the key on her person to prevent nosy museum visitors like me from prying?

  I wasn’t ready to give up. I rarely did when on a quest. Perhaps she had stashed it in the lampshade. No.

  Under the telephone? Again, no.

  In the coat closet?

  I scurried to the door and opened it. The hinges creaked. I froze. My heart thundered as I listened for movement outside the room. Nothing. But I didn’t have much time before someone would note my absence and come looking for me. I peered into the small cedar-lined closet and saw a series of antique jackets, dresses, bonnets, and high-buttoned shoes similar to those Felicia had worn for the party. The shelf overhead didn’t hold anything remotely resembling file records or a ledger. Frustration building, I rooted through the pockets of the jackets and dresses for the desk key and I was about to quit, when I suddenly remembered where I put my house key whenever I went to yoga class. Because my yoga clothes have no pockets, I stuffed the key in my shoe.

  I turned each pair of shoes upside down, and in the next to last pair, a sassy brown number with white-tipped toes, I found a scrolled key.

  My pulse racing, I crept to the office door and listened again for sound of anyone approaching. Hearing nothing, I returned to the desk, slotted the key into the lock, and twisted. Success.

  With a gentle shove, I pushed up the tambour rolltop. A pen and a set of reading glasses lay dead-center, at the ready. The stationery compartments to the right were filled with personalized museum stationery, envelopes, and panes of stamps. The twin drawers held paperclips. Certain I was looking for a ledger of some sort, I whipped open the tiny cupboard on the left, but it merely contained business cards and boxes of pens. A clock with a second hand ticked mercilessly on the shelf above the stationery slots.

  “Hush,” I muttered as I slid open the three front drawers. In the first and second, I found lined pads, void of notes or doodles. In the third, I discovered a green-spined book. I pulled it out, my fingers shaking with nervous energy, and flipped to the first page. Numbers and names of donors stared back at me, each entry dated. The same on the second and third pages.

  Before I could read more, I heard footsteps on the stairs. The clickety-clack grew louder. My adrenaline pumping, I searched for a hiding place. The room was too sparse, the closet too far away. I barely managed to pull the tambour rolltop down and stuff the ledger behind me as the door to the office squeaked open.

  Feeling like a girl caught stealing money from her mother’s purse, I forced a smile at Felicia.

  “What the heck do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, her eyes sparkling with suspicion.

  “I . . . I . . .” Sputtering didn’t become me.

  “What’s behind your back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Give it to me.” Felicia charged me.

  I wielded the ledger like a shield, reluctant to fork it over.

  She snatched it from my hands. “I’m calling Chief Urso.” She crossed to the telephone and lifted the receiver.

  “Don’t,” I pleaded, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my eardrums, not because I was anxious about being alone with Felicia—people downstairs knew I’d gone to console her—but because I was worried about Urso finding out I’d been sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong. Besides, she looked more intent on strangling the telephone than me.

  She tapped her toe. “Well?”

  I swallowed hard, then confessed, starting with my theories.

  Felicia exhaled as if she were a balloon that I had punctured with a sharp needle.

  I continued. “When your sister, Lois, said you couldn’t afford to take trips with her—”

  “Couldn’t afford to? Heck, I didn’t want to!”

  “Didn’t want to what?”

  “Travel with her,” she snapped, her righteous anger r evived.

  “But she said you didn’t have the cash. That you have money issues. She said you ran through your inheritance from your dead husband.” I didn’t add that people were talking about the possibility that, to get his money, she had killed her dearly departed husband while sojourning in Europe. “And Prudence thought—”

  “I don’t give a darn what that penny-pincher Prudence thinks.” She replaced the telephone receiver, then whipped open the ledger to the last page and stabbed her finger at an entry. “Five million dollars and counting. I’m flush. You can ask my banker, who happens to be downstairs.”

  “But Lois said—”

  “I told my demented sister that I couldn’t travel because she snores and talks in her sleep.”

  I thought of Felicia’s alibi for the night of the murder. “Lois said you didn’t meet up with her the night Ed was killed.”

  “Of course, I did.”

  “No-o-o.” I drew the word out. “She was visiting your aunt who had broken her hip.”

  “Auntie broke her hip the week before. I visited her at the same time as Lois. Auntie will verify the date. She may be in her eighties, but she’s not the one losing her marbles, if you know what I mean.”

  Hearing people shuffling about in the hallway emboldened me. I said, “Then why did you argue with Kristine about money at the diner?”

  “We didn’t argue.”

  “You demanded she pay you what Ed promised you.”

  “Who told you—?”

  “There were witnesses.”

  Felicia worked her tongue inside her mouth. “It was a matter of
principle. Ed made a pledge.”

  “Some people say you were a woman scorned, and—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, enough gossip! Whoever your some people might be, they’re wrong. I am not a woman scorned. I despised that man.”

  I felt like I was stuck in a kaleidoscope, my theories a jangle of fractured colored pieces. “I don’t know who started that rumor,” Felicia went on. “Lois, I imagine. She hates me for being prettier and younger, like I could help either. No matter. It’s totally false. Ed was a sack of bones who liked to flirt, and when he flirted with me, he always added money into the equation. I’m not stupid. This museum needs constant renovations. Why not accept money from the richest man in town? So many others in town wanted to match contributions. Who was I to say no? Luigi Bozzuto, Mr. Nakamura, those three buffoons on the town council who kowtow to your grandmother. If they want our town on the map, then they shouldn’t mind giving a pretty penny to preserve our history, right? Ed was my link, nothing more.”

  “But if he bowed out, all the others—”

  “They paid up. All the contributions are in the ledger.” She shook the book. “I had no motive to kill Ed Woodhouse.”

  I stood there, heat suffusing my cheeks, unable to apologize quickly enough. “I’m sorry, Felicia. Truly sorry, I—”

  “Hmmph.”

  “My grandmother . . .” I shrugged. “She’s not guilty. I need something, anything, to prove her innocence. I thought you . . .” I shook my head. “I didn’t think.”

  Felicia snorted. She had every right. I couldn’t prove any of my claims. All I had was hearsay. But if Felicia hadn’t killed Ed, then who had? There had to be something I was missing, right under my nose, but I couldn’t see it.

  “My money is on Kristine,” Felicia said as she stowed the ledger in its rightful place and locked the rolltop desk. “She’s hiding something.”