The Long Quiche Goodbye

by Avery Aames

  I grabbed hold. “Do you mind leaving it? I’d love to look through.”

  “Sure. No need to let another book get ruined by a stupid flood.” She ran out muttering, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

  As I heard the grape-leaf-shaped chimes tingle and the front door slam shut, another image flashed in my mind. I shouted, “Rebecca!”

  That first day after the murder, Vivian had tootled into The Cheese Shop and had prodded me into investigating the crime. She was the one who had suggested Kristine wanted to win the election so badly that she would have killed Ed and set up my grandmother to take the fall. Eager to latch on to a theory, I had agreed, but now, something wasn’t synching in my mind. Something about the afternoon when Bozz and I had taken platters of cheese to Europa Antiques and Collectibles for Vivian’s auction event.

  I replayed the sequence in my mind, paying attention to detail as if I were logging cheese data into my brain. We set out the platters. We searched for knives. We found them among Vivian’s collectibles—her hope chest—located in the antique hutch. There were yearbooks and other curios there. I recalled the spines of the books, Providence High School. Why keep them so close at hand? Mine were at home. Why were hers at her shop? So she could view them often? And the napkins that she brought out. The moment would have flitted from my memory bank if she hadn’t seemed embarrassed when I admired the hand-embroidered Ws on them. She had made a point of telling me they stood for her married name, a marriage that had lasted less than a year. What was the real story? Had she actually made them because she fantasized that one day she would become Mrs. Ed Woodhouse? Was that why her own marriage had fizzled?

  “Rebecca!” I called.

  She poked her head in the doorway. “Sorry, customers were clamoring for Morbier. We’ve run out, and—”

  “Where’s Matthew?”

  “Visiting local vintners.” She glanced at her watch. “He should be back soon.”

  I gathered the yearbook under my arm, petted Rags once for luck, and dashed from the office.

  “What’s going on?” Rebecca scuttled after me. “Did you find a clue?”

  I explained my theory as I rooted through my purse for my cell phone. “And then there’s the fact that Vivian really shouldn’t drink. She alluded to her limit a couple of times, once at her store and again at the wine tasting in the annex. I hadn’t thought much of it. She could be one of those people who loses all inhibitions after a small amount of alcohol.”

  Rebecca snapped her fingers. “You’re saying she drank too much the night of the gala opening because she was watching Ed Woodhouse flirt with all those women, and it drove her crazy.”

  “Exactly.”

  At the end of the evening, after Grandmère and Kristine had stormed from the shop, Vivian had confronted Ed, and he had blown her off. She had retreated to the rear of The Cheese Shop for a bite of ham and pineapple quiche. Had she been unable to console herself with food? Had she, in a fit of passion, grabbed a knife from my display table and gone after him? On the day that I’d intruded on Meredith and Matthew, I recalled Vivian saying to Jordan that extraordinary circumstances made a person do extraordinary things. I thought the comment had held an undercurrent directed at Jordan and his past, but perhaps Vivian had been referring to herself. I headed for the front door.

  “Where are you going?” Rebecca said.

  “To Europa Antiques and Collectibles.”

  “Are you nuts?” Rebecca raced past me and blocked my exit. She bolted the door, flipped the open sign to Closed, and steered me back to the cheese counter. “Call Chief Urso.”

  “I need more proof. I can’t risk him getting angry at me and locking up Grandmère. If I go over to the antique shop, maybe I can drum up some.”

  “You don’t mean you’ll frame her, do you?”

  “No, of course not. I’m going to take pictures with this.” I waggled my cell phone. “The day we set up the event at her shop, Vivian’s office was a mess. I remember thinking that the town of Providence would find that hysterical, since she’s such a neatnik. Anyway, there were crumbs on the floor.”

  “Crumbs?”

  “Pie crust crumbs. She ate ham and pineapple quiche right after her to-do with Ed. I’ll bet pie crust crumbs clung to her dress.”

  Someone rapped on The Cheese Shop door—the elderly animal rescuer accompanied by a cluster of various sized dogs, all straining at their leashes. I pointed to the Closed sign. “Sorry, emergency,” I yelled through the glass. “Come back later.”

  The rescuer, a patient sort, gave a mush signal to her pack and scuttled off.

  “You’re thinking the crumbs fell on the floor?” Rebecca said.

  “Right.”

  “But that only establishes that Vivian was here and went there, and we already know Luigi saw her go to her shop.”

  She was right, blast it. “Okay, let’s say she ran from the scene. Realizing there was blood on her dress, she raced to her shop. In a panic, she undressed—the crumbs fell to the floor. She stuffed the dress into the bureau. She wore blue that night, remember?”

  “She always wears blue.” Rebecca stabbed a finger at me. “She told me once it matched her eyes.”

  “Well, I saw something blue hanging out of the opened bureau drawer.”

  “Oh, my! But what did she put on?”

  “Her raincoat.” I ticked off my thoughts on my fingertips. “Remember she was wearing a raincoat at the crime scene?”

  “She hadn’t worn it to the gala event.”

  “Right.”

  Rebecca frowned and shook her head. “What about Gretel seeing someone on the hill that night? The timing’s all off.”

  My confidence waned until another thought occurred to me. “If Vivian had stuffed the dress in the bureau, wouldn’t there be trace evidence of blood in the drawer?”

  Rebecca clapped me on the arm. “CSI techs would be so proud of you!”

  Heck, I was proud of me!

  “Call Chief Urso,” Rebecca said.

  “You call him. Tell him I’m on my way to the antique store.” I pushed past her and unlocked The Cheese Shop door.

  She barged in front of me again and grasped my wrist. For a wisp of a girl, she had a steel grip. I was strong, too, a result of hoisting dozens of seventy-five-pound wheels of cheese daily, but I couldn’t wrench free.

  “Let me go,” I said. “You watch the shop.”

  “I’m coming with you. Vivian might try to murder you. She sawed through your banister.”

  “To injure me. To incapacitate me. To give herself time to get out of town. If she’d wanted me dead, she would have killed me by now.” I really believed that. We had been friends too long. “I think Vivian realized that I would be able to put all the clues together, perhaps as she swept up the crumbs, or when I asked her to corroborate what time she had visited her shop, or when Gretel revealed that she had seen someone digging. That’s why she persisted in making us suspect Kristine. Now, let me pass, Rebecca. I won’t endanger you.”

  “Danger’s my middle name.” My sweet young assistant got a bullish look, something I’d bet she had learned from her taciturn father. Willowy or not, she was not going to let me leave the shop alone.

  How could I refuse?

  Minutes later, Rebecca and I peered through the window at Europa Antiques and Collectibles.

  “I don’t see signs of Vivian anywhere,” I whispered. “She’s not standing at the register.”

  “There aren’t any customers, either. The place looks filled with boxes. Like she’s leaving town. Maybe she’s in the storage room.”

  A couple of tourists in tie-dyed clothes who were window-shopping at Mystic Moon craned their heads to gaze at us.

  I smiled and tapped my watch. “Thought the shop was closed already. It’s not.” I cranked the door handle and slipped inside. Luckily, Vivian hadn’t hung any cute little wind chimes over her door. Nothing announced our entrance except the squeak of hinges in need of oi
l.

  As Rebecca closed the door, she bumped into my backside. “Sorry,” she whispered. “What now?”

  “We sneak into the office and poke around.”

  “What if she’s inside? The door’s ajar.”

  “I’ll act like I’m in the market for . . .” I glanced around the shop. A lamp for the twins’ bedroom? A table for the foyer?

  “An old cash register,” Rebecca chimed in. “That would look really good in The Cheese Shop, don’t you think?”

  I glowered at her. “We’re not buying anything.”

  “I know.”

  I weaved through the clutter of antiques toward Vivian’s office and, on a whim, made a detour to the antique hutch. I opened the cabinet door and rooted through Vivian’s memorabilia. I snagged her copy of the Providence High School yearbook and flipped through the pages. Dozens of students had written good luck wishes for the future. I stopped on the picture of Vivian and Ed as Most Perfect Couple and my mouth fell open. Across the bottom left corner, in tight, barely legible handwriting, was scrawled: I promise to be there for you forever. Ed.

  “What the heck does that mean?” Rebecca peered over my shoulder. “Be where, to do what exactly?”

  “I don’t have a clue.” And I wasn’t about to waste time trying to divine words from the past—I’d done that too many times in my own life, with items left to me by my parents. I stuffed the yearbook back in place, hurried to the office, and nudged the door open. The room stood empty. The floor was clean. The drawers to the bureau were closed. Teacups and teapots lined shelves behind the desk. “Stand guard, Rebecca, and if Vivian appears, say something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Ask her to . . . I don’t know, show you . . . a cash register. When she does, I’ll slip out of the office and act like I was in the restroom.”

  Rebecca pointed at me. “You’re devious.”

  I had never thought of myself that way, but perhaps I was. Once in high school, I had stolen out of my grandparents’ house at two A.M. Another time, I had cheated on a history test. And I knew how to change the odometer reading on my car.

  I slinked across the hardwood floor and opened the top drawer of the bureau. A royal blue tablecloth stared back at me. The tail ends must have been hanging out the other day. I searched beneath the cloth. No blue dress. But I did spot pie crust crumbs at the base of the drawer. A forensic lab would be able to corroborate that the sampling came from one of my pies. I seasoned every crust with white pepper to give it an extra zing.

  I fished my cell phone out of my trouser pocket and flipped it open. Using the camera tool, I took quick pictures of the crumbs. I opened an email to send the pictures to Urso, but before I pressed send, my gaze landed on Vivian’s gym bag tucked into the corner of the room behind the desk. Jutting from a break in the zipper was a wooden handle attached to something shiny with serrated teeth. A saw. Would sawdust from my banister still cling to the metal?

  As I tiptoed closer to inspect, the office door squeaked open.

  “Rebecca,” I whispered. “Take a look at—”

  “I’m afraid she’s indisposed,” Vivian said, her words clipped and hard.

  CHAPTER 29

  I spun around and stumbled backward, my rear end hitting the edge of Vivian’s desk as she brandished one of the Bakelite carving knives. Lucky for me, she wasn’t as deft as a ninja. In fact, she looked nervous. Perspiration soaked the underarms of her summery dress, and her forehead glistened with moisture. But her eyes bristled with manic energy. Nervous or not, she meant to scare me. Maybe kill me.

  Keep calm, I told myself, but despite my warning, my heart had crawled up the back of my head and was hammering an escape route through my ear. “What did you do to Rebecca? Did you stab her?” I didn’t see any blood on the knife, but I wasn’t brave enough to draw nearer and take a closer inspection.

  “I thought I heard something while I was doing inventory in the storage room. I was surprised to see your little helper standing by my office door like a cigar store Indian. I captured her and put her in the storage shed. Don’t worry. There’s air. She won’t die of suffocation. I grabbed this”— she waggled the knife—“when I noticed someone had been rummaging through my things. Was it you?”

  Darn. I wished I’d had the wherewithal to grab one of the knives. I’m quite talented with knives. As a girl, I loved to whittle. “How did you get Rebecca away from the door without making a sound?”

  Vivian wiggled a bare foot. “Stealth.”

  “She still would have screamed at the sight of you.”

  “She was text messaging, the silly goose.”

  Hopefully texting Urso. “Did you hurt her?”

  “I might have squeezed the air out of her for a second. I’m very strong, thanks to my taskmaster trainer.” Vivian flexed her biceps. “Poor Rebecca. I can only imagine how she’ll feel when she wakes, tied up in that musty old storage room with a gag in her mouth. Even I get a little claustrophobic in there.” She drew nearer.

  I detected the fermented odor of wine coming from her, and I tensed. Had she been drinking?

  I screwed up some courage and held out my hand. “Why don’t you give me that knife and let’s talk?”

  She shook her head. “By the way, I locked the front door. We don’t want any shoppers to interrupt us, do we?”

  I sure did.

  “Give me the knife, Vivian. Please.”

  She glanced at it again as if admiring the gleam of the blade. “I don’t want to go to jail.”

  “You don’t want to go to jail,” I echoed. After Creep Chef took off for Paris, rather than sink into the mire of believing I wasn’t good enough for him, or anybody else for that matter, I went to a therapist who made me embrace change as a great opportunity. One of the techniques the therapist used was repeating what I said so I felt I had been heard. I tried to apply that technique now.

  “It was Ed’s fault,” Vivian said.

  “Ed’s fault. Got it.”

  “He made promises. Back in high school.”

  “He promised to be there for you forever.”

  “How did you know that?” Vivian peeked over her shoulder at the main room of Europa Antiques and back at me, then cocked her head. I’d seen a raptor do the very same thing in Jurassic Park before attacking the humans. Her eyes grew hard. “Have you been reading my journals?”

  “No. I . . .” I scrabbled for the right words. “You said something to me the other day. That Ed and Kristine were oil and water. I assumed you meant that you and he weren’t. That you and he were made for each other.”

  Tears flooded the corners of her eyes. “We were lovers that summer right after high school graduation.”

  She had to be kidding. I had seen the picture in the yearbook. Ed was definitely not that into her.

  “He promised when we graduated college that he would come back to me, but when he returned, he dismissed me.”

  “You’d planned out your life,” I reasoned. “You saw a future with him. You embroidered those napkins.”

  She nodded. “He started dating everyone but me. I told myself I could wait. He wasn’t marrying any of them. Men need to sow their oats. I bided my time.”

  I glanced around the office looking for something that I could use to restrain Vivian. There weren’t any ropes, no packing string. I considered racing to the gym bag and grabbing the saw to defend myself, but what if the zipper stuck? I didn’t want to make her lash out prematurely with that darned knife. “And then Kristine came along,” I prompted, hoping Vivian would continue talking long enough for me to forge a plan.

  “They weren’t right for each other,” she hissed. “Just because they were both born with money didn’t mean they were compatible.” She had said something similar that night at the gala opening. Why hadn’t I picked up on it then? “Ed belonged with me, but she . . . she swayed him. She fluttered around like a stupid peacock, and for some reason, he liked that.”

  A pounding came from the ba
ck of the shop. Then a frantic scream. Rebecca must have awakened.

  Vivian smiled. “Must have freed herself from her bonds. I never was good at tying knots. But no matter. She won’t get out. I bolted the door. I also took her cell phone, erased all texts, and stowed it in my purse for safekeeping, if you were wondering about that.”

  I wasn’t. Guess I should have been. I scanned the room for an object that I could use to disarm Vivian. Hurling something was out of the question. I stunk at softball, hence the concussion I’d suffered in high school. I would miss my mark. Besides, getting whacked by china teacups probably wouldn’t make Vivian drop the knife.

  “It didn’t take long before Ed realized he had made a mistake.” Vivian tilted her head. “He confided that he was sorry he ever married Kristine. Even sorrier that he got her pregnant.”

  Poor Willamina, plagued by a self-indulgent mother and a father who hadn’t given a whit.

  “We were friends, you see,” Vivian went on. “Ed told me everything.”

  Except that he loved you.

  I didn’t say what I was thinking out loud. As Tyanne would say, I hadn’t just fallen off a turnip truck.

  “But Ed liked how Kristine bullied the townfolk. He loved power. He thrived on it. It made him feel like a big man.” Vivian licked her lips.

  “Want a glass of water?” I said. A pitcher of water and an empty glass sat on her desk, out of reach. I didn’t, for one minute, believe dousing her with water would make her melt like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, but it might disorient her. If only—

  “No!” she snapped and took a step closer.

  Rebecca continued to pound and scream. I wondered why the owner in the Mystic Moon next door didn’t come over to complain until I remembered it was voting day. She must have gone to post her ballot.

  “It wasn’t like that for Ed in college,” Vivian droned on. “He was a small fish in a big pond. He came back to Providence, and with Kristine by his side, he was a big man on campus all over again. When he grew tired of her, he started wandering.”