For Cheddar or Worse

by Avery Aames

  A small moan escaped my lips. I pressed the back of my knuckles to my mouth.

  A cavalry of footsteps pounded the stairs. I spun around. Ryan stood near the doorway. He jutted his arm to prevent Victor and Erin from entering.

  “What happened?” Ryan yelled.

  Erin wouldn’t be deterred. She ducked beneath his arm and darted into the room. “Charlotte, you screamed.” I guess my moan wasn’t as small as I’d thought. “Is everything—” Erin glanced beyond me. “Lara!” She tried to get past me.

  I clasped her by the shoulders. “No!”

  “Is she . . . Did she—”

  “Die? Yes,” I said. A bitter sadness filled my mouth.

  Erin moaned. “How horrible.” She wriggled out of my grasp and dashed to the others who had clustered into the room.

  Kandice was now in attendance as well, but not Shayna. Where was she? The others looked horrified. The words She’s dead and She must have died in her sleep circulated among them. Snowball slinked past Kandice’s ankles, his eyes as wide as saucers.

  Erin spun around. “Charlotte, do you know what happened?”

  “No.”

  I scanned the room. The door to the bathroom was ajar. The doors of the hand-painted armoire were hanging open. My gaze landed on the bedside table, upon which sat a sliver of cheese on a napkin and an empty wineglass—the glass Lara must have taken from the dinner table. The tray of fruit and cheese she had whisked off the table rested on an ornate escritoire across the room, as did the bottle of cabernet—empty.

  Jordan pulled his cell phone from his pocket and stabbed in a number. “Chief,” he said. “It’s me. Can you come to Emerald Pastures Farms?” He listened. “A woman is dead. Lara Berry. Yes, that Lara Berry. In the inn. Third floor.” Jordan worked his tongue around his mouth. “No idea. I’ll leave that up to you.” He ended the call.

  “What will you leave up to him?” I whispered.

  “Evidence.”

  Kandice gasped. “Do you think she was murdered?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Jordan said.

  “Then why will he need to collect evidence?” she demanded.

  “Because all deaths are suspicious until proven otherwise,” Jordan said as if by rote. Sadly, from experience, we both knew the next few steps in an investigation.

  Jordan asked everyone to back out of the room. I didn’t obey. I couldn’t bear to leave Lara alone. In death she looked so vulnerable and meek, nothing like the terror that had stormed out of the dining room last night.

  Erin grasped my hand and stood with me just inside the door. “Poor Lara. Do you think she had a heart attack?”

  “I can’t hazard a guess,” I said. Our charming chief of police had at least taught me to reserve judgment. On the other hand, I wondered whether Lara might have committed suicide. I didn’t see anything remotely like a bottle of pills, and yet something felt wrong about the scene.

  Erin wove her hands together. “Someone should alert Lara’s family.”

  “She has family?” I said.

  “Everyone does at one time or another.” Erin was speaking out of the side of her mouth, her gaze riveted on Lara.

  “On a talk show last year,” I said, “Lara told the hostess that her parents had passed away, and she doesn’t have kids. She never married.”

  “True,” Erin said. “But she mentioned a sister in the acknowledgment of her book.” Her cheeks flushed pink. “Yes, I read her book. Front to cover. It was good. Informed.” Erin hesitated, as if she wanted to say something else.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You mentioned that you’d met Lara before.”

  “Mm-hm. Once.”

  “Where?”

  “At a conference. In Cleveland. She was sharing her views on how to age cheese, and I approached her afterward.”

  “Did you talk?”

  “Sort of. She was brusque, like a rock star who doesn’t have time for fans.”

  Apparently, that had been Lara’s modus operandi.

  “When she arrived here,” I said, “did she remember meeting you?”

  Erin blurted out a sharp laugh. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “Sorry, that was rude of me. No. My farm is way too small a concern for her.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It is. It’s puny.” Erin grimaced. “Anyway, that wasn’t the only time she was dismissive. When I was showing her to her room, she carped the entire time. ‘I have to walk up three floors? To a room in the attic?’” Erin did a good imitation of Lara’s abrupt speaking style. “Next, when she saw the number twelve on the door to her room, she cried, ‘Why not give me room thirteen and be done with it?’ I told her not to be superstitious. All of the rooms at the inn are even numbers. She asked why. I told her Andrew likes even numbers. He—”

  A siren wailed outside and grew louder. Doors slammed. The front door to the inn squeaked open.

  Jordan yelled, “Up here!” He edged closer to me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded even though my insides were in knots.

  Chief of Police Umberto Urso, a linebacker-sized man with penetrating eyes and an easy calm, tramped into the room. Deputy Devon O’Shea, a hunky guy with an unruly hank of hair that unfailingly found his forehead, even when his broad-brimmed hat was in place, followed him inside.

  “You arrived fast, Chief,” Jordan said.

  “I was just up the road, visiting my folks.” Urso’s parents owned Two Plug Nickels Farm, one of the local participants in the cheese competition. “The deputy was nearby as well.”

  “U-ey,” I started and quickly revised. “Chief Urso.” U-ey is the nickname that many call him, a result of the pair of Us in his name. I try not to use U-ey when he is serving in an official capacity.

  “In a minute, Charlotte. Let me get my bearings.”

  Urso and I had grown up together. For as long as I’d known him, he had dedicated himself to service. Eagle Scout. High school class president. At one point, I believed he might leave Providence and enter national politics, but he stayed. He loved Providence as much as I did.

  He donned latex gloves and strode to the bed. He checked Lara’s pulse, not that he didn’t believe us, but he had to determine for himself that she was dead. He slid his hand beneath her armpit. A few moments later, he said, “She’s not in complete rigor mortis, but she’s been dead a number of hours. She’s cool.”

  “The room is cool,” I mumbled.

  “True.” Urso pulled a paper and pen from the breast pocket of his brown uniform. “First impressions, please.” He regarded Jordan and me.

  I recounted why we had come to Lara’s room, how we had found her dead, and how the others had followed to check on us after I screamed. When I concluded, Urso asked everyone to step outside. Jordan, Erin, and I shuffled toward the door, but we didn’t exit the room. Not because we meant to be disobedient; I don’t think any of us wanted to leave Lara.

  My throat grew thick as Urso toured the room. I couldn’t seem to swallow away the grief. His focus rotated from Lara lying on the bed, to her shoes, to the wine and the cheese platter. In three long strides, he crossed to the bathroom and entered. I heard cabinets opening and closing. He returned to the room and strode to the bed. He crouched down and inspected the pillows and shams on the floor. He glanced upward at the skylight and downward at the green-toned area rug. Then he rose and stood in the center of the room, hands fisted on his hips.

  “Chief Urso. Sir.” Deputy O’Shea had also donned latex gloves. “Look at this.” He was standing by the exterior window. He ran his fingertip along the edges.

  Urso joined him.

  “It’s painted shut,” O’Shea said. “No cracking. It hasn’t been opened.”

  Erin edged in front of me. “All the windows on this floor are th
at way. I’ve renovated and upgraded the windows on the first floor and am halfway through the second floor. I haven’t been able to do everything yet because—”

  Urso held up his hand. “Thank you, Miss Emerald, I’ll talk to you in a moment.”

  I gulped. He had called her Miss Emerald, not Erin. He was reverting to his impersonal cop mode. Uh-oh.

  Urso returned to Lara and assessed her from head to bare toes. He bent close to her face and inhaled. Using two fingers, he pried open one of Lara’s eyes then released it. The abruptness of his action made me gasp.

  “What is he doing?” I whispered to Jordan.

  “I’m not sure.”

  I cleared my throat. “Chief, do you think Lara died of a heart attack?”

  He pivoted to face me. “No.”

  “An overdose? Did you find pills in the bathroom?”

  “Nope.”

  “A gas leak?” I suggested, although the carbon monoxide detectors hadn’t sounded.

  Urso shook his head. “She was smothered.”

  I whispered, “As in murdered?”

  His mouth twitched. “She didn’t do it to herself.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “There’s lipstick on the pillowcase.”

  “I get lipstick on my pillowcase if I don’t wash my face before bed.” I mimed the motion.

  “A smudge, perhaps,” he said. “But a perfect print? Two full lips? I don’t think so. And if suffocation or smothering has taken place, the eyes of the deceased will be bloodshot, which Miss Berry’s are. This is definitely murder.”

  I shivered. Not again. Not another body. A sob burst from deep within me. “How?” I asked. “If the door was locked and the windows were painted shut?”

  The crowd outside the room started to murmur. I heard a handful of questions: “What?” “How?” “What did Charlotte say?” “What was the chief’s answer?”

  I swiveled to look at them—Kandice, Victor, Ryan—and I couldn’t help wondering whether one of them had killed Lara. Yes, she had been imperious and frosty, and she had verbally abused each and every one of them last night. On the other hand, just because she was a miserable soul didn’t mean she deserved an untimely death.

  Shayna materialized on Kandice’s right. Kandice said something to her, and Shayna’s mouth dropped open. Tears sprang to her eyes. Was her reaction genuine? Why hadn’t she arrived earlier? Surely she’d heard me scream and seen the police’s arrival. What had taken her so long to make it to the third floor? Could she have killed Lara out of spite? The termination of their partnership not only hurt her income, it had to have hurt her feelings.

  I surveyed the room again and wondered, for a second time, how the killer entered if the door was locked and the windows sealed shut? How did he . . . or she . . . escape? Even I knew that to carry out most second-story-type crimes, the perpetrator came in through the window and exited through a window or door. Was there a secret entry like a hidden staircase behind the armoire or beneath the area rug?

  Urso was standing beside the bed, speaking to the coroner on his cell phone. Deputy O’Shea was taking photographs: of the wine, the cheese platter, the window, the bed, the pillows on the floor, Lara’s shoes—their toes turned away from the bed. Was that significant? O’Shea inspected something on the bedspread more closely. With gloved hands, he picked up a hair: red. Lara had red hair. Then he picked up another one: white. The cat’s, I imagined. The deputy tucked them into evidence bags.

  Erin tapped my arm. “Charlotte, this will ruin Emerald Pastures for sure. I know it’s wrong of me to be thinking of something like that because . . .” She slurped back a sob. “What am I going to do?”

  I wrapped an arm around her. I had felt the same way when our landlord was found murdered in front of the shop. Years had passed, but the memory was still fresh: his body; my grandmother holding on to the knife that was used to kill him; the murmurs in the crowd wondering whether Grandmère was guilty and whether Fromagerie Bessette would survive the bad publicity.

  “Don’t worry, Erin,” I said. It was a weak response, but what else could I say?

  Erin started to blink rapidly. “Wait a sec. How did the killer get in? Charlotte, you told the chief the door was locked, and Jordan, you kicked it in, right?”

  Jordan nodded.

  Kandice elbowed through the knot of people and aimed a finger at Erin. “You! Erin! You have keys to the rooms. You could have entered and left easily.”

  Erin shook her head vehemently. “No!”

  “Of course you could have.” Gone was any semblance of Kandice’s boisterous, fun-girl personality. Her tone was hard; her gaze, resolute. “Did you kill her, Erin?”

  “No!”

  I believed her. In my heart of hearts, I knew she didn’t have it in her to kill anyone. She was kind and loving. She labored to keep her farm thriving and her brother safe. Besides, she was so petite. There was no way she could have overwhelmed Lara with a pillow. Lara was a head taller and pounds heavier.

  “C’mon, Erin, admit it,” Kandice continued. “No one would blame you. You killed Lara.”

  “I couldn’t have,” Erin cried. “I don’t have another set of keys.”

  “Baloney. All proprietors do. Don’t lie.” Kandice’s eyes were pink-rimmed, nearly matching the streaks in her hair. At the moment, she reminded me more of a mouse than a bird. A cruel mouse. “You and Lara didn’t finish on the best of notes last night.”

  “Nobody did,” Erin protested. “She argued with everyone.”

  Kandice shook her head. “She attacked you, Erin. Your home. Your possessions. She made fun of your brother. Did you use a key to enter her room and—”

  “I didn’t come in.” Erin’s skin turned ash gray; her lips trembled. “I couldn’t have because the keys . . . They . . .” She splayed her hands. “My brother lost them.”

  “A likely story.”

  “Two days ago,” Erin said. “He was stimming.”

  I understood the term. Stimming is the repetition of physical movements or sounds that help an autistic person block out other stimuli that might upset him. Some autistics might flap their hands; others might rock or snap their fingers. Erin told me once that when Andrew was young he liked clacking door knockers and drawer pulls.

  “He was outside near the well,” Erin continued. “He was bouncing the ring of keys in his hand. He likes the jangling sound. Charlotte, you know how he likes that sound. That’s why he carries a tambourine.”

  I nodded.

  “Andrew accidentally lost hold of the keys,” Erin said, “and they fell into the well. With all the preparations for the brain trust, I haven’t had time to get copies of the keys made.”

  Kandice grunted, not buying Erin’s account.

  “Other than the housekeeper,” Erin went on, “you each have the only key to your room. She doesn’t live on-site. She won’t arrive until noon today. She makes up the rooms during the lunch hour.”

  I spied Urso running his hand along the walls, and the notion I’d considered a moment ago returned. “Erin,” I said, “are there other ways into the room? Perhaps a concealed entry to an old staircase?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t see a chimney,” I went on. “Was there one at any time? Or a dumbwaiter?” Maybe the killer had crawled through some kind of patched-over space. Beneath the bed? Behind the easy chair?

  “The only chimney is in the living room. The third floor units—all of these—” Erin twirled a finger. “I told you, this floor used to be the attic. My parents refurbished it years ago, hoping to make the bed-and-breakfast a real draw for the farm, but we never had enough guests to utilize the rooms until now, which was why I hadn’t gotten around to freeing up the windows. Lara’s arrival”—a tiny sob escaped Erin’s lips—“surprised me, but how could I tell her to stay someplace else? It
’s all your fault, Kandice.”

  “My fault?”

  Erin jutted a finger at her accuser. “You kept Lara’s arrival a secret from me. From all of us. Why?”

  “It wasn’t a secret. It slipped my mind.”

  I gawped at Kandice. It had slipped her mind to tell the owner of the farm that Lara Berry, the most influential person in cheese today, was coming to the brain trust? No, I didn’t buy that. Kandice was well prepared. She sent out a flurry of group emails, including attachments with schedules and reminders about what to wear and where to check in. How could she have made such a faux pas? Had she hoped to cause Lara grief? Had she betted on Lara losing her cool upon arrival? Maybe she killed Lara, but why?

  “You should have warned me,” Erin persisted. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I—” Kandice huffed. “You called me and said you had a room available.”

  Erin glowered at her. “I wasn’t going to tell Lara to leave, and I—” She wrapped her arms around her petite body and drew in an agitated breath. “I was hoping she’d give the farm and our cheeses a good review. A word from Lara Berry is . . . was . . .” Her chest heaved; her shoulders sagged with the effort. “A word from her could have been gold. After I learned the news from Charlotte, I made up the room especially for Lara. Once she was over her peeve, she told me she liked the décor and the view. She found it restful.”

  Urso had moved to the center of the room and was pivoting slowly.

  Erin said, “What is he doing?”

  “Starting over as if he just walked into the room.” Rinse and repeat, I mused. U-ey was nothing if not thorough.

  I followed his example and tried to view everything with fresh eyes. Sadly, it all looked the same. Lara dead. The windows painted shut. Erin, at Kandice’s insistence, the most likely suspect.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Urso ordered Deputy O’Shea to wait for the coroner in Lara’s room and asked the rest of us to convene in the dining room. In daylight, the room seemed less dramatic than it had last night. The maple table had been cleared, the dishes removed, the wood polished to a fine sheen. A needlepointed linen runner extended the length of the table. A vase of daisies—my favorite flower—sat atop the runner. Seeing them usually made me smile. Not today.