Lost and Fondue

by Avery Aames

  Although I was disappointed not to have found a flagrant article declaring Winona a murder suspect in another case, I was intrigued by her art competition win. Perhaps art was her link to Harker. Granted, she was older than Harker, but she and he might have had art in common. Perhaps that was her link to Dane, too.

  With a flick of the mouse, I clicked on the hyperlink to the art competition. The signal indicating that the site was loading whirled. And whirled. Two minutes passed. Three. Four.

  The door to my room squeaked open.

  I whipped around, heart pounding.

  Rags skittered to my side and zigzagged around my ankles, meowing like it was my fault that he had been asleep when I’d arrived home.

  “Hello, you little scamp. I wasn’t ignoring you. I didn’t want to ruin your beauty sleep.” I patted my lap. He leapt onto it and draped himself across my thighs. I scratched between his ears, and he hummed like a motorboat. If only I could feel so relaxed.

  The computer message continued to read loading.

  When another five minutes passed with no connection—our fair town was notorious for cellular dead zones and slow Internet hookups—I gave up and crawled into bed. I said prayers for Jordan, Jacky, the twins, and Matthew, and closed with a prayer for Quinn and Meredith. I really didn’t want Quinn to be guilty. I would do everything in my power to prove she was innocent.

  At 6:43, I woke with a start. Someone was pounding on the front door. I slipped out of bed and peered through the break in the drapes.

  Sylvie, dressed in a skintight, futuristic getup that she must have purchased at a costume store, glowered up at me and waved a fist.

  I moaned. Just what I needed, a not-so-cheery hello first thing in the morning. I massaged my scalp with my fingertips to fire up my brain cells and glanced at the computer. It had timed out and shut itself off—not a good sign. I could only hope the new day would go better than my night.

  Quickly I dressed in black trousers, a scarlet sweater, and loafers. I liked the way jewel tones brought out the color of my skin and made me feel bold. I needed something to face Sylvie with a little more verve than I felt.

  I rapped on Matthew’s door and hurried past. “Wake up, Cuz,” I rasped over my shoulder. “Guess who’s here!”

  Rags trailed behind me as I dashed down the mahogany stairs and skidded to a stop in the foyer. A peek in the oval gold-leaf mirror that hung in the foyer assured me that I looked strong and defiant. Good.

  I whipped open the front door. “It’s not even seven,” I said.

  Sylvie jutted a hip. “I have an order to obey.”

  Multiple meanings of the phrase ticked through my mind, but Sylvie snipped off my musings by flaunting a folded piece of paper.

  “What’s that?” I said, knowing full well what it was.

  “The order to obey.”

  “To obey what?”

  “Me, of course. Whenever I want time with the girls, you have to give them to me.” She tapped her foot. “And I want them. Now. I’m treating them to a tour of Amish country.”

  “They can’t miss school.”

  “Yes, they can. I have an order. By a judge.” She flourished the paper a second time.

  A bit of the devil rose up inside me. I snatched the paper from her hands and ripped it in half. “Gee, oops.” I grinned. “I guess you’ll have to get another.” I started to close the door.

  Sylvie slammed her shoulder against it to prevent me from closing it.

  I let out an oof, thinking with her sense of style and brute strength, Sylvie should consider becoming a Roller Derby queen.

  “Don’t get cheeky with me, Charlotte!” she said.

  “I’ll show you cheeky, Sylvie! I—”

  The patter of small feet stopped on the landing above the foyer. I twisted and saw the twins at the railing. Amy rubbed her sleepy eyes with her fists. Clair looked bright-eyed, like she’d been up for hours—probably reading. I could see her becoming a librarian or bookseller or even a book editor later on in life. She’d be one of those people who could read a book a day and she’d retain every word.

  “Charlotte, let me in.” Sylvie poked her head through the front door’s opening.

  I considered using the door like a guillotine but nixed it. I wouldn’t look good in prison orange. It wasn’t jewel-tonish enough.

  “Hi, my babies,” Sylvie yelled. “Mumsie wants to take you on another trip.”

  Matthew bolted from his room, a chocolate brown robe tied tautly around the waist, brown paisley pajama bottoms bunching on his bare feet. “Girls, get ready for school.” He bounded down the stairs, two at a time, and charged toward the entryway. “I’ll handle this, Charlotte.” He peeled my hands off the door and swung it open.

  Sylvie stumbled into the foyer but righted herself and huffed. “I have an order, Matthew.”

  “It’s not valid if it’s torn in two.” I offered the pieces to Matthew and winked.

  “It says you have to obey me,” Sylvie said.

  “She wants to take the girls on an Amish tour,” I countered. “I told her she couldn’t.”

  “I’ve already paid for it.”

  Did I detect a hint of whine in Sylvie’s tone? Score one for me.

  “We’re supposed to have a meal at an Amish house,” she went on.

  “Not happening.” Matthew stuffed the torn document into his pocket.

  Sylvie sputtered. Any second now, I expected her to stomp her foot and throw a hissy fit, but no words came out. What could she do? We were two against her one. After a long moment, she shook her fist and shouted, “I’m coming back with a policeman.”

  “Go for it,” Matthew replied. “Chief Urso has so much time on his hands. Not!”

  “You’ll be hearing from me.”

  “I’m sure we will.”

  “And that Meredith—”

  “You leave Meredith out of this!” Matthew said.

  Sylvie started to leave and turned back. An evil grin spread across her face. “In the meantime, I’ll use your credit card for a little shopping—an expense I’m sure you can ill afford.” She spun on her silver stiletto heel and strutted out the door and down the path toward her rented Lexus.

  I gaped at Matthew. “She’s still able to use your credit cards?”

  “No, I took her off all of them.”

  “She must have memorized the number and the security code. You’d better freeze your accounts.”

  Before pulling from the curb, Sylvie whipped open the passenger window and yelled, “I hear Le Chic Boutique near The Cheese Shop is pricey. Watch me make Prudence Hart my best friend.”

  Just you wait, I mused with wicked glee, wishing I could be a fly on the wall as she went head-to-head with Prudence. Our local diva would suggest what looked right on Sylvie, and Sylvie, unable to restrain herself, would give Prudence a piece of her feeble mind. Oh, yeah, sparks would fly. Enough to start a forest fire. Maybe, if we were lucky, they’d both combust.

  Matthew closed the door, his face pinched with concern. Sensing the tension, Rags brushed up against Matthew’s bare ankles. Matthew bent over and kneaded Rags’s neck as he glanced up at the landing. The twins hadn’t minded him. They were crouched and huddled together, peering between the railings. Their sweet eyes glistened with tears. My heart ached for them, but even I, a fixer by nature, couldn’t protect them from the cruel events that continued to alter their lives.

  “Girls,” Matthew said, his voice vibrating with pent-up emotion. “Get going. Now. Breakfast in ten.”

  “Gluten-free mascarpone pancakes,” I added as an incentive.

  As a unit, they scooted into the bathroom at the end of the hall.

  When the door clicked shut, Matthew ran his hands through his mussed hair. “I’ve got to start early today. I’m making the rounds at the local wineries. Anything you need?”

  I breathed shallowly in my chest, thankful that he was acting as if life was returning to normal, even if it wasn’t. “I think a meritage w
ould go nicely with that Irish blue cheese we got in.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “In our newsletter, I wrote seven o’clock for the wine tasting tomorrow. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yep.” Matthew started up the staircase. On the second step, he paused. “Charlotte, I’m a good dad, right?”

  A torrent of sadness clogged my throat. “You’re the best, and the girls know it.”

  “Do they?”

  “Of course they do.” When Sylvie abandoned them, Matthew had turned a bad situation into a good one. He came home to a small town and a family that adored him. He became attentive to his girls’ needs. At all times, he encouraged them to be their best. “They adore you, Matthew. More than you’ll ever know.”

  At The Cheese Shop, I put Sylvie and her threats aside, and went about my routine, making quiches and facing cheeses with a sharp-edged knife. Next, I set out the specialty dish—a new daily tradition that was fast becoming popular with the customers. The specialty of the day was a Brie fondue. I filled a white porcelain serving dish with the lusciously gooey mixture, placed it into a wire holder over a lit can of Sterno, and laid long wooden skewers on the plate below. Beside it, I set a basket filled with chunks of country bread. Within an hour, the customers had devoured the tasty treat, and I had to make another batch.

  Rebecca slipped into the kitchen and leaned a hip against the counter. “Finally, we’ve got a lull.”

  “We deserve one.” I fetched a wheel of Brie from the walk-in refrigerator and set it on the marble slab. As I removed the wrapping, I said, “What’s on your mind?”

  “I was thinking ...” Whenever she used that tone, she was considering something nefarious. “We should go to the Ziegler Winery and check out that brick wall.”

  “We’re doing nothing of the sort.” I pulled a sharp Wüsthof knife from the knife drawer.

  “If it was recently built—”

  “No.”

  “Maybe we could prove—”

  “No.”

  “But the murderer—”

  I gave her a warning look.

  “C’mon, Charlotte. Didn’t you hear the gossip? The town council is talking about not letting Meredith build the college.”

  I gaped. Was my theory correct? Had a local killed Harker Fontanne to put a damper on the new college plans? “Grandmère hasn’t mentioned a thing to me.”

  “She might not know yet.”

  As mayor, she should.

  “I only know because I overheard that old windbag Arlo MacMillan telling that local vintner about it.” Rebecca frowned. “Why are they friends? Arlo’s so—” She swatted the air. No one liked pasty-faced Arlo. “Anyway, if the college plan fails, the Harts have offered to buy the winery from the city.”

  I gaped. “Prudence?”

  “Her brothers.”

  Prudence’s brothers—she had two or three, I couldn’t remember—were vintners and lived somewhere in Oregon. Why would they need another winery? Then I recalled the old map that I’d seen during the scavenger hunt at the Ziegler Winery. Back in the eighteen hundreds, the Bozzuto, Urso, and Hart families had bordered the Ziegler estate. Had the Harts lost their property along the way because of Ziegler? What if the Hart brothers wanted revenge? What if, to cast a pall over the transformation of the winery into a college, they indiscriminately killed Harker? Did Prudence know? Was she in on the plot?

  “Here’s what I think,” Rebecca went on. “We’ve got to go inside the winery before the sale takes place. It’s public property, isn’t it?”

  “No way. We’re not going.” I wadded the wrapping for the Brie into a ball and tossed it into a nearby garbage can.

  “Don’t you remember how your grandmother said it’s important to set the scene? What if the murderer did that?”

  Or murderers, I thought.

  “What if doing that made him careless? What if he left even more clues than a brick wall at the scene? Shouldn’t we know what story he—?”

  “Or she or they,” I corrected, still stuck on thoughts of Prudence and her brothers.

  “He ... She ... They ... Whatever. Shouldn’t we know what story the murderer was trying to tell? Jewels and bricks. There’s something there. Time is of the essence.”

  The chimes jingled in the shop.

  Rebecca looked in that direction and back at me. “Think about it, okay?” She scuttled out of the kitchen.

  As I started to cut the Brie in half, I had to admit that my little assistant-slash-sleuth was on to something. Could I learn more about who killed Harker if I went back to the scene of the crime? Could I find something to prove Quinn’s innocence?

  CHAPTER 15

  For the better part of the afternoon, I didn’t think again of raiding the winery. But then Rebecca went missing.

  “Rebecca?” I peeked out the rear door of The Cheese Shop and scanned the co-op garden in the alley. Other than tulips swaying in the breeze and a few daring birds searching for worms in the moist ground, there was no movement. Where had Rebecca gone? Usually she took a half hour break, not an hour and a half. I hadn’t noticed her absence until now because we’d had a flurry of activity that had kept me hopping. The pastor had come in to order twenty cheese trays for a church function, and we’d had at least two dozen requests for the Brie fondue recipe.

  I returned to the cheese counter and said to Pépère, “Do you know where Rebecca went?”

  He shook his head, but I caught him eyeing me surreptitiously as he sliced a long tube of chili turkey pepperoni into wafer-thin slices.

  “You do know, don’t you?” I said.

  “I have no idea.”

  “C’mon, tell me. Where is she?”

  My grandfather did what I called his cute-little-boy pout, the one he used whenever he was trying to hide something. “Why do you not believe me?”

  “Because it’s not like her to be gone so long.”

  “Charlotte, she is a grown woman. Do not worry so.”

  “But she should have called.”

  “Perhaps she went exploring and lost track of time. She loves the outdoors.”

  “It’s too windy.”

  “She likes a crisp breeze.” He moved something from one hand to the other and chuckled.

  But I didn’t laugh, because an inkling of Rebecca’s whereabouts came to me and sent a tremor of apprehension through me. I grabbed Pépère by the shoulders. “Are you speaking in code?”

  “Code?”

  “Did the little imp go to the Ziegler Winery?”

  “Whatever for?”

  “To explore!”

  “Chérie, she wouldn’t do that, would she?” Pépère laid his knife on the counter, wiped his hands on his apron, and strolled toward the refrigerator. As he moved, I noticed him stuffing a piece of Roaring Forties blue cheese into his mouth. He hadn’t been trying to cover for Rebecca. He’d been sneaking a slice of cheese from the cheese-tasting platter.

  “Pépère, I’m worried.”

  He swallowed and said, “Call her.”

  I did. She didn’t answer her cell phone. Reception during a strong wind was spotty at best. Dread flooded my thoughts. What if Rebecca had sneaked into the winery and somehow locked herself in the cellar? Or fallen down stairs and couldn’t get up? Time is of the essence, she’d said.

  Kicking myself for not sensing what she was up to, I whipped off my apron, slung it on a hook, and grabbed my car keys. “Pépère, hold down the shop. I’ll be back.”

  “Chérie, call Chief Urso.”

  And have him chastise Rebecca for breaking and entering? Uh-uh. I couldn’t do that to her, and I wouldn’t do that to myself. Urso would razz me or, at the very least, hold me responsible.

  Because I wasn’t keen on going to the winery by myself, as I hurried to my car, I called Meredith and begged her to join me.

  “Can’t,” she said. She was caught up in parent/teacher conferences. She tried to talk me out of going, but I wouldn’t be swayed. Before hangi
ng up, I asked the question that was pressing on my mind. “Meredith, do you remember seeing the brick wall in the Ziegler cellar when you started renovations with Vintage Today?”

  “Remember? I told you. I didn’t go down there.”

  “Could you call the VT crew and ask?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  I explained the theory.

  She was silent for a long time. “I’ll check and get back to you.”

  Banks of clouds blocked the late-afternoon sun as I drove toward the winery. Halfway there, the wind picked up in intensity. My insides felt just as rootless. As I swerved to avoid tumbleweeds frolicking across the pavement, I decided the best thing to calm my nerves would be to review what I knew about the case.

  Because I refused to believe Quinn capable of murder, I put her relationship with Harker aside for the moment and focused solely on Harker. He was an artist. A good one. And yet, according to Edsel Nash, he was ready to abandon his fine art to become a comic book artist. Edsel said it was because Harker felt his quest for perfection in art was destroying his soul. Was that the truth or did Edsel have a reason to lie? If someone—Edsel—did steal Harker’s art, had he killed him to keep the theft a secret? That seemed like an overreaction.

  Harker was also a gambler. He had an outstanding debt with Dane Cegielski. Had Dane killed Harker because Harker refused to pay his paltry debt? At first impression, he’d reminded me of a brooding Hamlet in love with the beautiful Quinn. Had he gone crazy with jealousy because Harker got the girl? If Dane liked Quinn, why would he have set her up by planting Quinn’s ring on Harker? No, I couldn’t wrap my mind around that.