The Long Quiche Goodbye (26 page)

I woke to a stream of sunlight peeking through the split in the yellow-striped drapes. Years ago, Grandmère had redecorated my old room, changing it from turquoise, my favorite color, to buttercup yellow, but it still smelled of lavender and made me feel safe. I rose and stretched, then braced myself for a long Tuesday. Voting Day. Anything could happen.

After a warm shower, I saw the twins off to school, bid Grandmère and Pépère goodbye, and with Rags slung over my shoulders, returned home. Urso had set the banister back in place and replaced my grosgrain ribbon with crime scene tape. He hadn’t been by yet to do the repair.

I set out food for my edgy Ragdoll cat, but he shunned it and roamed the house like a curious detective. I ate an English muffin with a slice of tomato and melted Collier’s Cheddar and drank a quick cup of coffee, then I changed into a pair of coral chinos and a matching ribbed V-neck. I added sparkly earrings, dabbed on some blush, and hurried to work.

By the time I arrived at Fromagerie Bessette, the shop was awhirl with activity. Rebecca stood behind the cheese counter, prettifying gift baskets. Matthew, the sweetheart, was tending to cheese orders. While waiting, customers talked about who they had voted for. I didn’t hear anyone admit to having voted for Kristine. Most were certain that Grandmère would win.

Leaving Matthew and Rebecca in charge of the shop, I retreated to the kitchen and, for the next hour, baked fresh quiche. Afterward, I headed to the office and busied myself with writing a newsletter and calling our vendors and the local farmers to ensure this week’s deliveries. I had a quick chat on the telephone with Jordan that made me warm all over. He told me he was looking forward to tasting my panini. I was looking forward to another taste of his delicious lips. I didn’t mention the banister incident. I didn’t need him to worry if, indeed, all I had were very hungry termites.

Midmorning, Rebecca rapped on the office door and hovered in the arch. Rags bounded from my lap and rubbed his head up against Rebecca’s ankles. “Not you.” She wagged her finger at him. “No more treats for you.” He hadn’t eaten breakfast at home, probably still sensing the stranger’s intrusion, so I’d asked Rebecca to feed him at the office. Like a silly goose, she had hand-fed him. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to have a spoiled cat on my hands. I had to get him back on a schedule fast.

“You know,” Rebecca said. “I thought about you all night. There was this
CSI
on, and it was about someone poisoning somebody else.”

“What does poison have to do with me?”

“The victim on
CSI
had put two and two together. The killer couldn’t let him live.” Rebecca stepped into the office and perched on the end of my cluttered desk, while using her hands to work through her theory. “See, I got to thinking, what if Tyanne, knowing Kristine was otherwise occupied, actually killed Ed? I mean, her husband could have watched the children, right? He wasn’t at the gala opening. And what if Tyanne thinks you’ve put it all together, so she sabotaged your house?”

I hadn’t even considered Tyanne. Should I have?

“But then I thought, who did Gretel see on the hill?” Rebecca popped off the desk and left the room, her question creating a void I couldn’t fill.

I closed the office door and returned to the desk chair. Rags leapt into my lap and kneaded my abdomen with his claws. I ignored him, laced my fingers behind my neck, and looked up at the whirling ceiling fan, trying to clear my head. Who did Gretel see on the hill? Certainly not Tyanne. She was shorter and wider than Kristine. Felicia was about the same size. So were a whole slew of people in town.

Someone knocked on the door.

I sat upright. “Come in, Rebecca.”

Meredith rushed in, once again covered in cobwebs. She held up a book. “You’ve got to see this.”

CHAPTER 28

Curiosity didn’t propel me from my office chair. Meredith often brought me rare books. She wanted me to become an aficionado like her. She often talked about starting up a book club. “Is it something you . . . ahem . . . borrowed”—I cleared my throat deliberately—“from Felicia’s museum?”

“No, it’s from the room I’ve been cleaning out at school. It’s a Providence High School yearbook.”

“So?”

“I’ve found yearbooks dating back seventy years. I’ve been thinking I might scan pictures of the fun stuff about people still living in Providence. You know, prom queens and kings, Most Likely to Succeed, Most Persevering. I thought I’d make a video collage, and then show it at our next fund-raiser.”

“What an undertaking.”

“You’re telling me, but I think for historical value, it could be really cool. Maybe some of the old coots would donate just to get the picture out of circulation.”

“Why would they—?”

“A ton of them were really geeky back then.”

“That’s blackmail,” I teased.

“Sue me.” She winked. “So, speaking of geeky, which is why I’m here . . .” She opened the book and set it on my desk. “While I was hunting, look what I found. A picture of Ed and Vivian, voted Most Perfect Couple
.
” Meredith snorted. “It had to be a joke of course. Look at Vivian.”

I peered at the picture. Vivian, as thick as a sparkplug, was wearing a plaid skirt and sweater, knee socks, and big glasses. She had a bow in her hair and braces that glimmered in the sunlight—a nerd by all accounts. She stood stiffly beside Ed, who, though gaunt and spooky during his last days on earth, had been handsome in high school. He had that jock look, with strong cheekbones, smoky bedroom eyes, and a smile that would make girls weak at the knees. Slap a letter jacket on him, and he could have been cast as the cocky hero in any Hollywood movie. How life had changed him. Life with Kristine.

“I wonder how Vivian felt about being mocked like this?” Meredith said.

I ran my finger around the borders of the picture and something clicked in my mind. I never would have suspected that Vivian and Ed were the same age. With her taut body and creamy skin, she looked way younger than fifty. Ed had been going to seed. Yet, there they were, a couple. I should have put it together earlier. Luigi said he and Ed had been teammates, and Vivian admitted that Luigi had tried to date her in high school.

“Do you think someone made them pose like this?” Meredith asked. “They’re standing so . . .” She mimed the awkward pose. “Some jerk on the yearbook staff, I’d bet. Thank God whoever it was didn’t make them kiss or something.”

I remembered kissing my first boy about that age. He was always tugging my hair and telling me I was ugly, ugly, ugly. I stared again at the picture of Ed and Vivian. Had he teased her mercilessly and made her adore him? She looked like she might have welcomed a kiss. In the picture, she was gazing longingly at him. What if, after all these years, she had remained in love with him?

“Kids can be such toads,” Meredith said.

I shifted in my chair as comments Vivian had made over the past few days started to make sense. She said that Ed and Kristine were nothing alike, that they didn’t belong together, they were oil and water. Did she feel that she and Ed were better suited? Had she pined for him? When I’d asked her about her tiff with Ed, she said he could be such a toad when it came to her future. What if she had meant her future with him? She could have found out that he met with a divorce lawyer. What if he made her think she could win his heart, but at the last minute, he sold off her building, her livelihood? A final slap in the face.

“Meredith, what if—?”

Meredith’s cell phone rang. “Hold that thought.” She fished her phone from her purse and answered. “Yes? Oh, no.” Her face turned pale. She snapped the phone shut. “It’s the school. There’s a plumbing problem in the storage room. I have to go.” She reached for the yearbook.

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
W
s 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 oil.

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.”