For Cheddar or Worse (27 page)

CHAPTER

Shayna
, I thought. Did she kill Lara out of revenge and then return the violin to Erin as a final
gotcha
, knowing Lara had stolen it? Or was Kandice lying?

No longer needing to see Erin or Andrew—I was certain she was innocent and positive I had figured out what his chanting signified—I headed back to town with the plan to pick up Rags and track down Urso.

Navigating the various Street Scene stages was a challenge. It was dusk, that time of day when it was harder to see. Streetlamps didn't quite do the trick, and visitors were everywhere. The sights and sounds were great.

At stage fifteen, one of the cooks from The Country Kitchen acted as barker, encouraging people to learn how to make the perfect grilled cheese.

On stage eleven, three characters dressed up to look like wedges of cheese were chanting cheese poetry while doing a soft-shoe routine. Audience members clapped in time.

On stage seventeen, Ryan, who had made it back to town before me, was perched on a chair, playing guitar with a
four-man band. He looked wrapped up in the tune, his chin tucked, his fingers moving rapidly. Victor stood among the spectators typing a text message on his cell phone. He didn't seem overjoyed with his release from jail. Rather, he appeared menacing. His jaw was ticking with tension; his eyes were steely. Maybe he was concocting a new prank or contacting another date that was barely of age.
Whatever
, as Rebecca would say. He had been exonerated. I moved on.

Nearby at the History of Cheese venue, audience members were roaring with laughter. I watched one vignette, where men and women in funny hats and robes entered and exited, some uttering one or two lines while others mimed their responses. The experience reminded me of a spoof Grandmère had staged at Providence Playhouse a few years ago called
The Complete History of America (Abridged)
by the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Although there was truth in the telling, silly fun was had by all. Me, included.

Drawing nearer to Fromagerie Bessette, my stomach made a horrid noise. I rerouted to The Country Kitchen diner. I craved a cheeseburger, one of the diner's specialties. I would order one to go.

I perched on a stool at the counter and ordered from the ponytailed twin waitress who had helped out at Emerald Pastures Inn. Delilah, who was bustling from booth to booth, waved
hello
.

Beyond her, I caught sight of Shayna, also nestled at the counter. Her tote bag and a wad of knitting rested on the stool beside her. She was scrolling through something on her cell phone.

Before contacting Urso and making a fool of myself, I felt the urgent need to ask Shayna where she had gone that night. Here. In public. Where it was safe. She had lied about her alibi. Why not admit to the police that she left the inn and returned at two
A.M.
? What was the big secret? I also wanted to hear from her lips what Lara and she had argued about. Kandice's and Erin's hearsay accounts weren't satisfying me.

The stool on the other side of Shayna was free. I sat down. She regarded me icily.

“Have you tried the burgers?” I asked. “They're incredible.”

“I ordered chicken soup.” Shayna pushed her cell phone aside. “My stomach is a little raw.”

“You haven't gotten much farther on your knitting project.”

“I was in Sew Inspired a few minutes ago, asking Freckles for advice. She said to toss it and start over.” Shayna offered a weak smile.
“C'est la vie.”

The waitress set a bowl of steaming soup in front of Shayna. “Super hot,” she warned. “Want a glass of water, Charlotte?”

I signaled
no
and kept my focus on Shayna.

“Did you hear?” Shayna said. “They nabbed Victor. He killed Lara.”

“Actually, he's been released already. He's not guilty. He has a solid alibi. A young lady came forward—a very young lady—who said she was with him the whole night.”

“How like Victor.” Shayna inserted her spoon into the soup and stirred. “Do the police have another suspect? Are they going to rescind our right to leave town?” She lifted a spoonful of soup. Steam rose in waves. She blew on it, dumped the bite back in the bowl, and resumed stirring. Each movement seemed deliberate and thoughtful. Was she trying to figure out what she would say to the police if questioned again?

“I'm not sure.”

The waitress returned with my burger packed in a to-go box. I set a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and told her to keep the change.

Shayna eyed the to-go box. “Did you sit by me to ply me for more information, Charlotte? Don't answer. I know you did.” She sighed. “I thought we were friends, but I can't figure out who my friends are anymore.”

“You and Lara had a complicated relationship.”

“Yes, we did.”

“I asked you before about the argument the two of you had during the break on Friday. You said it was nothing, but a source overheard you discussing social media.”

“So?” Shayna folded her arms and glared at me. “I'm always in the market to grow my business. Lara had the inside track.”

“The source said you warned Lara that she couldn't hide something any longer. Were you referring to the violin?”

“What? The violin? No. And your
source
heard wrong. It was the other way around. Lara said those words to me. She—” Two deep-set lines formed between Shayna's eyebrows. She tried to erase them with her fingertips. “It doesn't matter what she said. ‘Forgive and forget.' That's my motto. I've spent a lot of years in therapy to learn that. ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.'”

An
aha
moment struck me. I pictured Shayna holding a glass of sparkling water; Shayna eyeing a wine bottle; Shayna not sipping any wine. “Are you a recovering alcoholic?”

Shayna flinched but didn't respond. She ate a big bite of her soup.

“The Serenity Prayer,” I went on. “You know it.”

“Lots of people do.”

“Where did you go the night Lara died?” I blurted.

“Huh?”

“Ryan saw you entering the inn at two
A.M.
You were dressed in black, like you had gone someplace incognito. You asked him not to tell anyone that you went out.”

“Ryan . . . He . . .” She heaved a sigh. “All right, yes, if you must know, I went to an AA meeting.”

“After midnight?”

“Even in little old Providence they have those. They're really, really private. Satisfied?” Shayna plunked her spoon into the bowl. “Do you want the truth, the
whole
truth, Charlotte? Lara's outburst at dinner made me want a drink so badly I couldn't . . . breathe. She was being miserable to
everyone. To me. To Erin. But when she attacked Erin's brother, I thought I'd get sick. She has a nasty streak, and it was out of control. I sat in my room and knitted and watched TV until I was nauseous. I had to get out. Get some air. Get some support.”

“Earlier, before dinner, it made you angry when she removed the wine bottle from your hands, didn't it?”

“Angry. No, she was doing me a favor. She took it and whispered for me to be brave.”

“Brave?”

“I wasn't brave years ago. It was why she ended the partnership. She said she couldn't stand by and watch me make a mess of my life. She worried that I would run the business into the ground with all the mistakes I was making. She said I would destroy my family. She refused to stick around and watch. The day she left . . . I was angry. Red-hot angry. The next day, I was devastated, and I quit drinking. Cold turkey.” Shayna took a big slug of her ice water and
clack
ed the glass down. “It took a long time to repair the damage I caused with my girls, but I did. I thank Lara for that. In the end, she really was a friend.”

“Will someone come forward to say you were at the meeting?”

“What does it matter? It took place after the time frame for Lara's murder, and what do you not understand about AA being anonymous, Charlotte?”

I shifted on my chair. “Where did you attend the meeting?”

“I repeat, what does it matter?”

“Because if you're telling the truth about one thing, I'd like to think you're telling the truth about everything. There's only one gathering after midnight in Providence. I happen to know where it's held because a friend who works late hours is an alcoholic.”

Shayna sighed. “It was at a red house on Hope Street, beyond the hardware store. Happy?”

I was. She was telling the truth.

“For the record, Lara didn't want me to hide my sickness
any longer. ‘Come clean after all these years,' she said. If it was out in the open, no one on social media could
out
me.” She paid for her soup, gathered her knitting, said, “Take care,” and left.

I remained on the stool mulling over the facts. If Shayna and Victor were in the clear, and Erin was innocent—I truly believed she was—then that left Kandice and Ryan as suspects. Kandice swore she was forever grateful to Lara for turning her life around; she never would have hurt her.

How about Ryan? The other day Rebecca asked me if he was too good to be true. Maybe he was. He was the one, after all, who had made me think Shayna was guilty.

CHAPTER

Thinking of Rebecca and how I'd suggested she do her due diligence on Devon made me realize it was time for me to do the same for Ryan Harris.

I raced back to Fromagerie Bessette. The lights in the main shop were off. Rebecca was gone. Rags stirred when I entered the office. I switched on the light, set my to-go cheeseburger to the side, and clicked
ENTER
on my computer keyboard. The screen came to life.

Rags climbed into my lap and tramped in a circle. The pressure of his paws activated my cell phone; it glowed in my pocket.

“Off, Ragsie,” I cooed, but he wouldn't budge. “Fine, settle down.” When he did, he peered up at me and made a
mrr
sound, asking me if everything was all right. I said, “No, it's not.” Rags gave me a questioning look. “Ryan Harris. You don't know him.” Did I? Only a day ago, I believed he was the kind of guy who could love Erin and help with her challenged brother. Was I wrong?

I typed Ryan's name into a Google search. A number of
listings emerged, some with middle names, some with middle initials. Ryan Harris, no middle name or initial, had a website, a couple of social media sites, and plenty of images of him roaming farms, standing behind lecterns on daises, and shaking hands with well-known people. I clicked on his website, which not only provided information about his consulting services but featured his latest book. A visitor to the website could read the first chapter, review the table of contents, and order the book.

On the
About Ryan
page, the biography was five times longer than the one he had provided for the brain trust brochure. The first paragraph recapped what I already knew: Ryan was divorced with three children; he resided in Texas; prior to that, he had lived in Wisconsin; he taught farm owners how to manage their operations for maximum growth and income.

I read on. Sprinkled throughout the bio, he had included pictures of his mother, sisters, and him on their family farm, and of the grown-up clan, many with children, at a Christmas reunion. There were pictures of an incredibly serious high school–aged Ryan with his gymnastics team, as well as individual pictures of Ryan while performing on the rings. There was a younger picture of Ryan merrily climbing a rope hanging from a tree. Not proof positive that he was the killer who had entered Lara's room via the skylight, I told myself. Lots of people climbed ropes. I had loved doing so as a girl.

The subtitles beneath the family pictures named each of the members. The one beneath the team picture stated Ryan and his teammates went to regionals and then nationals. Two of the team members, including Ryan, had been Olympic hopefuls.

The caption beneath a picture of Ryan from the back doing an Iron Cross on the rings, a task that required him to support himself with both arms shooting straight out from his shoulders, legs hanging straight down, said he had excelled at the move. Something in the photo made me pause.
The last name; it appeared to be shorter than Harris. I zoomed in. The name on Ryan's shirt read:
Yeats
.

When and why did he change his surname? I skimmed the biography and learned his mother's maiden name was Harris. Ryan must have changed his name after his father died. I read further in his biography, but I couldn't find the reason for the switch.

In the search engine line, I quickly typed in
Ryan Yeats
and added a caret symbol > and the word
father
.

Up popped an article about Samuel Yeats titled “What Would You Do?” Eighteen years ago, the Yeats Family Farm suffered a setback—it went bankrupt. Thrown into despair, Samuel Yeats drank . . . and drank. One night, he went into the family barn and hanged himself. Ryan, at the vulnerable age of fourteen, found his father's body the next morning.

My insides snagged. My throat grew tight. Ryan had told me that finding his father wasn't pretty.

According to the article, the day after his father's funeral, Ryan put aside his dreams of becoming an Olympic athlete. He performed odd jobs while learning the art of farming. He was, after all, the eldest child and only son.

Something niggled at the back of my brain. Ryan had mentioned that a number of Lara's reviews had ruined small farms. Did she destroy his family's farm? The night Lara antagonized everyone—the night she was killed—Ryan said to her, in defense of Shayna, that a farm is a family's lifeblood. He accused her of having no regard for anyone. Had he really been referring to his own farm . . . his own family?

I searched Samuel Yeats's name in regard to Lara. Indeed, the Yeats Family Farm was one of many that went belly up after one of Lara's critical reviews. Samuel put the farm up for sale, but no one would touch it. I stopped scrolling. I could guess the rest.

Ryan had acted as though he had never met Lara, but he had met her, as a teen; it had been she who hadn't recognized him. I doubted Ryan came to the brain trust
expecting to see her. Kandice hadn't included her on the roster. She was a surprise attendant. However, when he saw her that first night and she subsequently harassed him at the Street Scene, old memories must have surfaced.

Did Ryan return to his room that night and plot how he would kill her so no one would suspect? How had he known the skylights weren't sealed shut? Maybe Erin had taken him on a tour of the inn and described, in detail, her renovation plans. The first morning of the brain trust, Ryan had skipped breakfast and arrived late at the cheese facility. Had he been busy testing out his plan? Did he, like a jewel thief, climb to the roof and steal across to the skylight above Lara's room? Did he test opening it with the remote control he swiped? If it worked, then all he had to do was find some rope.

I had to tell Urso my findings. Unable to reach my cell phone with Rags nestled in my lap, I picked up the receiver to the landline telephone and dialed the precinct. The clerk answered. I asked for the chief. She said he was tending to a three-car pileup in the north part of town. Cow's fault, she added. She asked if my issue was urgent. I said it was. I was at The Cheese Shop. I needed him to call me ASAP; it was about Ryan Harris.

When I cradled the receiver, Rags wakened. His ears perked. He twisted his head toward the door.

“What is it, fella?” I whispered.

A floorboard squeaked. Someone was in the shop. Rebecca would have called out; my grandparents, too.

Rapid footsteps. The door to the office burst open. It slammed into the wall. Ryan stood beneath the arch, his face dripping with perspiration, his eyes merciless.

Butterflies—no,
hornets
—took flight in my gut. Stinging, zapping. There was no way for me to escape. No windows, no skylight. I wouldn't get past Ryan.

“Is your set over?” I asked, the tension in my voice even shriller than yesterday when I had pretended to my husband that I wasn't jealous about Heather. How petty that all seemed right now.

“Don't play stupid,” Ryan said. “You know why I'm here.”

“Let's talk.”
Talk?
Honestly. Since when had I become a therapist? Since when did I know how to negotiate? I set Rags on the floor and said, “Go!” But he wasn't listening. His ears were laid back, his face jutting forward, his tail at attention. He snarled and charged Ryan.

In one swift move, Ryan nabbed Rags and tossed him out of the office. On all fours. Ryan closed the door and locked it. Rags yowled with anger.

The pitiful sound drove me to distraction. I needed to focus. I tamped down my fear and glared at Ryan. “How did you know I was here?”

“I planted a bug on you.”

Embarrassment coursed through me. “In the breakfast room earlier today,” I said. “When you helped me to the bench.”

He nodded.

If only I had been more alert. Rebecca said Ryan had worked at a spy store. He'd sold mostly nanny cams. “You carry bugs around with you?”

“I like to be prepared.”

“Why me?”

“At The White Horse, you were poking your nose where it didn't belong. At the inn, too, when you were having lunch with Erin.”

Fear zinged through me. “You. You did it. You hurled the rotten wood railing at me.”

“Yup. Missed.”

“You could have hurt Erin.”

“I'll admit I wasn't thinking straight. I thought a scare would frighten you off.”

“Did you cause the ficus tree to fall on Kandice?”

“Now, why would I do that? That was a pure accident.”

“You followed me home from The White Horse Inn in the dark sedan.”

He grunted.

“When I showed up at the inn today—”

“I knew you were snooping again. I had to control the situation.”

“You followed me to Lara's room.”

“If that darned housekeeper hadn't shown up . . .” Ryan inched forward, his teeth bared.

Keep him talking
rang out in my head. Urso would learn that I had reported in. When he returned my call and I didn't answer the phone, he would check up on me. Or would he? He was upset with me for prying into his investigation. If only I had touched base with Jordan.

Up, up, up
chimed in my head.

“Andrew heard you,” I said.

“Heard me what?”

“You came back to the inn before midnight the night Lara died. You went up to the roof at eleven thirty. You went down at eleven forty-five. He heard you.”

“He heard something. He can't confirm it was me.”

“Later, after you killed Lara, you sneaked out and entered through the front door so someone—Kandice—would hear you come in after midnight. Clever.”

He grinned.

“Your father hanged himself,” I said, trying a different approach. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

“No loss. Dad was weak. He caved.” Ryan grasped a pillow off one of the director's chairs positioned along the wall. Did he intend to smother me like he had Lara? Had he brought a dose of chloroform to facilitate the process?

I wouldn't succumb easily. I would fight. But I needed a weapon. The computer was too unwieldy to hurl. Same with the chair. The blotter and pen set were useless. So was the cheeseburger in its to-go box.

Think
,
Charlotte
.
You've taken defense classes. What's your move?
I'm nimble. If Ryan came at me, I could duck past him. Open the door. Pick up Rags . . .

Not a chance. Ryan would nail me from behind.

I said, “You blamed your father for destroying your family, didn't you, Ryan?”

“Darned right I did. He left us. Mom and six girls.”

“And you with no future, no Olympics.”

Ryan sneered. “If only he had manned up. But he couldn't. Mom was all-forgiving.”

“You took your mother's name.”

“It was her family that started the farm. She let my dad rename it as her fifteenth wedding gift to him.”

“And then Lara Berry came calling.”

“Lara.” He snarled her name.

“Did your father do something to incur her wrath?”

“Dad had a mouth. He spouted off sometimes. He talked to reporters. He—” Ryan rubbed his forehead hard, like he was suffering a severe migraine. “I. Don't. Know.”

“What did Lara do?”

“She took a tour of the farm. Told Dad and Mom she loved the place, the lying phony. Then she wrote a bad review. She said our product was inferior. She sent out notices to cheese shops and suppliers. Dad fought her. He got the newspaper involved. He hired an attorney.”

“That doesn't sound like he was weak.”

“He waited six months to start the process. Too late. By then, our business had soured.”

Rags scratched the door. Ryan swung around and hissed. During the distraction, I glanced left: notepads, pens, a digital calculator about three ounces in weight. Nothing hefty.

“Your mother advised you to ‘take it in stride,' Ryan. Did she mean your father's death?”

“Everything: death, life, success, loss.”

“She also said, ‘Let bygones be.' She didn't want you dwelling on the past.”

Ryan's face twisted with pain. “Good old Mom. All she ever dreamed about was making cheese. Our cheese. The family cheese. History, she said, mattered.”

History
. I looked to my right. The antique wrought iron cheese grater that Lois had repaired was still sitting in the director's chair where I'd left it. Grandmère hadn't picked it up yet. Would it work as a weapon? It was about sixteen inches long and as heavy as a mallet. If I swung with both
hands and caught Ryan on the arm or shoulder, maybe that would give me time to run. Get Rags. Flee.

I inched from behind the desk. Toward the enemy. I had to risk it. “You hated Lara Berry for destroying your family. No matter how angry you were at your father, she—”

“Was the devil!” Spittle flew from Ryan's mouth.

“You followed her career. You patterned yours after hers. Except you tried to use your power for good.”