Lost and Fondue (2 page)

I let out an exasperated sigh. If something valuable was buried beneath the winery, I’d bet dimes to dollars Ziegler’s daughter had unearthed it before she skipped town. Unless, of course, she found a body buried there—another rumor—and that was why she’d really left.

“Let me show you what else I have planned.” Meredith pulled a piece of purple haze paper with frayed edges from her tote and waved it.

The timer in the kitchen tweeted.

“Give me a sec.” I hurried to the kitchen at the rear of the shop, pulled the quiches from the oven to cool, grabbed the quickie breakfast I’d intended to eat in the silence of my office, two floral napkins, a knife, and a bottle of Kindred Creek spring water, and led my friend through the stone arches into the wine annex that abutted the main store. I set the breakfast on one of the mosaic café tables, poured the water into two of our big-bowled wineglasses, and offered Meredith half a croissant swathed with soft Taleggio cheese and homemade raspberry jam. Melt-in-your-mouth goodness.

As I took my seat, Meredith handed me the list. In addition to the scavenger hunt, she’d written down sack races, tag football, and Frisbee contests. More than fifty people had been invited.

“Oh, I almost forgot the main reason I came to see you,” Meredith said, her mouth half-full. A tiny moan of gourmet delight followed her words. “I want you to serve fondue at the party.”

I gulped. She’d hired me at the onset to provide cheese platters and finger food for the event. Fondue was not your typical buffet item. It was lovely for an intimate group of six or eight, but fifty or more? On a day’s notice? Oh, my.

“You can do it, right? Of course you can. You’re so incredible. Nothing fazes you. I want lots of different kinds of fondues.” Meredith ticked her fingers. “A cow’s milk, a goat’s milk, and a sheep’s milk.”

“Sheep’s milk cheese doesn’t melt well.”

“Sure, you know best. Anyway, it’ll fit into the party’s theme.
Lost and Fondue
. Get it? We’re
finding
a new college.” She giggled, tickled with her cleverness. “And I want Matthew to add champagne to the wine tasting.”

My cousin, a former sommelier, was my partner in The Cheese Shop and Meredith’s flame.

“I know the additions are last-minute, but please say you can do it all. Please?”

How could I say no in the face of her excitement? I nodded.

Meredith leaped to her feet. “Yippee. Oooh, on the platters of cheese, you’ve simply got to include that Humboldt Fog and, hmmm, that rosemary-crusted sheep’s cheese.”

“Mitica Romao?”

“That’s it. And that Red Hawk from the Cowgirl Creamery. I made an open-faced salmon melt, like you suggested. Major yum!”

Red Hawk cheese was one of my all-time favorites. It had a buttery flavor and the smoothness of a Camembert. The closer to room temperature it was served, the better. That was true for any cheese.

“Did I tell you that I’ve invited my niece and her art class from Ohio State University to commemorate the event?” Meredith said.

The last time I’d seen Quinn, I was her babysitter.

“I told you she’s studying fine arts, didn’t I? She’s part of this tight-knit group that hopes to go on to the Sorbonne or the Pratt Institute or the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. They’re coming to paint pictures of the winery before it becomes a college. Sort of like a Degas gathering. I’ve gotten them some press. Isn’t that cool?” Meredith polished off her breakfast, swigged some water, then rose from her chair. “I can’t wait to tell my older brother you said yes. You remember Freddy, don’t you?”

I warmed all over, remembering my first kiss with Freddy onstage, behind the curtain, in the Providence Elementary auditorium. He was ten, I was seven. His lips had tasted like peanut butter.

“I always thought the two of you would have hooked up,” Meredith said.

When Freddy was a senior in high school, he had asked a junior to the prom and not me, a lowly freshman. I’d cried for days.

“You and he would have been terrific together.”

Except he married the junior the summer following graduation and had a child—Quinn—five months later. Freddy was charming but impulsive.

“You both have so much energy, and you’re kindhearted, and—” Meredith’s voice caught ever so slightly. “Did I tell you he adores the Food Network and classic films and juicy mysteries, just like you?”

She had. Many times.

“But now you’re with Jordan, and I’m so happy for you.”

Over the past few months I’d been dating Jordan Pace, one of our local cheese makers, a man with the good looks of a movie star, the voice of a crooner, and the edginess of a gambler. Except in his case, he liked to keep his past—not his cards—close to his chest.

Meredith glanced at her watch. “Gotta go. Quiche?”

While I packaged a pie in a gold box and tied it with strands of raffia, she kept talking about Freddy and her niece and the other talented artists.

Seconds after she departed, Rebecca, my young assistant, trotted in dressed in a yellow raincoat and matching kneehigh boots. She smacked the heels of her boots on the rug by the front door to rid them of water.

“Morning, boss.” She whipped off her coat and hung it on a peg at the rear of the shop. Beneath, she wore a yellow crocheted sweater dress that fit her coltish frame perfectly and looked suspiciously new. I kept myself from commenting on her spending habits. She didn’t need me to mother her. She set straight to work, unwrapping cheeses and laying them on the cutting board. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” I lied. An inch of rain in less than twenty-four hours wasn’t my idea of beautiful, just sloppy. A foot of fresh snow and a snowball fight with Matthew’s twin girls—now, that would be fun. We hadn’t had snowfall in weeks and probably wouldn’t until next year.

As if reading my mind, Rebecca said, “How are the twins?”

“Super.”

In the course of the past year, I had fallen head over heels for my young nieces—who weren’t really my nieces, if the truth be told. Matthew was my cousin, which would make the girls my cousins once removed, or something convoluted like that. But Matthew was like a brother to me, so I’d settled on calling the twins my nieces the day they were born, and no one seemed unhappy with the arrangement. At the insistence of my grandparents, I had taken Matthew and the twins into my home when Matthew’s wife abandoned him for a cushier life with Mumsie and dear old Dad back in their cottage in England. Cottage, ha! A twelve-acre estate complete with a bowling alley and a dressage ring. So far, having the four of us live under one roof was working out just fine. If only I could stop the twins from sliding down the white oak banister of my old Victorian home. Even beneath their frail weight, the banister creaked. I worried for their safety but pushed the angst aside. In many ways, children are like cheese. Wrap them too tightly with protective wrap and they’ll suffocate.

I tied a brown apron over my chinos and gold-striped sweater and joined Rebecca at the cheese counter.

“Did I see Meredith leaving the shop?” she asked.

I brought her up to speed about Meredith’s request to change the fund-raiser menu as well as her plan to add mariachis for entertainment.

“Do you know what I heard?” Rebecca began facing the surfaces of the cheeses with a fine-edged knife while I arranged the prepared cheeses in the display case. “I heard there’s buried treasure at the winery.”

“Rumors.” I blew a loose strand of hair off my face.

“Have you ever been inside?”

“Not on your life.” Back in high school a group of daring souls, led by Meredith’s brother Freddy, stole in. I chickened out. I had no desire to skulk through cobwebbed rooms or socialize with the rodents that had to have taken over the place.

Rebecca said, “You know, on
CSI: New York
, there was this story about—”

The grape-leaf-shaped chimes over the front door jingled, and Grandmère chugged inside, wagging her finger. “Where is your grandfather?”

She strode to the back of the shop, the flaps of her raincoat furling open and revealing a bright pink sweater and patchwork skirt. I smiled. My grandmother might be in her seventies, but she still had the style of a hip gypsy and the energy of a locomotive going downhill with no brakes.

She peeked into the kitchen and into the walk-in refrigerator. “I need him at the theater.”

“What’s the play you’re doing this spring, Mrs. Bessette?” Rebecca asked.

“A new playwright’s work:
No Exit with Poe.
” My grandmother gave a dramatic flourish of her hand. “Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, as interpreted by the characters of Garcin, Estelle, and Inez.”

“That makes no sense,” I said.

“Why?” Rebecca asked. Before leaving her Amish community and moving to Providence, Rebecca had never been to the theater. Now she was an empty vessel eager to be filled with knowledge. In addition to being a TV mystery junkie, she read a play a week.

I said, “Because
No Exit
is an absurdist play about three people in hell who probe each other’s painful memories. It has nothing to do with Poe.”

Grandmère sidled up to me and tapped my nose with her fingertip. “That is where you’re wrong,
chérie
. The playwright is focusing on Sartre’s main theme, the suffering of being, as seen through the poetry of Poe. We’ll get rave reviews, mark my words.” She scuttled to the wine annex and looked inside. “Where is your grandfather?”

“Not here.”

“He said he was going for a cup of coffee at the diner, but I know him. He can’t resist coming to The Cheese Shop. Oh, Etienne!” she called in a singsong manner.

She was right. My grandfather loved spending time in the shop. He may have retired, but he needed to breathe the pungent air inside Fromagerie Bessette on a daily basis or he’d die.

“He’s hiding,
non
?” Grandmère returned to my side and peered cynically into my eyes, like a snake charmer who was being conned by the snake.

“Oh, please,” I sniffed. “You think I’m abetting him? Maybe he’s taking a little stroll. You know how self-conscious he’s become about the few pounds he’s gained since his retirement.” My grandfather loved to sneak slices of cheese from the tasting platters we set on the marble countertop. “Look, there he is.” I pointed. Pépère was exiting the Country Kitchen across the street. “And you’ll notice he’s not headed this way.”

Grandmère muttered something in French, chastising herself for not believing the love of her life, and I smiled. Theirs was the kind of relationship I craved, aged like a fine cheese.

“Charlotte,” Rebecca said. “Did you tell your grandmother that Meredith wants local actors to be mariachis at the fund-raiser?”

I cocked my head. Exactly when in the last few minutes did she think I’d had time to do that?

Color drained from my grandmother’s face. “No, no, no!”

I flinched at the panic in her tone. “Why not?” I asked, unable to mask my concern.

She didn’t answer.

A shiver coursed through me. When Meredith first suggested the idea of converting the college, my grandmother suffered the same reaction, but she’d never explained why. Not one to buy into rumors, I had let the matter drop. “Is it the music?”

“It matters not. It . . .” Her voice trailed off. She petted my cheek. “I must fly.
Au revoir.
”

As she scurried out, I turned the sign in the front window to Open. Customers bustled inside. Many sampled cheeses, while others came to hang out and chat. With the flurry of activity, the feeling of foreboding vanished. An hour later, I believed nothing in the world could go wrong.

Was I ever mistaken.

The door burst open, a gust of cool air invaded the shop, and in bounded Sylvie, Matthew’s ex-wife.

With her you-owe-me attitude, enhanced lips, and augmented breasts, Sylvie, as Grandmère would say, was all huff and fluff. She adjusted a gargantuan leather tote over the shoulder of her faux ocelot coat—at least I hoped it was faux—flipped her acid-white hair off her shoulders, and in a shrill English accent that would make Anglophiles cringe, shouted, “Where are my babies?

Without a care, Sylvie swiped droplets of water off her coat onto The Cheese Shop floor and stomped toward me. “I want my girls now. You can’t keep me away. You have no right. They’re mine. Mine, I tell you. Give them to me. Do you hear me?”

Loud and clear. I bridled at her demanding tone. Not because her entrance had scared off half of my customers or because her ranting had frightened the rest of them so much that they’d retreated to the edges of the shop, but because her girls were no longer hers. She had abandoned them.

“Sylvie.” I didn’t attempt to hug her. “Why don’t we go in the other room?” I did offer a hand to guide her. It was the diplomatic thing to do, and the wine annex was empty of patrons.

She wrinkled her refurbished ski-tipped nose as if she’d detected some horrid odor. “I want my babies, Charlotte. They aren’t at your house. I thought they might be here because it’s so early.”

“They’re at school.” I kept my voice cool, although I felt anything but.

“They are not. It’s Saturday.”

“They’ve got pottery classes.”

“Fine. I’ll fetch them.”

I gripped her elbow to stop her, pinching hard with my thumb. So much for diplomacy.

She wrenched free and, out of nowhere, burst into tears. Crocodile tears. She flung herself into my arms and cried like a baby. Reluctantly, I patted her back.

“I made a mistake. A huge mistake,” she blubbered. Her tears soaked through my sweater. After a long moment, she pushed herself away and wiped streaks of mascara from beneath her eyes. “You believe me, don’t you?”

I smoothed the hair cupping my neck. Did I? Did it matter?

“Let’s talk about it,” I said.

Giving Rebecca an over-the-shoulder
what can you do?
glance, I guided Sylvie through the brick arches leading to the wine annex and settled her at one of the tables nestled by the bay window. Rags, my adorable Ragdoll cat who’d dared to sneak from the office to see what I was up to, sprinted to the wine bar and crouched beneath one of the stools, ears perked.