The Long Quiche Goodbye (6 page)

“Teacher/parent conferences. All day, all night.” Bozz snatched a slice of the Double Cream Gouda from a wooden platter sitting on the tasting counter and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed it whole, as only a teenager could. “This is my favorite, I think.”

I smiled. He said that about every cheese he tasted.

“How’s the website coming?” I asked.

“Good. Some snags with the links you want on it, though.”

“What kind of snags?”

“Some of the links are defunct. Probably means the companies have gone out of business or are about to.”

I wanted links on the site to tout those companies who had helped us in the past. My customers could ideally become their patrons. It broke my heart to hear that some couldn’t afford to stay open.

“All the artisanal farmers and wineries around here are good to go, though.” Bozz playfully pulled on one of Rags’s paws. Rags batted him on the ear. “My dad said to say thank you for thinking of that.”

“No problem.” Bozz’s family was salt of the earth. His grandparents and mine had been friends for years. His grandmother was one of the first to visit Grandmère during her confinement. “Take Rags out for a walk, would you?” I hitched a thumb at the blue leash hanging on a hook by the rear exit. Rags, more often than not, thought he was a dog.

As Bozz exited with the cat, in strode Delilah Swain, the owner of the Country Kitchen. She was a curvy raven-haired beauty who had wanted to make a career as an actress and dancer in New York but had returned to Providence five years ago, heartbroken and penniless. Her father ceded his business to her, though he continued to work full shifts.

“Charlotte, your grandmother,” Delilah said, out of breath.

She was not prone to panic. She had nerves of steel. She had weathered a blazing fire and a remodel at the Country Kitchen last year without gaining one new wrinkle in her pretty face. She had starred in a number of the town’s plays without ever missing a line. Seeing her out of breath made my adrenaline kick up a notch.

“What about her?”

“I was passing the house on my way to work and, well, you should go see her.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just go!”

CHAPTER 6

Worried that Grandmère might do something drastic if I wasn’t there to stop her, I whipped off my apron, hurried to the back of the store, and ordered Rebecca to buck up. I grabbed the picnic basket filled with goodies from the walk-in refrigerator, slung the basket over my arm, and took off.

The late morning sun baked my cheeks as I raced down Hope Street toward Cherry Orchard Road. As I rounded the corner and drew near to my grandparents’ old Victorian—an olive green beauty with white trim, a wraparound porch, and a red roof—my heart clenched. Townsfolk with protest signs were marching on the sidewalk. Their signs read
Oust Bessette
. I frowned at one protestor, a woman who ought not to throw stones seeing as she had been forced from her position as treasurer of the Providence Elementary PTA after she was seen pole dancing in a nearby town. She had the gall to hold her sign higher as I brushed her shoulder. Kristine Woodhouse wasn’t among the crowd, but I was certain she had incited the dissent. I spotted a few of the reporters who had pestered me in the shop earlier. One, the weasel with bug-eyed glasses, sidled toward me, a tape recorder in his hand.

I brandished my palm and said, “No comment.”

“But—”

“No. Leave me . . . and my family . . . alone.” Teeth gritted, I pushed through the white picket gate, past the banks of flourishing red azaleas, and scuttled along the cobblestone path.

Pépère stood on the porch by the swing, wringing his hands over his belly, his face pinched with pain.

I gave him a hug and said, “Why don’t you go to the shop, Pépère?”

“I don’t want to leave your grandmother with . . . with this.” He indicated the swelling crowd.

“I’ll be here for a while. At least take a walk. Go to the Country Kitchen and get a cup of coffee.”

“People will want to talk about . . .” He screwed up his mouth. “I do not wish to.”

Gossip was never one of Pépère’s favorite things. He had often told me that Fromagerie Bessette was not designed as a gossip parlor, but there was nothing he could do about it. He wanted people to feel at home. I intended to encourage that feeling.

“Why not build something?” I suggested. He loved to tinker. Birdhouses of all shapes and sizes adorned the yard, for thrushes, warblers, wrens. Mr. Nakamura, who owned the Nuts for Nails hardware store, teased that my grandfather kept him in business with all the wood and birdseed he purchased. “Please?”

He nodded.

“Where is Grandmère?”

“Inside.” His mouth twitched up on one side. “She is . . . not herself,
chérie
. Do not judge.”

He tottered toward the garage where he kept his workshop, and I slipped into the house with caution. I stopped near the archway of the living room and peered between the blades of the potted palms.

Grandmère, clad in a pink marabou-trimmed robe and mule slippers, was pacing the Persian area rug like a caged animal. She held a tumbler in her hand, the foamy contents definitely not milk. A gin fizz, I assumed. She made a mean drink, a concoction that had left me so dazed one time that I had sworn off fizzes for life.

“Hello, Grandmère,” I said tentatively, unsure if I would upset the delicate balance that had to be at war in her mind. She could rebel to the house arrest that had been forced upon her or take her sentence in stride. “You look very pretty.” I crossed to her, swung the picnic basket out of the way, and kissed her on each cheek.

“How quickly they forget all that I have done.” She swiveled around, the robe wafting around her ankles. She swept a hand in front of the wall filled with photographs of Playhouse productions.
“Que’st-ce que je vais faire?”

“What are you going to do?” I translated aloud, as I often did, to make sure I had understood her fast-paced French. “Fight, that’s what.”

“One cannot fight an evil that one cannot see.”

I petted her shoulder, my insides clenched with frustration. What would happen if she was found guilty? How could Pépère survive if she was locked up in jail? How could I? Not to mention, what would Providence do? We would lose the one soul who cared about the town more than her own life.

No, I had to stop thinking like that. She was not guilty. She would be proven innocent. I would do everything in my power to ensure that.

“Grandmère, the people who truly know you haven’t forgotten. The rest will remember when your name is cleared.”

“What will I do?”

She spun back to face me, her eyes misty with tears, and my heart ached. My grandmother was the most stalwart woman I knew. Seeing her broken made me choke up.

“We’ll figure out something. I promise.”

“I did not kill him,
chérie
.”

“I know.”

She swept past the Queen Anne armchairs and the hem of her robe snagged on one of the legs of the maple coffee table. She yanked it free and slumped into the burgundy velvet couch. The down-feather cushions poofed up around her. The liquid in her glass swelled but didn’t flow over the edges. “Ed Woodhouse was a vile excuse of a human being, but I would never . . .” She settled back and closed her eyes. Perhaps the liquor was affecting her more than she realized.

“Why don’t you give me the drink.” I held out my hand.

Her eyes blinked open. She stared at the glass, as if trying to conjure answers from the contents. “It calms my nerves.”

“Your nerves are fine. They’re made of iron,” I said, keeping my hand extended.

After a moment, she struggled off the couch and relinquished the tumbler.

Relieved, I carried the glass into the kitchen, set it in the sink, and placed the picnic basket on the terrazzo tile counter. “I brought lunch. Your favorites. French fries.”

“Freedom fries,” she muttered.

I smiled. From the day my grandparents arrived in America, they had embraced everything American. Along the way, they had picked up a number of quirky expressions, and though some might be dated, they still used them.

“I also have Crackerjack Chicken, and Caprese salad on a skewer.” Both were easy to make. For the chicken, I basted chicken breasts with olive oil, seasoned them with salt and pepper, sautéed them to a tender white finish, and layered slices atop a piece of Brie and a crispy sesame cracker. It was a melt-in-the-mouth treat with a crunch. The Caprese salad on a skewer was exactly what it sounded like: marinated vine-ripe tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, and leaves of basil, alternately strung on a short wood skewer. “Which plates do you want me to use?” She had three sets. One with roosters, another with flowers, and—

“The plain white ones.”

Usually she liked me to use the ones with the roosters on them. Her kitchen wasn’t huge, but it was friendly, with high ceilings and a large nook fitted with a Shaker-style square table and benches. A few of the rooster plates hung in brackets on the walls as decoration.

Grandmère set the table with plain placemats and paper napkins.

My lungs grew tight. I had to break her out of this mood. But how? Bursting into song might help, but I was a little rusty, and Grandmère could be a perfectionist when it came to tone. I would have to warm up my vocal cords first. Instead, I chose to do a little soft shoe as I fetched a pair of crystal water glasses from the see-through cabinets. Grandmère didn’t crack a smile. I gave up trying to entertain and hoped food would do the trick. I filled the glasses with ice water and placed them on the upper right-hand corners of the mats. Every meal was meant to be an event, Grandmère had taught me.

“Where’s your grandfather?” she asked

“I told him to make you another birdhouse.”

She blew a ruffled stream of air out her mouth. “Him and his birds.”

“Be glad he’s not enamored of mice.”

I noted a glimmer of humor in her eyes, but it quickly died. I combed my brain for a few quick jokes, but none came to mind, not that they would easily. I preferred wit to slapstick. “Sit,” I said.

I arranged the contents of the picnic basket onto white platters, set the platters in the middle of the table, put a white plate on each of our table mats, and slid onto the bench. I eyed the food and instantly salivated. Grandmère barely gave the items a glance.

“You have to eat.” I laid my hands out on the table, palms up. She placed her hands on mine, and the floodgate that had been damming her tears broke. The last time I had seen her cry was back in high school when I had played Wendy in
Peter Pan
. When she regained control of herself, we ate.

She lifted one of the Crackerjack Chicken sandwiches and nibbled at the ends.

As we moved to dessert—a plate of fresh fruit adorned with a scrumptious triple cream cheese from California—I said, “Can we talk about last night?”

She nodded.

“I heard you say to Ed that he would not like secrets revealed. What secrets?”

“Bah,” she said. “I was so angry.”

“I need to know. What secrets did Ed have?”

“I saw him with that woman from the tour.”

“The guide?” The brassy blonde who had set off Kristine big-time.

She nodded. “I delivered a basket of cheese to Lois’s Lavender and Lace. That woman is staying there.”

“The tour guide.”

“Ed came to visit her.”

Knowing what I did about Ed now,
visit
wouldn’t have been the verb I’d have chosen. A womanizer didn’t simply visit, did he?

“He didn’t see me, but I saw him.”

If he was actually having an affair and Kristine found out, would she have killed him? Right in front of my shop? Of course she would. People who committed crimes of passion didn’t have control over where and when. Had Urso nailed down her alibi yet?

“Ed told me to mind my own business.”

He had said the same to Vivian after she chastised him at the gala.

Grandmère rose from the table, shambled to the sink, and started a pot of coffee. As she waited for it to process, she fussed with the glass roosters I had given her last year for her birthday. They stood on the counter, catching sunlight, their cocks’ combs glimmering bright red. A few minutes later, she returned to the table with two steaming mugs of not-so-great but drinkable coffee.

I pressed on. “After your spat with Ed, you pushed Kristine outside.”

“She said horrible things. And that Felicia. She said worse.”

Had Felicia incited the crowd on the sidewalk in front of my grandparents’ house? Though she could be a nice woman when separated from Kristine, she could also take instruction well. One flick of Kristine’s index finger and Felicia would follow. Why some smart and talented people didn’t develop backbones was beyond me.

“What did Felicia say?”

“Just worse. I can’t remember.”

Grandmère couldn’t remember? The woman, who, over her lifetime, had memorized as many scripts as Meryl Streep, couldn’t remember a few simple sentences? I sighed. Stress was really eroding her spirit.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“The three of them crossed the street and went into the Country Kitchen.”

“Three? You mean four.”

“No,
chérie
, three.”

“Which three?”

“Kristine, Prudence, and Tyanne, of course.”

“Not Felicia?”

“No, never.”

“Why do you say never?”

“Because Felicia has not set foot in that restaurant since Delilah returned to town.” She leaned closer. “At one time, Felicia was in love with Delilah’s father.”

“With Pops?”

“She’d wanted to marry him, but he never asked her. She’s always resented that he gave Delilah the diner.”

I leaned back in my chair. Felicia, a widow for thirteen years, had more than enough money to buy the Country Kitchen should it ever go up for sale. Why would she hold a grudge against Delilah? Sometimes the secrets our little town kept astounded me. “So Felicia went off on her own?”

Grandmère nodded.

“And you?”

“That is when I took my walk. In the opposite direction of Felicia. I headed to the clock tower. She strolled south down Honeysuckle Street.”

Toward the museum. That would make sense. Felicia, an avid art lover and devotee of history, had established Providence’s Historical Museum. It was located in the residential district, thanks to a special permit that allowed her to use a historic landmark house that had been built in the early 1700s. The museum boasted artifacts of the Indian tribes that once inhabited Ohio, as well as relics of the first settlers and original artworks of American painters. Ever since vandals attacked statuary at the museum last year, Felicia had been religious about double-checking to make sure the museum doors and gates were locked. Fearlessly, she did a walk-around with a huge flashlight at nine and midnight.

“You stayed at the clock tower for how long?”

“I have no idea. Long enough to be able to breathe again and realize I had left you in disarray, so I hurried back. That’s when . . .” Her lower lip began to quiver. “That’s when I found . . .” Her gnarled hand flew to her mouth. She bit back a sob.

I patted her shoulder.

“He didn’t deserve to die, Charlotte. Ed was not a nice man, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

I’m not sure everyone in town agreed with her.