As Gouda as Dead

by Avery Aames

  “No.” O’Shea was adamant. “Uncle Tim refuses to go to bachelor parties. He hates them. He hates all celebrations.”

  “You’re kidding. He owns the most rousing place in town.”

  “I know.”

  “And he was the one who talked you into posing at my bachelorette party.”

  “I can celebrate. You can celebrate. Not him.”

  “I don’t get it. Why does he hate celebrating so much?”

  “You don’t know?” O’Shea rammed the doorknocker into the wood again. “He got dumped at the altar twenty years ago.”

  “Wow. I had no idea. I barely knew him then. I was in high school.”

  “Yeah, of course. Dumb me.”

  To the deputy, I would bet anyone over thirty was ancient.

  “Tim was the youngest brother,” O’Shea continued. “After all of his older brothers got married, he was feeling the pressure to follow in their footsteps. So he got engaged to a girl he didn’t love. Respectable, but, well, you know.” O’Shea grimaced. “Sometime before the big date, he decided to quit farming and buy the bar. I guess he forgot to tell his intended. On the morning of the wedding, she called it off. She didn’t want to have anything to do with someone who supplied liquor to people.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Maggie something.”

  “Does she still live in town?”

  “No. She moved away about a year later. Tim told me she never married. He swears he ruined her for everyone. Some couples aren’t meant to be, I guess.”

  I wondered how Tim tolerated Tyanne’s career as the town’s premier wedding party planner. Tyanne had never mentioned his loathing for celebrations.

  O’Shea knocked a third time. His boot drilled the porch while he waited. “C’mon, open up,” he grumbled.

  “Try the knob. It’s not breaking and entering.”

  He did. It was unlocked. He pushed the door open. “Uncle Tim?”

  Jordan’s home was very male, filled with leather and wood furniture. The aroma of beer and ribs drowned out the normal aroma of pine and musk. The party appeared to be made up of about fifteen males. A couple of them were playing darts. A few others were seated at tables playing cards. I don’t know what I had expected Jordan’s bachelor party to be, but this wasn’t it. The word tame came to mind.

  I didn’t spy Tim among the group, but I caught sight of Jordan, who was standing with his back to the door chatting up another farm owner. Despite the tension of the moment, my insides did a happy dance. In three days, I would be his bride. But that wasn’t why we were here. “Jordan!” I yelled.

  Jordan pivoted. His mouth turned up in a quick grin. He set down his glass of beer and strode toward us, rolling up the sleeves of his work shirt as he approached. Call me nuts, but whenever I saw him saunter toward me, I thought of hunky cowboys in romantic movies. He grasped my elbow and leaned in for a kiss. “Hello, my love. What a nice surprise, but you know you’re not supposed to be here.” In an exaggerated way, he glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder and back at me. “You might see something you don’t want to.”

  “A stripper perhaps?”

  “Alas. None to be found,” he teased. His jocular mood quickly disappeared when he took in Deputy O’Shea. “What’s up?”

  “Is my uncle here?” O’Shea asked.

  “No.”

  “His truck is.” He pointed.

  Jordan peered beyond us. “Huh. The devil.” He swung around and surveyed the room. “Tim!” he bellowed.

  Tim didn’t emerge from the pack.

  Jordan yelled to the crowd, “Has anyone seen Timothy O’Shea?”

  Like a big bear, Umberto Urso, our chief of police, muscled his way through the group, a can of beer in his hand. He and Jordan had the same dark hair and the same lover-of-the-outdoors tanned skin, but that was where the match ended. Urso stood a good four inches taller than Jordan and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. “Deputy, why are you here?”

  “I think my uncle came looking for you. He called me. Did he call you?”

  “No.” Urso withdrew his cell phone from his pocket and scanned the readout. “I see a missed call. No message, though.” He pocketed the phone. “What’s this about?”

  I had known Urso since we were kids. He was an expert at separating business from pleasure. He urged the four of us to move to the porch, and he closed the door.

  “Tim called me. He sounded upset.” O’Shea replayed the bits and pieces he had gleaned from Tim’s voice mail. “At first he said he heard something, but then revised that to say he saw something. I’m not sure what he saw, but it sounded urgent. He said he was going to track you down. I’ve got to find him.”

  O’Shea didn’t wait for a command from his superior. He turned on his heel and strode to Tim’s truck. He crouched down and clicked on the flashlight application of his cell phone. Peering at the surrounding ground like a seasoned tracker, he pointed and said, “I see a boot print pointing this way.” He strode toward the cheese-making facility, about fifty yards from the main house, where Jordan’s staff made the farm’s specialty—Pace Hill Farm Double-cream Gouda.

  While Jordan’s house was designed in the American Western style of a working ranch, the cheese-making facility was state-of-the-art. The exterior was streamlined. It only had one long window near the top of the building to allow in light.

  O’Shea went to the front entrance, put his hand on the doorknob, and twisted. The door opened. He stepped inside.

  Jordan, Urso, and I crowded in behind him. No lights were on. A sense of gloom hung in the air.

  “Uncle Tim, are you in here?”

  No response. I didn’t even hear the hum of machinery.

  “Out of my way, deputy.” Jordan hurried to a panel of switches and flipped on the overhead fluorescent lights.

  The facility was as cold as a morgue. The room wasn’t vast, measuring about forty-by-twenty feet. A large stainless steel vat, a third of the size of the room, stood in the middle of the linoleum floor. Long whisklike prongs were attached to a metal arm above the vat; the prongs, when swirling, assisted the cheese makers with the coagulation process. Paddles, ladles, skimmers, and sieves hung on hooks on the far wall.

  At the far end of the room—

  I looked at the vat. It was filled with milk, ready for cheese making. “Jordan!” I pointed. “Milk.”

  “Oh no.” His hushed tone matched mine.

  Urso said, “What’s odd about that?”

  “There’s not supposed to be any milk in there,” Jordan said.

  Urso shook his head. “I still don’t get it.”

  “It’s too soon,” I explained. “The staff doesn’t release the day’s draw of milk from the refrigeration tanks until four A.M.”

  “Here’s how it works.” Jordan used his hands to describe the method. “The cheese maker pours the milk into the clean vat. Next, because we vat pasteurize the milk, we heat the milk to one hundred and forty-five degrees for thirty minutes, and then add starter culture to kick off the process. Then”—Jordan struggled to catch his breath—“rennet is added and so forth. The milk thickens. After a time, we separate the curds and whey, and . . .” He rolled his hand to signify the rest of the lengthy procedure.

  “But the milk shouldn’t be there right now,” Urso said.

  “Correct. This is wrong.”

  Urso squinted. “Are you suggesting—”

  “No,” Jordan cut in.

  “Couldn’t be,” I chimed.

  “Wait a sec,” O’Shea nearly shouted. “You don’t think my uncle tripped and fell in the vat, do you?”

  I wasn’t thinking that he tripped. The floor was flat; there was no way for Tim to have tripped. And the vat was filled with milk. I doubted Tim had filled it.

  “If he’s in there, we’ve got to get
him out!” O’Shea rushed toward the edge of the vat. “He must have come looking for you in here and—”

  “Why would he have done that?” I said. “It’s obvious the party was in the house.”

  But O’Shea wasn’t listening to me. “Where’s the drain? There’s a drain, isn’t there?” He squatted and stared beneath the vat. There were a few inches between the bottom of the vat and the floor to allow for drainage.

  “Hold on, kid.” Urso tapped O’Shea on the shoulder. “This is all conjecture. Maybe the milk-filled vat is a prank.” He turned to Jordan. “It’s your bachelor party night. I’ll bet Tim stole in here and pulled the chain to release the milk purely to mess with you. He’s planning to tell you there are ghosts on the farm.”

  “Pretty expensive prank,” I said.

  Jordan spun around. “Tim, are you here? Come on out. You got me.”

  But Tim didn’t appear. The lights started to buzz overhead. Other than that, nothing made a peep.

  I perused the room for some telltale sign that might reveal that Tim had been in the facility. Why would he have come in here instead of Jordan’s house? Violet Walden claimed that both she and Ray Pfeiffer had seen Jawbone Jones tear out of the pub’s parking lot. Had Jawbone caught up with Tim? Had the two fought? What beef could Jawbone have had with Tim? I hadn’t noticed two sets of tire tracks outside, but I hadn’t been looking. The road and parking area had been recently plowed by a snowplow; the pavement was clear.

  “Where’s the plug for the drain?” O’Shea repeated.

  Like the young deputy, I dropped to my knees and searched beneath the vat for the drain. Something small and shiny glinted on the floor. “Hey, look.” I reached for it but couldn’t quite grasp it. My arm wasn’t long enough. “Urso, help me out.”

  Urso squatted beside me. He extended his arm and nailed the object. He rocked back on his heels and opened his palm to reveal a silver-tooled button.

  O’Shea gasped. “That’s . . . that’s from my uncle’s shirt.” Tim liked to wear plaid shirts, especially ones made by a seamstress in town. “He’s in there. C’mon. Do something.”

  Urso raced around the vat. “Let’s empty this.”

  CHAPTER

  Jordan said, “That’ll take too long.” He dashed to the wall and seized three cheese-making tools that looked like rakes. He handed one to Urso and one to O’Shea.

  Working together, they propelled the rakes through the vat of milk. It didn’t take long to locate Tim. When they drew him out of the milk, I gagged. He was dead, of course.

  Jordan fetched a large plastic tarp from his barn, and Urso and O’Shea hauled Tim onto it. I saw the deputy wipe his eyes a couple of times with the back of his sleeve. Jordan and Urso did, too. None of them lost total control. Me? I was a mess of tears. What was Tyanne going to do when she heard? She would be devastated.

  While waiting for the coroner to arrive, Deputy O’Shea and Urso moved to the side to chat. I caught snippets of the conversation. The deputy was making the case that Tim was murdered. He ruled out the release of the milk as a prank, reiterating what I’d said, that it was an expensive practical joke, and his uncle wasn’t into waste. Secondly, the bruise at the back of Tim’s head. Thirdly, Tim had called the deputy, upset. And lastly, two witnesses, Violet and Ray, had seen Jawbone drive off in his truck when Tim left the pub.

  Moving to join them, I said “U-ey,” but quickly revised it to “chief.” In a professional setting, he preferred that I not use the nickname he’d been given back in grade school, because his name, Umberto Urso, had two capital Us. “Jawbone owns Lock Stock and Barrel.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “He has all sorts of guns at his disposal. Maybe he forced Tim at gunpoint to go into the cheese-making facility and climb into the vat. Or maybe he sneaked up behind Tim, butted him on the head, and pushed him in.”

  “Jawbone is a former Olympic biathlete hopeful,” Urso said. “He’s good with guns. An ace shot. Why go to the trouble of filling the vat and putting Tim in it when he could just shoot him? And what motive would Jawbone have to kill Tim?”

  “I don’t know yet, but—”

  “Charlotte, go home. Try not to think about it. I’m on the case.”

  Dejected, I retreated to Jordan’s porch. I couldn’t go home. I’d come with the deputy. And, honestly, how could I put the murder—I was certain it was murder—from my mind? Tim was a friend. He was killed on my fiancé’s property. Jordan stood at the front door. His face was flushed, his eyes glistening with tears that he refused to let fall. One by one, he informed his bachelor party guests what had happened. He advised each of his friends to head to Urso for questioning. According to what I could overhear, no one had a clue that Tim had arrived on the property. No one had seen a thing.

  A half hour later, a chill took residence in my back. I shivered and shuddered. I kept picturing Tim’s body, his clothes drenched with milk, and all the life—the vitality—drained from his face. Before I knew it, a series of gallows humor jokes ran roughshod through my mind. Death was not Gouda; it was bad. Tim got creamed. Tim met with a cheesy death. I pinched myself to make my wicked mind quit while it was behind.

  A screech ended my mental tirade.

  Urso’s other deputy, Rodham, who reminded me of the Road Runner with his spear of red hair, leaped from the cab of his truck. As he approached Urso, another notion came to me. I raced toward them. Rodham whipped around, hands ready to strike. He was clearly on tenterhooks, not because of a fresh murder, but because his wife was due any minute with baby number two.

  Urso swung an arm out to keep Rodham in check. Urso looked weary. His eyes were red-rimmed in the same way that Deputy O’Shea’s were. He and Tim had been good friends. They hadn’t been contemporaries; Tim was—had been—older. But Urso had appreciated a good beer, and Tim had appreciated a man who liked to fish.

  “What are you still doing here, Charlotte?” he asked.

  “I came with Deputy O’Shea.”

  “I’ll get you a ride back to town.”

  “No. Listen.” I touched his sleeve. “I don’t mean to overstep. I know you’ve looked for tire tracks and footprints by the truck.”

  “There’s a muddle of prints,” Urso said, “all of which could belong to any number of people in town. Most people around here use the same snow tires. They wear the same boots.”

  “Right.” That was one of the notions that had struck me. “But did you check the linoleum in the cheese-making facility? A telltale print on the smooth surface might show the way the killer walked. Heavy on the inside or outside of his foot.”

  “The killer must have considered that. The linoleum was mopped clean.”

  “Are you kidding? While everyone was here at the party?”

  “Pretty bold, I know.”

  “Urso, Tim said he saw something. What if he saw the guy—”

  “The guy?” Urso’s mouth twitched. “Charlotte, usually you’re an equal opportunity amateur sleuth. A murderer can be a he or a she.”

  “I believe this killer is a man.” A few months ago, after helping solve the murder of a stranger in town, I had begun to feel confident about my ability to process information. I wasn’t a policeman. I wasn’t a professional detective. But I had good instincts, which I relied upon. “Here’s why. I doubt a woman could have overpowered Tim, who was a pretty big man, and hurled him into that vat.”

  Urso smiled wearily. “True.”

  “What we have to find out is what Tim saw.”

  “We—”

  I held up a hand. “Don’t fight me on this. You’re tired; I’m tired. Hear me out. What if Tim saw a crime outside or near the pub? Like a robbery or a beating?”

  “Or he saw a bear roaming the streets or a missing kid whose face is on a milk carton.”

  “Don’t tease.”

  Urso si
ghed. “Please, I beg you, don’t think about this. It’s my job.”

  “And Tim was my friend. Our friend. Jordan’s friend, too.” Tim and Jordan had knocked back more beers than Urso and Tim had, and they’d talked about their mutual affection for the restaurant business. And music. Both men loved jazz and the blues. “Tim deserves swift justice. You need everyone’s input to get this solved.”

  “I’ll consider whatever you say. Fair?”

  I nodded.

  Urso scrubbed his dark hair with his fingertips then beckoned Jordan. “Would you mind taking Charlotte home? I need my deputies to remain here, and I don’t think she should stay the night, in case—”

  “In case what?” I asked. “In case I have more theories? In case I—”

  “Hold on,” Urso snapped. “Don’t get defensive. I just said I’d take your hunches into account. But I don’t want you here in case the killer decides to come back.”

  I threw a panicked look at Jordan.

  “Don’t worry.” Jordan ran a hand along my arm. I’d never seen him look so shattered. His jaw was tight, his right cheek twitching. Obviously finding a dead body—not just any dead body; a friend’s body—on his farm was sapping him of his usual verve and focus. “Whoever killed Tim is not coming back, not with all these cops around.” Jordan glowered at Urso for even suggesting the idea. “But the chief is right. You should go home.” He steered me toward his Explorer.

  On the drive, we didn’t talk about the murder. We didn’t talk about our bachelor and bachelorette parties. We kept silent, the hum of the heater and my occasional involuntary moans the only sounds to disturb the night.

  After he checked out my place to make sure all the windows and doors were secure, my cat Rags trailing us and chugging his concern, Jordan drew me into his arms.

  “Jordan, I’m scared.”

  “I told you, with the police at the farm—”