by Avery Aames
“Got a moment to chat?” I said.
He squirmed.
I took that as a yes and plunked down into the chair opposite him. The rattan squeaked beneath my weight. The chill in the air cut through my coat and up the legs of my trousers, but I wasn’t about to ask if we could go inside. I wanted him on edge with no time to regroup. “I heard some news. Gossip, probably.”
He folded his paper and tucked it between his thigh and the side of the chair. “Hungry?” he asked. The front door was open a crack, and the flavorful aroma of pot roast wafted through the screen door, but he wasn’t inviting me for lunch. He lifted a pretty floral plate from the table beside him and offered me a frosted cookie. His hand shook ever so slightly.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“So what’s your news?” He popped a cookie into his mouth and fed a crumb to Agatha, who licked his fingers in thanks.
“It’s about that hockey game.”
He swallowed the cookie and replaced the plate on the table. “Which one?”
“That Bluejackets game you went to on the night of Kaitlyn Clydesdale’s death. You were talking about it at the shop. Lois gave you the tickets as a birthday present.”
He stroked his chin, as if culling the memory from a distant place in his mind. “Oh, yeah, I remember. We played the Kings.”
“That’s the one. Did you stay for the whole game?”
“Sure did.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t go often. I’ve got to relish every minute when I get the chance.”
“I know what you mean. I’m that way at an OSU football game.” I pumped my arm overhead. “Go Buckeyes.” I made the warbling sound that had become a standard cheer at games.
Ainsley chuckled and his shoulders relaxed. He was getting into my rhythm. Rebecca would have been proud of me.
“So what’s the gossip?” he asked.
“It was about their star. Luka … Luka . . .”
“Lukashenko.”
“That’s the guy’s name.” I smacked my thigh in agreement. “I heard Lukashenko achieved a hat trick that night. That must have been great to see.”
“It was.”
“Except I don’t remember you mentioning the hat trick when you were in The Cheese Shop yesterday. You told us he’d scored two goals.”
Ainsley blanched but quickly recovered. “My mistake.”
“So, you did see it. How did it play out? Did he score in each period?”
“Um, gee …” He tapped his head with a knobby finger. “The old noggin’s not as good as it used to be.”
“Maybe you missed seeing one.”
His eyes drew to narrow slits.
“Perhaps you were someplace else,” I went on, throwing him a bone. “Maybe you were buying food at the concession stand.”
He bobbed his head. “That was it. I ate my way through the game. The hot dogs at the arena are the best.”
“Slathered in beans and cheese.”
“And onions,” he added.
“You need a fork to eat them.” The thought made my mouth water. My grandfather had tried to duplicate the recipe, but his beans were always missing something. I had suggested extra molasses and maybe a dash of white pepper. “Except”—I shook a finger—“there are television screens by every concession stand. You should have seen the play. Fans would have been going wild.”
Ainsley grew quiet. He glanced at the screen door and back at me. In a thin voice he said, “I wasn’t at the game, but you know that, don’t you?”
“Where were you?”
Silence.
“Were you with Kaitlyn Clydesdale?” I said.
“What? No.”
“You knew her.”
“Of course, I did. She stayed here for one night, but she moved on to Violet’s Victoriana Inn.” His gaze shifted up to the porch ceiling and down again. He was lying.
“Years ago,” I said, “she lived in Providence. Did you know her back in high school?”
“I don’t recall.” He sounded like a well-prepared witness.
“I see.” I slid forward in my chair, as if I were planning to get to my feet. “Maybe I should talk to Violet to get the scoop. I’ll bet she knew who Kaitlyn Clydesdale’s gentlemen callers were.”
“What do you want, money?” Ainsley blurted. “Do you have compromising photos? Huh, do you? I’ll pay whatever you ask.”
“I don’t want your money, Ainsley.”
“If you don’t want money”—he screwed up his mouth—“then what do you want?”
“I want the truth. I believe you were having an affair with Kaitlyn Clydesdale.”
The man exhaled like a harpoon had punctured him. “It’s not what you think.”
“Tell me what it was,” I said, sitting taller, feeling my oats.
“You have to promise not to tell Lois.” He glanced again at the screen door.
I followed his gaze, seeing no sign of his wife or any of the inn’s guests, for that matter. I said, “Where is Lois?”
“In the kitchen, making pot roast using your grandmother’s recipe.”
Grandmère, who had inherited the recipe from her grandmother, had raffled off the recipe at a fund-raiser. The dish asked for extra bay leaves, a handful of cloves, and ten grinds of the peppermill. It was the kind of food that went down easily in the winter and worked like a heating element from the inside out.
“Promise you won’t tell Lois,” Ainsley repeated.
“It’s not mine to tell.”
He drew in a deep breath. “Whatever you’ve heard, you don’t know the half of it.” He plucked Agatha from his lap, wadded the blanket into a ball, and rose from his chair. Agatha leaped back onto the chair and nestled on the cushion as Ainsley ambled down the porch steps. He crooked a finger for me to follow. I shook my head. I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t going to follow him to a shadowy spot behind the inn, not after Rebecca had reminded me that he might be capable of extreme violence.
I remained in my seat. “We can talk here, sir.”
“But Lois might—”
I remained steadfast.
“Fine, whatever. She shouldn’t be out anytime soon. She recently brought me the cookies.” He returned, scooped up the dog, and slumped into his chair. The wicker hissed.
“Kaitlyn Clydesdale,” I repeated.
He started to rub the dog with intensity. Agatha yipped and leaped off his lap. She nosed the screen door open and scurried inside.
“Were you her lover?” I said as the door clacked shut.
“Lover? Bah!” Ainsley snarled. “I was her pawn.”
A stream of arctic air swirled around the porch. I shivered and slipped my hands into my coat pockets. “Explain.”
“Lois and I …” He massaged his temples. “With couples our age, things get tired after too many years together. When Kaitlyn showed up, she reminded me of the good times we’d had back in school. She made me feel young and frisky. I couldn’t resist her bigger-than-life charms. After a couple of rolls in the hay, however, I realized she wasn’t that into me. Know what I mean?” He shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “She had an ulterior motive. I just didn’t get it at first. When I wanted to end the affair, she said she was going to blab to Lois. I pleaded with her to keep our secret. She said it would cost me.”
“She wanted cash?”
“Worse. She’d only keep the secret if I granted her a portion of the raw land I owned north of town.” He jabbed his forefinger at me. “That’s when I caught on.”
“Caught on to what?”
“She’d planned to blackmail me all along.”
There was that word again. Blackmail. Who else had Kaitlyn threatened?
“Such a lowly word, isn’t it?” He plucked pills of wool off the wadded-up blanket. “I agreed to give her the land, but she died that night, and, well …” He waved his hand in a circle.
“Pretty convenient timing,” I said.
“Oh, lord, I didn’t kill her!” He shook his head a
long with his denial, but there was something he wasn’t telling me. His eyes began to blink rapidly.
“You saw her that night.”
“No, not that night.” His gaze flitted upward again. How many lies did the man think he could get away with? He would fail a lie detector test, for sure. “I met with her earlier that day.”
“Where?”
“At Violet’s Victoriana Inn. She was downright vicious,” Ainsley continued. “She said, agreement or no agreement, she was going to tell Lois about us because”—he heaved—“because she thought all women should know when their husbands cheat.”
It sounded to me like Kaitlyn had experienced a bitter breakup.
“I told her if she did, that would constitute an end to our agreement about the land. Kaitlyn laughed, and—”
“Hey, Ainsley!” A neighbor, who was walking his Malamute on a leash, waved from the sidewalk. “How’s business?”
“Good, Fred. Good.” Ainsley shot a sociable hand into the air, but his gaze was flat. When the neighbor passed by, Ainsley continued. “Kaitlyn laughed and said she would give me until morning to tell Lois myself, and then she dashed off to a Do-Gooder meeting. Can you believe that? The hypocrite! She was no Do-Gooder, I’ll tell you.” He slapped his palm on the arm of the chair. “She was going to ruin my life, but she wanted everyone to believe she was a saint. Bah!”
I let his diatribe settle like dust, then said, “It sounds like you could’ve killed her right then and there.”
Ainsley folded his hands together and pointed at me with his index fingers. “I wanted to, but—”
“Hey, Mr. Smith.” A gangly man in his thirties trotted up the path to the inn with a female companion. The woman stomped up the stairs first and removed her knit hat. The man held the screen door open for her. As they entered the inn, he said, “Good weather for Eskimos, huh?” The woman tittered, like the guy was the funniest man in the universe. They let the screen door slam behind them.
Ainsley opened his hands, palms up. “I swear I didn’t kill her.”
“What did you do after meeting with her?”
“I came home, but I couldn’t drum up the courage to tell Lois myself, so I went for a walk with Agatha.”
“For how long?”
He gripped the arms of his chair, looking like a man on the Titanic who believed a deck chair would save him. “Two hours, maybe three.”
“Where to?”
“To the property I own, north of town.”
“What did you do when it grew dark? You didn’t go to the game.” I knew I sounded like a coldhearted, cross-examining attorney, but I needed answers.
“I couldn’t. I felt sick to my stomach, so I walked some more, okay?” He shot to his feet and stomped to the screen door. He peered inside, then pivoted and marched to the railing. “I was a Boy Scout, back in the day. I got a number of badges in camping and trailblazing. The stars offer up as much light as any flashlight, if you know how to use them.”
“Any witnesses?”
“Agatha was with me,” he said over his shoulder. “But the pup hasn’t learned to people-speak yet. She’s no Lassie.”
“Didn’t Lois notice that Agatha was missing?”
“Agatha is like a wild child. She’ll chase squirrels and disappear for hours on end. Lois thinks it’s cute. I needed someone to talk to. The dog was as good as anything.”
“Did anyone pass you on the road?”
“No one I knew. I saw an Amish man, but he wouldn’t remember me. They drive with blinders on, don’t you know.” He smacked the railing again.
“What did you do when you came home?”
“Kept as quiet as a clam. Lois was scrubbing pots. The guests were in the dining room, polishing off their dinner.” He hung his head and swung it from side to side. “I couldn’t tell her about the affair.”
“Even though Kaitlyn Clydesdale was going to.”
“I planned to tell her in the morning. I needed the courage.” He raised his hand as if on the witness stand. “I never went near your friend’s cottage, I swear.”
I joined Ainsley at the railing, an idea nipping at the edge of my mind. Cool air snaked around my ankles and sent a shiver up my legs. “You said your property is north of town. Is it near the Burrells’ property?”
“It abuts it.”
I recalled a conversation with Sylvie outside Rebecca’s cottage on the night of the incident. Sylvie had said Kaitlyn had come into Under Wraps and talked about her empire. At the time, I hadn’t given it much thought, too distracted by Sylvie’s claim that Ipo had motive to hurt Kaitlyn. Now, I wondered. The word empire was unusual. I said, “Did Kaitlyn ever talk about wanting to build an empire in Providence? It seems she wanted to acquire more than yours and the Burrells’ properties. She was after Arlo’s, as well.”
Ainsley scratched his chin. “She never specifically said the word empire to me, but she was power hungry, that’s for sure.” He sighed. “I’m not sorry that she’s dead.”
A woman uttered a teensy sob. I swiveled toward the sound. Lois stood beyond the screen door, her hand over her mouth. Agatha, parked at Lois’s feet, growled between sharp teeth. So much for not being Lassie. The scamp must have tugged her mistress to the door to hear the conversation.
Ainsley darted to the screen door and whipped it open. He reached for his wife. “Lois, darling.”
She swatted him. “Don’t darling me.” She slurped back tears. “How could you? With Kaitlyn Clydesdale, of all people?” She peered at me, her eyes shooting missiles. “I told you that woman was trouble, didn’t I?”
“She was blackmailing me,” Ainsley said.
“After you gave in to her wiles.”
“I was weak.” He held his hands out, as if being powerless was a good enough excuse for cheating.
“Then I’ll be strong.” Lois drew tall. “Pack up, mister.”
“You don’t mean it.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” She gestured, for emphasis.
Ainsley dropped to one knee. “But I love you.” He snatched Lois’s hand in his.
“Too late.” Lois flicked his hand away. Agatha yipped her support. “We’re through.”
“But—”
“Move out.” Lois jabbed a finger. “Go to your mother’s. She thinks you walk on water.”
Ainsley flinched as if she had slapped him, then scrambled to his feet and slinked into the great room. Through the archway, I saw him reach for the prized hockey stick hanging on the wall.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Lois stormed in after him. “Stop right there. You’ll take none of those things, you two-timer.”
“I was just going to set things right.”
“My foot!”
He jammed his hands in his pockets and ogled Lois with hangdog eyes. “Please, darling, don’t kick me out. We can fix this.”
Lois crossed her arms, looking as immovable as one of the ice sculptures at the Winter Wonderland faire.
Ainsley cut me a stony look, obviously blaming me for his current situation, then shuffled down the hallway toward his room behind the kitchen.
When he disappeared, Lois sank onto an ottoman, lifted Agatha onto her lap, and scratched the dog’s ears. “What have I done?” she muttered. “Oh, what have I done?”
She continued murmuring, seemingly unaware that I was standing at the front door, and I had to wonder, by her quick decision to boot out her husband, whether she had already known about his affair with Kaitlyn.
Had that knowledge driven her to do something rash?
CHAPTER
I trudged back to work, no wiser. On the way, I felt horrible for even considering that Lois could be guilty. Though she had been quite brusque with her husband, I didn’t believe, in my heart of hearts, that she could have lashed out at Kaitlyn—or anyone, for that matter—and left her to die.
When I entered Fromagerie Bessette, I found Bozz shadowboxing with his reflection in the glass that fronted the cheese counter. He stopped mid-punch
, dropped his hands to his sides, and said, “Hey, Miss B. Sorry about skipping out earlier. I had no idea you needed me.”
“No worries. Where’s my grandfather?”
Bozz slung a thumb over his shoulder. “He just left. If you ask me, he sounded a bit like the Mad Hatter. He was mumbling, ‘I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.’”
“You mean he sounded like the White Rabbit.”
Bozz looked perplexed.
“In Alice in Wonderland,” I said. “The White Rabbit is the one who’s late. He wore spectacles.” I drew an outline of an imaginary pair of glasses. “He was doing the queen’s bidding.”
“Whatever. Anyway, Pépère was perspiring.”
Worry cut through me. It was my fault that my grandfather was late bringing food to starving actors. If only he weren’t always on the go. A while back, Matthew and I had wanted to send our grandparents on a vacation, but to date, we hadn’t convinced them to go anywhere. Oh, sure, they took occasional day trips to other Ohio hot spots like the German Village in Columbus or the zoo and botanical garden in Cincinnati, and my grandfather had joined Matthew and me on a tour of American cheese farms, but none of those trips counted as a vacation. Recently I had suggested they take a trip to France, but they had pooh-poohed me. They did not have a love affair with their native land.
I said, “Bozz, can you watch the shop for a while longer? I want to help Pépère distribute his pizzas at the theater. I’m sure you can handle the crowd.”
He scanned the store—which was empty—and winked. “Don’t think that’ll be a problem. Everyone’s at the faire. What time should I close up?”
“Five thirty is fine. Put a sign in the door steering customers to the Le Petit Fromagerie tent, then head on over for the night shift.”
“Gotcha.”
* * *
I needn’t have worried about my grandfather. When I arrived at the Providence Playhouse theater, I found him on stage scuttling around a long buffet table, tending to actresses, many of whom wore work shirts or robes slung over racy, very lacy getups. The Chicago costumes weren’t nearly ready this early in the rehearsal process, but Grandmère liked her actors to dress in character at the first opportunity.