Days of Wine and Roquefort

by Avery Aames

  Matthew and I finished our meals in quiet. As a busboy removed our plates, Sylvie waltzed into the diner, dressed in something akin to a safari outfit—hound’s-tooth jacket, jodhpur trousers, stretch poplin shirt, riding boots, and a walking stick. The twins followed her, each looking normal in simple jeans, tee shirts, raincoats, and galoshes.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Amy and Clair called. They skipped toward us.

  Sylvie peeped over her shoulder like she had lost something. When the door to the diner opened again, I realized she hadn’t lost something; she had misplaced someone. Ashley Yeats, dressed in similar togs to Sylvie, pushed through the throng. With renewed confidence, Sylvie sashayed toward us. Apparently, she had lassoed a date with the journalist and couldn’t wait to parade the man in front of her ex-husband.

  The twins arrived at the booth and flung themselves at their father for a hug.

  Matthew said, “Whoa, don’t smother me. Back up.” They obeyed, and he gestured for them to approach him, one at a time, for a hug; Amy first. “Where are you off to in this sluggish weather?”

  “Kindred Creek.” Clair flapped a brochure in Matthew’s direction. Dutifully, he took it and browsed the pages.

  Amy said, “We came here to show you our outfits.”

  More likely, Sylvie wanted to show off hers. That wasn’t exactly fair of me. Sylvie was usually a good mother, and the twins seemed happy whenever they were with her, but I found it curious that she always had to make an appearance before she went somewhere with them, as if she wanted to flaunt what a good mother she was. To Matthew. To me. To the world.

  Sylvie came to a stop, jutted a hip, and rested her forearm on it. Had she memorized the pose from some glamour magazine? At any moment, I expected Ashley to swing around in front of her and fix her collar and makeup. With his striking visage, perhaps he had been a model in another life.

  “Hello, love,” Sylvie said. “We’re going on the Best of Fall hike.”

  Best of Fall was an annual outing led by the Bird Watching Society of Providence.

  “Doesn’t it sound fun, Daddy?” Clair said. “We get to pick up leaves . . .”

  “. . . and put them in hiking journals that the park provides,” Amy finished.

  “And see birds . . .”

  “. . . and we can share them in school on Monday.”

  “Ashley suggested the idea,” Sylvie said. “You’ve both met Ashley, haven’t you?”

  “Of course they have.” Ashley elbowed Sylvie. “Fromagerie Bessette is where I bought the wine for you, love.”

  The cheap wine, I mused.

  “Isn’t it muddy at Kindred Creek?” Matthew said.

  “We don’t mind.” Amy twirled in a circle. She was forever spinning. “It’ll be fun. Mud washes off.”

  Sylvie wrinkled her nose. I got the distinct feeling she wasn’t going to the creek out of a deep desire to commune with nature. “Let’s go, my girlie-girls. Ta-ta, Matthew.” She slipped her hand around Ashley’s elbow and steered the girls toward the exit. Over her shoulder, she said, “I’ll have them home by eight.”

  Matthew turned to me. “I’ll believe that when it happens. The woman doesn’t have a clue when it comes to time of day.”

  Whenever Sylvie entered and left a room, I felt depleted, as if she had taken a part of my soul or a smidgen of my life force with her. Matthew looked drained, too.

  “It’s always hard to keep up appearances, isn’t it?” I said.

  Matthew nodded. “What is she thinking taking the girls in this kind of cold weather to a wet park? And with him.”

  Delilah sidled up to the booth. “She has no filter,” she said. “So many in town don’t. Take that guy at the counter, for instance.”

  I gazed at Boyd Hellman, who sat hunched over the daily special while shoveling food into his mouth.

  “He speaks his mind”—Delilah nestled into the booth beside me—“without taking into account who is listening. At first he seemed keen on bending my ear about Ashley Yeats. Right after that, he launched into a rant about Harold Warfield. He doesn’t have most of the facts straight, of course.”

  I wondered whether Boyd was spreading rumors simply to ward off Urso. “Do you know Harold?”

  “Don’t you remember him?” Delilah asked.

  I shook my head.

  “He was a few years ahead of us in high school. Class vice president. Co-captain of the debate team. Backup field goal kicker. He went off to college—I can’t remember where—and one day, he returned married to that plain wife of his, which surprised many of us.”

  “Why?” Matthew asked.

  “Because he had a second fiddle complex. He wanted to be number one so badly that he always made sure he dated pretty girls. When he came back to Providence, he had dreams of owning wineries, not managing them. I was off in New York when he moved back. A girlfriend called me and said she thought he must have gotten his new wife pregnant and that’s why he married her, but they never had kids, so that theory was a bust. He went to work for the Bozzuto Winery for a couple of years, but when he was passed over for the job of manager, he lucked into a new position at Shelton Nelson’s. He was in here the night Noelle Adams arrived in town,” Delilah continued. “He didn’t seem pleased. His wife kept saying, ‘Don’t worry.’”

  “Maybe Rebecca was right to think Noelle was after his job.”

  “No way.” Matthew slung an arm over the top of the banquette. “She was a people person, not a numbers person. She didn’t want to manage that winery or any winery. She wanted the glitz, the glamour.”

  In Providence? That didn’t add up.

  “Whatever,” Delilah said. “Harold was upset, and he threw down his napkin and stormed out.”

  I folded my hands on the table. “Delilah, do you think Harold, as misguided as his notion was, had it in him to kill Noelle to prevent her from rising in Shelton Nelson’s company?”

  From the counter, Boyd said, “Noelle didn’t trust Shelton.”

  “Who asked you?” Delilah said.

  “All I’m saying—”

  Delilah scooted from the banquette and marched to Boyd. “Keep your nose out of our business, you hear?” She planted her hands on her hips. “Who are you anyway? You’re always here, always inserting your opinion into everyone’s business. You have no right. First, you’re not smart enough. Second . . .”

  I edged out of the booth and laid my hand on her shoulder as she was gearing up for another put-down. “Cool it. I want to hear what he knows.”

  Delilah muttered, “Whatever. He’s your problem now. Don’t get too close, though. His breath . . .” She fanned her nose.

  I crowded Boyd on his stool. He avoided my gaze and hunched forward, both forearms on the counter as if he were protecting his food.

  I gave his shoulder a gentle rap with my knuckles.

  He whacked my hand away.

  “Hey, buddy,” Matthew jumped to his feet. “Lay off.”

  “No, you lay off,” Boyd muttered.

  I signaled Matthew to keep cool. “We only want to talk, Boyd. You said Noelle didn’t trust Shelton Nelson. I didn’t get that impression, and she was staying at my house.”

  “You don’t know her like I do. Nobody does.”

  “Did,” Matthew corrected.

  Now, nobody would. My heart wrenched with sorrow.

  Boyd shoveled a last bite of the cheese-stuffed chicken into his mouth. While chewing, he said, “She would come back from trips after she met with Nelson, and she would be hyped-up.”

  “Angry?” Matthew asked.

  “No, excited. She said she was intrigued.”

  That sounded like a woman in love. I said, “Why do you think she didn’t trust him?”

  “She wrote notes.” Boyd’s voice rose with intensity. “Tons and tons of notes.”

  “In her journals.”

  He gave a perfunctory nod.

  “How many journals did she keep?”

  “Two at a time. When she didn’t
like a journal, she burned it. The nuns taught her to do that. Bury your past.” Boyd spanked the counter. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That’s what she did with her folks. They burned her, so she burned them.”

  “Burned?”

  “In here.” He tapped his head. “In her mind. Poof.”

  Noelle had hesitated when I’d asked about her parents. I hadn’t pressed. “Why—”

  “Uh-uh. I’m not telling you anything else. That’s personal.” Boyd slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and lumbered off his chair.

  I said, “Wait. I’ve found the journals, Boyd. I gave them to Chief Urso. Noelle didn’t destroy them.”

  “Whoop-dee-do. I hope he can make sense of them. I never could. Now, leave me alone.” Without another word, he plodded out of the diner.

  Matthew said, “Did you hear that? He read the journals. Maybe he killed her to get his hands on them. Maybe he tore out pages that mentioned him.” His face lit up. “You know, whenever I make notes on my cell phone, I send them in an email to my computer. Maybe Noelle scanned her journals into her computer to make a record of them. A record is a kind of key, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER

  12

  I returned to The Cheese Shop, retreated to the office for privacy, and called Urso to ask him about Noelle’s journals. For a guy who had professed his love for me in the not-so-distant past, he sure could be curt.

  “What don’t you understand about butting out?” Urso yelled.

  I held the telephone receiver away from my head. Even Rags, sitting in the office chair, perked up his ears. Resting a hip on the corner of the desk, I bent at the waist to pet Rags and cooed, “Calm down. It’s simply our nasty chief of police getting all high and mighty.”

  “I heard that,” Urso said.

  “You were meant to.” After drawing in a deep, calming breath, I said, “Look, all I want to know is whether you found any records on Noelle’s computer. Maybe a digital journal. Or copies of her handwritten journals. Or sales accountings. Or client information. Or notes of her meetings with Shelton Nelson. Any records. A record could be a key.”

  “In whose thesaurus?” he snapped, then said, “I’m sorry, but I need you to stop hypothesizing. You have no reason to get involved.”

  “Except Noelle was a guest in my house. And one of my cousin’s best friends.” A sob caught in my throat. I swallowed hard. “I liked her, U-ey. In a short time, I thought of her as family.”

  “Charlotte, I get it, I do, but—”

  “U-ey, we seem to be the only ones thinking outside the box.”

  “We who?”

  I hesitated. I was the object of Urso’s wrath; Matthew didn’t need to be as well. “Me. I meant me. Look, tell me yes or no. Have you scoured Noelle’s computer?”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Very funny.”

  He exhaled. “Yes.”

  “Did you find dated entries related to her work?”

  “Yes.”

  Relief swept through me. “I told you that the journals were missing pages. In the diary journal, each was marked with a date. The last date was the day before she arrived in Providence. I saw her writing that night. There should have been a page with that date. Did you find scanned copies of her journal pages in her computer?”

  “No.”

  I huffed. “That’s it? ‘No’?”

  “Good-bye, Charlotte. I’ve got a meeting to attend.”

  “Wait. I wanted to talk to you more about Boyd Hellman. There’s something fishy about the guy. He’s hot-tempered and knows a ton about Noelle, but he won’t tell.”

  “Good for him. That means he’s honorable.”

  “You really don’t think he’s guilty?”

  “Charlotte . . .”

  “I also learned more about Harold Warfield. He—”

  The phone clicked—dead—and my insides turned white-hot. If U-ey were standing in the room and I was a guy, I would punch him right in the kisser.

  “Chérie.” My grandfather scuttled through the door, out of breath, his face shiny with perspiration. Had he run the entire way from his house to the shop?

  I flung the receiver onto the cradle and hurried to him. “What’s wrong? Is it Grandmère?”

  “Ce n’est rien.” He waved for me to stop worrying. “I have come because you did not show up at the theater with the pizzas, and I thought there might be something amiss with you.”

  I slapped my forehead. I had promised to make kid-friendly turkey and mashed potato pizzas for the Thanksgiving play rehearsal. I grabbed his elbow and steered him to the kitchen. “Let’s get cracking. I did the prep work already. The turkey is cooked, the potatoes mashed. All I need to do is grate the mozzarella cheese.”

  Rags peeped at me from his spot on the office chair and meowed.

  I winked. “Yes, I’ll bring you some turkey.”

  A second meow.

  “And cheese.”

  • • •

  While I stood at the cheese counter grating fist-sized rounds of Salted Lioni Mozzarella, a supple cheese from New Jersey, Tyanne Taylor breezed into the store.

  “This way, y’all.” Tyanne was a native Louisianan; she and her family had moved to Providence after Hurricane Katrina. A few years later, her husband—the skunk—left her for a lusty younger woman. She held the door open for Liberty Nelson, who ambled in looking uncomfortable in a frilly, high-necked ensemble suitable for a heroine in a Jane Austen novel. Tyanne let the door swing shut and finger-combed her bangs into place. “Honestly, sugar, I can’t believe you haven’t purchased anything here. In all these years? What you’ve been missing. You are going to be so pleased.” She strolled toward the counter, the swirly hem of her burgundy dress swaying with a sultry vigor. “Charlotte, I have brought you a new and very eager client. Ooh, Liberty, look.” She pointed at one of the cheeses in the display case and read: “Lover Boy cheese.” She laughed out loud. “That’s precious. Charlotte, these tags are new, aren’t they?”

  I nodded.

  “Get this, sugar,” Tyanne continued reading: “This is the cheese you would throw over your boyfriend for. Love it.”

  Liberty tittered then smiled tightly. She squinted at me with a docility bordering on drug induced. What was going on with her? The overnight transformation from tiger to pussycat was downright eerie. I thought of Lois’s comment that Liberty intended to change her ways. Had Liberty’s religious boyfriend demanded the makeover, or was Liberty pretending she was the epitome of innocence so Urso would cross her off his suspect list? Did she think he was that naïve? “What kind of cheese is it, Miss Bessette?”

  Miss Bessette? Heart be still. Okay, now I knew an alien had invaded her brain and removed her personality.

  “It’s Délice de Bourgogne,” Tyanne chimed in. “A triple-cream cheese from France and perhaps the most luscious bloomy rind cheese ever. Read this cute flag.”

  Liberty recited: “So smooth it makes Brad Pitt seem like a dullard.” She fluttered her hand to cool her face.

  I choked back a laugh as the term phony echoed in my head.

  “That’s double-cream Cremont, a scrumptious cheese from Vermont,” Tyanne said.

  “It’s a blend of goat’s cheese and cow’s milk with notes of hazelnuts and a creamy texture,” I added as I mounded the cheese I had grated and started on a second ball of the Salted Lioni.

  “Hm-m-m.” As quickly as Liberty’s interest piqued, it fizzled. She moved toward the shelves holding honey and exotic vinegars.

  I leaned into Tyanne. “We’ve missed having you around.”

  “Don’t worry. I will be here bright and early tomorrow. I am never giving up my weekly commitment to tend the cheese counter, but whewie, am I ever busy. Who knew that brides love the holidays for weddings. And do not even start on the plethora of showers I’ve got on my agenda. In fact, Liberty and I came in to design a cheese platter for her soiree, which is set for December 15th. Did I tell you she’s getting married February 14th, Va
lentine’s Day? How romantic is that?”

  “Congratulations.”

  “She is marrying the sweetest guy in town,” Tyanne said. “A devout Christian.”

  “So I heard.”

  From across the shop, Liberty said, “He’s not devout. He’s just, you know, dedicated.”

  Tyanne winked at me. “He is the nicest fellow you’d ever want to meet.”

  I whispered, “Is he the reason she’s in that getup?” I glanced toward the street, wondering whether her fiancé was keeping an eye on her from the sidewalk to ensure she towed the line. If so, that would be no way to start a marriage.

  “He likes her to look precious.”

  “But he fell in love with her before the change,” I protested.

  “Some men say that, but in the end, they want what they want.” Tyanne’s mouth pulled into a frown. I imagined she was thinking about her ex. “No matter,” she trilled and batted my arm. “Whatever the concessions, our little Liberty is head over heels in love.”

  I couldn’t imagine Liberty being a head-over-heels type of girl, especially when she possessed what I considered an unhealthy affection for her father. Desperate to know more about her and whether she was capable of murder, I said, “Confidentially, what kind of woman is she, Tyanne?”

  Tyanne cut a look in Liberty’s direction; Liberty was fully occupied with reading labels on jars. “A little exacting, but what bride isn’t?”

  “Meredith wasn’t.”

  “Fine,” Tyanne said. “Meredith was the exception. She’s so levelheaded it’s scary. So, yes, I was spoiled my first time out as a wedding planner. Ooh, look at this tag. Smokin’ sexy. Too cute.” She chuckled.

  “Rebecca came up with that one.”

  “Of course she would, the imp.”

  “Are you talking about me?” Rebecca emerged from the kitchen while blotting her hands on a white towel. “Charlotte, Pépère needs more mozzarella.”

  “It’s coming.” I took the grated Salted Lioni, tossed it into a large white bowl, and started in on another round. A dozen pizzas required a lot of cheese.