Clobbered by Camembert

I bit back a smile of triumph. “I imagine he went home.”

“You didn’t bind him up?”

“I’m not that dastardly.”

A twinkle crept into Urso’s gaze. He quickly erased it and whirled around on Rebecca and Ipo. “You two stay put, you hear? Not a peep to reporters or to townsfolk. I’ll return.”

“Do either of them need a lawyer?” I asked.

Urso stabbed a finger at me. I threw my hands up in mock-defense. He didn’t say a word and marched away.

* * *

The next morning started with a bang. Literally. Even though I heard something akin to a poltergeist in my kitchen, I dared to enter. I found Amy raging from cupboard to cupboard, slamming indiscriminately while muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Sometimes she was so like my grandmother it was scary. Negative energy zinged out of her.

Our poor Briard pup, his eyes as wide as saucers, scooted beneath the kitchen dining table and sought shelter by Clair’s legs. Rags, who was used to Amy’s occasional outbursts, nestled into his rattan bed and placed a paw over his exposed ear.

I glanced at Clair, who was working on a needlepoint project for art class, and said, “What’s wrong with your sister?”

Clair tucked her hair behind her ears. “She’s mad at Tommy for not paying attention to her last night.”

“Thomas,” Amy cried. “I call him Thomas now. He told me I had to. And, oh, he paid attention, all right,” she went on, her voice squeaky with outrage. “He squirted me with ice-cold water.”

Clair stifled a laugh. “It could have been worse. He could have pelted you with ice chips.”

I knew better than to get into this argument. I opened the refrigerator and retrieved gluten-free pancake mix. I had made it at midnight to settle my nerves. “Will flapjacks with creme fraiche and chocolate chips help your mood?”

Amy scowled at me. “Nothing will help me today. Nothing. He’s so … so . . .”

“Stupid,” Clair said.

Amy whirled on her. “He’s not stupid.”

“Last night you swore you would never like him again.”

“And I won’t.” Amy sizzled with anger. “Never.” She stormed from the kitchen and stomped up the stairs. The door to her bedroom slammed with a thwack.

* * *

An hour later, when I arrived at The Cheese Shop, I found Rebecca in a similar mood, for entirely different, more grown-up reasons.

She charged me like a freight train with no brakes. “You’ve got to do something.” She tugged on the cuff of my red turtleneck sweater. “Something!”

“Where’s Matthew?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s downstairs admiring the framing in the cellar. Please, do something.”

“About what?”

The shop was empty of customers. I allowed her to pull me into the kitchen at the rear of the shop where she was preparing a gift basket. An assortment of cheeses sat on the granite counter, including a bloomy rind Brillat-Savarin, a washed-rind Taleggio, and a Mimolette, which was a perfect cheese for grating, with a unique tangerine color and heavenly hazelnut flavor. The basket already contained a jar of Ipo’s Quail Ridge Honey, a box of gourmet crackers, and a bag of dried cranberries. Wheels of ribbon and a pair of scissors lay to the side.

Rebecca released me. “Urso went to Ipo’s after he met with that horrible Oscar Carson.”

“O-ka-a-ay.” I pushed up the sleeves of my sweater and started wrapping the cheese selections in our special paper.

“He wanted to see those luau sticks that he’d asked Ipo about, but Ipo couldn’t find the sticks. They weren’t where he stored them in his house. Somebody stole them.”

“Why would someone steal them?” To each selection of cheese, I added an identifying sticker that informed the customer of the name of the cheese, its country of origin, and the type of milk used: cow, sheep, goat.

“I don’t know. Neither does Ipo.” Rebecca worried her hands in front of her. “Please, please help him.”

“What can I do?”

“Find the real killer. You’re the smartest person I know. You can do it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

I shot her a concerned look. Usually she gave me a play-by-play of the steps I needed to take to solve a crime—steps she had gleaned from TV repeats of NCIS, Murder, She Wrote, and Law & Order. “How long were you at Cherry Orchard Park?” I asked, deciding that the first step in any investigation was establishing a timetable of events—not that I would be investigating, but I liked to be prepared.

“At least forty-five minutes.” Rebecca picked up the scissors and a strand of ribbon and curled the heck out of it.

“Did you know Kaitlyn was coming over to talk to Ipo?”

“We didn’t have a clue.” Rebecca started in on another unsuspecting strand of ribbon. Curl, curl, curl. She ended up with the tightest corkscrew twist I had ever seen.

“So whoever killed her was impulsive,” I said. “He—”

“—or she,” Rebecca cut in.

“—or she couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t be there. Maybe he … or she … simply wanted to chat with Kaitlyn, but things got out of hand.”

“What about Barton Burrell?” Rebecca shook the scissors at me. “What if he didn’t want to sell his farm?”

I calmly removed the scissors from her hand and set them at the far end of the counter. “Then he would have opted out of his contract.”

She crossed her arms and tucked her hands beneath her armpits. “What if he couldn’t?”

“Any contract can be broken. It might have cost him, but he could have broken it. Besides, I saw Barton at Lois’s Lavender and Lace doing chores right before Kaitlyn died.”

“No, you didn’t. You went to yoga class. There was plenty of time for Barton to have gone to the pub and overheard where Kaitlyn was headed. He could have run to my place, seen Ipo and me leave, and realized his opportunity. He waited for her inside, argued with her, and wham.” She slammed a fist into her palm and begged me with her eyes to conjure up a better scenario.

“Charlotte?” Matthew called. He strode past the kitchen, reading from a sheaf of papers. Seconds later, he reappeared and peeked in. “Aha, there you are.”

“I thought you were in the cellar,” I said.

“A while ago. Hey, Tyanne came in looking for you.”

I tensed. Did she want to discuss the destruction of her husband’s ice sculpture? Thomas and Amy’s budding friendship? What would I say?

“You hired her, remember?”

Of course, I did. The last twenty-four hours had sped by in a blur.

“I sent her to our Winter Wonderland tent to help Pepere,” Matthew went on. “Hope that’s all right. Do you have a sec to review some vendor contracts?”

“Sure, I—”

“Matthew.” Rebecca pushed me aside and made a beeline for my cousin. “You’re brilliant. Don’t you think Barton Burrell could have killed Kaitlyn Clydesdale?”

So much for me being the smartest person she knew.

Rebecca explained her theory.

“Nah, Barton is harmless,” Matthew said. “In fact, he might be one of the nicest guys in town.”

“Nice guys commit murder,” Rebecca said.