Clobbered by Camembert

“She didn’t?” I said.

“No, not for the museum or for the theater.”

“Ha!” Sylvie spread her arms wide. “You see? She wasn’t a nice woman.”

“She died too soon,” Prudence snapped.

“Oh, please. Why are you defending her?” Sylvie rubbed her thumb and forefinger together like a moneylender. “Now you’ll have to wheedle your precious cash from Georgia Plachette, and don’t think that’ll happen anytime soon, love. She’s as tight as the Queen Mother.”

“Psst.” Rebecca tapped my forearm with the flat blade of her carving knife and leaned in for a private conversation. “Maybe we should check out Georgia. Maybe she’ll benefit from Kaitlyn’s death. You know, the CFO takes over or manages the estate or something like that? It could be worth a lot of money to her. Remember how cagey she was when you were questioning her the other day?”

“But how would she have known about Ipo’s pu’ili sticks?” I sighed, wishing Kaitlyn Clydesdale had never come to town and life could return to normal, but then I mentally kicked myself for having such a selfish thought. The woman was dead. No matter how mean she had been, she hadn’t deserved that fate.

“Please, Charlotte, question her.” Rebecca’s voice cracked. “Please.”

CHAPTER

I found Georgia at Clydesdale Enterprises’ temporary offices, located above the Cafe au Lait Coffee Shop. Kaitlyn hadn’t gone to any expense to decorate the place. She had provided a couple of hardback chairs, a glass-top desk, and a file cabinet. Shelving on one wall held legal-sized boxes, a historical guide to Holmes County, and a feeble looking silk plant. A photograph naming Kaitlyn the Do-Gooder Woman of the Year hung on the opposite wall.

Georgia sat at the desk, typing on a laptop computer. She looked up when I entered and adjusted the shawl swaddling her shoulders. “May I help you?” Her face was puffy, her nose redder than before. Had she been crying? That was a bad combo with a cold.

“I wanted to see how you were feeling.” I removed my scarf and gloves but kept on my winterberry red blazer. The temperature in the office was warm, but not warm enough to shed a layer.

“I’m fine.” She sneezed three times in a row and reached for a pile of wadded-up tissues beside a to-go cup from Cafe au Lait. Her hand stopped short. Her gaze flitted to a stack of papers on the other side of the computer. In a flash, she scooped the papers off the table, slipped them into a file folder, inserted the folder into a red briefcase beneath the desk, then snatched a tissue. A magician ripping the tablecloth from a table couldn’t have been more deft.

The fleetness of her actions piqued my curiosity. Was she simply being organized or was she trying to keep me from seeing the papers, which in a brief glance looked like court documents? Was it a document ceding control of Clydesdale Enterprises to the CFO, as Rebecca had suggested?

Whoa, Charlotte. I reined myself in. Who was I to jump to conclusions? Except I did want a close-up and personal look at the papers she had hidden. ASAP.

Georgia dabbed her nose. “Why are you here?”

To snoop was probably not the best answer. Neither was I’m the town’s appointed savior, didn’t you hear?

“To check in on you.” I stared at her coffee cup. “Want a refill?”

She sneezed again and quickly blew her nose. “No, that’s okay.” She sounded whiny and even more miserable than when we had first met, but why wouldn’t she? Her boss had died. She had to be devastated. Unless, of course, she killed the boss.

“My treat,” I said. “Drinking plenty of liquids while you’re sick is important.”

She offered a weak smile. “Okay, sure. It’s orange oolong tea.”

I set my scarf and gloves on the desk, hustled downstairs, and returned with two teas and six packets of honey. Georgia looked like she could use extra sweetness in her life. I handed her the goods and settled on a hardback chair with my cup of tea. Steam rose through the tiny sipping hole and glazed my face with moisture.

“So how are you doing?” I asked.

“Horrible. All the journalists calling. All the police questions.” She sipped her tea and let out a teensy hum of enjoyment.

I allowed a comfortable silence to settle between us as if we were girlfriends sharing a cuppa. After a long moment, I said, “I didn’t know Kaitlyn well, but people say she was a wonderful woman.”

Georgia hesitated. She glanced at the commemorative Do-Gooder photograph and back at me. “She gave her all to everything.”

“My grandmother adored her.”

“Kaitlyn spoke highly of your grandmother, too.”

I gazed through the glass-top desk, but I couldn’t get a clear view of the briefcase below. Georgia’s slouch ankle boots, which were as saggy as a Shar-Pei’s skin, blocked my line of sight. I craned my head to spy beyond the leather, but I couldn’t make out the words on the file folder. “How long had you known Kaitlyn?”

“A long time.”

Again she had hesitated. What was up with that?

“Tell me about you.” I set my cup of tea on the desk, rose a tad from my chair, and overemphasized tucking the tail of my blazer under my rear. While I did, I scooched my chair an inch to the left so I could get a better angle on the file folder. Squinting, I could read the word Plachette on the tab. There were two more words but I couldn’t make them out. If only I had Supergirl’s vision. “When did you first start working for Clydesdale Enterprises?”

“Five years ago.”

“When did you become CFO?”

“Right away.”

“You can’t be much older than thirty.”

She blushed. “Actually, I’m thirty-eight.”

“No way.” I scooched some more. She had to be thinking I had ants in my pants, but I didn’t care. I had no shame. “I want the name of the skin products you use.”

She bit back a hint of a smile, reminding me of somebody, but I couldn’t put my finger on whom.

I eyed the file folder tab again. Plachette: Georgia … something. I needed to stare, but she would catch me if I did. I reached for my cup of tea and accidentally knocked my gloves and scarf to the floor. “Clumsy me,” I said. As my fingers grazed the cashmere, I got a clear view of the file folder tab. Plachette: Georgia Clydesdale.

Color me stupid. That was why she looked familiar. That was why she had hesitated when I had asked how long she had known Kaitlyn. She was Kaitlyn’s daughter.

Snagging my things, I returned to a sitting position and studied Georgia. She had Kaitlyn’s eyes and the same haughty cheekbones, but she was at least ten inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter. And her dark curly hair was a stark contrast to Kaitlyn’s blonde straight coif. Did she dye and perm it?

“What’s wrong?” Georgia said. “You’re staring at me.”

“You’re Kaitlyn Clydesdale’s daughter.”

“I—” She pursed her lips.

“Why keep it a secret?”

Georgia squirmed.

“Because she didn’t want people to know how old she was, right?” I said. “She wanted people to think she was in her fifties, and if they found out you were thirty-eight—”

“You’re wrong. She feared she’d be accused of nepotism.”

I gaped. “That doesn’t make sense. She owned the company; she set the rules.”

Georgia examined her chewed-to-the-nub fingernails. “She didn’t think her associates would welcome the idea that they had to report numbers to her daughter. She—” Georgia sneezed and the shawl fell off her shoulders, revealing a skintight plunging neckline black dress. I had seen the same dress on a mannequin in the Under Wraps