Clobbered by Camembert

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.”

Grandmere, 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 along 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