Clobbered by Camembert

moisture.

“Such a tragedy.” Kaitlyn strolled to me and patted my upper arm. “That darned cat.”

I stiffened. “What are you talking about?”

Kaitlyn placed her hand on her chest; her mouth drew into a thin line. “Didn’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“People, including your grandmother, said your cat was roaming around the car and distracted your father.”

My stomach clenched as a streak of orange and white zipped across my mind. Sherbet. My cat. We’d owned a cat. Until now, I’d blocked the memory from my mind. Images flickered before my eyes. I was sitting in the backseat of our Chevrolet. Sherbet was nestled in my lap. My father was driving fast and laughing. My mother laughed, too. Wind blasted through the car. We took one of the hills like a roller coaster, and my mother said, “Whee!” I whispered to Sherbet not to be scared. My father looked over the seat and winked at me. His face was full of lightness and joy. When he turned back to face the road, there was a blur. “Horses,” my mother screamed. My father swerved.

I glowered at Kaitlyn Clydesdale. “No, that’s not what happened. Sherbet was in the car, yes, but she was clutched in my arms.”

“Are you sure?”

I willed away tears threatening to fall. Could I be sure? Had I forged my own memory? Had I blanked out the possibility that Sherbet had bolted from my arms and made my father swerve? Any reminder of Sherbet had been removed from my grandparents’ photograph albums. Had my grandmother believed Sherbet was to blame? It was my fault that we’d had a cat at all. For months, I’d begged for a kitty. I’d whined until my parents had caved. Oh, Sherbet. What happened to you?

“Your mother was a darling friend,” Kaitlyn went on glibly, as if she hadn’t thrown an emotional boomerang into my life, and once again I grew uneasy. Who was she, anyway? Was Rebecca right to mistrust her? “We had such romps, she and I. She was a gifted singer, did you know? She would have been very proud of you and your accomplishments. Fromagerie Bessette is renowned.” An alarm sounded from inside Kaitlyn’s purse. She pulled out her cell phone. “Sorry, I must go. I have an appointment.”

“Wait,” I called, eager—even if I was put off by the woman—to know more about my mother, but Kaitlyn strode through the tent door without a look back.

No sooner had the door clicked shut than it reopened, and Sylvie sashayed in. At least this time she had the sense to wear a robe.

“I know something you don’t know,” Sylvie sang.

Refusing to rise to the bait and eager not to dwell on the event that led to my parents’ deaths until I could talk to my grandmother and glean the truth, I said, “Rebecca, go back to the shop and get those platters I need for the photography shoot. We’ll figure out what’s up with Kaitlyn Clydesdale’s plans later.”

“You bet you will,” Sylvie said, triumph in her tone.

At times I wished I could pull out her wispy hair, strand by strand.

“You’re not going to like who her business partner is,” she went on.

I strode to the buffet table cheese counter, removed everything from it, and polished it to a gleam.

Sylvie trailed me like a hard-to-lose shadow. “I heard they want to take over Providence.”

“‘They’ who?” Rebecca said.

Sylvie kept mute. Obviously she wanted me to be the one to beg for the answer. Well, she could choke on her gossip, for all I cared. She didn’t give a whit about Providence. Her main thrill in life was to upset Matthew and her twins’ lives. Selfish, that’s what she was. Maybe she was the partner. I could see her begging her doting mother and father for cash to buy the property so she could make a name for herself in a town that had snubbed her. Except, thanks to reckless business judgment, her parents were broke. La-di-dah.

“Who?” Rebecca demanded. “Tell us who.”

CHAPTER

Sylvie, the witch, didn’t blab. Before scurrying out of the tent, she smiled a wicked grin and cackled. Give her a broom and she could celebrate Halloween three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

“Good riddance,” I muttered. What I wouldn’t do for a bucket of water.

For the next hour, I remained at Le Petit Fromagerie and photographed a variety of cheese platters—a square slate one, a raw-edged granite one, and a round teak one—each laid out with a different selection of cheeses. While I worked, I started to make a list of possible business partners for Kaitlyn Clydesdale. According to Sylvie, I wasn’t going to like whoever it was. Prudence Hart, the town’s self-righteous, style-challenged society goddess came to mind. She would do anything to make waves. I wouldn’t put it past her to want to own a number of competitive businesses. She’d threatened to open her own cheese shop, except she wasn’t fond of cheese. Arlo MacMillan, a curmudgeon of the highest degree, dreamed of expanding his chicken farm, which lay to the west of Quail Ridge Honeybee Farm.

“Move the wedge of Triple Creme Brie to the left, Meredith.” I steadied my camera while Meredith, my best friend and schoolteacher extraordinaire, fiddled with the slate platter of cheeses.

With mid-morning light filtering through the tent’s windows, I focused on the center of the platter, which I’d adorned with goat, sheep, and cow’s milk cheeses, as well as crackers and a mound of luscious dates.

“How’s that?” Meredith asked.

“A bit more to the left.”

“You’re as much of a sneak as you were in grammar school.” Meredith whisked her shoulder-length hair off her freckled face. “How dare you wrangle me into a job with the promise of tasty tidbits and then renege. And I’m not talking about gossip. I was expecting f-o-o-d.”

I chuckled. “Don’t worry. You’ll get some cheese. But I need to takes these photos in just the right light. Updated photographs on a website draw customers. And Rebecca is more than occupied on her break.”

I glanced at Rebecca, who was supposed to be arranging jars of honey on the pair of baker’s racks that we’d brought to the tent, but she was flirting with Ipo. She twirled a lock of hair around a finger and twisted the toe of her right ballerina slipper in the fake green grass. I couldn’t fault her. The honeybee farmer, a transplanted Hawaiian and a former fire dancer at luaus, was not only handsome but a sweetheart. I gazed at my own heartthrob, Jordan, a local cheese farmer who had offered to help Matthew lug in boxes of wine. Muscles rippled beneath his work shirt. Perspiration beaded on his chiseled face. He must have felt me looking, because he turned his head and gazed at me with such passion that heat swizzled to my toes. Over the past few months, we’d spent a lot more time together. And not only on dates. Fromagerie Bessette was in the process of adding a cheese and wine cellar beneath the shop—we wanted to offer the freshest cheese selections around as well as preserve all our shipments of wine—and Jordan was helping us design it. As the owner of the building, he had even offered to foot half of the expense. He called it an investment.

“Yoo-hoo, where’d you go?” Meredith said. “As if I didn’t know.”

I yanked myself back to the photo shoot and clicked off a few more pictures using a wide-angle lens. “So, have you set a wedding date?”

Meredith and my cousin Matthew were engaged.

She said, “We’re thinking that autumn would be—”

“Charlotte,” Rebecca called. “What’s that cheese you said Ipo would like?”

“That little round of Emerald Isles goat cheese. You know the one, from Emerald Pastures Farm.” A charming artisanal cheese maker north of town owned Emerald Pastures Farm. She put her heart into her work. “It’s got a luscious mushroom flavor. Very earthy. I’ve stored some in the refrigerator.” In addition to the wine and cheese tastings we were offering in the tent, we planned to sell a modest selection of other cheeses and wines. I’d had a glass-fronted refrigerator delivered for the occasion. It stood between the baker’s racks.

Rebecca pulled a hatbox-style cheese container from the refrigerator and plopped it into one of our pretty gold gift bags. “And what about the Brie?”

“I’d suggest using the same one I’m photographing. Rouge et Noir Triple Creme.” It was a fabulously creamy Brie made by the Marin French Company, the oldest cheese manufacturer in the US. “And don’t forget the Chevrot I