Without the umbrella for cover, icy rain pelted me. I shielded my eyes with my hand and stared after my less-than-gallant knight.
As he ran, an image came to me—of the thief running from Le Petit Fromagerie. He had looked about the same size as Chip, and Chip was about the same size as my assailant at Oscar’s.
I must have gasped because Chip galloped back. He held the umbrella over my head. “Babe, what’s wrong?”
Fear peppered my insides. Were his eyes the eyes I had seen through the ski mask? Why would he have killed Kaitlyn Clydesdale? He had agreed to a contract with her. She was going to make his dreams come true. And yet—
A low, guttural rumble scudded through the heavy gray clouds overhead. I flashed on Oscar looking anxious when he had held up Chip’s iPhone. Oscar hadn’t been afraid of Georgia. He had been scared of Chip.
“Charlotte?”
A whiff of Chip’s lemony cologne confirmed my suspicions. It was the same citrus aroma Chip always wore, so I should have known earlier that he was my attacker. But the night the thief had assaulted me in the tent, there had been so many conflicting scents—cotton candy and pine and cocoa. At Oscar’s, my assailant had smelled like horses and hay and, I realized too late, lemon.
“You took the cheese,” I blurted. “Someone robbed our tent. The thief stole a round of Emerald Isles goat cheese. It was you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re nuts.”
“This morning, I stopped by the B&B. Lois said you were taking one last sightseeing tour of town, but you went on a hayride, didn’t you?” Minutes ago, Chip had petted the roan at the entrance to the faire and called him by name. “To you, there’s nothing more fun in life than a hayride.”
“A hayride with you.”
“You smell like horses and hay, Chip.”
“So?”
“The guy who attacked me at Oscar’s house smelled like horses and hay and lemon-scented cologne. You went on the hayride and then you went to Oscar’s to get your cell phone back, and you—”
In a split second, Chip tossed the umbrella to the ground, grabbed me, whipped me around—hockey stick and all—and slapped his hand over my mouth.
I stomped down with my heel but missed his foot. I kicked back and only scraped his calf.
“Dang it, Charlotte. If you weren’t so persistent.” He lifted me off my feet and carried me, kicking, to Le Petit Fromagerie. A
CHAPTER
As the tent door clicked closed, thunder rumbled overhead and dread flooded my veins. I tried to assure myself that Chip hadn’t hurt me before, therefore he wouldn’t hurt me now, but I wasn’t very convincing. If only the ice-sculpting contest wasn’t pulling the crowds away from this section of the faire.
Chip set me on my feet, snatched the hockey stick from me, and wielded it overhead. “Don’t scream.”
Throughout our relationship, I had known Chip had a temper, but I had never thought he was irrational. We fought; we made up. He oozed charm; I felt guilty. He had never laid a finger on me. If I disobeyed his order now and screamed, would he whack me with the stick? Talk about being conflicted, not to mention that I wasn’t sure I could even whisper, let alone yell. My throat felt clogged with cotton.
“Whatever it is you think I did …” Chip let the sentence hang.
I didn’t think; I knew. And he knew I knew. What I didn’t know was why he had done it.
As my heart jackhammered in my chest, I scanned the tent for an escape. I couldn’t crawl beneath the lower edges. They were weighted with metal pipes and lashed to stakes outside the tent. The windows were zippered shut. Sealed boxes of stemware and crates of wines stood stacked against one wall. Decorations that had adorned the walls were stowed in see-through containers. Cheeses were stored in ice chests. Cartons of souvenir plates sat piled on top of each other and strapped to a trolley for easy transport. Someone from The Cheese Shop was certain to return for the rest of the items, but how soon? Tyanne had been toting a box of stemware, which meant she was headed to Fromagerie Bessette, not to the tent.
“I’m innocent, babe. Tell me you believe me.”
I gaped. He wanted absolution? Was that the way to keep him calm?
“Prove it.” My voice sounded raspy, tight, but I couldn’t make it any louder. Where was a megaphone when I needed one? “You have something fuzzy in your pocket besides your cell phone. Show me what it is.” Ten bucks said it was a ski mask.
He didn’t budge.
“The night Kaitlyn died, you claimed you were at the pub,” I went on. “You watched Georgia playing darts.”
“That’s right. She scored nine bull’s-eyes.”
“Did you see each one?”
Chip tapped the hockey stick on the fake grass. As if keeping rhythm, rain pelted the tent’s roof with an intense rat-a-tat.
“Here’s what I think happened,” I said, as the evening that Kaitlyn died played out in my mind. “Georgia announced she was going for ten bull’s-eyes. When Kaitlyn came in and asked where Ipo was, you saw your opportunity. Georgia was in for the long haul; she wasn’t going to quit. If you could find someone to corroborate your alibi, you were gold. So you fortified Luigi’s drinks.” Back in college, to knock out the competition, Chip had done the same thing to a guy who had hit on me. He had sneaked an extra shot of vodka into each of the guy’s rounds. “The morning after Kaitlyn died, I saw Luigi at the library. He thought someone had slipped him a Mickey Finn.”
Chip jammed the hockey stick hard on the grass but didn’t say a word. His gaze turned glacier hard.
A chill crept into the tent. I fought hard not to shiver. I needed to appear strong, in command. If only I could scream. “When Luigi was sufficiently plowed”—my voice was stronger, but not strong enough—“you sneaked into the men’s room, slid out the window, and raced to Lavender and Lace. You grabbed the hockey stick and hurried to the cottage.” Chip had always been fast. It was one of his greatest assets when playing hockey. “Later, with Luigi three sheets to the wind, you told him you were at the pub the whole time. He confirmed your alibi. What I can’t figure out is why you killed Kaitlyn.”
“I didn’t kill her.” Chip popped up the hockey stick and caught it at the neck. Like a hockey enforcer, he spun the stick around and glowered at me. I was the one person standing between him and freedom.
I eyed the door. If I bolted for it, Chip might strike out. If I continued talking, maybe he would see the error of his ways. I tried to conjure up the spirit of one of Rebecca’s TV legal eagles, preferably one with the gift of persuasion. “Kaitlyn was your ticket to Nirvana. She wasn’t going to renege on your contract.”
“Exactly. Which gives me no reason to have killed her.”
“She valued her contracts,” I went on as I tried to figure out Chip’s motive. “She was standing pat on Barton’s sale. She wouldn’t let Oscar quit. She wouldn’t even let her daughter walk away from her duties. So, if she wasn’t going to back out of your contract, why did you kill her?”
“I didn’t. That’s what I’m telling you.”
I had never considered Chip a sociopath, but perhaps he was. He didn’t look one bit fazed by lying.
“You stole the cheese from the tent because”—I licked my parched lips—“you thought you needed to replace it at the scene of the crime. You had used a container as a hockey puck on Kaitlyn’s neck and absconded with the evidence.”
“No.”
“But you never replaced the cheese at the cottage, did you? You changed your mind, because you realized if you replaced the cheese, Urso or one of his deputies might notice, and that would draw attention away from Ipo as a suspect.”
“Ridiculous.” Chip twisted the hockey stick, lost hold of it for a second, but quickly regained control. His eyes
