The Long Quiche Goodbye (21 page)

“Thanks,” Vivian said.

“Girls, over here.” Gretel patted a chair beside her and motioned to another one next to it. “Join us. Freckles is giving me my quick fix of gossip. I’m so bad.” She toyed with her long blonde braid, her cheeks glowing with good humor. “You know how my sweet hubby doesn’t like me to chatter.”

“I won’t blab.” Freckles nudged Gretel, then eyed me and Vivian as we set our plates down on the table and nestled into two empty chairs. “I was just telling Gretel what Kristine, Prudence, and Tyanne wore today to Felicia’s party.”

“Animal prints and black gloves. My, my.” Gretel laughed.

“In other news . . .” Freckles offered a knowing chuckle. “Vivian, I saw you chatting up Luigi Bozzuto today.”

“I did nothing of the sort.” Vivian wrinkled her nose.

“He likes you,” Freckles went on.

“One would wonder why, after all the times I’ve turned him down. I’ve never given him an ounce of encouragement.” Vivian took a bite of quiche.

“Some men like a challenge,” Freckles teased.

“Why is that?” Gretel asked. “Why can’t a man like a woman who is throwing herself at him?”

“Exactly,” Vivian said. “What do you think, Charlotte?”

“I don’t have a clue.” Was that what I was doing with Jordan? Making myself too available? Was that why Urso was so interested in me, because I wasn’t giving him the time of day except to call him with possible murder suspects? Not happy being the focus of attention, I said, “Do I detect a note of regret, Gretel?”

“Oh, no. Never. No regrets. Everything has a purpose. Ecclesiastes 3
.
” She blotted her mouth with a napkin. “I belong right where I am. Fate plays its hand, which, by the way, might be why I take walks.”

I tilted my head. “I don’t understand.”

“Well . . .” Gretel said, drawing the word out like a talented storyteller. “On the night of Ed’s murder, I was out walking the hills, as I always do. I saw lots of people. I didn’t think anything of it. Didn’t mention it to Chief Urso. He had no call to question me. Lots of people walk. But . . .” She held up a finger. “I woke in my sleep last night and realized that I had seen someone who looked just like Kristine that night on one of the bluffs.”

“You’re kidding,” Freckles said. “Kristine?”

“A silhouette, mind you. The silver light from the moon skimmed her body. She was digging.”

“Burying something?” I said, thinking of the bloody dress Kristine would have needed to ditch.

“I don’t know.”

“What time?” Freckles said.

“I always walk around ten. It calms me before I go to sleep.” Gretel studied her fingernails. “Now, of course, I could be wrong.”

“Why would you say that?” Vivian leaned in, a forkful of coleslaw suspended between plate and mouth.

“Because I heard, at the time, Kristine was picking up her daughter from Tyanne Taylor’s house, and yet I felt so sure. I believe God wants me to feel sure.”

“Are you?” I asked.

“Yes, I am.” Gretel nodded with confidence. “I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles.”

CHAPTER 23

That night and the next morning, I left one message after another for Urso. The man was impossible to reach. At eleven A.M., he stomped into the shop. The grape-leaf-shaped chimes jingled merrily, but he wasn’t smiling. He stopped halfway across the floor, hands at his sides, right hand twitching by his holster as if he was ready for a gun-fight. Not with me, I hoped.

I asked Rebecca to tend to the three customers, and I hitched a finger at the rear door. “How about some sunshine out back, Chief?”

Urso nodded and lumbered up to the counter, a scowl etched into his forehead. I removed my apron, smoothed the front of my pleated blouse, and grabbed a bottle of Pellegrino from the cooler. I pushed open the door at the rear of the shop and Urso followed.

The fresh scent of morning filled the air and infused me with hope. We were going to get to the bottom of the mystery and free my grandmother.

“I’m so glad you got my message.” I handed him the bottle of sparkling water.

He screwed off the top and slugged down a couple of gulps. “I didn’t get any message.”

That surprised me. “Then why are you here? Did Luigi call you?”

“No. Why would he?”

“Gretel?”

“Nope.”

“Because . . .” I swallowed hard. “Why did you stop by?”

“You know why.”

My stomach turned to jelly. Felicia must have said something to him about my raid on her museum office after all. Rats. I steered Urso to the meditation bench at the far end of the garden. “Sit.”

“I’m happy standing.” He folded his arms across his massive chest and glowered at me.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “Felicia has every right to press charges. I never should have broken into her office and rifled through—”

“You did what?”

He didn’t know? Felicia hadn’t blabbed? My cheeks felt hotter than hot. “Well, doesn’t that beat all? Hoisted by my own petard.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

“A
petard
is an old French bomb, set against a castle wall to—”

“I know what a petard is,” he snapped. “What did you do?”

“Why are you here?” I countered.

“You first. Why did you break into Felicia’s office?”

“I thought that Felicia . . .” I zipped my mouth shut. It didn’t matter what I thought, I’d been wrong. “I made a mistake. She’s forgiven me.”

“Charlotte, if you don’t stop prying into others’ affairs, I’m going to lock you up. Better yet, I’ll remove your grandmother from her cushy house arrest and put her in the slammer. That’d serve you right.”

“As long as you throw me in with her.”

“Don’t be a smart aleck.” Urso gazed at me with hard eyes as he swigged more of the water and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Why are you here?” I demanded, angry that I’d given him Pellegrino water when I could have given him tap water for all the good he was doing to free Grandmère.

“Because your grandmother has a battalion of women parading around her yard with rally posters this morning, and they’re chanting. I told you—”

“She has the right to have friends over.”

“She’s under house arrest. Don’t you understand—?”

I put my hand on his arm. “U-ey, that’s not important.” “Don’t call me U-ey.”

“You’ve got to talk to Luigi Bozzuto.”

He flipped my hand away. “I don’t have to do anything of the kind.”

“He knows something that’s pertinent to the case.”

“Charlotte—”

“Ed Woodhouse met with a divorce attorney.”

“A divorce . . .” He blew a stream of air out his nose and growled, reminding me of a frustrated bear who couldn’t reach a hive of honey. “Why didn’t Luigi come forward?”

“Because he didn’t remember until yesterday. He saw the guy at church and it came back to him in a flash.”

“And he told you?”

“He came straight from church to Felicia’s museum party. You were with your family.” I paced in front of him and explained my theory about Kristine needing the status of being Mrs. Ed Woodhouse and her dream of a political future. “That’s motive, right? If Kristine knew Ed was getting a divorce, she’d have done everything in her power to stop him. And get this, Gretel Hildegard, the pastor’s wife? She saw someone who looked like Kristine digging in the hills that night. After ten o’clock. Kristine claimed she was picking up Willamina. She lied. What if she was out there burying her bloody dress and gloves?”

“Man, oh, man, oh, man.” Urso slumped onto the bench and set the Pellegrino bottle between his thighs. He squinted up at me.

Rebecca poked her head out the rear entrance. “ Charlotte—”

“Not now.” I remained focused on Urso. “Seeing Kristine out there casts doubt, right?”

“What casts doubt?” Rebecca hurried over and drilled me with her gaze.

I repeated what I had told Urso.

“Yeah, that’s motive.” Rebecca snapped her fingers. “I saw on
Law & Order
where this wife—”

“Now, Miss Zook—”

“Don’t ‘Miss Zook’ me, Chief. You call me Rebecca like everybody else.”

“Rebecca, let’s not—”

“Let’s not what, theorize? Find out the truth? Prove Grandmère is innocent?” She plopped onto the bench next to Urso and rapped him on the arm with her knuckle. “It’s your job, I repeat,
your job
to keep hunting until you have all the clues. Did you get evidence from the crime scene? Did you scour the financial records of your major suspects? Are you going out to that hill and look for a bloody dress and gloves? Well, are you? On an episode of
Law & Order
, this wife refused the divorce, and—”

“I saw the show. I know what happens.” Urso leaned back and let out a deep, throaty laugh.

“Don’t laugh at me.” Rebecca popped up like a firecracker and faced Urso, hands on her narrow hips.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh, it’s just. . . .” He swallowed back a chortle. “I will check into Kristine Woodhouse’s financial records and Ed’s meeting with the attorney and Gretel’s sighting, and I will do my best to pin down exactly what happened and when. Happy?”

“Ecstatic.” Rebecca gave a curt nod. “Oh, Charlotte, I almost forgot. I came out to find you. Matthew’s looking for you.”

Panic swept through me. “Why?”

“There’s been another altercation at school.”

Matthew and I raced into the school’s main office, a hectic place filled with children who had forgotten their lunches. A saintly receptionist advised us that Principal Yale was attending to the twins in the music room rather than her office. The principal doubled as the music teacher. Arts, thanks to special funds granted by the PTA, were an integral part of the Providence school system’s curriculum.

The sound of our footsteps echoed off the floors as we hurried down hall after colorfully decorated hall, veering toward the music room at the far end of the school.

A teacher standing by the door to the library said, “ Shhhhh.”

Inside, a group of students sat bent over their desks, each with a test in front of them, and I wondered if Amy had been caught cheating on an exam. The end of school was near.

We raced past another room and I heard, “Charlotte, Matt!”

I clutched Matthew’s arm and we backed up a pace. Meredith stood on a ladder, a cloud of dust billowing around her, a feather duster in her hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Penance for not telling you the truth about Matt and me.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“Just kidding. I’m taking every lunch hour to clean out our storage room of historical books. Seeing Felicia’s wonderful museum set me to thinking that perhaps, with a little display of our own, we could get more folks to fund our special projects.” She tucked a strand of hair under the red kerchief she’d tied around her head. “Why are you here?”

“Amy got into trouble,” Matthew said.

“Oh, no. Why didn’t Principal Yale tell me? I’m coming.” She scrambled down the ladder, brushed dust off her clothes, and pecked Matthew on the cheek. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Walking in rank, we pushed through a set of double doors and down the last hall. Sunlight slashed the big-paned windows on our left and made the area feel as warm and dry as a sauna. The sound of children playing scales, up and down, up and down, on more than one piano, and in varying octaves, came from inside the music room near the auditorium. I peeked through the windows in the door. The room was set up for a small orchestra, with metal chairs, music stands, and a conductor’s podium. Instruments were stowed neatly on shelves. A bass violin rested in a T-stand in the corner, with probably the same old apple box beside it that I’d had to stand on to play the “brown monster” when I was the twins’ age. Bass violins were a rare commodity in schools. Not only were they expensive, but they were hard to play. Always up for a challenge, I’d latched onto the “brown monster” with the passion of a virtuoso. I wondered who was playing it nowadays.

By the upright piano on the near wall of the room stood Principal Yale, a fortysomething woman and mother of five grown girls, who reminded me of Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, full-figured with a beaming goodness. She was advising the twins, who were perched on the bench playing scales on the piano keys. At another piano near a window with a view of the schoolyard sat Willamina and Tyanne Taylor’s son. They, too, were playing scales.

I pushed open the door and strode inside with Matthew and Meredith at my heels.

Principal Yale spun around and offered a tight smile. “So good to see you.”

The children stopped playing and peered at us over their shoulders. Clair offered a weak smile. Amy made a goofy face. Matthew looked at me, helplessness in his gaze.

“Meredith, good of you to join us,” Principal Yale went on.

“I didn’t know—” Meredith sputtered.

“A playground fracas. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“I’m their teacher.”

“You were so intent with your project, and I have been paying close attention to this matter, but now that you’re here, perfect. Why don’t we convene out in the hall?” Yale extended a hand to guide the way. “Children, keep up the good work, in sync with the metronome, please. Scales build strong fingers. Do the C scale three more times and then move on to ‘Pomp and Circumstance
.
’ Clair, you’re the leader. We want to sound good at graduation, don’t we?”

The children said, “Yes, Principal Yale,” and began again, their little thumbs stretching beneath their palms to make the transition upward.

Yale pushed through the door and led us to the far end of the hall near the entrance to the auditorium, where she had set up a semicircle of metal chairs. “Take a seat, please. Meredith, grab an extra chair, please.” Meredith obeyed. “We’ll have privacy here, I assure you.”

“What did Amy do this time?” Matthew said.

“Actually, it was Clair.”

“Clair?” Matthew, Meredith, and I said in unison as we sank into our chairs.

Yale remained standing. “She got into a fight with Willamina Woodhouse.”

“Oh, no,” we intoned like a Greek chorus.

“What I gather from the other children is that Willamina started ranting about the vote scheduled for tomorrow.” Yale folded her hands in front of her. “She marched around the playground and called to her friends to join in. When they didn’t, she chanted louder, saying her mother was going to win. Your little Clair . . .”

“She’s always so good,” Matthew whispered.

“Even the good ones lash out. It seems that Clair rushed Willamina, her fingers primed like claws.”

“Did you see her do it, ma’am?” Meredith asked.

“No. The other children . . . they’re quite descriptive with their words, as you well know.” Yale tried to stifle a smile but failed. “Anyway, my understanding is that Clair rushed Willamina, grabbed her hair, and tugged her to the ground.”

The three of us gasped.

A choppy rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” started up in the music room.

“They tussled. Amy tried to pull Clair off, but Clair in sisted that her grandmother was going to win the election. Willamina, bless her disagreeable soul, continued to oppose.” Yale checked her watch and looked down the empty hallway. “Politics can bring out the worst in people, don’t you think?”