The Long Quiche Goodbye by Avery Aames

saw her flirting with Mr. Woodhouse. She was twirling her hair around her finger.” Rebecca demonstrated. “What if he dumped her and she flew into a rage?”
    I suppressed a smile. My young protégé was becoming entirely too enraptured with the investigative process.
    “C’mon, Charlotte.” Rebecca prodded me again. “You know you are more than capable of cracking this case. Just think.”
    “I wouldn’t do that.” Jordan slipped into the huddle, a gold Fromagerie Bessette bag tucked under his arm. He plopped a sample of Molinari Toscano Picante salami into his mouth and chewed.
    “Do what? Think?” I pulled innocently on the hair cupping the nape of my neck, caught myself doing it, and whipped my hand to my side. I was nothing like Felicia Hassleton. Girlish machinations were not my style.
    “Investigate,” Jordan said. “Chief Urso is a good man. He’ll get to the bottom of things.”
    “I know that.”
    “Isn’t Mr. Lincoln doing his job?” Jordan asked.
    Mr. Lincoln, our attorney, was as gaunt and as tall as the historic president, and about as stoic.
    “I heard he visited your grandmother today,” Jordan said.
    Mr. Lincoln had shown up at the house at the end of my picnic with Grandmère. He had brought Grandmère a selection of magazines to help her through the confinement.
    Vivian said, “Doing one’s job and being a kind neighbor isn’t always good enough, Jordan, and you know it. Sometimes it takes extraordinary circumstances to make a person do extraordinary things.”
    Her words held an undercurrent of meaning that I couldn’t decipher, and I realized that I didn’t know beans about Jordan Pace. I cocked my head. What was his story? Did he have skeletons in a closet? Did Vivian know something I didn’t? He wasn’t homegrown. He had moved to Providence from California about three years ago with little luggage and no job. Within months, he had established his thriving Pace Hill Farm. Tongues had wagged, but that hadn’t stopped a number of eligible ladies from dating him, all of whom were married now. Their husbands teased that Jordan was a little slow on making decisions in matters of the heart. I was willing to be patient, to a point.
    Jordan faced me and riveted me with his gaze. “If your grandmother is innocent, there is nothing to worry about.”
    “If?” I asked, my tone sharp, his doubt ricocheting me out of Dreamland and back to the present. “If? Of course, she’s innocent. She said she didn’t do this. I believe her.”
    “I believe her, too,” Rebecca said.
    A muscle ticked in Jordan’s jaw. My guess was he didn’t like women ganging up on him. What man did? He said, “Talk is that she and Ed argued that night about him evicting you from the premises.”
    Rebecca turned pale. Her bravado withered.
    Vivian’s didn’t. She squared her shoulders and glowered at Jordan. “Talk is cheap, and Ed didn’t evict them or anybody else.”
    “That’s because he’s dead,” Jordan said.
    We all went silent.
    Jordan shifted his feet, probably realizing he had overstepped his bounds. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. Just—” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go. Tread softly, okay?”
    Tread softly? What the heck did that mean? Did he think I would go around town like Annie Oakley, wielding a rifle and demanding answers?
    With an aching heart, I watched him leave the shop, wishing we could return to life before the murder—minutes before, when Jordan had looked ready to ask me out. His interest in me had obviously fizzled. Why? Because I was the granddaughter of a murder suspect? Or was it something else?
    To put the quarrel from my mind, I finished up Vivian’s order, bid her goodbye, then set about straightening the shop’s various displays. More than half of our supply of homemade basil pesto had sold. I would have to make another batch.
    Matthew strode up, his apron a mess of oily fingerprints. We laundered them daily to keep them looking fresh. “Charlotte,