Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The wine and cheese shop was dim and cool, the kind of place that smelled like cork and aged wood and took itself very seriously.
Bottles lined every wall from floor to ceiling, each one labeled with a handwritten card in script so ornate it was essentially decorative.
A small chalkboard near the door listed the week’s featured selections with descriptions like brooding finish and notes of twigs and dried violet, which Lexy read twice and still couldn’t tell if it was a selling point.
Ida stopped just inside the door, looked left, looked right, and located the gourmet shelf in the back with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had done reconnaissance.
“I’ll just be over here,” she said.
“Ida, we’re not here to shop,” Ruth said.
“I know that.” Ida was already moving. “I’m multitasking.”
Darlene Harrington emerged from the back room hauling a carton of wine, and she did it the way people do things they’ve done ten thousand times — efficiently, without drama, and with the upper body strength of someone who didn’t need anyone’s help.
She set the carton down, straightened, and looked at five women standing in her shop on a Saturday afternoon.
Her expression did not say welcome.
“Help you?” she said.
She was older than June, wiry and sharp-featured, with the kind of eyes that moved fast and missed nothing. She had June’s cheekbones and none of June’s warmth, which made her look like a slightly more suspicious version of the same basic design.
“Darlene.” Nans smiled the smile. “We heard you know the Mercer house well.”
Darlene picked up a bottle from the carton, checked the label, and slotted it onto the shelf without looking at Nans. “Of course, generations of my family lived there.”
“The porcelain cat,” Lexy said. “The one from June’s sale this morning. Did you know anything about it?”
Another bottle. “Never heard anything about a cat.” She had the rhythm of someone keeping her hands busy on purpose.
“Haven’t been up in that attic since I was a teenager.
June and Margo and I used to go up there and dance to records.
” She said it with the tone of someone presenting an alibi that happened to also be a memory.
From the gourmet shelf came the soft sound of a wicker basket being lifted. Then set down. Then lifted again.
“June mentioned you have a habit of looking for things in that house,” Nans said pleasantly. “Drawers, closets. The basement once, apparently.”
Darlene’s hands stilled on a bottle of Cabernet for just a beat. Just one. Then she slotted it home and reached for the next one.
“Families say all kinds of nonsense when they don’t understand a person’s habits,” she said. “I like order. That was my grandparents house. Doesn’t mean I was looking for something.”
Ruth, standing slightly to the side with her iPad held loosely at her hip, said nothing. But her eyes moved — once, quick — to Nans.
“What would you even be looking for?” Lexy asked.
Darlene smiled. It was a tight, practiced smile, the kind built specifically for questions it had no intention of answering. “I told you. Nothing. Just looking around is all.”
A small silence settled over the shop, the kind filled with the soft clinking of bottles and the distant sound of Ida doing something at the gourmet shelf that involved very careful deliberation.
Helen, who had been examining a handwritten wine card with polite interest, looked up. “It must be a nice memory though. The three of you up in that attic. June, you, and Margo.”
Something moved across Darlene’s face — there and gone, too fast to name. “Long time ago,” she said.
“People don’t always forget the things they found in old attics,” Helen said, gently, to no one in particular.
Darlene picked up the now-empty carton and crushed it flat against her knee in one clean motion. “I need to get the next case,” she said, and went back through the storeroom door.
Ida materialized at the counter. She set down three cheeses fanned out like a hand of cards, two kinds of crackers stacked beside them with architectural precision, and then placed a small jar at the front with particular ceremony.
“Fig jam,” she said. “For the investigation.”
Everyone looked at the jar.
“How is fig jam for the investigation?” Ruth asked.
“It creates a relaxed atmosphere,” Ida said. “People talk more when there’s a nice cheese board.”
“There isn’t going to be a cheese board.”
“There could be.”
Darlene came back through the door with another carton, took one look at the counter, and set it down with more force than strictly necessary. “Will that be all?”
“Yes, thank you,” Nans said warmly. “You’ve been very helpful.”
Darlene’s expression suggested she very much doubted that.
Outside, the afternoon air was sharp after the cool of the shop. Ida had the crackers open before they reached the corner, working the packaging with the focused efficiency of someone who had been patient long enough.
Ruth waited until they were halfway down the block. “Did you see that?” she said. “She hauled two cartons of cabernet like they were grocery bags. Crushed a cardboard box with her knee without blinking.”
“I noticed,” Nans said.
“She’s got the upper body strength to crack a skull.”
“She was nervous,” Ida said, getting the first cracker to her mouth at last. She chewed. Nodded. “These are good.”
“She did seem nervous,” Nans agreed.
They walked in silence for a moment, the kind that settles when everyone is thinking the same thing and waiting to see who says it first.
Ida reached into the bag for the triple cream brie and examined it with the seriousness it deserved. “If she’s innocent,” she said, “I’ll eat this entire brie by myself.”
Ruth looked at her. “You were going to do that anyway.”
Ida considered this. “That’s fair,” she said, and started looking in her purse for something to spread it with.