CHAPTER 1
“Harbison!” Archie, my cheesemonger-in-training, called out in triumph.
“That’s the one,” I replied from the opposite side of our Dairy Days festival booth. Archie and I were holding the Curds & Whey sign in place, while my neighbor and best friend, Baz, hammered it into the front of the plywood booth. I was quizzing Archie on the themed grazing boxes we’d be selling at the three-day festival as we readied our cheese shop booth before Dairy Days began tomorrow. Harbison, the Best in Show winner at the American Cheese Society’s 2018 competition, was one of the cheeses we included in our All-American grazing box. “It’s a pocket-sized wheel and it’s wrapped in a pretty white and brown outer layer made of strips of spruce tree bark harvested from the woods of Jasper Hill Farm—”
“In Greensboro, Vermont,” he finished proudly. On the cusp of turning twenty-one, Archie was enthusiastic about almost everything, including learning about cheese.
I smiled, recalling how I’d soaked up as much knowledge as I could from my first mentor after I’d stumbled upon her cheese shop in France and begun working there during my semester abroad more than a decade ago. I’d come from a cheese background, having grown up on a dairy farm with a small creamery, but Archie’s first introduction to artisan cheese didn’t occur until last year when I’d hired him to work at my newly opened cheese shop. He deserved to feel proud.
“That’s why it tastes woodsy and sweet, with the hints of lemon and mustard balancing the earthy flavor,” I said. “The best part about it is that even without heating, it’s almost fondue-like. You just remove the top and dig into the creamy interior like a dip.” We’d also filled the box’s compartments with slices of another award winner, Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Wisconsin, and a third cheese, the velvety Appalachian from Virginia, as well as flatbread crackers. Slices of tart green apples would go in fresh tomorrow morning.
My other essential Curds & Whey crew member and friend, Mrs. Schultz—who was “smack dab” in her sixties, as she liked to say—stared at the booth from several feet away. Her head of curly blonde hair was slightly cocked to the side as she squinted at the sign’s placement. She stuck her hands just below the waist of her floral fit and flare dress and tapped the toe of one of her ballet flats. We’d been at it for more minutes than was probably necessary, but that’s what we got for asking a retired high school drama teacher to give us direction, even if it was just to ensure the sign was level.
“A little higher on your side, Willa,” she directed over the buzz of other vendors prepping their own festival booths.
The district-wide Dairy Days festival took place annually in Lockwood, the town adjacent to Yarrow Glen where my friends and I lived and where my shop was located. Dairy Days had grown over the past forty-nine years from a farmer’s market celebrating the local Sonoma Valley family dairy farms to a very popular festival with total attendance in the thousands. By tomorrow, the grounds would be teeming with festivalgoers flitting from booth to booth amid activities like butter churning contests, milking competitions (with fake udders, of course), and the popular cow parade. I could practically hear the giggles of children on the kiddie rides and smell the aroma of food truck offerings that would be wafting through the air.
I stood on my tiptoes to raise the sign, as I was quite a bit shorter than lanky Archie. “Is this enough?” I asked, straining to keep it in place.
Mrs. Schultz held her hands in front of either side of her face, as if framing the booth for a movie shot.
“It’s going to have to be,” Baz said, driving home the final nail.
“Perfect!” she declared.
The rest of us stepped back to look at it.
“That looks great,” I concurred. “Thanks, everybody. And thanks for making the sign at the last minute, Baz. I don’t know whatever happened to last year’s. You’re a lifesaver.”
“Sometimes literally,” he said, raising his eyebrows so they hid behind his overgrown brownish-blond bangs.
He was referring to a scary situation I’d gotten into while we were investigating the death of an old friend of mine last spring. Team Cheese, the name we’d given our motley group whenever we had a mystery to solve, comprised the four of us—Baz, Archie, Mrs. Schultz, and me. We’d gotten involved in police investigations a time or two … or four. It happened more often than one would think—enough for us to give our sleuthing group a name.
“That’s true,” I replied. “And since you’re bringing it up again, I’m guessing you’re getting low on cheese curds?”
He grabbed his toolbox from the ground and exchanged the hammer for a mostly eaten snack bag of curds. “My last one.”
I chuckled. “I got you covered.”
Baz and I started most mornings chatting over coffee on our adjoining decks before work and plenty of evenings grabbing dinner together at our local pub. I knew him well enough to know when free cheese curds were his motive.
“We should get to the stage. It’s fifteen minutes until the first dress rehearsal,” Archie said, checking his phone for the time.
The Labor Day weekend festival culminated in the Miss Dairy pageant Monday afternoon and, spurred on by Mrs. Schultz, Archie had volunteered to be one of the dancers in the opening number.
“Is it that late? That means Beatrice must be there by now. We’d better go,” Mrs. Schultz said, putting a pep in our step. Beatrice was a fellow shop owner originally from Lockwood, who continued her role as head of wardrobe for the Miss Dairy pageant. Mrs. Schultz had been volunteering as her wardrobe assistant for the pageant ever since Beatrice had moved to Yarrow Glen to open her thrift shop five years ago.
The sun was slowly creeping near the distant mountains that surrounded the valley, adding a shimmery kiss to the leaves that had already turned golden. I rubbed my arms, wishing I’d thought to bring something to wear over my T-shirt, which read “I can’t help it, I’m too fondue of cheese.” It was easy to forget how quickly it cooled down late in the day this time of year.
“We better take my truck. I’ve got work to do there too. I heard Nadine’s not happy with the ramp they put in to access the stage after she broke her foot,” Baz said.
“Nadine, the pageant director?” I asked as we walked to the vendor lot. I recalled Archie and Mrs. Schultz mentioning her name a few times in recent weeks.
Mrs. Schultz nodded. “She had a bad fall last week, but she’s soldiering on with a cast. Nothing’s going to keep her from directing the pageant. She runs the historical society museum, but she’s been directing the pageant for over twenty-five years.”
Archie and I rode in the cramped back seat of the extended cab pickup. Even though Archie’s knees almost came up to his chin, he insisted Mrs. Schultz ride shotgun, as he’d done on the way to the festival grounds earlier.
Within minutes of leaving the vendor’s gate, Baz was pulling into the visitor’s lot for the Lockwood Historical Society Museum. Instead of parking in one of the handful of spaces, he continued onto the unpaved path, past the carriage house that served as the Lockwood chief of police’s temporary headquarters during Dairy Days. A little farther along, we bumped past the museum’s 1800s Queen Anne–style ranch house, which sat by itself, separated from the festival grounds by a tall row of cypress trees. Beyond the trees, a line of red plastic fencing indicated the border of the festival grounds where cars were parked in uneven rows.
We easily spotted Beatrice’s bright purple van stenciled with the name of her shop, Bea’s Hive of Thrifted Finds, across the side. Baz parked on an available patch of grass.
He went to the bed of the pickup to retrieve his toolbox, and Archie, Mrs. Schultz, and I walked toward the van. There was a buzz of activity on the other side of the plastic fence where at least two dozen teenage girls and their mothers chattered near a large canvas tent.
Beatrice appeared from the other side of the van and opened her arms in greeting when she saw us approach. “Hello, my helpers!”
Talk about being on brand—I always saw her dressed in clothes that were either vintage or made to appear vintage with accoutrements she’d sew on herself. I was told she’d dressed like that long before she had her thrift shop, as she was an excellent seamstress. Today she wore a cotton patchwork wide-legged jumpsuit in shades of blue. Her blue-framed glasses hung around her neck from a bejeweled chain. Her long silver hair was pulled back on either side with blue gemstone combs and left to flow down to the middle of her back. I could totally imagine her as a Woodstock-attending, peace-and-love hippie teenager of the early seventies. Although now it might be peace, love, and gossip—Beatrice liked to know what was going on with others.
“This is quite the setup,” I commented, admiring the ten-by-ten canvas-wall tent, which had been erected behind a large, partially covered stage away from the main festival hub of booths, rides, and games. Since this was only my second Dairy Days festival, I’d never been to this area of the grounds. I expected the stage to look more like the small platform where I’d seen different local bands play at last year’s festival. This looked like professional stuff.
“It’s all Nadine’s doing. Ever since she got Spotted Cow Dairy to sponsor the fifteen-thousand-dollar college scholarship for the Miss Dairy winner, she’s leveraged it into beefing up the pageant, like securing money for the tent rental for wardrobe changes for the girls and getting big-name guest judges,” Mrs. Schultz replied.
I was really excited to see one of those big names—Food Network’s Nancy Fuller was slated to be the pageant’s guest judge this year. I was a big fan of hers and secretly hoped to get to meet her at the pageant on Monday.
“The Miss Dairy pageant might not be Miss America, but nobody better tell that to Nadine,” Beatrice added with a wink. She turned to Archie. “Thanks for assisting us old broads with the costumes.”
“Speak for yourself, Beatrice,” Mrs. Schultz said, half joking. By my estimation, Beatrice was probably only a few years older than Mrs. Schultz.
As soon as Beatrice slid open the side door of the van, the group of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls, along with their mothers, funneled through the fence’s opening and descended upon us. Archie hightailed it away from the oncoming mob of women.
“Girls! Girls!” I heard the voice before I attached who it belonged to. A thin, middle-aged woman in a long denim skirt and plain T-shirt whirred over in a three-wheeled electric mobility scooter. Her right lower leg, including her foot, was encased in a plastic orthopedic boot, with only her toes peeking out. The cumbersome boot extended over one side of the rust-colored scooter. She wore a thick copper-colored headband similar to the shade of her thatch of hair. It was Nadine. “Everyone, away from the van!” she called out.
I didn’t think she meant me, but her command was enough to make me step away too. I waited by the fence with Archie and Baz, who’d also stayed out of the fray.
“Girls, wait for the clothes to go on the racks,” she yelled as she headed toward us at an alarming speed. With one hand holding a large zipper binder and the other on one of the handlebars, she stopped the scooter abruptly behind the plastic fencing, causing her upper body to jostle forward from its seat. She scowled at the scooter before turning her attention to Beatrice, who’d also extracted herself from the commotion. “There are empty wardrobe racks set up beside the tent. Did you label the clothes?” Nadine asked.
“Of course. I think I know the drill after sixteen pageants,” Beatrice replied.
“When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, then you can be snarky.” Nadine turned her attention back to the clamor by the van. “Girls! Hands off!”
This time the contestants backed away from the van, although their mothers were still reaching inside, pawing through the costumes.
One mother, whose blonde feathered hair framed her face in layers, marched away from the van in a huff and approached Nadine. She wore a cute sundress and wedge sandals and reminded me of Beach House Barbie.
“Nadine, my Annabelle shouldn’t have to wear the oldest dairy dress just because she’s statuesque. It’s going to reflect poorly on her,” the woman, obviously Annabelle’s mother, said.
Nadine sighed. “We discussed this the other day at Beatrice’s. It’s the only one that fits her, and they only wear the dresses for the opening number. She’ll change into her own clothes before the judging begins.”
“First impressions count, Nadine!” she bit back before stomping away toward the tent.
Nadine didn’t seem to give it a second thought, as her voice projected again. “Beatrice! Are those costumes out of the van yet?”
“We could use some help,” Beatrice called.
“Stagehands! Help with the costumes!” Then in a lowered voice, “You people are useless anyway. That ramp is entirely too steep.”
Baz crumpled his now empty bag of cheese curds and tossed it in a trash bin before ambling over to Nadine with a toolbox and a grin. “That’s why I’m here.”
She looked him up and down. “You were helping a few weeks ago, weren’t you? What’s your name again?” She squinted at him as if it might appear on his forehead.
Copyright © 2024 by Korina Moss.
