Page 3 of Why Cheese?
He never married, never showed signs of caring about anything other than his cheese shop. That made the rest of the family suspicious like they expected to find bodies in his basement. Ha. Uncle Mateo was Santa Claus if jolly old Saint Nick left cheese in your stockings instead of toys or coal.
A hearty smile, earth-quaking laugh, and…four ridiculously hot men beside him. I jerk so hard in place, it wrenches my neck. Gasping from the pain, I stare at a black-and-sepia-toned picture on the wall of memories. Dead center is my great uncle with a huge mustache and sideburns. Even with my not having seen him in twenty years, he’s so young-looking I have to check again. He’s standing by the back wall of his cheese shop. Nothing much has changed since whenever that was taken. Even the signs about the cheese varieties are the same.
Around him stand four men I’ve never seen before. Leaning on Mateo and waving to the camera is a man with light hair. His hard, chiseled body, lantern jaw, thin lips, and gnarled nose bridge all point to a dangerous man, but his eyes crinkle so deep with laughter he has to have smiled every minute of the day to form them.
Beside him stands another man with a finger curled up beside his mouth. He is the complete opposite. Instead of pale hair, his is black as night and down to his shoulders with a soft curl to the ends. Everything about him is sharp from his chin, to his long nose, to his dark, mysterious eyes. His lips are lifted as if he’s hiding a secret. Just staring into the flat, faded picture of his eyes causes my toes to curl.
Slightly to the back and right of my uncle is a man who doesn’t look at the camera. His face is obscured by dirty pale hair, at a guess either honey blond or copper brown. It’s a startled scarecrow mop, but the fringes frame around a startling eye so pale in the picture that it almost looks white. I can’t make out much of his body as he’s hiding behind not only my uncle but the final man in the photo.
There’s no missing him. I remember my uncle towering above me, but he dwarfs Mateo by a good foot. He has his hands behind his back, his gaze slightly above the camera. Steel is all I can think of. I swear, even his hair in this black-and-white picture looks like it’s made of metal. His height masks his width, which is nearly double that of the shy blond man. A pair of old, oval glasses perch on his wide nose, but they do little to disguise the leg-trembling stare below them.
Well, whoever they are they’re either dead like my uncle or gray-haired old men. Though, something tells me Steel-eyes would be Christopher Plummer hot in his old age. Shaking off the thought, I move to return to the picture back to the wall.
“Wait.”
I focus on it again. There’s the wall, the old sign my uncle got from a dairy built in the eighteen hundreds, the shelves advertising discount cheeses. But what’s that gap in the floor?
Lifting the picture, I try to compare it with reality. Over the mystery gap from some fifty or so years ago now stands a crate with a display for free samples. Curious, I tuck the picture into my purse, then push on the crate.
“This is silly. There’s nothing here. I’m just… Oh my god.”
The last inch of the crate slides off of a metal door built into the floor. I peer at the latch, half expecting to find it padlocked, but it’s open.
So my uncle had a secret cellar in his cheese shop. People have those. For wine reasons? And not just to hide bodies he might have chopped up in his spare time.
I peer back outside like I expect an FBI detective to come running in screaming that I’ve solved the case. Laughing at my runaway imagination, I move to touch the latch. What about fingerprints?
Slipping my hand around the trash bag, I use that to yank the lid open. The door flies up and over as if it’s been used. A lot. Not creepy at all.
Using my phone as a flashlight, I make my way down a metal ladder. My steps clang and an echo answers them. I can’t see much beyond the brick wall as I hug tight to the ladder. When my foot hits the floor, I turn.
“Wow…”
This can’t be good. Massive vats of wood, like cups for giants, take up most of the room. On one side are trough sinks with a long line of hooks above them. A piece of flimsy white cloth dangles off of one of the hooks. Two cabinets that stand on either side could hold tools. Or worse.
“It’s not a murder basement,” I keep repeating to myself.
In all of this though, the strangest is a mysterious chest sitting dead center on a table before the vats. I ease closer, listening for any voice or cries for help.Silly, my uncle’s been dead for months. If anyone was down here…
Why am I so morbid?
No blood stains, so that’s good.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I put down my flashlight and reach for the chest’s lid. It won’t budge.
Inspecting closer, I find a lock more like what I expected on the door itself. So the basement isn’t worth locking up but this is. Cool. Cool.
I’m so gonna lose a kidney.
No. I can do this. And think of what a secret basement will do for the listing. It’ll double the square footage.
Bracing myself, I begin to dig through the jangling mess of keys. I flip through each one, finding none that will fit until I come across the last and weirdest. It looks like an old skeleton key from a haunted house but with a mysterious C at the top.
Either this will work or I have to break the chest open with a hammer. The strange key slips into the lock and turns. I laugh, shaking at the echo down the corridor. With trembling nerves, I lift the lid a teeny tiny millimeter and peek inside.
Confused, I lift the lid again, then I toss it back. Grabbing my phone, I beam the light on four cheeses sitting inside the chest. They’re carefully laid on top of each other with a flour towel between each layer.
One by one, I lift them out. The first is obviously a cheddar, white and as hard as the brick it's shaped like. I’m tempted to take a sniff of the aged cheese but set it down. After that are two softer cheeses with rinds, though one is thicker and heartier than the other. The last one catches me off guard.
