A Deadly Grind (7 page)

“I remember your nursing days,” Jaymie said, heartened by DeeDee’s no-nonsense company. “But I would never have assumed it meant you could face this.”

“No sweat.”

DeeDee and Becca had known each other for years, since high school at Wolverhampton High, but it was only in recent years that DeeDee had become Jaymie’s friend, too. In the past their fifteen-year age difference had meant they had little in common, but lately, their mutual love of “old stuff” had helped cement the bond of familiarity into friendship.

“Not much difference between a crime scene and a fight between siblings,” Dee said, with a chuckle. “When I quit working and started popping out babies, I thought my days of scrubbing blood were over, but having five kids just means the blood oozes out of someone you love.” She knocked the nailed board off the back door with one well-placed kick, and got down to business. First, she held up the bloody tea towel. “Do you want to rescue this, honey? Wash it?”

Jaymie shuddered. “No. Trash it.”

Dee then pulled up the bloodstained mat, tossed it into the garbage bag she had brought with her and vigorously scoured the blood spatter from the door. Then she got down on her hands and knees to clean, her wide bottom moving in rhythm as she scrubbed, first the door and legs of the Hoosier, and parts of the wall, then moved down to the floor. It looked like the shiny gray paint that coated the board floor had resisted any of the blood soaking in. That was a relief.

Jaymie stood and stared for a moment, then got her broom and started rescuing those cups and saucers that were intact, sweeping up the rest of the chips and chunks. They were silent for a long while, scrubbing and sweeping, but finally Jaymie needed to move her mind away from grimness and blood. She was tired to the bone, but wouldn’t give in to her weariness. “DeeDee, why didn’t anyone on the committee tell me Heidi was going to be playing a part in the Tea with the Queen?”

“Yikes!” DeeDee sat back on her haunches and cast a rueful look up at Jaymie. “We didn’t know how, hon. Heidi comes along—she’s not such a bad kid, really—and she offers to donate a big whack of money if we let her play a part. Greed overcame good sense; I wasn’t at the meeting, nor were you, apparently. I think you were up in Canada visiting your Grandma Leighton. Later I raised hell. I thought there must be a reason why Heidi was at one of the only meetings of the year you weren’t at, but the others said no, it was just chance. Then I said, we’ve never done anything like that before, let someone pay their way onto the committee or the tea. Bad precedent.”

“I didn’t ask why you all
let
her, I asked why no one told me.”

DeeDee began scrubbing again. She carefully disposed of the cleaning cloths and soiled paper towels in the garbage bag. She had already explained that they would be taken to the hospital; it was vital that they be disposed of correctly by someone experienced in handling bio-waste.

“No one would volunteer to hurt your feelings, hon,” DeeDee said. “We were going to get Becca to do it—God knows she doesn’t have trouble hurting anyone’s feelings—but she never came to town, and it wasn’t the kind of thing we wanted to do over the phone.”

She had to stop mooning around Queensville, Jaymie decided, because if people thought she still carried a torch for Joel six months after he’d dumped her, she was risking looking like an idiot. She swept the shards of china up and disposed of them, then knelt down by the cookbooks. As she stacked them back in the box, one in particular stood out; it was a small vintage book, grease-stained, with a line drawing on it of a church. “The Johnsonville United Church Ladies’ Auxiliary—1953. That’s interesting,” she said. She plunked her butt down on the wide board floor of the summer porch, trying to ignore what DeeDee was doing, and leafed through it. One recipe jumped out at her. Queen Elizabeth cake. Hmmm. She held it up to show DeeDee, and said, “This must have been made to honor Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.”

DeeDee bent forward and stared at the recipe. “Maybe, but my grandmother swears that recipe was around during World War II; says it was a favorite of the Queen Mum, and that’s why it was called Queen Elizabeth cake.”

“Oh, right! I forgot her name was Queen Elizabeth, too. I’m going to try this recipe for the tea tomorrow,” Jaymie said, beginning to feel better just focusing on something other than the dead body. “If I ever get this stuff cleared up, that is.”

“Who do you think he is . . . was, the dead man, I mean?” DeeDee asked. “Hoosier dead guy?” she said, laughing. She wrung red water into the pail from her cloth.

Jaymie looked away, queasy, but tried to smile at DeeDee’s joke. “I don’t have a clue. Why did he break into our house, of all places, with all the houses that are empty and loaded with expensive stuff? I don’t get it.”

“Maybe he wasn’t the robber,” DeeDee said. “Maybe he saw or heard something, came up to investigate, caught someone
else
in the act and got whacked.”

“At our back door?” Jaymie considered it, but shook her head. “He’d have to come through the gate and down the path and up to the house, and he’d have had to be walking down the back lane to see anything going on. Unlikely at three or four a.m.”

The whole thing was unlikely, though. Who was he, and what had he wanted? And why had he lifted all the boxes off the Hoosier? She glanced over, and her eye was caught by the box of sewing stuff; she remembered the random conversation she’d overheard at the auction about the valuable button. When she bid on the sewing stuff, it was really to see who else would be bidding on the box, hoping she’d see who was after a valuable button, but she’d gotten the whole box for fifteen bucks.

Surely someone wouldn’t have followed her home for
that
? She’d never been broken into until the night she brought stuff home from the auction, though. It was something to consider. She packed the cookbooks into the box, piled the sewing box on top of it, and piled them on the Hoosier. She was going to take it all up to her room to sort, at some point, but not until after the tea.

Even as she made plans and tried to forget the awfulness of the last several hours, the problem still plagued her: who
was
the dead guy by the Hoosier?

Five

D
EEDEE AND JAYMIE finished up the cleaning, working together on the fingerprint dust with dish detergent and cloths, which seemed to cut through it and remove it well, even off the Hoosier, which, it seemed, had been dusted more than anything else. The kitchen and summer porch finally had no visual or olfactory reminders of the terrible death that had taken place during the night. Instead, it smelled of bleach, pine cleaner and window spray, overlaid with the fresh spring air that poured through the open door. Her older friend snapped a lid on the bucket of blood-tinged water, tossed the rubber gloves in the red garbage bag, and said she would take care of them both; she still had connections at the Wolverhampton General Hospital, and they could properly dispose of the bio-waste. She hugged Jaymie tight, told her to take it easy and try not to think of what happened too much, and then trotted away to her car, parked out front.

Jaymie went back through the house and stood staring out over the backyard as Hoppy sniffed around the perimeter, along the line of holly bushes and down to the forsythia. Did he smell the victim’s and the murderer’s scents? She had heard somewhere that a dog’s sense of smell was a hundred thousand times better than a human’s; what would that be like, being able to scent out the villain? So much information that no human could access.

A breeze raised goose bumps on her bare arms, and she shivered. Somewhere out there was a murderer, a cold-blooded killer who had not hesitated to dispatch another human life, extinguishing it like it was a candle to be snuffed. It was a horrible end for the unknown man, whoever he was. But the freshening breeze reminded her that she needed to get on with things, among them, fixing the broken back door. She’d make a call to Bill Waterman, their local handyman.

But first, she wanted to make sure there were no shards of glass or china to get stuck in little paws. She got the broom and swept the whole long porch, edging past the wicker furniture on one side, just past the Hoosier: dust balls, some shards of bone china, random pieces of dried plant material, and a triangular corner of some piece of paper were all she swept up. She bent over to look at the triangle of paper, then picked it up. It had typed print on it; it looked like it had been torn from something, a receipt, maybe, or perhaps it had fluttered out of the box of cookbooks when they’d been dumped, so she stuck it in her jeans pocket to look at later, then dumped the rest of the stuff in the trash.

“Hoppy, come on in, fella,” she said, clicking her tongue. He turned and stared back at her, but with a puzzled look in his eyes. She never denied him time in the yard. Denver prowled up behind Jaymie and stood with her, looking out over the yard, a long rectangle rimmed with a battered wooden fence, old forsythia bushes and the line of holly bushes Jaymie had planted just the month before. She loved her backyard. It was an oasis of calm, an untidy strike at a world enamored of right angles and hard lines. The frayed edge of her lawn, where it tattered along the wrought-iron fence and hard-packed dirt of the back lane, was perfect in its imperfection.

This was her home, and it made her sick to the pit of her stomach that someone had died right near where she stood. She looked over her shoulder at the Hoosier, with the boxes now tidily loaded back on top of it. After the night she’d had, she was exhausted, but she wasn’t going to sleep yet. Instead, she would find refuge in the warmth and comfort of her kitchen, and the recipe for Queen Elizabeth cake she had found in the old cookbook. If it worked out, it would be part of the Tea with the Queen fundraiser the next day. More importantly, maybe cooking, her familiar work, would erase the horrible scene that was imprinted on her home like a pheromone scent.

But to bake, she needed to shop. With a list of ingredients in her shoulder bag, Jaymie set out, Hoppy tugging her along, bobbing on the end of the leash with his bouncy gait. The only thing better than the backyard for the lionhearted, three-legged little Yorkie-Poo was a walk. First stop, Anna and Clive’s bed-and-breakfast, the Shady Rest.

She strode up the short walk to the Queen Anne–style home that had been converted to a bed-and-breakfast ten years before. Clive and Anna were the third set of owners since the conversion. “I’m going to the Emporium. Can I pick you up anything?” she asked as Anna opened the door to her brisk knock.

Tabby was on Anna’s hip, as usual. “Jaymie, you are a lifesaver!” she said, glancing over her shoulder as the phone began to ring. “After that awful night and his long drive, Clive’s sleeping. The house is a mess, and I haven’t even started cleaning the room for today’s arrival! Wait a sec while I answer that and get my list.” She thrust Tabby into Jaymie’s arms and dashed back into the house, leaving the door open.

Jaymie bobbed Tabby on her hip while the baby cooed and laughed at Hoppy’s antics. The little dog was running in circles, then, loose for the moment, dashed into the house trailing his leash. He sniffed around the base of the stairs, yipping excitedly and looked up at Jaymie. “What on earth are you on about?” she asked.

Anna came back to the door and reclaimed her child, handing Jaymie a list in exchange. She leaned forward and said, in an undertone, “Could you pick up something at the pharmacy, too? I wouldn’t ask, but I can’t get away right now, and if I don’t get it, we may have an unexpected bundle of joy in nine months’ time!”

Jaymie laughed. “I can pick that little item up for you, though if not getting it resulted in another one of these,” she said, chucking Tabby under the chin, “it wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”

“Not just yet,” Anna said, with a harried laugh, “not until we get this place settled a little more.”

“It’s the least I can do after standing you up this morning; I was supposed to help with breakfast. I haven’t forgotten!”

“You were slightly distracted,” Anna replied.

Jaymie set off with Hoppy leashed again, and only then looked at the list. “Wow. I didn’t know she needed so much stuff!”

The walk was short, but it kept her mind from wandering to the dark night and the dead body. She mounted the creaky porch of Queensville’s general store, a place that stocked a weird assortment of everything from batteries to beach balls to baklava. She put Hoppy in the “puppy pen” that the Klausners, the elderly Queensville Emporium owners, provided on the side porch of the store (fresh water and companionship for Hoppy, who immediately met one of his closest pals and rivals, Junk Junior, a bichon mix with no snooty attitude), and then entered. It had been a general store since the mid–eighteen hundreds, so the floors creaked and groaned like an elderly aunt settling down into a too-
comfortable chair. There were always folks inside, though some were not buying but “chatting” with Mrs. Klausner—gossiping—and if you needed the local news, this was the place to stop.

She was greeted by name, and though curious stares followed her past the register, nobody said a word about the murder. They probably already knew as much as Jaymie did, and perhaps more. Along the back wall there was a pharmacy, a postal outlet and a Sears catalogue depot, all manned by one person, Valetta Nibley, a sour-faced spinster of an astonishingly sweet disposition. Jaymie took a spot behind Valetta’s one customer, a tall gentleman who was explaining that he couldn’t possibly sleep without his pills, but had run out, or hadn’t brought enough from home.

“I thought I brought enough with me, but I seem to have misjudged my needs.” He pushed an empty prescription bottle across the counter to her. “It’s very strange. I don’t think I’ve lost any, but they are gone, nonetheless.”

“Certainly, Mr. Foster,” Valetta, a registered pharmacist, said, writing down his doctor’s name as he spelled it out. “I’ll phone his office about your prescription, and he can fax the okay to me. We do this all the time for visitors.”

He said he’d be back later, and ambled off down the aisle. Jaymie recognized him; when she had last seen him, he and an equally tall and stately-looking lady were at the auction.

“Jaymie, how are you? Are you okay? I was going to call, but then I figured every other person in town had already called you, and you’d need a rest.” Valetta glanced around and then leaned out the little window. “Are you and Becca all right staying there? You can come bunk in with me, if you don’t mind sharing a double bed in the guest room.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I think we’re going to be okay. Whatever the thief wanted, he’s dead now.”

“Yeah, but someone killed him.
In your house
. Aren’t you scared to death?”

Jaymie shrugged. She was terrified, but she was not going to admit it. Folks were already feeling sorry for her—she was really going to have to address her prolonged mourning for her love life—and she was not going to give them more reasons to tiptoe around her. “It’ll be okay. The cops are going to be watching the house for a while.”

A customer edged closer, probably to listen in on their conversation. Valetta said, “What can I do for you?”

Jaymie quietly explained what she needed to pick up for Anna Jones, and Valetta promised the prescription would be waiting for her when she was done with her shopping, but as Jaymie turned to retrieve one of the tiny shopping carts reserved for serious customers, the woman added, in her normal voice, “Folks are saying that the fella who was murdered was looking to hide drugs in your place. That true?”

“Wow,” Jaymie said, turning back to her. “Wherever you got that from, the person is badly misinformed. Who told you that?”

The woman squinted and cocked her head to one side. “Can’t remember. It was before the woman who told me the guy was an international terrorist, but after the one who said he was trying to sneak in to steal your panties.”

Jaymie felt the heat flush her face. “I’d be grateful if you’d tell anyone who speculates that no one knows who the guy is, why he broke into my house, or who killed him. And he didn’t make it past my summer porch!”

“Yeah, well, I knew he wasn’t the panty thief, ’cause I know who that is, and he doesn’t break into houses. He only steals panties left on clotheslines to dry.”

Jaymie bit her lip to keep from laughing, the incongruity of Valetta Nibley talking so matter-of-factly about a panty thief was too funny. “And you’ve never turned him in?”

“The police know too, but you’d have to catch him in the act, or with the stolen goods, and he
wears
the stolen panties, then tosses them out.” She wrinkled her nose. “Yuk.”

“I think I have too much information now,” Jaymie said.

There was a twinkle in Valetta’s gray eyes that indicated she
might
be joking, but one never knew with the woman. “I’ll holler when I’ve got the item you need,” Valetta said, winking at her and turning away.

She was a good friend, Jaymie thought, as she collected the dates and cream she needed to try the Queen Elizabeth cake recipe. Valetta Nibley, a “spinster”—that was her own name for herself—was likely trying to raise Jaymie’s mood in the wake of the murder. So far, she was holding up. Jaymie started on Anna’s list. Bananas, apples, milk, flour, baking powder, cereal . . . on and on. “I should have brought the van,” she said aloud, trying to imagine carrying it all with Hoppy tugging at the leash.

“I beg your pardon?”

Jaymie looked up from the list to find Mrs. Bellwood, the annual Tea’s short, stout Queen Victoria, staring at her, thick dark brows drawn down over beady eyes. “Sorry, Mrs. Bellwood, I was thinking aloud.”

“Bad habit. I do it all the time.”

Jaymie was about to move on, but the silver-haired woman grabbed ahold of her sleeve with a firm grasp.

“Is that outsider in Queensville yet?” she said.

Jaymie effortlessly translated the woman’s reference. “I don’t know if Daniel Collins is here yet, but I sure hope he is. We need to get into the attic to get down the tables for the tea.” The tables for the Tea with the Queen had been stored in Stowe House attic for thirty-five years, ever since the first event.

“Weather channel says rain for tomorrow,” she replied, obliquely.

“I hope not,” Jaymie said. “We can’t get nearly as many people in the house as we can when we hold the event on the lawn. And Canadian tourists won’t come over on the ferry if it’s raining.” Jaymie suspected that Mrs. Bellwood would love the chance to lord it over a tea table in the parlor, which Daniel had not changed since he bought the house with the furniture three years before.

In those three years he had spent, probably, less than a month total in Queensville, and many of the locals resented an “outsider’s” grasp on the oldest and most prominent house in the village. Lazarus Stowe, builder of Stowe House, was an important local figure, the man who had brokered the agreement to split Heartbreak Island between the neighboring countries of Canada and the US, avoiding an international incident in the 1840s, when feelings were still running high in Canada after a rebellion in 1837. It was rumored that Sir John A. MacDonald, the first prime minister of Canada, had spent a few days there once as Lazarus Stowe’s guest, before Canadian confederation, that momentous uniting of various parts of the northern nation into one dominion on July 1, 1867.

“Trip Findley told me that there was a car outside that house all night long!” Mrs. Bellwood said, her voice low. “Probably another outsider!”

“How did Mr. Findley know the car was there all night?” Jaymie asked, vaguely moved to defend Daniel Collins, whose only discernible flaw was that he had bought Stowe House from underneath the nose of the heritage committee.

“Trip walks every morning at five a.m., and he goes past Stowe House. He feels that since Collins is so seldom there,” she said, her chins wobbling with indignation, “it behooves those of us with a stake in Queensville to keep an eye on the place.”

Jaymie resisted the urge to retort. When the place had gone up for sale three years before, Mrs. Bellwood and Trip Findley had spearheaded a movement to buy Stowe House and convert it into a Queensville historical museum, but the plan had fallen through, the victim of not enough cash and a lack of local enthusiasm. As good an idea as it was, local people felt it would be a money drain, and probably foresaw decades of pleas for more money to repair and maintain the building as a museum. The local economy was not that strong and folks’ pockets not that deep.