A Deadly Grind (8 page)

Even after the plan died for lack of interest, when the irascible pair of oldsters learned that an outsider had bought that precious piece of village history, they became incensed and never forgave the buyer. Daniel Collins seemed happily oblivious to Mrs. Bellwood’s frosty stares and cutting remarks. In truth, Daniel, whom Jaymie had befriended, had perfectly good caretakers who checked daily on the house. He had installed an expensive alarm system and fire protection, and even though he was seldom there, was an excellent guardian of that bit of village history.

“So, what did Mr. Findley see?” Jaymie said, urging the woman (who was staring down her mortal enemy, Imogene Frump, in the pet food aisle) to continue. Anything about a stranger in town was interesting, given what had happened at Jaymie’s house.

Mrs. Bellwood looked to the left and to the right, then leaned toward Jaymie. “There was a car with out-of-state plates sitting outside Stowe House.” She flashed a look at Imogene Frump, then leaned over even closer and whispered to Jaymie, “And there was a
man
asleep in the backseat!” Mrs. Frump was edging closer down the crowded grocery aisle, and Mrs. Bellwood straightened, and said, in a ringing, carrying tone, “And that’s all I know about that!”

The two old enemies nodded and drifted past each other, like great sailing ships signaling their presence in murky fog and thus avoiding a catastrophic collision.

“I’ll see you at the tea tomorrow, Jaymie dear,” Mrs. Bellwood cried. Her position playing Queen Victoria in the annual tea had been her victory decades ago over Imogene Frump, and the root of their enmity, since she took every opportunity to remind the other woman of her triumph.

“Jaymie, parcel pickup,” Valetta called just then.

Jaymie, musing about the new information Mrs. Bellwood had given her, finished up her shopping, got Anna’s birth control from the pharmacy and left the store with much to think of, not the least of which was how was she going to handle four bags of groceries and a prancing little dog all the way back home. She released Hoppy from puppy prison—Junk Junior was already gone, so Hoppy was the only little dog in the pen—and put her bags down on the creaking stoop while she snapped on his leash.

“Hey, Jaymie!” a voice called out, fighting to be heard over the roar of an energetic engine.

She looked up as Daniel Collins himself cruised up in front of the store in his battered Jeep Wrangler. “Hi, Daniel! I was just talking about you. Were your ears burning?”

He grinned and unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, hopping out and strolling around to greet her. “I was talking about you, too. I met your new neighbor, Anna Jones, when I went looking for you. I figure everyone is probably freaking out that I haven’t gotten here yet.”

“A little,” Jaymie admitted. “Hey, can you give me, Hoppy and this mountain of groceries a lift back home?”

“That’s what I came here for! Anna said she hadn’t realized you were walking and had given you her whole shopping list.” He slung her bags in the back, as Jaymie climbed in the passenger side and belted herself in, holding Hoppy securely on her lap.

The ride back to her home took less than three minutes, but it saved her a lot of time and trouble, and Jaymie told Daniel so. There was something different about him this time, she thought, glancing over at his beaky profile, tousled sandy hair dancing in the wind and flopping over his high forehead. He was smiling more and seemed unusually animated.

As they pulled up in front of the B&B, Jaymie said, reaching behind for Anna’s grocery bags, “I heard there was someone sleeping outside of your house all night. What’s up with that?”

Daniel reached over to help her retrieve a runaway apple as Hoppy leaped into the back of the Jeep and chased it. “Bad timing is what’s up with that. That’s Zell McIntosh, an old college buddy of mine. We’re having a reunion of sorts this weekend through to Memorial Day weekend next week. Just the three of us: me, Zell and Trev Standish. Frat buddies.”

Jaymie tried, and failed, to imagine Daniel Collins—serious, (generally) bespectacled and levelheaded—as a frat brat. “Were you supposed to be here earlier, or was he the one who got the timing wrong?”

Collins nodded. “Perspicacious: that’s what my mom would call you. He’s the one who got it wrong, because I texted him three days ago that I’d be here Saturday morning. I was early, got here at seven a.m., so I don’t know why he arrived last night.” He paused one beat, then said, “Hey, I heard there was a fracas at your house last night, but nobody would tell me what happened. What’s up?”

“Hold on, and I’ll get rid of these bags and tell you,” Jaymie said. After she unloaded Anna’s groceries and helped her harassed neighbor get them into the house, Daniel and Jaymie went into the Leightons’ front door, just as Becca came down the stairs yawning and stretching.

Between them they told their village neighbor what had happened as Jaymie unloaded the groceries. He exclaimed at the awful event and regarded Jaymie with great seriousness for a few moments over his glasses. “Are you all right? Really?”

“Yeah, I am. I’m just fine,” she said, wondering at his expression. Becca was watching him with raised eyebrows.

“And I’m okay too, in case you’re concerned,” she said, after a moment’s silence.

“Right. Good. Hey, can I see the Hoosier cabinet?”

Jaymie led him back to the summer porch and pointed it out, and watched while he looked it over.

“A real Hoosier, right?” he said. “What are you going to do with it? You putting it in the kitchen?”

“Eventually,” she said, “but not until it’s cleaned up some.” She shuddered and turned away, not able to look at it without thinking of the man dead beside it, or the grinder that had been the murder weapon.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Daniel said. “It was . . . it was right here that it happened, wasn’t it?”

She nodded and went back to the kitchen table; the police hadn’t warned her against it, but she was not about to reveal to anyone else what they suspected about the grinder.

Daniel then told them his plans for the next while. He and Zell—and his friend Trevor, if he showed up in the next few hours—could handle getting the tables down from the attic. His lawn service was mowing that very moment, pruning the forsythia that lined the south side of the house and trimming the spirea on the other side. Tables would be set out the next morning, and he and Zell and Trevor would be available to move them into place. Becca, naturally bossy, said she would be there to organize them.

There was silence for a moment, and then Daniel slapped his open palms on the trestle table and stood. “I guess I’d better get going. Zell wants to see the sights, and I said we’d go across the river into Canada for dinner.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket as it buzzed. “Damn!” he said, reading the tiny screen with a frown. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Looks like Trev’s going to be late.”

“Your other friend?”

“Yeah, Trevor Standish. He’s the one who organized me and Zell and him getting together, and now he’s going to be late.” Collins swiftly texted an answer and slid the device back into his pocket. “How late, he didn’t say. Typical Trevor. I’ll let you both get back to . . . to whatever you were doing,” he said, with a shy look at Becca.

And he was gone.

Jaymie and Becca had some lunch and then, to relax a bit from the horrors of the night, Jaymie began her Queen Elizabeth cake, turning the sticky dates into a newer glass bowl, boiling the kettle and pouring one cup over the dates and baking soda, which fizzed up. She would never pour boiling water into a vintage bowl; an unseen hairline crack could cause it to shatter. Nor did she ever use her vintage bowls in the microwave. That would be like putting her grandmother in a rocket ship to the moon.

“What is
that
all about, boiling water and baking soda?” Becca asked, looking over her shoulder.

“I think you do this to soften the dates, so they blend well with the moist cake batter,” Jaymie said, lifting down her favorite Pyrex bowls, a vintage “Primary Colors” set, from the open shelf over the sink. She set the oven to preheat while Becca sat down at the kitchen table to make a list of things to do before the next day.

There was silence for a moment, other than the sounds of Jaymie mixing and Becca scratching items on her list.

“I can’t stop thinking about that poor guy . . . the dead man,” Becca said, tapping her pen against her pad of paper.

“I know,” Jaymie said. She worked the moist ingredients together in the red bowl, the second smallest in the graduated nesting set, while her sister watched.

“Who can he be? Do you think the cops know and just aren’t saying?”

Jaymie shrugged. “The detective told me that they didn’t know yet. That was hours ago, though.”

“I should have stayed up to help you clean, Jaymie,” Rebecca said, looking toward the sunporch. “You did a great job. I was almost afraid to come down, but . . . it’s like it never happened.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “I’m not sure about sleeping here tonight, though. There’s a murderer running around out there.”

Jaymie had been trying not to think about that all day. “I have Bill Waterman coming to fix that back door later,” she said, in an oblique answer. “I want him to take the storms off the summer porch, too. I was going to call him this week about that anyway. The police did say they’re going to cruise by often for the next while, and even have someone sitting out back, until they figure out who did it. Bill’s going to put in motion detector alarms.”

“I know. Still . . . it freaks me out.”

Jaymie set the bowl aside for a moment, pushing thoughts of the blood and violence out of her mind. It wasn’t easy because, as tired as she was, it was looming, like an awful weight on her shoulders. “Anyway,” she said, brusquely, “about the cleaning . . . DeeDee showed up to help just after you went upstairs. She dug right in and did the stuff I couldn’t face—you know her; blood doesn’t faze an ER nurse—so don’t worry about it, sis.”

Becca smiled and put one hand over Jaymie’s and squeezed. “Old friends are the best kind. Anyway, to change the subject to something lighter . . . I bought a gross of white polyester napkins that look a lot like damask. You know how every year some idiots steal the vintage ones, and we can’t replace them. Polyester’ll make it a lot easier to wash out the jam stains.”

“Let me see them.” While Becca was gone, Jaymie finished the cake batter, poured it into a round pan and popped it in the preheated oven.

Becca plunked a shopping bag with plastic sleeves of the white polyester napkins on the table, and Jaymie slipped a set out of the plastic and shook one loose. She handled it, the cheap fabric catching on a ragged fingernail and the rough skin along her thumb. “Becca, these are awful! They don’t feel anything like real damask!”

“Good enough for the masses, Jaymie. They’ll steal them anyway, and I won’t care because they’re only fifty cents apiece and replaceable, instead of real damask or linen at five bucks.”

“But . . .” Jaymie stopped, dismayed but unable to fight her sister on it. Becca was right in one respect; folks did keep filching the vintage linens, as petty as it seemed, as a souvenir of the tea. But polyester! She looked down at the textured striping meant to simulate damask. “We use real china and real linen tablecloths because we’re trying to create a Victorian ambience. This doesn’t really go along with that.”

“I know,” Becca said. “But it’s like trying to feed foie gras to a five-year-old. They don’t appreciate the real thing anyway, and when they steal one of these, the last laugh is on them, not us. You
know
I’m right.”

As uneasy as Jaymie was with Becca’s sweeping statement, she was right about the polyester napkins. This was a fundraiser for the Heritage Society, and losing vintage damask or linen didn’t help the bottom line. “Counterfeit damask. What’ll they think of next?” Jaymie said, and rose to pull the cake out of the oven. She had already boiled the odd “icing”—it was made of brown sugar, coconut, butter and one other ingredient she had had to guess at; she hoped “top milk” meant cream—and poured it over the cake. It pooled, so she got a nutpick out of the drawer and poked holes in the top, letting the brown sugar mixture ooze into the cake. She then stuck the pan back in the oven, watching it carefully so she could tell when the coconut had browned slightly.

“People will counterfeit anything!” Becca said, bundling up the bag.

When she pulled the cake out of the oven, she stared at it, unsure what it would taste like. It was a lovely golden brown, and smelled divine. “Yeah, but counterfeit damask napkins? Sheesh!”

Six

B
ECCA HAD A million things to do, she said, not the least of which was a visit to the Queensville Methodist Church to see how preparations for the next day’s affair were going. She bustled off, happy to have someone to boss around, Jaymie thought with a smile. Maybe her sister needed that activity to get her mind off what had happened in the night. No matter what Jaymie did, the questions continued to hum in the back of her mind: Who was the dead guy, and who’d murdered him? And why? And why in their home with that darned grinder? She had a headache that probably wouldn’t go away until she got some sleep.

After washing and pairing up the china teacups and saucers that hadn’t been smashed in the murderous melee, and setting aside the strays—cups or saucers that didn’t have mates—Jaymie packed the sets in a box to be taken along with the ones they had already chosen for the tea, as well as the boxes of serving pieces, and set them in the hall near the front door. The Queensville Methodist Church Lady’s Guild, in support of the Queensville Heritage Society, would be using their own giant urns to hold boiling hot water from which they would make pots of tea fresh, as needed. Tea was a delicate thing, and one could not make an urn of tea and expect it to be palatable, not on the ladies of the Guild’s watch, anyway! Coffee would also be available for confirmed tea haters, and the ladies themselves, most of them in their seventies or eighties, would be up on the wide wood porch manning the urns, teapots and serving tables while the nimbler women, like Jaymie, DeeDee and others would be doing the table-to-table serving.

In costume.
Ugh
, Jaymie thought. She had a black dress made a few years back for her first time serving at the Tea, and it was authentic in most details, sewn of “stuff,” that ubiquitous scratchy cloth considered adequate for the serving class in Victorian England. Black didn’t suit her, magically draining all the color from her pink cheeks and making her look like a superannuated spinster. In the historical romance novels she read, the servant girls (usually earls’ daughters who felt compelled to escape evil guardians, or who wanted to earn their way with honest labor, rather than living in the luxury to which they had been born) always managed to look fetching and piquant in black maids’ outfits and white lace mobcaps. But Jaymie knew she looked frumpy, especially when compared to Heidi, who would be decked out in a gown fit for a princess. And Joel would certainly be there if Heidi was. She sighed, resigned to her fate of looking like Heidi’s dowdy older sister.

She returned to the kitchen, avoiding looking through to the summer porch, the spot where the poor unknown man had died in the night, and examined the Queen Elizabeth cake, with its coconut and brown sugar drizzle. It didn’t look particularly inspiring, but hopefully it tasted better than it looked. Maybe there was a way to jazz it up, make it more appealing. She cocked her head and stared at it; cream cheese icing, maybe, instead of the coconut and brown sugar? There was no cake in the world that cream cheese icing couldn’t improve. It wouldn’t be authentic to the vintage recipe, but sometimes you just had to go for flavor.

She’d have to taste it later, after it cooled, to see if it was good enough to consider adding to the treats offered to the Tea with the Queen customers. As she stood brooding at the kitchen counter, Denver rubbed up against her ankle; she dished him out some kibble, then made a cup of Tetley (bought across the river in Canada) for herself and took it into the backyard with a cookbook, followed by Hoppy. Jaymie sat in an Adirondack chair in the shade of the maple and stared up the lawn at her tainted summer porch. Becca had questioned whether they should spend the night, but Jaymie figured, if they didn’t, when would they come back?

What if the murderer was
never
discovered?

She shook off the heebie-jeebies and turned her mind back to the Tea with the Queen event. Tomorrow was the first day, and it just had to go well! The previous year’s affair had been a bit of a disaster. It had been unseasonably hot, no one had wanted to drink tea and the cakes had gone gungy and dry, with colored icing melting off the tea cakes in the heat. One of the older Guild ladies had fainted, and 911 was called. An ambulance and paramedics don’t make for an elegant tea atmosphere, they discovered. The woman recovered swiftly and was horribly embarrassed that she had spoiled the event, though no one among the heritage committee members even whispered such a thing.

This year would be better if the weather held. A light breeze fluttered through the leaves, and a robin sang his throaty love song, liquid and melodic. The day had already seemed endless; she was exhausted and fretful, but had no inclination to nap yet. Denver stretched out in a patch of slanting sunlight, while Hoppy intently sniffed one particular spot in the hedge of holly bushes.

“What is there that fascinates you about that spot?” Jaymie said to her dog, as she set aside the cookbook she had on her lap and got up to have a look. Hoppy bounced around her as she leaned over and peered into the holly. Denver also shook himself awake and strolled over to see what she was staring at.

It was a small, square pavé pin, with a checkerboard pattern of black and clear stones set in gold. She picked it up and turned it over. The pin would have had a “clutch”—the back of a tack pin, in jeweler’s parlance—to hold it in place, and the absence or loss of that was what had caused it to drop in her hedge. Tangled on the teeth holding the stones in place was a white thread.

Who had lost it? And why in her garden? She had just planted the line of holly bushes in April, and the pin was perched on
top
of the soil, unaffected by the rain that had puddled the earth into mud just the weekend before. Had it been dropped by the murderer?

Jaymie shook her head and stuck it in her pocket. That was just ridiculous. How many murderers wandered around wearing diamond pavé pins? She should put up a notice at the store, because the pin looked really quite valuable. If someone claimed it, they would have to explain how it had gotten in her hedge.

She sat back down in her chair and picked up the cookbook. Was there anything else she could make to add to the treats at the tea? She leafed through, but shook her head. Nothing suited. She was only a beginning baker, and the bar was set high, because the baked goods on offer were extraordinarily good. Violet Nibley, Valetta’s English sister-
in-law, who lived across the river in Johnsonville, Ontario, was an amazing baker, and churned out dozens and dozens of scones, Eccles cakes, tea cakes, and the more mundane items folks seemed to expect, like muffins, cookies and cupcakes.

But lots of other ladies would be providing whatever items were their specialties. As a fan of history and a lover of the romance of past ages, Jaymie wanted to try to bring some sense of authenticity with her offerings, and had suggested clotted cream to go with the scones and jam for a proper cream tea, but real clotted cream was not available.

She had made some headway, though; Victoria sponge and a tricky-to-make but lovely-to-look-at Battenberg cake (when cut, the cake displayed a pink and yellow checkerboard effect) were both on the menu. That delicacy, the Battenberg, had reportedly been named for Queen Victoria’s granddaughter’s husband, Prince Louis of Battenberg. Over the winter she had researched the Queen’s family history and knew far more than she would ever need to know.

Jaymie dreamed that, one day, the annual Queensville Tea with the Queen event would be famous worldwide, as celebrated as high tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. But she had to admit that some treats, while not traditional afternoon tea staples, were too good to leave out. Most Americans, especially, had never tasted an honest-to-goodness, runny, delicious Canadian butter tart, and that deficiency would be filled by Tansy’s Tarts, Tansy Woodrow’s bakery on Heartbreak Island. She donated dozens of the gooey, sweet, drippy treats, like a savvy drug dealer giving out freebies to hook customers. Once someone tried a Tansy butter or butter-pecan tart, there was no going back. Tourists would gladly pay the water taxi to ferry them over to the island so they could buy a dozen of the pricey diet-busters.

At last Jaymie returned inside, blocked the back door as well as she could until Bill fixed it, and made some calls. Then she locked the door to the summer porch and retreated to her bedroom. She stretched out on her comfy bed, Denver curled up at her feet and Hoppy took to his big pillow under her side table. She tried closing her eyes, but they popped open. She was alone in the house, and felt it, every creak and moan making her edgy. This wasn’t going to work.

Was Becca right? Would they have to abandon their home for a while?

She got up, made the circuit around the house—which was still vacant of thieves or murderers—then returned to her room. Opening her window wider, she listened for a moment to the sound of a distant lawn mower. This was her house, her
home
, she thought, sitting on the edge of her bed. It was safe. The murderer, whoever it was, was probably long gone after the violence of the night. There was no way they would hang around Queensville just waiting to be discovered.

But what if it was a local, someone she knew intimately, someone who smiled at her every day, and said, “Good morning, Jaymie”? It just couldn’t be. Queensville, her beloved little town, didn’t grow murderers.

She lay back down and finally fell asleep. Weird dreams threaded through her slumber, of different houses, shadowy assailants, broken teacups, barking dogs, a meat grinder and a river of blood. Some time later she drifted up to awareness of the downward progress of shadows on her bedroom wall and the uneasy sense that night was approaching, like fog, on little cat feet. Or maybe that was Denver approaching on little cat feet, prowling along her body and sniffing at her mouth.

Startled awake, she pushed the cat away. Doors locked? Dog safe? Yes and yes, she thought. But she felt alone. Where was Becca? Alarm coursed through her and she bounced up to sit on the edge of the bed, shaking. “Becca?” she called, still groggy, her voice thick with unshed sleepiness.

But her sister didn’t answer. When Jaymie swiftly descended to the kitchen, she found a note on the trestle table with some keys weighing it down:
Bill has fixed the back door; new keys. Motion detectors have to wait. I’m at DeeDee’s for dinner. Come on over, Dee says! Want to stay there tonight? Becca

No, she didn’t want to stay anywhere but their home. And she had taken enough time away from real life. This was Anna and Clive’s first season as proprietors of the Shady Rest, and the initial run was this holiday weekend. They were fully booked, all three rooms taken for the Victoria Day weekend, and Jaymie was working for Anna, or was supposed to be. After that disastrous morning, who knew?

Hoppy was overjoyed to get outside, and not so happy to be called in after only his necessary jobs were done. But Jaymie had to get next door if she was going to help Anna prep for the next morning. She locked up and trotted toward her neighbor’s home.

“I’ve come to help!” she said, when Anna let her in the front door.

“Have you had dinner yet?” the young woman asked.

“No, but I’ll come back after you guys are done, if you’re eating.”

“Don’t be silly,” Anna said, grabbing Jaymie’s arm and hauling her down the hall toward the back sliding doors off the kitchen. “Clive’s got some jerk chicken on the grill, and we’re celebrating the first full day of the season with some wine. Come on, eat with us. He made lots, and bought potato salad, too,” Anna added, to forestall any objection. “Tabby’s in bed, the guests are all out for dinner or whatever, and it’s just us.”

“I came to work, you know,” Jaymie said, following Anna down the long shadowy central hall of the Shady Rest, through the bright, modern kitchen and out to the elevated deck in back.

“And you will, don’t worry!”

“Jaymie!” Clive said, from his position near the grill. He waved his spatula in greeting, looking relaxed and handsome in dark shorts and a golf shirt that had his company’s logo stitched on the pocket. He wore an apron over it all that said, “Grill or be Grilled.” Chicken sizzled and spat, and he turned one leg quarter over, then pointed his tongs at the table under the awning. “Sit. Drink. You look like you need a glass of wine as much as I did.”

“I lay down for a couple of hours’ sleep this afternoon and woke up shaking,” Jaymie admitted, as Anna pushed her to sit and filled an acrylic wine goblet with a fruity merlot.

“After what you went through? Poor pet,” Anna said with a quick look over at Clive. “I’m freaked about a murderer in the neighborhood. Who could have done such a thing?”

“I’ve been thinking of nothing but that,” Jaymie said. “And who was the poor guy who died?” She shivered, and resolved to call the police the next morning to see what they had found out.

The sun was descending as Clive and Anna served up dinner. They chatted, but came to no conclusions. Dinner had been cleared and they were just enjoying another glass of wine when the tone triggered by the front door sent Anna through the house. She came back a moment later with someone Jaymie recognized.

“Jaymie!” Brett Delgado said. “What a pleasure to see you again.” He took her outthrust hand and held it between both of his own. “How are you? I heard about the awful events of last night.”

“I’m better than I was.” Jaymie gave him a small smile.

“Sit and have a glass of wine with us,” Anna said, filling another acrylic wineglass and pulling out a chair.

Brett sat, and said, with a worried frown, “Anna, I forgot to take my cell phone with me when I went out; I should check it, I suppose, but I was wondering, has Ted phoned here at all?”

“Ted? Why would he phone here?” Anna asked.

The man shrugged in discomfort. “We had a quarrel this morning, and he took off.”

“Took off? What do you mean?”

“Got in the rental car and took off. He’s done it before. He’s such a moody little brat sometimes,” Brett said, gloomily swirling the wine in his glass.

“Where did he go?” Jaymie asked.