Bowled Over (12 page)

While Becca took the individual dinners to Craig Cooper, Jaymie put the casserole on the seat of her van and took off to the Hofstadter farm, which was down an unpaved country lane a couple of miles out of Queensville. As she pulled up the driveway, she became increasingly uneasy at the derelict appearance of the property. Had the woman moved away, and Jaymie just hadn’t heard? The once tidy lane, lined with cedars, was now also lined on the lawn side with junk: a broken washing machine tipped over, green garbage bags full and sagging, disintegrating cardboard boxes and paper litter everywhere. The front lawn grass was so long that it was bent over and tamped down by rain and wind.

It didn’t get any better closer to the big red-brick house. A window on the second floor was broken and stuffed with what looked like a comforter and a piece of cardboard, and the front porch was full of more junk. The lane was so rutted that Jaymie decided to save her suspension and park her ancient van along the line of now ragged cedars. She did so, grabbed the casserole—still warm from the oven—and made her way toward the back door of the house. There was a battered pickup truck parked by the sidewalk that led to the back door, and the sound of voices raised in anger drifted to Jaymie. She paused out of sight and listened.

“Mom, we have to have a funeral.”

It had to be Kylie speaking. There was a mumbled reply,
then Kylie said, “
I’ll
do it, then. Craig is no freaking good. I don’t even know if he cares. I gotta go. If I’m going to plan everything, then I’ll have to get started.”

Interesting. So by Kylie’s reckoning, Kathy and Craig’s marriage was not the happy little nest after all. It sounded like Kylie was preparing to leave, and Jaymie felt awkward lingering by the side of the house. If she was caught, it would look like exactly what it was: eavesdropping. Jaymie advanced around to the back door.

Kylie Hofstadter was standing at the open door with Connor, and Mrs. Hofstadter was standing in the mudroom. Kylie whirled around when she saw Jaymie. “What are
you
doing here?” she asked.

“Kylie Marie Hofstadter!” her mother said. “That’s no way to greet someone!”

Strolling up the walk, awkwardly carrying the glass casserole dish, Jaymie considered her words carefully. “I’m so sorry about Kathy, Mrs. Hofstadter. I don’t know if you remember me; I’m Jaymie Leighton, Alan and Joy Leighton’s daughter? Kathy and I used to be friends. We…we had our issues, but I will never forget the fun we had as kids, and how close we once were.”

“Right,” Kylie said. She turned Connor around and sent him scooting toward the pickup with a pat on his bum, all the while glaring at Jaymie. “You have some nerve coming here like this.” Her voice was tight with anger.

Jaymie, trying to ignore Kylie—whose opinion of her had, no doubt, been poisoned by Kathy—moved forward until she could better see Mrs. Hofstadter, who stood in the open door. The years had not been kind to the woman. Always portly but neat and tidy, she was now slatternly, with a dirty housedress on and feet clad in filthy slippers. The smell of organic waste drifted from the house; it was the scent of
hopelessness. Paint was gone from the doorframes, and some of the wood looked like it was rotting out. Jaymie now understood why Kathy had tried to get her mother to sell the farm. If this kept up, the house would fall down around the woman’s ears, and no one would ever know what happened to her.

“Mrs. Hofstadter,” Jaymie said, holding out the casserole. “I just wanted to drop by and bring you this.”

Kylie, who looked like she had been on the verge of leaving before, appeared rooted in place. She was a young woman, not more than twenty-five or -six, but there were dark circles under her eyes and her hair was a rat’s nest. “She doesn’t need your food—freakin’ Leighton charity. Do you think we don’t take care of our mom?” Her voice bubbled with anger and tears.

In the face of so much pain, Jaymie was silent, not trusting her voice to be steady. The tragedy of Kathy’s death was at its most profound right here, right now.

Mrs. Hofstadter took the casserole. “Kylie, enough!” She turned to Jaymie and, water welling in her dull brown eyes, said, “I appreciate you thinking of me. Give my love to your grandma when you see her next. She was always real good to us. And to your mama, of course!”

“Mom and Grandma Leighton always said there were no better hams in the state than Hofstadter farm hams.” It sounded inane in the midst of the family’s tragedy.

“You should leave now,” Kylie said, her hands balled into fists at her side.

“I’ll come back another day for the empty casserole dish, Mrs. Hofstadter,” Jaymie said, turning and walking away. It suddenly occurred to her that she had never thought to ask Mrs. Hofstadter why Kathy had turned against her, and,
with Kylie there, there was no talking to her
this
time, but she had an excuse to come back—to pick up the casserole dish. She felt genuinely bad for the woman, who had lost so much, and wanted to help in any way she could. That, her grandmother would say, was what community was all about.

Seven

B
ECCA WAS ON
the phone to her assistant in London, Ontario, when Jaymie got back to the house from the Hofstadter farm.

“I can’t explain how the Old Imari platter got broken, Sabrina. We packed it as we always do, but we can’t control how the courier treats it,” Becca was saying, pacing the length of the kitchen. She caught Jaymie’s attention and rolled her eyes. “Tell the customer that if she can photograph the broken item and send me the picture, I will either reimburse her, or send her another, as soon as I…no, wait, Sabrina, calm down! I
know
she’s upset, and I’m sorry she chewed you out like that. You don’t have to take that. Give her my cell number if she wants to yell at someone. Laurel is always difficult, and I won’t take a hit on this. She’s been known to try to get something for nothing. Failing the photo, she can
send
me the pieces, and I’ll reimburse her for the platter
and
the mailing costs. I just need some proof that
it’s broken.” She clicked the off button and grimaced to Jaymie.

“Problem?”

“Problem
customer
,” Becca said. Rebecca Leighton Burke’s business, RLB China Matching, provided china dishes in old and/or discontinued patterns to people all over the map, from Chilliwack to Chattanooga. “This woman claims the Old Imari platter I sent her was broken when it arrived. It could happen; shipping is never foolproof. But if she doesn’t send me a picture or the pieces, am I supposed to just blindly believe her? That platter is worth five hundred dollars.”

“It’s insured, right?”

“Of course, but that’s not the point. If Sabrina can’t solve this, I might have to go back to London for a few days. Will you be okay, if I do?”

“I’ll be fine. How did it go with Craig Cooper?”

“He wasn’t home. I gather he was at the police station. His sister, Chloe, was there, though.”

“I’d forgotten about Chloe!”

“She lives in Wolverhampton now, works at a hairstylist’s. She didn’t seem too cut up that Kathy was gone.”

“Did she dislike her?”

Becca shrugged, and Jaymie felt a moment of irritation. If she had been there, she would have wormed her way into the house and asked some questions about Kathy and Craig’s relationship. “Well, what did she say?” Jaymie asked.

“Not much; she’s staying with Craig to help plan the funeral, I guess.”

“Well, I just saw Kylie Hofstadter out at the Hofstadter farm, and she claims
she’s
organizing the funeral!”

“I was just dropping off food, for crying out loud, not conducting an inquisition.” Becca already had her cell phone
out and was scrolling down through her list of contacts. “I have to solve this platter problem,” she said, her tone gruff. She moved out onto the summer porch, where she sat in one of the wicker chairs and made some calls.

So much for help with figuring out what had happened to Kathy! Jaymie had pictured talking to her older sister about what she’d heard from Valetta about Johnny Stanko and the bowl, and more about her troubling visit to the Hofstadter farm. Jaymie turned for comfort to the big box of cookbooks Becca had bought her the other day at the estate auction. She soon knew she was in trouble, because the stack of ones to discard was tiny, while the pile of ones she wanted to keep was so tall it toppled over on the trestle table.

The one that she had mined for the potato salad recipe (the one she hadn’t ended up using!) was a gem; it was a thick, blue, cloth-bound book called
The Lilly Wallace New American Cook Book
, and it was far more entertaining than she would have thought, given the plain binding. Sea moss pudding. Brains à la king. Tomato orange aspic. Were these things really so prevalent in 1943, when the book was published? She’d have to talk to her Grandma Leighton about that!

Out on the lawn, Hoppy started to bark, and Jaymie figured it was Dipsy Poodle again. She loved to taunt Hoppy by meandering close to the fence, then shying nervously away when he got too close. Hoppy never gave up trying to win the pretty little poodle’s attention, though. Jaymie kept perusing the cookbook and marked a page she wanted to show Rebecca about place-settings for china. A shadow fell across the page of her cookbook, and she looked up, annoyed. It was Detective Christian; she slapped the book closed.

“Your sister said to just come in,” he said, gesturing toward
the summer porch, where Becca’s voice still droned on.

“Sure, of course.” She jumped up, unnerved by his sudden appearance when she was lost in recipe land. “Do you want coffee? Or tea?”

“It’s July, and the middle of the day,” he commented. “Though it’s nice and cool in here.”

“These old houses are well insulated. The deep summer porch is good for keeping the hot sun off the back wall, too. Folks used to sleep out on the summer porch on hot nights.” But he wasn’t there for a lesson in house construction from the 1800s. He had been in her kitchen before, and he’d commented that it looked like the kitchen of an eighty-year-old rather than a young woman. He clearly didn’t know that retro was fashionable. “How about some lemonade? Then you can ask me what you want.”

His eyebrows rose as he sat down at the trestle table. “Why do you think I’m here with questions?”

“Why else would you be here?” she asked. She got out two glasses and poured lemonade that she had made for their picnic the day before. She plunked one down in front of him, and some sloshed over the side. She got a paper towel and gave it to him.

He mopped up the lemonade, then took a long drink, sighing with appreciation. “It’s good.”

She sat down opposite him and waited. She always talked too much in his presence. Today, she would simply wait.

“More cookbooks?” he asked about the toppled stack that splayed across the shiny wood surface. He eyed her cookbook shelf, which was already jammed full.

She nodded. “Becca bought me a box of them at an estate sale.”

“Why does anyone care about old cookbooks?”

She thought about it, not reacting to his bluntness, but to the actual question. “It’s like stepping back in time, and a lot of us like to do that. Some folks join battle reenactment troops, some collect coins or stamps and some of us like to read cookbooks and try out old recipes. It takes me back to life in another era before fast food and packaged mixes. If you wanted a cake, you had to make it, not rely on Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines.”

He nodded, holding her gaze.

She waited, but he didn’t say anything, and finally, carefully keeping the irritation out of her voice, she said, “Detective, do you want to tell me why you’re here, or are we going to play the silent game?”

He grinned, then quickly smothered the look. “Jaymie, can you think of any reason you would be mentioned when it comes to Kathy Cooper’s murder?”

It was not what she expected, but then, she didn’t really know what to expect. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

He paused and stared into her eyes for a moment. “Your name keeps coming up when I ask around about Kathy Cooper’s murder, and people who might have it in for her.”

“I’ve already told you about our tiff, and the feud from high school.”