Bowled Over (26 page)

“Don’t you believe that Stanko did it?”

She hesitated, thinking about it seriously. “I don’t know. It seems logical, you know? He’s violent, I get that. He threatened Kathy. I get that, too. But the sheer number of people who benefited from her death…it’s staggering.”

“We know that; we’ve investigated all of them. But Stanko is the only one of them to have that bowl in his hands.”

“I would bet that you’re not so sure of that,” she said, watching his eyes, fiddling with the runner in the middle of the trestle table. Hoppy settled at her feet and stared up at him, too. Even Denver prowled into the kitchen from one of his hidey-holes and sat by the stove, glaring at the detective. “I would bet,” she said, slowly, “that there are a whole lot of fingerprints on that bowl, and maybe a lot of smudging, too. I don’t know much about fingerprints, but I know it’s not always easy to tell who had an item and when.”

“We do know that
you
had the bowl in your hands.
And
you fought with Kathy Cooper. Freeing Stanko would put you back in the spotlight.” He was watching her, his gray gaze flicking unsettlingly over her eyes, down to her mouth, back up to her eyes.

She gazed at him steadily, hoping her eye wasn’t twitching. “We both know I didn’t have a true motive, Detective. A high school feud? You couldn’t arrest me for supposedly saying something nasty to someone seventeen years ago.” She saw in his expression that it was true. Relaxing a bit, she said, “Stanko has a history of violent behavior from what I understand, but lately he’s been trying to change his life. He certainly walked away from Kathy even when she was belligerent toward him. He said enough, though, that he sure looks like a good suspect.”

It began to make sense. “In fact, maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong,” she said, as a light bulb began to dimly glimmer in her brain. “I thought the use of the bowl was to implicate
me
, but maybe they were really trying to implicate
Johnny
.”

He nodded. “That’s possible.”

So, he was still investigating even after having arrested Stanko. Had he been pressured into making an arrest? Had he even been the arresting officer? She didn’t remember seeing him there that day.

“Who else wanted Kathy dead?” he asked.

“Let’s see…offhand? I can’t say these folks wanted her
dead
, necessarily, but Kathy was a contentious sort; she seemed to thrive on conflict. Have you looked at her nephew’s grandfather, Andy Walker? Kathy was trying to get custody of Connor, and I’m sure that didn’t sit well with him. Kylie’s motives are much the same, only stronger for a mother.” She wasn’t about to tell him about the insurance
policy Kathy had taken out for Connor’s benefit. She was pretty sure he’d already know anyway. “And the husband is always a possibility, isn’t that true?”

She stopped. To tell, or not to tell, that Craig had a lover on the side? On the one hand, it was a contributing factor to thinking Craig might have done it, but on the other hand…what kind of a gossiping snitch was she? It didn’t feel right, not when she didn’t have any concrete reason to think Craig had killed Kathy.

“What are you thinking right now?” he asked.

“I’m just…” She shook her head. “Look, this isn’t fun, informing on my friends and neighbors. Did you come here for anything specific?”

“I understand Dan Collins had to leave town, and your sister is away, too.”

“Yes. And?”

He crouched down beside her and turned her face toward him, his fingers warm on her cheek. He gazed up into her eyes. “I’m being serious, Jaymie. Stop trying to do my job. It’s dangerous. If you ask the wrong question of the wrong person, he—or she—could see you as a threat and come after you. I really don’t want to see this pretty face in the morgue.” He patted her cheek and stood.

“Who has been complaining about me asking questions?” She watched his face after she asked that question. “Let me guess…Could it be Craig Cooper?”

“Look, Jaymie, I believe Stanko did it despite what your friend Valetta thinks. It’s the simplest answer, and simplest is usually right.”

“Occam’s razor,” she murmured.

He stared at her, eyebrows raised. “Okay, yes. The theory that the simplest explanation is actually correct applies.”

She shouldn’t have been surprised that he understood her
allusion. “That’s not really what Occam’s razor means, and I’d bet you know that. So let me use it correctly: Yes, Stanko’s fingerprints are on the bowl, and he was heard to threaten Kathy. She’s dead. Simplicity suggests that there is a correlation.” She thought for a moment. “However, I would say that his motive is weak: anger. But if we accept that he had a problem with impulse control, then surely he would have attacked her then and there, rather than waiting hours?”

Christian nodded and sat down opposite her, elbow on the table, chin in his hand. “Go on, Miss Leighton. I’m fascinated.”

He was laughing at her, but she didn’t mind. “Yes, Stanko’s got a record,” she continued, “and some of the charges are for violence. He threatened her. But he’s never been a planner. I don’t know for sure, but I would bet that all of his offenses in the past have been where he was insulted or criticized, and he struck out then and there. So other explanations may end up being less simple, but more correct.”

The detective sat back in his chair and put his ankle on his other knee. “The DA is happy, and the judge agreed with us that he is a flight risk.”

“Look, logically, if you’re right, and Stanko is guilty, then I’m not getting into any trouble asking questions.”

He shook his head. “You don’t know that. There are secrets that people will kill to keep, and if you stir up the muck, you might inspire another killer to come out of the woodwork.”

She couldn’t disagree with anything he said, and she shrugged. “Valetta just doesn’t think Stanko is guilty, and she’s backing that up with her own money.”

“Hey, I’m glad he’s got friends, but the best lawyer in the world isn’t going to help with his fingerprints on the murder
weapon and his footpr—” He stopped and shook his head. “Never mind.”

She watched his face, and the scene of the crime came back to her. “His footprints were in the mud near the ladies’ washroom, weren’t they?” she said. She could see the truth in his eyes and how the noose of justice was closing around Stanko’s neck with each bit of circumstantial evidence gathered against him.

“I didn’t say that,” he said, his brows drawn down over his gray eyes. He bolted to his feet and headed to the back door. “And now I need to get out of here before you figure out our whole case!”

He left, and Hoppy gave a final bark at the back door, sending him on his way. Jaymie was on the phone to Valetta in seconds, updating her on what she had learned and what the detective had
not
said. Valetta was grateful. The lawyer would get all of that information, she said, from what was called “discovery,” when the prosecution would have to reveal what evidence they had on Stanko, but it was good to have it earlier.

“I’m just guessing,” Jaymie said. “He wouldn’t confirm it, but ask Johnny why his footprints would be there, at the scene of the crime.”

When she hung up, she felt an urge to call her mother, and Joy Leighton was home, for once. She told her mother all that had happened and about her day and, finally, about Mrs. Hofstadter’s farm.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry! Look, Alan and I are coming up two weeks early to visit Mom Leighton and Becca in London. I think we’ll come to Queensville and stay at the house for a week before the cottage is vacant. Maybe I can get some of the girls together and we can go help Martha out.”

It was a stunning offer from her mom, who disliked housewifely chores. In Florida, she hired a local woman to do all the heavy cleaning, and Jaymie’s dad did dishes and cooked, now that he was retired. “Would you, Mom? That would be awesome!”

“Honey, don’t say
awesome
. You’re not eighteen.”

“I don’t know if you realize how much work it will be, though.”

“I think I do. Did I say we’d do it alone? You and Becca and Valetta and Dee will all be there, along with Mimi and me and the other older women. Trust me, I wouldn’t tackle it by myself. But Martha won’t know that until we all show up.”

“Mom, she’s going to resist. She’s become a bit of a hoarder.” She took a deep breath and decided to be completely honest. “Actually, she’s a
terrible
hoarder. She didn’t even want to give me my casserole dish back.”

There was silence for a moment. “Jaymie, maybe you don’t remember this, but I’ve been chair of more committees than you can shake a stick at, and I’ve wanted to shake a stick at many of them. If I can steamroller twenty fractious women into a smooth-running organization, I can handle Martha Hofstadter. You leave that up to me. We’ll be up in two or three weeks. In the meantime, I will rally the girls and make sure Martha has someone dropping in on her every day. Now, how are you and that young man doing? Becca told me all about Daniel Collins, and my advice is, grab him before he marries someone else!”

Jaymie rolled her eyes and sat down, knowing she would not get off the phone until her mother had given her advice on “Husband Hunting: How to Catch and Tame the Bachelor Male.” After a half hour, she finally managed to get her mother off the phone and made dinner, just a salad. Her
shorts were far too tight, and she needed to fit back into her summer clothes instead of having to buy a whole new wardrobe. She sat in the garden to eat, reading a romance book to try to calm herself after Detective Christian’s unsettling visit and her mother’s lengthy monologue. The coming meeting between her mother and Daniel, and maybe even Daniel’s parents, was going to be simply awful, no matter how much she tried to believe otherwise. Her mother wanted grandkids, and Jaymie was her only shot at it.

Instead, she would think about something less intimidating than her determined mother, like the murder investigation. After dinner she was going to tackle something she just wasn’t sure about. She decided to go over and talk to Ella Douglas about Kathy Cooper’s July Fourth visit.

But first, the phone messages.

She listened to them; Becca had called, asking how things were going. Dee Stubbs had called to ask about Kathy Cooper’s memorial service. Heidi had called and simply asked her to call back, but when Jaymie did, there was no answer. And Daniel had called to say he missed her already. She hadn’t really thought about him much, but that might be because of how busy she’d been. Shouldn’t she think of him anyway, if he was her boyfriend, as people seemed to figure?

She’d definitely have to put some thought into that. How much should she miss Daniel when he wasn’t around?

Sixteen

I
T WAS A
lovely evening, with a light breeze that tossed the tops of the poplars but was gentle as a caress down at street level. As she walked toward Ella and Bob Douglas’s home, Jaymie pondered the day. The tangled threads of the mystery of Kathy Cooper’s murder seemed knotted even tighter. Was she being a fool? Was Johnny Stanko the real villain after all?

What Detective Christian had said to her earlier remained in her mind. He warned her not to go asking the wrong questions of the wrong people. But how did one know what was safe and what wasn’t with a murderer in their midst? Some innocent remark could be misconstrued, and
wham!
—she was the next victim. She pondered his contention that even if Stanko was guilty, it wasn’t good to go asking awkward questions, because you never knew what trouble you were stirring up. But heck, if you went around with that thought in your mind, you’d never talk to anyone about anything!

She threaded her way through town, admiring gardens, enjoying the summer air. She had looked up where the Douglases lived, on a street in the older section of town. When she got to the house, she stopped and examined it. An old frame cottage-style home not far from Johnny Stanko’s house, it was modified to take into account Ella’s motorized wheelchair. A lift had been added to one end of the porch, which stretched the whole width of the house.

There was no vehicle in the drive, but that only meant that Bob was out, because Jaymie knew Ella didn’t drive. It was Ella she wanted to talk to anyway, so she mounted the steps and knocked on the door. After a few minutes, she was about to turn and leave when she heard the deadbolt click, and the door creaked open.