Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (19 page)

“Nice. Well, I told the wifey I’d only be a few minutes, so I’d better get going home.” He strode off whistling, his hands shoved in his shorts pockets.

“Say, Will? Did you see Ruby down here earlier? Did she catch the ferry over to the mainland?”

He turned back, frowning, his face illuminated by the security lighting near the marina office. “Ruby Redmond? No. Why?”

“Just thought I saw her heading for the marina, that’s all.”

“Nope . . . can’t help you there.” He turned to walk away, but then turned back toward her, with a perplexed frown on his face. “Now, that’s odd. I didn’t see Ruby, but . . .” He shook his head.

“But what?” she prodded.

“I
thought
I saw Garnet. I could be mistaken. I just caught a glimpse, you know, and it is getting dark.”

“Garnet? Really? How long ago was this?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know . . . twenty minutes, half an hour? Maybe more. Gosh, I’m terrible with time, especially when I’m busy! It was when I got here, and I don’t know how long I’ve been looking for that darned paper. I must be wrong. It was just a quick glance, you know, and then the guy was gone.” He waved one hand in dismissal. “Nah . . . he’d be at the restaurant all evening. Forget I said anything.”

He headed off, and she led Hoppy down to the dock and sat on a bench, while Hoppy sniffed around and growled. She gave him a little more lead, and he pulled all the way to the end of it.

The thought that had been in the back of her mind all day as she went about her business came back to her. Who had killed Urban Dobrinskie and dumped him on her property? And why there? It made no sense at all, unless the killer was Evelyn or Sammy Dobrinskie. Sammy, especially, would know about the wheelbarrow and the muck and might think burying him would just make the problem of his father disappear. Was he capable of the coolheadedness necessary to think fast enough to shout, “Get off my property,” making it seem like Garnet was speaking? The more she thought about it, the less likely that seemed.

Something struck her in that moment. She was automatically eliminating Garnet from the pool of folks who committed the murder
because
of that voice, and her assumption that he had been in his house at that moment, along with her feeling that he wouldn’t plant the body in his own backyard.

But she really only had Ruby’s word for that. How could Ruby be so sure her brother was in the house? If she shut her bedroom door, she would never know if he crept out. It would be a clever double bluff to yell that phrase, and Garnet was clever; she knew that. She got a weird feeling that crept up her back. Valetta had said there was something “off” about Garnet and Ruby, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She needed to pin her friend down on that feeling, see whether she’d thought of what it was that made her say that.

“C’mon, Hoppy, let’s get back,” she said, tugging on the leash.

But the little dog was on the edge of the dock peering down into the water and could not be pulled.

“Hoppy, come
on
!”

He growled, but didn’t obey. It was probably a big fish at the water’s edge. He hated carp, for some strange reason, and would bark ceaselessly at carp, goldfish, suckers, any kind of big, slow fish. What was he glaring at this time?

She inched to the edge of the dock, and saw something floating, something blue. Blue? Not a fish, then, at least not the kind that frequented the dull waters of the St. Clair. There was too much shadow for the light overhead along the dock to help, so she dropped her dog’s leash, scooted off the edge of the dock near the shore, shed her sandals and waded out, the squishy muck on the bottom of the river oozing up through her toes. She caught hold of the blue cloth, but it was fixed to the dock support. She pulled harder, with Hoppy barking at her from the edge.

Just then she heard a commotion from up the beach.

“Ruby!” a voice called. “Ruby, is that you?”

Jaymie’s stomach lurched, and she grabbed hold of the blue cloth and pulled harder. The figure pulled free and floated toward her. A face moved into the light. “Oh my G—Help! Help me!” Jaymie cried, as she stared down at the body of Ruby Redmond.

Nineteen

G
ARNET REDMOND CAME
clumping toward Jaymie, and when he saw who she was holding on to, he cried out in anguish, “Ruby! My God, what happened!
Ruby!
” He leaped off the edge of the dock, grabbed her up in both arms and carried her to the edge of the river, his shadowy figure appearing and disappearing by the dock lights as he splashed toward shore. Another dog started barking in response to Hoppy’s yapping, and in the distance someone shouted, trying to make it shut up. Jaymie waded ashore behind Garnet. He gently laid his sister on the muddy shore and tilted her head back, trying to breathe into her mouth to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but fumbling. It was a surreal scene, like some waterlogged love scene made even stranger by the fact that they were brother and sister.

Soon others joined them on the shore in the spill of light from the dock lamps, but one man in shorts and a T-shirt elbowed his way through the crowd. “I’m a doctor; let me through!” Garnet surrendered his spot, and the man knelt by her and began CPR. In two minutes, miracle of miracles, she sputtered and he turned her over, as a rock fell out of her sweater pocket. A gush of water flooded from her and she coughed, choking and gasping.

Garnet wept with relief, then collapsed to the mucky shore, clutching his sister to his chest. Tears streamed down Jaymie’s face as Zack raced down the beach toward her and Hoppy, who was dancing around her feet, yapped nonstop.

“What the hell is going on here?” Zack said.

Jaymie picked up Hoppy as she explained.

Will Lindsay raced toward Jaymie, too. “What’s going on? What happened to Ruby?”

As Zack whipped out his cell phone and called for an ambulance, Jaymie quickly told the marina owner about her discovery.

“Oh my God!” Will whispered, his glance slewing toward Garnet, who held Ruby while the doctor checked her pulse. Tears glimmered in the corners of Will’s eyes. “I was just down here, and I didn’t . . . What happened? How . . . ?” He choked back a sob and pushed his fingers through his hair. “She could have
died
!”

“I know. Thank heavens for Hoppy!” Jaymie hugged the pup to her and gave him a kiss. He wriggled, wanting down, so she set him gently on the gravel that lined the approach to the dock.

“What is going on in this place?” Will said, still staring at Garnet.

The marina owner then joined a knot of curious, chattering onlookers, while Zack directed a local, who was one of the township’s volunteer firemen, to fire up his motor boat and take Garnet and Ruby over to Queensville. The fireman was a trained paramedic, but the doctor who had revived Ruby insisted on going along. The detective then strode off and made another cell phone call, as an ambulance roared up to the dock on the Queensville side, along with a police car.

Zack walked back toward Jaymie, still talking on his cell phone, then clicked it off.

“What could have happened? How did Ruby get down almost under the dock?” Jaymie shivered, the night air cool on her wet skin. Hoppy whined at her feet, and she picked him up again, cradling him to her as she retrieved her sandals and slipped them on.

“I don’t know,” Zack said, “but I am sure going to find out. And you are going to stay put and tell me everything that happened.”

He supervised the moving of Ruby onto the boat, and clapped Garnet on the shoulder, saying something to him. Garnet looked around and spotted Jaymie; he tossed her a set of keys and called out, “Can you tell the staff at the Ice House what’s going on—not everything; make something up—and lock up the cottage for me? I . . . I don’t know what else to say!” His patrician face held a look of confusion and agony.

“Don’t worry, Garnet. I’ll take care of it.” Even as she said that she wondered, should she be telling Zack immediately what Will said about thinking he saw Garnet on the dock earlier, and her witnessing him sneaking into the restaurant? Ruby was safe in the protective embrace of the law and the paramedics, but Jaymie would
have
to tell Zack what she had heard and seen.

The crowd abated, walking away from the marina in groups, heads together, telling and retelling all the known and unknown details. Will began to walk away, but Jaymie called out to him, “Hold on, Will!” She jogged over to him. “I think you should tell Zack that you saw Garnet earlier, down on the dock.”

His face was shadowed, but she could see his dismay.

“Look, Jaymie, I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but . . . I don’t think it was Garnet I saw. It can’t have been! You saw how he was; his sister is the most important person in the world to him. If you’re thinking he did anything to her, you’re dead wrong!”

“Look, I know you’re friends, but . . .”

“I imagined it, okay? Just drop it!” He whirled and stalked away.

She watched him go. She understood his reluctance to implicate a friend in any kind of wrongdoing, but Ruby was his friend, too. Wasn’t it best to let the police sort it out? Her mind was in turmoil, and she was caught in a dilemma.

When Zack was done on his cell phone, and the ambulance left the dock on the other side, he came over to her and said, “Let’s talk.” He took her arm and guided her to a bench on the gravel approach to the dock.

But she was too anxious to sit, and so she paced, as Hoppy sat and watched her. She told the detective, minute by minute, exactly what happened. Kicking at a sizable rock that sat on the smooth beach almost where Ruby had lain, she finally finished her story and looked up at the detective. “There’s one more thing I have to tell you,” she said.

He was alerted by her tone and watched her. She sat down beside him.

“While I was down here, Will Lindsay was just coming out of his office. He asked me if I had seen Garnet. He said he thought he saw Garnet down by the dock, but then, just now, he said he couldn’t swear to it, and he was clearly upset. I think he did see him—in fact, it felt like he may have been
more
sure now, not less sure—but he’s afraid you’ll think Garnet did something to his sister.” She told him what she saw, too, Garnet sneaking into the back door of his own restaurant.

“Excuse me for a minute.” He walked a ways away and pulled out his cell phone, making a quick call, no doubt to police headquarters. He came back and sat down. “Thanks for being honest, Jaymie. I appreciate it.”

“I couldn’t handle it if I didn’t say something and anything happened. But I just can’t believe Garnet could have done that to his sister. They’re so close!” She paused and looked off toward Queensville, the Victorian-style lampposts lining the walkway across the river invisible except for the faint glowing blobs of yellowy light in the humid night air. “How the heck did Ruby end up in the water?” she muttered. “I just don’t understand.”

“I don’t know, either,” Zack said, rising. “But before the night is out, I intend to.”

As he strode away, no doubt headed for a sleepless night, Jaymie walked to the restaurant. Her little dog was getting weary, so she carried Hoppy in just to the cash desk where Margaret, the bar manager, stood tallying the night’s receipts. Jaymie had known Marg for years from her high school days working part-time at the Queensville Inn, where the older woman had been the housekeeping manager.

“Marg, can I talk to you outside?” Jaymie asked.

She locked up the cash desk and followed Jaymie out to the board sidewalk, their heels clattering and echoing in the quiet night. They stood in the lemony pool of light cast by the restaurant’s outdoor bug lamps. “What’s up, hon?” Marg asked, her whisky voice gruff, but soothing. “You look upset.” She reached out and scruffed Hoppy’s chin whiskers.

“Have you seen Ruby or Garnet in the last while?” Jaymie asked.

“Haven’t seen Ruby all evening, and Garnet . . . Well, he was here; then he was out of sight. I assumed he was working in the office, but maybe he’s gone home.”

“Do they do that often?”

“What, leave me to lock up? Sure. Usually they tell me, but not always. I check the offices and all around the place before I lock up.”

Jaymie took a deep breath. “There’s been an accident. Ruby fell into the river. They’re taking her to Wolverhampton General to check her out, and Garnet went with her. He just wanted you to know so you could take care of things.”

“Oh,
no
!” the woman said with a gasp. Her lipstick-stained mouth formed an O; then she asked, “Is she okay?”

“I sure hope so,” Jaymie said.

“I’m shocked!” she said, one hand on her bosom. “Will Garnet be here for opening tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. Can you be here to open, just in case?”

“Sure. What’s
really
going on, Jaymie?” the woman said, searching Jaymie’s eyes. She swiped a hank of her frizzy blond hair out of her eyes. “I mean, first Urban gets himself killed, and now this. Do you think the murderer tried to kill Ruby, too?”

It wasn’t anything Jaymie hadn’t already thought of. Will at the dock came back to her. Could
he
have been involved? Why would he have killed Urban, and tried to kill Ruby? But it was possible, she supposed; she needed to think about that some more. She could see by the look in the older woman’s eyes that she had taken too long to answer. “I don’t know, Marg. I really don’t. As far as I know it was just an accident. Please don’t say anything else to anyone!”

“I wouldn’t. I’ve been friends with Garnet and Ruby for seven years.”

“That’s as long as they’ve been here, right?”

“Yeah. I met them when they came to stay at the Queensville Inn when they were researching business opportunities here. Then they bought and started renovating the Ice House, and asked me if I wanted a job as assistant manager.”

“But Garnet tried to buy into the marina first, right, before they settled on the Ice House restaurant?”

“Yeah. Fancy you knowing that! I thought that was a well-kept secret.”

“Well, he’s been trying to buy it again, since Urban died. He wasn’t too pleased when Evelyn, on Will Lindsay’s advice, turned him down.”

Marg’s eyebrows rose, but she just shook her head, looking puzzled.

“Where did they live before Heartbreak Island? Ruby and Garnet, I mean.”

“Uh, Florida, right? I think so, anyway.”

“You don’t know for sure? Haven’t they ever had family staying, or gone to visit friends?”

Marg frowned. “Jaymie, I don’t poke my nose into their business.” She shifted and looked back toward the restaurant. “I gotta go. The rest of the staff is done tallying tips and sharing out, and I have to make sure everything is ready for morning if I’m going to open.”

Jaymie headed back around to the Redmond cottage in a thoughtful frame of mind. She let herself in the front door, and put Hoppy down, expecting that the Yorkie-Poo would head to the kitchen, where he knew Ruby kept the treats in a jar by the back door. She wanted to make sure all the doors were locked. On the island, people were lax. They often left their back doors unlocked for convenience during the daytime, but folks usually locked up at bedtime. Garnet and Ruby had gotten into the habit of leaving theirs unlocked while Jaymie was there, though, for when she needed their toilet.

She did a circle check of windows and doors; the back door was, indeed, unlocked. She made sure the basement sump pump was off—if it rained, she’d make sure it was turned back on—the coffeepot was unplugged, and she was done. But where was Hoppy? Not in the kitchen, that she could see. “Darn you, little dog, where are you? Hoppy! Where are you, fella?”

No bark, no skitter of claws on hardwood, nothing. “Where
are
you?” She moved through the dim cottage, back to the bathroom, then Garnet’s messy room, then Ruby’s pristine bedroom. Hoppy was up on Ruby’s bed, paws on the side table, sniffing at an envelope that was propped against a digital clock. In printed block letters it read “Garnet.”

Her stomach lurched. She shouldn’t look, but . . . if there was something here that could help answer the questions that plagued them, it was important to find it out. She reached out, took the envelope and saw that it was not sealed. She opened it with trembling hands. The note was written in a generous, looping hand that Jaymie recognized as Ruby’s. She read the letter, then wished she hadn’t.