Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (26 page)

Jaymie beamed with pride and her dad squeezed her shoulder. “The real praise has to go to Sammy Dobrinskie,” she said. “That kid is going to be a talented landscaper. He already is, in fact!”

After, when the men offered to do the dishes, Mrs. Collins suggested that Jaymie show her around the island a little.

“Go on, honey,” Jaymie’s mom said, with a wink. “I’ll supervise the fellows so they don’t break any of your vintage china.”

So Jaymie walked off with Daniel’s mother, leading her down to the beach, then up the road, shivering a little as she passed the Lindsay home. Debbie Collins eyed the house, but Jaymie kept up a line of chatter, talking about the island and about Rose Tree Cottage, how her great-grandparents had built it a long time ago as a retirement residence. Finally she fell silent, though, noticing that Debbie Collins lagged behind.

“Can we just sit for a few minutes?” the woman said. “Maybe down on the beach at that picnic table.”

They had made a loop, and were now near the beach again, so Jaymie led her down the path to the sandy spot where the picnic table was. The sun was red gold and hanging low in the sky, just beginning to touch the western horizon behind Queensville.

“My Daniel is a very special young man,” the woman said, and left it hanging there, like a question.

“He is,” Jaymie said. “Everyone here has gotten to know him this summer, and everyone likes him.” It was true; even Mrs. Bellwood, Queensville’s annual Queen Victoria, and one of the oldest members of the heritage association, had admitted that he was a very nice young man and a great host of the annual Tea with the Queen at Stowe House. His donation to the association of money and a good computer—with all the software necessary for the association to keep on top of things like its website and accounts—had helped, but his own personality and easygoing nature had done the rest.

“I will admit he seems happy.”

It was grudging, and Jaymie frowned into the growing darkness, wondering why.

“Happier than he has been for a while,” she went on, after a pause. “I won’t see him suffer again.”

“I . . . beg your pardon?” Jaymie stared over at the older woman.

Debbie Collins’s round face was set in a grim expression. “I don’t know how much you know about that . . . that Trish creature, but she hurt him so badly, I felt like murdering someone for the first time in my life.”

She said it with a quiet, cultured voice, but there was a faint growl that reminded Jaymie of a tigress defending her cub. It began to dawn on her what this walk and talk was all about. This was a chance to probe Jaymie to see what her intentions were! Was she supposed to be in the position of the dangerous young men who were often the heroes of the historical romances Jaymie loved to read? Was Daniel being cast as the young innocent, whose heart and honor needed to be defended by a parent or guardian?

With wide eyes, Jaymie examined the other woman, trying to figure out what was behind that placid exterior. She felt like she was stuck in the middle of
Pride and Prejudice
, being warned away from Darcy by the dreadful aunt.

“I won’t see him hurt like that again,” Mrs. Collins said, steel in her polite voice. “Unless you can promise me that you won’t do the same as that . . . that
girl
did to him, I will do all in my power to break this thing up before it goes too far, and I have the tools, believe me.”

Jaymie had a hard time finding her voice. Really? She was being warned away from Daniel? “How do you think your son would feel, hearing you say that?” Her voice was stiff with anger.

“I don’t care,” she said. “I won’t have him hurt.”

A cold knot centered in Jaymie’s stomach. “What if I told Daniel what you’ve said?”

“You won’t if you’re smart. If you make him choose between you and me, I’ll win. I have before.”

This was a new wrinkle, but there was no way she was going to be manipulated like this. “Mrs. Collins, don’t get me wrong, I mean no disrespect, but Daniel is not a teenager.” She got down off the picnic table and tugged at the legs of her shorts, which had ridden up. She faced the woman, her cheeks flaming red with fury, and said, “I would never purposely hurt Daniel, but I can’t predict how things are going to go between us. Right now we are friends . . . close friends. We’re taking it slow. I was badly hurt, too, not even a year ago, so I’m in no hurry to get serious.”

In fact, it was Daniel who had been pushing her for more of a commitment. But she decided against telling the other woman any of their private life. She would just use it against Jaymie, probably.

“Good,” Daniel’s mother finally said and got down from the picnic table, dusting off her skirt. “Let’s go back.”

They were silent during the walk toward the cottage, and Jaymie’s anger was chilling to frigid as they walked. She didn’t even notice until it was too late that Zack Christian, dressed in a gorgeous gray summer-weight suit, was walking toward them with a big smile on his face.

“I’d know who this lady is even if you two weren’t together. Jaymie, you didn’t tell me how much alike you and your mother look. Mrs. Leighton, can I just say what a wonderful daughter you’ve got?” He put his hand on Jaymie’s shoulder and squeezed, his smile intimate. “She’s not only beautiful, but intelligent and caring. You must be proud.”

There was shocked silence for a long minute, and Zack’s expression turned to puzzlement, as his gaze flitted between the two women.

“I am Mrs. Debra Collins,” she finally said, her voice hard. “Mother of Daniel Collins, Jaymie’s boyfriend. And who,
exactly
, are you?”

He didn’t explain, but beat a hasty retreat with a look of apology cast toward Jaymie. She sighed. Well, if the woman needed ammunition, she now had it.

Daniel seemed to sense some tension when Jaymie and Mrs. Collins got back, and he anxiously corralled her, taking her aside and saying, “Did she upset you, Jaymie? She didn’t say anything, did she? She can be a little overprotective of me, but she means well.”

“Can you take a little walk with me?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, with a worried frown.

She steered him away from anywhere she thought they might meet Zack—though judging by the detective’s clothes, he was working, maybe even questioning some of the islanders about the murder—and so they ended up down by the Ice House restaurant. It was dark, but there was a pool of light now on the patio. She plunked down on a bench and ordered an iced tea from Lisa, while Daniel ordered beer.

“What’s wrong, Jaymie?” he said, his voice tense. “What did my mom say to you?”

How to handle this? The first heat of anger had burned off. “To be fair, she’s worried about me, and I don’t blame her. She loves you, and doesn’t want to see you hurt.” He started to talk, but she put her hand up. “I’m not going to share our conversation, and I’m not worried about it. But something else happened that upset me, and I want to tell you about it before your mother does.” She told him what happened with Zack, and how he mistook his mom for hers.

He laughed out loud. “Wow, you know, I guess she does kind of resemble you, vaguely. More than your own mom, in a way.” When she didn’t join him in laughing, he noticed, and said, more soberly, “Look, I’ll handle my mom.”

She glanced over and examined his beaky profile, and the hank of sandy hair that always brushed the tops of his glasses. “I don’t want her to take this the wrong way. Zack said I was . . . He kind of said I was intelligent and beautiful, and as my mother, she should be proud. That’s
all
, but . . . he kind of touched my shoulder, and I saw her expression . . .” She saw on his face that he was now taking the whole thing more seriously. This was going badly.

His voice was tense as he said, “Why would she take it the wrong way?”

She had decided to not tell him about how paranoid his mother was on his behalf, and how she had invoked the name of his ex-girlfriend who’d hurt him so badly, but maybe she
should
tell him all of it. “She’s your mom, Daniel, and protective; it’s her way, probably, to evaluate your girlfriend and see things where there’s nothing.”

He squinted through his glasses at her. “This doesn’t sound like you, Jaymie,” he said. “What are you
really
worried about?”

She sighed and took a long drink of iced tea, staring out over the river. She just couldn’t
tell him that his mother had as good as threatened to break them up; it wasn’t fair to put that between them. “We’d better get back. Your folks will want to get back to Queensville soon. I shouldn’t have left all the work of tidying up for everyone else, anyway.”

They walked back, arm-in-arm. But before they got to the cottage, he stopped her in a shadowy spot and kissed her. “That’s nice,” she whispered, leaning into him. He held her close, stroking her hair and rubbing her back. It was a lovely reminder of all of his good qualities, not the least of which was that he was a very good kisser. They strolled slowly back to the cottage, his arm around her shoulders.

The four parents were chatting on the front porch when Jaymie and Daniel got back. The two men were talking golf, of course, and the two women were comparing notes on the meal.

“It was all so good, Mrs. Collins,” Jaymie said sincerely, sitting on the top step of the porch stairs. “There was something a little different in your potato salad.”

“Curry powder,” she said, with a sharp nod. “It’s Martha Stewart’s recipe.”

“Jaymie, Debbie was just telling me the most wonderful news!” her mom said, brightly.

Jaymie’s heart thumped. News? What news?

“She and Roger have bought a cottage here on the island. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Cottage?” Jaymie’s mind was blank.

“Yes, the Lindsay one; we passed by it on our little walk, but I didn’t want to say anything just then. We were . . . talking about other things,” Debbie Collins said, her face composed and blank. “Poor Barb Lindsay is anxious to sell, after that hubbub the other day, and so it’s unofficially official. That fellow—Brock Nibley? Is that his name?—saw to it, and they’ve already drawn up papers.”

“But . . . how . . . Why . . .” Jaymie shook her head, looking from one of them to the other, and landing on Daniel. He shrugged. “How did you find out about it?”

“Brock Nibley,” Debbie Collins repeated. “He called us this morning, saying it wasn’t on the market yet, but would be, and did we want to see it?”

She had known Brock was cutthroat as a real estate agent—he scanned obituaries and attended funerals to get first jump on listings—but this was swift even for him.

“Seems like a nice enough spot,” Roger Collins piped up. “We spotted it last week during a river cruise and thought it had a great view, but that all that potential was wasted. It is so badly looked after, you know. And if our boy is going to be here a lot, we thought we’d have a little nest here, too. ’Sides, Debbie is just longing to work on the place; all this gardening has her inspired.”

“We had better get going, Roger,” Mrs. Collins said, standing and smoothing her skirt down.

Jaymie was going to go back to town with the Collinses, leaving her mom and dad to enjoy the cottage for a week, which was why she had left Hoppy in the house in Queensville. She
had
been looking forward to returning to being alone at the Queensville house, but the ferry ride was awkward, to say the least. No subject seemed safe, and she and Debbie Collins exchanged glances but did not speak.

Daniel drew her slightly away and said, “Are you angry that they bought the cottage?”

“It’s none of my business, but I am surprised. It seems so casual to buy a house in a place you never before wanted to live!”

“I’ve done that lots of times,” he said.

It was like an unexploded bomb had landed in her lap. “What?” She watched his shadowy profile. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said; I’ve done that lots of times. Besides a house in Bakersfield and one in Phoenix and Stowe House, I own houses in . . . heck, seven states? Maybe more?”

“Eight . . . You bought a house in Alabama two years ago,” Roger Collins, who sat nearby, said.

Didn’t his family have any boundaries? Daniel’s dad had been listening in the whole time. She kept her mouth tightly closed, then said a tepid good-bye to Daniel by the dock, saying she’d talk to him the next day. She returned home to Hoppy, who had been kept in the house in Queensville all day and was wild to get out.

Once he had fussed over her, and Denver slunk out to rub up against her arm, the warmest his affection ever got, she sat on the back step in the darkness while Denver prowled and Hoppy sniffed around and piddled. Daniel owned, what? . . . Eleven houses?
Eleven!
And she had had no clue. Eleven houses sprinkled over the United States like croutons on a salad. It was ridiculous. What kind of wing nut buys houses on a whim, she wondered. A rich wing nut, she supposed.

It left her feeling kind of tilted over, like something had moved, and she was left off-kilter. Wasn’t that kind of major? And Daniel had said nothing about it. Was Stowe House and Queensville just another temporary stop for an eccentric multimillionaire?

She headed to bed, finally, and tried to read, but there was a knot in her stomach. She supposed it had something to do with all of the fuss with Daniel and his parents, but it was more than that. It was fear, plain and simple. Tomorrow her first “Vintage Eats” column would come out in the
Wolverhampton Howler
, and she was ready to upchuck over it.

The next morning after a fitful sleep she rose, and went to her computer. The Vintage Eats blog she had started was still moving sluggishly along. She went on and wrote a piece about the excellent potato salad she’d had the day before, and the surprising ingredient, and mused about how sometimes you learn new tricks in the most unexpected places.

She was interrupted twice by phone calls, first from Valetta, congratulating her on the column, and then by Dee Stubbs, with the same message. She wasn’t sure whether she was most nervous or anticipatory over looking at her column, so she delayed going to the Emporium to get a copy until she published that day’s blog column.