Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (7 page)

“Urb was Canadian?” Jaymie interjected.

“He was born in Poland, and came over to Canada,” Evelyn Dobrinskie said, the tears in her eyes gleaming in the sun streaming in the window. “Then he came here, to the island, and that’s when we met, and got married. He was so handsome. My parents didn’t like him, but I knew he was the one for me.”

Evelyn colored, faintly, and Jaymie could see that when young, she had probably been one of those pretty women, frail and a little needy, who appeal to the big, burly guys.

“We’ll make sure you don’t need to worry about food, and if you have an overflow, I know a couple of empty cottages where we can put folks up. Don’t you worry about a thing,” Tansy said, patting the other woman’s shoulder. “Come on back and we’ll talk about it over tea.”

The baker pulled the other woman to her feet and led her back behind the counter toward the kitchen.

“I have to go,” Jaymie said to Sherm, glancing down at her watch. “The ferry leaves in five minutes or so. I’ll be back, maybe even tomorrow.”

She walked down to the dock in a thoughtful frame of mind. Seeing the widow gave her a different view of the awful event, and she wondered whether this case was going to be an easy one, or difficult. For all she knew the police could have someone in their sights already, but if they did, it was likely Garnet or Ruby Redmond.

As the ferry pulled away from the marina, Jaymie looked back at her pretty island. She could
almost
see Rose Tree Cottage through the trees that lined the riverbank. She was torn, in her feelings; on one hand, she wanted to go back to the bosom of her home in Queensville, but on the other, she knew what awaited her there. Her mother was on a tear, and nagged constantly about what she called “the state of the kitchen.” But she had to face her. She loved her mother, truly, but sometimes they didn’t see eye to eye.

So she’d stop at the Emporium first, since she had business to take care of there. She put Hoppy in the puppy pen beside the store, where he could consort with Roary, an asthmatic pug that belonged to Mrs. Trelawney Bellwood. Mrs. B. played Queen Victoria in the annual Tea with the Queen event in Queensville, and carried her regal bearing with her throughout the rest of the year, mostly to drive her nemesis, Imogene Frump, wild with envy. As far as Jaymie could tell, the two women had been competing ever since they were both pigtailed girls in school, back in the 1930s. Hoppy and Roary bounded about in the puppy pen for a moment, before Roary was stopped by a fit of sneezes and coughs.

Jaymie entered the Emporium, the chimes above the door dancing and jingling merrily. “Hi, Mr. Klausner,” she said to the ninety-year-old owner, who sat behind the cash desk reading his paper. He looked up, one eye huge behind the magnifying glass he used to read, and nodded. Jaymie circled the desk and picked up the reservation, rental and return book for her thriving vintage basket rental business.

Valetta, the combination pharmacist catalog order clerk for all of Queensville, closed her window at the back of the store with a bang, and locked the door, hustling to the front. “Jaymie! You have to tell me . . . have they made an arrest, yet?”

“No. Why?”

She looked around, and moved closer. “I hear that Ruby Redmond is going to be arrested!” she whispered, her hiss urgent. “I can’t believe it! Ruby?”

“Who told you that?” Jaymie exclaimed.

Brock, Valetta’s brother, wandered up from the back. That explained that. Brock Nibley, unlike Sherm Woodrow, was a gossip of the vicious and unreliable type.

“Ruby did
not
kill Urban Dobrinskie,” Jaymie stated firmly. Wouldn’t she look like a fool if it turned out that she did? But she didn’t care about that right now. It was most important to stop Brock in his tracks. “And as far as I know, no arrest is imminent; isn’t that how the paper puts it?”

He shrugged. “It’s what I heard. She was his mistress, and found out he was poking some other woman, so she did him in.”

Seven

J
AYMIE WAS STUNNED.
“Urban and Ruby? Wow, Brock, how wrong can you be? Where on earth did you hear that?”

He shrugged, but his expression was smug, as if he knew what no one else would admit to knowing. It was infuriating!

“For your information,” Jaymie said, “Ruby Redmond would not have done
anything
with Urb Dobrinskie. In fact, she couldn’t stand Urban. You know, he was really rude to her the other night at the Ice House. He had the nerve to call her a ‘she-male’!” Oops! She clapped her hand over her mouth.

Brock smirked, and Jaymie felt her stomach churn. The last thing he needed was more fuel for his gossip line.

Jaymie whirled toward her friend and moaned, “I didn’t mean to let that slip.”

Valetta glanced swiftly from her friend to her brother, and said, shaking her finger in his face, “Brock, if I hear anyone else say that, I’ll know it came directly from you.
Please
be a better person than that!”

He sniffed and shrugged, rolling his eyes. “Whatever. Urb had a girlfriend; that’s all I know. Thought it might be Ruby. Lovers’ quarrel, and all that.”

“I don’t know who did it,” Jaymie said, a headache forming like a tight band across her forehead. “All I know is, I found his body in the gully between our two properties.”

“You poor kid,” Valetta said, squeezing Jaymie’s shoulder. “Another body!”

“Our very own grim reaper,” Brock said, heading for the door. “I gotta go. Gotta show a house to a couple.”

“Someone new in town?” Valetta asked.

“Yeah,” he said, over his shoulder. “Daniel Collins’ parents are thinking of buying a place here.” He left, the chimes over the door ringing a death knell on Jaymie’s future peace in her hometown.

Jaymie’s heart dropped. Daniel’s parents, moving to Queensville?

“Did you know that?” Valetta said.

“I did
not
,” she said, grimly.

“Your mom and his mom don’t get along, do they?”

She sighed. “Like two territorial Chihuahuas, not that I’m calling either one of them a bitch. I don’t know why they don’t get along. They’re so similar, in a lot of ways.”

“That’s why,” Valetta said, with a laugh. “Two strong-minded women will never be able to get along if their son and daughter are dating.” She grabbed Jaymie’s elbow, and led her behind the counter, “Anyway, settle down. It’ll all work out. Better look at the book for the basket rentals.”

They did some business, and Jaymie went to the back room to wash a few sets of the melamine dishes for the baskets, then restocked the basket rental shelf. Finally, she couldn’t put it off any longer, and retrieved Hoppy. She headed home, dragging her feet as much as she had as a kid coming home from school, swinging the box of Tansy Tarts and letting Hoppy sniff everything.

She went down the back alley behind her beloved home, unlatching the gate. The back door was open, and there were mats and rugs lined up over the fence. Mom was cleaning, surprise, surprise. Oddly enough, while home in Florida, her mother employed a local woman to clean for them, but as soon as she got to Queensville it was as if a cleaning demon possessed her, and she fell to scrubbing and dusting.

Jaymie let Hoppy off his leash so he could stay in the yard. As she strolled up the flagstone walk she heard a low growl, and glanced over at the holly bushes. Denver was hiding in the shadows, and he was glaring at her. In his mind, no doubt, she had abandoned him to the not-so-tender mercies of Jaymie’s mother, who did not like cats at all. Joy Leighton tolerated Hoppy, but Denver was sneaky and gave her the evil eye, she said.

Poor fellow. It must be hard to live in a household where you weren’t appreciated. Jaymie crouched down by the bushes, and Denver slunk out, hunkering down in her shadow and letting her pet him. “I know, old boy,” she murmured. “Mom is a little high-maintenance, isn’t she?”

He grumbled and slunk back into the shadows, but this time he curled up for a snooze, appeased by her sympathy. Time to face the music. As Jaymie approached the house, she could hear shouting. Her folks were bickering again.

“Joy, where’s the instant coffee? I can’t find a thing in this jumble. I don’t know why the hell you feel the need to pull everything out of the cupboards like that. Can’t we come here and just relax?”

“I’m cleaning!” she said. “Jaymie said it was clean already, but it sure doesn’t look like it to me.”

“You should give that kid a break,” her dad said. “It’s her house now, isn’t it?”

“It’s Becca’s, too, and all this junk irritates her.”

“Let the girls sort it out on their own!”

“I’m home,” Jaymie called out, coming up the steps to the summer porch.

“Honey, are you okay?” Alan Leighton came out to greet her, and took her into a bear hug.

Jaymie had been out at the cottage for only a couple of days, but with all that had happened, one of her dad’s tight hugs felt good. “I’m okay, Dad,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. The sun beamed through the open door of the summer porch, warming her back as her dad rubbed her shoulder blades.

Jaymie’s mom came out to the summer porch, watching them. There was a tentative expression on her heart-shaped face, as there often was when she watched her husband with his daughters. Joy Leighton at sixty-eight seemed to defy her age. She was slight, the kind of woman who will always be described as “tiny,” with fluffy auburn hair that curled in light bangs over her smooth forehead. She suited to a tee the bluff squareness of Alan Leighton. But the two, as firmly united as they usually appeared, had once come close to divorcing; Jaymie remembered a bleak period of her childhood that was a time of bitter and loud quarrels. Becca, her elder sister by fifteen years, had become almost a second mother to Jaymie, telling her stories and singing songs that masked some of the acrimony from below.

“Jaymie, darling, are you okay?” Joy asked, her blue eyes full of worry.

Her mom
did
love her; that Jaymie knew, even if they didn’t understand each other or always get along. Both of the Leighton girls had taken after their father in physical looks, both solid, where Joy was slight, but Becca at least seemed to have inherited their mother’s clean gene, while Jaymie reveled in disarray. “I’m fine, Mom,” Jaymie said, pulling her mother into a three-way hug with her dad.

They all released, and Jaymie entered the kitchen to find it pretty much as she expected. Everything was pulled down from the tops of the cupboards, and the whole place smelled of pine cleaner. She stifled her reaction, which was to gripe at her mother about the disruption. Instead, she carefully said, “When you’re done, I’ll put it all back, Mom. I don’t want you having to climb the ladder or step stool.”

“I thought we’d go through it first, dear,” her mother said, moving over to the long trestle table where the array of vintage tins, bowls and utensils was lined up in military fashion. “Now, look at this baking powder tin,” she said, picking up the tall round container. “It’s all rusty! You don’t want something that rusty in the house, do you?”

The rusty piece was a vintage Calumet baking powder tin that Jaymie had paid ten dollars for at a vintage store, one of her more pricey acquisitions, besides the old Emporium scales. The tin was tall and red, and offered a striking contrast to the other more muted silver and steel items. “Mom, I could double my money on that now, if I sold it online.”

Her mother’s eyes lit up. “Great! I’ll get our camera and we can post it right away.”

“Mom, no!” Jaymie, exasperated, looked over at her father, but he wasn’t going to be any help at all, since he was shaking with silent laughter. “I’m not selling it,” she said, taking it from the woman’s hands and putting it back down on the table. She cast about for another topic, as she coaxed her mother past the kitchen toward the parlor. “If you really want to clean, why don’t you take down the books in the library? That room hasn’t been dusted in a dog’s age. Hoppy starts sneezing every time he goes in there.”

“Okay,” she said, doubtfully. “But we need to talk about Mrs. Collins and the family supper, and soon!”

“We will, I promise.” Jaymie returned to the kitchen. “Dad, what am I going to do?”

“About your mother? Or about Mrs. Collins?”

“Both!” Jaymie plunked down on a chair and covered her eyes with her hands. “It’s all a mess. But all I can think of is . . .” She trailed off and shook her head.

She felt her father’s arm over her shoulders, and he pulled her close.

“I don’t know how you’ve managed these last few months, and then to find another body! My poor girl.”

She sank into the hug for a long minute. Her dad always smelled of mints and wool and shoe polish, for some reason, even in midsummer.

He released her and examined her face. “Jaymie, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while.”

She looked into his blue eyes, the very color of her own. “What’s up?”

“Do you remember back in the winter, when your mom told you I was in the hospital for a few days?”

“Yeah. You had a hernia operation, right?”

“Not exactly. Your mother felt . . . We
both
worried that telling you something difficult at a distance would upset you, especially since you were going through that thing with Joel at the time.”

She felt her stomach drop. “Dad, what’s going on?” she asked, staring into his eyes. Her voice trembled, and she felt like her stomach was quivering.

“Damn,” he said, and shook his head. “I should have waited. Honey, it’s nothing, really. I’m good now. I really am!”

“You’re good
now
? What do you mean?”

“I mean that I had a prostate exam, and it showed up some anomalies.”

“Was it . . .” Her words choked off. She couldn’t say it.

“It was
not
cancer!”

She searched his eyes. Was he telling the truth?

“Honest, honey, it was
not
cancer. There’s a medical name, but I basically had an infection. They weren’t sure at first, but that’s what it turned out to be. I took an antibiotic, and it cleared up.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

He looked away and frowned. Hoppy bounced into the room and begged at her father’s knee for attention. He leaned over and petted the little dog’s head, and said, “Well, actually, we did tell Becca.”

Jaymie sat, stunned, for a long moment. “Becca went down to stay with you guys in March. Was that when . . . ?”

He nodded. “She came down to help your mother. You know your mom; she was a basket case for a while. Once we knew the truth, that it wasn’t cancer, and that I was going to be just fine, Becca left.”

“Why didn’t you tell
me
?” Jaymie said, tears clogging her voice and trembling in her eyes.

“Because we didn’t want to worry you, dear,” her mother said, from the kitchen door.

Jaymie twisted to meet her mother’s gaze. “But that didn’t occur to you with Becca?”

“When we saw you last Christmas you were so hurt by that jerk, Joel, and . . .” She shrugged. “We worried that it would be too much for you.”

She stood, and her glance went back and forth between them. “I’m real happy that you’re okay, Dad. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Either of you,” she said, looking to her mother, who still paused, elegant hand on the doorframe. “But when, in the last ten years, have I ever struck you as someone who couldn’t handle the truth?”

Neither answered, and Jaymie walked out the back door, down the flagged walk, through the gate and then into Anna Jones’s backyard. It was the same old problem; her parents just refused to see her as a grown-up. But at thirty-two, maybe they never would. She should just let it go, she supposed, even though it rankled. It wasn’t as if they were around all the time. Maybe they
needed
to still see her as their “baby.”

But the fact that they didn’t tell her about her father’s health scare was both saddening and maddening. What if it had been something much worse? How long would she have been in the dark? Maybe Becca would understand and could explain to her parents why Jaymie was hurt by it.

She let herself in to the B and B and found Anna in the kitchen, sitting with her head in her hands. Forgetting about her own concerns, she sat down next to her friend. “What’s wrong, Anna?”