Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (9 page)

“Really?”

“Nonsense,” Jaymie’s dad said. “We’ve known them for years. Garnet Redmond is A-OK in my books, and so is his sister.”

“You never know what people are capable of,” Debbie Collins said, a dark expression on her face. “I thought Trish Brandon was a really nice girl until she dumped my Daniel.”

Jaymie glanced over at Daniel, who was turning red.

“Mom, not here, please.”

“Didn’t you tell Jaymie about Trish?”

“He did, Mrs. Collins,” Jaymie said, folding her hands on her lap. “He told me all about her. And that he now thinks it was for the best.” Some of the triumph left the woman’s face.

“So you don’t think they’ll be arrested, or the Ice House will close down?” Lisa asked, bringing the conversation back to the matter at hand. She glanced over her shoulder, at one of her other tables. “I really like my job there, better than this one. You know, I wouldn’t think anything of it—the Redmonds being guilty, you know—except for those phone calls that evening.”

“Phone calls?”

“Yeah. Garnet and Ruby both kept getting phone calls, and a couple of times they left the restaurant.”

“Really. Were they gone long?”

“Ruby was gone for a good half an hour or more, at one point. Maybe more like three-quarters of an hour.”

“So you don’t mean they were gone together?”

“No!” Lisa said. “No, I didn’t mean that. They were gone separately, at different times, and not to dart league, either, because I asked Marg about that. It was weird. Usually once they’re there, they’re there.”

Separately, at different times. You could get anywhere on Heartbreak Island in twenty-five minutes or less. If you had a bicycle, which everyone did, even faster. If one of them wanted to kill Urban, and knew where he was, Jaymie supposed Garnet or Ruby could have done it.

But their absences from the restaurant didn’t matter a jot, since the killing had happened right behind the Redmonds’ and Leightons’ homes in the wee hours of the morning. “What did Ruby say when she came back?” Jaymie asked. “Anything?”

Lisa shrugged. “I was busy. Didn’t see Ruby again until a while later. It was nothing, I guess, but some bored kids prank calling. That’s what I heard Garnet telling Marg about the stupid phone calls, anyway.”

“What’s this all about?” Jaymie’s mom asked, her brow furrowed.

Jaymie had hoped the others were involved in their chatter and hadn’t been listening in on the conversation. She was silent, but Lisa was the original Chatty Cathy. “Jaymie found Urban’s body behind you guys’ cottage, right? Creepy! I’d be really weirded out by that, but she’s a trooper.”

Daniel’s mother had a look of horror on her face. “You found a body? Is this about that terrible murder out on the island? And it was behind the cottage where you all want to have dinner?”

Joy opened her mouth to reply, but Daniel and his father started to both talk at once, and Lisa, her face blanked into puzzlement, seemed to get that maybe—just maybe—she had put a foot wrong. The restaurant manager was looking over at them, frowning, so the waitress excused herself to see to her other customers and hustled off. Daniel’s mother had been soothed into calmness again, but Jaymie’s mother still looked ruffled.

Jaymie wondered whether she should raise the family dinner issue. As laden with emotion as it had been, it might just be a less fraught subject for conversation than the murder and her discovery of the body. Of course, even the dinner party at the cottage had violent overtones, now that it had been revealed where the body had been found. Fortunately, the men began talking golf, and proposed a foursome for the next day at the country club, at which the Collinses had a temporary membership while they were in Michigan, and the conversation wandered off in another direction.

As the others chatted, Jaymie began to wonder about something she hadn’t thought of before: there didn’t seem to be a lot of blood on the scene for someone who was stabbed, even though his shirt was soaked. She closed her eyes for a moment, the image of the body popping into her head. The bloodstain on his short-sleeved summer shirt had been an elongated oval, spreading down to his left side, even though he was flat on his back.

And Urban had been cold to the touch. Her eyes popped open, and she stared blindly down at the glossy wood surface of the table. Now she wondered not only
who
had killed him, but
when
? If Ruby was gone for a good while, that evening, could she have killed him earlier? It didn’t seem likely. Jaymie knew she would have noticed his body lying in the ravine when she looked out at some point, before the light was completely gone, or later, when she went looking for Hoppy. No, his body had not been there earlier; she was sure of it.

When Jaymie tuned back in, Daniel was observing her with a puzzled frown on his face, but the conversation among the parents had turned to the neutral ground of gardening. Debbie Collins was an enthusiastic gardener, it seemed, and had taken on the task of revamping the Stowe House gardens.

“I really miss gardening,” she said with a sigh. “It’s just not the same in Phoenix.”

“Bakersfield wasn’t much better,” Daniel said, with a grin, referring to his hometown of Bakersfield, California. “Dry and dusty, too.”

“It is different here,” Debbie Collins admitted. Her round face was alight with pleasure, for once, and she spoke enthusiastically of her trips to a local garden nursery, and her purchase of three new trees for the lawn of Stowe House.

Roger Collins grinned. “Yeah, and of course who gets to move them?” The others laughed as he raised his hand. “I had to get the wheelbarrow out. One of those things, with the root ball, is about two hundred pounds!”

“It is not
that
heavy,” Debbie demurred.

“I’ll help you out, Roger,” Jaymie’s dad said. “You and I can manhandle those babies into place. I’ve done that before.”

Joy Leighton, a look of alarm on her face, said, “Alan, you will do no such thing. I won’t have you straining something!”

Their dinners came just then, and they ate, agreeing that the food was not as good as the name Ambrosio promised. But the evening ended pleasantly enough, and Jaymie was relieved. The older couples made conversation in the parking lot while Daniel and Jaymie said their good-byes on the riverfront walkway. It reminded Jaymie of the Seven Minutes in Heaven game she played as a curious eleven-year-old, when she got her first kiss from Josh Burney; it was awkward, and yet oddly stimulating. They kissed for a couple of minutes; Daniel was a rather good kisser, not too hard, not too mushy.

“I’m sorry about my mom,” Daniel said, holding Jaymie close in the warm evening air.

“Are you kidding? My mom is no picnic either, Daniel. I was going to bring up the family thing out at Rose Tree Cottage, but there was already enough tension. I just wanted dinner to go okay. I think it did; don’t you?” She looked up at him.

“It went just fine,” he said. “You seemed a little distracted, though. Is everything okay? Despite finding a dead body in your backyard?”

She appreciated his delicacy. He never made her feel weak, or like he thought she couldn’t handle something difficult. “No, it’s okay. Troubling, and scary—I mean, there’s a murderer on the island somewhere, probably, unless he or she is already gone—but I’m all right.”

“C’mon, you two,” Roger Collins said from the parking lot. “Get done and let’s get going.”

“I don’t think your mom likes me,” Jaymie said, as they walked arm in arm back to their parents.

He shrugged, but she felt a thread of tension in his wiry body.

“She’s still holding a grudge against Trish,” he said. “She’ll come around. How could she not?” He gave her a quick kiss and the Collins family moved toward Roger Collins’s rented Beemer.

The Leightons returned home, and her parents turned in. She fed Hoppy the doggie bag she had brought home, then sat out on the back step while he took his piddle and Denver prowled the perimeter. She was going to do breakfast for Anna tomorrow morning, work four hours at the Emporium, then head back out to the island, hopefully, from her earlier conversation with the police liaison office, to supervise the plumbers as they finished their work.

Something that was said that evening should mean something to her, but what? She went over her conversation with Lisa. Was it about Ruby being gone from the restaurant? Or was it something someone else said? Finally, hopelessly confused, she called the animals in and retired, to dream of ice cream and Daniel’s kisses, not necessarily in that order.

Nine

J
AYMIE BUZZED THROUGH
her morning, taking care of Anna’s breakfast service for her, then spending a few hours working at the Emporium, filling in as cashier for the elderly but fairly spry Klausners, who both had medical appointments. The Emporium was a big, square clapboard building with a Victorian false front. The porch spanned the entire width, and had been a gathering place, of sorts, for over a hundred years, from a time when the newest shapes in bustles were available at the dry goods counter, to the present, when boxes of water weenies and boogie boards were lined up along the huge old windows. At one end of the wooden porch a newly reinforced wheelchair ramp gave access, but at the front, by the road, three wood steps ascended, and that was where Jaymie and Valetta took their midmorning tea, partially shaded from the glare of the sun that was traversing the cerulean sky.

“So they haven’t made an arrest yet,” Valetta said, sipping out of her mug emblazoned with the saying “Drug Dealer” in big red letters.

“No.”

“Do you think it could be Garnet or Ruby who did it?”

“I really don’t, Valetta,” Jaymie said, sipping her cooling tea. “What idiot would kill someone on their own property?”

Her friend shrugged. “It happens all the time. I don’t think if you’re killing someone you think of that. At least, not at that moment.” She had shed her lab coat, and tugged at the neck of her T-shirt, which sported a design of playful kittens in neckerchiefs.

What she said was true, but Jaymie didn’t
want
it to be Ruby or Garnet. She liked them both. Valetta was someone whose opinion mattered to her, so she tried to give it a fair chance in her brain. “Do
you
think it was one of them? Have you heard anything?”

Valetta chuckled. “No, not at all. I just think we have to keep an open mind.”

“You must know them both, right?”

“And like them.” She frowned off into the distance, and screwed up her mouth, suddenly serious.

“What is it?” Jaymie asked, watching her.

“There’s just something there, and I can’t put my finger on it. I’ve always felt like they’re hiding something.”

“Do you mean about the murder?”

“Good Lord, no. I haven’t seen either of them since the murder. But I’ve always felt there was something there that just . . .” She shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. Just something not quite right.”

Jaymie pondered what different people had said about Ruby, in particular. A couple of people assumed she was gay, and then Valetta’s brother was convinced that she was having an affair with Urban Dobrinskie. In a town like Queensville, rumors and gossip bubbled up through most conversation like magma, and Jaymie had long ago learned to ignore 90 percent of what people said. But could it be true? Was Ruby having an affair with Urban? Even an idiot like Brock Nibley had to be right
some
of the time.

She shook her head. Not about this; it just didn’t add up. Ruby was smart and even-tempered, and Dobrinskie had been an angry twerp. Still, Ruby’s words haunted her; she had said, “I didn’t mean to do it
.
” Do what?

After lunch Mr. Klausner came back from his doctor’s appointment, and Jaymie headed home a roundabout way, reluctant to return home immediately. As she passed Jewel’s Junk, she noticed the store next door—it had been a bungalow once, but had become a store since, a bookstore in its last incarnation—with the door wide-open and a sign leaning against the railing. She had heard about a new shop opening, but when it didn’t happen by Memorial Day weekend, she had put that down to unsubstantiated rumor.

She peeked in, curious.

“Hi there!”

Jaymie started, but then realized that the disembodied voice was floating down from the top of a ladder, and it was someone she knew. “Cynthia!” she said, to Cynthia Turbridge, transplanted big-city yoga instructor. “What are you putting in here? Your yoga studio?”

“Nope, I’m opening a junk store,” she said, with a laugh. “My cottage is too crowded with shabby chic, so I decided to open the Cottage Shoppe. Check out the sign outside when you leave.”

Jaymie glanced around at the boxes piled high with linens and white-painted furnishings lined up along the walls. “What a great idea! Can’t wait till you open.”

“About a week. Actually, you could do me a favor,” Cynthia said, climbing down from her perch, where she had been hanging white and gold drapes. She dusted her hands off and stared at the drapes, adjusting them slightly. “I hear you know all there is about vintage kitchen junk. My vision for this place is the complete shabby chic cottage, and I need some advice on the kitchen.” She explained that each room was going to have stuff for sale related to that room, like bed linens and furniture in the bedroom, china in the dining room, etcetera. “But when it comes to the kitchen, I’m stumped.”

Shabby chic, Jaymie mused. She wasn’t quite sure what it would entail. Cynthia, maybe seeing her puzzlement, rooted around in one of the boxes and produced some magazines. “Here, this will show you what I mean, at least as far as the bedroom goes. I just can’t figure out how to apply shabby chic to the kitchen.”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can come up with.”

“You’ve already inspired me, without even knowing it!” the older woman said. “For the front porch, I’m going to have some Adirondack chairs, of course, and a porch swing, but for the backyard, I was thinking of something like your picnic rigs!”

Jaymie returned home in a thoughtful mood. The Cottage Shoppe was going to be her kind of store, it sounded like, except she was thrifty, and Cynthia was likely going to charge an arm and a leg for her artistic vision of cottage life, planning to milk the tourists for their vacation shopping bucks.

Jaymie’s mom and dad were out with the Collinses golfing, their note said, so she settled down to her computer in her office to try to work on the article while she had the house to herself. It was no good. Her attention just wasn’t there, not with this murder hanging over them all, and her beloved cottage right in the middle of it. She picked up the phone; she needed answers.

First the police department. She gave her name and asked for Zack Christian. He was not available, but surprisingly, she was put through to Chief Ledbetter.

“H’lo,” he said, ending the word on a harrumph.

She apologized for taking up his time, then asked about her property, and whether she could arrange for the plumbers to do their work.

“Yeah, okay. We’re finished with your property, Miss Leighton,” he said. “But I do have a few questions.” Without waiting, he charged on: “You said you saw a flash of light. Can you describe it for me a little better, where it came from?”

She thought back, and said, “It was kind of like when you’re in the woods, and someone has a flashlight, and they play it around an area, you know?”

He grunted; then there was silence for a minute. “When you saw the body, did you know who it was?”

“Yes, of course! I had seen him not too long before, after all.”

“What about before that? Would you have recognized him before the argument at the restaurant?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But your family has had the cottage there a long time, right?”

“Sure, but I don’t spend that much time out there now, you know. And Dobrinskie had only been a part owner of the marina for . . . a few years? I’m just guessing. I don’t really know a thing about him.”

He grunted again, and again there was a long pause. “Okay. You can tell your plumbers they can go ahead.”

“Chief Ledbetter,” she shouted, before he could hang up. “When can I get my digital camera back?”

He was silent for a moment. “Come in tomorrow and get it. I’ll make sure they have it for you at the desk.”

“Chief, are you close to an arrest?”

“No comment.” Click.

Jaymie cuddled Denver and fed him, then snapped a leash on Hoppy, and headed down to the marina. Usually she loved the trip. The ferry’s approach to the island was done from the tip of the heart shape of Heartbreak Island, and on the bluff overlooking the river was a lonely cottage that Jaymie always watched, trying to imagine the view. It looked uninhabited, to her, but it was probably just used by vacationers, like many of the cottages, including her own.

As the ferry chugged toward the marina, her stomach did a few flip-flops that she knew were not motion sickness. Though she spent only a short while there every year, Rose Tree Cottage was her refuge. To get it back to being that, she had to hope the police solved Urban Dobrinskie’s murder, and erased all the bad feelings associated with Heartbreak Island.

“Hey, there, howarye?” Will Lindsay asked, as she disembarked with Hoppy. He looked a little harassed, his hair askew and his eyes underlined by dark circles.

“I’m good, Will. How are
you
? You look tired.”

He shrugged. “You never know how much there is to a business until you have to do it all on your own. I miss Urb. He could be an ass, but he sure know how to get stuff done.”

Heavy machinery rumbled down the hill, and he looked over his shoulder, as Hoppy yapped and growled at the noise. It was Robin driving a tractor, pulling a generator. Jaymie waved, but Robin didn’t see her, and turned, continuing on to the far end of the marina. He was followed by a couple of other guys on bigger machines.

“Wow. Something going on?”

“We’re finally getting the much-needed dredging done. The ferry port is being done first; I’m always so afraid of the ferry getting grounded. Then we’ll be doing the harbor mouth and some of the marina.”

Hoping it didn’t set her own project back, now that she had the okay from the police to continue, Jaymie said good-bye to Will, picked up Hoppy, and hustled to talk to Robin before he got down to work. She scuffed over the gravel and huffed and puffed her way over to Robin, Hoppy bouncing on her hip and her shoulder bag swinging wildly and whacking her on the back. The plumber had hopped off his tractor and was talking to one of his big machine operators.

“Robin!” she called.

“Oh, hey, Jaymie.”

“I just got the okay to finish the plumbing on the cottage property,” she said, gasping from sprinting the distance. “Are you going to be available?”

His round face wore an annoyed expression and he rolled his eyes, as if he saw dollar bills fluttering away, but he nodded. “I didn’t know when we could continue, and Will finally got the go-ahead to do the harbor work. But I promise I’ll personally come back this aft and finish up. There really isn’t that much, and a couple of my unskilled guys can do some of the heavy labor.”

“That’s why you’re the best,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder.

“I gotta go,” he said.

She caught her breath and walked Hoppy back to the cottage. As she ascended the steps up to the cottage, keys in hand, she tried not to let the events of the past days ruin her haven. All was safe and sound, and she poured some water in a bowl for Hoppy, then glanced out the back. Garnet was glaring at the mess, hands on his hips. Jaymie exited, scaled the slope and stepped carefully past the muddy hole, moving steadily toward him.

“Hey, Garnet,” she said, keeping her tone chipper. He looked a little gray, but pretty much as he always looked. “I just talked to Robin. I’ve got the okay from the police chief, so Robin is going to come back and finish up this afternoon. I hope. If he doesn’t get done, though, may I borrow your bathroom tonight again?”

“Sure, Jaymie,” he said, a worried expression on his long face.

“Everything okay? I mean, besides the obvious?”

“The obvious being everyone in town is whispering that either Ruby or I killed Urban?”

“No one really believes that. I’ve been through this myself, last month, when folks thought I killed Kathy,” Jaymie said, about the whispers that she had murdered her longtime foe, Kathy Cooper, at the Fourth of July picnic. “Trust me, your friends don’t think that, and even those who might believe it will be proved wrong as soon as the police figure out who
did
do it.”

He smiled. “I appreciate it, Jaymie. I forgot about your trouble last month.”

They looked over the mucky terrain. Jaymie had never realized how important the unseen and unnoticed leaching bed and septic system was until it was no longer functioning as it should. She suspected, after talking to Robin, that the failure of their septic system was due to their renters trying to defray the cost of renting by having additional family and friends come and bunk in with them, despite the written agreement, which stated no additional guests not on the rental agreement. Too many people overwhelmed the system. It didn’t help that their sump pump was draining into the leaching bed, too, though.