Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (8 page)

“Oh! Jaymie.” She looked up, the dark rings under her eyes signaling another sleepless night. “I didn’t hear you come in. Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”

“Liar. Talk to me,” she commanded, putting her arm over her friend’s shoulders.

She sniffed and shook her head. “I’m all right. Really!”

Anna was a few months pregnant with her second child, something she hadn’t planned when she and her Jamaican-born husband, Clive, sunk her entire inheritance into a bed-and-breakfast. Lately she had been suffering morning sickness, so Jaymie had been making the eggs part of the breakfast for her, since it was the one thing that turned her stomach.

If she wasn’t going to fess up, then Jaymie would just have to guess. “Has my mom been working out okay?” she asked. Jaymie’s mother had promised to do the cooking for Anna for the few days Jaymie was tied up with the cottage plumbing.

“Yeah, she’s been great! She made me mint tea this morning and was really so sweet! I . . . I . . .” Tears puddled in her green eyes and ran down her freckled cheeks, as Tabitha wandered in and stood by her mom. The toddler put her hand on her mother’s knee with an expression of concern in her dark eyes.

“Please, Anna, talk to me! I’ll just worry if you don’t.”

“I have to go back to Toronto,” Anna said. “We just can’t afford to pay for my prenatal health care down here, not when I have free universal in Canada! And I need to go back anyway, at some point, to spend enough time there to keep my OHIP up-to-date,” she said, naming her provincial health insurance plan. “I’ve been having some trouble, and last week, when I went back to TO to have a checkup, they were concerned about my glucose levels.”

“Are they worried about diabetes?”

She nodded. “And my blood pressure. Anyway,” she said, with a sniff. “I might have to get someone to look after the B and B for the fall and winter a little earlier than I thought I’d have to. That’s all. It’s just . . . none of this has turned out like I thought it would. It’s my own fault for being careless.” Careless, as in missing days with her birth control.

“But you don’t regret the baby coming?”

“Oh no!” Anna said, her smile breaking out like sunshine, warming Jaymie and relieving some of her anxiety.

“So it just means you’ll have someone take over a little earlier than you had planned, that’s all.” Anna had always planned to have someone else look after the B and B for the winter while she went back to Canada. She needed to stay there for at least six months to keep her eligibility for their universal health care. Jaymie still wasn’t quite clear on why Anna had felt opening a bed-and-breakfast in Michigan was a good idea. “Do you have someone in mind?” Jaymie asked, half afraid of the answer.

Jaymie just did
not
have time to run the B and B, not with the basket rental business—though that would slow down over the winter—the (hopefully) new column for the
Howler
, working at the Emporium and some of the other main street stores and, most important, writing her cookbook. But if it was necessary, she would definitely fill in for her friend until she found someone to take over the Shady Rest.

Anna nodded, even as her expression held a hint of doubt. “My cousin Pam lives in Rochester, and she needs to get away for a while. I told her she could come here to stay, and she’s going to arrive in the next week or so.” She sniffed. “If she works out, she can take over. I can teach her what to do, and go back to Toronto.”

“Problem solved, then!”

Anna nodded. “I know, but . . . Jaymie, I’m going to miss you so much!”

“Oh, honey, me, too!” They hugged.

“Halloo?”

Jaymie looked toward the door to see Heidi standing there, waving and smiling.

“Your mom told me you were here,” she said to Jaymie. “She was kind of weird, like she didn’t even want to look at me. Why is that?”

Jaymie sighed. Sometimes it was as if everyone else in her life was holding the grudge against Joel and Heidi longer than she had. Joel had a new girlfriend; Jaymie was over it. In fact, she liked Heidi a lot, and they got along just fine. So it was odd, considering everyone had been telling her for months to get over it, that they still treated Heidi like a pariah much of the time. “I’m sorry, Heidi. We had a bit of a quarrel just now. It’s probably that.”

Heidi sat down on the floor to play with Tabitha, then looked up and said, “I can’t believe what I heard happened over at the island!”

In muted tones and oblique language, avoiding the M-word (murder) and the D-word (dead) around Tabitha, they discussed it.

Jaymie had to dispel some of the weirder rumors, and wondered yet again at the Queensville telegraph, and how they got things very,
very
wrong much more often than they got them right. “I saw Bernie at the scene. I’m assuming she’s working on the case?” Jaymie asked. Bernice Jenkins and Heidi had forged a friendship begun when they discovered their common interest in mid-century modern furniture.

“Yeah. I just talked to her. She has a day off two days from now, and we’re going to an auction. You want to come?”

Given the state of her kitchen, and how her mother was dealing with her collection, she probably shouldn’t. “I’d love to,” Jaymie said. With Bernie on the case, as she was, maybe she’d be able to tell Jaymie was what going on, because Mr. Detective Zack would be no use at all, she knew from experience. It hit her suddenly that she assumed she’d get to know the details, that she just figured she’d be involved somehow, even though she really didn’t know the victim this time.

Maybe she was as big a nosy parker as the rest of Queensville; she just didn’t like to admit it. But she didn’t gossip; she “exchanged information.” And that was what gossip was, she realized, information given and received. So she was really every bit a Queensville gossip. She supposed that admission meant she could no longer criticize the rest of the town.

After a few moments more of chat, Anna asked something Jaymie had been wondering for a couple of weeks. “So, Heidi, have you told your folks yet about getting engaged?”

Heidi blushed, and a faint expression of irritation crossed her pretty, pale face. She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Gosh, you and everyone else wants to know! I swear, if it gets back to Joel that I haven’t told my family yet, he’ll be so hurt.”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Jaymie said. “Honest!”

“You haven’t told Joel that your folks don’t know you’re getting married? Hey, Brock Nibley was the one who told me,” Anna said, her hands up, palms out. “Don’t ask me how
he
knows.”

“That’s the thing about gossip,” Jaymie mused. “It seems that once a rumor starts, there is no stopping it. You’d better either tell your folks, or let Joel know you haven’t yet told them.”

“Will
you
tell Joel for me?” Heidi asked Jaymie, with a hopeful expression.

Astounded, Jaymie gaped at her while Anna snickered.

“Did I say something wrong?” Heidi asked, looking from one of them to the other.

“Doesn’t it strike you the least bit odd to ask your fiancé’s ex-girlfriend to tell him that you haven’t let your parents in on your engagement?” Jaymie carefully asked. Between the two of them, Joel and Heidi seemed determined to drag her into their relationship, the one place she did not, as his ex, belong.

Her expression blanked; then she turned pink. “I did it again, didn’t I?” she asked. “I was insensitive. Oh, Jaymsie, I’m so sorry!”

“Jaymsie?” Anna said, eyes wide, staring at her friend, then eyeing the blonde.

Jaymie shrugged. “Heidi, my feelings aren’t hurt, but it is
completely
unthinkable that I should break that kind of news to Joel. That’s your job.”

She sighed. “I’d better tell him when he comes back from his sales trip on Friday.”

“You had better!” Jaymie sighed and got up. “And speaking of parents and boyfriends, I have dinner tonight with Mom, Dad, Daniel and his parents. Oh, joy.”

“It’ll all turn out, Jaymie,” Heidi said, jumping to her feet. “They’re gonna love you!”

Eight

J
AYMIE HAD STARTED
a foodie blog online even before deciding to try to get her “Vintage Eats” column in the
Howler
. It was good experience, and had gotten her in the habit of writing every day, sometimes about recipes, and sometimes about vintage cookware. It was past time to update it, so she spent a few hours scanning old cookbook pages and recipes, wrote some blog entries, and postdated them to launch over the next several days.

As she hit “publish” on the last one, it occurred to her there was no way she could continue with the article on ice harvesting and ice cream making for the
Wolverhampton Howler
. How could she blithely talk about wickedly sharp and lethal ice picks, when one had been used, quite possibly, to murder someone on the island, right in the backyard she shared with the owners of the Ice House? What a mess!

She had to call Nan Goodenough, her prospective editor at the
Howler
. Wasn’t this wonderful? She didn’t even really have the job yet, but she had to phone her editor and change her article subject. It just wouldn’t do to use the Ice House and have photos of ice picks, not with the murder so raw and recent. And unsolved.

It was late afternoon, but she hoped she’d catch the woman at the office. She dialed the
Howler
, and got Nan on the phone. She explained her dilemma, and said, “So I think I should change it, don’t you?”

“Yeah. It’s too bad in a way; if we were a different kind of paper . . . but we’re not. We don’t want to have to tiptoe around people’s sensitivities. You can do the Ice House story later, unless Garnet or Ruby are arrested, of course.”

Jaymie sat back in her office chair, and it squealed in protest. “Do you think one of them will be?”

“I’ve heard things,” Nan said. “The paper is covering it, of course, and my hubby has some tips he’s running with. Garnet’s prints are all over the ice pick, of course, and after that fight between him and Urban . . . Well, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

For the first time Jaymie wondered, if Garnet
did
do it, then it was easy to figure his access to the ice pick. But if he didn’t commit the murder—and Jaymie still could not imagine him doing something so heinous—then how did someone else get the pick?

“So what other idea did you have in mind for the article?”

Too late, Jaymie realized she should have been prepared for this. “Uh . . . I . . .”

“You don’t have a clue, do you?” Nan said, her brash voice holding an amused note. “Honey, you should always be ready with spare ideas.” So spoke the New York journalist who had retired, married a widower, and moved to a small town in Michigan to help run a weekly newspaper.

“How about an article on vintage picnics?” Jaymie blurted.

“Not to tout your own business, is it?”

“No!” Jaymie’s face flamed; what an idiot! Of course the woman wouldn’t want to do an article that was so clearly self-promoting. “No, not at all, I—”

“Jaymie, I’m just kidding you. Honey, you have
got
to stop taking things so seriously. Look, just do it, already. The picnic idea is great, and you probably already know a lot about it, so you can hurry the story along. I need it soon, in case I want to use it for this week’s
Howler
. Photograph some of your vintage picnic rigs, and we’ll include your business in the article. Cross promotion is what it’s all about, and it’ll save me feeling bad about not paying you. Gotta go, kiddo.”

The dial tone woke Jaymie up to the fact that Nan had hung up on her. As always, when she was done talking to Nan Goodenough she felt like a limp dishrag. The woman, at sixty-seven, had more energy than most twenty-year-olds Jaymie knew. But she felt lucky to have such a valuable contact, and sat down to write her article with a much better handle on it than she had before.

• • •

DINNER WITH HER
parents, Daniel, and his parents, Roger and Debbie, was an event not so much to be looked forward to, but to be gotten through. If she could keep her mother and Daniel’s mother from becoming implacable foes, that was about the best she could hope to manage. Why did the romance novels she loved so much never deal with that particular peril? Danger was not in highwaymen or roving bands of pirates, but in the social intricacies of dealing with your boyfriend’s family.

Jaymie dressed carefully, a new skirt and wrap blouse bought just for its suitability for dining with parents. The thought that the Collinses might buy a house in Queensville and stay was like a dark cloud on an already gloomy day.

“Are you ready, Jaymie?” her mother yelled up the stairs to her.

She glanced at herself in the mirror over her chest of drawers and grimaced. Not at her looks, which were fine; her longish light brown hair was pulled up off her neck and coiled into a roll, and she wore a light coating of makeup, just enough to make her look happy, as her grandma Leighton would say. Her frown was brought on by the memories instigated by her mom hollering up the stairs to her. It had never been an easy relationship, between her and her mother, even though they loved each other.

Now, many years later, all it took for her to retreat to being a snarly teenager was to have her parents—especially her mother—in the same house with her. She took a deep breath and straightened her posture, practicing a placid smile in the mirror, hoping it reached her blue eyes; she was an adult, and she would find a way to make peace between her mother and Daniel’s.

The sun was setting, gilding every white surface with a layer of shiny gold, and lengthening shadows until they created long, dark patterns across the grassy yard. Jaymie locked up and they strolled down the long, flagstone path to the parking lane behind their house. It was already ten to eight, and they were to meet the Collinses at eight o’clock at Ambrosio, a new restaurant just outside of town on the highway; her dad was driving his car, since her vehicle was a rusting white van with room for only two people, and no air-conditioning. It had turned hot and dry, in a late-August kind of way, the kind of heat that makes any northerner long for the cool, crisp days and nights of autumn. Jaymie was already regretting the three-quarter sleeves on her blouse, but the car was air-conditioned and the restaurant would be, too.

They rushed from the coolness of the car to the coolness of Ambrosio, and followed the waitress through the murk to where the Collinses had reserved a table. Roger and Debbie Collins were younger than Alan and Joy Leighton by a few years, but still contemporaries. The men got along fine, and Roger and Jaymie’s dad greeted each other with firm handshakes and a comment on the possible matchups for the World Series. Joy and Debbie made polite noises while smiling on the surface, icy-cool expressions that did not reach their eyes. Daniel rose and took Jaymie aside, kissing her and giving her a very satisfying hug. Debbie watched from her seat with a neutral look on her plain, round face.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” he said. “For that to happen to you again, finding a body!”

It was much the same as he had said in their phone conversation earlier in the day. He had wanted to rush to her side, but she had reassured him that she was all right. Pretty much, anyway. He was comforting in every way, she thought, inhaling his soapy scent, fresh and vigorous. She looked up into his plain face, eyes set just the right distance on either side of a beaky nose, and a gaunt, rather lanternish jaw. “I’m fine,” she said, smiling up at him and squeezing his shoulders. “It was terrible, but it has nothing to do with me.”

He searched her face and nodded. “Good.”

“Let’s order soon. I’m starving!”

They sat down side by side and all chatted politely, until a waitress came and handed them each a menu. Jaymie glanced up at her, recognizing her immediately.

“Hey, Lisa,” she said, reading her name tag. “You also work at the Ice House, on the island, right?”

“I sure do. Oh! I recognize you; I saw you there the other night. You were sitting with a hot dude, that cop.”

Jaymie felt Daniel’s searching gaze fasten on her face as her cheeks reddened. “We weren’t
really
sitting together, at least not . . . It was just because it was crowded and there was nowhere else to sit,” Jaymie stuttered. She met Daniel’s gaze and said, “Zack Christian rents a cottage on the island. I didn’t know that until Ruby Redmond sat me at his table. There really was no other place.”

“It was hopping,” the waitress agreed.

Daniel smiled, crookedly, but his mother looked confused and concerned. For some, no explanation was necessary, and for others, no explanation would suffice; Jaymie repeated that to herself, and brightly looked up at the waitress. “So, do you work out there much?”

She shrugged. “Mostly in summer. I need the money for school, so I’ve got, like, four jobs in the summer.”

“Me, too,” Jaymie said.

“Oh, honey, that’s not quite true,” her mom said.

Jaymie closed her eyes and counted to five, then opened them and calmly said, “I work at the Emporium a couple of days a week, and substitute at Jewel’s Junk whenever she needs me. I cook breakfast for the B and B, and now I have the basket rental business, and in my spare time, such as it is, I’m working on that column for the
Howler
while writing a cookbook.”

“That’s not the same as a real job,” Daniel’s mother chimed in, agreeing with Joy Leighton. “You try being on your feet as much as this young girl is; you’ll soon see the difference.”

Daniel said, “Mom, you can’t—”

“It’s okay,” Jaymie said, touching his hand, keeping him from launching into a defense of her work ethic. “Let’s look at our menus.”

Lisa listed off the specials, and said she’d give them a few minutes. Jaymie stared at the menu, but didn’t really see it until she forced herself to relax. Ambrosio was a nice place, Jaymie thought, as she breathed deeply and looked out the huge picture window overlooking the river. Sparkling lights on the other side showed where a town was, and one slow-moving light was a mast top on a sailboat, slipping along the St. Clair.

She decided on her dinner choice, folded her menu and put it down. “I understand you have been looking at houses for sale in Queensville,” she said, brightly, taking both Roger and Debbie Collins in her glance.

Daniel glanced at her quickly. “Mom and Dad love looking at houses wherever they go,” he said. “Don’t you?”

His mother sniffed, her eyes still on the menu. “If you’re going to spend so much time here, Daniel, we may just
have
to buy a house. I haven’t seen hardly anything of you this summer.”

“Now, Deb, that isn’t true,” Roger said, heartily. “He came back for a couple o’ weeks in July, there.”

“Just to fix that trouble at Collins Inc.,” she replied. She looked over at Jaymie’s father. “He’s our only son, you see, and we miss him terribly.”

Alan Leighton, diplomat, said, “I can understand that, Debbie. He’s a fine young man.”

“And a good son,” she said. “It’s too bad that work and . . .
other
things, keep him busy so much, but you don’t get as wealthy and successful as he is without a great deal of hard work.”

There was a moment of silence, perhaps to mourn the death of any hope of subtlety behind Debbie Collin’s dislike for her son’s girlfriend, and Daniel sighed.

“I’m ready to order,” Jaymie’s mom said, slapping her menu closed. “Everyone else?”

Lisa came back and took everyone’s order, ending with Jaymie. “You had the perch at the Ice House, too, right?” she said.

“I did. Loved it.”

“It’s better there than here,” she said in a whisper, glancing around. “You didn’t hear it from me, but the fish at Ambrosio is not the best. You’re better off with pasta.”

That changed a couple of orders, including Jaymie’s, and Lisa gathered up the menus. But still she lingered for a long moment, and leaned over to talk to Jaymie. “Say, I need to know ahead of time . . . do you think Miss Redmond is going to be arrested? Or Mr. Redmond?”

Jaymie quickly said, “I really don’t believe so. Neither one of them killed Urban Dobrinskie. You know them better than that, don’t you?”

Lisa looked doubtful. “I don’t know. Mr. Redmond hit Mr. Dobrinskie pretty hard the other night. And the cops came back this afternoon to search the restaurant. Had to close down early. That’s why I’m doing a shift here.”