Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (11 page)

The next morning dawned gloomy, with an enervating tension in the air that was usually the precursor to a massive thunderstorm. It was such a relief that she could now use the cottage bathroom, that she cleaned it in celebration. The backyard still looked awful to her, a long muddy expanse that needed a lot of work. She was curious to see what Sammy Dobrinskie would come up with, and she was even more curious about Garnet Redmond’s push to buy part ownership of the marina.

Did that give him a motive for murder? Or was it the insult to his sister, on top of his dislike of the man and the fellow’s threats, that made murder seem like a viable option for the calm, cerebral Garnet Redmond? She pondered that, but just couldn’t picture Garnet killing a man in cold blood. Maybe when he jumped in and offered to buy the Dobrinskie share of the marina, he was just taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the man’s death. Perhaps he even thought he was helping out the widow and her son.

Jaymie made some salad, sandwiches and a batch of real lemonade, and piled it all in a basket, then, just after noon, leashed Hoppy, grabbed the basket and took a walk along the sandy beach that lined the river side of the island. Hoppy barked and dashed at the herring gulls that swooped overhead and bobbed upon the river. She approached the marina, where Robin’s men were already working, crunching across the gravel that covered the slope up to the dock area. From what she understood, the whole affair of dredging the harbor and marina was complicated by the fact that on a small island, getting big equipment over was difficult, and sometimes impossible. They had to innovate, using the equipment on hand and a lot of backbreaking manual labor.

It was a busy place, and she saw that Garnet was there, standing with Will Lindsay and Robin, pointing and gesturing, as men do when they are intent on the important task at hand, whether it be building a barbecue or a skyscraper. Hoppy, with his long leash, bounced over to them and begged for attention at their feet, his one front paw stroking the air like a friendly wave hello. Garnet reached down to scratch the Yorkie-Poo behind the ear. Jaymie approached.

Robin grinned as she walked up to them. “Hey, Jaymie. Sammy is excited about your landscaping project. He won’t tell you that himself, but take it from me, he is. It’s nice that he has something to look forward to right now, with all this crap about his dad happening.”

“My dad okayed paying him for any design work he does, and you mentioned he could use the project for his course work. Is that true?”

“Sure is. I went to see his mom last night, and she has pretty much decided to go with him to Bloomfield Hills, where the Oakland Community College campus is. She wants to get the hell out of here.”

“Bad associations?”

He shrugged. “I just don’t know. She’s so upset and frazzled. I don’t know what to make of it.”

Will and Garnet had been talking as Robin spoke to her, but they called him back to their conference. “I’ll tell Sammy to take his lunch break and show you his sketches,” Robin called back to her, as he walked away with the other two men.

Jaymie chose a picnic table, as a rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. The air had that languid kind of humidity that often accompanies a low cloud cover, and she was glad she had dressed in shorts and a sleeveless tee. She put down a bowl of water for Hoppy, and spread a cloth on the rickety picnic table, unloading the plastic containers of food. Sammy Dobrinskie, his face and hair damp from washing up, approached the table shyly, looking off into the distance as he walked toward her with his clipboard under his arm.

“Hey, Sam,” Jaymie called out. “I’m looking forward to seeing your sketches.”

“It’s not much,” he said, tossing down the clipboard.

“Eat,” Jaymie said, pushing the container of sandwiches and salad over to him, and waving her hand at the plates, paper towels and cutlery.

While he dove in, she examined his sketches, orienting herself first and figuring out his symbols. He had done a couple of different plans, and to her untutored eye, they looked remarkably professional. But she didn’t completely understand.

He wolfed down a sandwich, eschewing the salad and taking another sandwich instead—Jaymie hadn’t realized how much one skinny teenage boy could eat—and bounced around to sit beside her on the picnic table bench. The table squeaked in protest and shifted under them.

“Look, it’s not to scale, because I didn’t take measurements,” he mumbled around a mouthful of chicken salad sandwich. “But here is your cottage, and there is Mr. and Miss Redmond’s cottage. I roughed in their terraces—I know you think they look good, but they should have done something a little different; doesn’t matter, though—and then showed your property. You’ve got this cool opportunity here,” he said, pointing with the end of a pencil, “to add a water feature, before you lay sod . . . you know, the piping and electric. And you said something about a seating area. Down here near that grouping of trees, you could do a flagstone patio—you don’t need a gazebo because you’ve got natural shelter—with the water feature near it. You’d want a path snaking around to a low stone wall,” he added, “so people can sit by the fountain.”

“A fountain?”

“Yeah, the water feature . . . I see a fountain. You could either have one coming out of a stone wall, or a freestanding one in the middle of a small patio. It would be like a grotto . . . you know, back in the day rich folks had a grotto on their property. You could do, like, a miniature version.”

It appealed to her. She read historical romances, and she pictured the grottos where romantic couples often got frisky. “Isn’t that a lot of work?” she asked. And expensive, she thought.

He shrugged and swallowed a long gulp of lemonade. “I say, do some of this now,” he said, pointing to the patio and landscaping, “and work in the other aspects as you have time. But you should lay in the electricity and water pipes now, cap them, and they’ll be ready to put in a water feature.”

“What about winter? Won’t they freeze?”

“You’d have to winterize it. Robin can tell you how.”

“That’s a good idea.” She looked over the drawings, and noticed that he had worked up a couple of plans, one with, and one without, the water feature. He saw her land sloping down to a terrace, with a circular stone patio in the shade of the copse of alders. The crab apple trees were gone, she noticed. He used gentle curving lines for gardens, and had sketched in some perennial plants. At the edge of the sketches was a list of suggested plantings, many of which she had never heard of.

When she asked him about that, he colored faintly. “I did a lot of research, when mom and I were doing the garden. Some of these we used; some we didn’t. You’ve got more shade than we do.”

Jaymie considered the nervous, frail Evelyn Dobrinskie, and tried to imagine her and her slim son working on a garden together, bonded by their mutual love of landscaping. And bonded also by their fear of Urban Dobrinskie?

Shouting down by the marina made them both focus on the workers, those who were already back to work. Robin had run over, and several others, including Will Lindsay, joined them. “I wonder what’s going on?” Jaymie said aloud.

“I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Sammy sprinted off.

Hoppy yapped excitedly, and Jaymie untied his leash and followed the teenager at a more sedate pace, with Hoppy dancing and tugging at the end of the leash.

She approached the small crowd, and saw them pulling something out of the harbor.

“That’s my wheelbarrow,” Robin shouted, one hand on his hip, the other thrust into his mop of reddish brown hair. “Who the hell dropped it into the harbor?”

Eleven

J
AYMIE WAS STILL
puzzling over that, as she caught the ferry for home. The easiest explanation was that some drunken weekender had seen the wheelbarrow, taken a joy ride in it, and ended up down at the marina. Dumping it in the drink may have seemed like fun, to an alcohol-fuzzed brain. But the wheelbarrow was taken from her job site, which was
behind
her cottage. It was private property; what had someone been doing wandering around there?

It made her shiver. It was weird that a veritable crime wave—first thefts, and then murder—had been happening in her backyard, while she slept just yards away.

As she disembarked at the ferry landing in the marina on the Queensville side, she had Sammy’s sketches in her bag, as well as her almost finished article on vintage picnics. She was heading home eventually, but her first stop, digital camera in hand, was the Emporium.

She put Hoppy in the puppy pen—the little protective pen between Jewel’s Junk and the Emporium—with his best buddy, Junk Jr., a bichon mix who belonged to Jewel, owner of the upscale, boutiquey junk shop next to the Emporium, then entered the dim old grocery variety store, the wood floors making their usual
thunk
sound with each footstep. She said hello to Mrs. Klausner, who nodded and knitted on, wordless, and checked out the vintage picnic basket rental book. The weekend was coming; there were several rentals that she had to prepare for. She used the store phone to call over to the Queensville Inn, and arranged for the appropriate food to be delivered, and called, also, for reservations at the Wolverhampton Winery, where one of the basket renters wanted to have their picnic.

She rearranged the basket display and stood back, gazing at the checked red cloth spilling out of the vintage wicker basket, as she swiped some tendrils of hair off her sweaty neck. The afternoon was hot and close, the kind of humid air that makes everyone jumpy in their own skin. Too many days of heat and high humidity made her think about autumn with longing, so the occasional cooler breeze was exciting, a sensory warning of nature’s plans to shut down leaf production and bring vivid color to their green and blue world. Jaymie had already started thinking about autumn picnics, since there were those day trippers in the area who liked to do a color tour. Baskets could feature the chef at the inn’s Brie en Croute, and Tarte aux Pommes, and the winery’s maple wine. Yum!

After a sweaty summer, she also looked forward to autumnal sweater weather because that would mean her mom and dad, and presumably Daniel’s parents—unless they bought a house and stayed in Queensville, dread thought—would all have departed for warmer climes, and she could get on with the tasks at hand: building a career as a food writer and figuring out what there was between her and Daniel. She had until Christmas or so, the deadline they had given themselves to figure out what they both wanted. More properly, what
she
wanted. Daniel had been quite clear about what
he
wanted, a relationship, with all the trimmings.

Valetta closed her pharmacy office and joined Jaymie, staring at the picnic basket displayed on the shelf behind the cashier’s counter. Finally, she said, “Is there a reason we are glaring at these poor baskets as if they’ve done something dastardly?”

Jaymie laughed, and even dour Mrs. Klausner smiled.

“I’m just lost in thought, I guess.” She related her musings regarding autumnal baskets, and Daniel, and their parents. “Once they go back to Florida, I won’t see them until we all meet up at Grandma Leighton’s and Becca’s for Canadian Thanksgiving.”

“That’s October, right?”

“Yeah. Second Monday.”

“So . . . are you going to stare at the baskets all day?”

Jaymie shook herself and smiled. “No. I’m actually here for a purpose.” She explained having to rethink her first article for the
Howler
, and said, “So, Nan Goodenough okayed me using the vintage picnic baskets idea. I need to do this quickly, though, because I have to turn it in as soon as possible, pictures and all.”

“I’ve got a few minutes to help. What do we do?”

Jaymie said, “I think I’ll use that picnic table behind the Emporium, the one in the shade of the oak, as a staging area.”

Valetta helped her lug out picnic baskets, linens and a couple of sets of melamine dishes. Starting with the vintage wicker basket that she used only for display—it was too fragile for renters to use, and too valuable—she laid out a scene at the base of the old oak tree, with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth spilling out of the basket. She retrieved the lacquered fake “baguette” and wine bottle she used for display, and set up the red and white melamine in a “picnic for two: display. She photographed it, then set to work setting up a second display on the old wood picnic table, using one of the red-and-black plaid tin picnic baskets.

“It needs something,” she said, staring at it. She raced back to the store and grabbed a beach ball, sand buckets, and a few more kid’s toys. Finally, when she was happy, she photographed the family picnic scene.

“So, you’re happy with the article?”

Jaymie shrugged. “It still needs work.”

“What food are you going to use for the story?”

“You’ll see!”

“In other words,” Valetta said, “you have no idea yet.”

As they packed the stuff up to take back inside, Valetta asked her about the cottage plumbing, and Jaymie told her it was done, and explained Sammy’s sketches. They took a break on the Emporium veranda and had a cup of tea, while Valetta looked over the sketches. She pronounced herself impressed.

“Something else odd happened,” Jaymie said, sticking out her bare feet and wiggling them in the sunshine. “Garnet Redmond is pressuring Urban Dobrinskie’s widow to sell him their half share of the marina.”

Valetta’s eyes widened. “Really? Didn’t know he was ever interested in
that
.”

“Me neither,” Jaymie mused. “Robin says she should keep it. Will Lindsay could get someone to help him run the marina, he says. But I guess Garnet wants it pretty bad.”

Valetta chewed her lip and tapped her fingernails on her tea mug. “Did he ever try to buy it from Urban?”

“Good question,” Jaymie said. “I don’t know.” It made her feel a little hinky inside, wondering whether her pleasant backyard neighbor at the cottage was really a scheming killer. She was suspecting Garnet, but she just couldn’t overlook Ruby’s words that night.

Why had Ruby said, “I didn’t mean to do it”? Jaymie hadn’t told anyone about that, not even Valetta. She just couldn’t, and she didn’t quite understand why, except that she knew what it was like to have the police examining your every move, thinking you’d killed someone when you hadn’t. She just could not believe Ruby was a murderer, and it didn’t feel right to expose her to the police for something Jaymie had accidentally overheard. If she was the murderer, which Jaymie doubted, there would be other evidence.

After her tea break with Valetta, Jaymie retrieved Hoppy and headed home, to find that the war between the moms was heating up. Her mother was stiff with anger and slamming dishes around in the kitchen, but it took some prying to get the source of the trouble out of her. It was a phone call, she said, from Mrs. Collins, in which that woman not-so-subtly implied (according to her mother) that the Leightons should accede to her wishes and have the family dinner at Stowe House because Daniel had a lot of money.

“Mom, she can’t have said that.”

“It’s not what she said; it’s what she meant,” her mother said, drying the last dish and shoving it into the cupboard.

Jaymie cringed at the cupboard door slamming, and exited to the backyard to find her dad.

He shrugged helplessly when asked about it. “I don’t know, honey. I wasn’t even here,” he said, as he put the lawn mower away in the garage. “We came back from our foursome this morning,” he said, and rolled his eyes. Alan Leighton did not like golfers who weren’t serious about the game, and neither Jaymie’s mom nor Daniel’s was a serious golfer. “Then Roger and I went back to the club to play nine holes with Grant Watson.” Mimi and Grant Watson were the Leightons’ next-door neighbors and best friends both in Queensville and Boca Raton, where they wintered, like the Leightons did. “The women seemed to get along fine on the golf course this morning, but I came back in just as she slammed the phone down after talking to Debbie Collins. She’s been like that ever since. She won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“But you know how she gets. Is Mom getting bent out of shape over nothing? I just don’t know,” Jaymie said.

“Don’t talk about me as if I’m automatically in the wrong,” her mother said.

Jaymie whirled around to find her mother standing on the flagstone path, her arms folded over her chest. “Mom, I don’t automatically think you’re wrong. Mrs. Collins can be difficult.”

“Difficult? Ha! You don’t know the half of it. You should have heard her this morning. Your father thinks everything went swimmingly? You should have
heard
how condescending that woman was, how . . . how
snippy
! Mrs. Butter-wouldn’t-melt-on-her-tongue! She has no intention of doing anything but
exactly
what she wants.”

“I know that. But I’m trying to figure out what to do about it.”

“There’s nothing
to
do. We will have the family dinner at Rose Tree Cottage, as always. They can come or not; I don’t really care.” She turned and started up the walk.

“Mom, we need to find a compromise!”

“That ship has sailed!” she said, with a flippant wave of her hand.

Jaymie rolled her eyes and turned back to her father. “Dad, you have no clue what our cottage looks like right now. It’s awful! If we plan to have a family dinner out there, I’d really like to make it look at least . . . I don’t know, passable? But Mom doesn’t seem to care.”

“You know your mother; once she gets a bee in her bonnet.” He shook his head. “She can’t give in now, or she’ll lose face.”

“She’s not a samurai warrior, and she won’t have to commit hara-kiri if we don’t do dinner at Rose Tree Cottage.”

She went up to her room and called Daniel’s house, praying that he answered, and not his mom. He did. “Daniel, we need to talk,” she said, tersely.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, panic in his voice.

“Yeah, fine, but we need to talk family dinner. Can we meet somewhere? After dinner?”

They agreed to meet up at the park band shell much later, after Jaymie got back from the auction she was attending with Bernie and Heidi. “I’ll call you when I get home,” she said, and hung up. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she reflected on the many times over the years that she had holed up in her room after a fight with her mother. She was thirty-two, not twelve, but when her parents were back in their room down the hall, twenty years seemed to disappear like a handful of feathers blown away by a puff of air.

• • •

SHE WAS SET
to meet Bernie and Heidi at an auction house in the country. It was once a barn, but MacKenzie and Sons had purchased it a few years before, and had renovated it to use as their auction house. It was big enough, and with huge sliding doors above a ramp, so it could be used even for farm machinery and recreation vehicles.

She pulled her beat-up van into place in the muddy parking lot, which was really just a field near the barn. It must have rained out here, not unusual in Michigan; it could be sunny and bright in one spot, and a few miles away could pour. Given the heat and humidity, it was only a miracle it hadn’t poured over Queensville, too.

The place was not that busy, which might mean she’d get something for a decent price. She signed in, got her buyer number, then entered the vast barn and scanned the widely dispersed crowd for her friends. They stood together near the auctioneer’s podium. Bernie and Heidi were as physically contrasting a pair as ever there was. Bernie was round-faced and stocky, with close-cropped unstraightened hair, chunky gold earrings and little makeup on her mocha skin. Heidi was slim and pale, with blushed cheeks, mascaraed lashes and chandelier earrings dangling in the midst of blond, straight hair.

Jaymie waved hello to them, but then raced up and down the long tables of box lots and around the perimeter where the larger items sat, to do a quick scan of the auction items. It seemed to be a mishmash of estate relics and garage sale leavings. There was nothing for her kitchen, which was a good thing, but there
was
a collection of patio furniture from the sixties and later. She stopped to examine it more closely.