Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (5 page)

A dog barked in the distance, then yelped; it sounded like someone had thrown something at it. Jaymie stumbled down the slope and across the muddy ravine, over the ruts of dirt, to the clear space that the plumbers were working in. She stepped over PVC piping, and played her flashlight over the grass as Hoppy barked at the back door. Other lights were beginning to flicker on through the woods that separated their cottages from others.

Where was that dark spot she had noticed, the one that hadn’t been there earlier? There! She approached and the flashlight pinned on the dark spot, which quickly became a human form. “Garnet, call 911!” she cried.

“Jaymie, are you okay?” Ruby shouted, as Garnet said, “What’s going on?”

“Someone’s hurt,” Jaymie yelled, and, gasping for breath, approached the figure. She played the flashlight over the man, beginning at the feet, shod in sand-clogged, deep-treaded work boots. As the light moved up the paunchy body, she wondered at the stillness. “Mister, are you okay? Can I get some he . . .” She stopped talking. The glassy eyes, wide-open and staring, as well as the bloodred stain drenching his golf shirt left no doubt that help would be too late. She sobbed, her voice clogged and unnatural sounding. “It’s Urban Dobrinskie,” she yelled. “And he’s . . .” She paused as her stomach heaved. She reached out and touched him; he was cold! She retched, then cried, “He’s dead!”

Not again, not again, not again; the refrain thrummed through her brain. Another body?

“What? Impossible,” Garnet said, his voice coming closer as he spoke, echoing her own thoughts.

It
was
impossible. And yet . . . there was Urban. Garnet came up to Jaymie and hovered over her shoulder as she trained the flashlight on the remains of what was once the marina co-owner.

“Damn!” Garnet yelled, backing away, stumbling a bit. “It
is
Urban.”

“What’s going on?” Ruby hollered.

“Call 911, and don’t come down here, Ruby,” Garnet said. “It’s Urban. He’s . . . damn! Just call 911!”

Garnet stayed with Jaymie while Ruby made the call, but unlike the last couple of times she had found a body, now there were no sirens, no onslaught of cops swarming the place. They were on an island, after all, and one with very few motor vehicles and no physical police presence. Neighbors began to gather, and some even trudged through the dirt of the bared leaching bed toward Jaymie and Garnet before being warned to stay away.

Fifteen minutes later the bobbing stream of light from another flashlight played across the slope and the ridges of dirt. “What’s going on here?” a voice called out.

Zack Christian! Well, of course the police would call their very own eyes on the island, Detective Christian. It was comforting, in a way, that he was the one arriving to take charge.

He approached, cautiously, and said, “I understand you’ve found a body, Jaymie. Again.”

She slumped in weariness on a mound of dirt and covered her face with her dirty hands.

“This is no time to be caustic,” Garnet said, his voice hard with anger. “This young lady is ready to collapse. She wouldn’t leave poor Urban alone, though, and I wouldn’t leave
her
!”

“I know, I know.” The detective cautiously stepped closer to them and bent over the body, shining his flashlight over Urban. “Have either of you touched him?”

“No,” they both said in chorus.

“Well, yes,” Jaymie said. “I had to be sure, that he was . . .
you
know. And he was . . . is. He’s dead!”

“But this is exactly how you found him?” The detective reached out and touched the man’s gray skin, his quick eyes scanning Urban’s face. “You two need to go to your homes and wait, while the Queensville team gets here.”

“They’re coming to the island?” Jaymie asked.

He nodded.

“Police boat,” Garnet murmured and Zack again nodded.

Of course! Every riverside municipal police force had a boat or two. Just as she thought of that, the thrum of a heavy outboard motor sounded, echoing in the quiet night as it approached the Heartbreak Island marina.

“Jaymie, will you go back to your cottage, please? And no phoning
anyone
, either of you!” Zack said.

Jaymie picked her way back across the dirt toward her cottage, slipped off her flip-flops and went in, putting on the kettle for a cup of tea as Hoppy danced around her. She gave him some kibble and tried to settle down, blearily reading through what she had written. It was just a jumble of letters in front of her eyes, and she gave up. She got up to look out the back window every few seconds, it seemed, as the cops stood talking at the perimeter of her property, then made their cautious way toward the body of Urban Dobrinskie.

There were no doubt other things going on, other cops doing things: notifying Mrs. Dobrinskie, who Jaymie vaguely knew as a mousy little woman, apple-shaped, with soft brown hair going to gray. There was a son, too, she remembered hearing; Zack had said he had to stop Urban from berating his son. She could also see a uniformed officer questioning the neighbors who stood in housecoats and pajamas on the perimeter of Jaymie’s backyard. Flashlights arced beams around her yard and into the wooded copses on either side of the ravine.

As much as she tried, Jaymie could not stop wondering, though: Who had killed the man, and right beneath her cottage? The blood had saturated the chest of his short-sleeved sports shirt, so there was some kind of chest wound, but she hadn’t seen a knife or any other weapon. She glanced out at the commotion on her back lawn again; a floodlight had been set up, the area tented with a quickly set up canopy and tarps to keep it from the eyes of the curious.

She knew the drill; soon she would be asked to recount every moment of the last few hours, and she had best be prepared. She thought it over, and remembered the shouts of what she thought sounded like an argument. Then “Get off my property!”

Who would have said that but Garnet? It hadn’t sounded like Garnet, but if he was angry, and from a distance?

She was actually beginning to feel nauseous from needing to go to the bathroom so badly, but it would still be hours before she could intrude on anyone to borrow their facilities. And going in the bushes was definitely out now, unless she wanted a police officer’s flashlight shining on her behind. She looked up at the Redmonds’ cottage. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to go there. She skirted the murder scene and found Zack. “Look, I really need to use the bathroom, but with the plumbing work being done on my property, I can’t flush the toilet. I’ve been depending on the Redmonds. Can I
please
go and use their bathroom? I won’t stay, I promise.”

He looked harassed and tired, and swiped one hand over his eyes, scrubbing them with his thumb and forefinger. “Okay, all right. Look, go and use their bathroom, but do not—and I mean this, Jaymie—do
not
speak of this to them. I’ve got a cop at their cottage, and I need to manage this scene properly, given the circumstances.”

She was so relieved already she felt like kissing his scruffy cheek, but she sketched a wave and trotted up the hill toward the cottage.

Coincidentally, the officer on duty at the cottage was Bernie. “I was just thinking of you,” she said to the other woman.

Bernice was in uniform, and grim-faced. “You okay?” she asked. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard the detective say your name. Girl, you have got to stay out of trouble!”

“I’m trying to,” Jaymie said. “But it keeps finding me!” She explained, briefly, about her family’s cottage and what she was doing on the island, and told Bernie about the leaching field and her inability to use her own bathroom right then. “Zack said I could use the Redmonds’ bathroom if I just went in and came out.”

“All right, but be sure you just go straight to the bathroom and out!”

Jaymie tiptoed in the back door. She heard voices, and caught a glimpse of Garnet and Ruby quietly talking in the small pantry off their kitchen. She headed toward them to let them know she was using their facilities, but paused, feeling a little awkward. Ruby was weeping; how could one interrupt that?

“I didn’t mean to do it, Garnet. You
know
that!” she sobbed.

Five

D
IDN’T MEAN TO
do what?
Jaymie wondered, as she began to back up, and tripped over something, making an awful clattering noise in the process.

Garnet poked his head out and saw her. His expression wary, he eyed her as he said, “Jaymie. What’s up?”

“Uh, I just came over to . . . I mean, I asked the police and they . . . He . . . Detective Christian said I could come over to use your washroom,” she said, practically dancing in place, she had to go so badly.

“Oh yeah, go ahead,” he said, as Ruby hid her face in her brother’s shoulder.

Jaymie scooted down the hall. Relief! She scrubbed her hands and her face, drying them on the pretty finger towel on the rack by the sink. It was an almost blissful moment, and she felt human again, until she remembered what she had overheard and wondered what it had to do with Urban Dobrinskie’s murder. Or maybe it wasn’t murder; maybe . . . Oh, who was she kidding? It was murder. She went back to the Redmonds’ kitchen to find them both sitting at the table, composed and stoic.

“I have to go right back,” Jaymie said, feeling awkward for any number of reasons.

“Are you okay?” Garnet asked her, his eyebrows slanting over his gray eyes.

Bernie came to the back door. “You done, Jaymie?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m leaving. I just . . . I’ll be right out.”

The officer nodded, her gaze darting between Jaymie and the siblings.

Jaymie glanced out the Redmond back kitchen window to the ravine, where the white tent glowed from the floodlights within it. It was a surreal scene, like some secret government operation in one of those alien life-form movies Joel had always been fond of. Glancing back to the Redmonds, she whispered, “The cops let me come over here on the promise that I wouldn’t stay, or talk about this.”

“I understand,” Garnet said, getting up and walking her to the back door. But he grabbed her arm with a steely grip when they got there. “Jaymie, I don’t want you to misinterpret what you heard just now,” he muttered, glancing over her shoulder at his sister, who still sat at the table, looking tired and worried. “Ruby was talking about something else, not . . . not that,” he said, motioning down the hill with a nod of his head.

Jaymie nodded. “Of course. I know that, Garnet,” she said. There was no way Ruby Redmond could kill someone, even Urban Dobrinskie, who had been so rude to her.

He squeezed her arm and released her.

“Who do you think did this?” she whispered, looking over his shoulder at Bernie just outside the door. She was on her radio, talking intently to someone.

He shook his head. “I just don’t know.”

Jaymie exited, nodded to Bernie, who was still talking to someone, and walked down the slope and across the lawn, avoiding the tented area. Dawn was just beginning to break, the pearly light making everything gray and sage, as mist rolled over the landscape from the river. She was so tired, and yet on edge. Just knowing there was a body there, behind the tent, was unnerving. It didn’t matter that what she had seen of the man she had not liked; Urban was a human being. And the fact that such violence had happened right there in her own backyard was awful.

Her torn-up, muddy backyard; what about the plumbers! Oh Lord, she was going to have to call them and tell them not to come. There was no way the area would be clear for them until later in the day, at best, or the next day, even. She looked up the slope to her back deck. It seemed so long a climb, the weariness she was feeling burrowing right down to her soul. How could cops deal with such cases day in and day out?

Zack came out of the tented area just then. She felt a sudden pang; he looked as tired as she felt, so maybe it affected the police, even as they did their job. Ruby’s statement, “I didn’t mean to do it,” echoed in Jaymie’s brain. Should she tell Zack about that? How would he take it? Well, how
else
would he take it? She was so torn! But deep in her gut she did not believe that Ruby could kill anyone.

“Jaymie, can we talk for a moment?”

She nodded, motioned to her cottage, and he followed her. She led him in the back door, and Hoppy skittered around him, wuffling and sniffing his shoes, which he removed at the door and left on the rubber mat, as they were caked with mud.

He gently pushed the little dog away. “Nice cottage.”

She smiled and glanced around at the blue painted cupboards and natural wood countertops. She had resisted Becca’s desire to modernize the cabin. It was a cottage, not a house, she insisted. When people rented it, they wanted the rustic cottage feel. Secretly, she wondered whether she was right about that. Lots of cottages on the island had been remodeled or rebuilt with gorgeous glass enclosures, modern openness, and there was a certain grace about them that made pokey little Rose Tree Cottage, with its flaking blue paint, seem more worn-looking than rustic.

“I like it,” she said, and it was true. Despite its flaws it was quaint and charming; they never had a week during the late spring, summer and early autumn when it wasn’t rented out. “I always come here in summer for a few days, but I really like it best in the fall, when the leaves are all beautiful colors. And Hoppy loves it; he has more freedom here.” Her smile died. “Usually, anyway. When I don’t have plumbers and dead bodies.”

“Look, speaking of that . . .” He took her elbow and guided her to a chair.

It reminded her of Garnet’s steely hand on her elbow, and she wondered about that. His grip had been positively ironfisted, the clutch of a worried man. If his sister’s words truly had nothing to do with the murder, why was he so worried about Jaymie overhearing and misunderstanding? And why hadn’t he just explained what she meant?

“You need to give a statement, of course, but I don’t think it’s appropriate that I take it,” Zack said.

“Why not?” she asked, looking up at him. He turned away and stared out the back window at the scene below.

He shrugged and eased some tension out of his shoulders by flexing them. “Because when you give it, I’ll be in it. We walked back here last night and I asked you to go to dinner with me. That makes me a part of your last twenty-four hours.” He turned back and regarded her solemnly. “I’ve been through this before,” he said, his tone hard, “and I won’t let it happen again. Ever. I won’t let my objectivity be put in question.”

She was taken aback by his harshness, but nodded. So, what Bernie had told her was very likely true; he was gun-shy after being fired for involvement with a witness. “It doesn’t really matter who I give my statement to.”

He watched her eyes, and she could see he was torn. “Okay, then,” he said. “I have to tell my chief everything, but maybe I’ll leave it up to him to decide who questions you.”

So now it was not a definite “no” that he would take her statement. In a way she hoped it
was
someone else, because she hated having to lie, and not telling him what she had overheard Ruby say felt like a lie by omission. It would be far easier if it were a stranger she was talking to.

Confused by his wavering, she said, “I don’t care, Zack. I just want to do it and get it over with. I’m hoping to go back over to the mainland.” She was weary to the bone. Hoppy pawed at her lap and she picked him up, cradling him in her arms. “Look, I have to call my plumbers and tell them not to come today to finish the leaching bed. At least, I’m assuming we won’t be able to finish the work right now?”

He nodded. “I think the body will probably, given the circumstances, be here for a few hours more. Tell them tomorrow, and I think you’ll be safe.” He headed for the door, slipping his muddy shoes back on. “Just sit tight, and I’ll find out about the statement.”

She set Hoppy down and made a pot of coffee, needing the jolt of caffeine.

The phone rang and it was Valetta, town gossip and Jaymie’s best friend. “Jaymie, I heard you killed someone in your backyard, a burglar or something. What’s going on?”

The Queensville telegraph was working as wonkily as usual; some of the facts, plus speculation, plus gossip, plus a wild bit of imagination, all heaped together, whipped into a frenzy, and baked until piping, crazy hot. She explained, in unadorned terms, that she had found the body of Urban Dobrinskie in her backyard. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’d better call my mom before she gets the same whacky message and believes it!”

Valetta’s laugh cackled across the river. “Okay, but are you coming in today? We have some basket returns,” she said, mentioning the vintage picnic basket rental business Jaymie operated with the Emporium, where Valetta worked as a pharmacist.

“I hope so. I have to wait here until I give my statement to the police.”

“That’s becoming a bad habit,” she said.

“I know.” Jaymie spotted Zack and a tired-looking older man coming to her back porch. “I’ve got to go. Looks like the cops are coming.”

Zack deferred to the older man, who rapped peremptorily on her back door and stepped in without waiting for her okay. Of course Hoppy promptly went nuts, and tackled his pant leg. Jaymie grabbed her little dog by the collar, and smiled up at the two, noting that Zack was compressing his lips in an attempt not to smile.

“I’m so sorry. He thinks he’s a Doberman. He wouldn’t have done that if I had asked you in,” she said, pointedly, “but right now he thinks you’re an intruder.”

“Jaymie Leighton, this is Chief Horace Ledbetter,” Zack said. “Chief of the Queensville Police Department.”

“Hi, Chief Ledbetter,” Jaymie said, letting go of Hoppy, who, now that he knew these were not intruders but invited guests, sniffed politely around their feet and waggled his body.

The man observed her for a long moment, then said, “You’re the little lady who keeps finding bodies. Our best bet for peace in Queensville is exiling you, it seems.”

She stood still for a moment, hand stuck out to shake, and mouth open. Then the big man’s face wrinkled in what could be mistaken for a smile, and she relaxed. He was joking. “Wrong place, wrong time.” She dropped her hand to her side.

He bent down, grunting and puffing over his belly while he scratched Hoppy’s neck and got a hand licking for his efforts. Straightening with an effort, his shrewd eyes took in her cottage and he nodded. “This is the kinda place I’d like to retire to.”

“I like it. It’s been in our family for a long time.” She glanced between the two men, still wondering what was going on. Were they there officially, or what?

“Why don’t we have a seat, Miss Leighton?” he said.

“Would you like a coffee?” she asked, taking them both in.

“No,” Zack said, and at the same instant Chief Ledbetter said, “Yes.”

“Okay, have a seat at the kitchen table. Just swipe that stuff away,” she said, about the papers and clipboard.

The chief glanced at the heading on the paper, which read “Column Ideas for
Howler
.” “Ah, you’re a writer?”

“Not really,” she said, getting some mugs down from the cupboard. “Or . . . well, I’m trying to write a first column. I’m . . . I want to be a food writer, I guess you’d call it. I’m going to have a column in the
Howler
called ‘Vintage Eats.’
If
I can ever write it. That’s a big ‘if.’” She sighed and got the cream out of the fridge, adding it to the tray that she then brought over to the table.

“‘Vintage Eats’? What would that encompass?”

Warming up, now that she was on familiar ground, she poured both men coffee and talked a little about her idea for a column on vintage recipes and kitchen utensils.

“My wife would read that,” the chief said. “She loves cooking. She’s almost as good a cook as my mom was,” he said and patted his belly. “As you can tell. You and your family had this cottage long?”

“Always,” she said, sitting down opposite him. “My great-grandfather built it, back when this was all just woods.”

“When I was a kid, the Ice House here on the island was a spooky abandoned building. We used to row over here at night and hide out in it smoking cigars we’d stolen from my dad,” he said, his bulbous nose becoming red as he chuckled.

“I was just there the other night, at the restaurant! I was thinking of doing my first article on the Ice House, and ice harvesting, with a recipe for old-fashioned ice cream!”