Victoria Hamilton - Vintage Kitchen 04 - No Mallets Intended (15 page)

Cynthia suddenly got very busy, taking the box and pulling out the contents, willy-nilly. There was a pretty lot of vintage enamel bowls that caught Jaymie’s interest, and a green enameled soap dish that would be perfect hanging over the sink in the Dumpe kitchen. Jaymie picked it up, examined it and realized it was a reproduction of an antique, not the real deal. Cynthia didn’t really care about the distinction, but Jaymie did.

She glanced up to talk, but the other woman had gone white, her complexion a pasty chalk color. “Are you okay?” Jaymie asked, as her friend swayed on her feet. She pulled a chair over and forced Cynthia to sit. Kneeling by her, she repeated the question.

Cynthia shook her head, then appeared dizzy, and put it down in her arms for a second, on the Arborite table. Finally she said, her voice muffled, “I’m not all right at all. You want to know where I was that night Theo was killed?”

“Yes,” Jaymie said, afraid of what she was about to hear.

Cynthia took a deep breath and sat up straight, staring out the back window at the darkening sky. “I wasn’t home, I can tell you that.”

“Then where were you?” Her question hung between them, and Jaymie knew the answer was important. Cynthia’s fury over Theo’s defection had been weighing heavily on the older woman, and there was clearly still something wrong, even though Carson was now dead.

“I was over at some bar on the highway getting stinking drunk,” Cynthia said, her voice guttural with suppressed emotion. “Like a fool, I then got in my car and drove.”

“No!” This was not at all what she had expected and, even though Jaymie was shocked, it wasn’t as bad as she feared. Or was it? “Cynthia, what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. I
wasn’t
thinking! I don’t even remember it clearly, but I knew I needed to go somewhere.” She broke down sobbing, and Jaymie knelt by her, patting her shoulder, not quite knowing what else to do.

“I haven’t done that in a long,
long
time. Not since the DUI about… oh, God… fifteen years ago? But I did it… I drove. And now I can’t remember where all I was, where I went. All I know is…” She raised her head and looked at Jaymie, tears streaming down her face. “When I woke up in the morning in my car on a side road, there was blood on my sweater and I don’t know how it got there!”

Fourteen

J
AYMIE
’
S
HEART
THUDDED
,
and then beat faster; she felt sick, but she was not going to get hysterical. “How
much
blood? Are we talking a scratch, or…” She shook her head and caught her breath. She thought of what the police chief had said about the killer being splattered with blood. “Was your sweater splattered or dripping or… or what?”

The older woman swayed in her chair and moaned.

“Cynthia, relax.” Jaymie hopped over to the sink and filled a tumbler with cold water. “Have a drink and take a deep breath,” she said, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite her. “What
exactly
are you saying? What do you think happened that you had blood on you? And where
were
you?”

Cynthia shivered, her teeth chattering with cold or shock. Jaymie turned up the thermostat, then retrieved a vintage granny square afghan from the living room section of the shop and draped it around Cynthia’s shoulders, tucking her in, trying to help her get warm.

The woman’s eyes held a bleak expression. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered. “I just don’t know!”

Okay, first things first. Perhaps Jaymie should be advising a trip to the police station, but there was time for that, if it was necessary. “Where is the sweater now?”

“Do you want to see it?”

Jaymie hesitated, but then her resolve crystallized and she nodded. “Yes, I do. Where is it?”

“Here, in the shop. I didn’t want to leave it at home, but I didn’t know how to get rid of it. I hadn’t… I hadn’t thought anything until I heard about Theo. That’s when I brought it here… I just
couldn’t
leave it in my house!” Her voice rose to a hysterical note, and Jaymie touched her arm to reassure her. She instantly calmed. “I’ll get it.” She disappeared from the kitchen and returned carrying a pale pink cashmere polo-neck sweater.

Jaymie took it from her, trying to quell the shaking of her own hands. This was a lot to take in; cool, calm, collected, yoga-teaching Cynthia Turbridge, whom she had always admired for her poise and serenity, had some darkness in her past, it appeared, from the casual mention of drinking binges and DUIs. Her grandmother had always said still waters run deep, and it appeared in this case the aphorism was true.

But if the last year had taught her anything, it was that people were not always who you thought they were. Joel’s defection and her climb back from the depths of heartbreak had begun her transformation into a more realistic woman. Finding a few dead bodies along the way had toughened her, too. A little blood was not going to shock her. As long as it was a
little
blood. She laid the soft, luxurious sweater on the table and looked it over.

There was what appeared to be blood on it, true, but it was limited to one sleeve at the ribbed wrist and some along the ribbed waistband. There was a hint of the blood on the cable-knit pattern across the breast, but it wasn’t splattered, by any means; it appeared as if Cynthia had rubbed against something—or someone—bloody. Whoever killed Theo Carson would have been splattered, unless they were wearing protection of some sort. In fact, this blood would seem to argue that Cynthia could not have been his murderer; if she had killed him, there would be much more blood or none at all.

But still… it
was
blood. Now, what to do about it? She was uneasy, after her talk with the chief the previous night. It seemed as though he wanted her help, and he definitely considered her an aid in his quest to nab the killer. But she would only pass along what she considered to be truly related. It was like the will she had found… it had nothing to do with the killing, so it was not a piece of the puzzle and would only cloud the case. This blood could not be from the murder, so it was unrelated and unimportant. Or at least she sure hoped that was so, because she wasn’t turning Cynthia over to Chief Ledbetter. Not yet, anyway. The woman was fragile and already a suspect in the chief’s mind.

“Are you
sure
you don’t remember anything?” Jaymie prodded. “Did you see anything? Talk to anyone?” The shop owner had turned away from the sweater and was swallowing convulsively. “Cynthia, you have
got
to face this.”

“I know, I
know
,” she said, her tone low. “It’s just like a part of my past has come back to haunt me.”

“What do you mean?” Jaymie asked.

“I came to Queensville for a lot of reasons that you know about… my mother, and wanting to start fresh, retiring from business. I messed up in my life but good, Jaymie. I don’t talk about it, but it’s true. There was a time when I drank heavily. I was… I
am
 . . . an alcoholic, and I fell off the wagon that night. I haven’t driven drunk or blacked out for years.”

Jaymie grabbed her hand. “Cynthia, I’m sorry for your troubles, but right now you need to focus and tell me what you remember of that night.”

“That’s the problem, I don’t remember anything!” She shook her head and closed her eyes.

“That can’t be true.
Think
, Cynthia!” Silence. That approach—bleating at her to think—wasn’t working. Instead Jaymie went back to the beginning and took the other woman over her evening, how she’d closed up the shop, gone home, had something to eat, then got restless.

“I was feeling lonely, and that’s dangerous for me.” She picked at her manicured fingernail, pulling at a tiny ragged flap of skin. “I tried to call Jewel, but she was out and not picking up her cell phone. So I thought I’d go out for just one drink.” She laughed, but it was a bitter sound, dark with self-loathing. “One drink. When did I
ever
stop at one drink? I really thought I had it licked.” She shook her head. “I guess that was my mistake.”

“But you must remember where you went. You were sober when you started out.”

“Oh, sure. I went to the Cozy Inn Bar and Grill, out on the highway on the way to Wolverhampton.”

“Okay, that’s good. What happened there?”

She frowned. “I had a few drinks. But the bartender was watching me too closely, so I left.”

Jaymie frowned; watching her too closely? It almost sounded like Cynthia had regressed to her alcoholic ways even at that early point, paranoia making her skittish. “Okay, you left the Cozy Inn… and went where?”

“Some other place. I just drove for a while. I don’t remember where it was.” Her tone was dull, defeated, her head down.

Jaymie pushed the glass of water toward her, worried that she hadn’t been looking after herself and might be dehydrated. “Drink up. Look, there aren’t that many bars around this part of the township. How long did you drive? How far?”

She shrugged, hopelessly. “Fifteen minutes? Twenty? I just don’t know.”

“Where were you when you woke up in the morning?”

She shivered and looked embarrassed. “I was on a side road down near Algonac,” she said. That was a town at the junction where the St. Clair River entered Lake St. Clair.

That was the opposite direction and quite a ways away from Dumpe Manor. Jaymie looked down at the sweater. Carefully, she said, “It doesn’t look, to me, like you were anywhere near the murder.”

Cynthia turned to Jaymie with hope in her eyes. “Really?”

“Really. I was there; I saw poor Theo. If you had done anything, there would be more blood.” Jaymie blinked and shoved the memory back in the closet of her mind, where it belonged. “Still… Cynthia, if you could just think what happened in those hours, it would help. This
is
blood, or looks like it, anyway,” she said, indicating the crusty, stiff dark spots.

“I don’t know, I tell you!” she cried, threading her fingers through her hair and scrunching it, leaving it unusually mussed. “Everything from the Cozy to waking up in the morning is a blur!”

“Has this happened to you before? Blackouts, I mean?”

“When I was drinking,” she said, nodding, her voice breaking. “It happened all the time. People would tell me stuff the next day that I did the night before, and I wouldn’t remember.”

That sounded awful… and dangerous. “Cynthia, you have to—”

“No! Don’t push me. Can’t you see I’ve had enough?” She got up and took her glass of water to the sink, then gripped the edge. She stared out the back window and said, “I don’t remember a thing, and that’s it.”

No amount of coaxing or prodding helped, after that, and in fact she became almost hysterical. Jaymie got her calmed down and left without subjecting her to any more questions, but she was still wondering, where did the blood come from? And whose was it?

It was getting dark quickly, the sky purple and streaked with gray clouds. Jewel caught her as she was walking away from the Cottage Shoppe.

“Hey, Jaymie! Can you do me a favor?”

“What’s up?” She was tempted to tell Jewel that Cynthia needed a friend right at that moment, but she wasn’t sure if the woman would appreciate it. She swiftly decided that if Cynthia needed Jewel she’d call her.

“In Wolverhampton I picked up a back support that Dee ordered for her mother-in-law. You know Mrs. Stubbs in the wheelchair? I guess her back has been bothering her and Dee sourced this one designed for people with osteoporosis and paid for it online. I told her I’d pick it up for her since I was going to be out and about today. If you’re going that way, could you take it over to the Queensville Inn?”

Though it wasn’t on her way home, Jaymie agreed and took the clunky bag; it was only a few blocks out of her way. She headed there, walking quickly. The Queensville Inn looked a little spooky in the gloom of autumn twilight, with purplish clouds gathering in mounds on the horizon and wet leaves gusting along the streets. It was a grand Queen Anne manse, much bigger even than Dumpe Manor, and had newer additions to make several modern suites for guests. Lyle Stubbs, the proprietor, and his girlfriend, Edith, lived on the main floor in a suite, as did Lyle’s mother, Mrs. Stubbs. Jaymie knew the woman well, and they’d struck up an odd friendship based on two things: Mrs. Stubbs’s grudging liking for Jaymie, who, though a modern girl, still appreciated the past, and Jaymie’s love for the elderly woman’s stories of Queensville’s days gone by.

“Hey, Edith,” Jaymie said as she entered the main lobby and found the woman manning the check-in desk.

Edith looked over the tops of her bifocals. “Oh, hello, Jaymie.”

Jaymie explained her quest, and Edith said she could just leave the backrest with her, but Jaymie replied that if Mrs. Stubbs was in her room, she’d like to visit for a moment. It was only five thirty, so though the senior had eaten dinner, she was likely still up and about. Jaymie headed down the hallway.

It was Mrs. Stubbs’s crankiness that had saved Jaymie’s life during the spring incident, when a would-be killer was coming after her in an upstairs suite of the inn. Jaymie made enough noise that Mrs. Stubbs’s complaints sent her son, Lyle, up to the room at just the right moment. She had a profound regard for the old lady and had managed to enrich her new friend’s life by arranging for the wheelchair-bound woman to get over to Johnsonville on the Canadian side for a day trip that summer. She hadn’t forgotten her resolution to find out about getting a ramp installed at the new Queensville Historic Manor for Mrs. Stubbs and other wheelchair-bound townies, too.

“Mrs. Stubbs?” Jaymie said, knocking and entering.

“Who is it? What do you want?” the woman said, looking up from her book. She was an avid mystery reader and held a large-print copy of the latest M. C. Beaton on her lap, where she sat in her wheelchair in the pool of light shed by her bedside lamp. “Jaymie!” she cried, when she saw who it was. She put one long, arthritic finger in her book to hold her place and sat back, wincing a little.

Jaymie brought the bag over with the back support and explained it was something Dee had bought for her to try. She offered to put it in place, and the woman agreed. It was a simple thing, just a support with Velcro straps around the backrest. Jaymie securely attached it and the woman sat back, sighing with a smile on her face.

“That feels better. She’s a nice girl, my daughter-in-law,” Mrs. Stubbs said about DeeDee. “But she’s afraid of me. Needs to grow a backbone.”