Victoria Hamilton - Vintage Kitchen 04 - No Mallets Intended (26 page)

Who would have thought that three of the suspects would be working together?

Earlier that day, after Jaymie talked to Isolde on the phone at the Wolverhampton Historical Museum, Isolde had called Prentiss Dumpe, whom she suspected of the murder, and asked him if he had the Dumpe manuscript Theo had been looking for. She was stupid enough to threaten him, implying she had really seen something that night, even though she hadn’t. He told her he had hidden the manuscript in the garage at the historic house. She could have it if she would just keep her mouth shut.

In retrospect it was obviously a ploy to control her movements, but she fell right in with his plan. Recklessly, she went there directly from work. When the papers weren’t where Prentiss said they were, she called Jaymie’s house, using the pay-as-you-go cell phone she had bought to replace her missing one. She was calling Jaymie to ask her to meet her and help search, on the principle that shared glory was better than no glory, when Prentiss and Dick confronted her.

Who knew what they had intended? Isolde heard enough that she thought they planned to kill her and make it look like a remorseful suicide, hoping to throw the police off the trail of the three henchmen, but when they found out she had just called Jaymie, they decided to bundle Isolde off into the root cellar and wait to see what happened. Jaymie did show up, but not in response to the phone call she must have just missed.

The rest, Jaymie knew. One thing for sure, if she
had
been home and gotten that call from Isolde, she would not have gone to the house, she would have called the police. Isolde was a more reckless version of herself, and she was a little ashamed at the danger she had put herself in at times. Daniel was, to some extent, right to warn her to be careful, and she’d tell him that next time she talked to him.

Isolde appeared to be recovering nicely, but the EMTs were going to take her to the hospital as a precaution. The chief hoped to be able to reconstruct some of the night’s activities using Prentiss’s and Dick’s seized cell phones. They could tell a lot from the timing and number of phone calls and text messages between them.

An hour later Jaymie was finally home again, as snow lightly dusted the holly bushes and grass, and whirled in dancing swirls in the soft glow of her back porch light. She went in, greeted by a blinky, sleepy Hoppy, and turned off the kitchen light. She heard Chief Ledbetter’s police car engine thrum with a throaty murmur as the car pulled away.

She collapsed in bed, both her critters curled up beside her in the dark, Hoppy’s twitching and snoring strangely comforting. Something in her universe had shifted and she wasn’t sure what it was, despite the chief telling her it was the crimes she had seen committed, the turmoil she had witnessed firsthand. Maybe she was just overwrought, and that was why she felt so odd, so muddled and emotional. She must have fallen deeply asleep, because she awoke with a start; it was morning and her phone was ringing.

“H’lo?” she muttered, cradling the handset against her cheek.

“Jaymie, are you all right? Are you okay? My God, what happened?”

“Valetta?” She looked over at the clock. “What time is it? I can’t see.”

Her friend was calmer when she next spoke. “If you’ve been sleeping, you must be okay. Do you want to call me when you’re awake? I’m at home. Or I could just come over.”

An hour later after a hot shower, she was finishing up her story to Valetta, who sat at her table, mug in hand. At the same time she fielded phone calls and explained her night to various people. Nan, her editor at the
Howler
, was one of the first and said she was sending a reporter over to talk to Jaymie. That was not what she wanted to do—talk about events with a reporter—but what could she say to the woman who had been so helpful to her budding career as a food writer?

“I can’t believe those two, Prentiss and Dick, were in it together,” Valetta said, shaking her head and then gulping down the last of her tea. “How did
they
come to be in cahoots?”

“As unpleasant as he seemed to be to me, the doctor had some folks under his spell. Prentiss Dumpe is a master manipulator, or he is if you’re as troubled and afraid as Dick Schuster. The guy started out as a patient, I guess, trying to get his marriage back on track, but after his wife dumped him—pardon the pun—he ended up under the doctor’s thumb, totally controlled and manipulated by Prentiss. There even may be some pharmacological manipulation in there somewhere,” she said, shooting a sideways glance at Valetta, who remained stone-faced. “You’re not going to say anything?”

Valetta shrugged. “I may or may not have called the licensing board on Dr. Prentiss Dumpe once or twice when I got worried about the meds he was ordering for his patients.”

“Okay, I won’t press. I know that’s private. Anyway, it’s all kind of a jumbled mess. I think it got that way because of three crooks and a bunch of snoops, like me and Theo. I’m sure the police know more than I do about some aspects, by now, but a few things are clear. Prentiss knew about his son’s side business, stealing everything he could get his hands on. It’s been going on for a while. He seemed to feel it was their right to make use of Dumpe Manor as a storage facility, but then when the society finalized the real estate deal in October, that left them with too short a time to get all the stuff out, especially with all the folks going in and out at all hours.”

“All the stolen stuff. They were moving it to the root cellar, right?”

Jaymie nodded. “Until I discovered that hiding place, which left them with nowhere. That’s why they ended up with a bunch of stuff still in the attic, shoved back so far it wouldn’t have been found for a while if it hadn’t been for the alarm guy. I think Prentiss was hoping that the discovery of the will would put a halt to all this business about fixing up and opening the home in early December. That may even have been some of the motive behind planting the fake will.”

“Okay, back up, back up. So… why did you end up bonked on the head in the first place? And who did it?”

“It was all about the will. Schuster was supposed to be planting it, but got scared when he heard me, so he grabbed the first weapon he could find and hit me on the head. Isolde was coming to the house to check it out. Theo was out of town and she was hoping to search the house for whatever it was he was hiding from her. Luckily, she helped me. So the will had to be planted later—I figure that’s when Dick took the other mallet, the one he used to kill Theo—but he and Prentiss didn’t know that Imogene and Mrs. Bellwood had already thoroughly searched the kitchen cupboard. I’ll bet they took my tool kit, too, because it hasn’t turned up since.”

“This was a mess, wasn’t it?”

Jaymie nodded. Valetta didn’t know the half of it. “The chief now knows about Cynthia, and we’ve figured out they used her car while she was passed out, then parked it near Algonac to confuse her. It had to be a maze of cars that night, before you and I got there, because they also had Theo’s and Isolde’s! I still don’t know where Theo’s car is or was, but I suppose the police do. There were three of them, so I guess they worked it out. They had a plan, I suppose, but Isolde and I kept mucking it up. It’s lucky for Cynthia she didn’t wake up while all this was going on, or she’d probably be dead. I think they were hoping she’d think she was guilty and end up arrested and her car searched for forensic evidence.”

The phone rang, and Jaymie jumped up to get it.

“Jaymie, I’ve been trying to call your cell phone,” Daniel said, exasperation in his tone. “What is the point of me giving you a cell phone, if you never answer it?”

“Well, hi, Daniel. Nice to hear from you, too,” she said, rolling her eyes at Valetta.

Her friend got up. “I’ll just let myself out, okay? I’ve got a million things to do today, but I’ll call you later.” Valetta waved and left.

“So, what’s up?” Jaymie said to Daniel, not wanting to get into everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. She didn’t comment on the cell phone and where it was now, still in her van until the police retrieved it for her.

“I really need to talk to you, Jaymie, but I’d rather video chat, okay? Go up to your office and log on. We need to…
I
need to see you to talk to you.” He spoke quickly and left no room for argument.

That was weird,
Jaymie thought as she hung up. He knew she wasn’t overly fond of video chatting because it made her self-conscious, and she couldn’t wander around and do stuff with the phone glued to her ear like she usually did when talking to him. But it sounded important. She hoped he wasn’t going to push her again about an answer on the subject of marriage and dating. She was most definitely
not
in the mood today. Every part of her body ached, and she was exhausted.

She logged on to her computer and clicked on the video chat link, and up popped Daniel, in his home office in Phoenix. He looked worried and tired. “Hey, you okay?” Jaymie asked, concerned and hoping he hadn’t had bad news of some sort. “You look like you haven’t slept.”

“We have to talk, and I don’t know how to say this,” he said, looking miserable. He fidgeted, moving restlessly and looking to the right and left.

His glasses glinted in a desk light, and she couldn’t see his expression. Her stomach twisted. “Daniel, what’s wrong? Just tell me!”

He paused and looked down. There was a voice somewhere, and he looked over his shoulder, then back at her. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this. Trish and I—you remember we talked about Trish, my ex?—we got back together. We’re… Jaymie, we’re getting married over Thanksgiving weekend.”

Jaymie shook her head and almost laughed. “Come
on
, Daniel. Whatever you have to say, you don’t have to make something up so that it doesn’t seem as bad.”

There was a long silence. He shifted awkwardly, disappearing out of sight and reappearing. Then he looked her in the eye and said, “It’s true, Jaymie. You always asked if I was over Trish, and it turns out I wasn’t. I was desperate to get married, and I really like you, but—”

A face appeared over his shoulder, a woman in her midthirties, dark hair cut in a bob. “Hi, Jaymie,” she said. “You don’t know me, but I’m Trish. Look, Daniel’s not saying it right. I was an
idiot
to break up with him, and I learned my lesson. I called him, talked to him, and we met up. Turns out neither of us is over the other, and so… to cut to the chase, we’re getting married. Sorry, but I don’t think you really wanted him anyway.” She squeezed Daniel’s shoulders and looked at him, then kissed his cheek. “He’s my geek now.”

Stunned, Jaymie sat back, hardly able to breathe, tears welling up in her eyes. Hoppy had climbed the steps and was waiting at her knee, trying to get her attention, but she gently pushed him away. “You
can’t
be serious,” she finally said, her tears drying even before they ran down her cheeks. She was shocked, but oddly enough, not unhappy.

No answer from either of them. Daniel looked miserable and ashamed.

“Just give it some time and you’ll get it,” Trish said, her tone hard and brittle. “When Debbie told me Danny was trying to get you to marry him, I knew I needed to move in or lose him for good.”

“Debbie… oh, Mrs. Collins!” Jaymie sat back again, still scrambling for answers. Mrs. Collins had been bitterly angry at Trish. However, Trish had one thing Jaymie didn’t, and that was a home in Phoenix, and therefore a reason for Daniel to stay put. By contacting Trish, Daniel’s mother had guaranteed her son would stay in Phoenix, and had perhaps moved to secure grandchildren and a life that would keep him close to home.

Words she had said to Heidi about Joel came back to her; you can’t “steal” a man if he’s in love. She took a deep breath and watched Daniel. The poor guy looked absolutely despondent. “Daniel, you know I want what’s best for you, right?” she said. “I only want you to be happy.”

A beam of hope lifted his expression. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Sure. And the same back at you.”

“Will she make you happy?”

He nodded. “As long as I know you’re okay.”

Jaymie had some doubts about Daniel’s future happiness married to Trish, but he was an adult, and it was his life. “I’m better than okay. I would have said no,” she said. “I’d made up my mind in the last week. I’m not ready. This happened at the right time, and if you’re happy, I’m happy for you.” It was the honest truth. She took a deep breath.

He looked relieved, and tears actually watered in his eyes. “Thanks, Jaymie. You don’t know how much this means to me. I was so afraid to hurt you like Joel did.”

“Are you happy to be getting married so quickly?”

He nodded. “I am. Trish gets me… she always did.”

“Friends?” Jaymie said.

“Friends,” Daniel replied.

They signed off and Jaymie sat for a moment, assimilating the vast change that had occurred in her life in just the last few minutes. She was free, and that was good. And now she had to get on with her day.

As she descended, she heard a tap at the door. Bernie was there, holding out Jaymie’s car keys and cell phone. “Do you have a minute?” Jaymie asked.

Bernie did. She wasn’t working, she just drove Jaymie’s van over as a favor to the chief, she said, so she came in and they sat in the parlor with tea. Bernie liked Earl Grey, and Jaymie enjoyed it as a change, so they sipped together.

“Have you heard from Heidi in the last few days?” Jaymie asked, after they had gone over everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, including the latest, Daniel’s breakup by video chat. “How are she and Joel doing?”

“Better, I think, thanks to you. That was an awful shock, though, right?”

“What, that he was married?”

Bernie nodded.

“Awful. I hope Heidi’s not too upset.”

“No, that’s what she isn’t,” Bernie said, squinting and cuddling a happy Hoppy on her lap. Denver had come in and was snoozing in his basket by the fireplace. “I think she’s relieved it isn’t another woman, you know? I mean, that he’s not in love with another woman. Joel is off seeing about a divorce, and Heidi has gone to the city to talk to her parents about Joel. They won’t make the Christmas deadline to get married, but they’ll be okay.”