White Colander Crime (6 page)

They wheeled the dolly cart just beyond the Emporium to a spot of public property known locally as “the village green.” It was merely a small triangular plot bounded by the intersection of three roads: the main street, the road leading to the river and docks and a residential street that led to Jaymie's home, but it had been serviced with electricity and water so that the town could use it for just such events as this. The cubicle would be centered over that electrical outlet so lights and small appliances could be plugged in.

“Bill did such a good job on the booth,” Jaymie said, as she and Valetta watched.

“I love the musical notations above the counter!” Valetta said.

The stand was a square enclosure with a marquee over the counter on which Bill had painted some sheet music with “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” picked out in notes and with the words in script. Hot cider would be available to strolling tourists who had come for the beginning of Dickens Days. Unofficially, Dickens Days lasted all of December, but officially, it was a two-week period before Christmas when the town was lit up.

The men got down to business screwing the booth together and leveling it. Cody was the harder working of the two young guys Bill had hired, and eagerly took direction from the handyman on what to do and how. Jaymie was glad Bill had help. He was getting older. It hadn't slowed him down, but she often felt the town relied on him far too much. He needed extra hands.

“Have you got all your shopping done?” Valetta asked her, as they watched.

“As much as I'm doing,” Jaymie said, glancing over at her friend, for whom she had commissioned a hand-knit sweater made by Mabel Bloombury. It had a colorful depiction of Valetta's pretty cottage home, with little house-shaped wooden buttons down the front. Gifts made by expert crafters, whether knitters, woodworkers or others, were original. She loved giving them even more than getting them. She already had it, and it was wrapped and ready.

“I was done in September,” Valetta smugly replied. “William and Eva are getting educational toys whether they want them or not. I will be
that
aunt!”

“I wish I had a niece and nephew to spoil,” Jaymie said, standing and stretching. “I'd better get back to work. My tea is cold, anyway, and so am I. There are some cobwebs in the rafters just begging to be eradicated. I'm going to have to get out the sixteen-foot ladder to handle them.”

Valetta's eyes widened. “Oh, Jaymie, please don't! Let the Klausners hire someone to do that!”

“I can do it,” Jaymie said. “I've done it at home before.” She had done the ceilings of her home, but they were twelve foot, not the twenty-foot-high ceilings of the Emporium. She went inside. Valetta didn't follow right away, so she assumed her friend was finishing her tea.

Getting the ladder out of the back storage room was trickier than she thought it would be. She was trying to maneuver it when she felt it move on its own and yelped, looking up to find Cody Wainwright on the other end.

“Mr. Waterman sent me in to help,” he said, his gaze sliding away from hers.

“I should have known Valetta wouldn't let it go,” Jaymie grumbled, as Valetta scooted past her into her enclosed pharmacy.

“I don't want to see you dead, so shoot me,” Valetta said, then closed the door, going back to work as a customer came up to her counter.

Jaymie explained what she was doing, and she and Cody worked in silence all the way around the Emporium, as Jaymie took a duster on a long handle around the ceiling, sending cobwebs drifting down to the floor. Jaymie was actually glad of the help. Cody was fairly intuitive and didn't need a lot of direction. He was careful and proactive, too, making sure obstructions were out of her way as they moved the ladder around the store. When she was done, she and Cody folded the ladder and carried it back to the storeroom, the task made easier with another pair of hands.

After, as they walked together to the front of the store, he lingered and shuffled his feet, picking up candy bars and putting them back, then tidying a plastic tub of child's hair ornaments. Finally, he looked her in the eyes and said, “Look, I'm sorry about what happened between my mom and me, but it's not what you think. I didn't . . . I mean she . . .” He sighed and shook his head. “I didn't hit her or anything. I would never do that.”

Jaymie watched him. He was young, a good ten or more years younger than her, his face just beginning to thin out into the planes of manhood. He was good-looking but unkempt, with a shaggy mane of hair that looked like it hadn't been combed or washed in a few days.

“It's not for me to judge,” she finally said. “Your family is your business.”

He nodded.

“I know that my friend Jakob Müller has hired you. He's a good guy, and he likes you.”

“I love working with the Christmas trees, and I like helping folks cut them down. I'm going out there to work after I finish with Mr. Waterman.”

The bells over the door chimed and Shelby Fretter entered and started down the baking aisle. Jaymie felt rather than saw Cody stiffen. She hoped he wouldn't accost the girl, but he followed her down the aisle and grabbed her coat sleeve as she was reaching for a pound of shortening. Jaymie watched, holding her breath, as he said something and Shelby snatched her arm away.

“Leave me alone, Cody Wainwright,” she said loudly, her voice echoing in the upper reaches of the Emporium.

He stared at her in puzzlement.

Her gaze slid over to Jaymie, then away, as she turned to face him. “I told you never to talk to me again, and I meant it. You leave me alone or I'll have the cops on you so fast you'll spin like a top.”

His eyes wide, he stared at her then muttered, “You can't treat me like this, Shelby! You can't jerk me around and then expect me just to slink away like some dog you've kicked.”

Jaymie decided she had better intervene. She was coming round the corner of the aisle when Shelby tumbled to the floor and screeched.

“Get away from me!” she cried, hands raised to shield her face.

“Shelby, what's—”

“I said, get away from me!”

He bent over and grabbed at her as she covered her face with her hands. Jaymie lunged forward and got hold of his arm. “Just leave her alone, Cody. She said she doesn't want to see you!”

He whirled and shook off Jaymie's hand. “Get off me!”

Shelby was skittering away from him on her butt, sliding along the hardwood floor of the store. “Just leave me alone, Cody!” she said.

He stomped from the store as Jaymie helped a distressed Shelby get up. She refused to talk about it and refused further offers of help, just buying what she needed—some shortening, baking powder and bandages—and leaving. Valetta, who had been busy with a customer and so didn't see what happened, came up to the front.

Jaymie quickly told her everything. “I'm worried about her. He doesn't seem willing to accept that she doesn't want anything to do with him. I'd better make sure Cody has really gone.”

Valetta followed her out to the porch. Cody was nowhere in sight, and Shelby was stomping off down the street past Jewel's store. A fellow coming toward her accosted her and she stood talking to him. It seemed an impassioned chat; she waved her arms and he took her shoulder at one point, but she shook him loose, calming down and nodding as he talked.

“Who is that?” Jaymie asked, rubbing her arms to try to warm herself up. A breeze was blowing around the corner of the Emporium, riffling her hair and freezing her butt. “I feel like I've seen that guy before, but I can't tell at this distance.”

“He's been in the store before when you've been working. That's Delaney Meadows,” Valetta said, burying her hands in the sleeves of her sweater, a particularly cheery Christmas confection with bells all over it. The breeze made her jingle like a wind chime. “He owns a white-collar employment agency. Runs it out of the old Belcker Building on Munroe.”

“Of course! I know who you're talking about. She works in his office.”

“He found an administrative assistant for Brock's real estate office last month,” Valetta went on, naming her brother, who was a local real estate agent. “He said Delaney was great about sending them referrals.”

Jaymie still watched. Shelby appeared just as abrupt with him as she was with Cody and Jaymie herself. Maybe that was in the Fretter DNA, given how Lori Wozny seemed the same: quick to take offense and get angry. “She still seems pretty upset.”

Meadows was putting up both hands, and shaking his head. He reached for her arm, but she jerked it away and stomped off. He turned to watch her walk away and called something after her, but she just turned in one smooth move, flipped him the bird and kept walking.

“What's wrong, Jaymsie?”

She turned at Heidi's lilting, questioning voice. Her friend was bundled up a little warmer than she was wont to do, now that winter was threatening Queensville with icy fog some mornings and flakes of snow that danced downward some nights. But nothing could hide her beauty: long silky blond hair, small features, tiny waist, petite all over. Jaymie had felt gawky and enormous in her presence at first, but even though the girl had “stolen” Joel from her and was now engaged to him, Heidi's sunny personality and sweet nature soon had her at ease. They had become fast friends.

“We were talking about Shelby Fretter,” Jaymie said, indicating the tableau down the road of Shelby walking away from Delaney Meadows, who was now walking after her, trotting to catch up. “She seems pretty mad at the world. It must be this stuff with her boyfriend that has her upset,” Jaymie said, and explained.

“I don't know about that,” Heidi said. “I think Shelby Fretter hates everyone. She sure does hate me!”

Six

“H
ATE
YOU?
YOU
know her?” Jaymie asked in amazement.

“She's going out with this guy who is in the same business as Joel, so we all went out to dinner. She was so
rude
to me!”

“Wait a sec,” Jaymie said, before Heidi could complain more. “You and Joel went out with Shelby and Cody? But Cody Wainwright's not in the pharmaceutical business.”

“Cody Wainwright? Who's that?” Heidi asked.

Valetta laughed. “While you two talk at cross purposes, I'm going in. I have work to do.”

Shelby and Meadows had disappeared around a bend in the road. Jaymie eyed the sky, which was a robin's egg blue with light puffy clouds skidding along like paper sailboats on a stream. She wasn't fooled; the crystalline nature of the day meant snow by nightfall, hopefully not enough to interfere with the evening's festivities. Jaymie grabbed Heidi's sleeve and tugged. “Come in and talk in the store. It's too cold out here.”

Heidi trailed after her into the Emporium and slipped off her ski coat while Jaymie served a couple of customers who had followed them in, one wanting buttermilk, which they had, and another wanting pickled quince, which they did not have, and in fact no one in the history of retail had ever carried. Jaymie then turned to Heidi, who was perched on a chair by the part of the counter where Jaymie had her picnic basket rental counter. Good, she had some stuff to do there anyway, to make the display more festive.

“You've got such nice handwriting, Heidi. Would you make me up a sign saying special Christmas themed baskets are available for rental for the Dickens Days festivities?”

As Heidi lettered the sign using red and green felt pens, Jaymie redid her rental basket display and quizzed her friend on what she meant by saying she went out with Shelby Fretter and a boyfriend who worked in the same industry as Joel, pharmaceutical sales.

“Joel knows this guy, Glenn Brennan, and he wanted to find out how the guy was stealing doctors.”

“Stealing doctors?”

“I guess Glenn managed to get some doctor who Joel has been wooing for ages to refer his drugs over the ones Joel's company makes. It's a similar drug, something for man private parts or something. I don't ask.”

“Can't say I blame you. So you all went out to dinner: you, Joel, Glenn and Shelby?”

She nodded. “Shelby and Glenn had gone out a couple of times, and he was totally into her. She treated him awful, but then she treated me awful, too. She seemed angry to be there and said they were supposed to be out to dinner alone.”

Jaymie's mind teemed with questions, but she let Heidi print the advertising card first. The girl was on her fourth attempt; she'd never get one done if Jaymie kept distracting her with conversation. Jaymie focused on her rental basket display instead, set up on a wooden shelf behind the sales counter. She had a fifties-era poinsettia-printed tablecloth draped on the shelf. The display was a little aluminum Christmas tree and a vintage tin red-plaid basket. She propped the lid of the basket open, created a snowy scene inside with a miniature mountaintop of felt “snow” and bottle-brush trees. Tiny Christmas village figurines were set on the slope, skiing, building a snow man and having a snowball fight. She created a stack of snowballs with cotton puffs.

“When was this?” Jaymie finally asked, righting one of the figurines that had fallen over.

“Hmm?” Heidi said, carefully adding a holly drawing on the bottom of the sign.

Jaymie looked over her shoulder, then turned and examined the sign more closely. “Wow, you're good at that, Heidi!”

“Really?”

“Sure!” Jaymie said. “I was asking when this was that you all went out.” She expected the answer to be some months past, because she knew Cody and Shelby had been dating for over a month and a half.

“About three weeks ago. And I saw them out together just last week when Joel and I went to Ambrosio,” she said, naming a restaurant on the highway out of town.

“Three weeks ago? And you saw them together just last week.” Jaymie had the impression that Cody believed he and Shelby were semiserious, or at least exclusive, but that was apparently not the case.

“Why does it matter?” Heidi asked, holding the sign out to Jaymie.

She wouldn't care less except Cody was Nan's son, and now he was also Jakob's employee. But that had nothing to do with Shelby, she thought. “Nothing,” Jaymie said with a shrug. “But why would she be rude to you? Everyone loves you, Heidi.”

Heidi jumped to her feet and hugged Jaymie. “No,
you
love me. I don't know why, but I'm just grateful. You and Bernie are the best friends I've ever had!” she said, naming their friend Bernice Jenkins. Bernie was an officer on the local police force and aspired to become the first female African American detective on the town's force.

“But seriously, Heidi, from the sound of it the girl just hates everyone. Like mother like daughter.” She told Heidi about her run-in with Lori Wozny. “The woman was bound and determined to take everything I said and did as a slight.”

Nodding eagerly, Heidi said, “Shelby is like that, too! No matter what I said, even when it was a compliment, she made it seem like I was insulting her! I said she had a nice hairdo, and she said well, no wonder I didn't like it since I could afford hundreds of dollars for a cut and color. I told her I liked her dress, and she made some crack about taking handouts when she was a kid and shopping in thrift stores, but oh, I wouldn't know anything about that.” Wide-eyed, she shook her head. “And here I thought it was just
me
she didn't like.”

“She has a chip on her shoulder and I think it runs in the family. I felt bad about my run-in with Lori, too, until I heard she's always like that.”

She sighed. “I feel better now. So she's dating a couple of guys at once?”

“I guess so. Nothing wrong with that if everyone knows about it, but I can't imagine juggling two guys at once.”

“Rumor is, you won't have to worry about that anymore,” Heidi said, with a sly glance.

Jaymie was silent. The downside to living in a small town was that everyone knew about your business, and felt entitled to comment on it. It was a testament to how far Heidi had come in Queensville that she was now in the loop. Just months before, townsfolk, siding with Jaymie and her broken heart, had frozen Heidi, seen as the interloper, out. But Jaymie's friendship with her had solved that little problem. Coupled with Heidi's naturally warm personality, it meant that the girl was now quite popular. Jaymie remained silent and Heidi didn't push.

“What is this Glenn guy like?” Jaymie asked.

Heidi wrinkled her nose. “I don't like him at all. He's so . . .” She wriggled her shoulders, an expression of distaste, for her. “When Joel was up getting us drinks and Shelby went to the ladies' room, he kept saying things to me, even though he's on a date with Shelby and I'm with Joel. It felt creepy.”

“He came on to you?”

“Kind of. Nothing too outrageous or I would have told Joel, just compliments.”

“But Glenn seemed into Shelby?”

“He was all over her, you know, touching her shoulder, sitting with his hand around the back of her neck . . . I
hate
that! I don't know why some guys do it. She didn't seem all
that
into
him
. Nonchalant. Is that the word? She acted like she couldn't care less. Maybe that's why he acted all crazy about her when she was there, trying to reel her in.” She slid off the stool.

“What did they talk about?”

“With each other? Nothing. Joel and Glenn did all the talking. That guy brings out the worst in Joel. It was like constant one-upmanship. Who had what clients, who had more sales . . . That kind of stuff.” She pulled on her coat. “So the sign is okay? I'm so happy to help! I got one of the robes you told me about, and I talked to some of the ladies and they all liked your suggestion about me strolling and handing out goodies.”

“I'll see you this evening, then.”

The rest of her shift was straightforward. After lunch Mr. Klausner, silent as always, took his post behind the cash register with one of his granddaughters, Gracey, who he was training to work.

At home Hoppy was overjoyed to see her, but gave her a brief tail wag and bounded out into the yard to piddle then bark at Trip Findley, her behind-the-lane neighbor, who was out repairing his back fence. Denver slunk out, too, and Jaymie began the mad dash to get ready for the first real evening of Dickens Days. The next day she would be at the historic house in costume, baking cookies in her hopefully still working and very
very
clean vintage oven. But first, this evening she would stroll the town, give out pamphlets and maybe see Jakob and Jocie.

She consulted her list and took care of several things, including phoning in a food order to the Queensville Inn. The chef there handled the food supplies for her vintage picnic basket service. Three families were picking up deluxe baskets to enjoy near the river while the Queensville Brass Chorus played Christmas tunes in the bandstand near the boardwalk.

Midafternoon the phone rang. It was Becca, so she caught up with her sister while she raced around doing other things. Becca, Kevin and maybe even her Grandma Leighton would be joining her in Queensville a few days before Christmas. Her mom and dad, driving up from Florida, would meet them there, then they would all cross the border to London, Ontario, Canada, where Becca would host them for Christmas with her fiancé and one of his kids. Becca was uptight and worried, but Jaymie got her calmed down and even laughing with a description of her run-in with Lori Wozny.

By the time she signed off, had dinner, got Hoppy and Denver their meals and let them out in the yard again, it was dark and time to get going. She changed into her Victorian cloak, made sure the animals were inside and comfortable, then headed out, walking first to Bill Waterman's shed for a stack of pamphlets.

The large workshop was brightly lit, beckoning and warm even though Bill had the door propped open. He was at his workbench near the locked storeroom in his shirtsleeves and jean overalls, working on some kind of electronics.

“It's one of the speakers from the PA system I've installed in the cider booth,” he said, in answer to her query. “It keeps shorting out.”

“Do we need that?” Jaymie asked. The storeroom was unlocked. She retrieved a pile of pamphlets and stacked them in her wicker basket, then came back out to stand by Bill, who bent over the back of the speaker box.

“Fletcher wants to use it tonight. He said ‘Make it a priority
,
Billy Boy.'”

Jaymie chuckled at Bill's impersonation of their hail-fellow-well-met mayor, Eddie Fletcher, who tended toward a false hearty friendliness. It was funny how as the success and self-funding nature of the heritage committee became more evident, Fletcher had suddenly become interested in the Dickens Days celebrations, though he had originally opposed the town putting up any money for policing and servicing the two-week event. Regardless, the heritage committee welcomed his participation and he would be there that evening, as well as at the next day's official opening of the Queensville Historic Manor.

“Do you still have your key for the storeroom?” Bill asked, as he stripped a wire.

“Of course,” Jaymie said, jingling her keys in the pocket of her hoodie under the cloak. “You can lock up when you leave.”

“I'll be around most of the evening to stomp out any fires. Tree and Imogene have been plaguing me nonstop about the booth. They keep blowing fuses and won't listen when I tell them not to plug so much into one extension! Darned slow cookers full of cider.”

“Don't let them bully you, Bill!” she said, and left, emerging into the frosty air.

The workshop was on a slight rise above the main street, so she paused for a moment, enchanted by the transformation of her town. The town's deciduous trees had long since lost their leaves, so the only green was a sprinkling of firs and pines. All along the main streets householders and business owners like those of the Queensville Emporium, Jewel's Junk and the Cottage Shoppe had decorated the conifers on their property with dazzling white lights that twinkled and gleamed. Even the oak trees had been gussied, with strings of lights wound around their trunks and lower branches, like ghostly trees shining in the darkness.