Bowled Over (24 page)

“You don’t know?”

Jaymie thought about it, about the occasionally catty remarks she had made, thinking she was being funny, about her nickname for Craig Cooper, the one that had stuck and stung for all those years. “You know, maybe I do know why she believed it. I wasn’t a terrible kid, but I did have my moments.”

“It wasn’t just that. Kathy was touchy sometimes about where she came from. She was probably a little ashamed, especially at that age. Maybe she even worried that it was true.”

“That…that they s-stank? But it
wasn’t
true,” Jaymie said.

Dani shrugged. “I don’t know; I’m just speculating. I didn’t know her then. So what do you want from me?”

“You knew her better than I did, at least these last years,” Jaymie said, rubbing at a spot of frosting on her thumb. “I want to find out who killed her. I just can’t let go of it. And to do that—to find out who might have wanted to hurt her—I need to know more about her.”

“But I understood there’s been an arrest.”

“A very good friend of mine—someone whose opinion matters to me and who I trust—doesn’t believe Johnny Stanko killed Kathy,” Jaymie said. “And God only knows there were lots of other people who won’t be crying at her funeral. She was a polarizing figure.”

“But I still don’t get it. How can I help?”

“You knew her in a different way than anyone else. You were her best…pretty much her
only
friend. Did she confide in you? Was it that kind of friendship?”

The woman hesitated and stared into Jaymie’s eyes, her own full of doubt. “Why should I tell you anything? Why should I believe your motives?”

Jaymie nodded. “Fair enough.” She thought for a long minute. “I’ll tell you what I feel; that’s pretty much all I can do. I can’t shake this…this sense of sadness over the whole thing. All the what-ifs come back to haunt me. What if Kathy had turned to whoever told her such a horrible lie back in high school and said there would be no way I could say such a thing? What if I’d pursued it harder, instead of feeling hurt and withdrawing? I wish she had believed in me and our friendship. Despite everything, I’d have thought she would have given me a chance to tell her the truth. Instead, I just never knew. I can’t think why she didn’t just
say
something to me.”

“Kids are insecure. I know that better than anyone. Like
I said, she probably believed it because she was afraid it was true, and that’s exactly why she couldn’t confront you. Hearing it secondhand was bad enough, but face-to-face would have been so much worse.”

“It sounds like you’ve had experience?”

Dani nodded. “I briefly had a girlfriend in high school—not a girlfriend in the sense of Emma, just a friend—but when the others noticed us hanging out together, she was teased so much she turned against me, said she never really liked me, that she only hung around me because she felt sorry for me. She said a lot of other crap, too.” Her expression was impassive, but anger flared in her eyes. “It hurt so bad, I lost a whole year of school. I never spoke to her again. I had to transfer to another school finally, after I tried to commit suicide. It was a long time before I trusted anyone again.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jaymie said, gazing into her eyes, where the hurt still lingered. “Do you ever wonder what that friend feels today, if she’s sorry for what she said?”

The other woman frowned and looked down into her coffee, swirling it around. “You know, I never really thought of it that way. She was a kid too, so afraid of being ostracized. I wish she’d had more guts, but…” She shrugged. “Teenagehood sucks.”

“You’re probably right about why Kathy believed the lie. But I can’t leave it alone; I keep thinking what might have been if she hadn’t died. On the Fourth, before I even found out the truth, I swore to myself that the very next day I was going to corner her and hash it all out.” She met Dani’s gaze. “Why did I wait? Could I have changed anything? I just don’t know. The only thing I can do now is help the police get whoever did that to her and her family.”

“And you don’t think Stanko did it?”

“That’s just it; I don’t
know
, not for sure. He was a bully in high school, and he gave Craig Cooper a real hard time, but I don’t think he even knew Kathy. He
seems
like the type, and I wince even saying that, but he has a short temper and a history of violence, and he threatened Kathy at the picnic. She was so gutsy.” Jaymie shook her head and took a long gulp of coffee. “I would have backed down, but she didn’t.”

“Okay. I’ve been wracking my brain the last couple of days trying to think of who might have done it, but when Stanko was arrested I just…” Dani shrugged. “But I hate when people make snap judgments, and if he’s not guilty, I don’t want him to suffer.”

“I have to be completely honest here. I do have another motive for figuring this out. Kathy was killed with my glass bowl.” She hung her head a moment, shivering as the horror of the scene came vividly back to her. She looked up; Dani’s expression was soft with sympathy, but she waited, silent. “I brought that bowl to the picnic, and someone used it to kill her. That makes me really mad,” she said, through her teeth. “But it also makes me a suspect. If Stanko didn’t do it, then we’ll be back at square one. I want to know the truth, and I can’t just leave it up to the cops. This is personal.”

“How can I help?”

“I need to know about her life. Did she say anything lately about anyone she was afraid of? Did she tell you about any fights she’d had? About her and Craig’s relationship? Her and Kylie? Connor’s grandfather, Andy Walker?”

“Whoa, that’s a lot. Give me a minute.” She sat back in her chair and drank down some of her coffee, her gaze unfocused. “Well, she and Craig; something was bothering her about that the other day. I talked to her on the phone on the morning of the Fourth. She wanted Emma and me to come
in for a picnic, but one of the horses was colicky, and we had to stick around and walk her. Emma told me to go ahead to Queensville if I wanted, but Matilda is my oldest horse; I didn’t want to let the poor old girl down.” She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them. “Instead, I let Kathy down. What if I could have changed things that day, turned events so it wouldn’t have happened? I guess I feel like you do. I’ll never know.”

Jaymie reached out and touched her knee. “So let’s see that whoever did this to her pays. What else did you talk about that morning?”

“She was upset. I’m not quite sure, but I had a feeling that…that she was afraid for her marriage.”

Jaymie nodded. “I can believe that. I know it won’t go any further than this, so I’ll tell you something I’ve just learned: Craig was cheating on her. I have a witness to him kissing another woman.”

Dani gasped, eyes wide with shock. “Bastard! He was the one thing she was sure of in life, she once told me. What an asshole! Pardon the language.”

“Pardoned,” Jaymie said.

“She told me that she took his phone by accident one morning a few days before the Fourth. She saw text messages on there that weren’t right, and I think she saw a photo that upset her. She wouldn’t tell me everything, but she was devastated about it.”

“I wonder if that was what was going on at the Emporium on the second. She had a phone in her hand and was looking at it, and she said something like “What the heck?” and she was upset. Maybe that’s why she lashed out at Ella about running over Connor’s toes.”

“Oh, and that’s another thing. She e-mailed me that she was planning on going over to Ella’s place and apologizing
for biting her head off. She said…” Dani frowned and stared down into her cup. “What did she say? Something I meant to ask her about. Oh yeah. She said that she wanted to
help
Ella. Ella Douglas is that woman in a wheelchair, right?”

“Yeah. She has a degenerative disease or something, and she’s having a lot of trouble right now. Kathy wanted to be a nurse. Maybe she was thinking of going back into it?”

“I don’t know,” Dani said, slowly. “I think she wanted to help her, specifically to make up for snapping at her in the store. I’m not sure, but that’s the only thing I can think of.”

“Ella Douglas was a girl we knew in high school. Back then she was a bit of a bully,” Jaymie said.

“Kathy did say that, but then said something about Ella being in trouble, and that she wanted to reach out to her.”

“That’s nice,” Jaymie mused. She was silent for a moment, letting the coolness of Dani’s rec room wash through her. “Everything I hear makes me wish I had not put off making it up with her somehow. You were her best friend; you must know about her plan to adopt her nephew and move to Toledo?”

Dani nodded, her expression troubled. “Connor meant the world to Kathy; he was
everything
to her. She and Kylie had a rocky relationship after Kylie’s fiancé died. I tried to tell her to let Kylie recover on her own terms, but Kathy was so worried about what Kylie’s depression was doing to Connor.”

“But Kylie was getting better, I’ve heard?”

“That’s real recent. Kathy was worried about a relapse. You have to understand, at one point Kylie was suicidal. Kathy didn’t trust her recovery.”

“Kathy also thought that Andy Walker was trying to alienate Connor from her.”

Dani’s gaze sharpened. “You knew about that?”

“I overheard her talking…actually,
yelling
it at Craig while they had an argument on the Fourth. Did Andy do something specific to make her think he was trying to turn Connor against her?”

“I’m not sure. My impression, if you want the truth, is that Connor was getting good at manipulating them both in that way kids have, to get what he wanted. When he was with Kathy, he’d say he wanted Grandpa, but Kylie said when he was with Grandpa Andy, he said he wanted Aunt Kathy.”

“How did the plan to get custody of Connor and move away from Queensville come about?”

“Kathy figured if she could prove to the judge that Kylie wasn’t stable, she’d get temporary custody of Connor. Then if she could get him to Toledo, she hoped Kylie would give up and forget about it.”

“That’s not likely. Kylie really seems to love her kid.”

“
Exactly
what I told Kathy,” Dani said, slapping her thigh. “But she wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Well, it does seem that she was giving up on the idea, from what I saw and heard on the Fourth. She was sitting with Kylie and Andy later in the day, and it looked like she had made up her mind to stop trying to get custody of Connor.” She was not about to share the info she had from the lawyer, that Kathy had already prepared to abandon the custody suit, for some unnamed reason. There was so much confusion around her intentions that Jaymie just didn’t quite understand.

Jaymie thought back to the conversation she had overheard between Kathy and Craig, when Kathy had been complaining about Andy Walker; it had almost seemed like Kathy was testing her husband, trying to push him to some
definite statement. She had said something like “If Connor is going with us,” but he had hushed her up. “I don’t know what changed her mind from earlier that day, when she still appeared intent on getting custody.”

“That I couldn’t tell you.”

The door to the rec room opened and Emma Spangler bopped in, dropped a kiss on Dani’s forehead and smiled over at Jaymie, perching on the arm of the chair Dani was sitting in, her arm looped casually over Dani’s shoulders. Despite her casual demeanor, there was an aura of tension in the set of her shoulders.

“So?” she said. “You guys solved the world’s problems yet?” Emma looked down at Dani and examined her face.

“Not yet, but we’re working on it. I’m fine, Emma,” she said, patting her girlfriend’s hip. “You can go wash up. There’s still coffee.”

“I love your carrot cake,” Jaymie said. “You should make it next year for our annual Tea with the Queen event!”

Emma stood and hesitated. “The Heritage Society is a lot of old ladies. I…I wouldn’t want to shock any of them by joining in, and I won’t change who I am or hide anything.”

Dani’s face held a look of tenderness as she took Emma’s hand. “It took a lot for Emma to come out. I’ve been out a long time, but she’s only been out a few years, and she’s lost family from it.”

“My parents are fine with us, thank God, but my brother…he hasn’t spoken to me since.”

“I’m sorry.” Looking between them, Jaymie smiled. “I think you might be surprised at some of those old ladies, though. When my friends, Anna and Clive, bought the bed-and-breakfast next to me, Clive was a little worried. He’s Jamaican, and Queensville’s population is, as you know,
quite…well, very pale complected. But Mrs. Bellwood—she plays Queen Victoria at the tea every year—said that Clive, if he wanted and was willing to grow a beard and wear a turban, could play the part of Queen Victoria’s dear friend and confidant Abdul Karim. Mrs. Bellwood really takes her part seriously and has done a lot of Queen Victoria research. She said Clive was so tall and handsome, that he would do the part justice. Not all of the old ladies are narrow-minded bigots. Gossips, yes; prejudiced…not necessarily.”

“I’ll think about contributing next year,” Emma said. “I’m going upstairs to wash and change. Can I get you two anything else?”

“No, we’re fine. Go ahead, Em,” Dani said.

When she was gone, Jaymie said, “One other thing I’ve been trying to find out…was Kathy a part owner of Laskan Cooper?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“Well…if she was, and if Craig was planning on leaving her, it could get messy.”

Dani did the necessary logic, and her eyes widened at the implication. “You don’t really think Craig is capable of killing Kathy, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Jaymie said, sighing in exasperation. “
Someone
did it, and it was someone who knew how she felt about me, because they took
my
bowl and hit her over the head with it.”

“I didn’t think of it that way, as a purposeful thing, choosing the bowl. So you think it was meant to point to you?”

Jaymie said, “It could have been chance, I suppose.”

“But you don’t really believe that.”

“No, I don’t. I think someone knew that was my bowl, and also knew I’d had a public argument with Kathy. Someone wanted me to look guilty. I doubt if they planned it
ahead, though, because they couldn’t know I’d argue with Kathy in front of everyone, nor that we’d be sitting close together, nor that I would bring a heavy glass bowl to the picnic. So whoever did it was smart and willing to take chances.”