Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (12 page)

There were quite a few items in one lot, several white-painted wrought iron chairs and a table; the paint was flaking, but the whole lot, with intricate roses in the ironwork, had an authentic shabby chic look that she loved. She thought of Cynthia Turbridge’s store, the Cottage Shoppe; this was just the kind of thing she’d love for the backyard! But Jaymie wasn’t going to give it up.
Mine,
she thought.
All mine.
She practically rubbed her hands together over it.

There was a newer double glider that was made to look like an antique, and some random chairs and small tables, too. If she could get it for a good price, she’d buy the lot for the cottage and the new patio. She might not be able to use it all, but she could think about that later. Whatever she didn’t want could easily be sold to Cynthia. Jaymie wrote down the lot number.

As she was getting ready to walk away, she spotted a box piled high with what looked like china dishes. When she got closer, though, she saw that they were really all made of enameled tin, pretty bowls and mugs and plates in white enamel with pale sky blue edging and bunches of painted posies in the center. She took some out; made in Mexico! Interesting. There was another box with larger pieces in it, mostly white with a red rim, big bowls and basins and a pitcher, as well as a coffeepot and kettle.

She had spent some time with the magazines Cynthia had loaned her, and noted that shabby chic seemed to be embodied by lots of white and pastels, or pops of vivid color; overall the style was characterized by a pretty airiness. For the kitchen, Jaymie was going to advise Cynthia to use dotted Swiss for the curtains, and furnish it with a vintage Arborite dinette set, but until this moment she hadn’t really figured out about the dishes. These enamelware dishes would be perfect! She could see an enamel coffeepot on the stove, and as she dug in the box she found even more stuff . . . canisters and bowls, many with a gingham print design in enamel paint. The blues and pinks were so pretty, it was impossible to resist. She’d have to see whether she could get the stuff cheap. She already knew she had a stack of vintage linens that Cynthia could sell in her Cottage Shoppe kitchen.

As the auctioneer started on a box lot of tools, she moved to join Heidi and Bernie. “Hey, guys, how’s it going?” They exchanged brief hugs and chatted, since the items up for bids at that moment were not interesting to them yet.

“You see anything you want?” Bernie asked Jaymie.

She told them about her need for patio furniture, that the lot she was going to bid on would satisfy, and mentioned the new vintage store soon to open, and how she was buying up some stuff for it. It wasn’t the kind of place Heidi or Bernie was interested in, though, since their style was more sleek and modern than cottagey. They tuned back in to the auctioneer’s spiel. Bernie was bidding on a teak sideboard for her dining room. She and Heidi were both collectors of mid-century modern, though Heidi, as a trust fund baby, could afford to shop at a much higher level than Bernie. When the teak piece came up, it escalated fairly quickly, and Jaymie thought for sure Bernie would drop out; instead, she hung back, bidding only at the last moment. Jaymie watched as competing bidders covertly examined Bernie, who ignored them, appearing calm and determined. One by one the others dropped out. She got the sideboard, and at a decent price.

“Congrats, Bernie!” Heidi said, leaning toward her friend and patting her shoulder.

The police officer was flushed with happiness. “I got it!” She hopped in place. “Now I need to get a few hours of overtime to afford it!”

“How is the murder case going?” Heidi asked, glancing sideways at Jaymie, eyebrows raised.

Jaymie held her breath and listened in.

“The detectives definitely have a suspect in mind,” Bernie said. “But you know I can’t say who; don’t ask me. I can’t gossip about that stuff. It’s worth my job!”

Jaymie thought quickly. “Well, the spouse is
always
a suspect. But I’ve met Evelyn Dobrinskie; she couldn’t hurt a flea.”

“Never be taken in by a frail-looking lady,” Bernie replied, with raised brows and a quirky grin. “A determined woman can do anything she wants.”

That could equally as well go for Ruby Redmond. Was Bernie hinting at who the police suspected? Jaymie turned her attention back to the auction stage; her first lot was coming up. She scanned the crowd quickly, and unfortunately recognized a few other cottage owners from the island. Were they there for the patio furniture? She hadn’t even had time to really evaluate the furniture, but she had a feeling about it, and bid aggressively, quickly upping the price, hoping that discouraged others. It seemed to work, and though she paid more than she had wanted, for the amount of furniture there was, she got a good price. She got the enamelware, too, for a pittance.

“Good for you!” Heidi said, and Bernie high-fived her.

“I’ll see if I’ve done well when I get the furniture delivered. That’s going to cost me, too, considering I have to find someone to take it all over to the island.”

The auction moved on, but nothing interested them and after another half hour, all three women were done.

“There’s nothing there for me,” Heidi said, and they all headed out.

Jaymie and Bernie paid for their purchases, and the three walked out into the misty, humid night to their vehicles. Bernie and Heidi had come together in Bernie’s silver sedan. The police officer had carried one of Jaymie’s boxes for her, so she shoved the one she was carrying in first, then took the box from Bernie, clunking it down in the back of the van by the other one. She slammed the doors shut and turned back to her friends.

“Come out for a drink with us,” Heidi said to Jaymie, touching her arm. “The bar at Ambrosio serves mai tais!” She and Bernie were into retro drinks and barware, and their newest kick was drinks from the fifties and sixties.

“I can’t. I asked Daniel to take a walk with me later. I need to talk to him about the family dinner and our moms. There is a war brewing.” She explained what she meant to Bernie, who looked mystified.

“Yikes,” she said, making a face. “I don’t envy you. I broke up with a guy once because my mother hated him.”

“At least Mom and Dad like Daniel, but Mrs. Collins is difficult, and my mom isn’t much better. They’re like a couple of mob bosses, competing for territory. I feel like going into hiding.”

They parted ways, and Jaymie drove back to Queensville. She decided to leave the enamelware in the back of the van until she had time to deliver it to Cynthia’s store.

The house was empty; her parents were next door playing euchre with the Watsons. She could hear their voices floating out of the kitchen window of the Watsons’ home. Jaymie stopped only long enough to call Daniel, grab Sammy’s plans for the cottage and leash her pooch. Darkness had fully enveloped the town by the time she started out toward Boardwalk Park. Hoppy tugged at the leash, sniffing at the peemail he had missed over the last few days of island hopping. She made her way to the band shell, and tied Hoppy’s leash off, letting him wander around on a long lead, while she sat and examined Sammy’s plans for the cottage landscaping by the band shell light.

“Hey,” Daniel said, from the bottom of the steps.

“Hey,” she replied, examining his face, the overhead light glinting in his glasses lenses. She saw the same exasperated “My parents are driving me insane” look that she saw when she looked in the mirror.

He joined her, gave her a quick kiss, then sat beside her and slung his arm around her over the bench back. “Whatcha got?”

She explained the landscape designs that Sammy had drawn up, and he looked them over. His mathematical, neat mind seemed to grasp the complexities immediately, and though he pointed out a couple of problems with Sammy’s design, overall he praised it. “The kid’s got potential, it looks like. His sketching is really good. I’ll bet he’s taken drafting.”

“And he’s so enthusiastic. It’s clear he loves this stuff. His dad apparently was not too supportive.” She explained about Urban Dobrinskie, and what Sammy had said about his father ridiculing his work. Hesitantly, she also told him what Zack Christian had said, about intervening when the man was bullying his son.

There was silence between them for a long moment. Did Daniel know that the detective had an annoying ability to send her heart rate into the triple digits? She sure hoped not; it was her guilty secret. The response was purely physical—the detective was extremely good-looking—but that would not be reassuring for the slightly awkward, gawky, beaky computer software mogul. She had never thought of herself as shallow, but clearly she was, at least in some ways. Luckily, it seemed that she was beginning to be immune to Zack Christian’s presence. In time, the effect would wear off completely.

Finally, she said, “What I can’t decide is, would Sammy Dobrinskie have the strength and the anger and the . . . I don’t know . . . guts? To kill his father.”

A look of alarm narrowed Daniel’s eyes and set two exclamation marks between his sandy brows. He examined her face over the top of his glasses, then pushed them up on his nose. “Jaymie, you’re not investigating again, are you?”

“Of course not. You make it sound like I’ve taken up a Nancy Drew obsession. But I can’t exactly ignore it; it happened right in the backyard of one of my two favorite places in the world!”

“I know,” he said, hugging her to him.

She turned around on the bench and looked up into his eyes. He had a calmness about him. Daniel Collins was one of those no-nonsense individuals who are endowed with an expansive heart and compassionate nature. She appreciated his rationality and ability to examine any problem and come up with a solution. “Change of subject. What
are
we going to do about our mothers, Daniel?”

“Mine doesn’t really have a problem,” said compassionate, rational Daniel. “It’s
yours
that is causing all the trouble.”

“
My
mother? She’s just reacting to . . .” She stopped, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t think you meant that how it sounded,” she said, carefully.

“I don’t know, Jaymie,” he said, with an exasperated sigh. “All I’m hearing is how stubborn your mom is being. I mean, why
does
the dinner have to be at the cottage? Why not my place? Or even
your
house here in town?”

“Or ‘even’ my house? You make it sound like a barn!” Although this was much the conversation she had had with her parents, from him, it was annoying. “Okay, I’m going to ignore that word ‘even.’ The reason my mom is adamant, is that it’s always been that way. She’s a stickler for tradition, and why shouldn’t she be? She only gets up here a few times a year, so why
shouldn’t
we do the family dinner out at the cottage, like we always do?”

“Maybe because, by your own reckoning, the backyard of the cottage looks like a strip mining site.”

“I’m looking for solutions, Daniel, not reasons to crush my mom’s wishes!”

“Be reasonable, Jaymie. She has to be realistic. Why knock yourself out when we could just as easily do the dinner at Stowe House?”

“Thus giving your mom
her
way!”

“That’s not my intent,” he said at last. He pulled her back into the circle of his arms. “Look, if this is a big deal to you, let’s work it out.”

She thought about it. It
was
a big deal, and she did want to work it out. All of it, including her relationship with Daniel. Taking her wishes into consideration, Daniel finally started helping her brainstorm solutions. Compromise, in Jaymie’s book, was extremely important.

After another hour or so of chat and a little kissing, they walked home along darkened streets, with a weary Hoppy tucked up in Daniel’s arms. “So we’ll go over to the island tomorrow morning, and survey the damage,” he said, confirming the plan they had finally worked out. “I’ll call the guys who do my landscaping and ask for quote on sod, and if they’ll include delivery over to the island.”

“And I’ll enlist my dad and Grant Watson, if I can, to help with some of the other stuff,” she added. “We ought to know in a couple of days if we’ll be able to get the place up to scratch to hold a family dinner there.”

“I’ll see if my dad wants to help.”

They stopped in front of Jaymie’s home and she turned around in his arms. “Thanks, Daniel. I really appreciate your support.” She threaded her fingers through his thick sandy hair, and they kissed good night. Then she took her sleepy little doggie off his hands, and went into her house.

Twelve

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Jaymie called Daniel to arrange what time to meet him at the ferry dock, but he was in crisis containment mode. There was some kind of big blow-up at his company headquarters, and he was actually in the middle of a Skype conference with his management team in Phoenix. As the owner and president of a software development corporation, he should not really be living so far away from the head office, but with the sophistication of modern technology, his “office” was just a video conference or Skype call away.

So Jaymie was once more on her way down to the marina, with just Hoppy for company, to catch the ferry over to Heartbreak Island. She had decided that some of the enamelware would fit in perfectly at the cottage, so she had a shopping bag full of the pretty dishes, and they clanked against her leg as she walked. Waiting on the dock for the ferry were Heidi and Joel. Not long ago the sight of them together would have crushed Jaymie’s heart into little pieces. Heidi was the kind of girl who had once intimidated a younger Jaymie. Her clothes were fashionable, though understated, and her makeup was impeccable. She came from money; one look told the casual observer that, from the solid gold bangles on her slim wrist, to the pricey footwear on her feet.

Her family had once been Queensvillians. Her great-great-some number of times-grandfather, Homer Lockland, had been the owner of the hardware store that was now an Ace Hardware. Homer moved to New York City and made his millions in real estate, and the rest was history. A fuzzier, more recent history was Heidi’s odd decision to buy a house in Queensville. Why had she decided to perch in such a backwater, when she was clearly accustomed to the finer things in life, like mani-pedis and shopping at Barneys? Not that Queensville was hopelessly rustic; it was as sophisticated as a smallish touristy Michigan town could be, but it was no New York City.

Her “theft” of Jaymie’s live-in boyfriend, Joel, was by now ancient history to many, though it had happened less than a year before. Finding out two things helped the process of Jaymie’s recovery from the wretchedness of heartbreak. One: Heidi was a truly sweet girl; good-natured, bubbly, not a mean bone in her body. Two: Joel was kind of a jerk; self-centered, conceited and most definitely condescending. Without the blinders of love Jaymie saw his feet of clay, and was grateful to be out of his circle of influence. Given another six months with him, she probably would have come to the same conclusion, that he was not the dreamboat she had thought him. His attraction to Heidi may partly have been because they both worshipped the same object,
him
, and his “brilliance.”

“Hey, Jaymie!” Heidi called out, waving.

As soon as he saw Joel, Hoppy whined and yapped. His complete adoration for Joel was still a mystery to Jaymie. She took the sloping walk down to the dock and let her little dog have a long lead; he wriggled over to Joel, who squatted down and petted the little dog’s head while his current girlfriend and ex-girlfriend chatted.

“What are you two doing down here?” Jaymie asked. When she had seen Heidi the night before, the girl hadn’t said anything about going out to the island.

Heidi gave a little hop, and said, “Guess what? Joel planned this big surprise. We’re going over to the island to look at a sailboat that’s for sale.”

“Really? I didn’t know you sailed.”

Heidi colored, prettily. “Actually, my boarding school had a sailing team. It’s the one sport I’m good at.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Jaymie said, drily. Joel looked up at her sharply, but she smiled down at him.

“Yeah, Brewster has a great curriculum!”

“So now you’re going to buy a sailboat?”

Joel stood. “The owner died, and the widow needs the money. I told Heidi it could be our good deed for the day!”

“Wait . . . are you going to look at the
Sea Urchin
? Urban Dobrinskie’s boat?”

Heidi looked down at Joel, a question in her eyes.

“Yeah,” Joel acknowledged. “It must be a good boat; it almost beat the Redmonds this year. With a better crew, it may just do it next year.”

The ferry, aptly named the
Ferry Queene
by its erudite owner, pulled into the marina and disgorged the few passengers near the small boathouse that held the customs office. Jaymie, Heidi and Joel strolled down to line up with the ten or so other passengers going to Heartbreak Island or Johnsonville, Ontario.

The day was getting warm already; the stormy weather of the previous day had been cleared out by a heavy thunderstorm in the night, so the humidity had eased, even as the wet earth perfumed the air. “I didn’t know you were such a sailor, Joel,” Jaymie remarked, shading her eyes and watching him.

“He was first in his class in college, right, honey?” Heidi said.

“Sure,” Joel said, heartily. “Say, heard you had a little trouble out at the cottage?”

“Yeah, I guess you could call murder ‘a little trouble,’” Jaymie said, sharply. She looked away, feeling a slow flush rise in her cheeks. Mention of the cottage from Joel reminded her of when things were better between them. Last summer, Joel and her parents had enjoyed the annual family dinner at Rose Tree Cottage. After that, everything seemed to go bad, and now she knew why. Heidi moved to Queensville in September, and she and Joel had met some time that month. He had made some excuse not to go to Canada with her for Canadian Thanksgiving, in October, and she surmised that he and Heidi had had their first real intimate “date” that weekend. By American Thanksgiving it was finished between her and Joel, though she didn’t learn that until a couple of weeks before Christmas. She was over it, and over him, but preferred to forget the whole episode.

They climbed aboard the ferry, Hoppy staggering a bit on the ramp. Jaymie picked him up and found a seat on the prow, which was lined with benches, setting her clunky bag down under the seat. Heidi and Joel followed. Jaymie didn’t talk much on the way over, though she did haltingly comment on the Dobrinskies’ selling of the
Sea Urchin
. As they pulled into the marina she saw Sammy there, along with Will Lindsay, both dressed in better-than-average clothes. It soon became apparent that Will was helping Sammy in the potential sale of the boat. Sammy smiled at Jaymie and waved, shyly.

“Can we talk in a while, Sam?” she said. “About the landscaping?”

He nodded, and turned back to Will, who was talking to Joel and Heidi. They all walked down to a slip where the Sea Urchin bobbed in serene beauty. Jaymie strolled over to Robin, who was leaning against an excavator looking at a clipboard. She let Hoppy have a length of his lead, and he happily sniffed at a clump of bushes where dock doggies would have left peemail.

“Hey, Robin.”

“Hey, Jaymie.”

“I came over on the ferry with Joel Anderson and Heidi Lockland. So Sammy and his mom are selling the
Sea Urchin
? I guess Joel and Heidi are looking at it today.”

Robin looked up and smiled. “Yeah. Sammy never really liked sailing anyway. If they can sell the
Sea Urchin
, it’ll help with his college costs.”

“You’ve known Sammy for a while,” Jaymie said. “He seems like such a nice kid, but with a dad like Urban . . . that can’t have been easy on him. Or his mother!”

“He
is
a nice kid, and a hard worker, but his mom . . . She’s a little odd. I know she loves her son, but . . .”

“How do you mean, ‘odd’?”

He shook his head, then glanced around, hunkered closer to her, and said, “I’ve never told this to anyone, but from what I understand, Evelyn used to follow Urban when he went on his little ‘dates,’ you know?” He waggled his unruly eyebrows.

“Why is that ‘odd’?” Jaymie asked, not surprised that Urban was widely known to have outside interests. The island was small, and people talk. But who was he cheating with? Ruby, as Brock Nibley had asserted?

Robin’s brown eyes widened and he reared back. “You mean you’re not surprised?”

“That a woman would tail her cheating louse of a spouse? No.” An unacknowledged ribbon of anger in the pit of her stomach, left over from Joel’s cheating on her, surfaced. “Maybe she wasn’t sure. Maybe she wanted details.” Maybe she was planning on divorcing him, but murder seemed simpler?

Zack Christian walked toward them, that moment, in just his swim trunks and with his towel over his shoulders. Just then a shout from his men called Robin away, and Jaymie was left with a shirtless Zack.

“How is the investigation going?” she asked, trying not to stare at his chest, chiseled abs and all.

“Why? You want to come work for us?” he joked, using the towel to dry his arms and stomach.

Sweat or river water, she wondered, distracted; what liquid was racing in droplets down his chest?
Focus, Jaymie,
she commanded herself. “Zack, this is important to me. That cottage is my . . . my haven.”

“You need a getaway from the hustle and bustle of Queensville, Michigan, so you cross a few yards of water and camp out?”

She eyed him speculatively. Was he distracting her from the investigation by throwing bon mots her way? Not-so-witty repartee as a diversion? “So, was Urban murdered with that ice pick or not?”

“You know I can’t give you that information,” he said. Hoppy trotted over to sniff his leg and the detective watched him, warily. “He won’t pee on my leg, will he?”

She rolled her eyes. Good grief. “He doesn’t cock his leg and pee against things like most male dogs. Not very well, anyway. He’s a little wobbly, being a ‘tripod’ as one of my friends calls him.” She was not going to be deflected. “Okay, assuming it was the ice pick, how much strength would it take to push that thing in deep enough to kill him? Would a woman be able to do it?”

“Depends on the woman,” he said, shifting impatiently. “Look, Jaymie, I have to go. This was just a break, and I’m late for work.” He whirled and strode away, his shoulders set in an angry line.

What had she done to set him off? She shook her head; no telling. She pondered her ice pick query. The tool was sharp, even though it was old, so surely it wouldn’t take that much strength to push it in, as long as one didn’t hit bone. She shuddered, a little alarmed at the way her mind was working these days. Heck, if she was home, she’d do a little research on the Internet—she was becoming quite proficient at finding out esoteric information—or ask around, but out here, she was Internet-less. It occurred to her in that moment, though, that if the ice pick was the weapon, it really did limit the number of people who had access to it. The last she had seen it, it was in Garnet’s hand, so Garnet and Ruby were the most obvious. Would Evelyn Dobrinskie or her son even have been able to get ahold of it?

That was the sticking point for her, the one thing that kept her coming back to Garnet and Ruby Redmond. How could the murderer be anyone else, if the ice pick was the weapon?

Hoppy whined, so she moved along, the heavy bag bumping against her leg, clanking like a bag of tin cans; she let Hoppy sniff farther afield along a line of ornamental shrubs that bordered the customs shed, while she pondered the possible murder weapon. What had Garnet done with the ice pick when she was done photographing it? She couldn’t just assume the murder weapon was the ice pick. With all the fuss over the drill bit that was found near where Urban’s body lay, she had to wonder, could the same damage come from a drill bit as an ice pick?

It was all too confusing, and she didn’t know the folks involved well enough. But one thing she was sure of: to kill someone with either the drill bit or the ice pick would require close quarters and a cool, brutal side to one’s personality. It wasn’t like a shooting, where the perpetrator could commit the crime from some distance, or poison, where you didn’t need to see the victim die. No, this was up close and personal.

Sammy and the others wandered back to the dock area and stood talking for a few minutes. Heidi saw Jaymie, and said something to Joel, then sprinted over to join her.

“Are you buying the boat?” Jaymie asked.

“I think so!” she said, bouncing up and down, her silky hair flying out in a wave. Hoppy yapped and danced around, and she laughed. “It depends on Joel. He’s making the deal now. It’s so exciting!”