Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (14 page)

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Jaymie said about the measurements, stricken by how much work this could turn out to be. What had she pictured? She had just thought she’d sod over the whole area and be done with it, a couple of hours, and presto, a new lawn. “Can you swing by later to do that? I need to call my dad and boyfriend to see what’s going on, on their end.”

“Sure.”

Sammy walked back to the marina with Joel and Heidi. He had agreed to take them out, with Will’s help, to see how the
Sea Urchin
worked. As they walked away, Joel was enthusing about her “clean lines,” and asking about the shrouds, and Sammy was just listening, his shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets.

Jaymie returned to the cottage even more confused about the murder, and the possible guilty parties. She unpacked the bag and put the enamelware in the sink to wash. While Hoppy noisily ate a bowl of crunchies, she made a cup of tea and some phone calls. First, Valetta.

“Hey, kiddo, what’s up?” Valetta said.

Jaymie related the details of her afternoon, then asked, “So, what do you think? Is Sammy Dobrinskie even capable of killing his dad?”

“Now, you know my thoughts on that,” Valetta said. She had often asserted her belief that anyone could commit murder, given the right circumstances. “I don’t know the Dobrinskies that well, but Sammy has always seemed such a quiet kid, to me. He’s babysat for Brock a couple of times.”

Brock Nibley was a widower and the proud father of two kids Jaymie nicknamed Evil and Wicked. Their real names were Eva and William.

“I’m trying to figure out how the ice pick—if it’s the murder weapon—got from the bar into Urban Dobrinskie if the murderer wasn’t Ruby or Garnet.”

“Do you know for sure it was the murder weapon?”

“No, and that’s the frustrating part. Detective Zack won’t say. Guess I can’t blame him for that. But he acted kind of weird when I saw him today. I asked a few questions about the murder, and he got huffy and walked away.”

“Hmm. Huffy in what way?”

Jaymie described what happened.

“Maybe just for once you should try talking to him as a friend. He probably doesn’t know that many people here, and he’s lonely. Don’t tackle him with murder questions every time you see him.”

Jaymie thought about it for a long minute. “He wasn’t in work clothes. I guess it wasn’t fair to attack him with work-related questions in his off time.”

“Heidi may be right about him. He does seem to like you. A
lot
.”

“Uh, no! She’s
way
off base about that.”

“Okay. Well, you know best. Hey, do you need a hand getting things ready for the family dinner at the cottage, with everything else you’ve got going on?”

“Maybe,” Jaymie said. “Look, you want to paint that back room of yours this fall, right? Well, I’ll trade you help with that, for some work here.”

“Agreed. No landscaping, though, and no mud.”

Jaymie laughed. “Interior work only. Now I just have to convince Daniel’s mother that having the dinner out here won’t be a dangerous event. She and my mom are driving me nuts.”

“What about a compromise?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to get to the whole time, but nobody is going along with me. I wonder what I can offer her?”

“What does she want?”

Gloomily, Jaymie said, “Good question. For Daniel to break up with me, it seems. I can’t do anything right for her, nor can my mother. What does she want? Complete control?”

“Doesn’t every woman want control? Give her a little, and see if it helps.”

“But that just puts her in charge, and we end up having dinner at Stowe House!” Jaymie wailed. “I don’t know where this thing with Daniel is going, but if it’s long-term, I think giving in to his mom is a bad precedent.”

“I don’t mean give up total control. You just have to make it
look
like you are. Let her handle some key part of it so you can do what you want for the rest. Make a deal.”

Thinking about it for a long moment, Jaymie said, “Like, if I said she could choose the menu, as long as we hold the dinner at Rose Tree Cottage.”

“Now you’re thinking!”

“Valetta, you’re a lifesaver. But I gotta go and arrange for sod and backbreaking work, if we’re going to be able to do that.”

She called Daniel, who said that he had spoken to the supplier who provided his landscaping needs, and they could indeed supply sod to the island. She told him she’d call him with the amount, once Sammy told her, and then she asked to speak to his mother.

“Why?” he asked.

Taken aback, she said, “Why not?”

“Okay. Uh, I’ll get her.”

“Thank you.”

When Debbie Collins came on the line, Jaymie made polite chitchat for a minute, then said, “Mrs. Collins, I have a proposition for you. If you will agree to come to the Leighton family dinner at Rose Tree Cottage on Heartbreak Island, I will be pleased if you would help me plan the menu. Daniel has said what a wonderful cook you are, and I’d be happy to have the help.”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “All right. But why don’t you let me take care of all the food? You just worry about getting the cottage ready, and I’ll plan the menu and cook.”

Jaymie held her breath for a moment. Was she making a mistake? Their dinner had always been corn on the cob, ribs and salads. But surely that was pretty much what Mrs. Collins would plan, knowing this was a summer dinner. And did it matter what they ate? The most important detail for her and her family was upholding tradition by having the meal at Rose Tree Cottage.

Her own mom had too much on her plate, with helping Anna and other assorted activities, and truth be told, she wasn’t really much of a cook anyway. Jaymie had been looking forward to investigating some old recipes and trying them, but with all the landscaping to do yet . . . She made a sudden decision. “Great. Do we have a deal?”

“Absolutely. I’ll put Daniel back on, dear.”

Dear?

“What did you say to her?” Daniel said, his tone full of awe. “She looks like the cat that swallowed a canary.”

Uh-oh. “Is that a good thing?”

“If you knew my mother really well, you might not think so.”

She told him what she had done. “It’s all in the name of compromise, right?”

“Well, that ought to be okay. Call me when you find out the sod requirements, and we’ll get to work.”

The moment she hung up, Sammy called and said he was on his way over. Ten minutes later they were standing on the slope of her backyard, and he had out his measuring tape, a heavy industrial-looking affair. He directed her with all the confidence of an accomplished landscaper, and she thought how well he was going to do in his life’s work. But this blossoming of confidence . . . had it required Urban Dobrinskie’s death to bring it to fruition? And which of them was more likely the culprit, he or his mother?

“Sammy, I really am sorry about your father,” she said, as he sat on the deck writing down some figures.

He did some quick sums and looked up. “Don’t worry about it.” His tanned face set in a hard expression. “He tried to ruin my life, you know, like I was never good enough to be his son. Well, he can’t ruin it now.” He bent his head back down, did a final sum and ripped off a piece of paper. “This is how much sod you need. I’ll be back first thing tomorrow to start working on the landscaping, okay?”

In an instant he was back to looking like the thoughtful seventeen-year-old young man she knew him as; gone was the hard and sullen boy. It was like a persona that flickered on and off.

“Okay. See you tomorrow.”

Fourteen

S
HE PIDDLED AROUND
for a while, still trying to write her bio for the newspaper, wretchedly aware that it wasn’t going at all well. She needed to send the article to Nan, and soon, but she wanted to look it over one more time, make sure it was as good as she could make it. It was difficult to focus when all she could think about was that a murder had happened in her backyard. It was bad enough that she’d been caught up in that at her Queensville home—she had just gotten over feeling squeamish about the summer porch from the incident in May—and now it had happened out here. Was she some kind of doom magnet? It was disturbing. If it kept happening, the villagers would gather and it would be pitchforks or the river for her.

But while her mother was resident in the Queensville house, the cottage was still her preferred nest, despite the horrid happening. Now that she had her bathroom privileges back, she could drink tea to her heart’s content. For her supper she was about to use the recipe that she was writing about for the article, a “sandwich loaf” in miniature.

A sandwich loaf was an amazing fifties concoction that was served at bridal showers, picnics, club luncheons and the like. It looked pretty (in the old photos she had seen, anyway) but might be a challenge to make. She took a whole loaf of bread, sliced it into four pieces with three long horizontal slices, then filled it with three sandwich fillings. She chose ham salad, egg salad and, for the center, cream cheese with chopped olives. When it was stacked, she frosted the whole with some thinned cream cheese colored pale pink. Standing back from the table she thought how pretty it looked, like a loaf cake; she finished it with a decoration of olive “flowers” and parsley leaves on the top.

Before consuming it she needed to photograph it, so she took it out to the front porch, and set up a vignette with her Adirondack chair, a side table, and a frosty glass of lemonade with a cocktail umbrella in it. She tucked some pink roses from the vine that climbed the front porch into a mason jar, and set it on the little table, then carefully sliced the sandwich loaf and laid two pretty striped pieces on one of the enamelware plates, leaving the rest on a decorative tray. The blue siding of her cottage made a lovely background for the blue and white enamelware dishes, and the pink roses picked up the posies in the middle of the dishes. She hoped this was going to be good enough. She took several photos from different angles, moving things around, trying to find an arrangement that she liked.

After a couple of slices of the sandwich loaf for supper, she wrapped the remainder, put it in the fridge, and wrote the rest of the article in longhand. It was simple enough once she got going. Then she took a mug of tea out onto the front porch, sitting with her feet up on the porch railing, as Hoppy settled in next to her, with a contented doggie sigh. The sun sank behind Queensville, and the trees across the road from the cottage took on that brilliant green glow that comes from slanting sunlight.

Closing her eyes, she put her head back, trying to let go of the anxiety that spiraled through her, making her antsy and uncomfortable. Heartbreak Island had always been, to her, a peaceful place, despite the dramatic name and its history as the center of a tug-of-war between nations that finally ended in a peaceful resolution, and the splitting of the island in two. But maybe she just hadn’t spent enough time at the cottage lately to notice all the tensions and anger that swirled around among the islanders. The Dobrinskie marriage, so full of violence, and the hard-nosed competition between Urban Dobrinskie and the Redmonds were examples. Urban seemed like the kind of guy who was the center of a lot of controversy.

But what had contributed to it was the gossipy nature of such a closed environment. Everybody seemed to belong to the same clubs and go to the same places. Sherm Woodrow had wasted no time in passing on to Urban what he had heard about Garnet and Ruby buying a sail from overseas, one that was against regatta rules. But who had told Sherm that? Jaymie couldn’t remember whether he had mentioned where the information came from. She opened her eyes and watched the last rays of the slanting sunset gild the trees.

A dark figure trudged up the road from the direction of the marina, and in a moment Jaymie identified the figure as Will Lindsay. “Hi, Will!” she called out.

“Oh, hi, Jaymie,” he said. He looked down in the dumps, his boots scuffing along the gravel road like he didn’t have the energy to lift his feet.

“How’s it going?” she asked. “You all right?”

“I’m just tired,” he said, approaching her porch.

Hoppy jumped down from the chair and wriggled toward Will. The marina owner sat down on the bottom step and took Hoppy up on his lap. The little dog licked his chin and panted happily.

“On your way home?”

He scruffed Hoppy under the chin, and said, “What? Oh, no, that’s in the opposite direction. I’m actually on my way to see Garnet. I’m hoping he’ll back off a bit on the marina deal. I don’t want Evelyn and Sammy to rush into selling their share.”

“Is Garnet pressuring you to get them to sell?” she asked, alarmed.

He shrugged and looked down at Hoppy. “It depends on what you call pressure, I guess. I really like the guy, but I just don’t know how to tell him to lay off.”

“I don’t know if either of them will be home right now, but if they are, why don’t you try talking to Ruby about it?”

He stilled and cocked his head to one side. “That’s a good idea, actually.” He touched Hoppy’s wet nose and smiled. “That’s a
great
idea. I never did understand what Urban had against her. She’s such a
nice
woman. But he said she was not who she seemed.”

Something Valetta said teased the back of Jaymie’s brain, something about Garnet and Ruby. What was it? She couldn’t remember; she’d have to ask her friend. “What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll
never
know now, right?” He put Hoppy gently on the porch, and stood, stretching. “Thanks for the chat, Jaymie. I’ll see if I can get Ruby on my side.”

“Good idea. Try not to worry, Will; you’re doing the right thing.”

“That’s what Robin says. Evelyn and Sammy might need that income in a few years, if he’s going to start a landscape business.”

He trudged off into the darkness, and Jaymie pondered his problem. How much did she really know about Garnet Redmond? She spent very little time on the island, as a rule, generally making flying visits to clean the place, and make sure it was ready for guests, a few hours each time. But with the plumbing woes she had spent a lot more time in contact with the Redmonds in the last week or so. They both seemed very nice to her, but how would Garnet be if he was crossed? He had certainly cleaned Urban’s clock for what he said about Ruby, hadn’t he?

She just couldn’t believe Garnet would
kill
the man, though, and leave him in their own shared back area. That made not one speck of sense. Unless Garnet was counting on
everyone
thinking that way. It would take a particular kind of cool courage to be bold and leave the body right on your own property, to deflect suspicion in a kind of reverse psychology way. Having watched him sail, Jaymie knew Garnet was indeed decisive and bold.

Okay, so it could be Garnet. She had to admit it was possible. But to play devil’s advocate, if not him, who? Who killed Urban Dobrinskie in her backyard? She squinted into the gathering gloom. Or . . . wait . . .
Did
someone kill Urban Dobrinskie in her backyard?

The more she thought about it, the more it felt like a staged set. The body in the mud. The “murder weapon”—the vintage ice pick—placed under the body. Whatever it was in the trees that made Hoppy go nuts that night. And the voice, saying, “Get off my property.” All had been designed to point toward Garnet Redmond.

But some stuff didn’t fit. The items that had been stolen from the work site; what were they again? Boots. Wheelbarrow. The drill bit . . . though that may have been a coincidence and perhaps was just lost in the muck by a careless workman.

The wheelbarrow.

Hoppy, after investigating the perimeter of the steps and sniffing out any messages he may have missed, begged to come back up on the comfy chair, and Jaymie picked him up, scratching behind his ears.

The
wheelbarrow
.

Of course! She held her breath, close to a breakthrough. If Urban was killed elsewhere and his body moved, it would need to be carried in something, and what was more useful to move a heavy object than a wheelbarrow? It was a tool in the staging of the “murder” scene!

One detail—one pointed, particular detail—came back to her in that moment. She could picture the boots Urban had been wearing, deep-treaded boots common to many men; the treads had been clogged, but not with mud, as they would have been if he had walked across her work site. The treads were clogged by fine-grained sand. That was the final detail that proved her theory, that he had been killed elsewhere, was accurate. She had no doubt that she was late to that conclusion, though. The police would already know that.

So . . . sand. How would the treads of his boots get clogged with sand? If it was fine dry sand, it would have just fallen out of the treads, so it was damp sand, like that found on a beach, or down by the river’s edge. There was only one spot on the island that had that particular area of damp sand, and that was down by the Ice House.

She heard a noise on the road, and Will Lindsay trudged along, head down, back toward the marina.

“Hey, Will, what did they say? Did you talk to Ruby?”

“Neither of them was home,” he said, strolling up the walk to her step again, and putting one foot up on the bottom step. “They’re probably both at the restaurant until closing.”

“I thought they might be. Are you going to go down there to talk to them?”

“The restaurant’s not a good place to talk about this. And I’m so tired,” he said, scrubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I think I’ll just leave it until tomorrow morning.”

Realizing she didn’t know much about Will Lindsay’s private life, she asked, “Do you ever go to the Ice House?”

“My wife, Barb, doesn’t like going out much,” he said. “She’s a good cook. We eat at home most nights.”

“Is she a local?”

“Yup. We met in high school. We split up for a while, but we got back together again and got married.”

“Does she like the marina business?”

“Hates it! She’d be happy if I sold it and got a regular nine-to-five job. Says she doesn’t see me enough.”

What about the night of the murder, Jaymie wondered. He and Urban were business partners; could he have gotten sick of Urban’s behavior and wanted him out of the way? She examined what she could see of his face in the shadowy evening gloom. The porch light cast a faint glow, but not enough to see his eyes. “I guess you work late a lot?”

“I try not to, but when you’re in the leisure business, you have to stick around if the customers want you, you know? But boaters don’t stay out late, so I’m always home by eight or so, regular as clockwork . . . dinner at eight thirty, TV, then lights out. Barb says she can’t sleep unless I’m snoring beside her.”

Jaymie sighed. The police had probably already established where he was, given he was Urban’s business partner. “Is everything going all right with the marina? At least you’re starting work on the dredging. I heard that Urban was not willing to go ahead with that.”

He frowned. “Who told you that?”

“I don’t remember. Why? Isn’t it true?”

“Uh-uh. He was just careful is all, making sure we took it step by step. I didn’t blame him. It’s a big financial commitment. And you really have to have all your T’s crossed and your I’s dotted, when it comes to the environmental agencies. We’re right on schedule with how he wanted to handle it.”

He frowned and looked down at his feet, scuffing his boot on the bottom step. “I miss the old asshole, pardon my French.” He cleared his throat and looked up, with a quirky grin on his shadowed face. “He’d hate even thinking that Garnet was going to buy out his share. Another reason I guess I’m a little wary of selling out. I gotta go. I called Barb and told her I’d be a little late, but I don’t want to keep dinner waiting. It’s nachos night!”