Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) (3 page)

“Who is that?” Jaymie asked.

“Urban Dobrinskie,” Ruby said, following her brother toward the front of the bar. “He’s the part owner of the marina. Owns the
Sea Urchin
.”

“Right! The boat you and your brother beat in the race on July Fourth. What’s his problem?” Jaymie asked, trotting along behind Ruby.

“This time? Who knows. He’s always complaining.”

Jaymie followed Ruby to the front out of curiosity, because the man’s red face and pugnacious attitude was indicative of something more than a take-out order for perch. As they approached, she could hear him yelling at Garnet, as the two men stood toe-to-toe.

“I knew you two were crooked, but now I’ve got proof,” the balding, pudgy man hollered, shaking his finger in Garnet’s face.

It would have been comical, given the difference in the two men’s heights, if not for the anger expressed in every choleric grimace on Dobrinskie’s face.

“You’re cheaters,” he yelped. “You won last year by cheating, and you won
this
year by cheating. I’m gonna get you run out of the yacht club.”

“What the hell are you complaining about now, Urban?” Redmond said, his pleasant voice pitched a tad louder than normal. He glanced around. Jaymie could see that the confrontation in front of patrons made him uneasy. “Look, I’ll buy you a beer and we can discuss whatever it is—”

“The race, you jackass, the race!” Urban shouted. “I heard you ordered a sail from Switzerland, and bylaw 103, section A of the yacht club charter says no sail made in a country other than the United States is allowed.”

“Switzerland? Why would I . . . Who told you
that
crap?”

The other man hesitated a second, but the temptation to name his source was too great. “It’s not crap, Redmond. I got it from good authority. Sherm Woodrow don’t lie.”

Garnet’s expression was becoming thunderous, as Ruby and Jaymie got closer. “Yeah, well, that’s a load of horse manure, Dobrinskie. Sherm oughta shut his trap.”

Jaymie looked over her shoulder and saw Zack get up and follow them to the front, weaving past the bar patrons, who were all quiet now, watching the confrontation.

“Why? So you can keep cheating?”

Garnet’s face was flushed, a pulse throbbing in a vein in his neck. He shrugged his shoulder, as if working out some tension. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Dobrinskie, you old blowhard, you ought to be careful who you’re accusing, or—”

“Garnet, temper!” Ruby said, taking her brother’s wrist.

He shook off her grip, but shut his mouth. After a long minute, he said, his voice calmer, “You should leave now, Urb. If you think you’ve got a case, then take it up at the yacht club board meeting next week.”

“You gonna listen to that she-male of a sister of yours?
Garnet, temper!
” he mimicked in a falsetto voice.

Someone among the bar patrons laughed. Jaymie’s cheeks flamed with anger at the insult directed at Ruby, who gasped.

“Guess who wears the pants in that family,” Dobrinskie said, turning and surveying the crowd. “
And
who has a pair o’ balls hidden in there, prob’ly!” he finished, hitching his thumb over his shoulder in Ruby’s direction.

Several of the drinkers gathered near the bar gasped, and one young guy said, “That’s enough, now.”

Garnet was done talking, but that didn’t mean he was done. He grabbed the shorter man, whirled him around, hauled back and let loose a punch that sent the fellow flying backward.

Zack, who had been lingering nearby watching the argument, lunged forward and blocked Garnet, who looked like he was going to drop on the fellow and deliver more punches. “Enough,” he shouted, helping Dobrinskie to his feet with one hand and holding the other out toward Garnet in a “stop” gesture.

“I oughta sue you, Redmond,” Dobrinskie whined, holding one hand over his nose, which was bleeding. “I’m calling the cops!”

“You want to file a complaint?” Zack asked, his glance steely.

“You’re a cop, right?”

“Off duty, but yes, I’m a police detective. If you want to file a complaint, it’s within your rights, but I am obliged to warn you that I heard everything you said, and what you said to Miss Redmond could be construed as . . . as hate speech,” he said, avoiding Jaymie’s glance.

Jaymie watched, openmouthed.

“Hate speech?” Dobrinskie shouted. “What the fu . . .”

The detective had him by the arm and steered him through the oak doors and outside to the wood deck, so the rest of his expletive was drowned out. Jaymie bolted out the door after them in time to hear Zack mutter, “Look, you little toad, I’ve had to warn you about your temper before. You are ruining people’s dinner. Now, I
heard
Garnet say to you that you ought to take it up with the yacht club board if you have a problem—a reasonable suggestion in response to a base accusation—after which you gravely insulted his sister. That could be considered extenuating circumstances for him punching you, and I have to say, I’d have done the same if you insulted
my
sister.”

Dobrinskie jerked his arm out of Zack’s grip, his face red, spluttering in fury. “This ain’t the end. You tell Garnet that I intend to take it up with the yacht club, all right, and I’ll see him and his sister kicked out, pronto. I got a lot of pull, you know. I’m an important guy around here, and don’t you forget it.” With that he strutted away, down the board sidewalk muttering about big-shot cops, his own version of riding off into the sunset.

“Bravo, Detective,” Jaymie said, as he turned back after watching the man walk away.

He shrugged and smoothed back his ruffled dark hair. “I’m eating the best dessert of my life and he ruined it. What else could I do?”

“Homemade vanilla ice cream on a Tansy Woodrow butter tart, right?”

He nodded. “I’ve got a shameful sweet tooth. Now you know my darkest secret.” He held the door open for her and they entered the cooler interior.

“What did you mean, you’ve warned him about his temper before?” she asked, over her shoulder.

“The guy’s a creep. I caught him down at the marina yelling at his kid last week, and warned him then. The boy’s about seventeen, old enough to grow a pair, I guess, and stand up to the old man, but with a dad like Dobrinskie, he may never get a chance. That guy . . . If he doesn’t calm down, he’s going to have a heart attack before his next birthday.”

“Or set someone off so bad they’ll beat him to a pulp!”

Three

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Robin and his merry gang of plumbers woke Jaymie up early with the sound of the excavator chugging to life; she quickly got dressed in shorts and a sleeveless tee, and put the coffeepot on.

“You want to go over and see the love of your life?” Jaymie asked Hoppy, who sat staring up at her with his usual doggie intensity. He yapped. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

She grabbed a washcloth and towel, leashed Hoppy, and led him past the machinery, then dashed up the incline toward the Redmonds’ to use their facilities. If this went on much longer, she’d have to rent a chemical toilet or go back to the mainland. It might just be worth the money to rent the toilet. She was supposed to go back home today for at least a few hours, but until her mom and Mrs. Collins settled their differences, it was a strain to listen to her mother’s complaints.

“Mornin’, Jaymie!” Ruby, who was sitting on the back porch in a wicker chair, stuck her thumb in her book to save her place. “And Hoppy, my little love!” she cried. The dog trotted up the three steps to the Redmonds’ back porch and sat at her feet, gazing up at her with love in his eyes.

Jaymie could hear Garnet whistling in the kitchen, and the smell of bacon and eggs floated out the open window. “I need to use the washroom real bad,” Jaymie said, hopping from foot to foot and rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “Can I leave Hoppy with you? I don’t want him out among the workers alone.”

“Sure,” Ruby said, taking his leash and inviting Hoppy up to sit in her chair with her as she produced a biscuit out of her robe pocket.

Jaymie wandered through the back door and said hello to Garnet, who was at the stove.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, glancing over at her. “Want some breakfast?”

“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m just here to use the washroom!”

“Be my guest.”

She wandered down the hall, past Ruby’s room, with its perfectly made-up bed, then past Garnet’s, with the tumbled blankets half on the floor, to the washroom. Relieved of her worries and freshened by a good wash-up, she wove through the kitchen and waved good-bye to Garnet as she passed, then thanked Ruby, taking Hoppy’s leash. She headed across the Redmonds’ backyard to her own.

Rob the plumber caught up with her. “Jaymie, we’ve got a problem,” he said.

She stopped, with a sigh, and turned. A “problem” usually had dollar signs attached. What was it now?

“Someone ripped us off last night, stole tools.” His open, honest face, sunburned cheeks puffy like a chipmunk’s, wore an unusual expression of anger.

“Really? Who would do that?” Her remark was not disingenuous, but honest astonishment. Thievery was not a huge problem on the island, especially not something so mundane as tools. Sometimes beer coolers were rifled dockside, and occasionally there was some drunken pilfering of boats, but tools? One of the machines fired up, and Hoppy yapped, so Jaymie picked him up.

“Damn weekenders, that’s who!” he shouted, over the sound of the excavator, his cheeks getting redder. “Drink over their tolerance at the Ice House or the Boat House and can’t keep their hands off stuff!”

Jaymie sighed. Rob’s prejudice against the weekenders, those who rented slip space at the marina, or a cottage just for a week or two, was not his peculiarity alone. Many of those who called Heartbreak Island home felt the same way. The Boat House that he mentioned was the bar on the other half of the island, the Canadian side that faced the small Ontario town of Johnsonville. “Is it all replaceable?” she asked. “Why did you leave tools on the work site anyway?” She hoped he wasn’t going to try to stick her father with the bill.

“Some of the stuff was locked up in the storage trailer.
It’s
all okay, but one of my young guys . . . He didn’t know to lock everything up. Someone made off with a pair of work boots, a pick-ax, a wheelbarrow and, of all the stupid things, a drill bit.”

“A drill bit? Why would anyone take that?”

He shrugged. “You got me.”

“I still don’t understand why anyone would leave a pair of work boots on the site.”

He shrugged. “That’s Sammy for ya . . . He’s just a kid, barely finished high school. He didn’t think, I guess. He’s the one left the drill bit out in the open, and the ax, too.”

“So what do we do about it?”

“Suck it up, I guess. Nothing worth reporting to the cops or the insurance company.”

“Okay. I’m sorry about that,” Jaymie said.

“Not your fault. I’m just grumbling. Anyway, down to business . . . We’ve gotten down to the absorption trenches in the test area, so we know what we’re doing now,” he said, about the part of the leaching bed that worked as a natural system to control and absorb effluent from the cottage’s wastewater system. He pointed to some PVC piping laid alongside the work area. “We’re going to double or triple the size of the leaching field, so we have a lot of work with the excavator today; then tomorrow we lay the pipe and reroute the sump pump drainage. We think that’s what was flooding the leaching field.”

A sump pump was a necessity on the island because of the high water table. It would click on during rainy weather and pump water away from the cottage’s footings, to keep them from washing out. Rob explained that because the sump pump piping was directed to the leaching field, it overwhelmed the system on occasion, which partly explained why the lowest part of the ravine got spongy in spring, and took forever to dry out after rainy weather.

“Okay. I’m here for the rest of the day. I might go over to Queensville, or I may just leave that until tomorrow,” she said, thinking of her barely begun article. She was excited about it now that she had an idea. She
did
want to access her grandmother’s old cookbooks, to see whether there were any ice cream recipes, but her mother’s harassment would just put her off and irritate her.

She called Daniel before settling down to work, but he sounded harassed and frustrated, which, when she heard his mother’s voice in the background saying, “Are you sure that ferry out to the island is safe? You know how I don’t like boats, Daniel,” she understood. He and his mother were having the discussion—again—about the Leighton family getting-to-know-you dinner at Rose Tree Cottage.

She told him about the continuing problems with the leaching bed, then hesitated, trying to figure out whether it would be disloyal to her mother to tell Daniel that she was trying to convince her mom that the world would not end if they had the family dinner somewhere other than Heartbreak Island. She decided to let it be, in the end, so she could think about it some more, and said good-bye.

“I miss you,” Daniel said, with fervor.

Mrs. Collins’s voice was strident in the background. “Who are you talking to, Daniel? Is that Mrs. Leighton? I’d like to speak to her, if I may!”

“Mom,” Daniel said, his voice muffled as he turned his mouth away from the phone. “Do you really think I’d be telling Jaymie’s mother that I miss her?”

Jaymie stifled a giggle. “I gotta go,” she said, her voice gurgling with laughter. “I’m finally getting somewhere on the article for the
Howler
, and I want to get it mapped out today.”

“Okay. Miss you. Consider yourself kissed.”

She made a kissy-face sound and said, “I will. Hang tight!”

She then called Nan Goodenough with her idea for the story on ice harvesting and ice cream making, and got the okay to proceed. She was relieved to finally have an idea to work on.

By the end of the day, the plumbing workers had the whole backyard stripped of grass and dirt, and the anatomy of the leaching field had been laid bare. She supposed it was progress, of a sort, but it was like one of those tile puzzles where you had to tear apart what looked like progress to
really
make progress. There was nothing else they could do that day, since starting the next task would mean several hours of work, so the plumbers packed up, locking everything up tight this time, and headed home.

Though Hoppy usually had more freedom on the island than he did on the mainland, Jaymie hadn’t been able to let him wander the joined sloping Redmond-Leighton backyards because of the plumbing work, so she felt she owed him a walk. It was getting on in the afternoon, the sun slanting low in the sky, but she just had time to go to Tansy’s Tarts to get some pecan butter tarts to take home the next day.

She slipped her feet into flip-flops, grabbed a poop bag—just in case—clicked her Yorkie-Poo’s leash on, and said, “C’mon, Hoppy, let’s go get some sweeties!” She walked down the sandy road, thinking how simple life seemed when she was at the cottage. Just a fifteen-minute ferry ride and a ten-minute walk from her house, and yet it felt worlds away, thanks to the relaxed cottagers who at this time of day were just coming back from sailing the river, sunburned and laughing as they carried their life jackets back to dry in the sun, or over the porch railing of their cottages.

She took the long way around, skirting the river, the sun glistening on the water as a breeze skittered over the surface and a herring gull wheeled and screeched overhead. With a competent manager in Marg, the Redmonds were free to do what they wanted some days, and as she passed the marina she saw them just taking their sail down as they cruised closer to the island. They switched to motor power, pulling into the marina as Jaymie walked past the dock; she waved at them. Will Lindsay, the co-owner of the marina with Urban Dobrinskie, must have thought she was waving at him and shouted, “Hey, pretty lady, didn’t even know you remembered me!” He finished tying off a sailboat and helping one young woman to the dock, then approached Jaymie. He bent over to scruff Hoppy’s neck.

He was one of the members of the heritage society, and helped out at the Tea with the Queen event—known as the TQ by locals—every Victoria Day. Jaymie felt herself blush pink, but didn’t want to correct his mistake. “Sure I remember you, Will. It’s guys like you who make it possible to run the TQ event every May!” He was a cheerful, ruddy sailor type, so different from his business partner it was astounding.

He straightened and shaded his eyes, watching the Redmonds chug to their slip and pull close. Ruby leaped onto the dock and grabbed the rope, making an expert knot as she tied the bow of the
Heartbreak Kid
off. Her stringy muscles stood out on her arms, and her close-cropped hair was all askew. Garnet followed and tied off the stern end.

“Hey, Will,” Garnet said, approaching and clapping the other man on the shoulder.

“Heard you had a run-in with Urb yesterday,” Will said, a rueful grimace on his tanned face. He waved at some other folks who were tying their sail craft up for the night, and another group that was firing up their dockside barbecue. “Sorry about that. He can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but he isn’t always like that.”

“You’re not responsible for Urban, Will,” Ruby said, approaching, but moving aside as a teenager squeezed past her down the dock. “He’s his own worst enemy.”

“Ain’t that the truth!”

“Have you made any progress about the harbor dredging?” Garnet asked.

Jaymie knew they would soon slip into sailing talk—there had been some chatter about dredging the harbor mouth to allow bigger sail craft to enter—and excused herself, telling the Redmonds she’d be by the cottage later. “I have to get to Tansy’s shop before she closes.”

“Remember, the back door of the cottage will be open for you, Jaymie,” Ruby called. “While we’re at the restaurant, and even later, overnight!”

“I don’t want to disturb you guys,” she protested.

“Don’t be silly. I don’t want you to get caught short!”

“Thanks,” Jaymie said, and walked on up the rising road with Hoppy, then cut back into the island, strolling the main road that bisected it into American and Canadian property.

There was a border, of course, and many roads that had crisscrossed the island in years gone by had now become dead-end streets. The thorny issue of border security had become a divisive subject on the island, with most saying they had for years been just fine with a virtually open border, so why tamper with perfection? On the other side of the issue were those who felt that security was more important than openness and convenience. Alien smuggling, drug smuggling, security; those were all good reasons to monitor who traveled back and forth. It didn’t take long to cross, since most islanders now had a Nexus pass, which was for low risk/high usage trusted border crossers.