Victoria Hamilton - Vintage Kitchen 04 - No Mallets Intended (23 page)

A wind had come up and now battered at her back window. Denver grumbled and turned around in his little bed by the stove, while Hoppy climbed in with him. For once the cat didn’t growl, but actually let him curl up, too, in the warmest spot in the house.

Michigan, where you can get four seasons in one day, Jaymie thought. Of course, didn’t almost everyone say that about their own weather? There was the old joke about if you didn’t like the weather, just wait ten minutes, and she had heard it from Ontarians, Minnesotans and Michiganians. This day, which had started sunny, was quickly turning into an old Gordon Lightfoot song, with the gales of November battering on her back door.

She realized she had already made the decision to do some more snooping. She briefly thought of Daniel’s admonition not to go out alone. It wasn’t that she didn’t think there was danger out there in the real world, it was just that she was not going to be cowed into hiding in her home without a big strong man to take care of her. If she got in trouble she’d figure a way out of it or pay the consequences; she would not be reckless, but she would not be intimidated, either. People took calculated risks every day; some called it fun, jumping from airplanes, riding horses, scuba diving, parasailing.

Jaymie snooped.

It was too windy and too cold to walk, though, so she’d take the van out to the house.

She loved how her house looked in fall. She looked it over as she unlocked her van, parked in the back alley by the garage. There was still a light on in the kitchen and it glowed, making the house seem a warm, inviting place. The grass was still green, and the holly bushes along the fence that bordered her property and the bed-and-breakfast struck a festive note for the season that was still a few weeks away. She paused, thinking, did she really want to go out in the cold and wind that night? Why not just make some cocoa and sit in the parlor with a good book?

However… how would she concentrate on even the best book with all this stuff hanging over her head? She needed answers. They may not be found at the historic house, but it was as good a place as any to start looking. She got in, gunned her engine and headed down the lane to the road out of town, away from the river.

As she drove, she pondered the random things that were troubling her. Where had Isolde’s cell phone come from? The packaging was neat and so was the writing on the envelope, tidy block letters with no embellishment. The package had been mailed from the post office in Marine City and…
Marine City
. Like a weird echo in her mind, she heard Jewel saying, about their Monday buying trip and stop in Marine City, “Cynthia had to mail something or other, so I went to an antique store…”

Had to mail something… but how did
she
get Isolde’s cell phone?

Jaymie pulled up in front of Dumpe Manor and sat staring at the road. If she could still safely assume that Cynthia Turbridge was not the culprit, there was only one answer: the cell phone had been in her car. Finding it would have terrified Cynthia. The knowledge of that lost night, the fear that she had done something horrendous: that would have driven her to conceal her discovery, to just mail it where she thought it might be found.

However, if she was guilty she might still do the same thing, just to get the cell phone out of her possession. She shook her head; surely if she had murdered Theo, then found Isolde’s cell phone in her car, she would just have dropped it in a Dumpster out of town, not mailed it to Theo’s address. Before she went home Jaymie thought she’d take a little side trip to Cynthia’s to get the truth out of her.

She pulled up the lane and regarded the house, bathed in the slanting light of November sunset. It got dark so early now; she had forgotten how early. One minute the sun hung low in the sky, and the next it was dark. Why was she even here? She sat staring at the house, looking up to the peak and thinking about the security expert who had installed the alarm system. He had told her that the ways into the house were various, and a locked door was not going to stop a break-in. Nothing could stop someone determined to break in, and even a security system was only as good as the people who used it. He had strenuously advised against giving out the entry methods and codes to too many people, saying it defeated the purpose.

But Lockland was equally certain that every member of the society should have access to the house if they hoped to get it up and running on time. Jaymie had read the pamphlet thoroughly, and thought she understood how the security panel worked, but would Imogene Frump or Mrs. Bellwood get it?

She went back to the problem at hand: who had killed Theo Carson? It all came down to why the author was at the house that night, and who had texted Jaymie to come out as well. Isolde had claimed not to know who took her cell phone, but the most obvious answer was Theo, and that would answer Jaymie’s puzzlement over him going to the house alone, when he had seemed so adamant against that. He hadn’t
intended
to be out there alone. He had figured on getting Jaymie there with a text supposedly from Isolde.

Everyone thought she was a snoop, and he must have bought into that. He certainly implied it in their conversation at the meeting. But why did he want her there? She tapped the steering wheel. He was looking for something, and she had a knack for finding things. Ergo, he had hoped to appeal to her famous snoopiness. Maybe he intended to confide in her and ask for her help. Isolde had seemed certain that Jaymie had sought and purposely found the valuable letter back in the spring, even though it had been pure dumb luck.

But then… why had he ended up dead?
Someone
hadn’t wanted him in the house searching it. It could be because of the stolen goods, but those were hidden pretty well. It would take a determined snoop with a lot of time to find those totes, the few that were left. No, it was… her eyes widened. It was all about the spurious will. Theo might find it, and he was exactly the
wrong
person. Not wanting to be caught snooping, he could just destroy it, or take it away with him.

If that was true, then this all came down to Prentiss Dumpe. He wanted the will discovered in a controlled manner by the right person; he must have been keeping an eye on the house. He didn’t like or trust Theo, and so figured Theo, feeling the same about him, would destroy the will because it benefited Prentiss. She remembered something, suddenly… an antacid wrapper in the garage when she had searched it, and Prentiss munching on candy from a roll at the heritage society meeting. He had broken into the garage and was hanging around there, watching the house, waiting until someone discovered the will. In fact, he had likely put it in the kitchen cabinet because of Jaymie’s vaunted sleuthing skills and habit of finding things. He intended to
use
her supposed skills to bolster his claim to the house.

He probably thought it would be funny if she was the one to help him establish his claim.

Headlights flashed in her rearview mirror as a car pulled in behind her. Momentarily blinded, she felt a frisson of fear as the car stopped and was turned off. Someone got out and strolled up to the driver’s side of her van. She tensed, but the face that appeared was Dick Schuster’s. He motioned for her to roll down her window.

She hesitated, but he was talking, so she rolled it down. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

He came closer. “I wanted to apologize!”

“For what?”

“For earlier in the store. I was upset. I get wound up and…” He shook his head and looked down at the ground.

“You didn’t really think I was accusing you of murder, did you?” she asked.

He looked back up, and his eyes were gleaming with tears. “I don’t know. It’s been such an awful time. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing everything. You don’t know what it’s like to go through a divorce, and then, when people start accusing you of being a weirdo…” He shrugged.

“Who’s accusing you of being a weirdo?” she asked.

“Oh, just everyone,” he said, his small mouth twisting in bitterness. “It’s all Prentiss’s fault.”

Jaymie eyed him. He looked so forlorn, she did feel sorry for him. “I’ve heard that he was your therapist for a while.”

“Not a very good one. I’d better get going.” He turned away.

Jaymie debated with herself, but made a hasty decision. “Wait, Dick! Hold on.” She got out of the van and chased after him. He knew Prentiss Dumpe better than she did, and maybe he could help her figure out if the man really was the murderer of Theo Carson, as Jaymie was becoming convinced, or if she was wrong.

He stopped and turned, a frown on his face. “What is it?” He had his cell phone in hand and looked back down, hitting numbers and letters on the keypad.

How to ask? “I don’t know Dr. Dumpe very well, but he strikes me as being a deceptive person. Is that true, in your experience?”

Schuster trembled slightly. “I think he is probably the most vile person I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.”

“I heard he caused problems with your wife.”

The man froze, his eyeglasses glimmering in the slanting sunlight, concealing his eyes. “Who told you that?”

“I… don’t remember.”

A car passed on the road. Schuster sighed. “My wife and I had problems even before Prentiss, but he sure didn’t help. Anyway, I gotta go.”

“Wait!” She scrambled to think of what she wanted to know, now that she had him there. There was only one thing, really. “This is important, Dick. Do you think Prentiss Dumpe could have killed Theo Carson?”

Schuster’s eyes widened. “Do
you
think so?”

It almost sounded like hope in his voice, but he didn’t seem to have an opinion. Well, it was a faint hope anyway. “I don’t know. I guess I’d better go do what I came here to do.”

“What was that?”

She hesitated, then said, “I wanted to be sure the security system is armed and working right. Just worried about it, I guess, with all the problems we’ve been having.”

“I’ll let you get to it, then,” he said, and he retreated to his car, cell phone out again.

Jaymie headed up to the house and climbed the stairs. There should be a small LED light in the sidelight window if the system was armed correctly. Because of the sheer number of people who would be going in and out, the security expert felt it best to make sure there was a way for those who understood the system to be able to tell at a glance that it was working, but it was information that was going to be limited to herself, Haskell Lockland and Bill Waterman.

It wasn’t there. From what she understood from the literature, there were two possibilities. If the power was out, then the system would go on battery power and the “armed” light would be the first energy-saving sacrifice. Or… it could just be that whoever had been in the house last—even Haskell—may not have correctly armed the system. She sighed and got out her key. There was only one way to find out which it was. If it was the latter she would need to jump through the hoops detailed in the pamphlet.

She let herself in and turned on the hall light, as the security alarm began to beep. There was no beautiful burst of light from the pendant, though. She flicked it up and down. Nothing. So,
that
definitely explained the lack of a light; the wind had taken the power out. It wouldn’t be the first time, but the power generally came back on within a half hour.

She needed to input the security code, now that she had unlocked the door, or the alarm would sound at the offices of Wolverhampton Security. Darn it! It was starting to get dark, the combination of early sunset and a gloomy sky causing a more complete duskiness than was usual for that time of day. She peered at the keypad, very faintly illuminated from the backup battery power.

A bang startled her and she jumped, her heart pounding as the alarm system kept up its steady beep-beep-beep. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come out here. She just needed to disarm the system, rearm it and leave. Luckily, Connor had recommended an extended entry delay time to give older and vision-challenged society members time to punch in the number; she had four minutes, and she might need every second. She could barely see the keypad. A flashlight would help; she had one in the glove box of her van. She’d get her cell phone at the same time to call Connor and make sure she was doing things right. She headed toward the front door, stumbling a little as she tripped on a rug, and ran into a solid wall. A solid wall that smelled of sweat and grunted in anger. Jaymie righted herself and stared directly at the shadowy face of Prentiss Dumpe. “Prentiss! What are you doing here?”

Twenty-three

“I
SAW YOUR
VAN
parked out front and was worried about you. Is everything all right, my dear?”

She swallowed. Prentiss was the
last
person she wanted to see, given what she now believed, so she needed to stay focused and get out. His face was obscured by the shadows and he emanated heat and a musky odor.

“I was just here to make sure the alarm system was up and working, but it seems that the electricity is out, and I… I can’t remember what the security expert said about power outages,” she lied. “I guess I’ll call Haskell and ask
him
.” If only she had her cell phone in her hand.

“Now, why would you want to do
that
?” he asked, his tone mocking. “You’re far more clever than that rooster Haskell Lockland. In fact you’re far
too
clever, aren’t you?”

“Not really,” she said feverishly. If only she was as clever as people seemed to think she was.

If she was quicker on the uptake she would have figured out right away that the “lady client” Prentiss was claiming to see as a therapist
must
be Cynthia Turbridge. The tricky part was that she understood that Cynthia’s alibi to the police was that she was home alone that night, but Jaymie had since remembered one small phrase the chief used; everything turned on that. He’d said that she had claimed to be home
at first
; that
implied a change of story, which telling the police that she was actually meeting her therapist would cover. Judging by what Jaymie had witnessed at the meeting, Prentiss seemed to have her securely in his pocket. But if that was true, and that was what he told the police—that he was busy that evening counseling Cynthia—Jaymie knew what no one else did, that Cynthia was in no shape that night to be seen or counseled by anyone.

“I had, uh, better go back to my van,” she said uneasily, but when she moved to go around him in the dark, he blocked her. Her nerves hummed with anxiety, the beeping of the alarm system in time with her thumping heart.

Prentiss had lied, but because Jaymie had not told the chief everything she knew, the police didn’t know that Cynthia, in backing up his story, had told a whopper. A lie about an alibi was no big deal, she supposed—even innocent people lied, as Chief Ledbetter had told her once—but in this case, if Jaymie was right, Prentiss Dumpe needed to conceal where he was that night. But why would Cynthia say what wasn’t true? The easy answer to that was that when the police confronted her with the fact that her car was gone out of her driveway that night, she likely saw it as a way to conceal her own whereabouts.

It was a foolish thing to do, because she was pretty sure Prentiss was here at Dumpe Manor killing a pesky troublemaker, Theo Carson, either to conceal what he and his son were up to or to keep the wrong person from finding the will. By propping up his alibi Cynthia had become an accessory to his crime. And now he was here again, with yet
another
pesky troublemaker… herself. She did not want to end up like Theo.

“I really need to go,” she said, shivering with a mixture of fear and cold. She again moved to get past him, but he put out one arm. She no longer wanted to disarm the alarm system. In fact, it might just be her best chance at getting out of this dangerous spot she had gotten herself into.

“I think I ought to explain my son to you, Jaymie,” he said, his tone oily with attempted charm. “I know he makes an unfortunate impression, but he is just acting out his anger at a system that doesn’t value his unique perspective on life.”

“There’s no need to explain Iago, Prentiss,” she said, an edge in her voice. What a load of rot. “He’s a thief. That’s no reflection on you. Now… I’m cold. I need to get back to my van.” She steeled herself to push past him.

He grabbed her arms, his grip surprisingly strong. “You’re not going anywhere. I don’t appreciate that you got my son in trouble. He was picked up for questioning this afternoon by some damn nosy woman detective who asked all kinds of questions about stolen property. I have no doubt that came from you. I’ve heard about your little excursion out to the root cellar. When are you going to learn to stop snooping? It’s almost pathological, this need you have to know everyone’s business.”

She tried to hold her tongue. The biggest misperception folks had of her was that she must be a busybody, since she had found three—make that four—dead bodies in such a short time. She’d been jokingly called Nancy Drew and Jessica Fletcher. Even Daniel had told her to “try to keep out of trouble.” But she didn’t go
looking
for trouble, it just found her!

Holding her tongue wasn’t her nature. She squinted, trying to see his eyes in the dimness of the cavernous entrance, the cold wind sweeping in the open door, as his grip began to numb her. “You wanted me to snoop, though, right? You depended on me finding that fake will. The will that’s going to put you in jail for fraud, if not murder!” Her voice was trembling by the time she was done. She tried to wrench her arms from his grasp, but he was too strong.

“You just won’t learn, will you?” he said, his breath minty from chalky antacid. “That was Theo’s problem. Thought he could blackmail me.”

“Blackmail?”

“Greedy son of a… wanted in on poor Iago’s little business venture.”

“That’s where he got Brock Nibley’s tablet,” Jaymie said.

“Among other things.”

Jaymie was startled. Theo had tried to bargain with this sociopath and his wastrel son?

“If he had abided by my rules he would have been just fine, but
no
, the weasel had to keep snooping!”

“You didn’t have to kill him! Murderer!”

“Why are you calling me a murderer?” he said with a sneer. “
I
didn’t kill anyone.”

If she was going to live to snoop another day she needed to get out of this fix. In a situation like this—and she had been in a couple—it was always difficult to know whether to be aggressive or placating. She took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. “Let’s just agree to disagree, shall we, Prentiss? I have to go.” She tried to push back, but suddenly there was someone else in the doorway. It was Dick Schuster! “Dick!” she cried in relief, as the doctor finally released her from his grasp. “Prentiss seems to have a problem with me. Will you walk me out to my car?”

“Yes, Dick, why don’t you do that?” Prentiss said with a smirk. “Or is that too difficult a task for someone of your limited abilities? Look what happened the last time I asked you to perform the simple task of keeping Theo Carson out of my house.”

That was the exact moment when Jaymie knew she was really in trouble.

Dick whined, “I wish you wouldn’t treat me like that, Dr. Dumpe.”

They were in it together. Prentiss was the person Dick had been texting or calling minutes ago, no doubt. It was dark and getting darker, and there was no way she was going to let these clowns take her hostage or worse. Talk or action—which was better? “So, Dick, you’re the good doctor’s lackey?”

Prentiss spoke up. “Poor fellow lacks impulse control, and that’s how Theo died, isn’t it, Dickie? He was
supposed
to knock Carson out to keep him out of the house, not kill him!”

A chill raced down her back. “Like he did with me,” she said.

“Yes, indeed… like he did with you. Even though if he’d had a lick of sense he would have just waited until you left the house on your own.”

“But that darned writer… he stole my work!” Schuster whined. “You told me I needed to assert myself with him, Doctor. Said I needed to be firm.”

“Dick, I’m sure you didn’t
mean
to do it,” Jaymie said, her teeth chattering. “Help me out of this and I’ll tell the police that!” As if.

He made a noise in his throat, a kind of anxious humming.

“Don’t be ridiculous! You’d lose everything, Dick, as if you haven’t already. You need me to help you get your life back!” Prentiss said.

Keep them talking, keep them talking… the alarm beeped on. “So you had Dick kill Theo, is that it? He
used
you, Dick!” she said. “He
wanted
you to kill Theo! It’s
his
fault!”

There was a pause, and she thought she might have him, but then Prentiss spoke again.

“He did it, and I have his bloody clothes to prove it. Common sense and self-control are problems stemming from your lack of confidence, right, Dick?” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “Or so your wife has always told me.”

So why confront me tonight?
Jaymie wondered, her gaze shifting from shadowy figure to shadowy figure. Why not let her just snoop around and go away, now that it was all out in the open? There was only one answer: they had been looking for a way to dispose of her troublesome self, and she had just given them that opportunity. She would be dead, and everything she had learned, every single thing she had speculated in the last hour, would be lost.

Or
not
! There was a time for negotiation, and a time for action.

She shoved Prentiss into Dick and pushed past them, dashing out the front door, down the steps and to her van, jumping in and turning the key. Thank heavens she was not in some horror flick, because the motor leaped to life right away and she began backing down the driveway, only to find that she was hemmed in by both Prentiss’s car and Dick Schuster’s. “Damn!” she shouted, hammering on the steering wheel.

As the two men raced toward her van, Schuster carrying a baseball bat, she quickly considered her options and thought of a great one. She urged her van forward, up the lane, and managed to swerve to miss Schuster, though he swung the bat and connected with her left front headlight. She drove up onto the lawn and around the back of the house. The beam from her one remaining headlight bobbed crazily, a slice of light flickering across the siding of the house as she jounced over bumps, ran down a bench and raced through a fledgling garden, then into the field beyond the expansive yard.

As she drove with one hand, she got her cell phone out of her purse and dialed 911, forgetting, of course, the method Daniel had input for her. It was simpler just to remember 911. Connected, she babbled as much of the story as she could, but she had to swerve to miss a fencepost, and the cell phone was knocked out of her hand and slid off the seat onto the floor. A swift look in her rearview mirror told her she was being followed, but by only one car. Hoping her cell phone was still connected she shouted out her direction. As she turned to the road and aimed for the access area that bridged the ditch, she saw why only one car had followed. The other was poised on the road, ready to cut her off if she decided to go that way, toward town.

She did her best to crank around the wheel of her van and start the opposite way, but the vehicle that had followed her was circling to the road in that direction. Her thoughts darted this way and that as she looked for a way out. Though it went against everything she had originally thought, these two were working together.

She had been thinking Prentiss and Iago Dumpe were the only culprits. Iago had been using the attic as a storage spot for his stolen goods empire and had been in the midst of moving it all to the root cellar when she found it. Prentiss, she figured,
or
Iago, had been the one to hide the fake will in the kitchen cupboard, not realizing that the Snoop Sisters had already searched it thoroughly and could attest that there was nothing there when they looked.

But in reality Dick Schuster, under Prentiss’s control either by psychological manipulation or drug-induced exploitation, was the doctor’s right-hand man.

There was no time to figure out the rest of the story now. Every action movie she had ever seen flashed through Jaymie’s mind; this was the point where the action suspended for a brief moment, and everyone held their breath. She assumed the other two drivers were trying to figure out what she was about to do next, and she had only moments to make a decision before one of them forced her hand. One car was behind her, and one was in front.

She was a very good driver, much better than anyone else she knew, but the van was lumbering and not in the best condition. Still, the fact remained: she was a
very
good driver. There was no time for her to turn, to point the car back to Queensville. So her best option was to charge through and get to the highway, then circle back to town. She gunned the motor, clutched the wheel and charged. This was going to be a game of chicken.